Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Davidson Loehr

16 June 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

OPENING

What are we filled with, when we’re full of ourselves? we’re not filled with others; others are different and have different interests. we’re not filled with the world. And we’re not filled with life, for life is so much more unbounded. we’re not filled with things others are very interested in, as we discover when we can’t stop talking about ourselves.

Whatever we’re filled with when we’re full of ourselves, it doesn’t seem to be very satisfying in the long term, if the cries of loneliness and yearnings for authenticity we hear and feel around us are to be trusted.

However you would describe the trap of being stuck only inside of ourselves, how do we get out of it? What is the path that leads out of self-absorption and into a more satisfying kind of life?

These are among the ultimate questions of our day. We gather to pursue them, in the hope that there may be something of value to be found and felt, even here, even now. That is why we can say that

It is a sacred time, this

And a sacred place, this:

a place for questions more profound than answers,

vulnerability more powerful than strength,

and a peace that can pass all understanding.

It is a sacred time, this:

Let us begin it together in song.

CENTERING

I offer a prayer to those eyes in that “gaze of eternity” I spoke about a few weeks ago here. They are the imaginary eyes of all the noblest people who have ever lived, and all the best gods of the world’s many religions. They are the eyes under whose gaze we need to imagine ourselves living, to lift us from our smaller possibilities to our larger possibilities. I would speak to those people and those gods.

I would say:

Protect us from our exaggerated opinions of ourselves.

Protect us from the arrogance that isolates us from others, the arrogance that isolates us even from our own greater possibilities.

Help us find the honesty and courage to be humble.

Help us to become small parts of a larger world, rather than merely towering over a world scarcely bigger than ourselves.

Release us from the fears that bind us.

Help us grow toward our true calling, as children of God, sons and daughters of the universe, and the hope of the world.

Amen.

SERMON: Humility

When I was asked to do a sermon on humility, I thought long and hard about it. That’s a tough topic, I thought. Not many preachers, I think, could really do a very good job on it. Most of them are way too humble to begin with. And if you take a humble approach to preaching about humility – well, you”ll just bore people to tears.

No, it would require a remarkable set of gifts to do justice to this. The preacher would need, to be blunt, a fair amount of arrogance to pull this off. A hard job, demanding a rare combination of gifts and talents!

And this, then, raised the musical question “But where in the world is there, in the world, a man so extraordinaire?” The answer struck with the force of a revelation: c’est moi!

(NOTE: In the worship service, this song from the 1960’s musical “Camelot” was sung with piano accompaniment. These are the lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, with a few obvious modifications to change the referent from a knight to a preacher.)

c’est moi! c’est moi, I’m forced to admit!

’tis I, I humbly reply,

That mortal who these marvels can do,

c’est moi, c’est moi, ’tis I!

I’ve never lost a battle or game.

I’m simply the best by far.

When swords are crossed,

’tis always the same:

One blow and au revoir!

c’est moi! c’est moi, so admirably fit;

[I am] Prometheus unbound.

And here I stand with valor untold,

Exceptionally brave, amazingly bold

To serve at the pulpit round.

A preacher, you know, should always be invincible;

Succeed where a less fantastic man would fail;

With a will and a self-restraint

That’s the envy of every saint,

He could easily work a miracle or two!

No matter the pain he ought to be unwincable,

Impossible deeds should be his daily fare.

But where in the world is there in the world

A man so extraordinaire?

(You know!) c’est moi! c’est moi, I blush to disclose,

I’m far too noble to lie.

That man in whom these qualities bloom,

c’est moi, c’est moi, ’tis I.

I’ve never strayed from all I believe.

I’m blessed with an iron will.

Had I been made the partner of Eve,

We’d be in Eden still.

c’est moi! c’est moi, the angels have chose

To fight their battles below.

And here I stand as pure as a prayer,

Incredibly clean, with virtue to spare, (sigh)

The godliest man I know! c’est moi!

That song wasn’t my idea, though it was my fault. When our church member Derek Howard bought the right to assign the topic for this sermon in our annual auction, and told me he wanted it to be on humility, my first crack was “Oh, I can do a hell of a job on that!” After that crack settled in, Donna, his wife, called back to request this song. I believe her thinking was “Well, if you”re going to be arrogant even about humility, you might as well do it to music!”

But I won’t take the rap for arrogance all alone. We live in an arrogant time. So I want to use the ideas of arrogance and humility to frame this sermon – and to finish the topic of liberal religion I didn’t quite finish last time (2 June 2002: “What, then, shall we believe?”).

Look at the magazines in grocery store checkout lines. Here are photos of the young, the pretty, the sexy on the covers, saying, “You want to know what success looks like? You want to know what a really attractive person looks like? You want to know what it means to be desirable, to be sexy? Look at me: c’est moi!”

Twenty years ago People magazine began focusing on personalities rather than character or content. But now “people,” in the remote 3rd person, isn’t self-absorbed enough. So now we have the magazines “Us” and “We.” That’s who we tend to think it’s all about today.

This has taken weird and unhealthy turns in many areas. Among liberal circles, for instance, there is the terribly narcissistic fad of what’s being called “identity politics.” This has infected many Unitarian church across the country, though thankfully not this one. Identity politics is the idea that people should be defined by their differences from others, rather than by their deeper similarities to them. Frankly, I think any church that can get seduced by this should close its doors and open a bagel shop. One of the basic teachings of nearly all religions is that focusing on our differences is the enemy of healthy religion, not its solution.

Still, it has become a minor plague, infecting many churches in several denominations, including ours. So much so, in fact, that at Ministry Day this week at General Assembly, the subject for the entire day is Identity Politics. I’m not going. If you want to starve unhealthy practices, for goodness” sake stop feeding them with attention! Identity politics is a series of small groups of people each singing c’est moi, taking turns shining the spotlight on one another – though the only group they”re really concerned about is ‘their kind” of people. Again, it’s a fundamental failure of religion, or even psychological health. Still, it’s here.

But we can back of and find the song sung in our wider culture, too. Take the stock market, one of my least favorite activities. We now live in a time when a healthy economy is defined as one in which stock prices rise.

Thirty years ago, a healthy economy was defined by how many regular working-class people could afford nice houses and good lifestyles on one salary, and could afford to send their kids to good colleges. Today, it’s defined by how much those who control the capital have creamed from the rest of society.

Among the reasons that stock prices rise are worker firings and downsizing, reduction in employee benefits, or moving entire manufacturing operations out of the country and giving the jobs to Mexican workers just south of the Texas border, workers who live in cardboard houses, work for less than a third of American workers, and take the jobs and the hopes away from American workers, in order to make greater profits for the owners. It’s the privileged bragging at the expense of the many, saying c’est moi, look at me!

Over the last two hundred twenty six years, our country’s economy has tilted dramatically toward favoring the very wealthy five times. Of those five times, we are living in the very worst, most brutal, most lopsided in our history. And the imbalance is getting worse daily.

If Congress votes to cancel the inheritance tax, it will probably remove close to a trillion dollars from our economy in the next decade. Add this to the half-trillion dollar budget deficit congress has already approved to shovel money into our new war, and there is a trillion and a half dollars – sure to increase as the was continues. That is money that will not and can not go into workers” benefits, social services, health care, or education.

Some authors credit Ronald Reagan’s economic advisors with perfecting this plan twenty years ago: creating such a huge deficit through increased spending and reduced taxes that the social net was removed from our poorest citizens and simply could not be replaced. Looking out for #1. Sitting on top of the world. That’s no place to be! I’ve flown over the top of the world. It’s frozen solid. Nobody can live there. No community, no companionship, no warmth.

And our very contrived war. I’ll keep saying what I’ve been saying since last September. This is not a war on terrorism, it’s a war about oil, about imperialistic control of other countries, about a country whose economic and military policies are working to turn the world into a two-tier economy of the very rich and the very desperate, and who are enlisting our armies to do it. This war also, like all wars, is increasing the gap between the rich and the rest. Workers” pay and benefits are not being increased, due to the national need to prepare for war. For the owners, however, profits are absolutely soaring.

These are not the actions of a noble country acting in noble ways. They are the actions of a country concerned only with its own interests, narrowly conceived, a country singing “c’est moi” to a world that knows better, as many of the newspapers in other countries are saying clearly. So this great Lerner and Loewe song “c’est moi” isn’t just sung in Camelot. In many ways, it has become the theme song of our times.

It’s too small. And it makes us small.

I learned something interesting about koi a few years ago – those decorative carp the Japanese have cultivated for centuries. And recently I’ve heard the same thing is true of crocodiles. They grow only to fit the size of their pond. If their pond is small, they will be small. If it’s a little bigger, they can grow to be a little bigger. They can only grow to full size in a very large pond. The same is true of us.

And the message of every religion I know of, at its best, has always been that being smug and arrogant makes it impossible for us to grow to our full size.

I spoke last time of the Danish existentialist S”ren Kierkegaard and the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, who turned some of Kierkegaard’s insights into dramatic scenes in his plays. I talked a little about the play “Peer Gynt,” and it’s worth revisiting that play. It’s a play about the difference between authentic and inauthentic people. Ibsen used Trolls to represent inauthentic people. He said the two races live by different mottoes, and you can tell whether someone is a human or a troll by the motto they”re living by. Trolls live by the motto ‘to thyself be sufficient.” Humans live by the motto ‘to thyself be true.”

we’re living in an age of Trolls. That’s what the motto means, “looking out for number One, being on top of the world, being ‘the Man”,” being absorbed in our own interests, narrowly conceived. c’est moi. These are the mottoes of Trolls.

The human motto, ‘to thyself be true,” is much bigger and much harder. It means being true to our greatest calling, to the most and best we can become, not something less. It means seeing ourselves as small parts of a much bigger world. Our world needs to be much bigger so we will be able to grow into our full size. Because like the koi and the crocodiles, we don’t grow much bigger than the world of which we think ourselves an organic part.

But how do you do it? How do you become most fully human and authentic? How do we outgrow the smallness that we can slide into so easily?

The door that leads to outgrowing a small past is the humility to acknowledge that we were wrong, that we were too smug and too small.

I think of arrogance as a soul that has collapsed in on itself. Arrogance is the sound of people growing smaller while shouting “c’est moi!”

It usually takes a powerful shock to our ego to get our attention and wake us up, because narcissism is very seductive and comfortable, as long as we can get away with it. In religious language, we can call this shock an epiphany, a revelation, even a conversion experience. In real life, it’s usually dramatic and always memorable. We never forget those moments when we were rudely awakened from a smaller existence into the possibility of a larger one.

That was what Derek’s four-minute confession was about earlier. [Derek Howard, the lay leader for this service, had spoken about the type of person who he was during the Vietnam War and how a visit to the memorial tempered his arrogance] That’s what happened to him when he visited the Vietnam War Memorial in 1984. He had been a war protestor who was absolutely certain of his position, untainted by doubts. Then he stood in front of that memorial and those tens of thousands of names of men who had given their lives for it humbled him. He didn’t change his opinion of the war, but he changed his opinion of those who had fought and died for it. As he said, he never saw the police officer again who had grabbed him in a choke hold and arrested him during that 1972 demonstration right here in downtown Austin. But after his epiphany, he knew the cop wasn’t, as he’d formerly thought, a pig. He was a man.

Thirty years ago, Derek and I would probably not have had much to say to each other. I served in the Vietnam War, and was proud of my service. The bravest people I ever saw were soldiers in that war, some of whom died there. My own reassessment of the war came much later, when I had the emotional distance to learn enough about it finally to realize that we had no business there.

These epiphanies are precious moments, even sacred moments. They are the times that we were shown a much bigger world, and are invited into it. It doesn’t happen very often in life. we’re terribly lucky when it does.

I don’t want to go into a lot more details or more examples of this, because I think all of you have been through it in your own life on some scale. Instead, I’ll use this to segue back to the subject of my last sermon, the development of liberal theology over the past two thousand years. I didn’t quite finish it last time, but you”ll see that humility plays its role here too.

I ended last time talking about Paul Tillich. I still think he was the best Christian theologian of the 20th century was. Partly because he was so frank about theology being closely related to depth psychology – something he learned from Kierkegaard as so many of the rest of us have.

But it was also Tillich’s insistence on honesty, on bringing all manner of questions to religion. Throughout his career, those who knew him, and many of us who read him, felt that he was torn between two allegiances. One was his desire to follow his insights to their logical conclusions, which would have led him beyond Christianity and beyond theism. He may have been the only religious thinker with a mind powerful enough to do this, so many of us wish he had done so. But his other allegiance was to the Christian tradition. He felt he was one of its ablest defenders, and felt compelled to defend it in an age of growing skepticism.

But in his last two years, he met Mircea Eliade, the great scholar of world religions at Chicago. And when these two great minds met, it was the younger Eliade who changed the older Tillich, and gave him the chance to grow beyond both Christianity and theism.

In a paper delivered only twelve days before he died, Tillich finally acknowledged the step he could have taken decades earlier.

After learning more about the way the same deep human questions are pursued through all world religions, he said that if he had it to do again, he would not have written his theology from within Christianity. He would have written it from within the broader field of world religions.

Even theologians who know Tillich’s work don’t seem to understand or discuss what this meant. But it was revolutionary. He was saying in 1965 that all the gods in all the world’s religions were created by their people, rather than the other way around. And they were created by their ancient storytellers as local and transient vehicles for our permanent human questions.

So the logical conclusion of liberal theology, and the legitimate heir to the gods, comes when we will take the step of owning our questions and pursuing the wisdom we need wherever it can be found. At their best, the gods are our resources and teachers, the projected personifications of some of our species’ highest hopes and most sacred values.

In some ways, this has been the message of liberal theology for over two thousand years. Two weeks ago I talked about Origen, the early 3rd century Christian. He taught that religious writings must be taken symbolically, not literally, because literal readings of scripture, he said, aren’t religious. He also said we need two things from religion. We need to find those things that are useful to us and worthy of God, worthy of the very highest that we can grasp. I’m still not sure that can be put better or more concisely.

Today, when we can learn so easily about so many religions and mythologies, we have a wide array of gods. Each one, created by the people who then came to worship it, has been a kind of collecting point for their collective wisdom. We can learn from all religions and mythologies.

If we’re smart, we’re still looking for what’s useful to us and worthy of the highest values, worthy of the gods.

We come to church because we need a community of people who will be serious about life’s serious questions, where we can pursue them in good company. It’s so hard to do alone.

What is it that’s hard to do alone? It’s hard to grow into the kind of life that’s useful to us and worthy of the highest.

As you can hear, this opens the scope of liberal religion onto an almost infinite scene. All religions, all gods, as well as all great poetry, drama, and all the humanities are food for our spiritual journey. That’s good news, it means there will still be plenty to talk about when I resume my regular sermons here in two months.

But you know, some day we’re going to hear some important questions we need to know how to answer.

They’ll be questions about a person who really did it. A person who really lived the way we want to live. Someone who tried the best they could to be the best they could. Someone who had moral courage, strength of character, whose life was a blessing to themselves and to others. Someone who was authentic, who was true to themselves in the best way, someone who really did it.

Then a voice from somewhere will ask, “Do you know that person?”

And more than anything, we want to be able to say “Yes. Yes, of course I know that person:

“C’est moi.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Davidson Loehr

2 June 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

OPENING:

If I wear an impressive clerical robe and act very priestly, can I tell you what to believe? What if I get a group of fifty together, or 500 – or what if we form a club? Then can we tell you what you believe?

When, exactly, do you give up the responsibility of speaking for yourself about your religious beliefs?

There are churches where the answer is “the minute you join this church.” The Southern Baptists have fallen to this level of authoritarianism, so that at least two local churches – University Baptist Church and First Baptist Church – have withdrawn from the Southern Baptist Convention rather than have their beliefs prescribed by someone else. There is a rumor that the entire Texas convention may withdraw from the SBC.

Within liberal religion, however – at least when it is being true to its heritage – the answer is that you never give up the responsibility to speak for your own beliefs. We must always work out for ourselves what we really believe – whether we like it or not.

What, then, shall we believe? That’s the question we gather, as always, to explore. And so

It is a sacred time, this,

and a sacred place, this:

a place for questions more profound than answers,

vulnerability more powerful than strength,

and a peace that can pass all understanding.

It is a sacred time, this:

Let us begin it together in song.

CENTERING:

We pray to the better angels of our nature. We pray to the spirit of all the noble souls of history under whose imagined gaze we live our lives.

We ask for help in holding lightly to yesterday’s answers. For they may not unlock tomorrow’s questions.

Yet not everything is to be outgrown:

Let us hold to what is compassionate, and helps make us a blessing to others.

Let us hold to what seems most deeply true, even if it is uncomfortable.

Let us follow that which compels us toward living out of our higher callings rather than the lower kind.

Let us hold to the fact that we are all brothers, sisters, children of God and the hope of the world.

Let us hold, in brief, to those things that are useful to us and worthy of God – useful to us and worthy of the very highest ideals we can grasp.

If we can hold just to these things, we will find our safe and proud passage through the narrows of life.

And so we pray to the angels of our better nature and the imagined presence of all the noblest souls of history. And we say “We would be one of you. We would be one of you. Be with us today and all days. Be with us.”

Amen.

SERMON: What, then, shall we believe?

In May, I finished a four-week adult education class in liberal theology with thirty or forty members and friends of the church. It was a tough course, with tough reading. I asked the class to read the original sources from liberal theologians going all the way back to the first century. I did this because when they are asked how they know these things, I didn’t want them merely to be able to say “Well, my preacher told me so.” I wanted them to be able to say “I read these things myself, and if you doubt my interpretation, let’s read them together.”

Of course, it isn’t possible to cover such a subject in only four weeks. But it is possible to get a very good feel, in just four weeks, for what the liberal style of religion is, and how it differs from the literal style that has always been its opposite.

I recorded all of these classes with some new portable digital recording equipment I bought to record the Jesus Seminar programs I do on the road. I think all of our courses should be recorded so that others can take advantage of them, so decided to start with this one. And I decided to make this sermon the final installment on those classes and recordings, by kind of summing up in half an hour two thousand years of liberal religious thought that couldn’t even be summed up in four weeks.

While the subject is complex, I think the gist of liberal religion is very simple and very clear. And if I’m right, I should be able to make it simple and clear to you here today. So if you don’t get it, it’s my fault.

Liberal religion is my own religious tradition. Others have called it “being human religiously,” or “coming to our full humanity and divinity,” it has a lot of nicknames. I think we can call it anything we like, as long as we can call it forth, and make it present in our minds, hearts, and lives.

What is it? The first distinction was drawn in the first century, between literal and liberal readings of scripture. By “liberal” I mean reading scripture symbolically, allegorically, metaphorically, rather than thinking that religious writings are to be taken literally.

A first-century Jew named Philo of Alexandria made this clear in a dozen different ways. But the distinction is also in the Bible. St. Paul said that “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6).” Every liberal in history would second that. And nearly the entire gospel of John, probably written between about 90-110, can be read as mocking literal interpretations. Over and over again, a story is told that makes sense only if taken symbolically, then those who hear it don’t get it because they can only hear it literally. Once you see the pattern, it makes reading that gospel almost funny.

1. Jesus says “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And a man answers “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:3-4, RSV)

2. The disciples want Jesus to eat, and he says “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” So they murmur among themselves, saying “Has anyone brought him food?” (John 4:31-33)

3. Jesus says “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. His audience again murmurs “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, “I have come down from heaven?” (John 6: 41-42)

Many biblical scholars, including those of the Jesus Seminar, don’t believe Jesus said any of these words. They were written by people to help create the new religion in which they had turned the man Jesus into a god. Still, they are saying that religious teachings must be understood symbolically, not literally, and this is a basic teaching of liberal religion.

A brilliant Christian thinker in the early third century named Origen took it farther. He said there are three levels of understanding religious writings, each suited to a certain level of seriousness and maturity in the believers.

At the very surface is the literal meaning of scripture – the “body” – which he thought was childish, and not religious at all.

Next is the symbolic meaning, the metaphorical meaning, where the real religious message is to be found. This is the “soul” of religion. “the aim of the Holy Spirit,” as Origen put it, “is that we should understand that there have been woven into the visible narrative truths that, if pondered and understood inwardly, bring forth a law useful to us and worthy of God.” (Origen, On First Principles, Chapter Three #4.) This is the general teaching of liberal religion in all times and places: that we are seeking for teachings and insights into our human condition that are useful to us and worthy of the very highest ideals we can fathom. Origen described those as being “worthy of God,” but it’s easy to understand his meaning.

