a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 24, 2004
[extemporaneous intro: the New England tradition of the "Election Sermon"]
I love voting here in Carlisle. I love walking out my front door, and strolling past the church and across the town common to the Town Hall. I love standing in line and chatting pleasantly with my neighbors while I wait to be checked in and receive my ballot. I love marking my traditional paper ballot "the old fashioned way" -- by hand, with a pen or pencil -- and knowing that once the crank has turned and the ballot box bell has rung I can count on my ballot being counted promptly and accurately by someone I know and trust and who lives in my neighborhood. It's about the most civil exercise of my civic duty that I've ever experienced anywhere. The perfect paradigm of participatory democracy: one person, one vote, where every vote counts, and every vote is counted. It just doesn't get any better than this.
When I lived in Oregon, we used to vote by mail. Our ballots would arrive at the house well in advance of the election, along with a thick booklet (sometimes even two booklets) published by the Secretary of State, in which anyone with $100 could purchase space to make a statement for or against a particular candidate or ballot measure (of which there were typically dozens). And at some point we would generally sit down around the kitchen table and work our way through this booklet, one issue and candidate at a time -- the kids too, even before they turned 18 -- and figure out how we each felt about things, before individually marking our ballots and sealing them in their return envelopes. I don't know whether this was really how the process was intended to work (and I can certainly see how in some contexts it might provide ample opportunity for electoral mischief like fraud, coercion, or abuse). But it worked pretty well for my family. And neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night prevented us from voting faithfully in every election.
It seems as though every election year we are told that THIS election is "the most important election of our lifetimes." And no doubt this is true...until the next one. As an historian I sometimes wonder about what specific moment or incident the historians of the future will point to and say: That was it, the ‘Tipping Point,' after which the United States of America ceased to be what it had been before, and became something else instead. None of us can really see, or say with any certainty, what that momentous event might be at the moment it happens to us. We like to think of America as the greatest Democratic Republic the world had ever known, the leader of the free world, one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all...and sometimes it's difficult for many of us to imagine that it ever was or ever will be any different.
History is an abstraction. The past is something that doesn't really concern us any more.. It's behind us, it's "history." And the future? We create our own future out of the decisions and the actions we make and take today. I can say this, though, about the history of the here and now. Whatever episode those future historians choose to single out to characterize our moment in history, it will be something emblematic of a much larger and more gradual change, rather than the result a single incident or decision.
Obviously, the judgment of history is not the only thing at stake in any given election. In fact, it's probably the least of our concerns. There are real life, real world consequences which flow from the decisions we make as an electorate about the people who will lead us and the policies they pursue. But sometimes it's important to consider that larger, historical perspective, and to remind ourselves that we have an interest, not only in the outcome of this election, but also in the integrity of our electoral process itself.
And it's not simply that good process leads to good decisions... which indeed it generally does. But good process also contributes to both the credibility and the legitimacy of those decisions. If we are convinced, for example, that the outcome of an election was both free and fair, even if we aren't especially happy about the results, it is easier for the losers to be persuaded by the winners to go along with the decision. But when the goal becomes Win at Any Price, or when the results are suspect and the process lacks transparency, there can never really be a convincing victory. The conflict simply moves to other arenas, and our entire society becomes weaker as a result.
These are basic lessons of history. They seem so simple and obvious when viewed objectively from a distance, yet for some inexplicable reason human beings have historically chosen to ignore them, again and again and again. Politicians obviously have a strong interest in defeating their opponents, and thus increasing their own power and influence. But if their real power and influence are in fact diminished by a victory which lacks credibility and legitimacy, what have they actually gained?
Thus all politicians, and all citizens really, share a common interest in a political system where both the winners and the losers are equally committed to and satisfied with the fairness of the process. No system is perfect. But when the margin of error is greater than the margin of victory, or it is obvious that the process is being unfairly manipulated by one or both sides in order to distort the outcome, everyone suffers and we all become losers.
Likewise, it's important to remember that the problems confronting our society are going to pretty much remain the same regardless of who is elected in November. There may very well be sharp philosophical and ideological differences between the parties and their candidates, but the problems themselves really don't care very much about ideology . Government policies are either going to be effective and make things better, or they are going to be ineffective and make things worse...and GOOD government is government which capable of evaluating its policies based on results, and modifying them accordingly, regardless of ideology.
In this respect, differences in political philosophy are truly significant only to the extent that they articulate different visions of what our society SHOULD be like...visions which reflect different understandings of what is "better" and what is "worse." Yet this is precisely the area in which most contemporary American politicians are most evasive. Instead, they like to talk in vague platitudes about "Freedom" and "Security" and "Family Values" while praising "the American Way of Life" as "the envy of the world." And at the same time they are constantly looking for new opportunities to characterize (or maybe caricature would be a better word) their opponents as dangerous fanatics whose views are "outside the mainstream."
And so we are left to guess at what our country might actually look like if our elected leaders were actually able to get their way, while at the same time taking no small comfort in the fact that, so far at least, politicians have proven remarkably ineffective when it comes to changing significantly any of the things that are truly important to us as a people.
And yet I think it is critically important that we take the time to ask ourselves this question at election time: What would America really look like if this or that particular candidate were actually capable of imposing their vision of society on the rest of us? Would it still be somewhere you would want to live? And if not, why would you possibly want to vote to go there?
Knowing that you all know how I feel about a lot of the political issues now facing our country, I imagine it may be somewhat difficult for some of you to think about these questions without filtering them through that knowledge. But the questions themselves work perfectly well for evaluating any candidate, regardless of where you or they may fall along the ideological spectrum.
So much of our political discourse these days is driven by image and sound bite: memorable slogans, scurrilous attacks, thinly-coded innuendo and outright falsehood. And perhaps it has always been that way; perhaps only our ability to amplify and broadcast our shrill political discourse has improved. Still, we like to imagine that we can actually tell something significant about a candidate's character based on how they appear in a televised debate, or whether we feel like we might enjoy sitting down for a beer with them if for some reason we just so happened to be invited to a backyard Barbecue at their home.
But it's all just an illusion, an image, a fantasy. So as long as we are using our imaginations anyway, why not try imaging what the world would look like if the various candidates actually had their way? Not just based on what they say they'll do (because you know they'll tell us anything to get our vote). But drawn from an overall impression of a candidate's words and actions and past behaviors, the people they surround themselves with (or refuse to be seen with), both their supporters and their critics.
I suspect that most of us engage in this kind of activity anyway when making up our minds about how to vote. But then we vote according to our gut, rather than in comparison to our own vision of society. We need to learn to trust our eyesight as well as our instincts. We need to stop wondering about whether we would want this person to be our neighbor, and start thinking about the kind of neighborhood we would find ourselves living in if all THEIR dreams came true.
A commitment to the integrity of the political process, a pragmatic bias for results, and a vision of society that is compatible with my own core values of diversity, pluralism, and equal protection under the law are probably the three most important criteria I use when evaluating candidates and deciding how to cast my vote. And yet there's another factor which is never really far from my mind, and which in many ways ties these other three considerations together.
I've long believed that the reason the framers of our Consititution insisted on a strict seperation between Church and State is because they understood, probably even better than we do today, the intimate link between religion and politics in the lives of most individuals. Religious belief has shaped and animated American political discourse since the earliest days of the Republic, and of course even long before that. Yet within our ingenious system of checks and balances, it was intended that no particular sect or doctrine should ever be allowed to take to itself the power of the State or the authority of Law. Like other competing interests within what was even then a remarkably diverse and regionally-divided nation, the give-and-take of political democracy was expected to moderate extreme opinion and create meaningful compromise.
Politics is the art of the possible. It is the vehicle by which we manage to live together within a community. Religion concerns itself with questions of ultimate meaning and value. In its most literal sense, it is the practice which "binds us again" to power which gives us life and gives life meaning. Religion expresses our obligations to God, to our own spiritual nature, and of course to our neighbors as well. Thus, the mere thought of "compromising" the core tenets of one's faith is a source of shame to the truly faithful -- it is literally "unthinkable."
Yet the ability to compromise, to create consensus and facilitate cooperation, is equally essential to an effective political process which allows people with differing beliefs to live together in the same society. It's not that we are expected to leave our beliefs at the door. We bring them to the table, but then courteously refrain from shoving them down one another's throats. We recognize that different people have different tastes, but that everybody has to eat...and so we attempt to prepare a feast which has something for everyone, and where no one goes hungry.
And that is "politics," within a "democratic republic." Not simply the tyranny of the majority, nor faithful obedience to a "higher law" in defiance of the laws of the community. But a "polity" which protects the integrity of our individual beliefs, and protects as well the integrity of the beliefs of others, while preserving the possibility of compromise and cooperation.
I know it sounds a lot easier than it is.
But the alternative: a society where the strong simply impose their will on the weak, is even more problematic, and ultimately leaves us weaker as a nation, while violating as well that most basic Religious Commandment: To do unto others as we would have others do unto us.
READING:
A Pastoral Letter from the Rev. William G. Sinkford
President, Unitarian Universalist Association
October 2004
Since our congregations opened their doors for the new church year last month, they have been ministering in a deeply divided nation. The United States seems to have vanished beneath the battle lines drawn between blue states and red states, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans.
