|
|
|
|
January 2002 Sermons
January 13, 2002 SermonRev. Nancy D. DeanJanuary 13, 2002The Peaceful Fight: Martin Luther King, Jr. and GandhiI chose this Sunday to talk about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for it is closest to his birthday, of January 15, 1929, although the national holiday will be celebrated next Monday week on January 21ST this year. Part of my rationale comes from a phenomenon I have noticed over the years that when you have your attention focused on something, suddenly that topic or thing leaps out at you from all over the place. Like getting a different color car, say a dark green one, and you never before noticed dark green cars all that much, but suddenly, once you are the proud new owner of a dark green car, they seem to be everywhere. So, my expectation, indeed my hope, is that during the next week you may be drawn more to the articles and news items that will be focused on Martin Luther King, and, certainly, to the on-going struggle we witness here at home and around the world for peace and justice. Most of you are well acquainted with the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. His work for civil rights, and his devotion to non-violence as a means for Black Americans to gain the justice and freedom that had been denied them since their ancestors were brought to this country in slavery over three-hundred years ago. What if often overlooked is that this struggle could have so easily turned into some horrible internal war, the likes of our Civil War in terms of death and destruction, but the Rev. King, believed that there had to be a better way, and that way was non-violent resistance and protest. What a lot of our brother and sister Americans are not so familiar with, is that much of what influenced Dr. King came from his reading of Mohandas Gandhi, and his meeting with him in 1959. The Rev. Dr. King had had a lifelong admiration for Gandhi, and during the course of King’s non-violent protest movement, frequently credited Gandhi's passive resistance techniques for his own civil-rights successes. I think my favorite quote from Gandhi, and one I often repeat, was credited to a reporter reputedly asking Gandhi, "What do you think of Western civilization?" and Gandhi replied, " I think it would be a good idea." Today, with a war called "Enduring Freedom" still being waged in Afghanistan, and the fifty-plus year struggle between the Israelis and Palestinians continuing to burden themselves and the world with their killing and maiming--all over what various groups have claimed God gave them, or wanted them to do, we might want to consider what would be more likely to work, and more likely to be what God would want. Assuming there is a God who cares one way or the other what this mass of humanity does with and to one another. This mass of humanity that seems unable to exist without violence, killing, war, greed, and God Forbid, perhaps eventually our complete destruction with nuclear war. So, in this month that celebrates one of the great leaders and heroes of independence in American civil rights, we might want to consider that at least two heroes of independence and peace, got there without resorting to war. That is indeed something wonderful to celebrate. The one thing that frustrates me so much as I witness the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland and England, the Osama bin Ladin al Quaida movement and all the western world, is that it all seems so senselessly focused on killing until one group gets their way and the other loses. There has been and is so little effort put into finding methods that would probably have long since achieved the more important goals of groups who are not just bent on human destruction. I have no doubt that if leaders like King and Gandhi had been given the reins in these various struggles, peace would have long since been achieved. So we have to ask ourselves what the deeper motivations and dynamics are for groups that often seem would rather stay in a cycle of violence, revenge, destruction, that take the higher road to peace. The humorist Dave Barry wrote expressing his frustration with the inability of Israelis and Palestinians to find some middle ground: "They can hold all the peace talks they want, but there will never be peace in the Middle East. Billions of years from now, when Earth is hurtling toward the Sun and there is nothing left alive on the planet except a few microorganisms, the microorganisms living in the Middle East will [still] be bitter enemies." That is a rather dire view and unhappy prediction, but I think his statement does exemplify the frustration that most of us feel. Gandhi, was a deeply religious man--a man of highly developed spirituality might be better, a lawyer schooled in England, who had both practical and spiritual motivations for his non-violent resistance and protest in helping to gain the independence for his people and the country of India. As the reading stated, he believed that: "Non-violence is a power which can be wielded equally by all [who] have a living faith in the God of Love and have therefore equal love for all mankind." And, further, that, it "is a profound error to suppose that whilst the law is good enough for individuals it is not for masses of mankind." My friends, this is the very core of our Unitarian Universalist principles. I am reminded of the story about the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., at the time he was Yale's chaplain, who, at a faculty-student reception, met an intense sophomore with the light of battle in his eye. "Sir," said the boy belligerently, "religion is a crutch!" "Sure it is," agreed Coffin, "but who isn't limping?" Yale professor Olivia Green quoting Gandhi:
