CHRISTMAS EVE (2006)

a homily delivered by the Rev Tim W Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle
Sunday December 24th, 2006

“And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed into their own country by another way.” [Mt 2:12]


I don’t know whether anyone else is really bothered by this or not, but how wise would we consider someone today who took-off on a months-long journey to a foreign land inspired by something they read in their horoscope, simply so they might shower an unknown child with expensive gifts, and then just randomly changed their return itinerary because one night they had bad dream? And yet this is precisely what Matthew tells us the Wise Men did at the birth of Jesus, when they saw his star in the East.

I imagine as for a lot of folks nowadays, my first exposure to the story of the Nativity came from basically secular sources: from things like “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” or the Christmas Songs I learned in school, and Christmas Stories read to me by my grandparents. And of course, from experiences like our own annual Christmas Pageant, where as a child I also acted out as children have for generations the story of the miraculous birth of the baby Jesus. And somehow from all these experiences, I came to the conclusion that the whole thing happened in a single evening: Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem and discovered there was no room at the inn, found alternative lodgings in a stable, gave birth to a child, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and lay him in a manger, and then the angels and the shepherds and the Kings all arrived in turn, everyone san “Silent Night,” and they all went home again.

But in reality, if it happened at all, it probably happened quite differently than this. The traditional “pageant version” of the Nativity actually combines two distinct (and in some ways contradictory) versions of the story found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Luke, as we heard, tells a tale of shepherds and angels and a manger; of a family traveling far from home and giving birth to a child under unusual circumstances; and then links all this to a Roman census which we think took place in the year 6 AD. Matthew, on the other hand, tells a story of astrologers visiting from the East in search of a child whose birth was foretold by the stars, sometime during the reign of Herod the Great -- who died in the year 4 BC. So there’s a ten-year difference of opinion right there...or maybe it was just an unusually long labor.

Even the time of year is a matter of some dispute. Shepherds typically keep watch over their flocks by night in the spring and early summer, which caused at least some early Church Fathers to place the date of Jesus’s birth sometime in late March or early April. The reason we celebrate Christmas in December is quite clearly an attempt to tie it to the symbolism of the winter solstice, a result of the Emperor Constantine’s fourth century accommodation with the pagan mystery religion of Mithraism, which also celebrated the birth of their deity, the Sun god Mithra, in this darkest time of the year.

But the visitation of the Magi is without doubt the most mysterious part of the story. Who were they, and why were they there, if indeed they were there at all? And what was this star that they saw in the East, which caused them to travel to Bethlehem? The word “Magi” is derived from a Persian word identifying a specific caste of Zoroastrian priests, and is more typically translated as “sorcerer” or “magician.” Tradition tells us that there were three, because it also tells us that they brought three gifts; and over the centuries they have even acquired names: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.

The gifts themselves are highly symbolic. Gold is a symbol of worldly wealth and power, although in a powdered form it was also sometimes used as medicine. Frankincense is a type of incense burned during prayers and religious rituals, while myrrh, that “bitter perfume,” is an oil used for embalming the dead. Suitable gifts for a king, or even for another magician. But hardly appropriate presents for the infant son of a peasant carpenter, born amidst animals in a stable.

And what about that mysterious star? The most common interpretation is that the Magi observed an astrologically significant conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the year 7 BC, although others have speculated that the star was a comet, or perhaps even a supernova. And then there is the part of the story involving Herod, a part that we rarely dramatize in our pageants for children. But according to Matthew, shortly after the Wise Men’s visit Herod sent his soldiers to murder every male child in the region of Bethlehem under the age of two, and that Jesus only escaped death by fleeing with his family into Egypt. Thus having inadvertently alerted Herod to a potential threat to his reign, the Wise Men also warned Mary and Joseph of the danger to their child in time to allow them to make their way to safety.

Christmas for us is often thought of as a season of homecoming. It is a time when we celebrate family, and the values of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All. It is a time for feasting, and philanthropy, and above all it is a celebration of and for children, each of whom is so precious in our eyes. And yet the Christmas story itself, as told in Scripture, is in many ways a very different tale. It is a story of a young family far from home, dependent upon the hospitality of strangers for their safety and security, and in danger of their very lives. It is a story of refugees living as exiles in a foreign land, pursued by soldiers on the whim of a murderous tyrant. But it is also a story of a great potential good which emerges from humble origins, and the hope, and the promise, of a better way of living in the world, and being at home on “an earth made fair, with all her people one.”

...LABORS OF LOVE

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday November 26th, 2006


I thought I’d start out this morning telling you all about the terrible dilemma I faced yesterday trying to decide whether I should take advantage of the gorgeous, crisp, clear Autumn weather and go outdoors to rake up the leaves in my yard, or instead remain indoors like I do almost every other Saturday and work on my sermon instead. Didn’t want to spend too much time ruminating about it either, since every minute I spent thinking about the alternatives was basically just one more minute when I wasn’t doing either; so I quickly decided to compromise, and to go outdoors and rake up SOME of the leaves while THINKING about my sermon, with the thought that I could always preach a little shorter sermon if I had too -- a compromise which I figured would please just about everyone EXCEPT those few tormented souls who actually PREFER long-winded sermons (and of course those few equally-tormented souls who are obsessed by the sight of a few unraked leaves lying around, and can’t rest until they’re gone), not to mention my dog Parker, who, had she been given a choice, no doubt would have much rather spent the time outdoors with me doing something more interesting than watching me lean on a rake.

Now I appreciate the fact that there are some people who find yard work spiritually inspiring, but generally I’m not one of them. For me, yard work has always pretty much been seen and understood as a form of involuntary servitude imposed upon me by my father, or my grandmother, or still later my former wife...something I would just as soon have avoided if possible, or at the very least done as little as I could possibly get away with. I do appreciate the sense of satisfaction that comes from the tangible completion of a job well done...and yard work certainly lends itself to that sense of accomplishment much better than a lot of the more intangible work many of us do to make a living. But for my own part (especially when I was still a kid), I generally found myself learning how to look busy while looking off into the distance thinking profound thoughts, all the while keeping an eye peeled for my father, or my grandmother, or (later) my former wife. And of course I did eventually figure out that I could actually USE the rake and still think profound thoughts, although for safety’s sake I tried to draw the line at tools with sharp edges or mechanical equipment.

And at the end of the day, I actually ended up raking a lot more of the leaves yesterday than I’d planned to, since as it turns out I’m ALSO one of those tormented souls who can’t really stand to see any unraked leaves lying around either, especially once I’ve started to rake them up. I’m getting better about it, of course, especially now that I’m back in therapy. But like a lot of folks, I still generally prefer to finish what I start, even when in the greater scheme of things I know it’s really not that important that I do. And this sometimes also leads to a reluctance to begin something I’m not sure I’m going to be able to finish, even though I understand perfectly well that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step....


Last Sunday (and really for a good deal of the past year) I spoke again about the essential relationship between Gratitude and Generosity: how our feelings of thankfulness for the many blessings we have received in life, including the gift of life itself, both inspire us and in many ways obligate us to share those blessings with others in creative, generative ways. These “debts of gratitude” are what bind us together in community, as members of an interdependent network of mutual accountability and support which forms the foundation of civil society itself.

And now today I want to explore this concept a little more deeply by looking at two other sets of interrelated values which, together, round out my own understanding of the life of Faith, and what it means to be a person of Faith, living within a Faith Community. But perhaps I ought to start out just by talking a little again about the idea of “Faith” itself. Faith is often understood (or perhaps I should say misunderstood) as “a Belief in Things We Know Aren’t True.” Yet a more accurate definition might be something like “trust” or “confidence” -- in other words, a belief in something we know we can’t prove, but also know in our heart of hearts is true anyway, and are therefore willing act confidently on that belief trusting that things will turn out the way we expect them to.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kirkegaard called this attitude the “leap of faith,” while Harvard psychologist William James wisely observed that often our own confidence can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, allowing us to accomplish difficult tasks where others failed simply because of their own self-doubt. And this is a very different proposition from the kind of “wishful thinking” that often passes for faith, which tells us that that individuals can achieve anything they dream, if only they believe it hard enough.

Yet there are also many times in life when we are asked to take things “on faith” -- not because we can verify for ourselves the truth of what we are being told, but because we are confident of the trustworthiness of the person who is encouraging us to “keep the faith.” And this is what makes Faith such a delicate matter, because once Trust has been broken it is very difficult to have confidence in that person ever again. Learning how to keep faith with others, by defending our own trustworthiness so that others can always be confident of us and of what we say, is at the heart of becoming an authentic person of faith, as well as a responsible member of a faith community.

Trustworthiness, Gratitude, and Generosity all might be thought of as “inner” virtues, in that they originate out of our own experience of living, and then are expressed in our interactions with other people. But there is a second, similar set of virtues which are much more relational in nature, and these are Compassion, Understanding, and Forgiveness. Compassion is literally the capacity to “suffer with” -- an ability to feel the pain of someone else as if it were your own. Compassion is a feeling of sympathy, which combines with our feelings of Generosity and Gratitude in order to create the intuitive basis of humanity’s most basic ethical principle, the so-called “Golden Rule” to “do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

Understanding takes this principle a step further, from feeling to thinking. Understanding is more than just the ability to put yourself in the other guy’s shoes, it’s also an ability to see the world through their eyes as well -- to step outside the limitations of our own personal experiences and familiar worldview, and to imagine intellectually how the world looks from a perspective different than our own. This ability to Understand is obviously increased by good communication -- by the open and honest exchange of information and experiences -- and also simply by the willingness to consider and explore different points of view. The more open we are to listening and learning from one another, the broader our capacity for Understanding becomes.

