September 2006 Sermons

• 9/3 Sermon -- 
• 9/10 Sermon -- Preserving the Past, Securing the Future
• 9/17 Sermon -- Covenanting to Be, To Do
• 9/24 Sermon -- Morality and the Self

September 10, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

September 10, 2006

Preserving the Past, Securing the Future

We are very fortunate as Unitarian Universalists in that there are many beautiful, unique historic churches around the world that are in and of themselves a testament to our religious movement. Many are in what are now modern Romania and Hungary, but historically that region of the central Europe, a great and prosperous crossroad for centuries, known as Transylvania. (Unfortunately, now associated for generations of readers and movie-goers with vampires and Dracula.)

In Boston alone, we have some beautiful buildings. Kings Chapel is next to the State House, and on the historic tours of Boston, as the first Anglican church 1686, which then became Unitarian in the 1700s. Services have a very Christian Unitarian, indeed high-church feel, even today, though the theology is mainstream UU. This is always one of three churches we take our Coming of Age youth to visit. Another famous church is the Arlington Street Church where Emerson, Channing, and many other famous historic American clergymen spoke, and from which abolition first was decried from a pulpit as an abomination to any person of faith—right on down to James Reeb who was killed in Selma marching for civil rights. Arlington Street Church also has the largest intact collection of Tiffany stained glass windows; truly a joy to behold.

Then there is the Oak Park, Illinois church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. So we are indeed, inheritors not just of a grand religious tradition, but of the architectural witness to that tradition.

Elaine Stiles, an expert in preservation of historic places, who documented our architectural history, wrote of our legacy:

Historic houses of worship play a singular role in the lives of their members and the community. They provide a sense of stability and permanence with their longevity, forge a sense of community by opening their doors to other groups, and offer their neighbors a place of refuge and comfort in crises. In the context of Unitarian Universalism, a local historic church may stand for the voice of liberal religious values and individual religious expression in its neighborhood, making the building an important symbol for like-minded citizens. Historic churches are an excellent example of how a community can come to associate a building with shared values and how devastating the loss or decline of such a structure can be to the collective psyche.

We here at this UU Society of Mill Creek (as in the Mill Creek Hundred, a designation from Revolutionary war times when one hundred men could be mustered for the militia), in Pike Creek Valley, will have been in this building three years next month. Three years does not qualify as historic. We have existed for over seventeen years as a congregation, and that does not usually qualify as historic, either. But the truth is both are historic events; both our founding and our building. We are creating the history as we go forward.

Historians, and other historically minded people, tend to be more focused on the things that have happened in the past as they relate to the present; but most of us—most of us here-- are more focused on the present and our hopes for the future. Clearly we need both ways of viewing the world, and especially of viewing our place in the world as a community of faith.

One of the reasons we have this Ingathering Sunday service to mark the new congregational year is about both preserving the past and securing the future. We have services every Sunday all year round, and the fact is our new church year actually begins July 1st and ends June 30th, but we see the re-gathering of this time of year, that happens as children head back to school, as a natural corollary to the start up of our own Sunday school for the Religious Education program, and for our families settling in after the travels of summer.

Further, pairing our Water Communion with this service gives us a chance to hear where people have found their summer sustenance, be that in their vacations places, or gardens at home, or wherever meaning has been found in the generally quieter pace of summertime.

As Union Theological professor Tom Driver taught, ritual is a showing of a doing. So this Sunday is meant to show us, to remind us, of the importance of this our religious home, and how our connections with one another are strengthened and enlivened in our shared worship, and in our time together.

Each person in this congregation, each member, friend, visitor, man, woman, or child imprints this place in ways often very concrete, but just as often ineffable. We feel this when we stand in a historic place, be it a religious place or any place that reminds us that we are a part of a great chain of being. We can rarely explain this essence of space, or religion, or our experience in general. Karen Armstrong says that this is: Because human beings experience transcendence. We have ideas and experience that go beyond our conceptual grasp.

We Unitarians are often more in our thinking mode than our feeling mode, but I hear from many of you that the Sunday experience you have here gives you a feeling of connection you find no place else. I know that it is special. It is also special for me. Even now as I stand here at this pulpit, I feel connected to all of you, and to many who are no longer with us, even people who have only been passing through. This is the process of history in the making, and what we can anticipate for the generations to come.