Most destructive and divisive in this political campaign is its tone of fear and fundamentalism-the notion that there is only one way to be religious, only one holy scripture worthy of being followed. Only one way to be patriotic. Only one way to be a family. And, sadly, only one way to be an American.
We religious liberals share our pews with those who do not share our theology. Liberal Christian, Jew, humanist, Buddhist, Pagan -- all find a home in our UU congregations. We know pluralism as a blessing, and our lived experience, that our differences need not divide us, is a great gift that we can offer this campaign-scarred nation.
Jason Shelton, a UU minister and director of music at our congregation in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote a wonderful hymn this year. He reminds us that when we stand on the side of love, we embody healing virtues:
The promise of the Spirit
faith, hope, and love abide
And so every soul
is blessed and made whole
The truth in our hearts is our guide.
We are standing on the side of love.
My friends, after the wrenching divisions of this campaign season, we need that blessing and that wholeness. In this spirit, I offer a prayer, in the hope that we may each play a part in the healing we all need:
Spirit of Life and Love,
Be with us now in prayer.
We seek the blessing and wholeness that come
From knowing we are bound to one another.
Let faith, hope and love abide with us.
May we open our hearts, finding there the discipline
To avoid stridency,
Which deepens not understanding
But widens the chasms between us.
May we open our hearts, finding there the courage
To join our hands with other people of faith
With whom we do not always agree,
Knowing that to clasp hands with others is to extend our reach farther
Than we ever could alone.
May we open our hearts, finding there humility,
Knowing that many who disagree with us
Are grounded in a faith
As deep as our own.
May we always acknowledge and honor the humanity
of those with whom we disagree.
May we remember what religion is:
a binding together of that which has been sundered.
For in this remembering, we lay wide the possibilities for
reconciliation and healing.
Amen.
Dear friends, as Americans, there is more that unites us than divides us, and there can be but one common destiny for this nation.
So let us stand purposefully on the side of love. The message of fear has been trumpeted throughout this election season. The message of love is quieter, but it is the antidote to that fear. Let us do what we can to help this quieter message be heard. And let us all do our part to bless and make whole a country wounded by partisan conflict and weary of division.
In faith,
Rev. William G. Sinkford
President, Unitarian Universalist Association
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Sunday, October 17, 2004
A COVENANT OF ALL SOULS
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 17, 2004
I realized that there was probably something seriously wrong with the priorities in my life when it dawned on me this past week that, although I was conversant with the latest head-to-head flash polling numbers from the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin, I had somehow failed to notice that "the Glove," #20 Gary Payton, Oregon State University class of 1990, two-time Olympic Gold medalist, nine-time All Star, and for over a decade the leader and go-to guy for my hometown basketball team the Seattle Supersonics, is now playing point-guard for the Celtics here in Boston. Admittedly, he's 36 years old now and probably nearing the end of his career, so no doubt he's lost a step or two...but he's still one of my favorite players ever, and it's going to be great watching him play on the parquet. There are rumors that he didn't really want to leave the West Coast -- that he failed to show up on time for his team physical, and also that he was arrested for DUI in Los Angeles the night after the trade was announced. But he's here now, and playing pretty good pre-season ball, and I'm just hoping that he'll continue to bring his style of aggressive, tenacious, up-tempo, in-your-face basketball to the Fleet Center night after night, and maybe even that a little of it might rub off on some of these other guys as well. You don't really need to do it all yourself in order to be an effective team leader. You just need to show your teammates how it's done, and convince them that they too are capable of doing it themselves.
But before I get too far away from the poll numbers, I just want to know: how many of you heard yesterday morning on NPR about John Zogby's unusual polling question? Three days before the 2000 Presidential election, Zogby's pollsters asked the question: "If you were a resident of Oz, would you pick the Scarecrow or the Tin Man for mayor?" Given the choice between a candidate with no brains but a heart, and a candidate with no heart but brains, the sample in 2000 split exactly down the middle: 46.2% to 46.2%. (And we all know how THAT election turned out!). This year, however, the Tin Man is leading the Scarecrow by ten points, and among those identified as "persuadable swing voters" the margin is even higher: 48.7% for the Tin Man, and only 13.3% for the Scarecrow....while outraged conservative Bloggers want to know why the Cowardly Lion isn't also listed on the ballot.
Here are some other interesting things that Zogby discovered about these all-important undecided voters. 27.4% of them have seen "The Passion of the Christ," but only 13.1% have seen "Fahrenheit 9/11." (for Kerry supporters those numbers are 15.5% and 65.5% respectively; for Bush supporters 43.4% and 2.7%). 56.2% of these 2.6 million undecideds feel that the country is going in the wrong direction; 55.2% want a President who keeps his religious values out of public business; and 48.4% consider themselves pro-environment. But 57.3% of them say they would rather have a beer with President Bush than with Senator Kerry, while only 9.3% would rather have a beer with Kerry than with Bush...apparently notwithstanding the fact that the President no longer drinks.
Meanwhile, I'm a little disappointed that my own "Joe Six-Pack" poll last week didn't get a little bit bigger response. Zogby's scientific poll determined that persuadable undecided voters are both slightly opposed to more rigid gun control (49.8% to 32.4%) and slightly in favor of either same-sex marriages or civil unions (54.8% to 38%), but I personally felt like my own humorous little survey fell a little flat...and there's really nothing worse than a flat beer gag, unless of course it's a flat beer that makes you gag, which I think might pretty well describe this Molson's Canadian. There are plenty of good beers that come from Canada (including Molson's Golden Ale), but this bi-lingual lager isn't really one of them, although it does possess the interesting feature of coming with pre-printed snappy rejoinders to lame pick-up lines. (This one says "Yes. But not with you"). And I don't mean to sound elitist about this, although I do come from the Pacific Northwest, where we feel like we invented both microbreweries and the espresso cart, and so can often seem a little snobbish about our beverages. And believe it or not, there is actually a point to all this, which I'll get to in just a second.
A Samuel Adams, of course, is always an excellent choice; but if you really want to enjoy a truly excellent local beer, for my money there's none better than this Harpoon IPA, which tastes almost as good as the IPAs we brew out in Oregon, and which I'm now pleased to say I can legitimately claim as a professional expense. (Why should millionaires get all the tax breaks?). But the two beers I really want to talk about are these. As a lot of you already know, my first full-time settled ministry was at the Unitarian Church in Midland Texas (coincidentally, at precisely the same time that George W. Bush was deciding to put down the bottle and pick up the Bible, and also when the events depicted in the recently released movie "Friday Night Lights" actually took place). And then, some years later as a doctoral student, I spent a semester as a visiting scholar at Aalborg University in Denmark. So I've actually had ample opportunities to enjoy both of these beers in their natural environments, and therefore feel well qualified to compare them. This Carlsberg, you'll notice, comes in a green bottle, and if you read the small print here on the label you'll see that it is brewed "by appointment to the Royal Danish Court." This Lone Star, on the other hand, proudly bills itself as "Texas born and brewed," "Pure Texan Beer," and "the National Beer of Texas." In Denmark you can buy a Carlsberg (in a green plastic bottle) from a sidewalk vending machine, while in Texas you have to get in your car and drive to the drive-up window at the local liquor store, where the smallest quantity you can buy is an entire six-pack...for approximately the same price you might pay for a single beer in Copenhagen. A bottle of Carlsberg also comes with a one-and-a-half kroner deposit (which when I was living over there was approximately 18 cents...I think it's even a little more now), and there are actually professional bottle scavengers in Denmark who apparently make their living collecting and returning other people's empties. This bottle of Lone Star, on the other hand, has a little slogan printed on it which says "Don't Mess With Texas," and periodically the county sends out convicted DUIs in orange jumpsuits to pick up the empties from the side of the highway. Also, even though this beer is labeled as a "long neck," you'll notice that both these bottles are basically the same size. And my theory is that this is the result of globalization, which demands a certain level of standardization when it comes to packaging. An authentic long neck is actually about an inch and a half longer that this, and used to be available only at licensed establishments within the Lone Star State itself. But the point I want to make is that if you were to pour each of these beers, ice cold, into a tall, frosted glass on a sweltering summer afternoon, I suspect that most folks would probably have a pretty difficult time telling them apart by taste alone. Two very different cultures enjoying a nearly identical beverage in almost exactly the same way. There is something universal about the experience; the social nuances may differ, but the beer remains the same.
There's a contemporary school of historical scholarship which argues that this delicious fermented beverage may very well be the reason that the human beings living on the fertile lands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers approximately ten thousand years ago gave up their hunter-gatherer ways, and decided to build and live in cities instead. Large scale grain agriculture made civilization both possible and necessary...more diversified and specialized forms of labor, a more sophisticated seasonal calendar, greater degrees of social organization and centralized planning, the development of systematic techniques for soil cultivation, irrigation, harvesting and crop storage, the creation of an effective military force to defend the fruits of one's harvest from those who would take it for themselves. Religion, government, taxes and the rule of law: all this flowed from the accidental discovery that sprouted barley contains natural enzymes which convert starch to sugar, which when in turn is exposed to more water and airborne yeast is converted to alcohol. Or so the theory goes. From Gilgamesh to George W. Bush -- nearly five thousand years of Western Civilization, all basically because human beings occasionally like to tie one on, and they wanted to make certain of a reliable supply of brewsky.