We want to find meanings worthy of the highest ideals, not lower-level concerns – like reciting creeds or principles spoon-fed to you by groups of people who neither know you nor what you need to believe.

Origen and many other liberal theologians would add that if it isn’t worthy of God, it isn’t really useful to us either – at least not in any religious sense. We can’t ever settle for merely joining a club, saying we believe the same as others just so we can feel like we’re part of that church, denomination or party.

And finally is the “spirit” of religion. The second level is as far as a lot of liberal religion ever carries it: learning how to understand the meanings of scriptures. But that isn’t the heart of the matter. At the final level, open only to those willing to see and work and be open to it and opened by it, is the very spirit of religion. This is the realization that religion finally isn’t about just “understanding” writings. Finally, it is about being transformed into a person living around a new kind of center. Finally, at the spiritual level, people realize that religion is about living holy lives, not merely understanding holy words.

Even eighteen centuries later, it’s hard to know how religion could be taken much more seriously than this. And Origen’s lesson on how to read religious scriptures: we are searching for those things that are useful to us, and worthy of God. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better statement about how to read religious writings. We are searching for those things that are useful to us, and worthy of the gods. Things that make us into more whole and authentic people, and are worthy of the very highest values and ideals we can know. That one lesson contains a whole graduate school education in understanding religion!

St. Augustine, writing in the early fifth century at the collapse of the Roman Empire, said that for people who read scripture literally – he compared them to children – the Bible is a kind of nest that keeps them from falling out, though it won’t do much else for them. But for others, for those who have learned the deeper meanings of these writings, the Bible is no longer a nest, but a kind of leafy orchard, where you fly about picking the finest fruits of the orchard (Augustine, Confessions, Book XII).

Where does the religious urge come from? Is it a kind of mental virus that infects weak-minded people? Is it some kind of invasion from a supernatural realm above the sky? Or is it something closer to home? 1400 years after Augustine came a great Protestant theologian named Schleiermacher, who is often called the Father of liberal theology – at least Protestant liberal theology. Religion, he said, isn’t about supernatural things. It comes from deep within us. It is the desire to become whole, to become integrated and authentic, to relate ourselves to things of the highest worth.

All of us respect those who live their lives in obedience to their quest for the highest, no matter what their religion is. We respect those who try to put themselves in harmony with what is highest, and this is the religious urge that is an inherent part of what it means to be human. Think of your own personal heroes and see if this isn’t true.

No one can become fully human without developing their spiritual capacity, Schleiermacher wrote, though it can be expressed in a thousand different ways, through a thousand different religions. There is a sense of awe, a sense of wonder at being here at all, at being a small part of such an unimaginable, immense universe. Religion – as Aristotle had said 2400 years ago – begins there, with that sense of wonder.

Every liberal theologian following Schleiermacher has been influenced by him. Some were moved to attack the supernaturalism and mythology in religion, so people wouldn’t be so easily misled by its teachings. This led to the quest for the historical Jesus – the quest to ask who that man Jesus was, what he really did, rather than what the mythic stories of the Bible say about him. That quest began in earnest in the early 19th century (with D.F. Strauss’ 1835 book The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined), and is continuing with the work of the Jesus Seminar today. The ability to be very critical of religion’s teachings has always been essential. If you just accept what others tell you, you have never developed your own religion at all, and probably don’t even know what you actually believe.

Other writers went into the depths of religion, into what it meant actually to be religious. Of these, the most influential and powerful was the early 19th century Danish thinker S”ren Kierkegaard, who is my own greatest influence. He has been called the founder of existentialism, and of psychiatry. And he did link religion, philosophy and psychology.

Religion becomes quite serious here. It’s no longer about living again in some other place and time, it is asking whether we’re really living here and now. The purpose of honest religion is to help us do this. And there can be quite a penalty for not doing it: for not becoming authentic. Kierkegaard wrote of a kind of existentialist’s “Judgment Day” that is pretty sobering:

“Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself” (from Either/Or, in A Kierkegaard Anthology edited by Robert Bretall, Princeton University Press, 1946, p. 99)

Honesty in life, and honesty in religion, are about this quest for authenticity and the kind of existential “judgment day” that Kierkegaard meant by that “midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask.” Many people, and many religions, are afraid of this. Liberal religion is not.

The playwright Ibsen turned many of Kierkegaard’s most disturbing insights into dramatic scenes, as he did in his play “Peer Gynt.” Peer Gynt was a man who lived his life as a phony – today we would call him a sociopath. Never in his life was he true to himself. He lived only to get wealth, power and envy, but never developed, never became authentic or real.

At the end of his life of worldwide travelling, he returned home, mostly to gloat. But what awaited him was that “midnight hour” when he was confronted by all the things he had never become. The Judgment came in the form of voices that called to him as he walked through the woods:

We are the thoughts you should have thought;

 Feet to run with you should have given us.

 We should have soared skywards as challenging voices,

 But here we must tumble like balls of grey yarn.

We are songs, you should have sung us.

A thousand times you have pinched and suppressed us.

In the depths of your heart we have lain and waited…

We were never called forth” now we poison your voice!

We are tears – you should have shed us.

We might have melted the icicles that pierced your heart…

But now the wound has closed over, and our power is gone.

We are deeds, you should have done us.

Doubts that strangle have crippled and bent us.

But on Judgment Day we shall flock to accuse you;

And woe to you then…

(Act Five, scene Four: adapted from several translations)

This isn’t a judgment day up in the sky. It doesn’t involve St. Peter or a gaggle of angels. This is the one that can ambush us when it looks back at us from our mirror and says “Who were you? Why didn’t you become yourself?”

The last major theologian we covered in this four-week course was the 20th century’s greatest theologian, Paul Tillich. He had read and was influenced by all the others, back to the first century – especially Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard. I’ll finish with Tillich two weeks from today, in my last sermon here until August. But I’ll introduce him today.

Tillich, perhaps more than any other theologian, insisted on absolute honesty. He said that our beliefs must change as the world changes and as we grow. To cling to childhood beliefs as a grown-up is to create an idolatry, he said. Even worse, it is demonic. This is the route of worshipping the key to last year’s lock. (This reference was to the morning’s children’s story.) It puts provisional teachings of a group or a church up on a pedestal. It keeps us from remaining open to life’s experiences, and keeps us from ever doing the hard personal work of trying to understand what we actually believe. Without that step, we’re living in a second-hand religion, a hand-me-down faith that may once have been somebody else’s , but isn’t what we really believe.

This is religion for the masses, and every religion, every denomination, has one. You can be a Presbyterian by just repeating their creeds and confessional teachings. But then you’ve just joined a club, not done the work of developing an honest religion of your own. You can be a Unitarian Universalist by trying to memorize those banal ‘s even principles.” Or, since few care to memorize them, you can get this little business card to carry in your pocket, so when someone asks you what you believe you can say “Wait a minute, I know I’ve got it here somewhere. These people told me what it was, hold on.” But again, you’ll have just joined a club, not found a religion. None of those “principles” came from asking any religious questions, any questions about the human condition or what might improve the world. They arose from taking a poll of “our people” and the sorts of generic things they could agree they believed. It was not a religious exercise. It was an insecure and narcissistic exercise among a tiny, marginalized group of liberals whose center was social and political, not religious.

But if you want a religion that is useful to you and worthy of God, you will have to be able to own the beliefs. They”ll have to have roots within your deepest and most honest assessment of your human condition and those beliefs and behavior needed to make you most whole, most authentic, most complete. No one can do that for you. Unless you do it yourself, it will simply not be done.

I have met people who wear T-shirts with those principles on them, who tell me they are UUs. I ask them if they really believe those things, and if so, how and why it came about. They stare at me. The truth is, too many people have no idea what they believe, and to add insult to injury, they have been going to a church that never even told them how important it is that they try to find out! They”ve been betrayed. That’s why Paul Tillich said that teaching creeds or principles in this way is demonic; it blinds people to the personal work of developing their real beliefs.

What, then, shall we believe as religious liberals? Though there isn’t a creed, there are some deep and enduring lessons to be learned from the whole history of liberal religion that we would be wise to keep. I wrote a brief list of some of these a few years ago, which I have included in the introduction to liberal religion and this church that’s on our web site. These aren’t offered as a creed, but for you to test against your own deepest values and your life experiences, to see if they don’t arise for you too – or how you would need to reword or replace them to be deeply true for you:

We believe that God loves us and wants us to love others. (Many here would prefer words like “Life,” “the Universe” etc. to the word “God,” but you can understand the meaning.)

We believe we’re a part of life and that we owe something back to the world for the gift of life. Many are searching for what that ‘s omething” is, though it need not be elaborate. As one medieval theologian put it, “If the only prayer you ever say is ‘thank you,” it will be enough.” But we are enlarged by an attitude of gratitude, and we seek to find our paths toward that way of understanding our lives.

We believe that down deep almost all religions are saying that we are precious people who need to treat everybody else as though they were precious, too.

We believe that we are supposed to live in such a way that, when we look back on our life, we can be proud, and can make those we care about proud. We believe we are to try and make this world a little better because we were here, each in our own way.

We believe that love is better than hatred, understanding is better than prejudice, and that if there is ever to be a better world, people of widely differing beliefs will have to help each other build it. This means we must learn how to communicate and cooperate with people whose beliefs differ from ours.

We believe that, down deep, most people of good will respect these ideals.

It is so important to take this both seriously and personally. Remember, we need a faith that can guide our lives in such a way that when that “midnight hour” comes, when those voices in the woods ask us who we really were and how we have spent our lives, we can answer them with our head held high.

I haven’t told you anything you didn’t already know. You know these truths at the bottom of your heart and the center of your mind, and at some level you have known them for a very long time, you know?

So that’s enough, that’s enough for this morning. In truth, it’s almost enough for a life, isn’t it?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Davidson Loehr

26 May 2002

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

OPENING

“Our souls are restless till we find our home in Thee.” The sentiment was from St. Augustine, 1600 years ago. “Our souls are restless till we find our home in Thee.”

We gather here from many places, bringing many needs. Joy, sadness, depression, energy and optimism: all those emotions and more are present here today. Perhaps it is at least true to say that our souls are restless till we find our home somewhere, in something that feels adequate to our yearnings.

CENTERING: Psalm 90 (mixed translations)

For our Centering, I”ve chosen a psalm written by a poet who lived under the gaze of God. This is taken from Psalm 90:

SERMON

I first heard of the idea of “living under the gaze of eternity” in graduate school. A professor said that’s how to understand the ancient Roman advice that noble people should live sub specie aeternitatis.

At first, I had this picture of pretending I was living while everyone who had ever lived was watching everything I did. That was not an appealing idea! I had had a few experiences of feeling watched when I didn’t want to be watched, and I didn’t like it.

For some people, that’s what it’s like imagining that God sees their every action. This has never seemed like such a good idea, either. When I was a little boy, I heard that Santa Claus did this – you know that terrifying song, “He sees you while you”re sleeping, he knows when you”re awake, he knows when you”ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness” sake!” Well, I never liked the idea of his knowing all that. I wanted to deny him access – set up a password or something.

It is an odd idea, living under the gaze of eternity. I can’t imagine that it’s very attractive to very many people anywhere. You”ve probably had some experiences of this, too.

The earliest I can remember feeling like someone invisible was watching me came when I was in the 8th grade, living in Colfax, Iowa, a town of about 1800 people twenty miles from Des Moines. Each year the Girl Scouts sponsored a Sadie Hawkins Day Dance, named after a very assertive character in the Lil” Abner comic strips, where the girls asked the boys for a date, and if asked you had to go. The most obvious thing wrong with this plan was that in 8th grade nobody knew how to dance, the girls didn’t know how to communicate with boys, and the boys hardly knew how to communicate with anyone.

I hoped and prayed that I”d be spared, but Helen van Elsen invited me to the Sadie Hawkins Day Dance, and I had to go. It was the kind of dance you could see in a movie about small towns in the 1950s. The girls sat on one side of the room, the boys sat on the other side of the room, the music played, we listened, and once in awhile a couple girls would get up and dance together since the boys were pretty useless.

After the dance came to a merciful end, Helen and I walked downtown to the Rexall Drug store and sat in a booth, drinking chocolate or cherry Cokes and talking. We talked and talked, until the owner of the drug store came over to tell us we had to leave because he was closing. It was midnight! That was a lot later than we”d planned on, so I walked Helen home then walked to my own house.

Monday morning, English class was always first. But on this next Monday, the teacher came into the class on a mission. She glared at me from the minute she entered the room, walked over to her desk, dropped her books and papers on it, pointed straight at me in front of the whole class and said “Young man, what do you mean getting Helen van Elsen home at 12:17 Sunday morning?!”

And I thought to myself, “I”ve got to get out of this town!” It felt like everyone was watching you in a small town, and I didn’t like it.

A more recent memory of getting caught by someone’s gaze came about a dozen years ago. It’s much shorter and wasn’t embarrassing, though it was still uncomfortable.

I was a minister in Michigan in a town of about 250,000. I was in line at the grocery store thinking about something else, when I became vaguely aware of a woman coming to get in line behind me. I had a full cart, she had just a couple items. Almost absentmindedly, I motioned for her to cut in ahead of me, and immediately wished I hadn’t done it because I was hungry and wanted to get home. But it was too late.

Then as she steered her cart in front of mine, she turned to me and said “Thank you. It’s nice to see a minister who practices what he preaches.”

I had never seen this woman before. I don’t think she attended my church. But I was on a weekly television show there, and might have been seen without knowing it a number of places.

While I was suddenly glad I had acted absentmindedly instead of thinking about it and keeping my place in line, it still felt like another voyeur had been watching my life while I was unaware, and I didn’t like it.

These experiences probably explain why I use a Macintosh computer.

I bought my first Mac in 1985, I’m now on my fourth. But some of you will remember the TV ad that announced this new kind of computer. It appeared at half-time during the 1985 Super Bowl, and was one of the classic ads in TV history. Back then, IBM was the only real competition, and this Macintosh ad portrayed the IBM computers and their horrible MSDOS system as Big Brother, up there on a screen, watching all of us, making sure we all conformed and did it His way, remember? Then some heroic savior figure threw a big hammer through the air and shattered that screen with Big Brother on it, and this quirky little Macintosh computer stood there, with something drawing squiggly lines on it saying “Hi!” I bought mine just a few months later.

While my experiences are bound to be different from yours, I think a lot of people have very negative associations with the idea of being under the gaze of others. Whether it’s Santa Claus or God, there’s something intrusive about it, like a kind of divine Peeping Tom at the window of your life where he has no place being. It can feel like we’re expected to conform to the expectations of others, and many of us equate that with losing our own lives. We live in such an age of individualism, the whole idea seems foreign.

Of course, living under the gaze of eternity doesn’t have to mean being watched by all the dullest people who have ever lived. It could mean trying to look at things against a background of the most, the best, that can be expected of us.

It could mean the noblest eyes that have ever lived, or being judged by the highest, the most enduring or eternal standards. It could mean living under the charge of becoming the best and most that we could be.

For a lot of young Christians, it can mean asking WWJD? I have a Unitarian colleague who didn’t like Jesus that much, but who liked the idea. So she had a bracelet made saying “WWXD?” She knew all the episodes of Xena, the Warrior Princess, and consulted her image of Xena just as the others wondered what Jesus would do. When I was a boy, I remember clearly that Superman and Captain Marvel were my own personal superheroes. I would wonder what they would do, or what Clark Kent and Billy Batson would do – and I occasionally snuck off where no one could hear me and practiced saying ‘s hazam!” just in case it really could call forth the magic lightning bolt that could turn me into Captain Marvel. It’s an important way for kids to try and call forth an image of someone of absolute courage and perfect moral compass: what would they do here?

Besides my negative experiences of being gazed at, I also have a very positive and powerful one. It came during the graduation ceremony when I received my Ph.D. degree. It was the first graduation ceremony I”d attended since high school, but a classmate said I didn’t want to miss it, because of this one line the president of our university said to the doctoral students. It came after all the undergraduates and Master’s Degree students had received their diplomas, and the president had called all the Ph.D. recipients up on the stage. She said a few routine things and a few ordinary sorts of congratulations, before she finally said this one line, which I memorized on the spot: “I welcome you,” she said, “to the ancient and honorable community of scholars.”

Just eleven words: “I welcome you to the ancient and honorable community of scholars.” For me, they were worth the trip. I had this sudden overwhelming feeling of being surrounded by all of the best scholars who had ever lived, all those ancient and modern thinkers I had spent seven years reading and struggling to understand. They were all there with me. The philosophers, from ancient Greece to modern Europe, England and America. All the theologians, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and all the rest of them. It felt like all of their eyes were on me, and I would be living under the gaze of both their approval and their judgment for the rest of my life. In that instant, I knew what it felt like to live “under the gaze of eternity,” and how empowering, frightening and transformative that could be.

I still imagine these gazes when I’m working on a sermon or a column. I think one of the lasting benefits of a good education is the quality of the ghosts that haunt you: those voices, those eyes. That’s also one of the lasting benefits of a good honest religion: the quality of the spirits that become present in your imagination. The quality of the transcendent ideals and values that “gaze” at you, that hold you accountable.

It has helped me get used to the idea of being watched by this invisible community when I realize that they”re not always watching. These eyes, these gazes, are an imaginary audience you can call forth when you have a tough moral or ethical decision to make, and want to feel yourself in the presence of people with wisdom and courage – WWJD? WWXD? It’s empowering and ennobling, like standing in the presence of an ancient and honorable community of scholars, or a community of saints. It’s the kind of feeling St. Augustine was after when he said “Our souls are restless till we find our home in Thee.”

My 8th grade English teacher was a blessing, not a curse. She represented, and reminded me of, an important set of social mores, expectations about how decent people behave.

And that anonymous woman in the grocery store was a blessing too, a reminder that it does matter whether we practice what we preach, whether we feel like it or not.

We live in strange and mixed times, like all times. We are living in a society of too many drugs of all kinds, too much selfishness, too much dishonesty in both high and low places. It’s true. But we are also living in an invisible community of poets and saints, heroes and lovers. They are the better angels of our nature. And by keeping them in mind, and learning to grow comfortable under their gaze, these noble souls can become even more. The God we keep in our mind and heart becomes our God, available to comfort and strengthen us. And all those poets and saints, heroes and lovers become our people. Our people, our angels, our community – and the home we have sought so long for our restless souls.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Davidson Loehr

19 May 2002

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

CENTERING: The Duck, by Donald C. Babcock

Now we are ready to look at something pretty special. It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf. No, it isn’t a gull. A gull always has a raucous touch about him. This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells. He isn’t cold, and he is thinking things over. There is a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is part of it. He looks a bit like a mandarin, or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree, but he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic. Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is. And neither do you. But he feels it. And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it. He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity – which it is. That is religion, and the duck has it. He has made himself part of the boundless, by easing himself into it just where it touches him. I like the little duck. He doesn’t know much, but he has religion.

SERMON:

I need to stop watching Jay Leno’s “Jaywalk” segments:

A woman who stares at a huge photo of Colin Powell and says she’s never seen that face before in her life.

A man who isn’t sure what country the Vietnam War was fought in, or what century the Civil War was fought.

The woman who, when asked what the two sides were in the Civil War, guessed that it was between East and West.

And this wasn’t just any Jaywalk segment; these were all college students.

Those of you who watch this show more regularly than I do will have your own favorite list of appalling answers from American voters. It seems undeniable that the quality of education in our country has fallen drastically in all areas of the humanities, as well as knowledge of world events.

This week, I was given an article from the local paper written five years ago that compared the education of 8th graders in 1997 and 1907, and it felt like watching another Jaywalk segment. Here are some of the questions from that old test:

Eighth-grade students were asked to “find the interest on an 8 percent note for $900 running two years, two months, six days, and to reduce 3 pecks, 5 quarts, 1 pint to bushels.”

They were asked to define words including zenith, deviated, misconception, panegyric, talisman and crypt.

Among the ten questions in geography were “Name two countries producing large quantities of wheat, two of cotton, two of coal and two of tea” and “name three important rivers in the United States, three of Europe, three of Asia, three of south America and three of Africa.”

Also in history, students were obliged to give “a brief account of the colleges, printing and religion in the colonies prior to the American Revolution,” to “name the principal campaigns and military leaders in the Civil War” and to “name the principal political positions which have been advocated since the Civil War and the party which advocated each.”

