PASTOR AND COMMANDER: ANOTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday May 2rd, 2004



I thought I’d start out this morning simply by taking a couple of minutes (more or less) to say a few nice things about President Bush. I know this may seem a little out of character for me, and that therefore some of what I have to say may sound like damning faint praise, or insincere, or even ironic, but I can’t really help that. This seemingly interminable electoral contest is steadily emerging as the most acrimonious in MY memory; and even though I know as an historian that elections often resemble open warfare (which is why they call them “campaigns”), and democracy itself many times seems like not much more than a rough and tumble, bare knuckled brawl, I still believe that at the end of the day a functional civilized society requires civil behavior, and that as a spiritual leader I ought to somehow try to model that. Not only is the ability to recognize (and even admire) the positive qualities of those with whom one disagrees an important step toward dialog, compromise, and eventual reconciliation, I also know that whenever people succumb to the temptation of “demonizing” their opposition, they run the serious risk of “misunderestimating” them as well. Even the most evil and odious political figure of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler, was a decorated war veteran wounded on the battlefield, as well as a committed and disciplined vegetarian who loathed both smoking and drinking, and loved both dogs and small children. Not much of a writer (although apparently he’s better in English than in his native German, because his translators have tended to clean up his grammar), but certainly a dynamic and inspiring public speaker, whose rabid patriotism was unquestionable. Simply to dismiss him as a madman -- a monster and an abomination -- actually minimizes the true magnitude of his evil-doing, because it ignores both its banality and its mass appeal.

But I digress. What I meant to say is that if I can find something complimentary to say about Adolf Hitler, even if it is essentially irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, I can certainly find something nice to say about George W. Bush. In fact, I can think of three things, right off the top of my head. And the first is that I know for a fact that the President is neither as dumb as he sounds, nor is he as sanctimonious and insincere as he sometimes seems to those of us who do not share his views. Let me take these one at a time. I first realized that the President is a lot smarter than he looks when I saw his SAT scores published in one of the national news magazines, and realized that they were virtually identical to mine. Not that the results of some stupid standardized test probably mean that much anyway. But personally, I’m not too sure that I’m really smart enough to be the President (and I can’t imagine any possible circumstance where I might actually have an chance to find out either -- thank God!), but I’m certainly no dummy; and I suppose that if I had the opportunity to watch my father do it first, I might feel a lot more confident that I was capable of doing the job myself as well. But my main point is that just because the President isn’t in the top one or two percent of the population intellectually doesn’t mean that he isn’t plenty smart enough to lead. If anything, the fact that he’s NOT a “wonk” is what makes him seem so personable and approachable. And if there are times when he appears a little smug and self-righteous, or even vindictive and mean spirited toward his antagonists...who isn’t? Those of us on the other side certainly haven’t been too kind to him either.

The second nice thing I wanted to say about the President is that he knows who he is and he knows his limits without surrendering to his limitations; he isn’t ashamed of being himself, and he isn’t afraid of surrounding himself with strong, smart, and outspokenly opinionated people. And this is actually relatively rare in a leader. Many leaders, I think, tend to assume that because they are in charge, their followers are all looking to THEM for direction and guidance, and sometimes they get a little swept away by this, and start to believe that they always have to be “the smartest guy in the room” -- that their leadership depends on providing the right answer in every situation every time, and that they can therefore never afford to be wrong or to appear foolish. And there are certainly times when the President appears to have fallen into this trap as well: when his need to present a strong, principled, and decisive image in public really just make him seem (at least to those of us who disagree with him) stubborn and ideologically obsessed (not to mention a little out of touch with reality). But it also seems to me that (in private at least) the President is quite adept at listening to the opinions of his advisors and other experts, as well as gauging the mood of the public (and especially his core constituencies), and then modifying his own views based on what he has learned. And this too is a positive quality in a leader: the ability to listen, to learn, and to lead your followers in the direction they want to go.

Finally, the one quality I truly admire in the President above all others is his singular ability to earn and inspire the loyalty of those who support him. On one level, there is nothing particularly mysterious about this quality: people are loyal to the President because they know he is loyal to them -- it is a reciprocal relationship of mutual obligation and responsibility. One hand washes the other. But there’s actually a lot more to it than that. I think the President inspires such strong feelings of loyalty among his core supporters because he articulates and defends a view of the world that is strongly held by people who feel that their opinions and beliefs have been profoundly marginalized in contemporary American society, and who see in him a leader who will restore that worldview and its moral values to the heart of our government’s foreign and domestic policy. They believe in him because he believes what they believe, and they all believe it with all their hearts.

I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership lately, and not just because there will be an election in six months which will once again determine the leadership of our nation for the next four years. This first Sunday in May is also the first anniversary of my election as the minister of this congregation, so I’ve also been thinking quite a bit about the differences between political and religious leadership, and likewise where they overlap, and where they ought to leave one another alone. Political leadership, at least in a democracy, is an expression of the will of the people through the principle of majority rule. Thus politics is all about the art of the possible: not merely an unvarnished manifestation of what is sometimes called “the tyranny of the majority,” but more typically a subtle combination of compromise and coalition building, together at times with a little judicious arm twisting, the ubiquitous quid pro quo, and no small amount of inflammatory pandering to the fears and prejudices of the electorate.