Of course, even if this theory contains a grain of truth, it would still be a mistake to conclude, in the words of botanist Paul Manglesdorf, that "the foundations of western civilization were laid by an ill-fed people living in a perpetual state of partial intoxication." There are certainly many other plausible interpretations of the historical record. A Marxist historian, for example, might argue that the increasingly complex forms of human social organization made possible by the Neolithic agricultural revolution facilitated the concentration of ever-increasing amounts of wealth and power in the hands of an elite, privileged class of warriors and priests, who then exploited the surplus resources of the entire society in order to consolidate their authority over the class of people who actually performed the hard, physical labor, while at the same time extending their hegemony over neighboring societies. But we all know that Marxist historians are basically just a bunch of crackpots. A more interesting line of inquiry involves the complex ways in which civil and religious authority were intertwined in Ancient Mesopotamia. The Kings of Bronze Age cities like Uruk, Sumer, Nineveh and Babylon were understood to be semi-divine entities, whose political legitimacy was derived from their faithful relationship to the local deities, who granted them the authority to impose equitable laws upon the population, and to demand and enforce obedience to those laws. The King was responsible both for maintaining order within the Society, and for protecting the members of that society from external threats; and to the extent that he was capable of performing those responsibilities, the people of the society owed him both loyalty and respect. The king's word was law, but the legitimacy of that law was not the product of the King's will alone, but flowed from the Gods, and was grounded in a covenant of mutual security and social order. And this Covenant replaced an earlier form of vendetta justice in which families basically exacted their own revenge against their perceived enemies for offenses real or imagined. Hammurabi's famous dictum "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" may sound a lot like the codification of the principle of vendetta, but in reality it mandates proportionality -- JUST an eye for an eye, ONLY a tooth for a tooth. (Although I should point out, just as an aside, that the Code of Hammurabi also calls for death by drowning for beer parlor proprietors who over-charge their customers, or who "fail to notify authorities of the presence of [known] criminals in their establishments.")
The ancient Hebrews appropriated this same idea of covenant to their own social organization. Except that their God was understood to be more than just a small, local deity whose jurisdiction merely extended over a single city. The God of Israel was the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, whose jurisdiction knew no limits, and whose power and authority dwarfed that of Gods fashioned by human hands. And the Covenant which this God entered into with Moses at Sinai held those “chosen†people to a higher ethical standard than their neighbors -- concerns about security and social order were subject to the additional commandment that justice be extended not merely to the members of the tribe itself, but also to outsiders...to strangers and foreigners; and to those who were powerless to protect themselves, like widows and orphans. This God of the Israelites was not merely the protector of the powerful, the pious, and the well-connected. This God cared about the weak, the poor, the marginalized and the forgotten...and insisted that they too be treated with fairness and compassion.
This tradition of ethical monotheism -- a tradition shared by the three great “western†religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, essentially affirms both that God is sovereign and that all souls belong to God -- that all people are God's children and therefore members of one family. This Covenant of All Souls declares that there are NOT two standards of justice: one for "us" and another for "them" -- rather, we are all accountable to the same ethical principles of mercy and even-handedness. And what makes this covenant possible is our own capacity for empathy: the recognition of a common humanity which transcends our various social and cultural differences, and unites us as a single people who are much more alike than we might at first think.
Here in the United States, the architects of our Constitution - our own so-called "founding fathers" -- created a secular form of Government with a strong separation of Church and State because the sophisticated political philosophies of the Enlightenment which they embraced allowed them to understand that even though we may be "One Nation under God," it is "out of many" that we become one -- E Pluribus Unum as well as "In God We Trust." And over the course of the last two centuries so-called "activist judges" (along with legislators, religious leaders, social activists and various other progressive reformers) have continued to encourage our society to expand its vision and become even more inclusive than even our most enlightened founders might have imagined. Because when we are all encouraged to bring our diverse gifts to the table, no one really knows for sure what kind of feast we will create. But we can at least feel confident that it will probably be delicious, because despite our different tastes and backgrounds, we all have much more in common than we know.
Good leadership is a process of bringing out the best in others. Ineffective leadership fails to do this, while bad leadership often succeeds only in bringing out the worst. And it isn't easy, because even when good leaders do their best, they can always control the behavior of those who follow. But if our church, for example, desires to exert spiritual and ethical leadership in a pluralistic society, the first thing we need to do is demonstrate among ourselves how it is done. Tolerance, compassion, civility, fairness, and dialog...these are the qualities which make us moral leaders in the world. These are to foundations of a Covenant through which "all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine."
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 17, 2004
I realized that there was probably something seriously wrong with the priorities in my life when it dawned on me this past week that, although I was conversant with the latest head-to-head flash polling numbers from the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin, I had somehow failed to notice that "the Glove," #20 Gary Payton, Oregon State University class of 1990, two-time Olympic Gold medalist, nine-time All Star, and for over a decade the leader and go-to guy for my hometown basketball team the Seattle Supersonics, is now playing point-guard for the Celtics here in Boston. Admittedly, he's 36 years old now and probably nearing the end of his career, so no doubt he's lost a step or two...but he's still one of my favorite players ever, and it's going to be great watching him play on the parquet. There are rumors that he didn't really want to leave the West Coast -- that he failed to show up on time for his team physical, and also that he was arrested for DUI in Los Angeles the night after the trade was announced. But he's here now, and playing pretty good pre-season ball, and I'm just hoping that he'll continue to bring his style of aggressive, tenacious, up-tempo, in-your-face basketball to the Fleet Center night after night, and maybe even that a little of it might rub off on some of these other guys as well. You don't really need to do it all yourself in order to be an effective team leader. You just need to show your teammates how it's done, and convince them that they too are capable of doing it themselves.
But before I get too far away from the poll numbers, I just want to know: how many of you heard yesterday morning on NPR about John Zogby's unusual polling question? Three days before the 2000 Presidential election, Zogby's pollsters asked the question: "If you were a resident of Oz, would you pick the Scarecrow or the Tin Man for mayor?" Given the choice between a candidate with no brains but a heart, and a candidate with no heart but brains, the sample in 2000 split exactly down the middle: 46.2% to 46.2%. (And we all know how THAT election turned out!). This year, however, the Tin Man is leading the Scarecrow by ten points, and among those identified as "persuadable swing voters" the margin is even higher: 48.7% for the Tin Man, and only 13.3% for the Scarecrow....while outraged conservative Bloggers want to know why the Cowardly Lion isn't also listed on the ballot.
Here are some other interesting things that Zogby discovered about these all-important undecided voters. 27.4% of them have seen "The Passion of the Christ," but only 13.1% have seen "Fahrenheit 9/11." (for Kerry supporters those numbers are 15.5% and 65.5% respectively; for Bush supporters 43.4% and 2.7%). 56.2% of these 2.6 million undecideds feel that the country is going in the wrong direction; 55.2% want a President who keeps his religious values out of public business; and 48.4% consider themselves pro-environment. But 57.3% of them say they would rather have a beer with President Bush than with Senator Kerry, while only 9.3% would rather have a beer with Kerry than with Bush...apparently notwithstanding the fact that the President no longer drinks.
Meanwhile, I'm a little disappointed that my own "Joe Six-Pack" poll last week didn't get a little bit bigger response. Zogby's scientific poll determined that persuadable undecided voters are both slightly opposed to more rigid gun control (49.8% to 32.4%) and slightly in favor of either same-sex marriages or civil unions (54.8% to 38%), but I personally felt like my own humorous little survey fell a little flat...and there's really nothing worse than a flat beer gag, unless of course it's a flat beer that makes you gag, which I think might pretty well describe this Molson's Canadian. There are plenty of good beers that come from Canada (including Molson's Golden Ale), but this bi-lingual lager isn't really one of them, although it does possess the interesting feature of coming with pre-printed snappy rejoinders to lame pick-up lines. (This one says "Yes. But not with you"). And I don't mean to sound elitist about this, although I do come from the Pacific Northwest, where we feel like we invented both microbreweries and the espresso cart, and so can often seem a little snobbish about our beverages. And believe it or not, there is actually a point to all this, which I'll get to in just a second.