Green goes on from that quote to talk about how Gandhi developed his method of "direct social action, based upon principles of courage, non-violence, and truth, which is called satyagraha." This method is centered in the notion that how people behave is more important than what they achieve. "[It] was Satyagraha that was used to fight for India’s independence and to bring about social change." The whole movement might not have happened had not Gandhi, in 1893, gone to South Africa to do some legal work. South Africa, then under British control, and, to paraphrase Green, almost immediately he was abused because he was an Indian who claimed his rights as a British subject. He saw that other Indians also suffered from discrimination, and though his law assignment was for one year, but he stayed in South Africa for twenty-one years to work for Indian rights. And it was there that Gandhi began to experiment with nonviolent protest. "He led many campaigns for Indian rights in South Africa and edited a newspaper, Indian Opinion." And, in a statement so profound it still escapes most people. "Gandhi told the Indians ‘Part of our sad condition stems from our own actions.’" Is this not true of each and everyone of us? And, does this not define perfectly the condition of the Palestinians and Israelis, as well as most groups in conflict? We all know that in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, and that set off the series of protests we mostly identify with the civil rights movement in this country. "In his first speech as leader of the boycott, King told his black colleagues: "First and foremost, we are American citizens. . . . We are not here advocating violence. . . .The only weapon that we have . . . is the weapon of protest. . . .The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right." We know, of course, that Gandhi expanded the fight for Indian civil rights and independence, and not without cost. He was jailed frequently, was beaten, abused, as were many of his followers, but he gained something that bullets, missiles, and bombs would not have achieved—the empathy of the world, and eventually the support of the world. Unlike Martin Luther King, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for leading non-violent civil rights demonstrations, Gandhi was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which remains a great injustice in the eyes of many people. Still, one feels sure that Gandhi would be more gratified by the long thread of influence he wove and which most recently was seen in the efforts by Nelson Mandela and others Black Africans to gain freedom in South Africa. We know that the peaceful efforts did not come without great sacrifice; lives were lost of black children, women, and men. And, a source of pride for us as Unitarians, a great many Unitarian Universalists joined in these protests, and even our own Rev. James Reeb was attacked and killed during his participation. Non-violent protest is not about no violence; it is about certainly a lot less violence, but more importantly it is about honor. And that is what seems so sorely lacking in the world today. Where are the heroes of peace, of non-violence in all these places of conflict? And, we, the citizens of this country, through our government, can we not put as much energy into finding peaceful means of solving some of the world’s problems as we do in bombing? I don’t pretend to have the answer to this question, but in good UU fashion, I know we have to ask it. Like many of you, I often despair at the human condition: Why do we rush to violence? Why are so many greedy and power-hungry? (Enron certainly pops to mind!) Why is our impulse to revenge so much stronger than our impulse to forgiveness? There is a story that just before World War II, in Flushing, New York, two clergymen attended an annual interfaith luncheon. Father Robert Felts, a well-known Episcopalian minister, in a playful mood said to his friend Rabbi Cohen: "You know, Rabbi, I dreamed of a Jewish heaven the other night. It was very lifelike, and it seemed to me to just suit the Jewish ideal. It was a crowded tenement district with Jewish people everywhere. There were clothes on lines from every window, women on every stoop, pushcart peddlers on every corner, children playing ball on every street. The noise and confusion was so great that I woke up." The equally witty rabbi replied, "By a strange coincidence, Father Felts, I dreamed the other night of an Episcopalian heaven. It was very lifelike, and it seemed to me to just suit the ideal of Episcopalians. It was a neat suburb, with well-spaced houses in excellent condition, with beautiful lawns, each with its flower bed, with clean, wide, tree-lined streets, and all was immersed in mild sunshine." Reverend Felts smiled. "And the people?" "Oh," murmured the rabbi, "there were no people." Like Rabbi Cohen, many others have said the world would be a pretty great place if there were no people. In fact, one scientist said in all seriousness that people are a cancer on the planet. But to celebrate the real goodness that also exists in humanity, without us there would be no appreciation for all the great beauty of our world. So, in spite of my frustration, I remain glad that there are people on the earth. Mohandas Gandhi was certainly special, an enlightened religious man, he was called Mahatma Gandhi, "mahatma" was the title given to him by his people and it means "the great soul." That is what the world is always in need of, great souls. Gandhi’s practice of non-violent resistance can be credited with our own relatively peaceful and by historical terms, brief period of civil rights struggle in his teaching of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.