But religious leadership ought to be about helping people to discern the Will of God, together with a humble submission to divine authority (however you may choose to understand that concept of a “higher power”) -- not my will, but thine Oh Lord be done. Keeping these things clearly distinguished in one’s mind is not always the easiest thing to do. What’s wrong with twisting a few arms, or even knocking a few heads and kicking a few butts, when you know that God is on your side? The answer, of course, is this notion of humility -- the realization that no matter how powerful our convictions may be, we will never FULLY know and understand the mind of our Creator, and that to believe otherwise is arrogant idolatry. Faith is less about certainty of belief than it is the trusting confidence that we must act in good faith even in the midst of our uncertainty, not knowing for sure whether God is on our side, but hoping that we are on the side of God, a God who is both Just AND Merciful, Righteous AND Compassionate, and who loves All Souls with the same unconditional affection that a perfect mother might feel for her children. The experience of faith is something which should be freely shared, but never forcibly imposed; there is no place for coercion in the Kingdom of God. Or at least this is what Unitarians, Universalists, and other religious liberals have traditionally believed. Faith is a Gift of God. And we best discern God’s will for us when we are free to share our faith openly with one another, without duress or fear of reprisal.

Of course, religion and politics are not the only fields where quality of leadership significantly determines both the quality of the experience and the quality of the results. I strongly suspect, for example, if we were to do a quick survey of the number of books on the subject, most of them would deal with issues of Leadership in Business, where it is sometimes said that “managers do things right, but leaders do the right things.” And yet I wonder whether this dichotomy is really fair. Which is preferable: to do the wrong things well, or to do the right things poorly? (Actually, that statement pretty much describes the differences between our two political parties, doesn’t it?) Clearly, the best alternative is to do the right things well: in other words, to be attentive to both the process and the vision -- the quality of the relationship between the leader, the followers, and their task -- as well as the ultimate worthiness of the goal itself, and how that worthiness is best determined and communicated.

Business leaders often look to sports for metaphors that can help them understand and explain what it is they are trying to do when leading a “team” toward a “goal.” Sports are a lot simpler than life: the rules are reasonably clear and fixed, the goals are pre-determined by the rules, and both the size of the field and the duration of the game are relatively limited in scope when compared to “real life.” The job of a coach basically has three parts. The first part is to come up with a “game plan” -- a strategy that will allow the team to achieve a victory. The second part is to teach their players all the skills they will need to have in order to successfully carry out the plan. And the third part is to motivate the players to make their best possible effort, to play up to the level of their ability and maybe even a little beyond it -- to inspire and encourage, threaten and cajole, reward, punish, praise, prod, criticize, challenge, support...and so on and so on. No two coaches are exactly alike, and no two players respond to exactly the same set of motivators -- yet often a feeling of pride in the quality of one’s effort and achievements, together with fear of the shame of letting one’s teammates down, are at the heart of all these other motivations; and good coaches, good leaders in general, seem to know instinctively the exact combination of each that will work best for every player on the team. Or perhaps they know because they listen, and because they know their players as well as their players know themselves, and therefore know also what makes them tick, and how to communicate with them in a manner that that the players can easily understand.

Of course no discussion of leadership can really be complete without some exploration of the role of leadership in the military. Warfare is the attempt to impose one’s will on another through force; and the mission of the military is the management and effective application of lethal violence. Over the centuries, military organizations have turned the process of leadership development into a science, because professional soldiers know from experience that no matter how carefully you plan, no matter how rigorously you train, no matter how good your equipment is, there inevitably comes a time in combat when someone has to stand up in the face of danger and say to his comrades “follow me.” Planning, training, good equipment, unit discipline and morale, camaraderie and trust, obviously all play an important role in what happens next. But without leadership, nothing happens at all. The common assumption about moments like this is that these leaders must somehow be more courageous than the soldiers they lead, that they are so naturally brave that they simply aren’t afraid to risk their lives in the face of the enemy. But according to those who have had the experience, this isn’t the case at all. Courage under fire has nothing to do with not being afraid. True courage is about being afraid, and doing your duty anyway, because you know that the others are depending on you, and the example of your leadership, for their survival.

Here’s another interesting thing to ponder. A standard light infantry platoon in the US Army is comprised of 35 soldiers (or, as the Army would put it, “34 men and one officer” -- typically, a 2nd Lieutenant, who is probably still in his early twenties). Yet this young Lieutenant doesn’t lead this entire platoon all by himself: he is assisted by a Platoon Sergeant, three Squad Leaders, six Fire Team Leaders, and two Weapons Team Leaders...35 soldiers, and a full third of them are designated as “leaders” -- each of whom is prepared to assume the responsibilities of their superior should the latter be killed in battle. And, of course, the platoon is also supported by an entire “chain of command” which coordinates their movement with the movement of other units, resupplies them with food and ammunition, evacuates casualties and provides reinforcements, along with all of the countless other things (including chaplains) that are necessary in order for this particular platoon to be able to accomplish its assigned operational mission. It’s a pretty elaborate organization, all of which can be sent into action at the word of a single individual, the Commander in Chief, whose leadership “by precept and example” trickles down through the ranks. Yet ultimately the success or failure of our military in actual combat (and its aftermath) relies far less on the leadership of the individual at the top of the chain of command than it does on the morale, the training, and the leadership of the soldiers whose boots actually ARE on the ground, and who rely on one another in order to survive, safely, to the end of another day.

We’ve seen two vivid examples representing both the best and the worst of American soldiery just within these past few weeks. The positive example, of course, was Ranger Specialist Pat Tillman, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, who was killed in action in Afghanistan during an ambush on April 22nd. Tillman, as you probably already know, had been the starting strong safety of the Arizona Cardinals, who left his lucrative professional football career to enlist, along with his brother Kevin, in the Rangers following September 11th. My big concern, both when I first heard about Tillman’s enlistment two years ago, and when I learned of his death last week, was that people would get the wrong message -- that they would look at his example and somehow equate being a soldier with being a professional athlete, and assume that combat was just another game. I don’t think Tillman ever felt that way, and I’m pretty sure he never intended to send that message...although you never know. Yet there aren’t that many people on this planet who are willing to walk away from a seven-figure income, and all that goes with it, in order to put themselves in harm’s way fighting for what they believe in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan. Pat Tillman was one. Osama bin Laden, interestingly enough, is another. I’m not really sure what to make of that, but there it is.