The professor of humanities who wrote this article in 1997 said reading this exam took his breath away, and he bet that most university students today couldn’t pass it. “We have come a long way since 1907,” he said, “but it is certainly not the high road we have taken.” And he concluded by saying, “A small world is long gone, as are the standards that made this national exceptional.” (May 3, 1997, Austin American Statesman, page not available).

And we reap what we sow. we’re not only slipping badly in basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic – as they used to label ‘the three R’s” – but in our awareness of the size of the world, and the role decent citizens of the world’s most powerful country should be striving to play in this world.

I’m glad there are a lot of good and dedicated people working at writing and publishing textbooks, and I’m glad I’m not one of them. The many layers of politics involved in textbook publication would drive me absolutely nuts. Textbook publishers are harassed by special interest groups from everywhere, each trying to put their spin on what is taught to our children.

There are corporate groups who want all talk of economics to stress the free-market economy, and identify that kind of capitalism with American democracy. Right-wing groups want America’s heroes to be white Christians, want creationism taught as a viable scientific theory, and want history books to omit or play down the murderous role of Christian armies during the Crusades. Jewish and Muslim groups want to check anything that mentions their own special interests, and the list goes on. I’m being led to understand that the truth is that it’s hard or impossible to get very liberal or multicultural messages into textbooks, if the publishers hope to sell them. Some books are scrutinized by so many special interests it seems a wonder that books dealing with more controversial subjects get published at all.

The teacher guides that accompany the textbooks aren’t under this much scrutiny. These guides give teachers other information and ideas for teaching the courses.

But even if we could try to fill out teacher guides, even if we had some power to help our public schools begin educating the character of our children again, we couldn’t go back to the McGuffey Readers. Times have changed. And a liberal education, especially in the humanities, is much more important than it was a hundred years ago.

Several people have asked me why there are no Unitarian schools, the way there are Catholic or Jehovah’s Witness schools. It’s a good question; maybe it will happen some day. Maybe that’s the only way we are likely to get the kind of education we need and wish for.

In the meantime, without our own schools or the power to get a decent humanities education back in public school curricula, I”ve had to realize this week that all I’m really doing here is fantasizing. That’s all I have to offer you today: a fantasy trip into the kinds of character-building ideals I wish our public schools taught, and a few ideas for how they might be taught.

The method is the same used by the McGuffey Readers, and by all religions: stories. So I’m going to tell you some stories.

Three Points: To keep this from getting completely out of control, there are three points, three lessons, I think we must be teaching our children if they are to become people of noble character in the 21st century. These are slightly different from the points taught by the McGuffey Readers, because our world is so different.

1. We are all brothers and sisters, children of God, and the hope of the world. All of us; all the peoples in all the countries in the world: male and female, white, brown and yellow, rich and poor, weak and powerful. All of us. We are all brothers and sisters, children of God, and the hope of the world.

How could teachers make this point in memorable ways without violating the important separation of church and state? Very easily, just as they did in the days of the McGuffey Eclectic Readers. Here are a few stories taken from religions and folklore around the world. See if you connect with them.

A. A family went to a restaurant: father, mother, and seven-year-old son. The waitress takes the parents” orders first, then turns to the boy. “And what would you like?” A little hesitantly, the boy says, “I”d like a hot dog.” Before the waitress can move her pen, the mother says “No hot dog. Bring him a steak, mashed potatoes and carrots.” The waitress ignores her. “Would you like ketchup or mustard on your hot dog?” “Ketchup!” “One hot dog with ketchup, coming up!” In the stunned silence at the table after the waitress leaves, the boy sits up quite tall and looks toward his parents: “You know what? She thinks I’m real!”

B. The Buddhists make the point in a classier way, when they tell us that everyone, every one of us, has within us a “Buddha seed.” Every one of us has within us that sacred possibility of becoming awake, enlightened, of becoming a blessed and holy person living a blessed and holy life. And our task is to look beyond the surface of others, to know that Buddha-seed is there, and to speak to their Buddha-seed, to speak to the part of them that is capable of the highest rather than something less.

C. The Jews have a similar story dating from the time of Isaiah, more than 2500 years ago. There are 36 people in the world, they said, who are capable of responding to the suffering that is part of the human condition. It is for their sake that God permits the world to continue. We don’t know who they are, and neither do they – so it’s important to treat everyone, including ourselves, as if they might be one of the 36 people for whose sake God permits the world to continue.

D. Sometimes, we can’t see it. Sometimes, both children and adults get beaten down, get buried under bad teachings, bad teachers or mentors, or life situations where all they can try to do is survive. There is a story to address this too: a true story, taken from science.

One of the most amazing examples of the power and persistence of the life force is found in the plant kingdom. When times are harsh and what is needed to bloom cannot be found, certain plants become spores. These plants dampen down and wall off their life force in order to survive. It is an effective strategy. Spores found in mummies, spores thousands of years old, have unfolded into plants when given the opportunity.

When no one listens, children form spores. In an environment hostile to their uniqueness, when they are judged, criticized, and reshaped through approval into what is wanted rather than supported and allowed to develop naturally into who they are, children wall the unloved parts of themselves away. People may become spores young and stay that way throughout most of their lives. But a spore is a survival strategy, not a way of life. Spores do not grow. They endure. What you needed to do to survive may be very different from what you need to do to live.” (Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, pp. 36-37)

Those are some of the stories that teachers would, in my fantasy world, use to teach the first point of character formation to all children: that We are all brothers and sisters, children of God, and the hope of the world.

2. My way of putting the second point is to say that the whole human sound goes up only from the full choir. We each have only a piece of the truth. The truth we need can only come through open dialogue and collaboration with those who see things differently than we do. And the arrogance of confusing our opinion with the Truth is often a sin against our humanity.

How to teach this? This one’s very easy, and often taught.

A. The oldest and most famous story is the ancient Indian story of the blind people and the elephant. You know the story. A bunch of blind people come across an elephant, which they’ve never experienced before. Each one tries to define the elephant just by the particular part of it they have bumped into. So the man who has bumped into the trunk is certain that an elephant is like a large snake. The woman who ran into one of its legs corrects him: an elephant is like a tree. No, says the woman who has got the tail, it’s like a thin rope. You’re all wrong, says the guy with an ear. An elephant is like a flat, leathery leaf. This is not a story about elephants! It is a story about blindness.

B. A shorter story comes from the Islamic tradition. To a visitor who said he was seeking the Truth, the teacher said “If what you really seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know,” said the visitor, “an overwhelming passion for it.” “No,” said the teacher, “a constant readiness to admit that you may be wrong.”

C. And a folk tale tells the same story in another way. The devil once went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them stoop down and pick something up from the ground. “What did that mind find?” asked the friend. “A piece of the truth,” said the devil. “Doesn’t that disturb you? Don’t you want to take it from him?” asked the friend. “No,” the devil laughed. “I love it when they find a few pieces of the truth. They turn them into beliefs, for which they are willing to kill.”

D. From Africa comes a story about salvation and religious pluralism. A little girl saw a monkey grab a large fish out of the stream and carry it up into his tree. “What on earth are you doing?” she shouted at the monkey. “Can’t you see?” called back the monkey, “I am saving this fish from drowning!” The sun that gives sight to the eagle blinds the owl. Monkey salvation will not save a fish, and fish salvation will not save a monkey.

E. And the Sufis tell this witty tale to make the same kind of point. A dead man suddenly came to life and began to pound on the lid of his coffin. The lid was raised; the man sat up. “What are you doing?” he yelled at the assembled congregation, “I am not dead!” His words were met with silent disbelief. Finally one of the mourners said to him “Friend, both the doctors and the priests have certified that you are dead, and so you are certainly dead.” And they buried him again.

3. The third point I think we should teach all our children is the most important, but it can only be learned if the first two points are learned. It is this: Our task is to reclaim the world for these noble ideals. These ideals aren’t new. They have been preached by every religion I’m aware of for thousands of years.

This is an easy point to teach, for here, the stories just abound, from traditions all over the world and throughout history, for this has always been our most important task: reclaiming and restoring the world.

A. The 16th century mystical Jewish teachings of the Kabbala say that in the beginning was Ein Sof, a great holy light, containing all the holiness and light in the universe. It exploded, and sparks of that great light went throughout the universe. There is such a spark within each person. And our job is to find those holy sparks and coax them into flames, so that together we might restore the world.

B. Some stories make the point much more modestly. A couple went to the Master, asking him how they could stop their endless quarreling. He said, “Just stop claiming as a right what you can ask for as a favor.” They did, and their quarreling instantly stopped.

C. These achievements of character aren’t easy, and they often involve some suffering, as we all know. There is, of course, a story about this too, another true one from science. It’s about oysters.

An oyster is soft, tender, and vulnerable. Without the sanctuary of its shell it could not survive. But oysters must open their shells in order to “breathe” water. Sometimes while an oyster is breathing, a grain of sand will enter its shell and become a part of its life from then on.

Such grains of sand cause pain, but an oyster does not alter its soft nature because of this. It does not become hard and leathery in order not to feel. It continues to entrust itself to the ocean, to open and breathe in order to live. But it does respond. Slowly and patiently, the oyster wraps the grain of sand in thin translucent layers until, over time, it has created something of great value in the place where it was most vulnerable to its pain. A pearl might be thought of as an oyster’s response to suffering. Not every oyster can do this. Oysters that do are far more valuable to people than oysters that do not.

Disappointment and suffering are a part of life. Many times we can just put them behind us and move on without them. But some things are too big or too deep, and we will have to leave or block important parts of ourselves with them. These are our grains of sand, the possibilities for our wisdom to grow into something precious. It starts with our realization that this particular loss is a part of us from then on, that we cannot go back to the way we were before.

Something in us can transform such suffering into wisdom. The process of turning pain into wisdom often looks like a sorting process. First we experience everything. Then one by one we let things go: the anger, the blame, the sense of injustice, and finally even the pain itself, until all we have left is a deeper sense of the value of life and a greater capacity to live it.” (Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings, p. 140.)

E. Two brothers had inherited the large family farm after their father died. Each received half. One brother was single and lived alone. The other was married, with five children. One night while lying in bed, the first brother was troubled by a recurring thought: ‘this isn’t fair. My brother receives the same amount of grain that I do, yet he has seven mouths to feed, while I have only one.” So he got up, snuck over to his granary, loaded a large sack full of grain and carried it over to his brother’s granary, dumping it in.

About the same time, the second brother was also awakened by troubling thoughts of a similar nature. “How can this be right? I have five children who can care for me when I get old, while my brother has no one. Yet he gets no more grain than I do. It isn’t fair.” So saying, he got up, snuck down to his granary, and carried a large sack of grain over to the first brother’s granary.

These secret nighttime exchanges went on for several years. Then one night – it was bound to happen – the two brothers picked the same time of the same night for their secret donations. Coming around the corner of a large building, they ran into each other, and the secret was out.

The story became an immediate favorite of the townspeople. Many years later, after the brothers had died, the town elders were looking for just the right place to build their new church. After much discussion, they built it on the spot where the two brothers had bumped into each other, as no more sacred spot could be found.

F. Another story comes from the 1970s at the height of the Hippie movement. It occurred on Easter Sunday morning, at an Episcopal church that practiced such “high church” that the head usher – who had held this position for nearly fifty years – wore formal coat and tails. The place was packed; there wasn’t an empty seat. And the hippie got in because he walked through the door while the old usher was looking toward something else. Walking down the large and long aisle, he stood out in every way. He was barefoot, for starters. His hair was dirty and uncombed, his clothes were tattered, and even those far away were sure he must smell. Unable to find a seat, he walked all the way to the front of the church, finally sitting down cross-legged in front of the first row of pews, and directly beneath the pulpit.

There was a hushed silence as the aged usher, seeing what had happened, started his slow and dignified walk down the aisle toward the front. People rehearsed their own silent rationalizations for what they knew would come next.

“Well, of course the dear old man will ask him to leave. It’s just so inappropriate. After all, that young man could see the kind of church this is. Where does he think he is, for God’s sake?”

At length, the old usher arrived at the front of the church. He walked directly over to the young hippie, removed his own shoes, and sat next to the young man, cross-legged.

This left even the preacher speechless. ‘the words I say to you today you will forget by next week,” he said to the hushed congregation. “What you have just seen is today’s real sermon, and you will remember it for the rest of your life.”

G. There are many more stories longing to make this point, but to bring this to a timely end, I”ll choose just one more. It is an old story about the Buddhist who asked his students how they could tell when the night had ended and morning had come.

“When you can tell a cow from a horse,” said one.

“Wrong,” the teacher replied.

“Well then,” said another, “when you can tell an oak tree from a maple tree.”

“Wrong again.”

“Well then, how?” the students asked.

“When you can look into the face of any other man and see your brother,” the Buddhist answered, “and when you can look into the face of any other woman and see your sister, then it is morning. Until you can do that, no matter where the sun happens to be, it is still night time.”

It is morning when the Buddha-seed, that spark of light from the creation that is within all our hearts, comes to light and comes to life and defines us and our part of the world.

This brings us back to Ezekiel’s dream from last week, doesn’t it? It was Ezekiel who put the words into God’s mouth that made God say he would take out our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, and put his spirit into us. We reclaim and restore the world when we have found the Buddha-seed in our hearts and in the hearts of others. The medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart called it, naturally, a God-seed. It’s the same seed.

But the seed has become a spore, hiding there where it is safe, hoping that some day we may find it, set it free, let it flower and help us grow into a new kind of world.

It is our most ancient and most abiding dream. Until we can bring it to truth, we just have ourselves, each other, our hopes, and these terribly sacred stories.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Davidson Loehr

12 May 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play.

CENTERING:

“I read the writings of Ezekiel in the Bible.” He’s a poet.” He puts words in God’s mouth, as so many poets do.” Ezekiel’s god says “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” And I will put my spirit within you”.

I read these words of Ezekiel’s , and I wonder what it would be like.” What would it be like, to have within me the heart and spirit of God – what would that be like?”

I feel the strange sensation of returning to my world with a new heart”.” I walk along a busy street.” The usual crowds are everywhere and I look at them, to my astonishment, in a strangely different kind of way.” They’re no longer a moving impersonal background.” They look like dozens, hundreds of sacred creations.” The sight of them awakens thoughts and feelings quite different from the ones I am accustomed to.

I go to the hike and bike trail, and as I ride my bike, I look at trees and birds, at clouds and animals and all of nature with a different kind of vision.” It seems, somehow, more miraculous.” It seems, somehow, more miraculous.” At home, at work, I look at people I dislike and see myself reacting differently.” The same thing happens with the people toward whom I formerly felt neutral.” And I realize, to my surprise, that I am different even with the ones I love.

I notice that with this new heart I am strong in situations that I formerly avoided.” Sometimes my heart dissolves in tenderness; sometimes it burns with indignation.” The loan of this heart of God makes me oddly independent: I do not cease to be attached to many things, but the clinging disappears.

Then to my alarm, this new heart and spirit steer me into situations that get me into trouble.” I find myself more interested in confrontation than comfort.” I say things that antagonize.

Finally I come back to the presence of God to give him back his heart.” It was exciting being fitted with the heart and the spirit of God.” But I know I am not ready for it yet.” I still need to protect myself a little.

But even as I take my poor heart back I know that I will be a different person from having felt, if only for a moment, what it meant to have within me a heart, a mind, and a spirit worthy of God.” (Adapted from Anthony deMello, ‘the Hazard,” pp. 62-64 in Anthony deMello, by William Dych, S.J.)

What would it be like to spend a day or a week filled with the heart and the spirit of God?” Would it change the way you see yourself? treat others? think of the world, and of life?” What would it be like: for a day, for a week, for as long as you could bear it?

SERMON: “Can we teach morality in schools?”

— I have heard a conservative described as a liberal who has been mugged.” I have a new understanding of that this week.” My bicycle was stolen from my car rack this Tuesday while I was having a dinner meeting with our church’s Executive Committee.” And a few months ago, I had a small Sony mini-CD recorder, a Nikon camera and a black leather bag taken out of my office.” Both times, I felt angry and violated.

— But it didn’t make me feel more conservative.” It made me miss, even more, the liberal humanities education that our students used to receive but receive no longer.” It made me miss the teaching of morality in public schools, and to teach morality in a pluralistic society like ours, it has to be a liberal curriculum.” I miss that.” No, it won’t stop theft.” But it could help.

— How do we teach morality, in public schools or anywhere else?” In our culture, as in almost all cultures, we have relied mostly on women to teach children a moral sensitivity.” We may wish things were more equal.” And there certainly are men who play a very big role in the moral education of children.” But traditionally, teaching character and morality to children has been the job assigned to women, both as mothers and as public school teachers.

— The best way to teach morality and character seems to be through stories.” That’s how Aesop’s fables did it 2600 years ago.” And some scholars think that Aesop, who traveled a lot, got his stories during travels to India, from an even older Indian collection known as the Panchatantra, animal fables that read a lot like Aesop’s .

— Learning that made me wonder how Indian parents teach their children morality and decent behavior, so I went to a website about Indian parenting ((www.IndianParenting.com).” Sure enough, most of the pictures were of women, and almost every link on this site was to a source for classic Indian stories: the Panchatantra, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Jataka tales, the full text of the tales of the 1001 Arabian nights, and whole collections of Indian and Hindu fairy tales.”

— We teach morality and character development through stories, because stories give us situations and characters we can identify with and remember easily.” It may be hard to remember that steady persistence pays off better in the long run than unsustained spurts of energy, but everybody can remember the story of the tortoise and the hare.”

— That’s also how we taught morality and character development in America’s public schools, when we still did it: through stories, poems, fairy tales and essays on character, to give kids a picture of how decent and honorable people were to live.” In fact, besides teaching basic vocabulary and literacy, that’s what public education was about: teaching American children how to become people with reliable morality and good character.

— From 1836 to the 1920s, American children were educated and their character was shaped partly through the famous McGuffey Eclectic Readers.” This was a set of six books, graded for young children through teen-agers.” The books used poems, stories, pictures and essays to teach the kids spelling, vocabulary, pronunciation, and proper word usage.” But always, the eclectic readings were teaching them what we expect from decent people. It’s hard to realize just how influential these books were.” Over 122,000,000 sets of them were sold, and most passed through the hands of a half dozen school children during their lifetimes.” In the South, the only book that sold more copies than the McGuffey Readers was the Bible. The moral values most stressed by the Readers were honesty, industry, courage, kindness, courtesy, and obedience.

— I had never read any of these until this week while working on this sermon, and probably most of you have never read any of them either.” So I want to read you a few excerpts from those old readers.” Next week, in the second part of this topic, I’ll suggest other stories that might be used in public schools to teach the moral lessons we need today.” But today, I want to expose you to some of the moral teachings so important in our nation’s history that you, like me, may not have been aware of.

1. First is an adaptation of biblical materials, though with quite a sobering spin.” It is not the way you’d expect reflections on the Bible to read.” This piece is called “Vanity of life,” written by an 18th century German (Johann Gottfried von Herder, 1744-1803), listen to the tone and message of some of this reading for American schoolchildren a hundred years ago:

-Man, born of woman, is of a few days, and full of trouble; he comes forth as a flower, and is cut down; he flees also as a shadow, and continues not.

-the tree has hope, if it is cut down, it may become green again”” But man dies, and his power is gone; he is taken away, and where is he?

-till the waters waste from the sea, till the river fails and is dry land, man lies [dead in the earth], and rises not again.” Till the heavens are old, he shall not awake, nor be aroused from his sleep.” If a man dies, shall he live again?

“You contend with us till we fall.” You change our countenance, and send us away.” Though our sons become great and happy, yet we know it not; if they come to shame and dishonor, we perceive it not.

This isn’t happy-face baby talk designed only to make children feel special.” This is heavy stuff.” This is treating children like people who can and are expected to grow up into serious and aware adults, thinking about life at deep and honest levels.”

2. Next is just one paragraph, written to describe ‘the character of the Puritan fathers of New England” – which was the character we expected of our children and our citizens:

— One of the most prominent features which distinguished our forefathers, was their determined resistance to oppression.” They seemed born and brought up for the high and special purpose of showing to the world that the civil and religious rights of man – the rights of self-government, of conscience, and independent thought – are not merely things to be talked of and woven into theories, but to be adopted with the whole strength and ardor of the mind, and felt in the profoundest recesses of the heart, and carried out into the general life, and made the foundation of practical usefulness, and visible beauty, and true nobility”.