—not that the struggle is over. And as those of you who get involved in the wider district and continental UU activities know so well, we UUs are always working to further the process of racial and social justice along. You and I, too, can learn these lessons, especially to learn to recognize the great souls, to honor them, to support them, wherever we find them. Yesterday, my husband was firmly rooted on the sofa in front of the television from about 4 to11PM, watching the football playoffs. A half-dozen times I came down and sat with him for a couple minutes and viewed the proceedings, and generally irritated my spouse who gets far too engrossed in these games for his own health. (Every time the Eagles got a touchdown, he roared like a male lion over his kill.) I am always fascinated that these people who are playing are such heroes and role-models to so many people. While they certainly deserve respect and appreciation for their skill, most of them are, after all, playing a game for a great deal of money, and probably would not be there otherwise. My understanding of a hero includes many people, King and Gandhi certainly, but all the people who sacrifice of themselves for others. Many of our nation’s founders were great heroes: they gave their lives, their fortunes, their homes to gain this country’s freedom. And to place these into juxtaposition is to remind us that we have not always found peaceful means to gain our peaceful ends. Humanity is still a work in progress, but amidst all this fighting that surrounds our country, and has now penetrated our shell of safety, we must be willing to talk peace with as much fervor as we talk war. That is the heroes’ message. That is the message of all the "great souls" who have come before, and I pray fervently we see again, soon. Amen January 27, 2002 SermonRev. Nancy D. DeanJanuary 27, 2002Whose Side is God On?The Super Bowl is upon us, and just to prove how little I know about football, I thought this Sunday was always Super Bowl Sunday, but my husband informed me last week that, no, next week is Super Bowl Sunday, since the Sept. 11th terrorism pushed the season back a week. I make no apologies, and just say that this sermon is less about the Super Bowl, though the blurb in our newsletter The Grist did to call attention to that event, than about how people understand God. Like many men and women in this congregation, my husband enjoys the Super Bowl. He is much more of a football fan than I would ever want to be, and after witnessing him watching two play-off games back-to-back a couple of weekends ago, I have to say I sympathize with Erma Bombeck who wrote on the subject, declaring, "If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead." The famous Oklahoma University football coach Bud Wilkinson was once asked what he thought was the contribution of football to physical fitness. "Absolutely nothing," Wilkinson immediately replied. "Absolutely nothing?" the startled interviewer asked. "Would you elaborate?" "Certainly," said Wilkinson. "I define football as twenty-two men on the field desperately in need of rest, and forty thousand in the stands desperately in need of exercise." One of the little sacrifices of love is to sometimes do things with your partner that you would not do left to your own devices, so almost every year my sweetheart and I watch the Super Bowl together. Fitting right in with Bud Wilkinson’s statement about the viewers, I make a big pot of chili, buy a range of junk food, and get into the spirit of the thing along with Tom. He does it for the game, I do it for the food. At least we do not have the confusion of the college football player and his girl who were standing on the sidelines watching the rest of the team scrimmage. It was obvious that the running back, Jim, was the star of the team. "Next year," said the guy to his girl, "Jim is going to be our best man." "Oh darling," the girl trilled, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. "What a nice way to ask me!" What really grabs my attention whenever I watch these games, is not the playing of football, but the interviewing of the athletes in the lengthy pre-pre-game show, the pre-game shows, and throughout the game some former heroes of the game are interviewed and asked to comment on all the various aspects of the present game, and, of course, the lengthy post-game show. For most of this, I am like the fifth-grade girl who was very proud of her brother, one of the high school football team’s star players. She was telling this to a new friend, explaining, "Yes, my brother is a star on the football team; he’s an offensive throwback." Amidst all this interviewing and commentary, the thing that leaps out at me is the regularity of players who attribute their success on any given play or game to the Lord, to God. They will say something like: "The Lord was with me, when Jones threw that long pass, and Smith caught it, but tripped on his shoelace causing the ball to fly up into the air, right where I was." Or, "God was with us today." Or, "I just thank the Lord for giving me the chance to make the play." And, on and on and on, crediting the Lord God for their successes. Which on the one hand seems to indicate a humbleness of spirit that it admirable. We might not take it so well if our