The shameful example involves the report, with explicit photographs, of the systematic abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by US Army Reserve military police at the Abu Ghraib prison. This is a complicated situation, and details are still emerging from the on-going investigation, so doubtlessly there will be much more to be learned in the weeks and months ahead. The President has said that he feels a “deep disgust” at the way these prisoners were treated (as he should), and that the behavior of these few guards does not represent the values of most American soldiers or the American people...which is certainly true. But I also believe that the President is wrong if he thinks that this is just an isolated anomaly that can be blamed on a handful of inadequately-trained and poorly-led reserve soldiers. The tone for this treatment was set much higher up the chain of command, and by decisions we have made as a nation about how we will treat the “enemy combatants” who come into our custody.

I’m not certain which profession is older -- that of the warrior, or that of the shaman -- and I’m not really sure that it matters that much either. I do know that in many ancient societies they were one and the same: the warrior king was also the chief priest, to whom the people looked for leadership at times of both military and spiritual crisis. Nowadays the two vocations don’t really appear to have much in common, although they intersect in intriguing ways. The trained, professional killer is also a dedicated professional peacemaker, whose strength deters conflict, and whose judicious use of force or the threat of force can sometimes prevent more widespread violence. Professional religious leaders, in every major religious tradition (including Islam), are typically taught that all men and women are brothers and sisters to one another in the eyes of their Creator, and that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us; that the redeeming power of God’s love is more powerful than our own human desire for revenge, and that we most completely destroy our enemies when we make them our friends. But when righteous anger becomes wedded to religious zeal, bad things happen. Call it Jihad or call it a Crusade, when we dehumanize our enemies we dehumanize ourselves, rationalizing and justifying our evil behavior with the lame excuse that we are only doing God’s will.

Here “in the trenches” of religious life in America, in the day to day activities of local congregations like our’s, we don’t often talk about these “big issues” of leadership. Here the talk is all about “shared ministry” and the role of the “equipping pastor” -- a leader who gives to the people the tools, and training, and guidance they need to pursue effectively their own “call” to serve. A “coach.” Yet what we do here is not unconnected to what is happening in the wider world. Our faithful attempts to do the right things well, to inspire and encourage one another to excellence, and to lead by example as well as by precept, are not confined just to this building, or even to our little town. In some abstract, spiritual way, the light we bring to our endevours truly does shine beyond ourselves. So carry this flame of peace and love in your hearts, in everything you undertake. And may the light you bring to all you do become a shining example to all the world.

READING

[Ft Lewis] Installation Chaplain's Office
Unit Ministry Teams Mission

• Operate a state-of-the-art spiritual power projection platform for the warfighter by providing them a superior religious support program and infrastructure that ensures the well being of our soldiers, civilians, retirees and their families through free exercise of their beliefs and gives them the opportunities for the positive life changing lessons, power and stability that transform people of faith.

I Corps Unit Ministry Teams Mission
• To provide or perform religious support for all authorized personnel of I Corps and Fort Lewis during peacetime and across the full spectrum of war in order to support the command in the facilitation of the free exercise of religion.
• To advise the command in matters of religion, morals, morale, and ethical issues in order to support the unit mission.

PATRIOTS & SCOUNDRELS

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, MA
Sunday April 25, 2004


I woke up last Monday morning with a mean-spirited thought in my head. It was a thought so maliciously mean-spirited that I hated to write it down, but so deliciously mean-spirited that I could hardly wait to share it....

But suppose, just suppose, that when June 30th finally rolls around, and the deadline for the formal transition of sovereignty has come and gone, we get the Supreme Court to appoint George W. Bush as the next President of Iraq? He could simply drag that snappy little flight suit of his back out of the closet and jump on the next plane to Baghdad, along with Rummy and Wolfie and Condi and Ashcroft and Ridge (we’ll leave Colin Powell out of this, since apparently he was already out of the loop anyway); Dick Cheney can go back to openly being the CEO of Halliburton, and our guardsmen and reservists could all come back home to their regular jobs and their families as well.

It wouldn’t really be considered “cutting and running,” since the very same people who wanted so badly to start this war will be right there on the spot cutting taxes and relying upon the “entrepreneurial spirit” to revitalize the Iraqi economy and create a free and democratic society out of the ashes of tyranny. Any remaining members of coalition who are still willing to stay will naturally be welcome to do so, and of course the new government would likewise remain free to hire as many “independent contractors” as they like...provided they are willing to pay them out of their own pockets.

It’s a win/win scenario; the only catch is that for everything to be considered legitimate and above-board, the Bushies will all have to quit their current jobs and formally renounce their United States citizenship, in order to officially become citizens of Iraq. But personally, I don’t have any problem with that. No problem at all....

Of course, there are some people who are of the opinion that the goal of creating a viable democratic government in Iraq is little more than a naive pipe dream. But I disagree. Even the most traditional and oppressive societies tend to endure “by the consent of the governed.” Not only do people everywhere like to have a say in how they live their lives, it is also very difficult to maintain control of a population whose basic desires are in serious conflict with those who would seek to rule them.

So as a result, even the most repressive and authoritarian regimes generally become quite adept at “manufacturing consent.” Sometimes this is merely the reluctant consent imposed by fear, and enforced by threat of violence; but more often than not far more subtle powers are at work as well. Authoritarian regimes are experts at saying one thing and doing another -- lying about their true intentions, while concealing their actions from public scrutiny.

They pacify the population with “bread and circuses,” while silencing their critics--not merely through violence or the threat of violence, nor even arrest and incarceration -- but by ridicule, or the emotional appeal to prejudice (and patriotism); through character assassination, propaganda, rigged elections, and effective control over the means of mass communication.