A Samuel Adams, of course, is always an excellent choice; but if you really want to enjoy a truly excellent local beer, for my money there's none better than this Harpoon IPA, which tastes almost as good as the IPAs we brew out in Oregon, and which I'm now pleased to say I can legitimately claim as a professional expense. (Why should millionaires get all the tax breaks?). But the two beers I really want to talk about are these. As a lot of you already know, my first full-time settled ministry was at the Unitarian Church in Midland Texas (coincidentally, at precisely the same time that George W. Bush was deciding to put down the bottle and pick up the Bible, and also when the events depicted in the recently released movie "Friday Night Lights" actually took place). And then, some years later as a doctoral student, I spent a semester as a visiting scholar at Aalborg University in Denmark. So I've actually had ample opportunities to enjoy both of these beers in their natural environments, and therefore feel well qualified to compare them. This Carlsberg, you'll notice, comes in a green bottle, and if you read the small print here on the label you'll see that it is brewed "by appointment to the Royal Danish Court." This Lone Star, on the other hand, proudly bills itself as "Texas born and brewed," "Pure Texan Beer," and "the National Beer of Texas." In Denmark you can buy a Carlsberg (in a green plastic bottle) from a sidewalk vending machine, while in Texas you have to get in your car and drive to the drive-up window at the local liquor store, where the smallest quantity you can buy is an entire six-pack...for approximately the same price you might pay for a single beer in Copenhagen. A bottle of Carlsberg also comes with a one-and-a-half kroner deposit (which when I was living over there was approximately 18 cents...I think it's even a little more now), and there are actually professional bottle scavengers in Denmark who apparently make their living collecting and returning other people's empties. This bottle of Lone Star, on the other hand, has a little slogan printed on it which says "Don't Mess With Texas," and periodically the county sends out convicted DUIs in orange jumpsuits to pick up the empties from the side of the highway. Also, even though this beer is labeled as a "long neck," you'll notice that both these bottles are basically the same size. And my theory is that this is the result of globalization, which demands a certain level of standardization when it comes to packaging. An authentic long neck is actually about an inch and a half longer that this, and used to be available only at licensed establishments within the Lone Star State itself. But the point I want to make is that if you were to pour each of these beers, ice cold, into a tall, frosted glass on a sweltering summer afternoon, I suspect that most folks would probably have a pretty difficult time telling them apart by taste alone. Two very different cultures enjoying a nearly identical beverage in almost exactly the same way. There is something universal about the experience; the social nuances may differ, but the beer remains the same.
There's a contemporary school of historical scholarship which argues that this delicious fermented beverage may very well be the reason that the human beings living on the fertile lands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers approximately ten thousand years ago gave up their hunter-gatherer ways, and decided to build and live in cities instead. Large scale grain agriculture made civilization both possible and necessary...more diversified and specialized forms of labor, a more sophisticated seasonal calendar, greater degrees of social organization and centralized planning, the development of systematic techniques for soil cultivation, irrigation, harvesting and crop storage, the creation of an effective military force to defend the fruits of one's harvest from those who would take it for themselves. Religion, government, taxes and the rule of law: all this flowed from the accidental discovery that sprouted barley contains natural enzymes which convert starch to sugar, which when in turn is exposed to more water and airborne yeast is converted to alcohol. Or so the theory goes. From Gilgamesh to George W. Bush -- nearly five thousand years of Western Civilization, all basically because human beings occasionally like to tie one on, and they wanted to make certain of a reliable supply of brewsky.
Of course, even if this theory contains a grain of truth, it would still be a mistake to conclude, in the words of botanist Paul Manglesdorf, that "the foundations of western civilization were laid by an ill-fed people living in a perpetual state of partial intoxication." There are certainly many other plausible interpretations of the historical record. A Marxist historian, for example, might argue that the increasingly complex forms of human social organization made possible by the Neolithic agricultural revolution facilitated the concentration of ever-increasing amounts of wealth and power in the hands of an elite, privileged class of warriors and priests, who then exploited the surplus resources of the entire society in order to consolidate their authority over the class of people who actually performed the hard, physical labor, while at the same time extending their hegemony over neighboring societies. But we all know that Marxist historians are basically just a bunch of crackpots. A more interesting line of inquiry involves the complex ways in which civil and religious authority were intertwined in Ancient Mesopotamia. The Kings of Bronze Age cities like Uruk, Sumer, Nineveh and Babylon were understood to be semi-divine entities, whose political legitimacy was derived from their faithful relationship to the local deities, who granted them the authority to impose equitable laws upon the population, and to demand and enforce obedience to those laws. The King was responsible both for maintaining order within the Society, and for protecting the members of that society from external threats; and to the extent that he was capable of performing those responsibilities, the people of the society owed him both loyalty and respect. The king's word was law, but the legitimacy of that law was not the product of the King's will alone, but flowed from the Gods, and was grounded in a covenant of mutual security and social order. And this Covenant replaced an earlier form of vendetta justice in which families basically exacted their own revenge against their perceived enemies for offenses real or imagined. Hammurabi's famous dictum "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" may sound a lot like the codification of the principle of vendetta, but in reality it mandates proportionality -- JUST an eye for an eye, ONLY a tooth for a tooth. (Although I should point out, just as an aside, that the Code of Hammurabi also calls for death by drowning for beer parlor proprietors who over-charge their customers, or who "fail to notify authorities of the presence of [known] criminals in their establishments.")
The ancient Hebrews appropriated this same idea of covenant to their own social organization. Except that their God was understood to be more than just a small, local deity whose jurisdiction merely extended over a single city. The God of Israel was the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, whose jurisdiction knew no limits, and whose power and authority dwarfed that of Gods fashioned by human hands. And the Covenant which this God entered into with Moses at Sinai held those “chosen†people to a higher ethical standard than their neighbors -- concerns about security and social order were subject to the additional commandment that justice be extended not merely to the members of the tribe itself, but also to outsiders...to strangers and foreigners; and to those who were powerless to protect themselves, like widows and orphans. This God of the Israelites was not merely the protector of the powerful, the pious, and the well-connected. This God cared about the weak, the poor, the marginalized and the forgotten...and insisted that they too be treated with fairness and compassion.
This tradition of ethical monotheism -- a tradition shared by the three great “western†religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, essentially affirms both that God is sovereign and that all souls belong to God -- that all people are God's children and therefore members of one family. This Covenant of All Souls declares that there are NOT two standards of justice: one for "us" and another for "them" -- rather, we are all accountable to the same ethical principles of mercy and even-handedness. And what makes this covenant possible is our own capacity for empathy: the recognition of a common humanity which transcends our various social and cultural differences, and unites us as a single people who are much more alike than we might at first think.
Here in the United States, the architects of our Constitution - our own so-called "founding fathers" -- created a secular form of Government with a strong separation of Church and State because the sophisticated political philosophies of the Enlightenment which they embraced allowed them to understand that even though we may be "One Nation under God," it is "out of many" that we become one -- E Pluribus Unum as well as "In God We Trust." And over the course of the last two centuries so-called "activist judges" (along with legislators, religious leaders, social activists and various other progressive reformers) have continued to encourage our society to expand its vision and become even more inclusive than even our most enlightened founders might have imagined. Because when we are all encouraged to bring our diverse gifts to the table, no one really knows for sure what kind of feast we will create. But we can at least feel confident that it will probably be delicious, because despite our different tastes and backgrounds, we all have much more in common than we know.
Good leadership is a process of bringing out the best in others. Ineffective leadership fails to do this, while bad leadership often succeeds only in bringing out the worst. And it isn't easy, because even when good leaders do their best, they can always control the behavior of those who follow. But if our church, for example, desires to exert spiritual and ethical leadership in a pluralistic society, the first thing we need to do is demonstrate among ourselves how it is done. Tolerance, compassion, civility, fairness, and dialog...these are the qualities which make us moral leaders in the world. These are to foundations of a Covenant through which "all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine."
Sunday, October 10, 2004
SERVING HUMANITY IN FRIENDSHIP
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 10, 2004
It occurred to me this past week, as I was thinking about what I was going to say here this morning, that after today there are only three more Sundays until the election. We've got one more debate to go, the polls are tightening, in a lot of states voter registration has already closed (although I think here in Massachusetts you still have until Friday to sign up -- does anyone know for certain?) Interestingly enough, I find myself feeling a lot more calm and relaxed than I did even a few weeks ago now that election day is just around the corner. It's not that I don't think the election will be close, or that I've stopped caring about who will win. It's just that I feel like I've already done my bit, and I'm ready for it to be over. I know who I'm going to vote for (and at this point I can't really think of anything that would get me to change my mind), I've contributed all the money that I'm going to contribute, I may still sign up to help people get to the polls on election day or something like that, but I don't really think that the outcome is in any doubt here in Massachusetts, and I'm not really sure that I want to vote absentee just so that I can travel to someplace like Florida or Pennsylvania (like so many of my colleagues are) simply to watch other people cast votes that might actually count if they're actually counted. I feel a little like my son Jacob did back in 1988, when he was only 15 and Michael Dukakis was running against the President's father. I think we might have been watching the World Series [that was the year that the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Oakland A's, and Kirk Gibson hit that dramatic 9th inning home run to win Game One], or maybe it was just some meaningless football game...but whatever it was, at one point Jake looked up from a particularly vicious attack ad and announced to no one in particular "I'll be so glad when this election is over, and we can go back to watching beer commercials again."
Of course, it's not just the Presidency that's up for grabs on November 2nd. There's a complete slate of State and Local issues and candidates on the ballot, plus (technically at least) the entire House of Representatives and one third of the Senate. Between gerrymandering and the absence of effective campaign finance reform, the power of incumbency is so great these days that there are really very few Congressional races that are actually that competitive...but even so, House Majority leader Tom Delay made certain that before the Congress recessed for the election there were a series of essentially meaningless procedural votes on issues like same-sex marriage and the assault weapons ban, just so that he could get Democratic Representatives from more conservative southern and western states on the record as having voted in favor of gun control, and against traditional marriage.