heroes were to say, true though it might be: "Yeah, all those years of great coaching and incessant practice finally came out today in my excellent playing." In all seriousness, though, I do have a fascination with this expression of religious belief and practice, that draws me to pick up my well-worn copy of William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, much underlined and dog-eared since my days at Harvard Divinity School, and still my absolute favorite book on understanding the religious impulse. The questions I take to the James’s work are: How does this particular manifestation of religious belief come about? What are we really seeing? And, what are we not seeing, as well? To set the record straight, I am not anti-sports. I think team sports are really fine, in their proper place. I happen to be a tennis fan, and I am not so much interested in other sports, though I was a soccer fan in the years my children played. Though, I do wish the university and college systems would separate the sports activities that are moneymakers from the academic activities, for I have seen the unfortunate side of that in my years as an English teacher in a university that placed a major emphasis on sports. I am biased in that regard. But I remember fondly softball games of my youth, tag football games the cousin played, and my own fun at basketball in my junior high years. So, despite all my joking about football as the spouse of a fan, my sermon today is not about the merits of team sports, but rather the way football athletes, among many others, seem to direct their religious beliefs into the game. They just happen to have a spotlight, but the practice is widespread among us all and around the world. What is happening when players so quickly attribute their success to God? What is happening when players drop to one knee and say a quick prayer before going to the play, or the plate in baseball, or cross themselves? Take note, that these behaviors are mostly reflecting Christian belief. From a Christian evangelical or fundamentalist point-of-view (the one to which I was reared), one is always supposed to give God all praise, since nothing good comes to one except that God grants it. So that part makes sense, but what seems contradictory is that one never hears the team players say, "Well we got beaten badly today; God must have been angry with us." When the players do poorly, they always take it upon themselves or the team and say they did not play well, or were not focused. Sometimes, they do say the other team just out-played them, or had a good day, but I notice that they do not say similarly, as they do of themselves, "The Lord was with the opponent today. We were not in God’s favor." It seems that giving credit to the Lord God is pretty much one-sided, unlike the games. What might be inferred from this imbalance of crediting successes to God is that people are self-centered. That is true as often as not. We can also infer a suspicion of God’s relationship to others. Or, this perhaps is not wanting to acknowledge the whole-picture. And, it might just be habit, something they are reared to. I know that I still say things like, "God forbid." Or "For God’s sake." And occasionally even, "Thank God!" when a close call is avoided. But, I do not mean those words at all; rather, they are the explicatives of the moment. They express concern, exasperation, or relief as the case may be. Still, for most of the athletes, the drawing on religion to account for success, or accounting for failure through the lack of acknowledging God’s presence, seems to be a real part of their religious beliefs and religious expression. What is to some extent troublesome about team sports is the degree to which players and viewers are called upon to engage in Christian rites in order to participate. Prayers at football games are the single greatest cause of church-state court cases. Local schools in predominantly Christian communities do not want to give up their ritual prayer-before-the-game. Further, team coaches and the players, use prayer and Christian evangelistic tactics to draw the team together, so those who are not Christian often find they are kept outside things, even kept from playing, if they are not willing to enact the rituals. There either was this past week, or will be this week, (I hope I have not missed it.) a program on television that deals directly with this issue. In the brief clip I saw announcing it, they showed a football player saying that somebody who had just been recruited had been rejected because he was an atheist, saying, "He didn’t fit in here." What of people of Native American religions, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all other many religions represented in this country? Are football, basketball, and hockey inherently Christian sports? These three did arise in predominantly Christian countries, but now we are most certainly a pluralist nation, and most of us would like to believe that sports would be free of the bigotry that is often so prevalent in our nation, but apparently it is not. Sports, though, only exemplify what is rampant in the country, and as I hear from UUs all the time, if you are not part of a mainstream Christian denomination, you are expected to explain yourself as an outsider, even though we claim in the same breath to be a Free Country, a Melting Pot, as if people really did value diversity, but there is still a large portion of the population that does not. Which, if we boil it down to its essence, relates in large part to our innate tribalism or clan-orientation. Belonging is valuable, knowing who belongs relates to safety, and how you know and are known is by the rites and rituals. Which leads to my short answer about this need to attribute good things to God. My answer is totemism. Totemism as in totem poles, ritual totems, and the vernacular totem, as in, "The rusting 1941 trophy is the their team’s totem." More formally as the anthropologists explain totemism:
Our need to express ourselves within the community is immeasurably strong, indeed part of the great impulse toward religion. Remember, I always differentiate spirituality from religion, for we are all spiritual, it is only the difference of spiritual development that makes the difference between the evil person, the ordinary person, and the mystic. Religion is the institutionalization of our spiritual beliefs and practices, so religion looks different in different cultures, but people and spirituality are pretty much the same everywhere with some shadings of expression, or as James says, varieties. In many ways, we remain insecure all lives, no doubt the result of our long development in our Paleolithic past, where it was a good idea to be wary surrounded by hungry animals, but in our modern world where we are not so much concerned about wild beast and more concerned about the beastly people, that insecurity get reshaped, but insecurity is still the bane of human existence. We look for safety and we look for comfort, and we especially look for those things from religion. In the prehistoric or preliterate days, people knew that good things and bad things happened in differing proportions to different people, and assumed it must have something to do with the good or bad intents of the spirit world, the gods, goddesses, sprites and devils. You offered your allegiance and sacrificial offerings to those that you believed protected you, and tried to ward off those that seemed to be against you. The totem pole as witnessed in the northwestern Native American Indian tribes, was animistic, or related to animals. Ravens, bears, cougars, any animal could be perceived as embodying the good or evil or capricious spirits. Over time, a clan developed a belief in certain totems of protective spirits, and they made their icons in the form of a log carved into the shape of the various spirit-animals, often brightly colored, and they stood protective over the village or tribe, much the way the Christ stands arms-spread over the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Each religion has done something similar, even Unitarian Universalists with our flaming chalice. So, what I believe we are witnessing with the football players and their one-sided attributions to God in the outcome of the game, has to do with insecurity, and if they had a good game, a great play, they offer their praise to God, in hopes that it will happen again, and the next game, they pray and Catholics cross themselves before they go to onto the field hoping to keep God’s favor. Which is why the focus is lopsided, for it would not do to call attention to the negative. You and I are not exempt from these totemistic behaviors either, and depending on how and by whom we were raised, we probably carry some with us from our "clan." Once, in great fear for my child’s safety, he was very small and I had just become a Unitarian, I put my hands together and said, "Please, God, let him be okay." Even though I did not then, nor do not now, believe in a god that intervenes in the world, but that impulse was there in me from my youth. In less stressful encounters, I am more likely to say, "Please, whatever non-specific good spirits that might by out there, help me." For, I am often insecure, as we all are, and in spite of logic, there is a bit of most of us that hopes for a little magic to protect us, or help us. And, we too, do not very often turn and shake our fists at the heavens when it does not happen. Now and then I hear about people who "lost" their faith, when someone they loved dearly had a horrible illness or accident and died. My suspicion is that what they lost was their belief in the totems. Their prayers were not answered, the suffering not relieved, the death not avoided, so they abandon the totem, and sometimes look for and find another. Like what I suspect may have happened to the twenty-year-old the press call the American Taliban, John Walker Linde, who at sixteen learned that his father was divorcing his mother to marry another woman, and he turned to Islam from his childhood Episcopalian faith. I certainly have no proof for that, but it is a strong suspicion. Sometimes people make a totem of our Unitarian Universalist faith, as well, and when the thing, often rationalism, that brought them to us does not keep them from harm, they will abandon UUism and look for another. So, whose side is God on during the Army-Navy game or the Super Bowl or the World Series? I don’t know. My suspicion is that whatever God there is that looks out for us, cares for us, intends the best for us, loves each one of us; that God is on each person’s side, and no particular group. I hope the best team wins, but when I say that, I do not mean the same thing my husband does, assuming he has no favorite, in which case, he wants "his" team to win, but to him the best is the best trained, the best athletically talented—that is, the best in the physical realm. Best to me, is the best not only athletically, but ethically, morally, spiritually. But, you know as well as I do, team sports are not won that way! |
Send mail to
webmaster@uusmc.org
with
questions or comments about this web site.
|