We’ve seen this pattern at work in Iraq...and in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, even as far back as Ancient Rome....and you can see it other places as well, once you know what it is you’re looking for. But the “will of the people,” and the basic desire for lives which can be lived in relative safety and security, the desire to raise children with a reasonable expectation of a better future, and to enjoy the benefits of peace and prosperity, is both universal, and indomitable. And it doesn’t really matter where you were born, or what religion you practice, or even whether you’ve had a lot of experience with democratic self-government in the past.

People tolerate authoritarian regimes for as long as they believe that they are better off simply “going along to get along” than they are standing up and resisting. A fear of violent reprisal is obviously part of that calculation, as is the natural human tendency to turn a blind eye to things we would rather not see in order to avoid rocking the boat. But when people realize that the time has come for them to stand up and be counted, and to take control of their own destiny, there is no power in the world that can keep them down.

Of course, free and enlightened liberal democracies also “manufacture consent,” but they go about it in a somewhat different manner. Authoritarian regimes attempt to suppress dissent, through a variety of coercive or misleading techniques. But the goal of liberal democracy is to elicit consensus, through the free and open exchange of information and ideas -- a dialog (or, if you prefer, a debate) which not only highlights dissent and various areas of disagreement, but also identifies and builds upon shared goals, values and interests, and is open to the possibility of collaboration around a common purpose, or compromise on points of difference.

The one essential quality that makes liberal democracy work is the ability to disagree without becoming disagreeable, and to recognize that your opponent is also your partner...the “loyal opposition.” Which is why, in a democracy, the rule of law is used to protect the voice and rights of unpopular minorities, while in authoritarian societies, the courts and the police inevitably serve to reinforce the power and privileges of the rulers, and to make those dissident voices “disappear.”

Which is also why you generally don’t see a lot of clever political bumper stickers publicly displayed in authoritarian regimes. My new personal favorite goes like this: “If you aren’t completely appalled, then you haven’t been paying attention.” Of course, as someone who has been paying attention -- close, focused attention, for quite some time now -- it’s all felt very vindicating to have the things that I’ve been thinking and feeling and saying and writing for two and a half years publicly confirmed both in print and under oath on nationally-broadcast TV by people who were there and who know, first hand, what really went on.

Depressing, but vindicating.

The appalling part is that there are apparently still a lot of folks who either simply don’t care, or who would just as soon dismiss it all as vindictive, politically-motivated “spin.” And this is the real challenge which confronts us all: how does one vindicate the truth, without seeming vindictive toward those who have been shamelessly lied to, yet who hesitate to confront the ramifications of that deception because the consequences are simply just too appalling to contemplate?

The date August 6th, for example, will probably never have the same immediate public recognition as September 11th, but maybe it ought to, since that was the day (as we all now know, or ought to know) that the President was told, to his face, in his Daily Intelligence Briefing, that Osama Bin Ladin was “determined to strike” in the United States, that al-Qa’ida was actively attempting to recruit within the Muslem-American community here, and that there were (and this is a direct quote) “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”

The President’s response to the insinuation that had he paid a little more attention to these warnings at the time he first received them, September 11th might have been avoided, was to say that if he had known that terrorists were going to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings he would have “moved heaven and earth” to prevent that from happening. But that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? Terrorists don’t generally send engraved invitations to their deplorable acts of violence. You have to be intelligent enough to read the signs of the times, to understand the significance of the handwriting on the wall.

Even so, I’m inclined to feel fairly forgiving toward the President on this account. We were all taken by surprise on September 11th; and it could have happened on anyone’s watch, no matter how vigilant they were. I feel much less forgiving regarding what happened afterwards -- of how the President and his close advisors intentionally exploited public sentiment about the September 11th attacks, and used misleading “methods of mass deception” against his own people in order to “bait and switch” Americans into a war against Iraq, a war which had apparently been on his White House “To Do” list long before he had even assumed the Presidency.

Some of the allegations that have surfaced in this connection truly do defy credibility. For example, Bob Woodward’s report that Saudi Arabian Ambassador Prince Bandar Bin Sultan was privy to the plan to invade Iraq even before Secretary of State Colin Powell had been made aware of it, and that there was an Enronesque secret deal between Bandar and the Bushies to manipulate oil prices this summer in an attempt to influence the outcome of the fall election. Incredible, if indeed it’s true....

I could go on and on and on about these issues, but there’s really no need -- you are all perfectly capable of picking up a newspaper or opening a book, turning on the television, or listening to Public Radio for yourselves. What I would just like to say though is that I rarely feel more connected to my illustrious Revolutionary-era predecessors like William Emerson of Concord or Jonas Clarke of Lexington than when I take advantage of the opportunity my vocation affords me to speak out from this free pulpit publicly about issues of “public concern.” “Sedition flows copiously from the pulpits” in Massachusetts, General Gage wrote to his superiors in London, in both the spring and the fall of 1774. Back in those days New England Clergy were known as “the Black Regiment” because of the color of their distinctive clothing, and their outspoken advocacy of the Patriot cause.

As an historian, my first official “Patriot’s Day” here in Carlisle was a real treat; Parker and I came out to watch the Minute Men muster on the Carlisle town green, and next time we will undoubtedly make the walk as well -- this year I had a very generous invitation to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees in Fenway Park, which naturally took precedence as a matter of religious observance. But this past week I’ve been able to take advantage of some of these sunny afternoons to explore the Minute Man National Historical park, and to read up a little about “the shot heard ‘round the world,” which initiated the American Revolution.