And then there is Forgiveness. You’ve heard me before quote Albert Camus that “To understand all is to forgive all,” but sometimes that process works just as well in the opposite direction. Sometimes we simply need to learn to forgive one another on general principles -- to look beyond the shortcomings of those who may have hurt or offended us, and to let go of our natural desire to balance accounts and settle old scores, in order to make mutual understanding possible, and avoid additional ill will in the future. Understanding naturally generates Forgiveness, but Forgiveness can just as easily generate Understanding, if only we are willing to take that first great leap.

At the heart of all three of these “relational virtues” of Compassion, Understanding, and Forgiveness is the capacity for Empathy, which is perhaps most easily described as simply a basic, fundamental “gut” awareness that other people have feelings too, and there is a lot more to the “real world” than merely our own appetites, ambitions, and desires. To my mind, Empathy is probably the single most important thing we need to teach our children, and also the single most important quality we need to cultivate continuously within ourselves.

Individuals who lack the capacity for empathy are technically known as sociopaths; and yet often times it seems as though our society itself rewards those individuals who are most ruthlessly and single-mindedly focused on their own personal ambition and self-interest to the exclusion of everything else, and that the pressure of competing with those who care for nothing or no one other than themselves forces us into the position of “looking out for Number One” as well. The Scripture cautions us “what does it profit a human being to gain the whole world and lose their own soul?” And yet a society which so ruthlessly separates its members into “winners” and “losers,” in the struggle simply to keep body and soul together, can easily distract us from this lesson, and focus our attention in a different direction.

But I’d like to suggest that this particular characterization of competition is both misdirected, and ultimately self-destructive. Our competitors may well be our rivals and our opponents, but they are not necessarily our enemies -- rather, they are also in many ways our partners, who challenge us to become better and to improve ourselves by pushing us to higher and higher standards of performance. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a race to the bottom. Properly understood, competition can also inspire us to ever greater levels of accomplishment and achievement.

These two weekends around Thanksgiving are sometimes known as “Rivalry Week” -- it’s the time of the season when High School and College football teams typically square off against their traditional neighboring opponents, and when you’ve attended as many schools as I have, you can always find someone to root for this time of year. And with the notable exception of “The Game” between Harvard and Yale, my teams all did pretty well this year; but what I really want to talk about is something I noticed about the interviews with these young athletes which take place after the game. You almost never hear the victorious players bad mouthing their opponents, or boasting about their own superiority. Rather, they tend to talk about all the hard work which lead up to their success, and the two words which come up again and again are Discipline and Sacrifice -- two words which contain obvious religious connotations.

Discipline is basically the practice of being a Disciple: the rigorous, organized, and focused lifestyle of becoming a profoundly committed and devoted learner. And Sacrifice means literally to “make sacred” -- to willingly give up something of value to ourselves in support of a more important purpose. It is through the addition of these virtues of Discipline and Sacrifice that we transform ourselves from mere “Generous and Compassionate Understanding Souls” into real Philanthropists, whose love for our fellow human beings is transformed, through devoted commitment, into truly effective “Labors of Love.”


So, Discipline and Sacrifice. Compassion, Understanding, and Forgiveness. Empathy, and Trustworthiness. Gratitude and Generosity. I know, the list keeps getting longer and longer. But who ever said that becoming a “Faith-Filled Soul” was going to be easy? It’s work, hard work. But unlike so much of the work we do, like raking leaves and washing dishes and taking out the garbage, it is work truly worthy of our close attention and best efforts. And yes it’s also true that we don’t often end up with that satisfying pile of raked leaves at the end of our efforts. The rewards of this “Labor of Love” are often slow to accumulate and difficult to see.

Yet if we are truly honest with ourselves, and keep faith with one another; if we reach out to others in Compassion, Understanding and Forgiveness, and Generously express our Gratitude for this gift of life itself; if we cultivate the Discipline and are willing to make the Sacrifices that will guarantee that our “leap of faith” is successful, then the benefits to both ourselves and to the world will literally be immeasurable.


READING: A Wonderful Message by George Carlin

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. ; We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips , disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...


Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for some day that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

DEBTS OF GRATITUDE...

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday November 19th, 2006


In the summer of 1980, just before the start of my final year of Divinity School, I learned what has turned out to be perhaps the most important lesson about ministry that I have ever learned at any time in my life. But after two very comfortable years in the bosom of Harvard Student Housing, I finally had to give up my cozy little room in Divinity Hall to make room for an incoming student, and move out into the “real” world of the Cambridge rental housing market.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t really afford even a small studio apartment of my own, didn’t own a stick of furniture to put in one either, for that matter; and was really at something of a loss for what I was going to do, until finally, through the help of some friends, I was able to find a vacant room on the campus of the nearby Episcopal Divinity School, which not only I could afford, but which also came with a meal plan.

The only problem was, the Episcopalians wanted the entire amount for a year’s room and board IN ADVANCE, and I didn’t have it. So I went to my field education supervisor, Rhys Williams, to ask whether the church might be willing to consider advancing me the entire amount of my meager student minister stipend for the year, so that I could have a place to live. I figured it was kind of a long shot, but I didn’t really have any other options...so I went to Rhys, and I explained my situation, and what he did next kinda surprised me.

He didn’t talk to the church treasurer, or take my request to the Standing Committee for a vote. Instead, he took out a checkbook from his desk drawer and wrote out a check to me personally for the entire amount. And then he told me not to worry, that the church would continue to pay me my regular stipend every month just as they had for the past two years. And when I tried to explain to him that I wasn’t sure I would be able to pay him back, he explained to me that no doubt in the course of my own ministry there would come times when someone else would be sitting in my office expressing a similar sort of need, and that if I had the resources at my disposal I should help that person just as he had helped me.

Now as far as I’m concerned, this story could easily be my entire message for this morning; but I want you all to feel like you’re getting your money’s worth, so let me elaborate a little. Today’s sermon on “Debts of Gratitude” and next week’s message on “Labors of Love” are linked together, at least in my own mind, around a common and culturally pervasive economic metaphor which seems to understand the world as some sort of “marketplace,” in which our lives are simply (or basically) a long string of “transactions” through which we attempt to exchange things of value for other things of value in an on-going effort to acquire things of increasingly greater worth.

But setting aside for a moment the unasked (and therefor unanswered) question of What IS “Truly Worthy” of being “Valued,” it’s intuitive to assume within the context of this metaphor that being in someone’s debt is something to be avoided. Indebtedness has a negative connotation in the marketplace: it is, after all, a commitment to repay past considerations with future favors, an obligation which binds us to return value with interest. No one is really supposed to LIKE being in debt; or at the very least, it would seem much more preferable to have others indebted to us, rather than the other way around.

Yet these social networks of mutual obligation are in many ways what bind human beings together as a society. And understanding this principle, one also realizes that it is often far easier to initiate a new relationship by allowing the other person to do you a small favor, which then places you in their debt, thus allowing you an opportunity to return the favor at a later time, reinforcing the reciprocal connection between you.

The indigenous, aboriginal peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast near where I grew up practiced this principle of reciprocal obligation to a remarkable degree, through a custom known as “Potlatch,” -- a practice which so upset the Christian missionaries among them that they eventually convinced the Canadian government to pass a law against it. A potlatch was a celebration, a party hosted by a prosperous family, during which they literally gave away everything they possessed to the other members of their village, thus acquiring immeasurable amounts of prestige and social influence in exchange.

The missionaries saw this custom as wasteful and improvident, because it seemed so contrary to traditional European commercial values like thrift, industry and frugality. Yet the New Testament itself also contains some very provocative teachings about debt and the nature of indebtedness, not the least of which can be found at the heart of the Lord’s prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are indebted to us.” The Greek word ofeilhmata means literally “that which is owed” or “that which is due,” and in Luke’s gospel at least it is explicitly equated with the forgiveness of sin or armartia which in this context is probably best understood as a “missed” obligation or unfulfilled duty owed to God.

But then in the very next section of that chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus shares this parable: “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be open for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be open. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone; or if he asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?...”

When I first read this passage many years ago, I basically thought it was saying “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Even if somebody is your friend, they aren’t too likely to get up in the middle of the night to give you something just so that you can entertain someone who is (to them, at least) a stranger. But if you just keep pounding on their door long enough and hard enough they will eventually get up and give you what you want, just to make you go away, even though they aren’t too likely to stay friends with you for very much longer.

But now (thanks to my expensive seminary education) I’ve come to see that it is the urgency of the NEED that evokes the response: the obligation to provide hospitality to someone who arrives at YOUR door hungry and in the middle of the night is what justifies your persistence, and in turn elicits the generous response from your neighbor.

There’s another story about debt, this time from the Gospel of Matthew, that made an even stronger impression upon me when I was young. In it Jesus tells his disciple Peter that “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him in prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you? And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt....”

It didn’t really take a Harvard education to figure out what THAt parable meant (although it was nice to be able to look at the footnotes in my study Bible, and learn that a denarus was equal to about a day’s wage for a common laborer, while a single talent was worth about 5,000 denarii, or roughly fifteen YEARS wages). And while I am still a little curious about how a common slave could run up a debt of ten thousand talents in the first place, it is the relationship between debt and bondage, freedom and forgiveness that is most intriguing to me now. The complex connections between debt and reciprocal obligation, servitude, forgiveness, and liberation, are well-explored themes throughout the Bible. They are central not only to the teachings of the Gospels, but also to the story of the Exodus from Egypt, and were important as well to the self-understanding of the Pilgrims who came to the New World, whose gratitude for their survival in the face of terrible hardship we commemorate on Thanksgiving Day.