But think about it for a moment. If you had a choice, where would you rather live: in a place where assault weapons were banned, and it was OK for people to marry whoever they loved; or someplace where everyone had an assault rifle, and it was illegal to be gay? Denmark, or Afghanistan? Canada, or Iraq? Or what about Carlisle, Massachusetts or Midland, Texas? I don't have any trouble knowing how I would answer these questions, and I don't imagine that many of you do either. But we live in a diverse nation, where people are free to have different opinions. And while I may like to believe that it's simply because they don't know any better, or that they've never really BEEN to Midland Texas...it may well be that they've just never been anywhere else.
In any event, it occurred to me that with all the flash polling trying to track likely voters in the so-called "battleground states," and the media pundits talking about NASCAR Dads and "Security" Moms, and which candidate appeared most "Presidential" at the most recent debate, that we've kinda lost track of what good ol' "Joe Six-Pack" really thinks. And so I thought I'd sponsor an informal poll of my own. [take out the empty beer cartons - Sam Adams and Lone Star] Just bring your empties and put them in the appropriate place, and who knows? -- maybe in another few weeks or so we'll all be able to put up our feet and breath a little easier, crack open a cold one, and just enjoy the game.
OK, I suppose it's time now to turn to my real topic for the day.
We say it together out loud every week, but how often do we take just a moment or two to reflect upon what it really means? "Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is our sacrament, and service is our prayer." These are basically our dogmas (although technically, Unitarian-Universalists aren't supposed to have any dogmas) -- they represent our most profound opinions, the things we believe are ultimately true. And then we follow them with a series of three parallel duties or responsibilities: "To dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, [and] to serve humanity in friendship" all working toward our ultimate goal of "the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine." It's an agreement, a mutual promise or Covenant, that we make "with each other, and with God."
I'll have more to say about the actual "covenant" part of our Covenant next week, but today I want to focus in on the idea of service, and especially these twin notions that helping our fellow human beings is both an act of friendship, and a form of prayer. I hope by now it is abundantly clear that the order in which each of these items appears in our covenant isn't exactly random. There's an obvious, dynamic logic to it it all: our commitment to love and to dwelling together in peace makes us naturally curious about one another's lives, and discovering the commonalities which link us together in community despite our many differences. As our wisdom and knowledge of one another grow over time, we likewise come to recognize our obligation to help one another out in times of trouble or need...and this vocation, this call to be useful, to be of service, is both the culmination and the fulfillment of our free religious quest. It's more than merely an act of friendship, or "neighborliness." It's more than just the tangible satisfaction of rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands a little dirty doing God's work in the world. It's also an act of worship, of faith and faithfulness -- a form of prayer by which we communicate our feelings of devotion and gratitude to our Creator....
The idea of prayer is sometimes a little problematic for Unitarian Universalists. If you're not really certain whether you even believe in God, what's the point in trying to talk to her? You might as well be talking to yourself, or to the Universe, or to thin air. If you look the word up in a good etymological dictionary you'll discover that prayer comes from the Latin verb precari which means "to beg." And this is certainly one very popular understanding of prayer: begging God for something we know we really don't deserve. For a trial lawyer, the "prayer" is a plaintiff's pre-trail request for the legal relief or monetary damages that they would hope to be awarded if the jury finds in their favor on every issue. This is one of the reasons why the current administration hates trial lawyers so much: it's because they realize that sometimes the prayers of deserving people are indeed answered, and they can't quite get it through their heads that litigation is NOT just another form of begging. Or maybe it's because they believe that some people are simply more deserving than others, and forget that it's only a frivolous lawsuit if your weren't the one who was injured in the accident.
But for more sophisticated people of faith, there is another dimension of prayer which reflects the reality that God really does help those who help themselves. Prayer in this sense is an appeal to the values and the principles which we hold most deeply, and the attempt to shape our lives in conformity to those same values and principles. It's not a matter of telling God what WE want, it's a process of discerning what God wants for US, and then asking for (and receiving) the strength, the wisdom, and the persistence to become the kind of person God wants us to be. And this process of discernment generally requires a lot more listening than it does begging. It asks us to look long and hard at who we really are, and what we truly believe. It asks us to question and challenge everything we have been told by others about who we "ought" to be, and what we "should" be doing, and demands instead that we search our souls for that small spiritual part of ourselves created in the image of God, and that we endeavor to make it larger, while at the same time learning to recognize and evoke that same spirit in those around us as well.
Now this isn't to say that there isn't potentially a lot of truth in what others tell us about who we ought to be, or what we should be doing. But if we simply take these pronouncements at face value, without doing the kind of prayerful reflection and contemplation I've just described, our faith will always be a little superficial -- it will be something we imitate, rather than something we live. And likewise, without the element of friendship, of service to others or some great purpose larger than ourselves, our faith potentially becomes too isolated and introspective, perhaps ultimately even narcissistic. Yet even here we must also be careful. There are people in this world who adamantly believe that God wants them to fly airliners into skyscrapers, or to cut off the heads of the infidels who occupy their country. There are people who believe that because they are self-proclaimed servants of God, on a mission from God -- a Crusade, a Jihad (call it what you will) -- that they are free to kill the evil-doers wherever they may find them, or to take them into custody without due process, maybe even torture them a little, because the nobility and the urgency of the Cause Itself does away with the need for any kind of “test:†of legitimacy, of credibility, or even subsequent accountability for the wisdom and appropriateness of their decisions. Yet this is simply wrong. When evil is answered with evil, evil wins...even if it is all done in the name of God, and with the best of intentions, or for the most noble purposes.
But when the obligation is simply "to serve humanity in friendship," the potential for inadvertently doing evil is dramatically diminished. Not that it becomes completely impossible: we human beings are incredibly creative when it comes to rationalizing our bad behavior, and sometimes equally incredibly shortsighted about the true consequences of our choices. Thoreau wrote in Walden that "there is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted," and that if he "knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." But to serve humanity in FRIENDSHIP, to do good for another human being knowing who they really are, and giving authentically out of the best part of ourselves, is an entirely different matter. "We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease..." Thoreau continued. "I would not subtract any thing from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind."
This is the ultimate test of prayerful service: do our lives and our works truly represent a blessing to humanity, to mankind? Are we, through our service, God's answer to our prayers? Do our endeavors lead to reconciliation rather than conflict; are we servants of peace, justice, wisdom, mercy, healing and redemption, rather than merely instruments of hatred and revenge? And yes, it IS a complicated business, and yes, we do the best we can. But by simply serving our fellow human beings in friendship, we become better people ourselves. Not just superficially, but deep within ourselves, in our hearts and spirits. We become indeed the people God intends for us to be.
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 10, 2004
It occurred to me this past week, as I was thinking about what I was going to say here this morning, that after today there are only three more Sundays until the election. We've got one more debate to go, the polls are tightening, in a lot of states voter registration has already closed (although I think here in Massachusetts you still have until Friday to sign up -- does anyone know for certain?) Interestingly enough, I find myself feeling a lot more calm and relaxed than I did even a few weeks ago now that election day is just around the corner. It's not that I don't think the election will be close, or that I've stopped caring about who will win. It's just that I feel like I've already done my bit, and I'm ready for it to be over. I know who I'm going to vote for (and at this point I can't really think of anything that would get me to change my mind), I've contributed all the money that I'm going to contribute, I may still sign up to help people get to the polls on election day or something like that, but I don't really think that the outcome is in any doubt here in Massachusetts, and I'm not really sure that I want to vote absentee just so that I can travel to someplace like Florida or Pennsylvania (like so many of my colleagues are) simply to watch other people cast votes that might actually count if they're actually counted. I feel a little like my son Jacob did back in 1988, when he was only 15 and Michael Dukakis was running against the President's father. I think we might have been watching the World Series [that was the year that the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Oakland A's, and Kirk Gibson hit that dramatic 9th inning home run to win Game One], or maybe it was just some meaningless football game...but whatever it was, at one point Jake looked up from a particularly vicious attack ad and announced to no one in particular "I'll be so glad when this election is over, and we can go back to watching beer commercials again."
Of course, it's not just the Presidency that's up for grabs on November 2nd. There's a complete slate of State and Local issues and candidates on the ballot, plus (technically at least) the entire House of Representatives and one third of the Senate. Between gerrymandering and the absence of effective campaign finance reform, the power of incumbency is so great these days that there are really very few Congressional races that are actually that competitive...but even so, House Majority leader Tom Delay made certain that before the Congress recessed for the election there were a series of essentially meaningless procedural votes on issues like same-sex marriage and the assault weapons ban, just so that he could get Democratic Representatives from more conservative southern and western states on the record as having voted in favor of gun control, and against traditional marriage.