It all happened right here in our own back yard; a part of our national heritage that we should all be more aware of. Sometimes though it seems a little TOO close to home: an occupying military force plans a raid to seize a cache of illegal weapons. At first everything appears to be going smoothly, then suddenly it seems as though the entire countryside has risen up against the Expeditionary Force like a swarm of angry bees (inspired to a frenzied pitch by the exhortations of their radical religious leaders). Shots are fired by snipers all along the line of march, the casualties mount as the Regulars counterattack and retreat...where have I heard THIS story recently?

Obviously, there are huge differences between 1775 and 2004, but the irony of the similarities is too great to be ignored. The same National Guard and Reserve units whose predecessors fought at Lexington Green and the Concord Bridge, and all along the Battle Road back to Boston, now find themselves deployed half-way around the world for an indeterminate time in a hostile foreign land.

No doubt these citizen-soldiers are still overwhelmingly just like the patriotic young American men and women who fought at Lexington and Concord, who enlisted to serve their country for a variety of good reasons, and who now suffer tremendous hardships on our behalf -- not just the danger of being killed or wounded, but also separation from their families and the interruption of their careers...not to mention the indignity of knowing that our government has hired countless thousands of so-called military “contractors” who earn as much in a single day as a typical soldier is paid each month, and who are basically free to quit their jobs and go home whenever they like.

And what is the mission of this military adventure? The liberation of a peaceful and freedom-loving people from the oppressive rule of a cruel tyrant? The protection of our homeland from the threat of further terrorist attack? Effective control over some of the world’s most significant oil reserves? A personal vendetta on the part of a handful of our political leaders, based on their desire not to appear weak in the eyes of the world, or to lose the battle of wills with their sworn enemies? A religious crusade against Evil-Doers, driven by one man’s sense of moral certainty, a man who frequently declares that “there’s not a doubt in [his] mind” that he’s doing the right thing, and sincerely believes that he is accountable only to a “Higher Authority?”

Maybe it’s a little of all these things, and some others we don’t know about...but it’s costing us four and a half billion dollars a month, people are dying, and there’s no end in sight. We deserve some honest answers. And our patriotic men and women in uniform deserve them most of all.

THE HOUSE IN WHICH WE DWELL

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, MA
Sunday April 18th, 2004


READING: Genesis 1:26-31a

I want to let you in on a little secret, just in case you weren't aware of it, but most of the sermon I am going to preach today is basically the same as the very first sermon I ever preached to a Unitarian Universalist congregation. It was Sunday April 29th, 1979, I was 22 years old at the time, a first-year student at the Harvard Divinity School, and my field-education supervisor, the Rev. Dr. Rhys Williams, had arranged for me to speak to the 1st Congregational Society, Unitarian Universalist, of Jamaica Plain, MA. I had six weeks to prepare that sermon, for which I was to be paid $50; and I got to practice it twice — once in front of my homiletics class at Harvard, and once for the entire staff of the First and Second Church in Boston. When the fateful day at last arrived, I woke up early, dressed in my best clothes, bought myself a big breakfast at the Mug & Muffin restaurant in Harvard Square (don’t bother looking for it; it isn’t there any more), rode the Red Line in to the Park Street station where I transferred to the Green Line out to Jamaica Plain, found the church, and was ushered into a huge Sanctuary which seated probably a minimum of three hundred people — twenty-two of whom happened to be in attendance there that Sunday morning, including myself, the organist, the soloist, and the sexton.

Coming up with a topic for that sermon was not so easy as you might imagine. As I’ve mentioned here before, Rhys had given me some very excellent advice: "Don't try to tell them everything you know the first Sunday," he had said to me (something that would have been a lot easier to attempt back then than it would be now), but even so, it still seemed at the time as though I had an overwhelming amount of spiritual wisdom and insight to communicate to those eighteen parishioners in a mere twenty minutes. I had taken my inspiration from an article I had read in the Boston Globe about some trouble the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority was having in their efforts to extend the Red Line north to Porter Square. MBTA engineers boring core samples along the planned route of the extension had discovered directly in the proposed path of the tunnel 40 thousand cubic yards of chemical sludge, which at one time had been dumped into a cesspool by a chemical manufacturing firm, and over a period of several decades had seeped out into the surrounding soil. Because the chemicals had continued to react long after their former owners had considered them garbage, no one could be certain of the exact properties of this sludge: how toxic or corrosive it might of been, whether it was going to present a significant problem in the construction of the subway, how much it would cost to clean it up, whether it could be burned or rendered chemically inert, or if they were simply going to have to dig it all up and transport it to another location. But the most outrageous part of the article was a comment by the president of the chemical company, who denied any responsibility whatsoever, asking instead "How were we supposed to know they were going to build a subway through there?"

Things really haven’t changed all that much in the last twenty-five years, have they? Well, maybe a little. There are now 129 certified members at the First Parish in Jamaica Plain, and when I go out on the road as a guest preacher these days I earn a little bit more than $50. But there is still a widespread belief in our society that those who want a strong economy, and those who want a sound ecology, are somehow working at cross-purposes. We can have forests or we can have houses; clean air and water, or automobiles and electric power — but to think that we might possibly have both somehow violates a fundamental law of the cosmos. Yet in the case of the Boston Subway we are confronted with the exact opposite of this belief: a situation in which a little ecological foresight might have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars of needless capital expenditure. And I'm sure that many of us can think of other, similar examples over the last quarter of a century — situations in which the ecologists and the economists have, in fact, had a mutual interest, and shared a common purpose. But this should really come as no surprise. Because, linguistically at least, the etymologies of the word "ecology" and the word "economy" are identical. Both stem from the Greek noun oikos, or "house," and its related verb form which means "to live in a house." Economics describes the rules or "laws" for running a house; Ecology refers to the "logic" or principles by which a house is run. In both disciplines, the object of study is the same. O Oikos en Oikoumena — "The House in Which We Dwell."