There is a profound irony at the heart of the human condition, that often the liberty of a privileged few is purchased and maintained only at the expense of the servitude of others, who typically share in relatively few of the benefits produced by their service. For example, academic historians have quietly acknowledged for years that the freedom and prosperity which allowed Mr. Jefferson to declare that “all men are created equal” was generated by the labor of his African slaves, and that this same economic arrangement was in a larger sense true of American prosperity in general, even for people like the mill operators of Lowell, whose mechanical looms spun raw cotton into cloth, even though they themselves did not directly own slaves.

Somewhat more recently and closer to home, author Caitlin Flanagan has argued in an essay that first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly that the modern feminist movement was both made possible and necessary by Globalization and a related influx of cheap immigrant labor here to the United States, which not only produced a ready supply of low-paid nannies and housekeepers, but also created the need for two-income households in order to replace the loss of “family wage” manufacturing jobs which have now moved “off-shore.”

It’s a complex equation, and I don’t honestly know what the answer is. How does one fairly distinguish between the honest, well-deserved rewards earned through the hard highly-skilled work of a talented few, and the outright exploitation of the relatively powerless, unfortunate and desperately-needy souls who work themselves to death without ever seeing even a fraction of the wealth generated by the products produced by their own hands? Where is the justice, and the equity, in this equation? How do we balance these accounts?

You don’t have to be from an underdeveloped, third world country in order to know the servitude of debt peonage. I’m confident there are people right here in this community who are wearing “golden handcuffs” -- people whose mortgages, car payments, credit cards, educational loans for themselves or their children trap them in jobs and lifestyles they might not otherwise have chosen for themselves. Even the very wealthy are not nearly so free as we like to imagine they are, while the lure of the things which money can buy can easily tempt us in to obligations we might not otherwise have assumed. How much money does someone really need before they can consider themselves “independently wealthy?” And are any of us ever truly financially “secure?”

I’m not suggesting that it isn’t possible; I’m just saying that, as a minister, I don’t really have that much first-hand experience of the subject. I tend to lean a lot more in the Thoreauvian direction of the equation, of measuring my wealth by the things I can afford to leave alone. The principle of Voluntary Simplicity -- of “downsizing” our lifestyles in order to free ourselves from the burdens of debt and the financial obligations of the marketplace, is an increasingly popular alternative to the never-ending pursuit of more and more. But there are limitations to this approach as well. Is it every entirely possible to become truly independent of the marketplace? Is complete self-reliance, and self-sufficiency, even desirable, much less plausible?

But just suppose that we should instead decide, either as individuals or as a society, to pursue a third way. That rather than seeking a financial independence that, more often than not, is more promise and illusion than tangible good, we decided instead to invest in Community, to create a network of mutual interdependence and reciprocal obligation that is both valuable and worthwhile in its own right, in that it truly embodies more worthy values than the mere acquisition of personal wealth. This is the path that many of the world’s wealthiest individuals, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, have already chosen to follow. How would our own lives look different if we too chose to honor this debt of gratitude, and embrace this labor of love?

We’ll continue to explore these questions next week. But for now I would like to leave you with the words of Peter Raible, with which I opened the service.

"We build on foundations, we did not lay.
We warm ourselves at fires, we did not light.
We sit in the shade of trees, we did not plant.
We drink from wells, we did not dig.
We profit from persons, we did not know.
We are ever bound [together] in community."


READING: “A Bounty of People” by Max Coots

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people.

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.

Let us give thanks;

For generous friends...with hearts...and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends, as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;

For crotchety friends, sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes;

And serious friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.

For all these we give thanks.

LOOKING BACKWARD, LIVING FORWARD

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at The First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 22nd, 2006

OPENING WORDS: American preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white and blue myth. You have to expose, and confront, the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion and caring of most American people, and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them. This is not easy among people who really believe that their country does nothign but good, but it is necessary, not only for their future, but for us all. -- Peter Storey, former president of the Methodist Church of South Africa.

***

So just in case you arrived late to church, or were sleeping through the first part of the service, today really is my actual 50th birthday. It was fifty years ago today, at approximately this time in the morning (although three time zones to the west of here) that my mother gave birth to me at Ballard General Hospital in Seattle, after what I’m told was NOT an easy labor. And yes, this also really is the 575th sermon of my career (or at least the 575th sermon that I can document -- there may have actually been a few others that have now slipped my mind and been justifiably forgotten). But I thought it was so precious last Sunday when I shared this information during the Moment for All Ages, and young Roy Watson looked up at me in astonishment and asked “the same one?”

In any case, I’ve certainly had plenty of time to think about what I wanted to say here this morning, and plenty of previous material to draw on. And yet, when it actually came time to write it all out, rather than sitting down in front of my computer and staring for a few hours at a blinking cursor, I decided to put Parker on her leash and take a little walk through this “City in the Woods” that has been our home now for a little more than three years.

First we walked down Church Street and past the ball fields, where I ran into Dick and Carolyn Shohet on their way to watch their granddaughter play soccer, and then of course I also ran into Nancy and Rick, as well as Mark Szezesniak (and I’m guessing that his daughter was somewhere out on the field too, although I didn’t see her). I know there are a lot of folks here in town who aren’t really that keen about having a ball field right across the street from their homes, but for my part I love it.... I would much rather have young athletes cutting through my back yard than a bear, for instance... and I’m especially looking forward to the new outdoor basketball courts the RecCom is planning to build where the tennis courts are now (assuming, of course, that they can finally get their ballot measure passed in a couple of weeks).

And then we kept walking on down the hill to the Green Cemetery, where Parker and I used to walk quite a bit when we first moved to Carlisle, but not quite so much any more. Now when we go to the cemetery I always find myself drawn to the graves of people I’ve buried there. Dot Clark’s daughter Betty, for example, who is buried next to her father Guy on the opposite side from her brother Bill, with just enough space left over in the middle for Dot herself someday (although hopefully not any day soon).

Or James Deacon, who was only 41 at the time of his death, and whose grave is marked by a polished black monolith engraved with the words “Death lies on him like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field,” and has a small statute of a sleeping dog curled up in front of it.

And of course, Jeanne Rourk, who I got to know so well in the last year of her life, and who gave me that great advice to “buy the red convertible.” I haven’t followed her advice yet, but maybe now that I’m fifty I will.

And then we walked back up the hill, and down the trail behind the parsonage to the library (where Parker always likes to get in a good sniff for bears), and then back up past the Common here to the front of FRS, just so I could take yet another good look at the reason I came to these woods in the first place, this “spiritual home in the heart of Carlisle” where I serve as the Parish Minister.

And I hope you all appreciate that even though it may seem like I talk an awful lot about myself up here (especially on a day like today), these sermons aren’t really about me at all. And they aren’t really about you either -- they’re about US: this community of faith where I am charged with the profound responsibility of trying to share things I have learned in fifty years of life and twenty-five years of ministry which might somehow be beneficial to some of you as well.

I know I can’t please all of the people all of the time. But I do have faith that if you stick around long enough, you will eventually hear something you think is worthwhile. Emerson once wrote that “The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life--life passed through the fire of thought.” This is what I do for a living...and believe me, it’s not nearly so easy as I try to make it look.

As I tried explaining to the kids last week, there comes a point in all our lives where we stop thinking so much about getting gifts on special occasions like our birthdays, and start thinking instead about the gifts we have to give, the best of which always come out of the essence of our own lives. It’s just like when we were kids ourselves, and people would ask us what we want to be when we grow up.

And then at some point we realize we ARE grown up, and have to start figuring out what it is we’ve become...even though most days we may still be feeling pretty “young at heart,” despite the evidence of our reflection in the mirror or the aches and pains of increasing age. And at this point in my life, I’ve been a minister for so long that it’s hard for me to imagine doing anything else... or perhaps more accurately, that I would ever stop BEING a minister no matter what I choose to do....

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the ways I’ve been celebrating this milestone in my life is taking advantage of various opportunities open to me for personal and professional development. And this last August I had a chance to spend two days down at the Center for Career Development and Ministry in Dedham, where I learned lots of interesting new things about myself and my ministry.

This is actually the third time I’ve been through a program like this. I went once when I was still in my twenties, in preparation for my ordination; and then again when I was in my mid-thirties, a few years before starting my Ph.D., when I was feeling a little burnt out by ministry and considering a change of careers. This last time was probably the most interesting though. Here are just a few of the things I learned.

First, my Myers-Briggs type has changed from the previous times I’ve taken the test, from Introverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiver to Introverted Intuitive FEELING Perceiver...which I’m sure means nothing to those of you who aren’t familiar with the MBTI, but which I take to mean that, in twenty-five years of parish ministry, I have finally given up on trying to figure it all out, and have learned instead that there are times when you simply have to trust your gut and follow your heart.

My Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory profile was also kind of interesting. This is a test I’m sure many of you are familiar with, since I think in one form or another it’s been a staple of High School Guidance Counselors since before I was born. This is that test where they ask you to answer a series of questions, such as whether you would rather milk a cow or fly a jet, and then at the end of several hundred of these they tell you whether you should enlist in the Air Force or stay home on the farm....

Ministers tend to have high scores in the “Social/Helping” area (which I do), and in the past I’ve also scored high on both the “Analytical/Investigative” and “Enterprising/Influencing” scales...which is why I was interested in earning a Ph.D. in the first place, and also why I tend to be just a little more entrepreneurial than most parish ministers (believe it or not).

