Home Up Contents Search What's New

May 2004    
January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004

 

 

May 2, 2004 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

May 2, 2004

Forgiveness: Love is Learning to Say You’re Sorry

Just to get us in the right frame of mind, I want each of us to think for a moment about something we wish deeply we had not done for which we would wish to be forgiven. It does not matter how or when or why, or if it has ever left your own mind and heart or ever will; but lift up that main thing or series of things for which forgiveness could soothe your soul. That something for which you never apologized, or even considered you could, yet you still know you were wrong. You still know that you would not repeat that wrong if chance favored a second go around.

We all have something. None of us get through life without injuring others or ourselves in some way through thoughtless acts, unkind acts, even cruel acts. We may have been children, or young and careless teens, or adults too egotistic to care about what we were doing to the other. We all have sinned. Sin is such acts; sinning is to do these things.

One of the great virtues of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions, in particular, is the focus placed on forgiveness. Christianity especially has made provision for public and private confession of wrongdoing, asking God to forgive sins.

For those of us in Unitarian congregations, the acknowledgement of wrongdoing falls squarely on our shoulders. It is up to each one of us to admit our failings, it is up to us to ask forgiveness where it is needed, it is up to us to make reparations; it is up to us to say we are sorry. Most importantly, it is up to us to own when we are wrong and to learn from that process of confession made to those we hurt and to ourselves.

In many cases, though, we cannot ask for forgiveness. We may not know the person we wronged, or the wrongdoing was so long ago that the people are gone, have died, or simply unapproachable. Then there are those sins of omission, those things we ought to have done, but did not, for which confession may be difficult or impossible. Ultimately, what matters most is that we acknowledge to ourselves those wrongs we have done for which we would like to be forgiven.

My experience tells me that often getting forgiveness from others is relatively easy compared with learning to forgive ourselves.

Wanting forgiveness, wanting to be forgiven, is deep in our cultural consciousness. But the sincerity with which we approach the issue of forgiving is equally important.

In Jewish tradition, one was/is obligated to confess one’s sins, and if possible atone for them. Most importantly, the good Jew was expected to confess his/hers sins before God; the story of Job is filled with pleas from Job’s friends to confess his sins so that God would lift his afflictions. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the holiest days of Jewish calendar, are the ten days when the faithful must confess and offer some atonement so that their names will be inscribed in the Book of Heaven. Various forms of repentance are suggested, but one such is that which Moses did when he discovered the Israelites had made the golden calf, and the scripture says Moses fell down on his face before God and begged forgiveness for the sin of Israelites in make the calf. Falling on one’s face was the visible sign, the posture appropriate when seeking absolution. There was also the scapegoat, later other animals were also used, but the sins of the person or the group where ceremonially transferred to the animal who was then sacrificed to atone for the sins.

We still have a cultural understanding of falling on one’s face or knees in begging forgiveness; and of the scapegoat, though that term has come to mean an action that avoids taking responsibility rather than the ritual placing of guilt, evil, or sin onto the animal to be sacrificed.

For most of us forgiveness is something we may seek, but not to publicly. Much was made of Richard Clark, during his testimony before the 9/11 Commission recently, turning to the families and asking for their forgiveness.

There have been other public acts of repentance made by this country for slavery, for the Japanese Interment in World War II, and from the Japanese for their mistreatment of Chinese and Koreans during that war, and so on. There is a deep understanding in world cultures of the value of public confession and requests for forgiveness. Generally, you and I deal with the more ordinary or regular levels of wrongdoing or sin, of repentance, apology and forgiveness.

Many of you probably recognize the title of my sermon as a play on a famous line in the 1970s movie, “Love Story,” with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw, a young Harvard couple from very different backgrounds, he is a blue blood, she’s working class, but their love story comes to a tragic end when she is diagnosed with cancer. He apologizes for something, and she says famously: “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” It made for good movie scripting, but I reacted immediately to the foolishness of that statement. For it seems clear to me that the essence of love is learning to say you are sorry and not to assume to heavily upon the goodwill of your partner. That line follows upon a line of music from a 1940s Mills Brothers song that states: “You only hurt the one you love . . .”

I take great exception to both these ideas because the chipping away at the love we are given with foolish acts of disrespect can eventually add up to enough to destroy that love. The people we love deserve the best treatment we have to give, not the casual and inconsiderate. I feel strongly that you should never talk hatefully to your friends, spouses, partners, children, for you would not talk that way to your boss, or to your minister, or next-door neighbor. After all, who deserves the best of us, but those who love us.