3. Another surprise as I read through these old Readers was that both men and women writers were used, and writings by women weren’t included as tokens.” These readings were chosen for quality, not gender or quotas.” Here is a piece written by Adelaide Anne Procter (1825-1864), who was writing just before the Civil War.” Notice how naturally she mixes masculine and feminine genders, as she teaches her readers that now is the time to bring forth our noble and courageous character.” One of America’s hallmarks has always been that we worship the present and future more than the past.” This piece, called ‘the Present,” is one of the writings that taught us this:

Do not crouch today, and worship the dead past, whose life is fled.” Hush your voice in tender reverence; crowned he lies, but cold and dead: for the Present reigns, our monarch, with an added weight of hours; honor her, for she is mighty! Honor her, for she is ours!”

see the shadows of his heroes girt around her cloudy throne; every day the ranks are strengthened by great hearts to him unknown; noble things the great Past promised, holy dreams, both strange and new; but the Present shall fulfill them; what he promised, she shall do.

She inherits all his treasures, she is heir to all his fame, and the light that lightens round her is the luster of his name; she is wise with all his wisdom, living on his grave she stands, on her brow she bears his laurels, and his harvest in her hands.

Coward, can she reign and conquer if we thus her glory dim?” Let us fight for her as nobly as our fathers fought for him.” God, who crowns the dying ages, bids her rule, and us obey, – bids us cast our lives before her, bids us serve the great Today.

To me, these readings are arresting.” They have a different feel, and are trying to shape children into a different kind of adults, than I think we’re trying to do today.

4. The McGuffey Readers were known for their opposition to war, and I have one paragraph from many anti-war readings for you.” But this seems a good place for another reading from the 19th century, one especially appropriate for today.” This is the original Mother’s Day Proclamation written in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe, a Unitarian.” It comes as a surprise to many that Mother’s Day didn’t begin as a concession run by florists and restaurant operators, but it didn’t.” It began after the Civil War as a women’s anti-war movement.” Here’s the original proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,

“Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.

“We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.” It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace,

And each bearing after her own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

Mother’s Day has changed a lot, hasn’t it?” Now here is the paragraph from the McGuffey Reader.” It is played in the same key:

War is the work, the element, or rather the sport and triumph of death, who here glories not only in the extent of his conquests, but in the richness of his spoil.” In the other methods of attack, in the other forms which death assumes, the feeble and the aged, who at best can live but a short time, are usually the victims; here [the victims] are the vigorous and the strong.” It is remarked by the most ancient of poets, that in peace, children bury their parents; in war, parents bury their children”.

5. Then there was a story, very typical of these books, about a boy who had been given a shiny new silver dollar for New Year’s (this was before the custom of giving Christmas presents was introduced by America’s merchants in the late 19th century).” While thinking about what wonderful things he could buy with it – a dollar went a lot farther in those days – he got in a snowball fight with some friends, and accidentally broke the window in a nearby house.” He ran, with all the other boys.” But later, he couldn’t live with that.” He knew he had done something wrong, and decent people don’t live like that.” So he went up to the man’s house, confessed he had broken the window, and gave the man his shiny new dollar to replace it.” As he walked home, he felt good, because he had done the right thing.” He had heard in school for years how decent people behave and today, for the first dramatic time, he had become one.” When he got home and his father asked him what he bought with his new dollar, he told his father the whole story.” “Ah,” said the father, “then you should go look inside my hat.” The boy did, and found two silver dollars there.” The man had come to his father, telling him what a fine and honest boy he had, and had given back the dollar and added another one for his honesty.”

6. Finally, a poem from the First McGuffey Eclectic reader, written for young children.” The first four lines are still famous, but I had never heard the whole poem, or the point it is making for these young children.” The poem is called “Mary’s Lamb.” This lesson (XLIV) teaches 32 new words, spelling, use and pronunciation.” But hear what else the poem is teaching besides words:

Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow,

and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.

He went with her to school one day – that was against the rule ”

It made the children laugh and play, to see a lamb at school.

So the teacher turned him out, but still he lingered near,

and waited patiently about, till Mary did appear.

And then he ran to her, and laid his head upon her arm,

As if he said – I’m not afraid – you’ll keep me from all harm.

“What makes the lamb love Mary so?” the eager children cry;

“O Mary loves the lamb, you know,” the teacher did reply.

“And you, each gentle animal to you, for life, may bind,

and make them follow at your call, if you are always kind.”

This is how morality was taught in our public schools in the United States for a century.” It seems a long time ago.”

Next week I’ll tell you some stories I think we could use today to teach morality and character in our schools.” But do you see what we are trying to do?” We are looking for the words and the ways to fulfill old Ezekiel’s poetic dream of so very long ago.” We seek to remove hearts of stone, replace them with hearts of flesh, and fill ourselves and our children with the legitimate heir to what was once called the spirit of God.

What would it be like?” What might we, our children and our country be like, if such a miraculous transformation could happen?” It is worth pondering – for at least a week.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Davidson Loehr 

April 28, 2002

Text of this sermon is not available but you can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Davidson Loehr

21 April 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

OPENING

Under the cover of war, stories circulate that all is not well with our nation, that serious things are amiss:

hundreds of billions of dollars siphoned from our economy and given to selected corporations civil liberties being curtailed and threatened – some say dangerously growing evidence that our government knew of the September 11th attacks in advance, and may even have known specific details, including the targets. As people of faith who are also proud Americans, these things must both concern and disturb us. If true, they have profound implications for our lives and for the soul of America. This morning and next Sunday, we gather to ask some hard and necessary questions. Our gathering is sanctified by the high and serious purposes that collect us.

And so once more, it is a sacred time, this and a sacred place, this: a place for questions more profound than answers, vulnerability more powerful than strength, and a peace that can pass all understanding. It is a sacred time, this: Let us begin it together in song.

PUPPET SHOW:

CHARACTERS: Two raccoons

Dragon

Baby Dragon (same voice as the 2nd raccoon)

– So only three voices for this one, though four characters.

All three characters appear at the beginning. The dragon is in the middle, with one raccoon on each side of him/her. The sex of the dragon doesn’t matter, whoever you have who’d like to be a good dragon here.

RACOON 1: (Doing a double-take at the dragon, looking around it to the 2nd raccoon, who’s also doing a double-take at the dragon and looking around it to the 1st raccoon). Hey! Like, uh, like you look a lot like a dragon!

DRAGON: (Dragon is always very cool, very in control.) Like, uh, that’s because I am a dragon – dude.

RACCOON 2: Wow! A dragon! I’ve never seen a real dragon before!

DRAGON: Most raccoons haven’t. Say, you’re a really good-looking raccoon!

(RAC2 kind of sashays, blushes, is really flattered.)

RACOON 1: Hey! Like what about me over here?

DRAGON: You wouldn’t think a dragon would be able to tell the difference between raccoons, would you? You’d think that to a dragon, you’d all look alike. But dragons can see some things very clearly, even though we don’t have good eyesight for big pictures.

RACOON 1: Well (grumbling) you sure are different from us, that’s for sure!

RACOON 2: Yes, you’re so very different from raccoons!

DRAGON: (To RAC2) Very different, very different. Tell me, what do raccoons do all day?

RACOON 1: Well, we work mostly at night.

(Dragon can upstage, turning his head when RAC1 answered his question to RAC2 with kind of condescending body language, then turning avidly, almost warmly, back to pay attention to RAC2 when RAC2 speaks.)

RACOON 2: Yes. We hunt for food.

DRAGON: Food? You mean like a nice medium-rare steak dinner with asparagus?

RACOON 1: Hah! No man, more like canned food. You know, like garbage canned food.

(Dragon can again turn his head toward RAC1 to kind of put him down or dismiss him through body language, before turning back to RAC2.)

DRAGON: (To RAC2) Oh, that’s not right, you should be eating steaks.

RACOON 2: (The flattery is working). Hey, you’re really nice, for a dragon. But what do you do all day?

DRAGON: Well, we guard the gold, mostly.

RACOON 1: The gold? Hey, gold’s so cool, ya know? Like what gold?

DRAGON: Oh, a whole mountain full of gold. Tons and tons of it. And diamonds and rubies and other jewels, too. (Looking at RAC2) Tons of the stuff. Here, like this. (Hands RAC2 either some gold, or a necklace, or jewels – whatever is easiest to handle that comes under the heading of “loot”).

RACOON 2: Oh, wow! Is this stuff real?

DRAGON: Is it real? Why, it’s as real as you are, you gorgeous little raccoon.

RACOON 2: Ooooooh! (Putting it on or looking at it, adoring the loot, whatever works.)

RACOON 1: (caustically mocking) “Your gorgeous little raccoon.” Argh! Like man, make me barf, why don’t you? Like whose gold is this you’re guarding?

RACOON 2: Oh, it’s probably the people’s gold, right? And you’re keeping it safe for them, huh?

DRAGON: (The dragon is much too powerful ever to need to lie). The gold belongs to the rich masters who own the people. They own the mountain, too. We work for them. And we get special things for doing it. (Dragon looks over to RAC2 with this last remark, as it’s intended to make RAC2 ask what special things.)

RACOON 1: What, you guard gold some rich finks have stolen from the workers? Karl Marx wouldn’t like that.

DRAGON: No, neither would Adam Smith or Thomas Jefferson. But Milton Friedman does.

RACOON 2: What special things do you get for guarding all that gold? (RAC2 is getting interested, and starting to take the dragon’s side).

DRAGON: (Dragon turns full toward RAC2, ignoring RAC1) Well, we get to fly, and we can breathe fire whenever we feel like it, and everybody is afraid of us. Here, would you like some more gold/jewels? (Gives more to RAC2).

RACOON 1: Fly? Hey, I wish I could fly! Can you teach me to fly?

DRAGON: (Slowly, and barely, turning to acknowledge RAC1) Sorry, fuzzbutt. That’s for dragons. (To RAC2) But you might be able to fly!

RACOON 2: Me? Really? Me fly? Oh like wow, that’s so cool!

RACOON 1: Hey, how come he might fly but not me? Like, that’s not right, man!

DRAGON: (Ignoring RAC1, talking to RAC2). Here, you need some more gold/jewels. Aren’t they nice?

RACOON 2: (Loaded down with jewels/gold). Oh, these are just beautiful. And they must be worth a fortune!

DRAGON: They are. Several fortunes. And there’s a lot more where they came from, believe me.

RACOON 2: Oh, I’d love to see it!

DRAGON: Would you? Then here, have some more (gives a big pile of loot to RAC2. RAC2 starts SINKING under the weight, and as he sinks below the stage, the dragon speaks down to him.) – There you go, there you go! See how easy this was? And look at you! You look marvelous!

RACOON 1: (Feeling – and being – very ignored and left out). Hey, like I don’t know why we’re bothering with you at all, you scaley old lizard. Come on, you gorgeous little raccoon, let’s go. (Looking over around the dragon, sees that the other raccoon is gone.) Hey! Hey, lizard-face! Where’s my friend? Bring back my friend right now!

DRAGON: (Looks down below stage level.) Ah. Yes. Wonderful. (Turning to RAC1) OK, fuzzbutt. See how beautiful your old friend looks now!

BABY DRAGON: (But with the same voice that RAC2 had – the voice needs to be characteristic enough to be easily identifiable.) Oh my gosh! Look what’s happened to me! Why, I’m not a raccoon at all any more! I’m a – a”

DRAGON: You’re a baby dragon! Congratulations! Now you really are gorgeous!

RACOON 1: Hey, hey! This isn’t right! This is all wrong!

BABY DRAGON: Watch your lip, fuzzbutt.

RACOON 1: Hey, he called me Fuzzbutt! What is this?

DRAGON: This, my dull-witted friend, is what this story was about.

RACOON 1: What? What? I thought this was a story about how different raccoons are from dragons! DRAGON: Nope. This was a story about how to turn a raccoon into a dragon. (Turning to baby dragon) Let’s fly away, baby, we’ve got a date with a big mountain of gold and jewels! (They start flying away, out of sight.)

RACOON 1: Hey, that’s not right! That’s not right! The story can’t end this way! I don’t like this! This isn’t the end!

BABY DRAGON: (Either just the voice, or the baby dragon comes back up) Sure it is, Duuude. It’s all over. We win and you lose. (Beats raccoon on the head with the THE END sign, though nobody can read the sign because it’s horizontal while he’s beating raccoon with it. Raccoon disappears from sight, saying “I don’t like this, I don’t like this!”)

After RACOON 1 disappears, Baby Dragon holds the sign up for the audience to see:

THE END

CENTERING:

500 years ago, Martin Luther said “War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families.

35 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. said “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

I want to talk with you about our nation’s body and soul this morning. Yet I know there are some here who have come with other needs, needs unrelated to this war.

Some come bearing the pain of private, personal wars: hurts and fears that are much with you this morning. Some come needing comfort, or quiet moments, or the hope of finding someone, somehow, with whom you can share your story. Some come for the first time, wondering what kind of church this is, hoping the service will be typical, and an informative introduction to this style of liberal religion, of being human religiously.

Whoever you are, however you have come to us this morning, I welcome you, and am glad you are with us today. If you have a personal matter or would just like someone to listen, please phone the church office and leave a confidential message in the appropriate mail box. We have a listening ministry of trained church members who can meet with you. And I am available to talk or meet with you. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock, and the doors shall be opened.

For now, let us take some quiet moments to center ourselves. If you like, you can light a candle of memory or hope during the quiet music.

SERMON

How do you turn a raccoon into a dragon? According to the puppet show, you do it by giving them wealth and privilege until they get used to it. In real life, the question and answers are more complex.

The real question is more like “How do you command and control others, to get them to serve your agenda rather than their own? How do you colonize people?”

This sounds like a political coup, so we think of things like armies, guns, loud noises and the smell of gunpowder. But these loud and rude acts only give you the opportunity to win the people’s mind and heart. Really to win them, or to colonize them, takes more subtle means. Still, it can be put simply: To control people, you need to write their story. You need to write the rules of the game that assign them supporting roles in a story that benefits you – and get them to want to do this.

Most religious teaching teaches us that we live in stories. We don’t live in “facts,” but within the stories that assign those “facts” their meanings. These are our life stories, our myths, our necessary fictions. On a personal level, there are many such stories: be pure, be reliable, be hard-working, witty, popular, prove that daddy was right about us, or prove that daddy wasn’t right about us. We have, between us, hundreds of such personal life scripts that assign us some of our life roles.

But I want to talk about larger stories today. I want to back off and look at the stories we live out, and live out of, as a society. This too could get complex, but I want to keep it simple, by looking at our “official” story – that we are a democracy – and the “real” story that has usually controlled our society – that we are some kind of an aristocracy. Democracy, while a high and noble-sounding ideal, is such an unlikely form of government! Even back when our colonies still belonged to England, there were skeptics. Here are some lines from an 18th century English historian that sound very modern. I haven’t been able to shake them, maybe they’ll stick with you too:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always voters for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. (Alexander Tyler)

Let’s not pretend that this is easy, or that all good people are naturally and solely on the side of democracy here. If you could get the government to give you money that came from other people’s taxes, wouldn’t you take it? If it were legal, if you could actually get other people to pay your way, how long would it take you to rationalize it? I could do it in ten seconds. The problem is how to do it. How can you get other people to support you?

You do it, again, by getting others to play roles in your preferred story. So let’s go back to America’s stories. Since the 17th century, there have been two primary stories that have vied with each other for control of our society. Their descendents still do.

In the language of those writers, it was the choice between rule by the “masters of mankind” and “the majority of mankind.” It is the rule of the many by the few, or of all by the many. Or, in just single words, it is the choice between an aristocracy and a democracy.

Which is better? We have all been trained to answer “democracy, of course!” But opinions have always been divided on this, as they are today, and even in this room. John Locke, the English philosopher who influenced many of our own Founding Fathers, thought it must be an aristocracy because he didn’t trust the masses. He said that “day-laborers and tradesmen, the spinsters and dairymaids” must be told what to believe: “The greatest part cannot know and therefore they must believe,” he said. Many still agree with him.

Thomas Jefferson took the other side. He said aristocrats are “those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.” Jefferson’s “democrats,” on the other hand, “identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as honest and safe”.”

Those who excel, after all, want excellence to rule. The vast majority want the needs of the vast majority to write the laws, so that all citizens can live rich, empowered lives that allow them to become the most that they can become, whatever that is.

The one story seeks government through command and control; the other, through empowerment and trust. You can already hear which one is more vulnerable and less likely to win, can’t you?

Still, there’s a tactical problem. How will the more powerful and wealthy (for example) pull this off, when they are the distinct minority? For all of our history, this battle between aristocrats and democrats has continued. For the first 150 years of our history, it sometimes seemed like a battle between those who had money and power, and everybody else. The courts (sometimes) kept regulating them through laws and statutes that limited their ability to earn profits at the expense of turning the rest of the country into subsistence-level workers or beggars.

The country, when it had a choice, wasn’t buying the story the aristocrats were trying to sell, and people weren’t willing to spend their lives as servants of the few. Here is the long story of labor disputes, monopoly and anti-trust laws, and other rulings designed to protect the rights of the majority from the extra power and skill of those who would be their rulers. If you know much American history, you already know all of this. There’s nothing new here.

But in the 20th century, something new did come along. It was a new invention that could become a tool powerful enough to let a smart few rule an unaware many. It came with mass communication, and was first noticed over 80 years ago, in WWI. It was the invention of propaganda. “Propaganda has only one object,” wrote one of its early masters: “to conquer the masses.” Propaganda is the tool used by a small minority to sell their story to a large majority. With enough slick spin, emotional power, and appeal to elemental yearnings and powerful symbols (as in “God bless America”), a few brilliant visionaries can convert and control an entire nation.

After WWI, people on both sides of the Atlantic wrote about this new invention. Adolph Hitler praised the British, and said the main reason that Germany lost the war was because its propaganda was so inferior to the British. He vowed to learn from the British.

And in this country too, President Woodrow Wilson formed a new group to adapt techniques of using propaganda to influence the American people in desired directions. This was in the 1920s. Let me read you a few quotes from that decade:

The great American journalist Walter Lippman was in President Wilson’s propaganda organization, along with Edward Bernays, who could be called the father of American propaganda. Bernays led the transfer of wartime propaganda skills to business’s peacetime problems of coping with democracy. When the war ended, he wrote, business “realized that the great public could now be harnessed to their cause as it had been harnessed during the war to the national cause, and the same methods could do the job.”

And the payoff? In the words of one of these early propagandists: “If the others let a minority conquer the state, then they must also accept the fact that we will establish a dictatorship.” There is the end of democracy that the 18th century English historian warned about. Once a group learns how to manipulate the masses to its own ends, democracy ends, replaced by a dictatorship, a rule of the few, an aristocracy. This last quote came from Joseph Goebbles, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. It was also Goebbles who said that propaganda’s one object was to conquer the masses, just as he described the masses as “the weak, cowardly, lazy majority of people.”

But the masses – and you realize, I hope, that this means us. We are the masses over whom sly leaders vie for control – the masses weren’t thought of any more highly on this side of the Atlantic. Walter Lippman wrote of the “ignorance and stupidity of the masses.” The general public, he said, were mere “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,” who must not intrude in the management of public affairs, though they may be permitted to select periodically among the “responsible men” whose task it is to rule them.

Do you see that this is the tool the aristocracy had needed since our country began, a tool to let them write the story for the masses, to put a command and control government in place of a government of empowerment and trust. The invention of propaganda and its immediate use after WWI is one of the most important stories of the 20th century.

Propaganda was talked about pretty openly during its early years, before people realized that wasn’t a very smart thing to do. In 1934, the new president of the American Political Science Association said in his presidential address that government should be in the hands of “an aristocracy of intellect and power,” not directed by “the ignorant, the uninformed.” “The public must be put in its place,” added Walter Lippman, so that the “responsible men” may “live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd” as they rule them.

That “bewildered herd” – that’s us too, you know.

This is a chapter of American history we must know if we are to understand who is running our country and how they run it. But we don’t know it, do we? Why do you suppose that is?