But this last time I took the test, my “Artistic/Creative” scores were four times higher than my next highest scale, which was something brand new, and which probably explains why I’ve noticed that my sermons have actually gotten a lot more subtle and carefully-crafted over the years, as well as something I’m really looking forward now to exploring in even greater depth.

But the most interesting insight to come out of this process was that somehow in the past 25 years, the naive youthful idealism which initially called me into ministry has somehow been replaced by a wise and mature cynicism.

Not Realism.

Cynicism.

This was a big surprise for me, notwithstanding my admiration for the original Cynic, Diogenes of Sinope, and his 19th century imitator, Henry David Thoreau, who was sometimes known in his own day as “The Diogenes of Concord.”

H.L. Mencken once described cynics as people “who, when [they] smell flowers, start looking around for a coffin,” while an idealist is someone “who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that they will also make better soup.” I’ve certainly seen plenty of coffins in my time; it’s something that pretty much comes with the job. But I’ve never been tempted to make soup out of roses, even when I’ve bothered to take the time to smell them.

The word “cynic” in Greek means “dog;” and Diogenes once said that he was “called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals” (which doesn’t really sound like such a bad job description for a minister, actually). I once wrote an entire sermon about him, entitled “It’s a Dog’s Life;” and if you Google it you may even be able to find it somewhere on the web, since I’ve preached it in a lot of places over the years.

But today I want to go in a little different direction. You see, I don’t really mind the fact that my youthful naiveté has been replaced by a more mature wisdom. Ever since I was just a kid, I’ve always aspired to be “wise beyond my years,” and now apparently I don’t have to worry about it any more. But it bothers me a lot that my idealism has apparently gone missing along with my naiveté. Because I’m wise enough to know that you’re never too old to be an idealist...even if one has grown a little cynical about it as well.

Idealists are basically people for whom Ideas are somehow more real and important than “what is.” They are Dreamers, who are sometimes dismissed as “unrealistic,” but who are capable of imagining new possibilities rather than simply seeing only the limitations of our present reality, and whose vision is often essential to leading us forward to places we’ve never been before. And cynics, I’ve often thought, are only “wounded” idealists; individuals who have seen good ideas crash and burn so frequently and routinely that they’ve grown skeptical, disappointed, and discouraged, and perhaps lost confidence in the power of a dream.

Of course, that was before I discovered that I am a cynic myself. Now I’m not really sure what I think. But I still believe that if we can just find the courage to trust our guts and follow our hearts, they will eventually lead us to something new and amazing, even if we can’t really see it clearly at the moment.

There’s one more thing I’d like to talk about this morning, and then we can all go downstairs and celebrate my birthday together. But I used to think that parish ministry was all about skills and credentials -- what I Knew and what I could Do to lead a church, as an institution, closer to the fulfillment of its mission. But over the years I’ve come to see that ministry is really a lot more about a relationship with a group of people -- a congregation -- who “congregate” together around their minister in the hope of receiving both inspiration and guidance, and who are hopefully satisfied more often than they are disappointed. And let me tell you, this is a lot harder than simply earning a few college degrees and knowing the latest techniques for evangelism and stewardship (or what in the “real world” would be known as marketing and finance).

And yet. the things that make ministry most challenging are also ultimately what make it most rewarding. Ministry is about helping people to get to know themselves a little bit better, and then encouraging them to use that knowledge to follow their dreams, to help others as they have been helped, and to make the world a better place for everyone in the process. And in this respect, we ALL become ministers of this church, whenever we congregate here together to guide and inspire one another.

According to the experts who study these things, a “serviceable pastoral relationship” essentially embodies four qualities, which together make the relationship possible. No minister is ever going to meet all of the expectations of all of their parishioners, and anyone naively idealistic enough to try will find themselves cynics soon enough. But attention to these four qualities make a serviceable relationship possible, even when we take it for granted that the Perfect Pastor is simply a figment of our imaginations.

The first of these qualities is Personal Integrity. Integrity is basically a function of knowing your own limits, and remaining true to yourself...of recognizing the boundary where you leave off and another person begins, and respecting those boundaries rather than compromising them. A boundary is not always a barrier between two entities -- it is also the place where they meet and come together as neighbors. And like the lines down the center of a highway, clear and healthy boundaries delineate the spaces which allow us to function safely and effectively together as a community.

The second quality is Trustworthiness. No one can compel another person to trust them. But they can attempt to earn that trust, by endeavoring always to behave in a trustworthy manner. Mutual Trust is essential to a serviceable pastoral relationship -- because if you can’t trust your minister, who CAN you trust? Yet as we see so often in the news these days, not all ministers are always worthy of that trust; and from time to time every minister is only human (although generally not on purpose). Many people in this suspicious age of ours find it difficult to trust anyone at all, which makes the challenge of establishing trust sometimes seem all but impossible. But the commitment to behaving in a trustworthy manner at least opens the door, and invites the other person to step safely inside.

The third quality is Spiritual Authenticity. A long robe like this one will cover a multitude of sins, and this is generally considered a good thing, since none of us is perfect -- and ministers often feel like we have to give up a good deal of ourselves in order to truly BE a minister. But there also needs to be a real person underneath the robe, who can understand and empathize with the real life concerns of other real people.

We are all spiritual beings, whether we recognize it or not. We all have questions about matters great and small which we will never fully understand; we all wrestle with issues of value and meaning and purpose for which absolute certainty is simply a comforting delusion. But authentic comfort comes not so much from the quality of our answers, but from the sincerity with which we approach the questions. And this sincerity is the source of an authentic spirituality, which not only acknowledges the difficulty of the questions, but also accepts and embraces both our personal shortcomings and the limitations of our answers, and still retains the ability to live life in the midst of the uncertainties.

This brings me to the final quality, which is a Humble, Confident Authority. This is perhaps the most difficult and challenging thing on the list, which is why I left it for last. But let’s face facts. It takes a lot of chutzpah to stand up here Sunday after Sunday, 25-30 times a year, year after year, 575 times total in my lifetime (so far), on the arrogant assumption that one has something to say that is actually worth listening to.

And yet, I could not do this job at all without a profound sense of humility regarding my own inadequacy for the task. It is only by bringing these two things together that I can find my own, unique “authorial” voice -- that I can find the courage to “speak the truth in love” (according to my own best understanding of it), both in gratitude for the many blessings and opportunities and advantages I have received, and in a spirit of generosity which shares willingly and openly whatever small wisdom my maturity may have brought me.

These four qualities: Personal Integrity, Trustworthiness, Spiritual Authenticity, and a Humble, Confident Authority grounded in sentiments of Gratitude and Generosity, are what make a serviceable pastoral relationship possible. But I hope you’ve also realized by now that they are NOT reserved for clergy alone. Rather, they are the qualities which make relationships possible, and make congregations vital and dynamic; which allow us to create profoundly meaningful communities of faith, and which drive out cynicism and restore idealism in a world too often wounded by disappointment and failure, skepticism and discouragement, and which desperately needs to be reminded of the forgotten power of a shared dream.

These are some of the things that I have learned in the first half-century of my lifetime. And I hope to be able to go on preaching them for another twenty-five years....


****

READING:

I have something a little unusual for the reading today. But this past week I received very lovely birthday cards from my parents, and I thought I’d share them with all of you this morning. I feel very fortunate that both of my parents are still living (although not with one another). My Dad, as many of you know, has remarried and lives in Sacramento California; while my Mom now lives right on the beach on Camano Island in Washington State, in the house my Grandmother built in the 1960’s to replace the one that had burned down during the Depression. And if Global Warming doesn’t get it first, I hope someday to live there too (in fact, you’ll hear a little in my mother’s card about the bulkhead between her house and the ocean).

But I do feel lucky, especially since I know so many people my own age (or even younger) who have already lost one or both of their parents...including a lot of people right here in this room. I attribute my own good fortune to good genes (which I hope I share), relatively clean living, and the fact that both my parents were still relatively young themselves when they became my parents. In fact, I’m told I was conceived during Finals Week of the Fall Semester of my mother’s Senior Year of college (which explains a lot, if you stop to think about it). In any event, I’ll begin with her card.


Dear Tim

So the big 50th birthday has arrived. When I got there, I thought the whole world would certainly stop in its tracks, but nothing at all changed. This was true of 60 + 70 as well, so I guess I’m pretty unimportant in the big scheme of things.

Hope your life is going well. I know you must be pretty busy with the start of the new church year. I enjoy your church bulletin. The church has lots of interesting things happening.

We have a higher dike now, and the new grass I planted up there is green and beautiful. Brian + Barbara + I all did the work at the same time. We were lucky with the weather -- Today is really the first cold + rainy day of autumn.

I’ve been talking to contractors about our bathroom remodel. It should be finished while I’m away for a quilting conference. May get up your way afterwards, if I can work it out. Love, Mom


Happy Birthday! Tim

I looked at all of the “50” cards and decided that they really aren’t “on target.” Turning 50 really isn’t funny and 50 isn’t really old. In fact, the way things have changed in recent years, I’m not so sure that the new cliché shouldn’t be “Life begins at 50.” Hopefully, by 50 one has all of the “stupid mistakes” they are going to make behind them and can focus on utilizing all of their meaningful experiences on having a healthy happy life. I certainly hope that is the case for you, because you have certainly “earned” the right to benefit in the future from all of the effort and hard work you have put in in the past.

I wish I had better words to express how proud I am of you and how much I love you! Dad.