Sometimes, I envision myself as quite elderly—more than now!—long after I have retired; and I hope to come here to experience what has become of the UU Society of Mill Creek that we have set in motion. It will be changed, of that I have no doubt, but it will also remain marked by all of us. I hope to see the children of the children of the children I have dedicated. I hope to see additions; maybe to the additions we make. I hope to see a bustling, very welcoming congregation, with dozens of people active at all levels of the congregation. I hope, and indeed I expect all these things will happen, and many more that I cannot even imagine.

Water itself is ever a reminder of the past, an element necessary to secure the future. The religious ritual use of water is as old as human religious expression. The Bible is filled with water related stories. My favorite is turning the water into wine! Even as a child, I was captivated by the miracles of Moses parting the Red Sea and Jesus walking on the water. Which, of course, reminds me of an old story:

A priest, a rabbi, an Imam, and a Unitarian minister went off together on a fishing trip. They tried every kind of bait they could think of, but the fish weren't biting. So the rabbi and Imam got out of the boat and walked across the water to another spot. Then the Unitarian minister got out of the boat and walked across the water. Soon the priest decided to get out of the boat, too, but immediately he started to sink. He floundered around, climbed back into the boat, and tried again. Once again he sank into the water. He clambered back into the boat, and tried once more, this time almost drowning. Finally the Unitarian minister said to the rabbi, "Do you think we should tell him where the rocks are?"

The spirit of this place is like those rocks beneath the water. This spirit pervades this place through us, and it will far into the future. This spirit will be here then even as you and I experience it this morning, for the constant in human life is the need for community, the caring of the gathered congregation. The spirit of place is with us always because, as Karen Armstrong said: Because human beings experience transcendence. We have ideas and experience that go beyond our conceptual grasp.

As water always leaves its mark on the world, even to the slow rolling of uneven rocks into the smooth pebbles that lie along the river bed. We are the water, the life blood, the essence of our religious faith and our UU experience. Our gathered Waters of the World are our showing of this doing.

May we be spiritually as the water to the rocks of life. May we be nourished by the life giving force of it as well. My friends, let us imbibe the spirit of this place; drink in the fellowship of one another, be washed by love that motivates us to strive to be better people, to learn from the past and the present that we might make the world a better place both now and in the future to come.

This is our clarion call of Ingathering, of our Water Communion. To make our mark, and to be marked by the best of human knowing which is love. In so doing, we preserve all that is best of us, and secure the best we have for best we create.

So be it.

September 17, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

September 17, 2006

Covenanting to Be, To Do

Our Unitarian Universalist faith is based at this point in our history on our wider membership’s understanding of our Principles and Purposes. Our Seven Principles, those ethical statements we believe all free peoples would be guided by begins: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote …." I draw your attention to that word covenant.

From the Sources from which we draw our ethical beliefs is this statement in our UUA handbook:

Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision. As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

The word fortune does not mean mere wealth, rather it means a greater good, it means destiny.

Covenant as promise is a matter of trust. That is what the story of Abraham and Isaac was really about. God is testing Abraham to see if he has faith, if he can trust enough to believe that what God has asked is right, even if Abraham cannot understand it. Now to modern ears, especially modern and reason driven UU ears, this story rings harsh. We immediately ask, What kind of God would ask an old man to kill his only son? That is a good question, and I would never discourage your asking that (or any other question!). But if we can re-center our focus and accept that the story might have another, larger message for the people of Israel at that time, then we can reach the deeper understanding of covenant that has for millennia inspired the Israelites down to modern Jews. A people who have known both great success and great suffering throughout their history.

Let me go back to the setting for the story of Abraham and Isaac. We know that in the land we now call the Middle East, were many tribes of peoples, who uniformly worshiped multiple deities; polytheism was the way of the world. The ancient Egyptians under the rule of Akhenaton are the first we know of to worship one god, the sun god Ra. One theory in theological history posits that the Israelites may have learned of monotheism from the Egyptians. But, for us it matters little who was first. The main point is that at this time in human history, the worship of many gods was the norm, even more to the point, at this time in human history human sacrifice is the norm. If you give to the gods that which is most valuable to you, that is, human life, then the gods will protect you. (Sometimes I wonder if we have truly turned out backs on human sacrifice.)

The same people who study the history of religion also posit that this story is a pointer to a dramatic change in human civilization, for instead of sacrificing humans, there begins the phase of sacrificing animals. That phase lasts up to about two thousand years ago, when a shift begins towards a further more spiritual understanding of sacrifice develops; for these historians, the story of Jesus’ crucifixion is the marker of that change.