Why then is the belief I mentioned earlier so widespread? One would think that living under the same roof as we do, we would have been able to reach some sort of consensus about how best to put our house in order, and that we would have done so long ago. Are the conflicts between environmentalists and industrialists merely differences of opinion? And, if so, where does the truth really lie?

The etymologies offer us a clue to the origins and history of this conflict. As the translation suggests, in its earliest form the science of economics was roughly equivalent to what we today would call "home economics," or, more accurately, the rules for the management of a farm or "homestead." And the first significant economist of whom we have record was none other than Socrates, whose thoughts on this subject can be found in a dialog by Xenophon known as The Oeconomicus. After extolling the virtues of a pastoral lifestyle — that sublime symbiosis between a farmer and the earth which allows one to pass the winter with an abundance of fire and warm baths, and spend summers amidst cool water and breezes and shade, Socrates remarks:

It would seem wonderful to me if any free human being possessed anything more pleasant than this, or found a concern at once more pleasant and of greater benefit in life. Furthermore, [and here Socrates uses the Greek word Gaia] ...the Earth, being a goddess, teaches justice to those who are able to learn, for she gives the most goods to those who serve her best.

Had the science of economics remained at this level — The Earth helps those who help the Earth — today's disagreements between conservationists and developers would have a far different tenor. But although Socrates may be remembered today as the founder of humanism, he is not considered the founder of modern economics — that honor falls instead upon Adam Smith, whose 18th century book The Wealth of Nations is now recognized as the cornerstone of Western Economic theory. Smith was a proponent of what is known as laissez faire or "free market" economics: the cost of goods is based upon the relationship between the desire for those goods and the amount of goods available, and governed by the "invisible hand" of a market economy. The goal of economically sophisticated individuals is to buy low and sell high — to acquire the things they desire at the lowest possible price while maximizing the value of their own labor and resources. In an unregulated marketplace, an equilibrium of costs and prices will be reached through the competition between various suppliers of the same goods and services, thus establishing a "fair market value" — the price the market will bear. I've simplified Smith's position considerably here, but the important thing for us to remember is that Smith and those who follow him think of the economic system primarily in terms of the metaphor of the marketplace: an arena in which commodities are exchanged.

A contemporary of Adam Smith was the Reverend Thomas Malthus, whose Essay on the Principle of Population was one of the major inspirations of Charles Darwin's theory of Natural Selection. If Smith can be thought of as the founder of modern economics, then Malthus might be thought of as the founder of modern ecology, at least to the extent that he was among the first to address many of the same issues which confront environmentalists today. Malthus noted that because the supplies of all commodities, and especially the supply of food, increase at a rate far slower than that of the population, there inevitably will come a time when the demand for essential commodities simply cannot be met by the available supply at any price. The competition of the marketplace, which Smith believed would insure the lowest possible price for all, instead becomes a struggle based on "the survival of the fittest," in which some individuals live and thrive while others are left to starve and perish. In the absence of an ecologically sustainable, "steady-state" economy, the invisible hand of the Goddess, Gaia, reaches out to strike us down, lashing back in self-defense at the fools who refuse to learn.

It was a Unitarian Universalist, Buckminster Fuller, who first coined the term "Spaceship Earth" back in 1964, in an effort to describe, metaphorically, the synergistic nature of that "interdependent web of all existence" in which economics and ecology find their synthesis as a single science of global survival. Since that time concepts like Acid Rain, the Ozone hole, Greenhouse gasses and Global Warming, have become parts of our everyday vocabulary; and many of us have also come to see the one fallacy contained in Fuller's excellent metaphor. The Earth is not a machine, a product of technology: it was not launched with "all systems go," it has no control panel by which we can easily manipulate its course, it has no ultimate destination, whereupon our arrival we will all disembark and make speeches to the media. If anything, the Earth resembles, not a spaceship, but a single living organism. The Biosphere has all of the characteristics of a living creature save one, that of consciousness; and even this criterion can be fulfilled if we are willing to recognize that our own species, homo sapiens, is itself a part of the biosphere — a part which can think. Just as within our own bodies exist organisms such as the mitochondria, which have an independent DNA structure yet play an essential role in the functioning of a cell, so too do we exist within the context of a larger, living being — the being Socrates called Gaia, or Earth.

When the economic laws of supply and demand fail to accurately reflect the ecological expense of producing certain products, we fool ourselves into thinking that we're getting a bargain. But instead we end up on the short end of the deal: we pay the bill for our technology in the price of our health care, the cost of our carelessness is subtracted from the quality of our future. When we think only of ourselves and our own profits, and fail to think and act prophetically for the Earth, we shortsightedly cut ourselves off from the true and ultimate source of value in our lives: we become, not the Mind of Gaia, but rather dangerous parasites which threaten the survival of the entire biosphere.

In the book of Genesis we read that on the Sixth Day of Creation, the creatures, male and female, who had been created in the image of God, were given dominion over the earth by the One who had created them. But this was a gift shared with others: with every beast upon the earth, every bird of the air, everything that creeps upon the ground, everything that has the breath of life...these too were given every green plant for food. And when the Creator saw everything that had been made, "Behold, it was very good."

And it still is good. But we have been poor stewards of our inheritance. In our post-Enlightenment attempts to make humanity the measure of all things, we have forgotten that more fundamental maxim of humanism taught by Socrates: to know ourselves. Our ignorance and our arrogance have combined to turn a garden into a desert, our house into a cesspool. Through our thoughtlessness we have abandoned our responsibilities to our Creator, and are discovering that we must indeed pay the price for this original sin. For we live here not as owners, but merely tenants in this garden. It is time for us to begin to put our house in better order. It is time to make our house into our home.

EASTER, AGAIN?