But think about it for a moment. If you had a choice, where would you rather live: in a place where assault weapons were banned, and it was OK for people to marry whoever they loved; or someplace where everyone had an assault rifle, and it was illegal to be gay? Denmark, or Afghanistan? Canada, or Iraq? Or what about Carlisle, Massachusetts or Midland, Texas? I don't have any trouble knowing how I would answer these questions, and I don't imagine that many of you do either. But we live in a diverse nation, where people are free to have different opinions. And while I may like to believe that it's simply because they don't know any better, or that they've never really BEEN to Midland Texas...it may well be that they've just never been anywhere else.
In any event, it occurred to me that with all the flash polling trying to track likely voters in the so-called "battleground states," and the media pundits talking about NASCAR Dads and "Security" Moms, and which candidate appeared most "Presidential" at the most recent debate, that we've kinda lost track of what good ol' "Joe Six-Pack" really thinks. And so I thought I'd sponsor an informal poll of my own. [take out the empty beer cartons - Sam Adams and Lone Star] Just bring your empties and put them in the appropriate place, and who knows? -- maybe in another few weeks or so we'll all be able to put up our feet and breath a little easier, crack open a cold one, and just enjoy the game.
OK, I suppose it's time now to turn to my real topic for the day.
We say it together out loud every week, but how often do we take just a moment or two to reflect upon what it really means? "Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is our sacrament, and service is our prayer." These are basically our dogmas (although technically, Unitarian-Universalists aren't supposed to have any dogmas) -- they represent our most profound opinions, the things we believe are ultimately true. And then we follow them with a series of three parallel duties or responsibilities: "To dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, [and] to serve humanity in friendship" all working toward our ultimate goal of "the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine." It's an agreement, a mutual promise or Covenant, that we make "with each other, and with God."
I'll have more to say about the actual "covenant" part of our Covenant next week, but today I want to focus in on the idea of service, and especially these twin notions that helping our fellow human beings is both an act of friendship, and a form of prayer. I hope by now it is abundantly clear that the order in which each of these items appears in our covenant isn't exactly random. There's an obvious, dynamic logic to it it all: our commitment to love and to dwelling together in peace makes us naturally curious about one another's lives, and discovering the commonalities which link us together in community despite our many differences. As our wisdom and knowledge of one another grow over time, we likewise come to recognize our obligation to help one another out in times of trouble or need...and this vocation, this call to be useful, to be of service, is both the culmination and the fulfillment of our free religious quest. It's more than merely an act of friendship, or "neighborliness." It's more than just the tangible satisfaction of rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands a little dirty doing God's work in the world. It's also an act of worship, of faith and faithfulness -- a form of prayer by which we communicate our feelings of devotion and gratitude to our Creator....
The idea of prayer is sometimes a little problematic for Unitarian Universalists. If you're not really certain whether you even believe in God, what's the point in trying to talk to her? You might as well be talking to yourself, or to the Universe, or to thin air. If you look the word up in a good etymological dictionary you'll discover that prayer comes from the Latin verb precari which means "to beg." And this is certainly one very popular understanding of prayer: begging God for something we know we really don't deserve. For a trial lawyer, the "prayer" is a plaintiff's pre-trail request for the legal relief or monetary damages that they would hope to be awarded if the jury finds in their favor on every issue. This is one of the reasons why the current administration hates trial lawyers so much: it's because they realize that sometimes the prayers of deserving people are indeed answered, and they can't quite get it through their heads that litigation is NOT just another form of begging. Or maybe it's because they believe that some people are simply more deserving than others, and forget that it's only a frivolous lawsuit if your weren't the one who was injured in the accident.
But for more sophisticated people of faith, there is another dimension of prayer which reflects the reality that God really does help those who help themselves. Prayer in this sense is an appeal to the values and the principles which we hold most deeply, and the attempt to shape our lives in conformity to those same values and principles. It's not a matter of telling God what WE want, it's a process of discerning what God wants for US, and then asking for (and receiving) the strength, the wisdom, and the persistence to become the kind of person God wants us to be. And this process of discernment generally requires a lot more listening than it does begging. It asks us to look long and hard at who we really are, and what we truly believe. It asks us to question and challenge everything we have been told by others about who we "ought" to be, and what we "should" be doing, and demands instead that we search our souls for that small spiritual part of ourselves created in the image of God, and that we endeavor to make it larger, while at the same time learning to recognize and evoke that same spirit in those around us as well.
Now this isn't to say that there isn't potentially a lot of truth in what others tell us about who we ought to be, or what we should be doing. But if we simply take these pronouncements at face value, without doing the kind of prayerful reflection and contemplation I've just described, our faith will always be a little superficial -- it will be something we imitate, rather than something we live. And likewise, without the element of friendship, of service to others or some great purpose larger than ourselves, our faith potentially becomes too isolated and introspective, perhaps ultimately even narcissistic. Yet even here we must also be careful. There are people in this world who adamantly believe that God wants them to fly airliners into skyscrapers, or to cut off the heads of the infidels who occupy their country. There are people who believe that because they are self-proclaimed servants of God, on a mission from God -- a Crusade, a Jihad (call it what you will) -- that they are free to kill the evil-doers wherever they may find them, or to take them into custody without due process, maybe even torture them a little, because the nobility and the urgency of the Cause Itself does away with the need for any kind of “test:†of legitimacy, of credibility, or even subsequent accountability for the wisdom and appropriateness of their decisions. Yet this is simply wrong. When evil is answered with evil, evil wins...even if it is all done in the name of God, and with the best of intentions, or for the most noble purposes.
But when the obligation is simply "to serve humanity in friendship," the potential for inadvertently doing evil is dramatically diminished. Not that it becomes completely impossible: we human beings are incredibly creative when it comes to rationalizing our bad behavior, and sometimes equally incredibly shortsighted about the true consequences of our choices. Thoreau wrote in Walden that "there is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted," and that if he "knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." But to serve humanity in FRIENDSHIP, to do good for another human being knowing who they really are, and giving authentically out of the best part of ourselves, is an entirely different matter. "We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease..." Thoreau continued. "I would not subtract any thing from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind."
This is the ultimate test of prayerful service: do our lives and our works truly represent a blessing to humanity, to mankind? Are we, through our service, God's answer to our prayers? Do our endeavors lead to reconciliation rather than conflict; are we servants of peace, justice, wisdom, mercy, healing and redemption, rather than merely instruments of hatred and revenge? And yes, it IS a complicated business, and yes, we do the best we can. But by simply serving our fellow human beings in friendship, we become better people ourselves. Not just superficially, but deep within ourselves, in our hearts and spirits. We become indeed the people God intends for us to be.
Sunday, October 3, 2004
TO SEEK KNOWLEDGE IN FREEDOM
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle Massachusetts
Sunday October 3rd, 2004
I honestly believe that of all the characteristics I might point to, the one distinctive quality that most distinguishes Unitarian Universalism from every other religious tradition known to human history is the extraordinary emphasis we place on the task described in the title of this morning's sermon: "To seek knowledge in freedom."I don't know whether to call this a commandment, or a mandate, or merely a "duty" -- but it's an important part of what it means to be a contemporary Unitarian Universalist, an essential component of our denomination's theological "culture." I suspect that most religious organizations welcome Seekers, and I know for a fact that there are plenty who value freedom and knowledge as much as we do, but I also suspect that for a lot of them (or at least a lot of the ones that I'm familiar with) their attitude is something along the lines of "your search is over -- we've got just what you've been looking for. So come on in, sit still and pay attention, while we feed it to you on a silver platter."
Which really isn't such terrible advice, when you stop to think about it. You can generally learn a lot if you are willing to listen just a little. But Unitarian Universalists tend to see things just a little differently. Back in 1819 when William Ellery Channing preached his famous sermon "Unitarian Christianity" at the ordination of Jared Sparks in Baltimore Maryland, he took as his text a passage from Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" and I don't think (as a denomination, at least) that we've looked back ever since.
Unitarian Universalists are curious people who like to ask questions. Lots of questions. Seeking is a way of life for us. We worship our freedom of belief almost as an object of idolatry, and accumulate knowledge as though it were money in the bank. Love is the doctrine of this church, and service is our prayer -- but our sacrament (the place where God's grace and "real presence" is made manifest in the here and now) is "the search for truth." And this same emphasis is reflected as well in our denominational Principles and Purposes statement, which of course begins with the familiar affirmation of "the inherent worth and dignity of every person," and concludes with "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." But at the center of this overarching declaration, the keystone if you will which holds it all together, is the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning." Indeed, for a lot of us that freedom IS the most signficant responsibility of our lives. Truth, meaning, knowledge, wisdom -- these things are not just means to some end, they are inherently worthwhile in and of themselves; they are what make our lives meaningful, and allow us to understand who we are and our relationship to everything we see and experience around us.