A DIFFERENT WAY OF DOING CHURCH

a sermon preached by the Rev Dr Tim W Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 15th, 2006


I once heard a story about an earnest young county extension agent, just out of Ag School, who was eager to teach all of the farmers in surrounding area the latest techniques of scientific agriculture. There was one old-timer in particular, one of those irascible white-haired Scandinavian bachelor farmers, who’d been doing things just the way his grandfathers had done them for as long as anyone could remember, that this young man was especially eager to win over. He tried sending him letters, and then calling him on the telephone... and eventually he just started driving out to the farm in person, where early one morning he finally caught up with the old-timer out behind the barn repairing his tractor.

Astonished by his good luck, the Extension Agent immediately started to describe with great enthusiasm all of the new scientific techniques he’d learned about in college. But the farmer just started shaking his head.

“It’s no good, sonny” the old-timer said. “I already know how to farm better than I do....”


I love this story for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because it reminds me that things are often a lot simpler than they appear, and that “success” (however we may choose to define that term for ourselves) often comes not so much from innovation as from a commitment to excellence. It’s not just a matter of learning how to do the latest thing, but rather remembering to do the things we already know HOW to do just a little bit better than we are doing them at the moment. Innovation can be good too, especially when it contributes to excellence... but we don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make certain that our tires are all inflated to the proper levels, correctly balanced and aligned in the same direction. And we certainly don’t have to have the latest GPS technology simply in order to figure out where it is we WANT to go.

Churches can often be like this. When you stop to think about it, “church” really hasn’t changed all that much in the past 2000 years. It’s still mostly about singing, and praying, and preaching, and breaking bread together. Worship, Education, Fellowship, Community Outreach and Pastoral Care (or what the old-timers would have called “evangelism” and “ministry”) -- five basic things that good churches all know how to do well, and struggling churches sometimes lose sight of, as they glance around the landscape looking for something new and innovative that will restore them to their good old “Glory Days.” It’s a very common situation, and not just in churches either. In any human activity, Complacency is often the offspring of Success, which in turn sows the seeds that form the roots of subsequent decline.

Of course, I’m not really sure it helps matters much that clergy are often a lot like that enthusiastic young County Extension Agent I was talking about earlier, always eager to embrace the latest innovation that comes down the pipeline from On High. I think UU ministers in particular like to think of ourselves as being part of the theological avant garde, out there on the “cutting edge” in terms of applying the timeless wisdom of the ages to the problems and challenges of contemporary society in fresh and innovative ways. So it’s easy for us to overlook that sometimes all people really want to hear is that Yes, life is often hard, but still it’s pretty good; and that God (or whatever passes for God these days) still loves us, and is still responsible for everything that is; and that our neighbors are basically pretty decent folks as well, despite their many obvious shortcomings, all of which we are generally well aware of, because we also share them simply by virtue of our own humanity.

In any event, it would be natural to assume from the title of today’s sermon, “A Different Way of Doing Church,” that I was planning to talk about something new and innovative this morning. But actually I want to talk about something tried and true, which probably goes back to the earliest days of religion itself (even if we do keep reinventing it in new and innovative ways in the attempt to keep it fresh and cutting edge). But as you already know, this month we are starting up a new Small Group Ministries program here at FRS. Small Group Ministries (capital “S,” capital “G,” capital “M”) are a relatively new and increasingly popular program in many Unitarian Universalist churches around the country these days. Sometimes known as “Chalice Circles” or “Covenant Groups,” they provide an opportunity for people to meet together once a month in groups of 8 to 10, either here at the church or in someone’s home, simply to talk with one another in a meaningful and intentional way about topics that are ultimately important to us all.

But small group ministries (small “s” small “g” small “m”) have been a staple of religious life from time immemorial. In fact, in many ways small “fellowship circles” are the building blocks out of which larger religious communities are built. The Choir. WomenSpirit. The Men’s Monthly Breakfast. The Green’s Sale Committee. And so on and so on and so on. Just about any group in church can become a fellowship circle, provided that it gives individuals enough time together that they are able to create significant, meaningful and authentic relationships with one another that go beyond a mere passing acquaintance.

A Covenant Group is just like that, only by design. In Covenant Groups, individuals intentionally promise one another (which is to say, they form a covenant) that they will meet together regularly for a given period of time for the specific purpose of creating significant, authentic, meaningful relationships intended to deepen and enrich the spiritual lives of everyone in the group. And in this respect, they truly are “a different way of doing church” -- a church which receives its inspiration from the ground up, rather than from the top down.

Unitarian Universalist Covenant Groups have a very unusual family tree, which can be traced back in two very different directions. The most obvious ancestors of this current generation of “Chalice Circles” are actually the “cell ministries” popular in Korean Christian megachurches, which were imported into this country by graduates of the evangelical Church Growth Institute at the conservative Fuller Theological Seminary in California, and then “borrowed” and modified by a handful of innovative UU ministers for use in our denomination about a decade ago. Some of these original Korean megachurches, such as the Yoido Full Gospel Assembly of God Church in Seoul, have over 700,000 members and approximately 25,000 “home cell groups” which meet regularly for prayer and Bible study.

But the more intriguing ancestor of Unitarian Universalist Covenant Groups are the “Basic Christian Communities” developed by Latin American Liberation Theologians among Roman Catholic compesinos in Central and South America. These basic communities also had their origin as Bible Study groups, but they also quickly evolved into “Bases” for Community Organizing and Political Activism among peasant villages whose needs were often overlooked or forgotten by a church hierarchy closely affiliated with the ruling elites. The “Base Community” concept came into the United States as part of the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980’s, where (as you might imagine) it quickly found a sympathetic home among politically active religious liberals of all denominational affiliations.

And yet, for both Religious Liberals and Evangelical Conservatives, “small group ministry” was not so much an alternative to traditional congregational life as it was a supplement and an enhancement to it. Just as distinct local parishes and congregations of whatever theological tradition all come together on some spiritual level to form “the Church Universal” -- each one of them doing God’s work as they understand it for their particular constituency of believers and seekers -- small group ministries might be thought of as the “cells” which make up the “body” of the church. Because even though it may be possible to be “spiritual” by yourself, it takes at least two or three souls to “be” a church. According to Roman Catholic theologian Fr. James O’Halloren, Church is a place that accepts us as we are, challenges us to grow, and creates an environment conducive to that growth. And small group ministries, of one form or another, are perhaps the most basic environment in which this process takes place.

Let me briefly explain again how our Small Group Ministry program works at FRS. The first thing you have to do is sign up for a group. We now have three groups to start out with: one group will meet on the 3rd Wednesday of every month (beginning next week) at 9:30 AM at Alison Saylor’s house, and is facilitated by Alison Saylor and Michael Dundorf. A second group will meet on the fourth Monday (beginning October 23rd) at 7:00 pm here at the church, and is facilitated by Ellen and Ernie Huber. And the third group will meet on the fourth Tuesday (beginning October 24th), also at 7:00 pm, and is facilitated by Steve Kirk and Bob Luoma, and will meet in one of their homes. Or if none of these times will work for you, you can also sign up for “option D” which means that you’re interested in joining a new group that will meet at a time and place still to be determined.

Once you’ve signed up, you also have to commit to showing up. This is really important, because the only way these groups really work is if everyone can count on everyone else being there. Obviously, sometimes things come up that keep us from keeping our commitments, and those things can’t really be helped. But the basic rule is that participation in the group is a priority, and that anything other than a real emergency gets scheduled around it. When I was part of a group of Unitarian ministers down in Texas, we were told that the only thing that should prevent us from attending a meeting was a funeral... our OWN! As I mentioned earlier, Small Group Ministries are ultimately about forming significant, meaningful, authentic relationships. And it’s hard to form a relationship with an empty chair.

You can read a lot more about the groups in the four-page Participant’s Handbook, which you’ll find near the clipboard with the sign-up sheets. But the basic format of a meeting goes like this. The participants gather in a circle around a chalice (which is why they are sometimes called “Chalice Circles”), and begin with a brief ceremony consisting of an opening reading and a chalice lighting. The next step is for group members to “check-in” with one another simply by sharing around the circle whatever important has happened in their lives since they were last together, much like we do on Sunday mornings during our “Candles of Community,” but on a slightly deeper level.

Then comes the “Topic of the Day,” which is an open discussion on a “religious” topic (broadly-defined) which has been selected in advance and is focused around a series of questions intended to evoke a thoughtful conversation. To start out with, each of the groups will be discussing the same topic at their monthly meetings, which will be selected by the group facilitators from a long list of potential topics we’ve “borrowed” from other churches. Finally, at the conclusion of the discussion there will be an opportunity for group members to briefly share their “Likes and Wishes” about the session, and a short ceremonial closing during which the chalice is extinguished.

And that’s the program. Simplicity itself, and all it takes is a commitment of a couple of hours a month. And yet I hope you can see how even among just a handful of people, participants can enjoy the experience of reverent Worship, engage in Fellowship with one another, and Educate themselves about spiritual matters simply by talking in a meaningful way about serious topics of religious significance.

But wait, there’s more! (and now I really am starting to feel like this sermon is turning into an infomercial). Because there are also aspects of Community Outreach and Pastoral Care to our Small Group Ministries program, which really DO make it a different way of doing everything else we try to do in church.

The Pastoral Care part I hope is obvious. It’s easy to get lost in a congregation of 600. It’s possible to get lost even in a congregation of 150. But there’s no way you can get lost in a Small Group of 10. If there is something significant going on in your life, the other members of your Covenant Group are going to know about it, and are going to be the first ones there to look after you, and to help gather the resources of the entire congregation to help you out.