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, MA
Easter Sunday, April 11th, 2004

READING: Luke 24: 13-35

[Extemporaneous Welcome to Children]

Some years ago now, when I was still relatively new to the ministry, and serving the Unitarian Universalist Church in Midland, Texas, there was a child in our Sunday School whose parents were divorced, so every other Sunday she attended our church with her father, and then on the alternating Sundays she went to the Baptist church with her mother and grandparents. And naturally (as you might imagine) this was a little confusing for her. One Sunday she’d go to the Baptist Church and hear about how God created the world in seven days. The next week she’d come to our church and learn about the dinosaurs. The next week she’d be back over at the Baptist church hearing about Adam and Eve and Original Sin. And then the following week she’d be back with us, and the teacher would have brought an actual snake into the classroom, as part of a lesson about “The Interdependent Web of All Existence, of Which We are a Part.”

Now as it so happened, the Sunday School teacher at the Baptist Church was actually kind of curious about Unitarianism, so she decided to try to find out more by asking Sherry about something that a young child was likely to know, such as the holidays.

“What do the Unitarians believe about Thanksgiving?” the Sunday School teacher asked.

“Thanksgiving is when remember the Pilgrims, who came to America in search of religious freedom, and survived the first winter with the help of their friends, the Indians.”

“And what do the Unitarians believe about Christmas?”

“Christmas is when we celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus, and the coming of light into the world at the darkest time of the year.”

“And what do the Unitarians believe about Easter?”

No response. So the teacher began to give some hints.

“You know, Jesus dies on the cross, and is buried in the tomb....”

Still no response.

“And he’s buried in the Tomb for three days.... And at the end of three days, he rolls away the rock, and comes out of the tomb....”

Suddenly Sherry’s eyes lit up. “And if he sees his shadow he goes back in and there’s six more weeks of winter!”

Now let me tell you a true story. A generation ago, when I was a child growing up in the Unitarian Church, it was still quite common in many of our Unitarian and Universalist churches for the Sunday School students to perform a full-scale Easter pageant at this time of year. And when my mentor, Peter Raible, who is now the minister emeritus at University Unitarian Church in Seattle (where I attended Sunday School as a child), was himself new to our ministry, he was in charge of organizing the Easter Pageant at our church in Providence, Rhode Island, which the children were to perform before the entire congregation as part of the Sunday service. Everything went smoothly until the dramatic climax, when the child who was playing the part of Saint Peter rushed onstage to announce the Good News. At the top of his lungs, he shouted his discovery to the congregation: "The Rock has risen, Christ has rolled away!" There was silence, followed by a nervous titter which soon gave way to uproarious laughter, bringing the pageant to an abrupt and early close. For from the innocent mouth of a child, a profound commentary on our faith had sprung forth. What is the meaning of Easter here in the Unitarian church? Perhaps it is nothing more than this: the Rock has risen, Christ has rolled away.

This is not an easy time of year to be a Unitarian Minister. It's not like Christmas; we call all pretty much get into the Spirit of Christmas without worrying too much about whether or not it truly was a Virgin Birth, or if the angels really did speak to the shepherds. Thanksgiving is essentially OUR holiday: a tiny group of pilgrims who come to a new world in search of religious freedom, and who survive against all odds and in the face of terrible hardship; and if you ever happen to find yourself in Plymouth some Sunday morning, and decide to worship in the church that the Pilgrims started, you will find other Unitarians there to greet you.

But Easter is different. No matter how eloquently we may speak of the rebirth of new life in Spring, or of other Ancient Near Eastern traditions of dying and rising gods, Easter remains the story of an empty tomb, the Resurrection of the Christ, a corpse that got up and "stood again." It's a story, quite frankly, which I don't believe; which is why it's so tough to be a Unitarian minister on Easter Sunday. What do you say after you've said "Sorry, I don't buy it. Not a word of it. It's nothing but fiction, a metaphor, a lot of make believe...."? That's not exactly the sort of message designed to inspire a great outpouring of renewed commitment and religious faith. And yet this is precisely what Easter is all about: the renewal of trust, the renewal of hope: the rebirth of a commitment rooted in faith, even in the face of death and disappointment.

As I said last week, our Unitarian Universalist religious heritage is based on a very simple premise: the premise that Truth, vigorously sought and plainly spoken, will win out over falsehood every time. The free and responsible search for truth and meaning is the cornerstone of our religious practice -- it's the reason a church like ours endures. But curiosity alone, even a "responsible" curiosity, is not enough. There also needs to be, somewhere, an understanding that Truth really matters: that this is not just some abstract, intellectual exercise we are engaged in, but rather potentially an activity of life-transforming significance. The life of faith is not just a commitment to know the truth, but also a willingness to be "set free" by the truth: a willingness to live, truly, by what one has learned, to come into the light rather than skulking in the darkness. It is only through our commitment to something which is larger than our self, larger than our personal preferences and desires -- a commitment which is open to the possibility of surrender, of losing one's self in order to find it -- that we grow beyond our present limitations as religious beings, whatever they may be, and bring our potential to fruition. Knowledge becomes transformative only when one is willing to be changed by what one has learned, willing to grow beyond what we already are to what we potentially might become. And I called this commitment the Challenge of Discipleship: the challenge of becoming a disciplined religious learner, enjoying Fellowship with other learners, sharing the Stewardship of a religious heritage and institution, providing Leadership for others who would join us on our way, and who likewise seek to grow beyond themselves.

You see, Easter is the story of an Empty Tomb. But it is also many other stories as well. It is a story of martyrdom: of one individual's faithful witness to the integrity of his beliefs, and of the price which he paid for maintaining that integrity. It is a story of failure, and temptation, and betrayal; and of the opportunity for a different kind of relationship with the divine, a "New Covenant" which is open to us even in midst of our human weaknesses and shortcomings, and still inspires us to become more than we now are. And above all, I think, it is a story of survival in the aftermath of tragedy, and of that hidden strength which exists within each of us, and which rises to the surface when we need it most.