Now, with that bit of history under one’s belt, the story of Abraham and Isaac takes on its deeper and probably closer to the original meaning. Abraham does not become a father until his old age, so this only son is very precious to him, and in the story God asks Abraham to take his son up to a mountain, to build an altar and to sacrifice him there. Abraham is mortified by this request, but he believes that God must have a good reason, and will let him in on it eventually. This is the kind of faith few modern people, even the most fundamentally religious would accept, as stated. Abraham takes Isaac, takes what he needs to make the sacrifice, God points him to the place, and there Abraham makes an altar, puts Isaac upon it, and raises the knife; but, as I learned it in my Sunday School, God sends and angel who stays his hand. The angel takes hold and stops Abraham’s arm from descending with the knife. A ram is provided by the angel, which Abraham sacrifices instead. Then, because Abraham has proved himself so faithful, God makes his a promise that lasts to this day.

Genesis, Chip 22: 17-18

17: I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies,
18: and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice."

That is the covenant. Abraham, you shall be the father of a great nation, which will be a blessing to all the nations. But, even that statement needs a context, for that was a very different time of nomadic peoples just beginning to settle into permanent agrarian communities; and marks for later generations the understanding of territory, nationalism, and land ownership which was beginning, and plagues us yet today.

We might also remember the saying: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

We all assume the existence of covenant in a democratic society or in the religious community. We believe that we will be safe in the context of government, of being cared for and respected in community, especially the religious community. That is easily taken for granted. I reared my children believing in that covenant established in our nation’s Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I believed they could be assured of fair treatment by the law if they learned to be law-abiding citizens. I believed they and I would be valued in the church, the schools, and the wider community if we kept faith with out democratic and spiritual ideals. This is the promise of faith in family, of faith in God, of faith in America, of faith in democracy.

Alas, this covenant has sometimes been broken.

Yesterday, here in this sanctuary, there was an incredible performance of narrative and music entitled Distant Voices based on the diaries of Hiroaki Nishimura, the pianist, Julie Nishimura’s father. Mr. Nishimura was a young man, excited to be an American of some few years, who along with all the Japanese American citizens on the west coast, was sent to an interment camp during World War II, lost his citizenship which he spent several years struggling to regain, and lost the ability to have the career he dreamed about and was training for when he was forced out of his home and into the camps. This is a terrible chapter in our American history. One which we hoped was closed. Yet, following 9/11 this kind of fearful behavior reared it head once again.

Danny Peak, the central narrator in the Distant Voices performance, said that a young middle eastern woman from Seattle who following 9/11 was detained for eight months before finally being released without any charges have been lodged against her, quoted the line: History does not repeat itself, people repeat history.

This should serve as a reminder to all of us that we are the caretakers of the covenants. The covenant of democracy is not self-sustaining. We are the sustainers. We are the ones who must value the promises of our ancestors, and protect them, if we hope to see the promises continue for our children as our inheritance to them.

The world is mirrored in its nations; its nations are mirrored in its communities; its communities are mirrored in its families; its families are mirrored in their individuals. That is why taking care of the spirit-mind-soul is so intensely important. What you and I value, what we believe is vital to ourselves, is also what is vital to the world beyond our homes and congregations. No religious community can preach hatred and violence, for instance, unless it exists first within in the hearts and minds of the people within.

Which brings me to what lives in my heart, what lives in our hearts in this congregation. We who are seekers after truth and justice cannot hope to experience truth and justice unless we are willing to live the meaning of both those terms to the best of our ability. Living and practicing truth and justice is not so easy. We each must be willing to examine our own motivations for what we believe and what we do, and that is certainly not easy. Yet, while we know the covenant that lies in our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the mortgage or deed on our homes, our United States citizenship or documents that allows us to live and work here, our membership in this religious community, we often forget that that covenant is based on a relationship of mutuality. Or, as we say in the vernacular: It’s a two-way street.

The promises we make are rarely one-way arrangements. God made his promise to Abraham, because Abraham showed his faithfulness. This faithfulness remains for Jews today their end of the agreement, their side of the Covenant.