This is a lot of new and probably strange information. Let me try to sum it up in a clear and simple way, borrowing from the writings of Alex Carey (Taking the Risk Out of Democracy):

There were three key developments in the 20th century which have shaped the world we’re living in today: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Corporate propaganda directed outwards toward the public has two main goals: to identify the free-enterprise system in popular consciousness with every cherished value, and to identify interventionist governments and strong unions – the only forces capable of checking the complete domination of society by corporations – with tyranny, oppression and subversion. The techniques used to do this are variously called “public relations,” “corporate communications” and “economic education.”

Corporate propaganda directed inwards to employees has the purpose of weakening the links between union members and their unions. From about 1920 through the present, US business made great progress towards the ideal of a democracy managed through corporate propaganda.

Those who run the best corporations didn’t get where they are by being stupid. They are among the most savvy and quick people in our society; few Ph.D.s would stand a chance against them in their court. Those who were entrusted with corporate power realized that one of the best investments they can make with their money is to invest in buying the politicians who make the laws.

Current struggles to pass meaningful campaign finance reform are attempts to undo this powerful structure of command and control by corporations. But for the past couple decades, many or most of our major political candidates are, like used BMWs, “pre-owned vehicles.” In order to get the money they need to compete in American elections, they must get large investments from large business interests. And for those investments, they owe something once they’re in office. They owe their investors the effort to slant the laws of the land in ways that let their investors “vote themselves money from the public treasure,” as that 18th century historian put it.

What does this mean? It means weakening or eliminating controls on environmental pollution or toxic emissions or burial of radioactive waste, letting chemical companies like Monsanto infect the entire continent’s wheat and corn crops with genetically modified organisms that have not, and can not be, tested.

It means reducing the taxes corporations pay, and shifting that tax burden to the citizens those of us in the bewildered herd, so that they can vote themselves money out of our personal treasuries. It means breaking unions, and redefining the economy as one that revolves around the price of stocks rather than the ability of regular citizens to earn good livings through an honest day’s work.

You can see how corporate investments in political candidates work by looking at NAFTA. NAFTA was carefully crafted as an investor rights agreement. It can’t be considered a worker’s rights agreement. Opening the borders means that America’s higher-paid workers must now compete with the far cheaper labor in Mexico. This threat has been used routinely to break American union demands for decent wages and benefits. If they refuse, the manufacturing is simply moved to northern Mexico, to workers who have low pay and few benefits, but see it as an improvement over abject poverty. NAFTA is an investor rights agreement. It is paying dividends on the financial investment that corporations and wealthy individuals made in our elections. They helped elect their candidate, and they want payback. It is only fair.

Or you can see how the paybacks from investing in elections work by looking at Texas’ own, Enron’s former CEO Kenneth Lay. Lay was the biggest single investor in George W. Bush’s campaign for president. In return for this investment, Lay was able to appoint White House regulators, shape energy policies and block the regulation of offshore tax havens, Enron had “intimate contact with Taliban officials” and the energy giant’s much-reviled Dabhol project in India was set to benefit from a hook-up with the oil pipeline we planned to run through Afghanistan.

These negotiations collapsed in August 2001 – a date that should begin making our ears stick up – when the Taliban asked the US to help reconstruct Afghanistan’s infrastructure and provide a portion of the oil supply for local needs. The US response was reportedly succinct: “We will either carpet you in gold or carpet you in bombs.” The notes of this meeting, which took place only weeks before September 11th, are now the subject of a lawsuit between Congress and the White House. Was the Taliban really destroyed for harboring terrorists? Or was it destroyed for failing to further the ambitions of Texas millionaires?

The London paper The Guardian also reports that US State Department officials in early July of 2001 informed their Russian and Pakistani counterparts of possible plans to invade Afghanistan in the fall.

To put this in the form of a question made famous during the Watergate investigation 30 years ago, we now need to ask “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”

Once we began our new war, it provided a cover for other agendas that the administration had been trying to do since the election, to fulfill their promises to their corporate investors.

I read in early March that over $212 billion was transferred from our economy to our larger corporations in the form of retroactive tax refunds sometimes going back fifteen years. Democracy can only exist “until [some] voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.”

Huge tax refunds were voted in, from which well over 90% went to the richest 1% of Americans. These are some of the returns on their investments in the president’s campaign.

And do you recall Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s recent statement? While requesting an additional $48 billion for defense, much of which will go to corporations closely related to this administration, he casually mentioned that the Pentagon had somehow misplaced $2.3 trillion. This makes me want Lewis Black to do an angry rant! It’s the wrong verb! Nobody “misplaces” $2.3 trillion. Someone took it, moved it to somewhere else, and others else got it. Who? Was it done without the President’s knowledge? If not, again, what did the President know, and when did he know it?

News reports from Der Spiegel to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN indicate that many different warnings were received by the Administration before the 9-11 attacks. It has even been reported that the US government broke bin Laden’s secure communications before September 11. The US government is being sued today by survivors of the Embassy bombings because, from court reports, it appears clear that the US had received prior warnings then too, but did nothing to protect the staffs at our embassies. Did the same thing happen again?

And does it get even worse? Could there be an even darker side to the events of 9-11? Maybe. I read an article in the March/April issue of The Humanist magazine that’s worth sharing. (I’ve since been told by several people at the three services on Sunday 21 April that these things were widely known and discussed back in September. But I don’t have independent verification.)

In the days leading up to 9-11, thousands of “put” options were purchased on companies whose stocks tanked after September 11. “Put” options are bought by investors when they are willing to gamble that a company’s stock prices will go down in the near future. Most prominent among these companies are American and United Airlines, whose planes hit the twin towers, and the investment firms of Morgan Stanley and Merril Lynch, whose offices were destroyed in the towers.

Between September 6 and 7, investors purchased 4,744 “put” options in United Airlines at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. At the same time, only 396 “call” options – where an investor bets on a stock price increasing – were purchased. On September 10, investors bought 4,516 “put” options in American Airlines versus 748 call options. In the three days prior to September 11, investors bought 2,157 “put” options in Morgan Stanley, a company which occupied fifty floors of office at the WTC. Volume during the previous week was a mere 27 “put” options per day. Likewise, investors bought another 12,215 “put” options for WTC tenant Merril Lynch.

Most embarrassing to the government, however, is the fact that many of the mysterious “put” options were purchased through an investment firm that was formally headed by Buzzy Krongard, the current executive director of the CIA.

Next week I want to keep exploring some of these issues. I want to look into propaganda more deeply, and to look at some disturbing developments indicating a new political ideology beginning to take over the religious right in this country – much to the dismay of some of their own Christian ministers. I’ll also want to look at much that is right and promising, and suggest some actions we might take.

But I have asked a lot of you today. I have tried to put some clear patterns to a tremendous amount of what will be new information for most of you. I may be wrong. My patterns and understanding may be wrong. The patterns I see suggest that the aristocracy controlling our election processes and much of our government is not serving, and can not serve, the interests or needs of the vast majority of the American people.

Under the cover of war, I believe there is a good chance that we are losing our American way of life, our civil freedoms, our economy, and the remaining vestiges of our democracy, just as that cynical historian predicted 250 years ago.

Where does this leave us? It reconnects me with some of my strongest and most basic convictions:

We cannot lose faith. We must continue to appeal to the better angels of our nature, and the better angels of our leaders. We cannot lose hope. The future is not yet written, its options are still open. And we must try not to become self-righteous or mean-spirited, or attempt to harm our nation. We may and must criticize and chastise its errant ways. But we must struggle to do it in a spirit of love. I struggle mightily with this one, and often lose here. I hope and I pray that we may indeed add our critical and caring voices to the dialogue. And even though we are few and our efforts may seem meager, they are essential – for us, for our nation, and for the world.

Let us go forth in faith, in hope, and in love.

Amen.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Davidson Loehr

31 March 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

OPENING:

It’s one of the two official religious holidays of the year, when many people wake up and must try to remember, again, how to find the church. These two holidays, Christmas and Easter, are almost secular festivals. Easter is more quickly identified with Easter Bunnies, colored eggs and chocolate rabbits than with any religious message. And like these candies, the super-hyped holidays cry out for sweetness and fluff, a Hallmark greeting card, nothing too heavy, just an Easter bon-bon before lunch.

Yet this is also a church, where we promise to seek that double-edged kind of truth which can both comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

So we gather to see how faithful we can be to our religious calling, and to the complex and ambiguous symbols of Easter. It is good to be together again, for it is a sacred time, this and a sacred place, this: a place for questions more profound than answers vulnerability more powerful than strength and a peace that can pass all understanding. It is a sacred time, this: let us begin it together in song.

CENTERING:

Let us offer an Easter prayer.

God of our hidden yearnings, find us where we have died and restore us. Heart of the universe, let us again feel your pulse within us. Let us feel connected again to others, to ourselves, to our own hearts and souls. Spirit of life, find our spirits and breathe life into them. Something in us, in our lives, in our world, died this year. Help us bring the miracle of resurrection here, now. Spirit of life, God of our inner souls, heart of the universe, hear our prayers, touch us in those places where life has left us, and let us live again. And let us be your eyes, your ears, and your hands to reach out to the sufferings of others. Let us be agents of compassion and grace in this often too-harsh and too-lonely world. We offer this prayer in the hope that even here, even now, the miracle of resurrection can find us. Amen.

SERMON:

All over this world today, about a billion Christians will be retelling the same story, of a son of God who was crucified and resurrected and who, if we believe in the story, can be our own personal savior.

Anyone living in the first century would have known a whole host of similar stories about gods who died and were resurrected. They knew the stories of Dionysus, born of a virgin and the great sky-god Zeus, whose followers gathered annually to eat flesh and drink blood symbolizing the flesh and blood of the dead god, and believed to impart his spirit to them. They knew the Egyptian story of Isis and Osiris, where Osiris was killed, resurrected much later, mated with Isis, who gave birth to the baby Horus. Everyone knew the image of Isis holding the baby Horus: it was the model for the Christian pictures of the virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. And the people knew the stories of other dead and resurrected gods, including Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis.

All these stories belonged to a mythic genre born into the ancient scientific worldview of 2000 years ago, where heaven was just up above the sky, hell was just below the earth, and the whole universe was a local affair. In such a small place, the gods could routinely sport with human females, and bodies might well come back to life or float up above the sky to live forever.

So all over the Mediterranean world of two thousand years ago people also gathered annually to retell these ancient stories.

But all over the world today – though in much smaller numbers – there are religious and biblical scholars who know that this was a myth. The myth had nothing to do with the man Jesus, who would undoubtedly have been appalled by a story that turned him into a savior figure and taught that the kingdom of God was a supernatural thing that he was supposed to bring to the faithful.

So there is this particular kind of tension involved in working with the ancient symbols and myths of Easter-type stories. This means that everyone who preaches on these myths and symbols today has to decide how to play them – how honest, how deep, how confrontive – as well as how and how much they will respect their audience. That’s the tension involved in preaching on popular religious holidays soaked in centuries of myth that’s popularly taken too shallow to be religious.

The normal spin put on these problems is to ignore the otherworldly story and convert words like “resurrection” into generic metaphors. If you are one of the seventeen people in Austin who read the religion pages of Saturday’s paper, you saw that’s what the clergy writing yesterday did. Bob Lively took “resurrection” to mean “love,” and everywhere he saw love flourish he rejoiced in the miracle of “resurrection.” And Bishop Greg Aymond took it a little deeper by equating “resurrection” with a renewal of hope. This is also what I did in this morning’s Centering prayer. So I don’t think it’s out of bounds. I think it’s a small part of what we need to do with these overloaded symbols.

But it isn’t enough. It reduces the message of religion to the blandness of a Hallmark greeting card. And it has that arrogant imperialism that the better Christian thinkers have been trying to grow away from – by claiming this common human experience for the Christian vocabulary.

Goodness: Hindus come to the same point of finding a reconnection where they had despaired of finding any connection, and don’t need the Christian notion of “resurrection” to deal with it. They understand it, within the organic integrity of Hinduism, as a realization that their atman – their individual soul – is indeed an integral part of Brahman – the universal creative and sustaining power.

Buddhists can come to the same kind of peace and understand it simply as “waking up” from the illusions that had until then made them more miserable. And naturalists can express the same experience just as adequately, though with perhaps less poetry. “I feel more connected to the world,” they might say. “I felt dislocated and disoriented, out of place, but now I feel myself to be a rightful part of the whole glorious world around me, and I feel less anxious, more full. Life is better now.” So I object both to the superficial pandering and the theological arrogance of pretending that “resurrection” is a necessary concept rather than merely a Christian concept.

There is another path through this symbolic swamp, just as ancient. It demands more of us, and takes off the traditional sugar coating in which popular holidays are dipped. But I think it takes us all more seriously and might do both us and the subject more proud. It is making the distinction between the religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus. Scholars have been aware of this distinction for a long time, but they usually hide it in code words:

Some speak of the “Jesus of history” versus the “Christ of faith”; Others talk about “Jesus” versus “the Christ”; Or the “pre-Easter Jesus” and the “post-Easter Jesus” All of these sets of code words refer to the fact that the religions, the messages of the Jesus of history was wildly different from the message assigned to the “Jesus Christ” of traditional faith. But it’s rude to say this, so both teachers and preachers in religion have collaborated in a conspiracy of silence for many centuries to keep such damaging (or thought-provoking) distinctions away from your tender ears.

You know more about the religion about Jesus, which is just known as Christianity. It teaches about a supernatural Jesus who was somehow the son of God, who performed amazing miracles, was killed, then “raised up” from the dead, in the intriguing phrase of the New Testament writers. Most biblical scholars I know are clear that no first-century writer thought that meant the resuscitation of a corpse. The general take on it is that to say God “raised up” Jesus meant that what Jesus taught about the kingdom of God was correct.

I think it was too. It wasn’t original, but it was profound, both then and now. So this Easter, I want to bring Jesus’s message to you and then let you decide for yourselves what kind of an Easter you can be most proud to seek and to celebrate. In other words, my tactic here is to take the tensions inherent in the symbols of Easter and pass them on to you, so you can feel the tension, and you can decide what style and depth of “Easter” you want to celebrate. Don’t worry: suffering, I’ve heard, can be therapeutic.

The Religion of Jesus

The religion of Jesus was as different from the traditional teachings of Christianity as you can imagine. But to understand it, you have to understand the kind of world into which Jesus was born.

Ironically, first century Galilee had much in common with our own society today – more than it had in common with the America of fifty years ago. Three centuries of invasions, by the armies of Alexander the Great and later the Roman legions, had destroyed all the temple cult centers which had stabilized a fair variety of ethnic and religious communities. By the first century there was no shared center, no collective identity. Galilee was filled with people who were not “a people.”

The social or dietary laws of one group – Jews, for instance – were odd or unappealing to other groups nearby – Greeks, for instance. Even simple social intercourse was harder than it is for us today. A Greek family invites you over for the first century equivalent of a barbecue. Since you’re “company,” they spend extra money to buy some first-rate shellfish and pork to roast. But you’re Jews, and your dietary laws forbid you to eat shellfish or pork.

In dozens of ways, Galilee was a land of chaos, where the prospects of ever making “a people” out of this disparate mess were somewhere between slim and none.

In times this chaotic, there seem to be two kinds of solutions proposed, as they were proposed here. The first was the most extreme, proposed by John the Baptist. John thought the situation was too far gone for anyone to fix. Not even God could make it right, he thought. So the only answer was that God was going to destroy the whole world, annihilate everyone in it – well, except for those who believed as John the Baptist did, of course – and start over.

John had a growing and fervent crowd who would gather east of the Jordan to await the sign of the end of the world, when they were poised to act against the Romans.

If you know anything about the Romans, you know this is not s smart tactic. They were very efficient, the Romans. They wouldn’t spend sixty billion dollars to bomb a thousand square miles of mountains in the hope of killing seven or eight civilians. Instead, they just captured the head of the movement and killed him.

But the murder of John the Baptist was devastating to his followers. It means that John’s message, John’s understanding of what “the kingdom of God” was about, was wrong. Otherwise, God would not have let John die that way. That was the supernatural or superstitious thinking of the first century.

John the Baptist was Jesus’s mentor and teacher. Jesus was one of his followers. And not long after John’s murder, Jesus appears for the first time as a charismatic leader, with many of John’s former followers now following him.

But Jesus’s message was very, very different. John’s solution had been to wait for a supernatural agency to fix the world by destroying it. Jesus’s notion of the kingdom of God involved no action by a supernatural agency. Jesus taught that we must reclaim the fragmented world by fixing it.

What made all the lines of enmity between different groups were the rules of each group’s identity – rules that made them special only by making all others wrong. Jesus taught that people should disobey and subvert exclusive identities. He and his followers begged for their daily food – a bit of begging that became famous as part of “the Lord’s Prayer.” “Eat what is put before you,” he instructed his Jewish followers. If Greeks offer you shellfish or pork, eat it! Don’t let any self-definition, including your Jewish one, separate you from others.

Only one identity was to be allowed in Jesus’ notion of the kingdom of God: we were ordered to see one another merely as our brothers and sisters, as children of God. Again and again he frustrated his more superstitious followers, who still expected him to continue John’s teaching. No: the kingdom of God is not coming. You can’t point to it and say “here, there.” It is already here, within and among you. Or as he said in the Gospel of Thomas, “the kingdom of God is spread upon the earth and men don’t see it.” It’s all here – at least potentially – and we don’t or won’t have the eyes to see or the ears to hear it. How many times he told his disciples that they didn’t get it!

There is no magic here, and no supernatural agency. God has already done his part. The ball is in our court, and God is waiting for us to act to bring the kingdom of God to earth. And we do it simply by changing our hearts and our actions toward others. Period. Amen. End of sermon, end of religion. Jesus never promised heaven or threatened with hell. He didn’t talk of an afterlife, just of this one. And he would not let people get away with believing that they could wait passively for a supernatural deity to fix things.

The Denial of Jesus

All students of the Christian scriptures know this phrase refers to his apostle Peter, who seemed categorically incapable of understanding Jesus’ message. It was Peter, remember, to whom Jesus uttered his angriest phrase: Get the behind me, Satan!” Peter, like most (perhaps all) of Jesus’ disciples, wanted to hear him preach the end-of-the-world clean sweep message of John the Baptist, and did not want to hear that this exciting supernatural kingdom of their expectations was to be replaced by a very down-to-earth kind of world in which they simply had to become active agents of love rather than righteous prophets of a mass destruction which only they would survive.

Catholic scholar Thomas Sheehan has put it pointedly when he says that “Peter continued his denial of Jesus by creating Christianity.” Christianity began as a religion of reversion to the pagan formula for salvation by a supernatural deity who demanded of us only that we believe the story and follow the leaders. This was precisely the image Jesus had spent his ministry preaching against.

Paul, the Inventor of Christianity

Most of the New Testament scholars I know agree that the Christianity that came to be normative was given its shape and message by Paul. Paul never knew Jesus, seems not to have known his teachings – he never mentions any – of Jesus’ central notion of the kingdom of God. Instead, Paul taught, much as John the Baptist had, that the end of the world was coming and Jesus Christ would be the salvation of the faithful in a supernatural way.

I feel, with many others, that Paul replaced Jesus’ this-worldly religion of responsibility with a simplistic supernatural religion in the mold of pagan cults, especially Greek mystery cults – and most particularly the cult of Mediterranean Mithraism. And I feel that the real crucifixion of Jesus came not by the Romans, but by Peter, Paul and those who established what became normative Christianity.

Many others have seen this, and many others have felt betrayed and angry about it. One was the Greek novelist Kazantsakis. You may know either the book or movie of The Last Temptation of Christ by him. In this book he creates a wonderful, if angry, imaginary scene between Jesus and Paul. When Jesus meets the inventor of Christianity he says You! So you’re the one who has been making all these things up about me. They’re not true! And Paul’s response is basically Oh you’re Jesus? Nice to meet you, who cares? I gave people the religion they needed, and it doesn’t need you.

I know Pauline scholars who think Kazantsakis’ portrayal of Paul is about as accurate as it gets. Even Paul’s defenders (and he has many) usually acknowledge his megalomania.