Having said that, I know also that we all fall short sometimes. We get overtired, cranky, stressed, and fearful, and then sometimes lash out at those closest to us. But if we love truly, then that love calls us to be ashamed, to ask for forgiveness, to try to atone for our failing. Love is learning to say you are sorry, but not just say, to mean it and to learn from the experience not to keep taking advantage of the ones who love us. The divorce rate tells the story all too plainly that inattention to loved ones, chipping away at the love and goodwill of loved ones, can eventually lead to a breakdown of that love.

Being sorry, though, is clearly not the same thing as saying you are sorry. My granddaughters, now almost three years old, started going to a play group last fall, and my daughter was astonished that one of the first things they learned was insincerity. Like most young parents, when they hit each other, pulled hair, took a cookie, she would tell them to apologize and say they are sorry. She began to hear, instead “Sorry Haley” or “Sorry Morgan”, this one syllable “sah”. “Sah,” is the insincere form of sorry: “Sah Haley/Morgan”; to which, my daughter would have to respond, “You say you are sorry the right way.” So out comes, “Soorrry Morgan/Haley” in an exaggerated fashion which probably means, “I am not really all that sorry and will do it again the next chance I get.” Still, parents know that they are responsible to teach their children that when you wrong someone, you should apologize, and it better sound sincere, for it should be sincere. It is a long series of lessons throughout childhood, and into much of adulthood as well.

As adults we usually do not mean to harm anyone, often our acts are those of thoughtlessness, being more concerned with our own needs that the needs of others. Selfishness is endemic in our world. We all make mistakes, or do things inadvertently that hurt others. The challenge comes in admitting we are wrong, and asking to be forgiven. Yet, I see so often how many people cannot admit their wrongs and repent them, to be willing to ask to be forgiven. Yet it is a sign of great character to be able to do so.

That is part one, learning to ask for forgiveness; now for part two, learning to forgive.

When I was doing my ministry internship, I remember the senior minister preaching about forgiveness, and during the discussion following the sermon, a woman stood up and said boldly, “I was brutally abused by my father when I was growing up, I will never forgive him. He does not deserve to be forgiven.” We all were in shock for a moment, mainly at her courage in saying what she felt very deeply; and most people probably agreed with her. I did in that moment.

I had a lot of conversations with members during the next couple of weeks, and with the senior minister, of course. Should this man be forgiven, should this woman be able to forgive? Most people deeply felt her pain, her righteous anger--her truthfulness.

I have read a great deal about this concept of forgiveness, and often the writers will point out that in a case like this abused woman’s, that the forgiveness is not for the abuser, but for herself. That it helps the one who has been hurt to get beyond the horrible things that happened. While I agree that we need to get on with life after great hurt, we are unlikely to forget such hurt, and unlikely to be able to forgive in the sense we would forgive someone who said some hateful to us. There are things that simply are too horrible to forget; perhaps some are too horrible to forgive.

But forgiving is meant to carry learning, meant to teach us the futility of certain actions. Thankfully, most of us are not dealing with such terrible and evil acts. The question become then, if we cannot forgive, what can we do?

This subject brings to mind the great German poet Heinrich Heine was famous for his barbed wit. About religion he wrote: “I love to sin. God loves to forgive sin. Really, this world is admirably arranged.”

Rather a skewed view of the whole issue.

Lately I have been reading and hearing much in the media about the Truth and Reconciliation program in South Africa at this anniversary time. How were all the black Africans going to get on with life after gaining freedom and the vote? Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and others had grave concerns that a wave if terror would be unleashed on the minority white population. This they knew would do no good, would harm the efforts to lift up the black population so that they could go forward to create a better nation for the people. To start on a path of revenge would lead only to further hate and destruction. Forgiveness was necessary to move forward. While it has not been easy, it has been far better than had they been determined to revenge.

We see around the world generations of people reared to hate, to revenge for acts of the past and the present. It is a viscous cycle which will never end until some understanding of forgiveness happens; to forgive so that the people can move forward, to forgive so that the next generation can be focused on something positive.
To forgive in this sense is not to say that the wrongs are not recognized for what they are, nor is it to say that further wrongs will be tolerated. For such nations as those in the Balkans who are in a six hundred year cycle of hate and revenge, forgiveness means to just stop what they have been doing to walk another path. The same issue is at work in the Middle East with Iraq’s various factions, with Israel and Palestine, within Sudan.

Consider Germany and Japan. Following World War II, it would have been easy to bring down a reign of terror on both these countries that started the war. We could still be engaged in a Balkanized conflict. The terms “Balkanize” or “Balkanization,” come from the ongoing fighting that cannot or does not resolve. It is a grave concern at present for the Middle East.