Of course, these values didn't actually originate with us. You can read about them right in the New Testament: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." (Lk 11: 9-10). And in the Gospel of John we are told "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (Jn 8:32). That was probably my favorite verse of Scripture, back when I was in High School and aggressively debating against my born-again Christian classmates in order to preserve my immortal soul in a state of non-salvation. And then, some years later, when I was in Divinity School, that particular verse took on an added poignancy for me, because the verb in the second clause -- luo: "to set free"-- also happened to provide the paradigm for the conjugation of all regular Omega-verbs: luo, lueis, luei, luomen, luete, luousi -- I set free, you set free, he/she/it sets free, we set free, all of you set free, they set free.... And that's just the simple present active indicative...don't ask me to go any further. But one of the things I learned incidentally while trying to memorize all this is that the verb luo more precisely means to "loose" or to "release" (as from bondage). So it's not just that we are created with a God-given freedom to seek the truth, it is also that our acquired knowledge of truth is itself liberating. The freedom to seek, and the freedom that comes from knowing (or even just thinking that we know) are really two very different things, which is why the certainty of those who think that they know things that others don't (especially when the others think that they in fact know better) is so exasperating. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But perfect knowledge is for God alone. And so, as Socrates so wisely put it, the wisest individual is the one who knows that they know nothing.
And yet, I canâ't very well stand up here with a straight face and tell you that "ignorance is bliss" either. Truth Matters. Knowledge and Wisdom matter. As human beings, we have the freedom to make mistakes; and we have the duty, and the responsibility, to learn from those mistakes and correct them if we can. Seeking knowledge in freedom is often a process of trial and error (or in the case of truly egregious mistakes, error and trial). Likewise, the inability to acknowledge even the possibility of mistake is the most dangerous form of ignorance. And we all know what Jesus had to say about people who are quick to point out their neighbors shortcomings, while turning a blind eye to their own. He called them hypocrites -- people who judge according to a standard which they themselves do not meet. Hypocrisy is perhaps the most frequently condemned sin in all the Gospels. (Actually, to tell the truth, I don't really know that for sure, because I didn't really take the time to count them all up. But it sure gets condemned a lot). But either way, the first thing we need to learn and remember about seeking knowledge in freedom is to do so humbly. There are a lot of things to know in this world. None of us will ever learn them all. A little humility and the ready acknowledgment of the fact that we all make mistakes goes a long way toward liberating us from the bondage of our own ignorance.
People sometimes criticize, or even make fun of Unitarian Universalists, because we are so notoriously tentative about saying what we believe. They say that UUs believe everything, or that we DON'T believe anything...or that we believe one thing one day and something else the next, or that we simply don't know WHAT we believe, which is why we spend so much time "seeking" in the first place. We're often accused of being moral relativists, because we're overheard talking about "my Truth," or suggesting that what is true for one person may not be true for all people, or what is appropriate in some situations may not be appropriate in others. Personally, I feel that these kinds of stereotypes are a profound misrepresentation of who we are and what we believe, but I also recognize that we contribute to this misunderstanding because we laugh at ourselves right along with everyone else whenever Garrison Keillor turns us into a punch-line, and are not always as precise or careful in our use of language as we might be, and therefore leave ourselves open to misinterpretation...especially by people who don't already understand (or who don't WANT to understand) what we really do stand for.
But just assume for a moment that Truth truly is Absolute: that what is True today was True yesterday, and will be True tomorrow and for all eternity. And further assume (just for the sake of argument, since it's a pretty big assumption) that it may even be possible for a human being to know and understand that Truth, perfectly and in every detail, and still further possible for them to communicate it sensibly to another human being. Even if it were hypothetically possible, how often do you think it would really happen? How long do you think it would take to know and understand "the Truth," and how many people would actually take the time to do it? Truth is "out there" but knowledge is "in here" -- it's a much more personal thing; and even if Absolute Truth is eternal and unchanging, each individual still has to discover and learn it for themselves. Patience and Persistence are essential qualities in a Truth-Seeker, and True Wisdom is the understanding that there is a difference between "the Truth" (which may very well be absolute and eternal) and knowing (or thinking you know, or claiming to know) what is true at this particular moment (which is always a little dicey and tentative anyway, since often it seems like the more we know, the more we discover there is to know). Knowledge is something we acquire slowly, over time. When we are free to seek knowledge we may actually be able to acquire it a little more quickly and thoroughly than if we just sit around and wait for knowledge to come to us. But let's face facts: true "know -it-alls" are basically just figments of their own imaginations, often failing to meet even the so-called "laugh test" when confronted with the evidence of their own profound misunderstanding.
Of course, it may also be true that Truth (or at a least certain kind of Truth) is a very simple thing -- something that we seem to know intuitively, as if from birth, and only need to learn to trust. I'm not going to hazard a guess right now as to what these "truths" might actually be, but there are certainly plenty of things in life that I basically just take on faith, because I know that if I doubt EVERYTHING, if I can't Trust ANYTHING, there's no way I'm even going to make it through the day. You'll probably hear me say this a lot from this pulpit if you sit here often enough, but "faith" is not belief in things you know aren't true. Faith is trusting the "truth" of things you know you can never really prove, and will never really have to prove to anyone but yourself. It's the confidence to live your life knowing you will always be a little more ignorant than you might like, but that you'll figure out a way to muddle through. And every time you do, you learn a little more...about yourself. You become more knowledgeable about who you are and what you're made of.
And this is true even if the outcome is less than perfect. I know it's a cliche, but failure can be a magnificent teacher...it teaches us things about ourselves and the world that success never can. Not all of those lessons are positive; some of them can be quite crippling if they rob us of faith in ourselves and the confidence to try again. But when you understand the task to be "seeking knowledge in freedom," it changes the nature of the process itself. The goal is no longer merely to succeed. It is to learn something new about ourselves and the world we live in through our efforts, and to be able to draw freely upon that new knowledge the next time we are confronted with a challenge.
Of course, like a little knowledge, relying too greatly on Force of Will and the Power of Positive Thinking can also be a dangerous thing. There's a profound difference between optimism and wishful thinking, and simply saying something is true doesn't make it so. We may not always choose to be completely candid with the people around us; there is such a thing as Too Much Information, and some things are simply nobody's business anyway. But it is always dangerous to be less than completely honest with ourselves. Only a fool tries to pull the wool over their own eyes, or ignores what is as plain as the nose on their face. Of course, this cuts two ways as well. We can also become too critical of ourselves, underestimating our own abilities or minimizing our own skills. Honesty means Honesty -- the strengths as well as the shortcomings; and often times we don't even know what we can do until we try. We should neither underestimate the power of optimism, nor should we rely on it exclusively. Trust, but Verify. And the verification -- the "truth-testing" -- generally comes only through the effort of honest exploration, or (to put it another way) the on-going process of seeking knowledge in freedom.
Of course, there are also some truths that can never be verified. I know I've talked a lot about God here this morning (maybe not so much recently, but earlier) and I know there are a lot of people who get a little nervous when I use that kind of language, just as I know there are others who find it kind of comforting and reassuring. The experience of God is one of those simple truths that can never really be proved, and never really has to be proved either. But this places that knowledge in a very special category. Even if you haven't had the experience...if you're not a believer, if it's just not part of your own "truth," you can still believe someone who tells you that they have experienced the presence of the divine in their life, and that it has changed their life for the better. You don't have to believe in God yourself in order to believe in the experience of the person who believes, especially if you can see with your own eyes that their life has been changed. (Of course, sometimes it may seem to you as if their lives have been changed for the worse, but that's a topic for another day). But once again, the Scripture tells us "by their fruits shall ye know them"and admonishes "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I, by my works, will show you my faith."
And likewise, even if you have been blessed by a profound, life-transforming experience of the Holy which you simply know without a doubt was the work of God, you need to remember that just because it makes sense for you to talk about that experience in a certain way doesn't mean that those words are going to be meaningful to others. You need to learn how to differentiate between the wisdom, and the insight, and the knowledge that you gained from the experience itself, and the various ways that you might communicate that knowledge to others so that it will be meaningful to them as well. And this represents yet another different kind of knowledge altogether, which relies less on divine revelation than it does simple human connection, and the ability (as I mentioned last week) to find commonalities in even the most diverse human experiences.
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle Massachusetts
Sunday October 3rd, 2004
I honestly believe that of all the characteristics I might point to, the one distinctive quality that most distinguishes Unitarian Universalism from every other religious tradition known to human history is the extraordinary emphasis we place on the task described in the title of this morning's sermon: "To seek knowledge in freedom."I don't know whether to call this a commandment, or a mandate, or merely a "duty" -- but it's an important part of what it means to be a contemporary Unitarian Universalist, an essential component of our denomination's theological "culture." I suspect that most religious organizations welcome Seekers, and I know for a fact that there are plenty who value freedom and knowledge as much as we do, but I also suspect that for a lot of them (or at least a lot of the ones that I'm familiar with) their attitude is something along the lines of "your search is over -- we've got just what you've been looking for. So come on in, sit still and pay attention, while we feed it to you on a silver platter."
Which really isn't such terrible advice, when you stop to think about it. You can generally learn a lot if you are willing to listen just a little. But Unitarian Universalists tend to see things just a little differently. Back in 1819 when William Ellery Channing preached his famous sermon "Unitarian Christianity" at the ordination of Jared Sparks in Baltimore Maryland, he took as his text a passage from Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" and I don't think (as a denomination, at least) that we've looked back ever since.