There are even more extreme reactions against the betrayal of the religion of Jesus by the religion about Jesus. Perhaps the most famous, and my favorite, comes from Dostoevsky’s book The Brothers Karamazov, in the chapter entitled “The Grand Inquisitor.” He has Jesus come back during the Inquisition, and stages this amazing – and, again, angry – scene between Jesus and the Grand Inquisitor, in which Jesus says nothing. I think Dostoevsky has nailed the religion of Jesus perfectly here, and think his anger at the religion invented about Jesus is pretty close to the mark too:

“You promised them heavenly bread, but how can that bread compete against earthly bread in dealing with the weak, ungrateful, permanently corrupt human species? And even if hundreds or thousands of men follow you for the sake of heavenly bread, what will happen to the millions who are too weak to forego their earthly bread? Or is it only the thousands of the strong and mighty who are dear to your heart, while the millions of others, the weak ones, who love you too, weak as they are, and who are as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach, are to serve as material for the strong and mighty? But we are concerned with the weak too! – by becoming their masters, we have accepted the burden of freedom that they were too frightened to face.” We shall tell them, though, that we are loyal to you and that we rule over them in your name. We shall be lying, because we do not intend to allow you to come back. “There are three forces, only three, on this earth that can overcome and capture once and for all the conscience of these feeble, undisciplined creatures, so as to give them happiness. These forces are miracle, mystery, and authority. But you rejected the first, the second, and the third of these forces and set up your rejection as an example to men.” You acted proudly and magnificently; indeed, you acted like God, but can you expect as much of men, of that weak, undisciplined, and wretched tribe, who are certainly no gods?” “tomorrow you will see obedient herds, at the first sign from me, hurry to heap coals on the fire beneath the stake at which I shall have you burned, because, by coming here, you have made our task more difficult. For if anyone has ever deserved our fire, it is you, and I shall have you burned tomorrow.”

Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” and Kazantsakis’ Paul are important to read and to teach, because they are among the educated voices that have not taken part in the conspiracy of silence. They present the contrast between the hard teachings of the man Jesus – the religion of Jesus – and the immeasurably easier teachings of Christianity – the religion about Jesus. And their anger doesn’t come from a lack of religious sensitivity, but more an abundance of it. They are angry because they believe, as I also do, that a lesser religion (Christianity) has displaced a greater religion (the religion of Jesus). It cannot be said too often or too bluntly: In direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus, the myth of the “Christ” led people back to the pagan and primitive belief in salvation through vicarious atonement by a supernatural savior-god who let people off the hook, demanding only unthinking obedience of them. Jesus’ teachings – to the extent that they were ever understood – were found to be too difficult. There must be a simpler and less painful route if Christianity were to be the universal faith visualized by such zealots as Paul – even if, in the process, it betrayed everything Jesus had considered sacred.

In Jesus’ time it was rude to demand so much of people – people who do seem to prefer miracle, mystery and authority to empowerment and responsibility. He was rude. His own disciples didn’t understand him, and Peter famously didn’t want to hear it. If people want miracle, mystery and authority, Jesus certainly didn’t offer them much.

He said God had done his part and it was their turn to act.

Christianity – the religion about Jesus – is finally too easy. It isn’t worthy of someone called a son of God. It isn’t worthy of those who would consider themselves people of God. It isn’t a spiritual path that any God worth the bother would raise up. It was the creation of Paul and other men, but not a prophet or sage of the first rank.

But there was such a first-rate prophet and sage involved in the story. He was a simple, marginal Jew from Galilee we’ve learned to call Jesus. He taught a narrow path, not a broad one, and preached a kingdom of God that we, and only we, could make present on earth as soon and as long as we find the courage to act like children of God, to see all others as children of God, and to act accordingly. It can happen any time, here and now. It can happen in Israel if both sides change the center of their faith. It can happen in Northern Ireland if both sides stop defining themselves as Protestants and Catholics, and define themselves instead only as brothers and sisters. It can happen in Austin, it can happen in your neighborhood, and in your life.

But only if you believe. No, you don’t have to believe anything supernatural, you don’t have to believe anything you can’t make sense of. You have to believe that the only identity of which grown-up religious people should be proud is the identity of seeing themselves and all others as brothers and sisters, and children of a God of love. Just that.

Today, we have translated the promise and the commandment into flowers, flowers for you to take home and reflect upon.* Fragile little things of beauty and vulnerability, as fragile as peace, as vulnerable as love. Take them home. The flowers are in your hands. So is the hope of your life, and the future of the world. Those words hardly seem adequate, though. Something more poetic and powerful is needed. Jesus called it the kingdom of God. That’s much better, and much closer.

The hope for the kingdom of God is in our hands, as it has always been. The dream has lain fallow for a long time. Many would say it has died. It is Easter, and the dream is in our hands. Let us think about resurrecting it.

————–

*This church celebrates an annual Flower Communion on Easter Sunday. People are asked to bring a flower, which they deposit in baskets. At the end of the service, the many baskets of flowers are brought to the front of the church, and people each come forward to take a flower from the baskets to take home with them.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Davidson Loehr

24 March 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

CENTERING:

Sometimes, demythologizing religion feels like stealing stories from the gods, then denying that the gods exist, in the sky or anywhere. It’s seductively easy to stay shallow and smug if we rob life of all its unseen dimensions.

Yet to be honest, it isn’t ever that easy. For we are still faced with the awful transience of life, life which moves so quickly.

As the poet Ezra Pound has put it,

The days are not full enough

and the nights are not full enough

and life slips by like a field mouse

not [even] shaking the grass.

And so we pray, in our demythologized worlds, 

to the gods who are now harder to find,

to the spirit of life, 

love, and all that matters. 

We pray for help

that we may live slowly and move simply 

and look softly 

that we may allow emptiness 

and let the heart create for us a home. 

Amen.

SERMON:

Last week I led a Jesus Seminar program at the UU church in Oak Ridge, TN, so the notion of demythologized Christianity is very fresh. And though it’s a lot of syllables for just one word, demythologizing our religions is one of the most important and most faithful things we need to do if we want our religions to be more real, and more relevant to the lives we’re living in this 21st century.

What does it mean? Sometimes it just means taking religious messages out of their protective mythic wrappings so we can see what, if anything, they have to say to us today.

All of our Western religions were born into a kind of cradle, or manger. They were born into the worldview of their time, which was very different than the way we see our world today. Christianity was born into this kind of a manger. Two thousand years ago, it was born into what today we might call the worldview of ancient understandings, the scientific worldview of the ancient world.

Scholars call that old worldview the ‘three-story universe.” It’s probably the most intuitive, common-sense view of the universe we”ve ever had. You can still experience it just by going outside on a clear day far from the city.

Look around you and you”ll see what the ancients saw: the earth looks flat, like a pizza. Just standing there, you”re seeing farther than most people strayed from where they were born. Up above, you can see the dome of the sky. They called it the “firmament” because they thought it was made of rock. It was so heavy, the Greeks assigned their strongest god, Atlas, to hold it up. There were holes in the firmament, which light came through at night, in the patterns of the constellations. Up above the dome of the sky was where the light came from, and where the “enlightened,” “illuminated” powers and deities were presumed to live in some way.

And down beneath the earth was the place of fire and brimstone. If you doubt that, just watch a volcano erupt, and ask yourself where that stuff came from. It was a bad place, the probably home of bad forces and spirits.

We humans were the playthings of the forces of good and evil, and our prayers were for help with the one against the other.

It was quite a small universe, really just a local affair. There was us, there was Up, there was Down.

This commonsense universe is the cradle into which Christianity was born. And the fantastic things of the New Testament make a kind of sudden literal sense when you remember this old worldview. A passage says the heavens opened and a voice boomed through saying “Behold this is my beloved son in whom I am much pleased,” and you can imagine it. After all, it’s not that far. It could open, you could imagine hearing the voice. Another passage talks about Jesus descending to hell. Well, you”d imagine he”d be protected from the fire and brimstone somehow, but again – it’s just not that far. You can imagine it. Heaven is up, hell is down, we’re on the stage in the middle. Very simple and clear.

No, the world was never made that way, not now and not then. We live in a world that doesn’t have an “up” or “down.” If this sounds odd, think of that photo of the earth taken from the surface of the moon a few decades ago. Imagine you”re standing there on the moon, looking at the earth floating in black space. Then imagine that big voice booming down and asking everyone on the planet to point to heaven. Now imagine the picture, and ask yourself where they are pointing! Locally, they think they”re point up. From where you are, you see they”re pointing out; there is no “up.”

The treasures of religion were hidden up there twenty centuries ago. God was put up there above the sky. You could say that 2000 years ago they hid the message of religion up above the sky to protect and honor it.

Next week is Easter, and the Easter message is a good example. Someone dying, then coming back to life and ascending up above the sky into heaven. What could that mean in a world that isn’t made that way? How are faithful and honest people to understand it? And Christmas talks about a man born of a virgin and a sky-god. What is that to mean? Sperm from above the sky?

Leaving the messages of religion stuck in that old mythic worldview forces our faith to try and live in two different centuries at once – the old 3-story worldview of 2000 years ago, as we need its insights for our 21st century modern worldview.

What would you ask believers to believe? In the religious insights, whatever they are, or in the way people used to think the universe was put together? In the messages of religion, or in first-century science?

Today, we have to protect and honor the messages of religion by locating them in this world. If we can’t find the sacred in the here and now, we may not find it anywhere.

That’s what demythologizing is about. It is saying that to be faithful, to honor the spirit of religion in the modern world, we need to take its message out of its ancient protective mythic wrapping, take off the training wheels, and see what it has to say to us today.

You know that isn’t how religion usually works. The orthodox still try to protect their old faith by keeping it in its old mythic worldview, as though religion is just too frail, too fragile, for the light of day. It fools people who want to be fooled, and many who don’t. But it doesn’t fool all the people, and it makes some of them very angry with the hypocrisy and denial.

On the plane back from Tennessee last Monday I read a book that spoke to this in ways that surprised me. It was a book of short pieces sent in by more than 90 Irish writers (Sources: Letters from Irish People on Sustenance for the Soul, edited by Marie Heaney). The editor had written to ask them what nourished and sustained their souls, and I was quite surprised to find how few of them chose anything from their religion, and how much anger they still felt for it.

Here’s a typical response, from Martin Drury:

Having been, until my early twenties, a devout and obedient Roman Catholic, I can still recall the seismic shock (and indeed can still experience the aftershocks) of the opening up of the fault-line between orthodox religious practice and authentic spiritual experience. I deplore greatly that those who were so quick to claim me for their own church were so slow to nourish my individual spiritual self”. Those who charged themselves with my spiritual formation” gave me no map-making skills by which I could chart my journey. The [maps] I have grown to admire and trust and which I find sustaining [are those] employed by artists of all disciplines.

“My preference is for the ambiguous [maps] of literature and for the celebration of humanity rather than some remote divinity.

This man wasn’t fooled by his church, and what he is resenting here is both his church’s deceptions and its faithlessness. Faithlessness. That’s an ironic accusation against a church, but think about it. Which is more faithless: to give up on believing in another world, or to give up on believing in this one? What would religious messages have to mean if they were about this world rather than another one?

One woman who had left the church criticized it for offering a religion that was not real. And she offered as words that sustained her soul not the Bible but a few paragraphs from the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit. It had been a long time since I’d read that book, and I hadn’t remembered it talking about how some things can’t be made real. Listen for it in this Irish woman’s critique of her former church:

The Velveteen Rabbit arrived on Christmas morning. The little boy loved him – for at least two hours – but in the excitement of the day he was soon forgotten. For a long time he lived with the other toys in the cupboard – and they were a pretty mixed lot: bossy mechanical toys who were very superior, full of modern ideas and talk of technology. Even the little wooden lion who should have known better pretended that he had connections with Government. The Velveteen Rabbit felt very insignificant. The only person to be kind to him was the old Skin Horse who was very wise.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day.

“Real” is a thing that happens to you when a child loves you for a long, long, time,” answered the Skin Horse who was always truthful. He said that sometimes it hurt being real – and that it doesn’t always happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges or who have to be kept carefully.

“By the time you are REAL most of you hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are REAL you can’t be ugly – except to people who don’t understand.”

Religions are like this too. If they are too fragile, break easily, or have to be kept too carefully, you can never snuggle up to them enough to make them real. Demythologizing religions, removing their old protective wrapping to make a home for them in our own lives, isn’t the devil’s work, it’s a godsend.

Many of the Irish respondents quoted William Blake as one of those whose writings and insights fed their souls. And in Blake too they found much anger at the deceptions of traditional religion. It had been a long time since I had read any of William Blake, and I was surprised to read some of these lines:

A truth that’s told with bad intent 

beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;

Man was made for joy and woe;

and when this we rightly know

Thro’ the world we safely go.

We’re not made for heaven, he’s saying. we’re not made for a perfect place somewhere else. we’re made for this place, joy and woe intermixed. These writers were absolutely committed to focusing on this life here and now, not another one elsewhere and later. What will this need to mean next week when we ask what message faithful people are to find in the old Easter message? What should we seek new life for? our souls, our society? our religion? our churches?

Another woman brought these lines from the poet Adrienne Rich:

from Twenty-One Love Poems

At twenty, yes: 

we thought we’d live forever.

At forty-five, 

I want to know even our limits.

I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow,

and somehow, each of us will help the other live,

and somewhere each of us must help the other die.

“Adrienne Rich (1929-)

Then more lines from William Blake:

Every night and every morn

some to misery are born.

Every morn and every night

some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie

when we see not thro’ the eye

which was born in a night to perish in a night”

I was struck by these last three lines:

We are led to believe a lie

when we see not thro’ the eye

which was born in a night to perish in a night”

In other words, Blake is saying don’t believe pronouncements from on high, don’t believe insights that pretend to be from gods rather than mortals who are born in a night and perish in a night. Here is this great poet of two centuries ago saying that our religion isn’t supposed to help us get to heaven after we die. What religion is supposed to do – these are more of Blake’s words – is to show us how

To see a world in a grain of sand

and a heaven in a wild flower,

hold infinity in the palm of your hand

and Eternity in an hour.

Every heresy trial would disagree with that. Refusing to believe in things you can’t make sense of has been dangerous as recently as the Taliban. Heresy trials don’t care how the heretic lived, only whether they said they believed the story of one particular religious group.

But think about this too. What kind of insecurity do such threats sound like:

— the insecurity of an eternal, omniscient deity who created the whole universe and knows what you think even when you don’t? Could a real god be that ignorant and petty?

— or the insecurity of members of a club, whose f and arrogant claim to truth might crumble if they had to admit that their story is just one among many, and that people do quite well without it?

No god worth the bother would punish people for refusing to believe old stories still left in their ancient mythic wrappings. No god worth the bother would reward us for checking our brains at the church door. Faithful people aren’t supposed to recite their group’s story unthinkingly. Faithful people are supposed to try and find faith worth living by, a way of viewing themselves and the world that can show them a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower.”

We who would be faithful today find ourselves in an odd and ironic place. Through the history of our Western religions, people have been taught that the goods of their religion are only available to the faithful, the insiders, the club members.

But that’s a third thing worth thinking about, as I found all the Irish writers thinking about it. What kind of truth could that be, that is only true and only real for members of a club? Anything that’s really true – especially if it’s being presented as coming from the god who created the whole darned universe – would have to be true for everyone. Religious insights have to be available for everyone. Insecure people might get seduced by creeds, principles, confessions of faith, but not gods, and not any real religions either. Religion and truth aren’t about faking it. If Christianity, Buddhism or the others have anything to offer to our lives, it has to be available to all who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear it.

We are in a different place today than we were in ancient times. The meaning of faithfulness has changed. True faithfulness no longer means looking away from this world toward the promise of another world later and elsewhere. It means, as these Irish writers say again and again, looking away from the talk of other worlds later and elsewhere and toward the promises and challenges of this one, here and now.

This is why I think religious liberals may be the most religious people around today. At our best, we can look past the mythic wrappings and other-worldly glows, and ask whether and how this or that religion can help us become more alive and aware here and now, can help us to see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower.

The Jews have a story about the day God decided he wanted to play a trick on humans. He was stumped, so as he always did when he was stumped, he called on his favorite rabbi.

“Rabbi,” said God, “I want to play a trick on people. I want to hide from them where they won’t be likely to find me, and I don’t know where to hide. What do you think: the far side of the moon, the outer reaches of the galaxy – what do you think, rabbi?”

And the rabbi replied “Oh, don’t make it so hard. Just hide in the human heart. It’s the last place they will think to look.”

So that is where God hid. And the rabbi was right, for even to this day hardly anyone thinks to look there.

There is a great irony in religion today. Many centuries ago when our Western religions were born, the prophets and sages who gave them birth tried to protect religion by hiding it up in the heavens above the sky. Today when we need our religion to be real, hiding it up out of sight is a death sentence for it. Today in order to protect it, in order to make our faith real, we must find it inside our world, inside our own hearts.

All three Western religions have seen this.

Jews, with their story of God hiding inside the human heart; Christians, through Jesus’ saying that the kingdom of God is not something that’s coming, but is rather something that is already within or among us, if only we will have the eyes to see it. and Moslems, when their Qu’ran teaches that God is closer to us than the vein in our neck. The true faithfulness we need today is not blind trust in another world, but faith in the hidden possibilities for wholeness and redemption in this one. True faithfulness is learned by opening our eyes to the glories of the world around us, and opening our hearts to find the god that is hidden there, the kingdom of God hidden within and among us, waiting to be made real in our own lives, the way the Velveteen Rabbit was finally made real.

In one sense, we are terribly alone in our demythologized world. But our poison can be our cure, for we are alone together.

We yearn together for the gift of vision that might show us

a world in a grain of sand

and heaven in a wild flower,

that might help us learn to hold infinity in our hand

and Eternity in an hour.

Yes, we know the days are not full enough

and the nights are not full enough

and life slips by like a field mouse

not even shaking the grass.

And so we end in quiet prayer to the unseen spirit of life, the unfound god 

hiding in our hearts. And we say Oh God, Oh spirit of life, help us

to live slowly,

to move simply,

to look softly,

to allow emptiness,

and to let our hearts create for us

Help us make a home, right here, within and among the undiscovered kingdom of God that lies hidden within our hearts, where it has always been hidden.

We pray for that, just that, here, now, together.

Amen.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Davidson Loehr

10 March 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

OPENING WORDS:

Is life sacred? Always? Is a birth a blessed event? Always? Morality is about behavior that honors life by treating it as it deserves at its best. So is the morality of abortion. These are hard and emotionally-loaded questions we’re asking this morning. It is almost impossible to be neutral about them. But if important and emotionally-loaded questions can’t be raised in church, it’s not much of a church. We gather to ask hard questions, and dare to suggest that we and our society might need to look at these issues in an entirely new way. And that willingness is part of the reason we can say that

It is a sacred time, this

And a sacred place, this:

A place for questions more profound than answers, 

Vulnerability more powerful than strength,

And a peace that can pass all understanding.

It is a sacred time, this:

Let us begin it together in song.

STORY: The Girl Who Loved Hamsters

Once there was a girl who loved hamsters. She badgered and badgered her parents until they finally did two things, one good and one not too smart. They bought her a hamster cage, food, and a hamster. That was good. But they bought her two hamsters. This wasn’t smart, because two hamsters don’t stay just two for very long. Hamsters are very friendly animals. And before long, she no longer had two hamsters, she had twenty.

But this girl loved hamsters, so she saw it as a good thing. She went to her parents protesting that twenty hamsters were too many for the small cage she had, so they needed to buy her a much bigger cage. They did, and the hamsters kept doing what hamsters do. Before long, she didn’t have twenty hamsters, she had three hundred! They started buying food in ten-pound bags.

Still, the girl loved hamsters, so this was fine. But they had overgrown their cage, were running all over the house, hiding under and in the beds, crawling out from under pillows just as you were falling asleep.

“We need bigger cages, and many more of them,” she pleaded to her parents. “And a special roof in the back yard where we can keep all the cages.” The parents yielded, and soon there was a kind of tenement rising in the backyard, with cages organized into blocks with little streets between them. The girl and a couple friends pushed a wheelbarrow down between the cages, throwing food into the rapidly increasing hamster population. They began buying food in hundred-pound bags.

And it was indeed increasing rapidly. Soon there weren’t three hundred hamsters, but about fifty thousand of them! They escaped from the cages, from the yard, and were running all over town, getting into everyone’s house, hiding under everyone’s bed and under everyone’s pillows. There was a loud outcry.

A town meeting was called, but the girl was ready for them. “I really love hamsters,” she said, “but I understand you don’t want them running loose through your town. So the solution is to build a large boat, with several floors, and float it out in Town Lake for these lovely, fluffy little hamsters. Then I can take a rowboat out each day to give them food.”