Forgiving, as a psychologist friend once said to me, is “for giving”; the compound word separated into its two words. Forgiving is for giving yourself a better life, or a people a better way of life. Forgiving is for living free of pain that begs a painful reaction.

The young woman who said her father did not deserve to be forgiven is probably right, but she deserves to a life that is for giving; for giving of herself and not being trapped in her pain.

Forgiving does not mean we must forget, or even engage further with the person who was the source of our hurt and pain, but it does mean that retaliation is not capturing our hearts and minds. We can move forward, we can live, we can give, we can see that life is for giving and for receiving.

Forgiving does not mean that we do not protect ourselves from further pain, but it may mean that we do not have to be snared in the pain.

As John Kennedy once said; “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”

Most of the time we are not dealing with torture, abuse, great or grave sins, but the ordinary sins of selfishness or self-focus. When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, that prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer, the phrase on forgiveness says: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The do unto others understanding that is so critical to communal life.

Note the prayer does not say, God forgive me and then I will forgive others; it asks God to forgive us in the way that we forgive others: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

This comes from the Judaic teaching that God will give you as you give others.

All of us need forgiveness, and we all need to forgive. We need this because we are not perfect creatures. We fail, we err, we goof up; sometimes on purpose, but just as often out of carelessness or neglect. From the Bible again: “For we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the Lord.” Now you do not have to believe in God to understand that we all have sinned, we all have done wrong things, and we all have fallen short of the glory of goodness, the glory of self-respect; the glory of feeling part of the community family-or more simply, fallen short of the glory of knowing the warmth and joy of love.

Love is learning to be humble in the face of failures, small or large; love is learning to say you’re sorry and meaning it, and keep trying each time to do better.

Forgiveness is ultimately the true lubricant of our communities that are (as Ben Franklin might say) healthy, wealthy, and strong.

Albert Schweitzer said: “If I do not forgive everyone, I shall be untrue to myself. I shall then be acting as if I were innocent of the same offenses, and I am not.” He says this along with the reminder that we can expect to be forgiven to the degree we are willing to forgive. A hard teaching, an even harder learning.

For us in this day and age, we of this liberal faith, forgiving can be an even bigger challenge, particularly if we do not see ourselves connected to the Ultimate Reality Schweitzer called God. Yet, regardless of the theology we profess, we are connected to each other in our families, in our congregations, and in the larger community. Forgiveness is necessary. Necessary as a principle of faith, because our Unitarian Universalist principles of faith call us to respect one another.

So be it.

 

Dedication of the Wynn Steinway Piano

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

May 9, 2004

President Franklin Roosevelt was explaining to the press some complicated issues regarding his home Hyde Park and the plan to give it to the state of New York as his memorial, the interview had been going on for quite a while, and was getting progressively more detailed regarding this memorial to his presidency, when Mrs. Roosevelt entered the room and spoke quietly to the President who wheeled around, abruptly ended the interview, saying simply: “I have to dedicate a piano now.”

So in the midst of this our annual Youth Service, with the youth as a palpable reminder of why we do so much that we do for, and with, our congregations, I am pleased that I now have the pleasure of dedicating a piano of a generation ago to our generation and the generations to come.

It was a tremendous surprise when I learned that the Wynn family were offering us this incredible gift. Everybody knows a Steinway is something very special. I found this quotation from the famous pianist Rudolph Buchbinder, who said: “A pianist without a Steinway, to me, is the same as a singer without a voice.”

For as long as we have had religion and worship, we have had music, and they have been working together ever since. From the Hebrew scriptures, Psalm. 92:1-4

 

          It is good to give thanks . . .

          To sing praises . . .;

          To declare your steadfast love in the morning,

          And your faithfulness by night,

          To the music of the lute and the harp,

          To the melody of the lyre.

          For you . . . have made me glad by your work;

          at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

           

           

Today, we of this Unitarian Universalist Society of Mill Creek, want to express our gratitude for the faithfulness of those who have, with their great generosity of spirit, built up this community of faith with music, and especially today, the Wynn family.

It came to me as I was contemplating this Dedication of the Wynn Steinway, how very joyful Barbara Avakian would be today, if she were still with us. Barbara gave us the piano we used for fourteen years, in anticipation of the day we would have a fine instrument such as this.

We have always had those who loved music, and worked to lift up and enhance our worship services with music; so it is truly a wonderful event for us to be here today to dedicate this Steinway piano, first owned by Phyl Wynn’s mother, Ruth MacIntyre McMullen. This brass dedication plaque will be placed on the Steinway today in her honor.