Unitarian Universalists are curious people who like to ask questions. Lots of questions. Seeking is a way of life for us. We worship our freedom of belief almost as an object of idolatry, and accumulate knowledge as though it were money in the bank. Love is the doctrine of this church, and service is our prayer -- but our sacrament (the place where God's grace and "real presence" is made manifest in the here and now) is "the search for truth." And this same emphasis is reflected as well in our denominational Principles and Purposes statement, which of course begins with the familiar affirmation of "the inherent worth and dignity of every person," and concludes with "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." But at the center of this overarching declaration, the keystone if you will which holds it all together, is the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning." Indeed, for a lot of us that freedom IS the most signficant responsibility of our lives. Truth, meaning, knowledge, wisdom -- these things are not just means to some end, they are inherently worthwhile in and of themselves; they are what make our lives meaningful, and allow us to understand who we are and our relationship to everything we see and experience around us.
Of course, these values didn't actually originate with us. You can read about them right in the New Testament: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." (Lk 11: 9-10). And in the Gospel of John we are told "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (Jn 8:32). That was probably my favorite verse of Scripture, back when I was in High School and aggressively debating against my born-again Christian classmates in order to preserve my immortal soul in a state of non-salvation. And then, some years later, when I was in Divinity School, that particular verse took on an added poignancy for me, because the verb in the second clause -- luo: "to set free"-- also happened to provide the paradigm for the conjugation of all regular Omega-verbs: luo, lueis, luei, luomen, luete, luousi -- I set free, you set free, he/she/it sets free, we set free, all of you set free, they set free.... And that's just the simple present active indicative...don't ask me to go any further. But one of the things I learned incidentally while trying to memorize all this is that the verb luo more precisely means to "loose" or to "release" (as from bondage). So it's not just that we are created with a God-given freedom to seek the truth, it is also that our acquired knowledge of truth is itself liberating. The freedom to seek, and the freedom that comes from knowing (or even just thinking that we know) are really two very different things, which is why the certainty of those who think that they know things that others don't (especially when the others think that they in fact know better) is so exasperating. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But perfect knowledge is for God alone. And so, as Socrates so wisely put it, the wisest individual is the one who knows that they know nothing.
And yet, I canâ't very well stand up here with a straight face and tell you that "ignorance is bliss" either. Truth Matters. Knowledge and Wisdom matter. As human beings, we have the freedom to make mistakes; and we have the duty, and the responsibility, to learn from those mistakes and correct them if we can. Seeking knowledge in freedom is often a process of trial and error (or in the case of truly egregious mistakes, error and trial). Likewise, the inability to acknowledge even the possibility of mistake is the most dangerous form of ignorance. And we all know what Jesus had to say about people who are quick to point out their neighbors shortcomings, while turning a blind eye to their own. He called them hypocrites -- people who judge according to a standard which they themselves do not meet. Hypocrisy is perhaps the most frequently condemned sin in all the Gospels. (Actually, to tell the truth, I don't really know that for sure, because I didn't really take the time to count them all up. But it sure gets condemned a lot). But either way, the first thing we need to learn and remember about seeking knowledge in freedom is to do so humbly. There are a lot of things to know in this world. None of us will ever learn them all. A little humility and the ready acknowledgment of the fact that we all make mistakes goes a long way toward liberating us from the bondage of our own ignorance.
People sometimes criticize, or even make fun of Unitarian Universalists, because we are so notoriously tentative about saying what we believe. They say that UUs believe everything, or that we DON'T believe anything...or that we believe one thing one day and something else the next, or that we simply don't know WHAT we believe, which is why we spend so much time "seeking" in the first place. We're often accused of being moral relativists, because we're overheard talking about "my Truth," or suggesting that what is true for one person may not be true for all people, or what is appropriate in some situations may not be appropriate in others. Personally, I feel that these kinds of stereotypes are a profound misrepresentation of who we are and what we believe, but I also recognize that we contribute to this misunderstanding because we laugh at ourselves right along with everyone else whenever Garrison Keillor turns us into a punch-line, and are not always as precise or careful in our use of language as we might be, and therefore leave ourselves open to misinterpretation...especially by people who don't already understand (or who don't WANT to understand) what we really do stand for.
But just assume for a moment that Truth truly is Absolute: that what is True today was True yesterday, and will be True tomorrow and for all eternity. And further assume (just for the sake of argument, since it's a pretty big assumption) that it may even be possible for a human being to know and understand that Truth, perfectly and in every detail, and still further possible for them to communicate it sensibly to another human being. Even if it were hypothetically possible, how often do you think it would really happen? How long do you think it would take to know and understand "the Truth," and how many people would actually take the time to do it? Truth is "out there" but knowledge is "in here" -- it's a much more personal thing; and even if Absolute Truth is eternal and unchanging, each individual still has to discover and learn it for themselves. Patience and Persistence are essential qualities in a Truth-Seeker, and True Wisdom is the understanding that there is a difference between "the Truth" (which may very well be absolute and eternal) and knowing (or thinking you know, or claiming to know) what is true at this particular moment (which is always a little dicey and tentative anyway, since often it seems like the more we know, the more we discover there is to know). Knowledge is something we acquire slowly, over time. When we are free to seek knowledge we may actually be able to acquire it a little more quickly and thoroughly than if we just sit around and wait for knowledge to come to us. But let's face facts: true "know -it-alls" are basically just figments of their own imaginations, often failing to meet even the so-called "laugh test" when confronted with the evidence of their own profound misunderstanding.
Of course, it may also be true that Truth (or at a least certain kind of Truth) is a very simple thing -- something that we seem to know intuitively, as if from birth, and only need to learn to trust. I'm not going to hazard a guess right now as to what these "truths" might actually be, but there are certainly plenty of things in life that I basically just take on faith, because I know that if I doubt EVERYTHING, if I can't Trust ANYTHING, there's no way I'm even going to make it through the day. You'll probably hear me say this a lot from this pulpit if you sit here often enough, but "faith" is not belief in things you know aren't true. Faith is trusting the "truth" of things you know you can never really prove, and will never really have to prove to anyone but yourself. It's the confidence to live your life knowing you will always be a little more ignorant than you might like, but that you'll figure out a way to muddle through. And every time you do, you learn a little more...about yourself. You become more knowledgeable about who you are and what you're made of.
And this is true even if the outcome is less than perfect. I know it's a cliche, but failure can be a magnificent teacher...it teaches us things about ourselves and the world that success never can. Not all of those lessons are positive; some of them can be quite crippling if they rob us of faith in ourselves and the confidence to try again. But when you understand the task to be "seeking knowledge in freedom," it changes the nature of the process itself. The goal is no longer merely to succeed. It is to learn something new about ourselves and the world we live in through our efforts, and to be able to draw freely upon that new knowledge the next time we are confronted with a challenge.
Of course, like a little knowledge, relying too greatly on Force of Will and the Power of Positive Thinking can also be a dangerous thing. There's a profound difference between optimism and wishful thinking, and simply saying something is true doesn't make it so. We may not always choose to be completely candid with the people around us; there is such a thing as Too Much Information, and some things are simply nobody's business anyway. But it is always dangerous to be less than completely honest with ourselves. Only a fool tries to pull the wool over their own eyes, or ignores what is as plain as the nose on their face. Of course, this cuts two ways as well. We can also become too critical of ourselves, underestimating our own abilities or minimizing our own skills. Honesty means Honesty -- the strengths as well as the shortcomings; and often times we don't even know what we can do until we try. We should neither underestimate the power of optimism, nor should we rely on it exclusively. Trust, but Verify. And the verification -- the "truth-testing" -- generally comes only through the effort of honest exploration, or (to put it another way) the on-going process of seeking knowledge in freedom.
Of course, there are also some truths that can never be verified. I know I've talked a lot about God here this morning (maybe not so much recently, but earlier) and I know there are a lot of people who get a little nervous when I use that kind of language, just as I know there are others who find it kind of comforting and reassuring. The experience of God is one of those simple truths that can never really be proved, and never really has to be proved either. But this places that knowledge in a very special category. Even if you haven't had the experience...if you're not a believer, if it's just not part of your own "truth," you can still believe someone who tells you that they have experienced the presence of the divine in their life, and that it has changed their life for the better. You don't have to believe in God yourself in order to believe in the experience of the person who believes, especially if you can see with your own eyes that their life has been changed. (Of course, sometimes it may seem to you as if their lives have been changed for the worse, but that's a topic for another day). But once again, the Scripture tells us "by their fruits shall ye know them"and admonishes "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I, by my works, will show you my faith."
And likewise, even if you have been blessed by a profound, life-transforming experience of the Holy which you simply know without a doubt was the work of God, you need to remember that just because it makes sense for you to talk about that experience in a certain way doesn't mean that those words are going to be meaningful to others. You need to learn how to differentiate between the wisdom, and the insight, and the knowledge that you gained from the experience itself, and the various ways that you might communicate that knowledge to others so that it will be meaningful to them as well. And this represents yet another different kind of knowledge altogether, which relies less on divine revelation than it does simple human connection, and the ability (as I mentioned last week) to find commonalities in even the most diverse human experiences.
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