The Community Outreach portion is a little more subtle. But as part of their mission, each Covenant Group is asked to take on one service project a year, either to the church or to the larger community. The project can be anything the members of the group decide among themselves they would like to do, large or small. But service is an essential component of the overall Small Group experience, both to remind us that service is also an essential part of our lives as people of faith, and also to prevent our Small Groups from becoming too inward-looking and self-absorbed, rather than connected to the larger community beyond our intimate circle.

I understand that life here in Carlisle can be much more busy and hectic than it was just a generation or two ago, when this truly was a sleepy little rural community of farmers, who worked long hours alone in their fields, yet craved a community church of their own, so that they could see all their neighbors on a Sunday morning, and avoid the long walk into the big city of Concord. And I truly believe that these new Small Group Ministries can help revitalize some of that community spirit as we approach our 250th year here on this hilltop. We already know how to do church better than we do. What we need is the commitment to one another, to do it as well as we know how....

***
READING: from Bonifacius or “Essays to Do Good” by Cotton Mather [1710]

WE CANNOT DISMISS this part of the subject without offering a proposal to animate and regulate private meetings of persons for the exercises of religion. It is very certain that when such private meetings have been maintained and well conducted, the Christians who have composed them have, like so many “coals of the altar,” kept one another alive, and been the means of maintaining a lively Christianity in the neighborhood. Such societies have been strong and approved instruments, to uphold the power of godliness. The disuse of such societies has been accompanied with a visible decay of religion, in proportion as they have been discontinued or disregarded in any place, the less has godliness flourished....

It is proposed that a select number of families, perhaps about twelve, agree to meet (the men and their wives) at each other’s houses alternately, once in a fortnight or a month, or otherwise, as shall be thought most proper, and spend a suitable time together in religious exercises....

The members of such a society should consider themselves as bound up in one “bundle of love,” and count themselves obliged, by very close and strong bonds, to be serviceable to one another. If anyone in the society should fall into affliction, all the rest should presently study to relieve and support the afflicted person in every possible way. If anyone should fall into temptation, the rest should watch over him, and with the “spirit of meekness,” with “meekness of wisdom” endeavor to recover him....

It is not easy to calculate the good offices which such a society may do to many other persons, besides its own members. The prayers of such well-disposed societies may fetch down marvelous favors from Heaven on their pastors; their lives may be prolonged, their gifts augmented, their graces brightened, and their labors prospered, in answer to the supplications of such associated families. The interests of religion may also be greatly promoted in the whole flock by their fervent supplications; and the Spirit of Grace mightily poured out upon the rising generation; yea, the country at large may be the better for them....

It is very certain that the devotions and conferences carried on in such a society will not only have a wonderful tendency to produce the “comforts of love” in the hearts of good men toward one another but that their ability to serve many valuable interests will also thereby be much increased....

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS ON A SUNDAY MORNING

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Neighborhood Sunday, October 1st, 2006

“We know how to create spaces that invite the intellect to show up.... We know how to create spaces that invite the emotions into play.... We know how to create spaces that invite the ego to put in an appearance.... But we know very little about creating spaces that invite the soul to make itself known, [and to do its work in our midst]” --Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness

A minister was standing at the door one Sunday, shaking hands as people left the church, when an excited little boy came running up to him and exclaimed “Reverend, when I grow up I’m going to come back here and give you a whole bunch of money!”

“Well, that’s very generous of you!” the startled minister replied. “What makes you want to do that?”

“I dunno,” said the little boy. “I guess it’s ’cause yesterday I heard my daddy tell the neighbors that you’re the poorest preacher we’ve ever had....”

OK, I don’t really know what your neighbors may have been saying about me, but I do want reassure you that whatever it is, good or bad, it’s probably only half-true. Of course, that’s kinda to be expected. We live our lives by half-truths much of the time; in many cases, it’s the best that we can do. Even when we know our own minds well enough to speak and live our own Truth with confidence, the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s place, to truly know and understand what’s on their minds (no matter how much empathy or compassion we maybefeeling), is at best an act of careful, two-way communication combined with no small degree of imagination and even outright projection.

It’s not that Truth itself changes, or that “The Truth” is in some way different for each of us. Rather, it is simply that our UNDERSTANDING of Truth (and for that matter, of one another), is always both limited, and evolving. Socrates famously declared that the reason the Oracle at Delphi considered him to be the wisest man in Athens was that he “knew that [he] knew nothing.” A certain degree of intellectual humility is, and has always been, the gateway to True Wisdom.

But just because we’re born knowing nothing doesn’t mean we have to stay that way. We all come into this world pretty much in the same condition: naked and ignorant of everything except the instinctive hunger of our own appetites. And yet even before we have drawn our first breath, “accidents of birth” begin to differentiate between “winners” and “losers,” (or perhaps more kindly and gently, between the fortunate and the less-fortunate).

Some of us are lucky enough to have been born with certain tangible (and intangible) advantages: good health; good genes; loving, prosperous, well-educated parents; American citizenship...the list is virtually unlimited once we have learned how to count our blessings. And others are born, through no fault of their own, into poverty, or with poor health, or any number of countless other afflictions which have tormented humanity from time immemorial.

And I guess the point I’m trying to make is that while good fortune is certainly nothing to be ashamed of, it’s nothing really to be especially proud of either. And yet so often when it comes to “keeping score,” we have a hard time distinguishing between the privileges of birth and the accomplishments of life, because the presence or absence of the former makes the achievements of the latter seem either absurdly easy or impossibly hard.

And yes, it’s true, that’s just the way the world is; and there’s not that much that any one of us can really do to change it. But if we are Wise, our understanding of THIS Truth can prevent us from making the terrible mistake of measuring our SELF-worth by our net worth, and teach us instead to measure our wealth according to the things we TRULY value. The Scripture tells us “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” But it seems to me that the other half of this proposition is also true: that if we simply find the courage to follow our hearts, we will discover something truly worthy of being treasured there at the end of that rainbow.

In any event, I promised you all a little “good news” this morning, and I certainly don’t intend to disappoint you. And I’m also sure that many of you here today already know that the English word “gospel” is derived from the Greek word euangelion (which is also the root of the word “evangelist”), and means, literally “a good message” or “Good News.” Yet if you were to walk up to random people on the street and ask them point blank “What IS the ‘good news’ of the Gospel?” I’ll bet you a dozen Dunkin Donuts to a day-old bran muffin that the answer you would hear most frequently (assuming you get an answer at all) would be some variation of John 3:16 -- “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

And yet, what would probably be overlooked in that conversation -- the other half of the truth, if you will -- is the fact that this well-known chapter and verse is something that one evangelist (John) had to say ABOUT Jesus, and not something that was actually ever said by Jesus himself. If you want to know what Jesus had to say on the subject, you’ll have to look at the Gospels of the other three evangelists, all three of whom tell a slightly different story in pretty much the same way (probably, my Bible professors used to tell me, because two of them were copying off of the third one’s paper).

But for Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Good News begins with the a quotation from the prophet Isaiah [40:3]: “Behold, I am sending my messenger before you, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” This is then followed by the story of John the Baptist, dressed in camel’s hair and a leather belt, surviving on locusts and wild honey, and baptizing sinners in the River Jordan. Jesus comes to be baptized, has a vision of a dove descending and hears a voice from “the heavens” quoting the Second Psalm (a story that gets more and more elaborate in each retelling, and is worthy of an entire sermon in its own right some other day), and then immediately goes out into the wilderness to fast and pray for forty days while he tries to figure out what this vision means. Jesus returns from the desert to proclaim his new message, and then afterwards calls his first two disciples, the fishermen Simon and his brother Andrew, with the same invitation he basically made to all his disciples: “stop what you’re doing, and follow me, and I will make you something different.”

But it’s the content of this “good message from the wilderness” that I want to focus on today. Mark puts it this way: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” [Mk 1:15] Matthew’s version is even simpler: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” [Mt 4:17] And we’ll get to what Luke has to say in just a second. But first I just want to point out that the language of this proclamation is so familiar to us now, and so burdened by 2000 years worth of theological commentary, that it’s easy to lose sight of what it might have meant to the people who were hearing it for the first time...when it was just a few words from the lips of a homeless (and I imagine rather scruffy after forty days fasting in the wilderness) carpenter’s son, back before there was any such thing as “Christianity.”

Those of you who attend services here regularly know that I don’t usually spend this much time interpreting passages from the Bible. But I did spend an awful lot of time in school learning how to do it properly, so from time to time I think it’s only proper that I should share some of that learning with you. And in this case, there are really only five key “loaded” words that I would quickly like to disarm, so that you can safely turn them over a little in your own minds. The word “Gospel” we already know in Greek is “euangelion,” or “good news.” The word basileia or “kingdom” (as in Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven) doesn’t really refer to a specific place; rather it’s a reference to the “reign” or “rule” of God; while the word “time” (kairos as opposed to the more familiar chronos) basically refers to a season or a specific period of time with special characteristics that distinguish it from other times. So the first part of the Good News is easy: the season has come for us to remember that G-d (or the spiritual, heavenly force within the Universe which gives us life and created all that is) is always near at hand, and still in charge of everything we see.