I have a contract with you; with the members of this congregation. It was effected in 1995, when the church called me to be the minister. The contract actually says very little; mainly that I will be responsible for a certain number of services, staff, pastoral duties, that I will have freedom of the pulpit, and so much time for preparation and vacation, and one month of promised sabbatical for each year I stay here, redeemable after six years. (Friends, I need to remind you that this month I begin my twelfth year as your minister. Since it took me three years to use up the last sabbatical, that may come as a shock to some of you.) That contract is in fact, though, merely a legal document; it barely touches the surface of the deeper covenant we made at the signing. For I assume and you assume a much great depth of spirituality than could ever be laid out in any legal document. I believe our Seven Principles are far closer to the covenant we have made as minister and congregation. The same can be said about weddings, or divorces, or most of the covenants and promises that are the stuff of most of our lives.

When we say we promise to be someone’s husband, wife, minister, senator, representative, governor or president, there must a basic ethical understanding of truth and justice or the promise will be flawed from the beginning.

I want us all to think about the promises we live by every day, from the home, to school or workplace. What are the implicit or explicit promises of our existence? Of our nationality? Of our religious affiliation? Mostly, our covenants are not business agreements, but spiritual expectations. They all begin ultimately, I believe, with the promises we make to ourselves. I will live a good life, I will respect myself and others, I will treat others fairly, I will work for these things I value.

My life begins with me. Your life begins with you. The convergence of the two will always emerge in a covenant of some kind. That covenant may be to our mutual benefit, or it may not. And that is why we have to communicate. To communicate is to speak what is in our hearts and minds, to make clear our expectations, lift up our beliefs our voices, our votes, our actions as we live. That is what every man and woman has done who has created anything good in family, community, the larger world.

Make no mistake: faith without action and commitment, is no better than a promise made by a liar. Commitment is the work of faith. Faith is not an idle pleasure, my friends; it is all about covenant, the promises we hold dear for our lives, and the lives of our children. Therefore, let us be about making covenant real, about making the promises come alive. That has been at the heart of our faith since the beginning. And I promise you that I will work all the days of my life to remind us that it is worth protecting and passing on.

So be it.

September 24, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

September 24, 2006

Morality and the Self

Today my sermon honors the ten Days of Awe that are the high holy days of Judaism which begin with Rosh Hashanah and end with Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah began this Friday evening, and Jews around the world are celebrating in ritual and song, but especially exercised in personal moral self-examination. A powerful work.

Judaism is the founding religion for both Christianity and Islam. Today there are literally hundreds of different sects of western religions that owe their existence to that small tribe of ancient Hebrews who had such a profound vision of ethics and community and especially nation-building. The Ten Commandments have in one way or another been guiding principles for millions of people over thousands of years. Those commandments have developed into far more complex systems of religious and civil law down through the centuries. There are no western peoples who have not felt the impact of what we now call Judaism.

Unitarian Universalists certainly are a product of this ancient religion, and in many ways we reflect the principled or ethical basis of religion more than many others. For from the ancient Hebrews down through the ages of Judaism’s development, belief was not as important a ethical principle. Judaism taught that it was essential to live faith rather than try to capture faith as belief, as tends to be the problem with doctrinally based religions. Morality, faith, belief were and are tied to the self and to the community. How the latter two relate is what makes for life.

The most important part of the Jewish high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is the focus on morality, self-examination, spiritual growth, and holiness. We, who are outside the ritual practice of Judaism, are no less in need of attending to the personal spirit/mind that directs our lives. We all want to grow spiritually; we all need to grow in spirit, for it is this growth that tells us whether we have a good life. The absence of growth, whether you call it intellectual or spiritual (it’s all spiritual to me), is what we recognize as unhappiness, discontent, depression, or void.

Our recognition of Chalice Circles today is part of our effort as a community of faith to encourage and enable this growth. Chalice Circles, this small group ministry of our congregation, is one way to facilitate this process. Certainly there are many ways, and we are encouraged to develop as many as we can; indeed, all the programs of this congregation are meant to do just that. So, even though it may look like the event is purely about sharing food, or fundraising, or encouraging our young ones, every program, every service, every component of every service, every meeting, every effort here is supposed to be guided by our Seven Principles, and guided by our understanding and belief that people need encouragement toward spiritual growth, and encouragement toward a better understanding of what constitutes the moral or ethical life.

Rosh Hashanah is a time when faithful Jews are expected to examine their hearts and minds and to ask forgiveness for those things they have done wrong, or sins if you will; and, to make recompense where possible. All of this leads to Yom Kippur when, as the tradition has it, the faithful will have their names written down in the Book of Life for yet another year.