Somehow, she was persuasive, and the town actually built a huge boat – it would have put Noah’s Ark to shame, it was so big. Before long there were far, far more than fifty thousand hamsters on the big boat. But now nobody could count them. They were breeding so fast they were getting crowded, and they seemed to get meaner, so that it was no longer safe to get onto the boat to play with them – not that anybody could really play with millions of hamsters anyway!

Each day, the girl who loved hamsters rowed out to the big ship in her rowboat filled with hamster food, which they were now buying by the ton, and shoveled food over the sides of the ship before rowing back to shore. Still, she loved hamsters, and loved the idea of knowing there were so many of them out there, even if she had no contact with them any more.

While no one could count the hamsters any more, everyone in town could get a sense of their growing numbers just by watching the big boat sink lower and lower into the water every day. There were millions and millions of them onboard now.

Finally, the big boat sank into Town Lake, taking all the hamsters with it. The girl was very sad, and she called another town meeting.

“The problem,” she said, “was that the boat wasn’t big enough. We need to build a bigger boat – and more boats. And we should buy our own company to make hamster food, it will be cheaper. I”ve done some research, and if we fire about five hundred public school teachers and double the class size in public schools, and stop repairing the roads quite so often, we can afford to do it. And we must do it, because I really love hamsters.”

What to do, what to do?

CENTERING:

For over a generation, America’s cultural liberals have treated abortion as a matter of individual rights, where the mother but not the baby is seen as a rights-bearing individual. Conservatives have countered by claiming rights for the baby, though the law hasn’t recognized a fetus as an individual.

That may soon change. On March 5th, this Tuesday, the Bush administration published a proposed rule designating embryos and fetuses as “children” eligible for medical benefits under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP – 67 Fed. Reg. No. 43, pp. 9936-9939). The pregnant woman herself is not considered the patient, only the embryo or fetus.

This is a brilliant and creative extension of individual rights designed to negate a pregnant woman’s individual rights by pitting her against the fetus, and putting the government only on the side of the fetus. It will be defended as a caring act by those who love children. Is it?

Or is it a cynical tactic to disempower women, to help remove them from the workplace and tie them to caring for children they do not want in an economy set up to treat the desperate children of desperate women as minimum-wage workers without any empowered choices?

Is forcing the birth of unwanted children really caring? Is caring that easy? Is it just a matter of saying we feel strongly about someone else? Or do caring and loving demand more? What would it really take to love children, and how can you tell when someone really does? These are our questions this evening, and I invite you into them.

SERMON: The Morality of Abortion

Fields like religion, ethics and morality differ from history, sociology, or anthropology in important ways. History can ask what people actually did. Sociology can study what different subgroups do, anthropology can try to discern the kinds of behaviors, good and bad, that characterize our species. They”re descriptive disciplines.

But religion, ethics and morality are our attempts to be normative. Religion, ethics and morality can ask whether the gods we’re serving or the rules we’re following are good or bad. Are we following a morality of enslavement or empowerment? Shakespeare observed that “we love not wisely, but too well.” We usually also worship not wisely but too well, and a key role of religion is to ask whether the gods we’re serving are worth serving.

With morality, we always need to ask whether it’s good or bad morality. And the only way we can answer that is to ask whether it helps people achieve their own kind of excellence and grow into their full humanity, or whether the morality being foisted on us is aimed to disempower segments of our society, to turn them into obedient things rather than empowered citizens.

Each kind of life, each species, even each individual, has certain kinds of excellence and development available to it. With lower species, it’s mostly just survival and breeding. Flies, ants, roaches and rats, jellyfish and lobsters are about self-preservation and propagation of the species: survival and breeding. Period. That’s the definition of lower forms of life, and of life reduced to its lowest possibilities.

This is the framework within we need to understand the morality of abortion. We must relate it to the larger question of whether it serves the empowerment of people toward their excellence, or the virtual enslavement of people to levels of diminished capacity where they can hope mostly just for survival and breeding. The morality of abortion is the question of whether it enslaves or empowers both the parents and the potential children.

Human life can be defined down in many ways. Totalitarian regimes can do it, whether in Stalinist Russia, the reign of the Afghan Taliban or the morality of the fundamentalist American Taliban, by curtailing individual rights and freedoms. Overbreeding can do it, by letting a concern for quantity, for the mere existence of life, trump the concern for quality, the development and empowerment of life. People kept desperately poor overbreed, have few real choices, and must obey those who have turned them into starving and desperate workers. The immoral downgrading of human life can be identified through any of these symptoms.

And now we are ready for Pope Leo XIII. By 1891, huge numbers of the world’s poor had been effectively reduced to things, to desperate creatures struggling merely for survival, who could be treated as a desperate labor force under the worst conditions. Children worked in mines by the age of eight or younger, and could look forward to no more than this until they died – usually at an early age.

The Church’s role had been immoral for centuries, conspiring with the wealthy to keep the poor desperate and overbred. And the religious argument always came down to the same passage from the Bible, one that anyone raised in a very conservative religion has heard before. It’s from Genesis, after Adam and Eve had been thrown out of the Garden of Eden, that the line occurs. “By the sweat of your brow you shall live,” the writers have God saying: By the sweat of your brow you shall live. You see, life just is nasty, brutish and short. It’s hard, it’s unfair, and that’s God’s plan, an enduring punishment for the fact that Adam and Eve preferred development over blind obedience. That line had been used for hundreds of years to keep the lower classes of people in their desperate, overbred, hopeless state.

What Pope Leo XIII did in 1891 was to use the same Bible passage to justify the opposite position, and to lay the foundation for workers” unions which the Church would support through its offices. Leo did it simply by emphasizing a different word in the sentence. “By the sweat of your brow,” he said, “you shall live!” And what, he asked, does it mean, ‘to live”? Does it mean merely to exist, to subsist at starvation level? Does it mean to live like lower animals do, or maybe like slugs or plants do? Are we promised, by this God in the Old Testament, only the absolute lowest possible quality of life? Is the mere quantity of life, the mere fact that we breathe and can move all that religion offers? Is it, to keep it in the language of theism, all that God demands, the absolute minimum quality of life?

No, said Pope Leo, it is not life like a lower animal which this God of the Old and New Testaments demands for us. It is the life of a human being. And not the absolute minimal life of a human being, either. Pope Leo’s God demanded that our labors enable us to live fully, to realize the full potential of human beings. That means time for education, time for leisure, time for relaxation with friends and family, time not only to bear life like a burden, but as well to enjoy it, to live it.

Leo contrasted humans with lower animals, which he called “brutes.” Now hear this remarkable Pope Leo’s words as he describes the “brute”:

The brute has no power of self-direction, but is governed by two chief instincts…. These instincts are self-preservation and the propagation of the species…. But with [humans] it is different indeed…. It is the mind, or the reason, which is the chief thing in us who are human beings; it is this which makes human beings human, and distinguishes them essentially and completely from the brute. (“Rerum Novarum,” in Seven Great Encyclicals, New York: Paulist Press, 1963, p. 3)

And what is the role of the Church in all of this? “Its desire is that the poor, for example, should rise above poverty and wretchedness, and should better their condition in life; and for this it strives,” wrote this Pope. (p. 14) And if conditions existed which robbed humans of the possibility of living like humans rather than brutes, if people found themselves in “conditions that were repugnant to their dignity as human beings… if health were endangered by excessive labor, or by work unsuited to sex or age”in these cases there can be no question that within certain limits, it would be right to call in the help and authority of the law [to do what] is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the danger.”

And why? Why must the Church and the law do these things? Because God demands it! Demands it, because humans must be given living conditions which allow them to develop fully to the limits of their potential as educated, intelligent, creative, and joyful people. It is for that they were created, and conditions which make that impossible are not merely wrong, they are evil.

This is the theological argument which Pope Leo XIII made over a century ago, and which has changed millions of lives through the force of both its argument and its implementation by the church’s people with the church’s help. And, at the bottom, that’s the only foundation on which a solid and durable theological argument can ever stand: that God demands it.

The only other point that it is important to mention is that this new understanding, issued 111 years ago, changed the position of the Church, a position which it had held and enforced for nineteen centuries. Even traditions which have existed since the beginning of the religion can be changed, as our understanding of the fullest potential of life is expanded. In other words, the fact that things have always been done a certain way is not necessarily an argument for continuing to do them that way. And now we can bring this full circle.

Times have changed. The population of the world has doubled – twice! – since 1891, even more so since the era when the Old Testament and New Testament were written. Two thousand years ago, the world’s population has been estimated at about 200 million. It doubled three times in 1900 years, to about 1.5 billion in 1900. Then in the next sixty years it doubled again, to 3 billion by 1960. And in the next 39 years it doubled again, passing six billion by 1999. The deadly effect of overpopulation and under-education on the possibility of living like human beings has never existed the way it does today. Neither the religious scriptures of the west nor established theological traditions have yet had to address this changed situation.

What this means is that breeding is not a high calling for our species, and hasn’t been for centuries. We have too many people in the world. We don’t need more people, we need better people, and you can’t have both. You can favor quantity – the mere fact of human births – or quality.

Would you like to see what it looks like when human beings live only like animals, driven only by self-preservation and propagation of the species? Go to Mexico City. Or Chicago. Or Detroit. Or New York City. Go to the ghettos, the slums, the shantytowns of the world, and you will see the evil conditions, and the results of those evil conditions.

Do you want to see it up close, one-on-one? Look at fifteen-year-old girls pregnant with their third child, trapped in a welfare system that makes it most profitable for them to remain unmarried and unemployed. Not that there are many kinds of employment open to many of these women. With grade-school educations, what are they to do anyway? They can be prostitutes and their boyfriends can be pimps, drug pushers and drug takers, or exploited laborers living at the edge of starvation and kept there by a system which can demand of them what it chooses and give them no more than it must.

The Church’s understanding of sex arose when high breeding rates were seen as necessary for survival, when breeding was a high calling for people living at the margins.

But that was already a fundamental misunderstanding of the needs of this species. For thousands of years, humans have been able to reach their own peculiar kind of excellence through structures that favor quality of life over quantity of life, that stress development and education, not breeding.

Again: breeding is not a high calling for our species, and hasn’t been a high calling for centuries. We don’t need more people, we need better people. There are too many people in the world, and it is immoral to increase their quantity at the expense of increasing their quality.

Let’s look at some examples of abortions and consider whether the decisions were moral or immoral:

“A young woman gets pregnant and chooses an abortion. That is a completely moral choice, probably the most moral decision she can make. Why? Not because she chose it. Women’s choices aren’t any more or less moral than men’s. But because breeding is not a high calling, we don’t need more people we need better people, and she didn’t want a child. Maybe she sensed that she didn’t have the maturity, the emotional or financial means to give an unwanted child a better life than she had. But she knew she wasn’t ready. Under these circumstances, it would have been immoral to bring the child into the world.

Why not force her to carry the unwanted pregnancy to term, to make her produce a baby for older and wealthier people who want to adopt? Because it is immoral to turn a human being into breeding stock for more privileged people. Because we have too many people in the world. Because we do not need more people, we need better people, and we cannot have both more and better people.

Is it caring or cruel to suggest that more babies can be a bad thing? China has for quite awhile now been urging that their people have no more than one child. That hasn’t received good press here, but it came from the government’s realization that quantity and quality are absolutely opposed in human life, and that the only chance their people have of raising the standard of living for a population of more than billion people is to reduce their numbers to a sustainable level.

When I was in Thailand last month, one of our guides told us that the Thai government has also suggested that Thais limit their families to only two children, for the same reason. Our guide understood it as the government’s concern for the quality of life available for her people, and treated it as responsible leadership.

Let’s consider another common case.

A 20-year-old college woman gets pregnant because she and her boyfriend weren’t careful. He wants to get married and raise the child, but she doesn’t love him, doesn’t want to marry him, and doesn’t want to raise a child. She wants to prepare herself for a career that might let her bring a child into the world later, when she can better provide for the child both materially and psychologically. The abortion is probably the most moral decision she can make. That decision honors the potential of her life, and honors the potential of her future child’s life. Letting the blind fact of pregnancy overrule the higher distinctions she can make with her mind is letting quantity trump quality, letting the merest fact of a potential human life trump the greater concern for the quality of that life.

A married woman with two or three children gets pregnant, does not want another child and gets an abortion, even though the husband wants another child. That is a completely moral decision. Why? Because bringing a new human life into an already overcrowded world is only a moral decision if we honestly believe we can give it a better quality life than we have, and that takes two willing parents, not just one unless that one is going to take full care of the new life.

We have been trained to think that the mere fact of a pregnancy is a kind of moral imperative, trumping other considerations. But it is not, and hasn’t been for centuries. Breeding is not a high calling for our species. We have too many people in the world. We don’t need more people, we need better people, and those closest to the pregnancy know better than anyone whether this is the right time or place for another birth to take place.

The girl who thought she loved hamsters did not love hamsters. She did not even to have known what love is. She confused it with her selfish preoccupation with watching large numbers of desperate little bodies.

Unwanted pregnancies for which a mother is not ready to be a mother should almost always be aborted. Not because a woman has individual rights, but because it is the only moral choice available unless she consents to become a breeder for others.

I’m not trying to answer all the questions tonight, just to sketch a new and different way of understanding the morality of breeding and the morality of birth control and abortion. It is hard enough really to love hamsters. Learning how to really love humans in their highest rather than their lowest possibilities is much, much harder. And much, much more important.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Davidson Loehr

3 March 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

This is the first of two connected sermons, and should be read in conjunction with the sermon “The Morality of Abortion,” delivered 10 March 2002.

OPENING:

For about 30 years, America’s cultural liberals have understood abortion as a secular matter of individual rights where the mother, but not the baby, is seen as a rights-bearing individual. Conservatives have framed it as a moral issue based on the assumption that life is sacred in and of itself and everyone has a right to it. Under Roman Catholic teaching, when push comes to shove the baby has a greater right to life, since it stands to get a bigger quantity of life.

I expect the Roe v. Wade decision to be overturned during President Bush’s term, and I think the majority of our citizens do believe abortion is primarily a moral issue.

If this is the case, America’s liberals now need to begin doing what we should have done thirty years ago. We need to reframe abortion as a moral issue rather than an issue of individual rights. And if we believe abortion is morally justified, we need to develop moral arguments for it that can be persuasive not only to us, but eventually to a majority of the voting public. I have believed this could be done since I first preached on abortion over 15 years ago.

Now, this week and next week, I will try to persuade you, and hope the picture I sketch is solid enough to begin persuading others.

To tackle such a big issue is to risk failure, and you may not be persuaded, you may decide I fail at it. Still, it is too important a subject to ignore. A new discussion must begin somewhere, and this is a good place to start.

CENTERING:

Is life sacred? Always? If so, what makes it so? Can we ever assume the authority and the right to say No to life? Through birth control, family planning, abortion, capital punishment or war? Ever? If so, how? When? Why?

These are questions more profound than answers. Let us not approach them lightly or we will do a great disservice to them and to ourselves. Let us first be humbled by the subject before us: Life.

Is life sacred? Always? If so, what makes it so? Who are we to pronounce on it, and how? We are here through the accident and gift of life. If we would deny the gift to others, how, when, and why would we do it? Let us begin by letting the questions settle in and being humbled by them, during the silence.

SERMON: The meaning of life

Aristotle said the meaning and purpose of a life was to grow into its own characteristic kind of excellence, to become an example of that particular life at its best. Each species, and each person, has its own unique potential, and the purpose of its life is to blossom into that – for the greater good of its society and world, he might add.

It’s easier said than done, though I think it’s the right answer.

But it takes a lot. It can’t be done alone. As Aristotle also knew, it takes a good community, good friends, a life that offers us the likelihood of this kind of development. Statistically, few people become what they could or should become. So many people with great gifts of art, intelligence, who never develop it, never become the one person that they and only they could become. The obstacles include poverty, toxic home life, mental illness, psychological aberrations, wars, or accidents of life.

So the primary duty of societies is to establish and nourish the conditions within which their citizens can become the best kind of people and society – in the slogan of the US Army, to become all they can be.

This simple insight into the meaning and purpose of life is something we can all agree to, but it has profound implications for all areas of living. I want to explore some of these implications this morning.

But the first thing I want to say is that we all know almost everything I’ll be saying this morning. We know that we are supposed to grow and develop our potential, to become the best sort of person we can, for ourselves and our larger world. It’s what we admire in other people, and in ourselves. We know this.

For example, think of people who breed and show dogs or horses. I was married to a woman who bred and showed a rare kind of French sheep dog called a Briard, and spent about six years attending dog shows and programs put on by breeders concerned with serving and improving their breed.

In dog shows, the breeders of each breed write the standards by which their breed is to be judged. These standards are the best that can be expected of this breed in each area. The dogs are only expected to be what they can be, not what some other breed can be. Greyhounds don’t get any extra points for being able to herd sheep, and sheep dogs get no credit for being able to retrieve a wounded pheasant. Each breed can and can’t do certain things, and the breeders say, as Aristotle did 2400 years ago, that each breed is capable of a certain distinct kind of excellence. The purpose of its life is to strive toward its own kind of excellence.

Horse breeders operate the same way. An Arabian stallion needs to have a certain scoop, or “dish,” a curve from its eyes to its nose. Its nostrils should be flared in official photos, showing an alertness and energy. Its ears should be forward; its body should conform to certain standards. The ideal is the essence of what an Arabian can be at its best, and it is that standard that judges and breeders use to guide them in breeding and training those magnificent animals.

The meaning of each creature’s life is to strive toward its own particular form of excellence. Those who care for the breed try to create the situations within which that might best happen. And they are quick to protect the animals they love from conditions that can harm them – bad food, unhealthy surroundings, cramped quarters or brutal trainers.

With our species, it’s more complicated and more demanding. Ancient writers used to describe us as being caught midway between the beasts and the gods. And the quality of human excellence – the meaning and purpose of our lives – was something available neither to the beasts nor the gods, they said.

We have a degree of consciousness, self-awareness and articulateness that is, as far as we know, not shared by any other species. In that sense, we’re at a higher stage of potential than the other animals. We stew over who we are and how we should live in ways that chimps don’t seem to. We know we will die, and that’s the ever-present background against which we live. We have high existential anxiety compared with dogs or horses.

So we expect more of ourselves than we expect of dogs, horses or chimps, and we judge ourselves failures in ways they don’t seem to care about.

Yet we’re not gods. We aren’t omniscient, omnipotent, or undying. We can articulate more than we can actualize. We can see more than we can be. We yearn for more than we can earn. We yearn for peace, love, justice, a world where the content of our character trumps the color of our skin. And these yearnings are among our noblest traits.

We fail; we fail at almost all of these. It’s a continual battle between high aspirations and low inspirations. And we are marked as human by this odd, frustrating combination. We do not respect people or governments that sell out to low and mean motives. We do not respect those who side with the stronger against the weaker. Something essential is missing in people who do that, something we think is necessary to becoming fully human.

Yet we continually fail. And our history can be seen as the struggle between a glorious vision and an often-vainglorious reality.

The meaning and purpose of human life is to live toward that level of awareness, that level of responsibility, to know the difference between fairness and greed, altruism and narcissism, between treating people as fellow children of God, and treating them merely as things, things that do not even engage our tender mercies or make Lady Justice insist that the scales be balanced and the games played fairly.

And I suggest to you that you know all of this whether you”ve ever articulated it this way or not. You know it.

If you doubt that, try this mental experiment:

Imagine that some benevolent aliens land here, are trying to assess what kind of creatures these humans are. They say “Point to the people, alive or dead, who exemplify the best your race has produced, all that you can be.”

I have a long list of candidates, you probably do to.

I would include Mahatma Gandhi who, even though his revolution in India failed, continued to live by the highest ideals he could see, rather than selling out to the lower interests all around him. This great Hindu heard and answered a higher calling, as we expect our best people to do.

I would include Martin Luther King Jr., who had a vision of Americans as children of God and inheritors of the American dream, and preached that we should, that we must, accept the responsibility to bring this kingdom of God down to earth where it belonged.

I would include Einstein, Darwin, Picasso, Mozart, Bach, Homer, Shakespeare and others as examples of the human imagination and understanding at its finest.

I would include the firemen from September 11th, who died going up the stairs that others were running down, because a sense of duty and compassion called them upward, a compelling link to the suffering of others.

And I would include whole long lists of public school teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, clerks and cops who have lived, each in their own way, to be agents of love rather than hate, understanding rather than prejudice, compassion rather than greed.