It’s the second part that sometimes feels a little uncomfortable to rational and scientific Unitarians and Universalists. Metanoeite kai Pisteuete -- “Repent and Believe.” Two imperative verbs with very intimidating connotations, especially if you don’t particularly believe that you have anything in particular to repent about. But when we strip away all the fire and brimstone, the Good News itself is actually a lot more palatable and easy to swallow. The word metanoia basically means to “transform one’s mind.” It’s analogous to the more familiar word metamorphosis or a “transformation of shape” -- such as a caterpillar being transformed into a butterfly. Likewise, the word pisteuo doesn’t so much mean “believe” as it does “trust” or “have confidence in.” Its corresponding noun, pistis, is the Greek word generally translated into English as “Faith.” And Faith, properly understood, is not so much “belief without evidence” as it is the confidence to Trust the Truth of things we know are true, but can’t necessarily prove objectively. Or to put it another way, Faith is the ability to live our own Truth -- half-truth that it is -- both confidently and humbly, knowing that there is more to life than meets the eye, and wise enough to accept our own unavoidable limitations and ignorance for what they are. And once we get our minds around this idea, it has the power to transform our whole lives, and open up an entire universe of new possibilities.

Which brings us at last to the Gospel of Luke. Luke’s “Good News” is much more elaborate than Matthew’s or Mark’s. Luke shows Jesus going to the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth, and reading another passage from the Prophet Isaiah [61: 1-2]: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And then he returns the scroll to the attendant, and says “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Now obviously, there’s a lot going on in that passage. But it all boils down to this notion of “The Year of the Lord’s Favor.” Some scholars see this as merely another reference to kairos: a season when the prophecies of old will finally be fulfilled, right before our very eyes. But others (myself included) feel that it is more likely a reference to the “Year of Jubilee” described in the book of Leviticus.

According to Levitical law, every seventh year was to be a “sabbatical” year, during which the land was to lie fallow, and all personal debts were to be forgiven. And every 50 years -- after seven cycles of sabbatical years -- came the year of Jubilee, when those who had sold themselves and their families into slavery in order to escape poverty and starvation would be set free, and all agricultural land which had been bought and sold in the past half-century would revert to the family of its original owner.

The reason for this practice was that the ancient Israelites believed that the land itself belonged to G-d, and that human beings were merely sojourners here on Earth. And thus land could neither be bought or sold; only the right to harvest what it produced for a certain number of seasons.

And likewise, human beings (or at least other Israelites) could not be bought or sold either; it was only their labor which was for sale, in exchange for adequate food and shelter. And every fifty years -- basically, once a generation -- society cleared the books, so that everyone could enjoy a fresh start....

Sounds like a pretty radical concept, doesn’t it?

And it was in Jesus’s own time as well.

But here’s the good news...

You don’t have to believe that something is truly possible in order to believe that it’s a good idea, and to live your own life according to that Truth.

You don’t even have to believe in God to believe that if there were a God, She would want us all to treat one another a certain way -- more frolicking, and less keeping score -- and to live your own life according to THAT Truth.

And it doesn’t really matter whether you were born rich or poor, or somewhere in between; it doesn’t matter how smart you are, or what you look like; how much you have accomplished with your life, or how much you have failed to accomplish...we all still live in that same “middle place” between finding the courage to follow the Truth we THINK we know, and the humility to acknowledge the many truths we will NEVER know, no matter how hard we may try to understand them, or attempt to ignore them.

Because life itself is nothing but an unexpected and undeserved gift from the Universe. And as I’ve said here many times before, no matter how great or how small that gift may seem, the only appropriate response to our good fortune is one of gratitude combined with generosity, and well-seasoned with liberal amounts of compassion, understanding and forgiveness.

And once we manage to “transform our minds” and our hearts and our souls so that we can live our lives trusting this Great Truth, then the real Good News becomes as plain as the noses on our faces: that in the eyes of our Creator, we are ALL children of G-d and brothers and sisters to one another, every one of us possessing inherent worth and dignity, and bound together in an interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part....


READING: “Snake” by Anne Herbert (from Co-Evolution Quarterly)

IN THE BEGINNING God didn't just make one or two people, he made a bunch of us. Because he wanted us to have a lot of fun and he said you can't really have fun unless there's a whole gang of you. So he put us all in this sort of playground park place called Eden and told us to enjoy.

At first we did have fun just like he expected. We played all the time. We rolled down the hills, waded in the streams, climbed the trees, swung on the vines, ran in the meadows, frolicked in the woods, hid in the forest, and acted silly. We laughed a lot.

Then one day this snake told us that we weren't having real fun because we weren't keeping score. Back then, we didn't know what score was. When he explained it, we still couldn't see the fun. But he said that we should give an apple to the person who was best at playing and we'd never know who was best unless we kept score. We could all see the fun of that. We were all sure we were best.

It was different after that. We yelled a lot. We had to make up new scoring rules for most of the games we played. Other games, like frolicking, we stopped playing because they were too hard to score. By the time God found out about our new fun, we were only spending about forty-five minutes a day in actual playing and rest of the time working out the score. God was wroth about that - very, very wroth. He said we couldn't use the garden any more because we weren't having any fun. We said we were having lots of fun and we were. He shouldn't have got upset just because it wasn't exactly the kind of fun he had in mind.

He wouldn't listen. He kicked us out and said we couldn't come back until we stopped keeping score. To rub it in (to get our attention, he said), he told us that we were all going to die anyway and our scores wouldn't mean anything.

He was wrong. My cumulative all-game score is now 16,548, and that means a lot to me. If I can raise it to 20,000 before I die I'll know I've accomplished something. Even if I can't my life has a great deal of meaning because I've taught my children to score high and they'll all be able to reach 20,000 or even 30,000 I know.

Really, it was life in Eden that didn't mean anything. Fun is great in its place, but without scoring there's no reason for it. God has a very superficial view of life and I'm glad my children are being raised away from his influence. We were lucky to get out. We're all very grateful to the snake.

THE COURAGE TO PRAY OUT LOUD

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle
Sunday September 24, 2006 [Rosh Hashanah, 5767]

Where is the Dwelling Place of God?

God Dwells wherever we will let God in.

This is the Ultimate Purpose: to let God in. But we can let God in only where we really stand, where we live, where we have a true life. If we maintain holy [conversation] with the little world entrusted to us, if we help the holy spiritual substance to accomplish itself in that section of Creation in which we are living, then we are establishing, in this our place, a dwelling for the Divine Presence --Martin Buber


I thought I’d start out on just a slightly more academic note than I usually do , just so I can create a little bit of context for some things I want to say later on. But first I want to make it clear that by “academic” I don’t mean “irrelevant;” I simply mean that I’m going to talk briefly about some topics that don’t normally get much discussion outside of a classroom. And by “slightly” I mean that what you are about to hear does contain some pretty broad generalizations, and that in no way will there be anything even slightly resembling a midterm....

But consider for a moment that, despite their obvious differences, the three major “Abrahamic” faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are all basically variations on a single theme -- the theme of Radical Monotheism, which declares that God is ONE and everything in heaven and on earth is under God’s dominion.

Islam is the “youngest” and most recent of these faith traditions to emerge, but in many ways it is also still the most foreign to Americans, and also the most “traditional” (or at least least modern) of the three, which is to say that it has been the least influenced by the secular philosophy of post-Enlightenment European Modernism, and more recently the relativistic philosophy of 20th century postmodern Structuralist/ Deconstructionist critical “theory.” God is still sovereign in the Muslim world; the word Islam itself means simply “to submit,” which makes a Muslim someone who willingly submits to the will and the word of Allah.

Christianity, on the other hand, is probably the most innovative (which is to say, the most derivative) of the three faith traditions. Christians have “borrowed” freely and without apology from every culture they have ever encountered, and have assimilated those beliefs into the “One True Faith” simply by claiming the ideas of other cultures as their own. As a result, Christianity is at once both the most diverse and historically the most contentious of the three faith traditions; and in effect invented the ideas of Toleration and Secularism simply to put an end to centuries of theologically-inspired religious warfare.

From the destruction of Herod’s temple (in the year 3830), to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 of the Common Era, (and in reality for even longer and still today) Judaism has been a religion of the Diaspora, a civilization in exile, confronted by the challenge of maintaining the integrity of it’s own cultural traditions while surviving within a surrounding dominant culture, and balancing the pressure to assimilate with the need to get along. Judaism’s view of pluralism is not a question of learning to practice tolerance, but rather the experience of being “the Other,” and subject to either benign neglect or outright extermination depending upon the whims of their more powerful neighbors.

All three faith traditions understand the Hebrew Bible as “Scripture,” although for each tradition that understanding means something a little different. And all three religions also have additional religious writings that are uniquely their own. For Muslims, the Qu’ran is understood to have been recited by Muhammad, in Arabic, in precisely the exact same words that God had the angel Gabriel place into his mouth. It is God’s final and most perfect revelation to humanity, and therefore the words themselves are Holy, not even to be translated into other languages.

Christianity created a “New” Testament to compliment the scriptures it had inherited from Judaism, and although in historical terms both text and canon are clearly the product of human agency, there are many Fundamentalist Christians today who also subscribe to the doctrines of literal verbal inspiration, and textual inerrancy -- essentially that the Bible was dictated word for word into the ears of its various authors exactly the way God wanted it to be, and is without mistake in either fact or doctrine.

Judaism, however, created the Talmud -- a collection of oral tradition and Rabbinic commentary on the Torah, which describes, explains (and often debates the meaning of) the traditional 613 commandments or mitzvot which stand at the heart of Jewish Law, or halakhah. Devotional practices like keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath, even the study of Scripture and the Talmud itself, are all part of halakhah -- which means literally to “walk,” as in “to walk with God.”

Which brings me at long last to the subject of Prayer. Within Islam, prayer is one of the five pillars of the faith -- it is a highly physical, corporate and communal act which takes place at fixed intervals five times daily. Christianity, as you might expect, has a very eclectic view of prayer: there are rote devotional prayers like the Rosary, well-rehersed public prayers in churches and on other “ceremonial” occasions, including the familiar “Lord’s Prayer” attributed to Jesus himself; and, of course, a rich tradition of private and spontaneous prayer, silent prayer, contemplative prayer and meditation...which also go back to New Testament admonitions attributed to Jesus about going into one’s closet to pray, and avoiding ostentatious prayers which draw unwarranted attention to the one who is praying, rather than focusing attention upon the One [God] being prayed to....