What I find especially interesting about this exercise of ethical self-examination as a moral duty is not that one goes forth as saved or pure. The expectation is that you will err or sin again. This is quite the contrary from the Christian position, as I was taught it, where go and sin no more is the driving force behind repentance and forgiveness. In Judaism, the Book of Life remains a living idea. It is as if, having done the hard work, indeed excruciating work, of looking at one’s moral center, repenting one’s errors, and asking forgiveness, that while your name may be inscribed in the Book, it’s plainly understood that you will have to do it again next year. Almost as if the ink fades with every act of malice, deceit, hatefulness, etc—all those deadly sins.

The deadly sins, or as the Church named them, The Seven Deadly Sins, are the sins that lead to death; but not death of the body. That is not the death about which deadly sins refers, although some of them may lead to that (gluttony for instance). But the real issue of death regarding these behaviors or attitudes we call sins, have to do with the death of one’s moral center. That is the death that leads to soulless living, and an empty or fearful life. For those that believe in punishment in an after life, it is the moral corruption that leads one to that place called Sheol as the ancient Sumerians first then the Hebrews called the place of the dead, or was later called Hell. A place of disconnect, of torment variously described in physical terms as it developed in Christianity and Islam. But originally, as understood for generations, Sheol or Hell was not a place of fire and eternal physical pain. Rather, it was a place of emptiness, darkness, loneliness, a place of abiding emptiness.

You and I know people who live in Sheol now, who are in Hell right here on earth. These are usually the most exaggerated cases, often as a result of untreated or untreatable mental illness, which we certainly should not confuse with being morally bankrupt. But similar feelings of fear, paranoia, emptiness or void, are also the product of compromised morals.

We must acknowledge our moral failing, according to Robert Ingersoll, that outspoken moral man, and avowed atheist of the late 19th Century, who had little use for vicarious atonement as taught in Christianity. In order for the world to be truly civilized, we must accept responsibility of our behavior; Ingersoll stated that:

An act is good, bad, or indifferent, according to its consequences. No power can step between an act and its natural consequences. A governor may pardon the criminal, but the natural consequences of the crime remain untouched. A god may forgive, but the consequences of the act forgiven, are still the same. We must teach the world that the consequences of a bad action cannot be avoided, that they are the invisible police, the unseen avengers, that accept no gifts, that hear no prayers, that no cunning can deceive.

We as Unitarian Universalists, this ethics-based religion, certainly believe in personal responsibility. We do not have a formal ritual of moral cleansing like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We have to do this work purposefully, intentionally, or it does not happen. But just because we are UUs does not mean that we do not need to be in touch with the dark side that exists in each of us. And contrary to popular UU opinion, social justice work doesn’t let us escape this personal need for moral self-examination. In the language of my religious upbringing: we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of the Lord – keep in mind that the Lord or God is another way of saying Perfection. Humanist and theist alike understand that. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of perfection; in fact we have all fallen short of simple goodness at times.

I have often repeated what a young man said to me many years ago about why he wanted to come to church every Sunday; he said: I need to be reminded that I want to be a better person. Yes, we want community, we want to have friends and ways to connect with people who view the world more or less like we do, but the very best reason for going to any religious community, for coming to UUSMC, to Sunday services, to all our programs is just this: We know that we am always struggling to be a good people, and we want and need to be reminded thatwe want to be a better people. I say this for myself. I need to be reminded that I fail at being a good person far too often. I need to lift up those failures in my own heart and recognize that to do such things without compunction leads to moral death. I don’t want to have such emptiness in my soul, and neither do you.

My friends, we all struggle along this road we call life. It is a much more companionable journey if others walk along with us. How we treat those people who come around us on this journey either strengthens us or weakens us. That is why we have ethics, why we have moral behavior, in order that we can keep walking amidst our fellow travelers. When we fail, when we hurt one another, when we cause pain and suffering for others, or when we do nothing, we hurt others, but we also wind up causing pain and suffering for ourselves.

Life is nothing if it is not about morality in relation to the self. Our faith, this beautiful gem of Unitarian Universalism, is a place to walk where we know others will help us and strengthen us, and were we can do the same for them. Chalice Circles are one program where we can walk together in faith, and I hope many of you will seek out a circle for your spiritual awareness and growth. But however you decide to do the intentional work of spiritual reflection, it will be worthwhile, and will invigorate not only your life, but the life of your families and larger communities, especially this community of faith.

So be it.

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