I would point to these and say here, here is what we can be, if only we will. Here is that kind of excellence that is uniquely human. Here are people who exemplify the meaning of human life, whose lives and examples I try to learn from.

Make your own list, but see if your nominees aren’t people who exemplify this very human struggle to become, and help others become, the best they can be, to establish the just society, the kingdom of God, the possibility of a true democracy, honest and responsible government, and a sense of fairness that pervades all.

Now look at some of the implications of this. Look what is required for people to become fully human, to act like children of God, to be true to the calling of a species with as much potential as ours has.

It can’t be done alone. It takes more than a village to raise a child. It takes a culture: a healthy and courageous community. Because societies and laws that oppress people – that force the game of living to be played by rules that empower the strong and cripple the weak – are societies and laws that are the enemy of our possibility of becoming human. Morally, those conditions are evil which imprison the weak within small or selfish visions imposed on them by the strong or the morally blind.

Quantity versus Quality

There is one simple rule that points toward whether we have set up rules to foster life at its highest or to frustrate it. And this too is true of many species of animals. The question to ask is whether we are exalting the quantity of life or the quality of life. The meaning of life is about rising to our highest potential quality, not just existing. Are we set up to encourage more births, or more excellence?

I’ve seen the results in dog breeding. Briards are still a fairly rare breed, because that’s the way the breeders want it. They have seen what happens to breeds that become too popular, when irresponsible breeders begin accenting quantity over quality in order to sell puppies. Irish setters are now plagued with a whole host of genetic flaws because they were so poorly overbred. German shepherds, Old English sheepdogs and others have had hip dysplasia bred into them, so their mature years will be painful and crippling. Doberman Pinschers, Rottweilers, even Pit Bulls have seen their breeds degraded through breeding for quantity rather than quality, producing lines of mean and dangerous animals.

Quantity is the value of much lower forms of life, forms that depend on breeding large numbers in order to survive. I’m thinking of insects, sparrows, rats and roaches. We seldom speak of an excellent mosquito or a really exemplary fire ant. We just note whether ants, roaches or mosquitoes are present, whether they”ve survived. And in order to survive, they must breed in sufficient quantities. Several centuries ago, and in desperate times, the same was true of humans in some places. When infant mortality was high, when few lived to adulthood, humans needed to breed in large quantities in order to have a few survive to breeding age. That, of course, hasn’t been true for a long time.

With show dogs or horses or humans, emphasizing numbers isn’t a mark of success, but of failure. For the higher and more complex an animal gets, the more we judge it by quality, by how or whether it lives up to the highest that can be expected of that kind of life.

You know this, we all know this, we just seldom speak of it this way.

Serving our daimon Some observers raise the bar of expectations for our species quite high. One of those is worth mentioning because he’s respected, and because his theories are both complex and interesting. This is psychologist James Hillman, whom some of you have read and others may have heard of.

In a book called The Soul’s Code, Hillman suggests that we have within us, from birth, a kind of spirit or “daimon” as the Greeks called it, that urged us toward a specific form of life for which we were made. I won’t follow him all the way, but I follow him part way, maybe you will too.

He cites the stories of a few exceptional people – geniuses, as we”d usually call them – because he believes that in geniuses these daimons, these fires of destiny, burn brighter than they do in most of us.

He tells the story of Manuel Manoleta (1917-1947), the Spanish bullfighter many still regard as the greatest matador who ever lived. As a young boy, Manoleta was shy, afraid, and regarded as a mama’s boy because he would hide behind his mother’s apron, and seemed generally afraid of the world. That all changed when he was eleven years old, and was suddenly interested in nothing but bulls. From that point, he was afraid of nothing. In his first bull fight, he stood his ground and suffered a groin injury, but refused help and walked out of the ring under a new kind of power and a new kind of identity. He had, as a boy, grown into the destiny to which he had been called.

Freudians might interpret his life behind a red cape as a manifestation of early neuroses, where the red cape took the place of his mother’s apron. Hillman says it’s more interesting to turn it around, and suggest that he hid as a child because he was not yet ready for the dangerous challenges for which he had been made.

Let’s take a less bloody, less macho story. The great violinist Yehudi Menuhin also saw his calling at an early age. When he was just three, he heard a great violinist play a difficult cadenza in a concert, and was transfixed. He later said that he knew from that moment that he must become a violinist. He asked his father for a violin for his fourth birthday. A relative gave the young child, instead, a toy metal violin with metal strings. But the four-year-old Menuhin threw the toy on the floor and would have nothing to do with it. His calling was to play a Stradivarius, not a toy. The fact that, at age four, he was too small to hold or play a regular violin made no difference. The young boy had received an adult’s calling, and struggled to grow into it. But the guiding spirit, the daimon, was there very early.

The word “genius” is a clue to this way of thinking. It means someone who is possessed by a spirit, or “genie,” and who serves that genie with their life. The genie gives them great powers, but it also directs their life. I’ve known a few geniuses, and this describes them better than anything else I can think of does. I don’t mean to imply some kind of supernatural mechanics, just a poetic metaphor for an intensely focused sense of purpose and destiny in a few of our most exemplary people.

Or finally, take the story of Golda Meir, the former president of Israel. As a young girl growing up in Milwaukee she was outraged – as a fourth-grade student – at a school policy requiring students to purchase their books, which she felt manifestly unfair to poorer students. This young girl organized a protest, rented a hall, and arranged for classmates to speak, adding her own unwritten speech. At the age of 11, Golda Meir was already a Labor Party Prime Minister.

These stories seem to imply that there is something in us almost like a spirit, a holy spirit, that holds our calling and destiny. We must hear it, respond, and be in an environment that can nurture this aspiration so that we may grow into our own distinctive kind of excellence. That would mean that things which thwart this development are enemies of the holy spirit. And that’s raising the idea of our calling, or the meaning of our life, to a whole new level.

To put it in God-language, it means that not only are we children of God, but that if we will listen, God has a plan for us. There is this ‘s till, small voice” inside us that we need to listen to in order to know who we need to become.

To put it in natural language, it is saying that life gives us not only our genetic packages, but also a certain style of character, a style of being, and our gifts uniquely equip us for certain callings, through which we both grow into our fullest humanity, and nourish the world around us.

Either way, it raises the question of the meaning of our lives to a higher plane, where it becomes our sacred duty to become who we were meant to become, and the sacred duty of our communities and societies to provide the kind of social and legal structures that enable and empower us to do so.

If that is so – and I think it is at least partly so – it is a new way of looking at ourselves, and at human life in general. And seen this way, the prospect of bringing new human life into the world carries with it a tremendous amount of responsibility. Now breeding isn’t a high calling for our species, only excellence is. And this, I’ll suggest, changes the whole moral structure of our views on life and death.

But this isn’t just about what I think. I want to engage you too. This week and next week I want to challenge all of us to think in a very new way about life, and about birth control and abortion.

So take these thoughts with you for a week, and turn them over. Think about the difference between forms of life where quantity is paramount, and forms where quality is paramount. And think about the implications of all this for thinking about abortion, both as individuals and as a society.

I’ll end in mid-air because we are in mid-air on this. Let yourself be stirred, even disturbed, and form your own opinions about the morality of abortion and how you would explain it to yourself, or to a city government. It isn’t supposed to be easy; after all, we are striving to serve human life, which we regard as sacred – and to serve it in the way its unique kind of sacrality demands.

But I will leave you with a teaser. One of the greatest ironies in the area of trying to find good moral arguments for abortion is the fact that the best one was developed by a Roman Catholic pope, over a century ago. I will be using an argument first and famously written by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 in one of the most famous and best papal encyclicals ever written, the Rerum Novarum. No, he wasn’t writing about abortion. He was writing about the condition of labor. But he wrote about it, in this encyclical over which the Church is so proud it issued commemorative updates in 1931 and 1961, by developing an argument which said that concerns for the quality of human life must trump concerns over mere quantity of life. I’ll see you next week with my friend Pope Leo XIII and the brilliant and courageous encyclical he wrote 111 years ago.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Davidson Loehr

3 February 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

SERMON

The most famous definition of fundamentalism is probably still H.L. Mencken’s from over seventy years ago, when he defined it as “The terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun.” There’s something to this. It’s too fearful, too restrictive, too lacking in faith to provide a home for the human spirit to soar or for human societies to blossom.

But there isn’t enough to it. There are far more fundamental things to understand about the phenomenon of fundamentalism, especially since September 11th. Also, an adequate understanding of fundamentalism has some inescapable and uncomfortable critiques of America’s cultural liberalism of the past four decades. We were given the rare chance of a revelation in the aftermath of those attacks. That revelation came in two stages.

First was list of things some Muslim fundamentalists hate about our culture:

– They hate liberated women, and all that symbolizes them. They hate it when women compete with men in the workplace, when they decide when or whether they will become breeders, when they show the independence of getting abortions, and changing laws that previously gave men more power over them.

– They hate the wide range of sexual orientations and lifestyles that have always characterized human societies. They hate homosexuality, can’t confront the homosexual tendencies that exist in them, so project them outward and punish them in others.

– They hate individual freedoms that allow people to stray from the single rigid sort of truth they want to constrain all people. They hate individual rights that let others slough off their simple certainties.

Not much about these revelations was really new. We saw all this before, when Khomeini’s Muslim fundamentalists wreaked such havoc in Iran in the years following 1979. We have long known that Muslim fundamentalism is a mortal enemy of freedom and democracy.

But the surprise came just a few days after September 11th, in that remarkably unguarded interview on “The 700 Club” between Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. It was remarkable partly because these men are so media-savvy it’s amazing they would say such things on the air. But it’s also remarkable because as they listed the “causes” of the September 11th attacks, we heard exactly the same hate list the Afghan Taliban had outlined:

– They hate liberated women who don’t follow orders, who get abortions when they want them, who threaten, or laugh at, their arrogant pretensions to rule them.

– They hate the wide range of sexual orientations that have always characterized human societies. They would force the country to conform to a fantasy image of two married heterosexual parents where the husband works and the wife stays home with the children – even when that describes fewer than one-sixth of current American families.

– They hate individual freedoms that let people stray from the one simple set of truths they want imposed on all in our country. Pat Robertson has been on record for a long time saying that democracy isn’t a fit form of government unless it is run by fundamentalist Christians of his kind.

It is terribly important for us to realize that the fact that “our” Christian fundamentalists have the same hate list as ‘their” Muslim fundamentalists is not a coincidence!

From 1988-1993, the University of Chicago conducted a six-year study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. About 150 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.

They identified five points shared by virtually all fundamentalisms:

1. Their rules must be made to apply to all people, and to all areas of life. There can be no separation of church and state, or of public and private areas of life. The rigid rules of God – and they never doubt that they and only they have got these right – must become the law of the land. Pat Robertson, again, has said that just as Supreme Court justices place a hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, so they should also place a hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. In Khomeini’s Iran of two decades ago, and in the recent Taliban rule of Afghanistan, we saw how brutal and bloody this looks in real time.

2. The second agenda item is really at the top of the list, and it’s vulgarly simple: Men are on top. In every way. Men are bigger and stronger, and they rule not only through physical strength, but also and more importantly through their influence on the laws and rules of the land. Men set the boundaries. Men define the norms, and men enforce them. They also define women, and they define them through narrowly-conceived biological functions. Women are to be supportive wives, mothers, and home-makers.

3. A third item follows from the others – indeed all of these agenda items are necessarily interlocked, and need each other to survive. Since there is only one right picture of the world, one right set of beliefs, and one right set of roles for men, women and children, it is imperative that this picture and these norms and rules be communicated precisely to the next generation. Therefore, they must control the education of the society. They control the textbooks, the teaching styles, they decide what may and may not be taught. In Afghanistan, women were denied any education at all beyond basic literacy – and sometimes not even that much. And in our own country it was a long and hard battle to get women access to college and professional educations and credentials.

4. A fourth point isn’t an agenda item, but an observation voiced by several of the scholars: there is an amazingly strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled by the State. One scholar suggested that it’s helpful to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. Fundamentalists spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. Likewise, the phrase “overcoming the modern” is a fascist slogan dating back to at least 1941.

5. And the fifth point is the most abstract, though it’s foundational. Fundamentalists deny history in a radical and idiosyncratic way. Fundamentalists know, as well or better than anybody, that culture taints everything it touches. Our teachers, our times, color how we think, what we value, and the kind of people we become. If you have perverse teachers or books, you develop perverse people and societies. And they agree on the perversions of our current American society: the air of permissiveness, narcissism, individual rights unbalanced by responsibilities, sex divorced from commitment, and so on. The culture must be controlled because it colors everything in it. So far, so good.

What they don’t want to see is that exactly the same thing was true when their own sacred scriptures were created. Good biblical scholarship begins by studying the cultural situation when scriptures were created, to understand their original intent so we can better discern what messages they may still have that are relevant for our lives. But if fundamentalists admit that their own scriptures are as culturally conditioned as everything else, they lose the foundation of their certainties.

St. Paul had severe personal hangups about sex, for instance, that lie behind his personal problems with homosexuality and women. How else would he say that it is a shameful thing for a woman to speak in church, or that men are made in the image of God, but women are made in the image of men? These are the reasons that informed biblical scholars take some of Paul’s teachings as rantings rather than revelations. But for fundamentalists, their scriptures fell straight from heaven in a leather-bound book, every jot and tittle intact.

Now something should be bothering you about this list. And that’s that except for the illustrations I”ve added, you can’t tell what religion, culture, or even century I’m talking about! This realization also stopped the scholars a dozen years ago while they were presenting abstracts of their papers at the fall meetings in Chicago. Several of them noted that all their papers were sounding alike, that we were reporting on ‘s pecies” and needed to be studying the “genus,” that there were strong family resemblances between all these fundamentalisms, even when the religions had had no contact, no way to influence each other.

This is one of the most important things we need to learn about the agendas of all fundamentalisms in the world. They are all alike. And the only way that can be the case is if the agenda preceded all of the religions.

And it did. These behaviors are familiar because we”ve all heard and seen them many times. These men are acting the role of Alpha Males who define the boundaries of their group’s territory, and the norms and behaviors that define members of their in-group. These are the behaviors of tens of thousands of territorial species in which males are stronger than females. Or to put it into jargon, these are the characteristic behaviors of sexually dimorphous territorial animals. Males set and enforce the rules, females obey the males and raise the children, there is a clear separation between the in-group and the out-group. The in-group is protected, the outsiders are expelled or fought.

What the conservatives of human societies are conserving is the biological default setting of our species – virtually identical with the default setting of ten thousand other species. This means that when fundamentalists say they are obeying the word of God, they have severely understated the authority for their position. The real authority behind this behavioral scheme is tens of millions of years older than all the religions and all the gods there have ever been. It is the picture of life that gave birth to most of the gods, as its projected protectors.

It’s absolutely natural, ancient, powerful – and completely inadequate. It’s a means of structuring relationships that evolved when we lived in troops of 150 or less. But in the modern world, it’s completely incapable of the nuance or flexibility needed to structure human societies in humane ways. It’s absolutely natural and absolutely inadequate.

But it does help us better understand the relative roles of conservatives and liberals in modern society, and the role that liberals play in giving birth to fundamentalist uprisings.

The conservative impulse that has its starkest form in the fundamentalist agenda is our attempt to give stability to our societies. And as many observers have noted, hierarchical structures tend to be very stable.

The liberal impulses serve to give us not stability but civility: humanity. And they do this by expanding the definitions of our inherited territorial categories. The fundamental job of liberals in human societies is to enlarge our understanding of who belongs in our in-group. This is the plot of virtually all liberal advances in society.

Giving women the vote eighty years ago was expanding the in-group from only adult males to include adult females. Once that larger definition was established by liberals, our conservatives began defending that definition of the in-group rather than the smaller one.

Likewise, the civil rights movement was a way of saying that our in-group was multi-colored as well as including both sexes. Every liberal advance adds to the list of those who belong within our society’s protected group.

This means that, while society is a kind of slow dance between the conservative and liberal impulses, the liberal role is the more important one. It provides civility and humanity, it makes our societies humane rather than just stable and mean.

It also means that in order for the liberal impulse to lead, liberals must remain in contact with the moral center of our territorial nature and our need for a structure of responsibilities. Fundamentalist uprisings are an early warning system telling us that the liberals have failed to provide an adequate and balanced vision, that they have not found a vision that attracts enough people to become stable.

Just as it’s no coincidence that all fundamentalisms have similar agendas, it’s also no coincidence that the most successful liberal advances tend to be made by wrapping their expanded definitions in what sound like extremely conservative categories. Take just a couple:

John F. Kennedy’s most famous line sounds like the terrifying dictate of the world’s worst fascism: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask rather what you can do for your country.” Imagine that line coming from Hitler, Khomeini, the Taliban, or Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell! It is a conservative, even a fascist, slogan. Yet Kennedy used it to effect significant liberal transformations in our society. Under that umbrella he created the Peace Corps and Vista, and enlisted many young people to extend our hand to those we had not before seen as belonging to our in-group: Liberal ends achieved through what sounded like conservative means.

Likewise, Martin Luther King used the rhetoric of a conservative vision, expanded through his liberal redefinition of the members of our in-group. When he defined all Americans as the children of God, those words could sound like the battle-cry of an American Taliban on the verge of putting a bible in every school, a catechism in every legislature. Instead, King used that cry to include Americans of all colors in the sacred and protected group of “all God’s children” – which was just what many Southerners were arguing against forty years ago. Liberal ends, conservative means.

When liberal visions work, it’s because they have kept one foot solidly in the moral center of our deep territorial impulses, and the other free to push the envelope, to create a bigger tent, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory.

And when liberal visions fail, it is often because they fail to achieve just this kind of balance between our conservative impulses and our liberal needs.

During the past half century, many of our liberal visions have been too narrow, too self-absorbed, too unbalanced. And their imbalance has been a key factor in triggering the fundamentalist uprisings of the past decades. When liberals don’t lead well, others don’t follow. And when society doesn’t follow liberal visions, liberals haven’t led well (or at all).

– When liberals burned the American flag during the Vietnam War rather than waving it and insisting that America live up to its great tradition, they lost the most powerful territorial symbol in our culture, and lost the ability to speak for our national interests. This created an imbalance that planted the seeds of future fundamentalist uprisings.

– When liberals defined abortion in amoral terms, as simply a matter of individual rights – where only the mother, but not the developing baby, were “individuals” – they created a moral imbalance that planted the seeds of future fundamentalist uprisings (as well as quietly losing the support of many liberals, including liberal ministers).

– When liberals over-emphasized individual rights while ignoring the need to balance them with individual responsibilities toward the larger society, they planted the seeds of future fundamentalist uprisings.

Those uprisings are happening in some Muslim societies that hate us and hate the influence our culture is having on their own. They are also threatening within our own culture, as shown by that amazing interview on “The 700 Club” and some of both Robertson and Falwell’s statements of the past two decades. I have heard now that Jerry Falwell has filed suit in federal court to challenge Hamilton’s interpretation of the separation of church and state. I’m not sure how to check this, but if it’s true it is a sign that the Taliban’s power could be transported to our own shores. It would only take revoking the separation between church and state, and the use of state power to enforce church-dictated behaviors and norms for all. And the degradation of American education through the influence of fundamentalist lobbies on textbook publishers is already well-documented.

But if I’m right in what I’m suggesting here, it isn’t their fault. The fundamentalists are reacting absolutely instinctively – whether they think they have instincts or not – to a threat to social stability made up of the narrow and unbalanced liberal teachings of the past three or four decades.

Maintaining both stability and civility, humane content and enduring form in human societies, is an unending dance between the conservative and the liberal impulses within our societies. But the task of liberals is much, much harder.

It’s really quite easy to be a fundamentalist. All you have to do is cling tightly to a few simplistic teachings too small to do justice to the complex demands of the real world. You just have to cling to these, and then pretend that what you have done is either honest or noble.

But to be a liberal, really to be an awake, aware, responsive and responsible liberal – that can take, and that can make, a whole life.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Davidson Loehr

6 January 2002

Text of this sermon is not available but you can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Like most religious literalists, I think religion is about our search for salvation. Unlike religious literalists, I think our salvation comes here and now or it never comes at all. I’m not inventing a new meaning for the word, I’m returning to its original meaning. It comes from the same Latin root as our word “salve,” and means health or wholeness. So what is salvation about for religious liberals? What makes us most healthy and whole?