The role of prayer in Judaism in some ways resembles the practices of Christianity and Islam, but in others goes far beyond them. When I was living on Nantucket, the congregation I served there shared its building with a seasonal synagogue. Every spring, when the Unitarians moved upstairs into the large, (and largely unheated) 400 seat 19th-century sanctuary, the members of Congregation Shirat Ha Yam would move into the much more intimate downstairs quarters of Hendrix Hall, where they held their Friday evening Shabbat services all summer long. Until, of course, the ten days which come each year right around now, when the two congregations would swap accommodations, so that the members of the synagogue might celebrate the Jewish High Holy days -- Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kipper, and the “Days of Awe” which fall between them -- in a space large enough to comfortably accommodate all of the Jews on the island. And I still have vivid memories of Rabbi Rachel Sabbath (isn’t that a great name for a Rabbi?) blowing her Shofar (in the middle of my sermon) in order to summon her people to repentance, so that they might be prepared to atone for their sins of the past year on Yom Kippur, asking forgiveness both of God and of one another, and thus beginning the New Year not only with a closed book, but also a clean slate.

The centrality of prayer in the Jewish tradition is profound. For an observant Jew, prayer is constant practice interwoven into their daily routine -- an on-going reminder of God’s presence in the world, and in life itself, even during the most ordinary activities of everyday living. Jewish prayers basically fall into three categories. There are prayers of Adoration or Blessing, which are essentially expressions of wonder and amazement at the Creator’s generosity toward us all. There are prayers of Thanksgiving and Confession, which acknowledge our Gratitude and our own fundamental unworthiness to receive the blessings God has given. And then there are Prayers of Petition, which essentially ask God for a favor.

Yet even these categories don’t really begin to describe the profound role that prayer potentially plays in the life of a truly observant Jew. There are prayers for before one gets out of bed in the morning, thanking God for returning the soul to the body, and prayers for when one retires to bed at night; prayers to recite before performing any mitzvah (such as lighting a candle or washing your hands) or enjoying any material pleasure; prayers for all sorts of special or unusual occasions and occurrences; formal prayers to be recited at services; or before and after meals; literally, prayers for almost every kind of situation you can think of. And the point is NOT that Jews can’t get through a day without praying. The point of prayer in the Jewish tradition is to cultivate an introspective awareness of one’s role in the universe and one’s relationship with God, so that one is constantly mindful of that role, and that relationship, in everything one does.

This principle of “mindfulness” or kavvanah (which is sometimes also translated as “concentration” or “intent”) is essential to creating an effective attitude of prayer. Without it, one is merely going through the motions and mouthing the words...reciting rather than really praying. The basic awareness that one is talking to God, that one intends to pray and has cleared one’s mind of other thoughts and distractions, is what keeps routine prayer authentic rather than empty and hollow.

Spirituality is a profound thing, but it can (and should be) also a very simple and mundane thing. We often think of “spiritual” time as time set aside from other, more worldly things. It may be as simple as time spent sitting in a circle around a candle reading poetry aloud, or lying silently on one’s back in a meadow looking up at the sky; but still it is time set aside from the “real world” to focus on spiritual things. But a discipline of prayer which acknowledges the sacred in every daily and mundane activity we experience reminds us of the constant presence of the spiritual in our lives in a way that is difficult to replicate through any other practice.

This brings me to the next point I want to make about prayer, which is the importance of regular practice itself. Prayer, (or any form of worship, really), is a skill or an ability which one can learn and improve through practice. If you’re not satisfied with your own spiritual life, if you tend to feel more frustrated than inspired by your attempts to pray, or your experience of worship in general, it’s probably because you aren’t doing it often enough. [As we heard in our reading], learning how to pray effectively is like learning a musical instrument or going to the gym. The desired outcome often depends less on the quality of the experience than the consistency of one’s participation: I don’t care how good your personal trainer is, if you’re only working out once a month (rather than daily, or even three times a week) you aren’t going to experience very good results. So why should we think that our spiritual lives are any different?

The Talmud teaches that when we ask God for a favor, we need to keep our expectations reasonable. Pray for wisdom, pray for courage, pray for guidance or patience or fortitude -- and, if you must, pray for a miracle, knowing that miracles are few and far between. But don’t pray for something that is well within your own reach, and then blame God when your prayers are answered only with silence. Make the effort. Overcome your frustrations. Judaism teaches us all to Praise the Creator of the Universe for the blessings we have already received, and to Give Thanks for having received them despite our own unworthiness. And maybe then our other prayers will be answered with something more than silence.

This brings me to the last thing I want to talk about today, which is the language of prayer, and the challenge of learning to Pray Out Loud. The Talmud teaches that one may pray in any language they understand, but many Jews feel that it is preferable to pray in Hebrew, since “Hebrew is the language of Jewish though.” Muslims, of course, pray only in Arabic; and I know of many Catholics who still miss the Latin Mass. There’s a wonderful Hassidic story about an unlettered man who wanted to pray in Hebrew, but did not know the language. So he went to the Shul and recited over and over again the only Hebrew he knew: the Hebrew alphabet. When the Rabbi asked him what he was doing, the man replied: “The Holy One, Blessed is He, knows what is in my heart. I will give Him the letters, and He can put the words together.”

For my own part, I have often wondered in the past whether it was possible to pray without words -- knowing that God knows what is in my heart even before I do. Having grown up a Unitarian, which (like many faith traditions produced by the Radical Reformation, tends to be highly individualistic and favors personal piety over public performance) I tend to prefer private, silent, contemplative prayers, along with practices like meditation and journal writing; and am by nature a little skeptical of the entire idea of prayer to begin with, especially sanctimonious and overly ceremonial group prayer on public occasions, which I’ve so often seen abused as a instrument of imposed conformity and social control.

When I was serving our congregation in Midland Texas, we competed in an ecumenical church basketball league against all the other congregations in town: Baptists and Methodists and Roman Catholics... congregations which often had their own gyms, as well as thousands of members from which to draw players to form multiple teams of various levels of skill. At age 32, I was the youngest player on our squad of eight...and possibly the most athletic as well, so you can just imagine what it was like to try to keep up with our opponents. And there was always that awkward moment, right before tip-off, when the referee would gather both teams at center court, and invite someone to lead the entire group in prayer. Generally we Unitarians all looked at our shoes until someone from the other side spoke up; until that one fateful night when the referee asked specifically whether our team, as visitors there in the “Gym of the Lord,” would like to offer the prayer that evening, and of course all of my teammates looked directly at me....

Now obviously, as a minister, I’d prayed out loud in public before... generally in church, with a script, and a nice long “moment of silence” in my hip pocket to finish things off; or perhaps a brief table grace I had memorized, or something else I had written out in advance. But this was different. This was crunch time. And so we all clasped hands there at center court, Unitarians and Baptists alike; and I prayed. I just said out loud what I was feeling in my heart about what I thought we all needed to hear while standing there in the the Gym of the Lord, in the presence of the Spirit of Creation itself. I took my time and didn’t hurry or go searching for fancy language or turns of phrase; and pretty soon I was finished, and it was over... and I could tell that the ref in particular had been moved by my prayer, because afterwards I noticed him nodding in agreement, and EVERY questionable call that night went our way, and I made it all the way to the fourth quarter before finally fouling out.

It still wasn’t enough for us to win, but it was the start of a big change in my life, because from that day forward I made up my mind that I would no longer be afraid to pray out lout, and that whenever I was asked unexpectedly to pray in public, I would simply take a moment to center myself, to connect as best I could with all the people around me, to focus my attention on the real presence of the Spirit of God... and to say out loud what I was feeling in my heart, without hurrying or searching for the perfect words, in the hope that whatever I had to say would somehow be heard by whoever needed to hear it....

It’s a practice I heartily recommend to all of you as well....

Pray with me now, won’t you?

Mysterious Source of all that is.
We come here today with humble, grateful hearts...
Hoping to have them filled with hope...
Hoping to have them filled with love...
Hoping to have them filled with the Spirit of Life itself,
that creative spirit through which all things are made new.

Teach us how to open our hearts, that they might be filled with a wisdom that surpasses the wisdom of the world, and a peace that passes understanding itself....

Amen. And Blessed Be.


READING: “The Need for Prayer”

by Tracey R Rich (Judaism 101 www.jewfaq.org)

Many people today do not see the need for regular, formal prayer. "I pray when I feel inspired to, when it is meaningful to me," they say. This attitude overlooks two important things: the purpose of prayer, and the need for practice.

One purpose of prayer is to increase your awareness of G-d in your life and the role that G-d plays in your life. If you only pray when you feel inspired (that is, when you are already aware of G-d), then you will not increase your awareness of G-d.

In addition, if you want to do something well, you have to practice it continually, even when you don't feel like doing it. This is as true of prayer as it is of playing a sport, playing a musical instrument, or writing. The sense of humility and awe of G-d that is essential to proper prayer does not come easily to modern man, and will not simply come to you when you feel the need to pray. If you wait until inspiration strikes, you will not have the skills you need to pray effectively. Before I started praying regularly, I found that when I wanted to pray, I didn't know how. I didn't know what to say, or how to say it, or how to establish the proper frame of mind. If you pray regularly, you will learn how to express yourself in prayer.