With joyful hearts we want to thank you, Phyl, Bob, and Kenneth Wynn, and to honor your generosity to this congregation. So now:

          We dedicate this piano

          to the glory of music,

          to bliss of hammer on string to the human ear,

          to the musical respite of weary hearts,

          to the joy of our shared Unitarian Universalist worship.

Amen

 

May 30, 2004 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

May 30, 2004

On Being a Patriot: A Homily for Memorial Day

As frontline “babyboomer” born at the end of WWII, I grew up with two things, first was a great fear of the “Red menace” the communist Soviet Union; and, secondly, a deep sense of the special nature of our democratic union, which was born out of tyranny. Tyranny which the Soviet Union represented in those days. It made us all feel very patriotic to know that we had a special kind of freedom that should be preserved.

To encourage our patriotism, we began each school day in my rural Idaho school with a Bible verse, a prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance (I remember saying the original, then the changed one with “under God” added), and we also sang a patriot song (there were about six we rotated through). My two favorites were “It’s a Grand Old Flag” and “God Bless America.” So I grew up with a strong sense of patriotism, and even today easily well up when hearing our national anthem. (Yet, I must also say that these were done inappropriately for the most part, and I remember youth singled out because they could not participate in all these without violating their religious beliefs.)

Today the Soviet Union is no more, and our understanding of what we have to fear as a country is different. Now we fear the anonymous terrorist, and those groups who send them out, usually in the name of some fundamentalism, either religious or nationalist. It is harder for us to put a face on the evil that seeks to hurt and even destroy us. Patriotism today calls on us to have a different understanding of what “enemy” really means, and what we can and should be willing to do in the service of our country, and what we should not be willing to do.

Matthew Arnold, the great Victorian philosopher and poet wrote an essay in which he talked about peak times in history that he called “golden ages.” These golden ages are times when great things happen, such as in the Enlightenment, or our Revolutionary period, when several great minds came together to create our dynamic Union and our timeless Constitution. Between these golden ages are what Arnold called “troughs”; those valleys when we are either declining from a past golden age or moving toward the next one. It is hard to know whether we are in a golden age or trough; one suspects that the people living in the age of Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington would not likely have felt they were witnessing a golden age in the making.

We today may be either on a decline, in the bottom of the trough, or an ascent. Only our history will mark the truth. One thing that seems certain, is that we are in a time of change in the nature of world conflicts.

Fifty years ago, WWII was a defining moment for us, and was unlike most wars in having a very clear-cut example of an evil ruler invading to dominate and control as much of the world as he could. Justice seemed clearly on the side of the Britain and the Allies.

War now is most likely going to be various terrorist plots and acts, at least according to the predictions of most of those who closely study war. The big powers are not going to be facing off as in the past, but warring will be rooted in smaller groups with a mission to strike fear into the populations of the world were there is power. We in this country are now the major target, and this is unlikely to change.

So how do we understand patriotism that is not well bounded, that requires us to have a deeper understanding of the world, our nation and people? If there is no box to put around the war, or the misguided person who represents the evil is not a leader in any traditional sense, how do we rally?

My strong sense of patriotism tells me that as the Bible teaches, a house divided cannot stand; that patriotism now must be about something both deeper, broader, and more important than any one country, or political party, or any one leader. I find a great deal of truth in the following excerpts on patriotism from two of our country’s great thinks and leaders.

From Theodore Roosevelt:

      Patriotism means to stand by the country.

      It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.

      It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.

      In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth--whether about the President or anyone else--save in the rare cases where this would make known to the enemy information of military value which would otherwise be unknown to him.

       

And from Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr. (who was also a Unitarian):

      Patriotism is love for one’s country, to support, serve, and defend, to be inspired by, to change for the better and to care deeply for its citizens.

      [and]

      Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

       

So from these two I find what I can hold onto of what it means to be a patriot. It means to support the country first, which means all of our people, by being truthful, especially by our leaders being truthful, and this understanding from Stevenson that we need “steady dedication” to the great values of our first Golden Age, those values that gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Patriotism is not just about flying flags, or standing behind any one president or policy, or reacting quickly with our own weapons of great destruction without due consideration for the short and long-term goals, and the greater outcomes. Patriotism for Americans is about who we are, a free people born out of our own fight against tyranny, and our belief in the democratic process. It is telling the truth, and it is being dedicated to the Constitution and Bill of Rights which distinguish us from other nations not just when it suits us, but all the time.

So be it.

Send mail to webmaster@uusmc.org with questions or comments about this web site.
Designed by Vega Computing Solutions.
Copyright © 1999-2009 Unitarian Universalist Society of Mill Creek.