Consider if you will the story of Simon Peter, or "Rocky" as one of the more contemporary translations of the New Testament calls him, in an attempt to render the effect of the Greek pun on his nickname Petros or "rock." He was the first of the disciples to answer the call of Jesus, a simple working man who caught fish for a living on the Sea of Galilee, and lived at home with his wife and his mother and his brother -- always the most faithful and loyal of the disciples, and yet also (it's always seemed to me) a little thick-headed, as though he really didn't grasp or understand the full significance of everything that was going on around him at the time. Yet it was upon this "rock" that Jesus chose to build his church, his community of people who had been "called out" to learn the Good News of the New Covenant. And the Story of Easter is as much the story of disciple Peter as it is of Rabbi Jesus: what does the "learner" do when the "teacher" is suddenly taken from him, and the full significance of it all finally begins to grow clear?

This, in a nutshell, is what it means to become a disciple: it means the recognition that when you answer the call to become a religious learner, and commit yourself to the discipline which that entails, you are also accepting the responsibility of becoming a religious teacher: of communicating by example what you have learned through imitation. You become an "apostle" -- one who is "sent out" -- one whose faith has not only taken root in the discipline of religious life, but which has also taken wing so that it can be spread to others. This is the quality that separates the Disciple from the dilettante, from someone who merely dabbles in spriritual learning for their own amusement, pretending to a wisdom greater than they possess. The disciple may recognize that his or her knowledge is incomplete, may even shy away from the challenge of sharing it with others. But ultimately the true disciple will rise to the challenge; and it is through this process: learners teaching learners teaching learners teaching learners, that the community endures, surviving even the execution of the teacher who first gathered it.

Jesus himself was a disciple once. In the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel we read of an episode in his life, when he was the age of twelve, in which he remained behind in the city of Jerusalem following the Feast of Passover, and was missing from his family for three days. They eventually found him sitting in the temple, listening to the rabbis and asking them questions, and surprised that his parents should have been so worried about his whereabouts. And eighteen years later, following his baptism by John in the river Jordan, it was only after forty days of fasting in the wilderness that Jesus came to the decision to answer the call to ministry, to gather disciples to him, and to preach good news to the poor. The challenge of an authentic religious faith entails making that step from study to service, to move forward from learning to actively doing the Good and the True.

In the case of Simon Peter, the challenge came upon him suddenly. At the moment Jesus was arrested Peter's first impulse was to resist, to fight back; and afterwards, in those dark hours before dawn, as he followed the members of this paramilitary "Death Squad" who had kidnapped his teacher back to the house of the High Priest himself, and then sat in the courtyard -- frightened, helpless, and confused -- three times he denied that he even knew Jesus, no doubt hoping to avoid a similar fate himself. And when he realized what he had done, he wept for the shame of it.

And then a very strange thing happened. For in the ensuing hours and days that immediately followed the crucifixion, it was the Apostle Peter -- the Rock -- who "stood again" in the place of the departed Jesus, who gathered the disciples together in the Upper Room to observe the Sabbath while they waited for the opportunity to anoint the body of their executed teacher. There was as yet no talk of any "resurrection," no one had been to visit the tomb, no one had claimed to have seen the Risen Lord. But the miracle of Easter had already begun; the teacher was dead, but the teaching lived on: the disciples, the learners, were becoming teachers in their own right, and the community which they formed would survive.

Recall for a moment the passage I read this morning from the Gospel According to Luke, the story of the resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus. I read that passage not because I think that it's an accurate account of something that actually happened, but because it is a story that is personally meaningful to me. Imagine this, if you will. Two disciples, two "learners," are returning home after having witnessed the crucifixion of their teacher and master. They meet a stranger on the road, invite him to share their company and hospitality; and in the familiar action of the breaking of the bread, they see again the face of their rabbi, Jesus. And the message of this story, for me, is not so much that Christ still lives, but that Christ Lives On: that everything that Jesus had come to stand for in the lives of these two students was just as valid after the crucifixion as it had been before.

It has always struck me as ironic, with all the heated arguments I've heard about the nature of the resurrection: whether or not it occurred at all; whether the tomb was empty or Christ simply "appeared;" what, if anything, it should mean to us today anyway, that more often than not, whenever the Apostle Paul (whose epistles represent the earliest documents of what we now call the "New Testament") speaks of the "risen body of Christ," he is speaking metaphorically of the early Christian church, with its "body" of believers, its "many members." For Paul, the empty tomb was never an issue; he saw the Risen Christ every time he saw another Christian, every time they broke bread together. Paul himself never met the living Jesus -- of this even the most conservative Biblical scholars agree. And yet tradition records that he was struck blind on the road to Damascus, and emerged from that experience a different human being: not just a disciple, but an apostle of Christ, with a new vision of his role as a religious learner, and a teacher. The Greek word anastasis, which we translate as Resurrection, literally means "to rise" or "to stand again." And it happens not once in history for all time, but continually for each of us who encounters the Rabbi on the road to Emmaus, or Damascus, and who "rises up" to "take a stand" for a higher principle, for a different way.

Once Jesus had died upon the cross, it was the Apostles who held the church together during its early years: Peter who provided the leadership, the continuity, the solid root from which the community of faith would take wing; Paul who carried the good news to the Gentiles, who spent a good portion of his ministry in prison, and whose letters are now regarded by the church to have the authority of Scripture. Peter went on to become the Bishop of Rome, the first Pope; and was likewise crucified for his beliefs there in that city during the reign of the emperor Nero. Tradition says that Peter asked to be crucified up-side-down, with his head toward the ground and his feet in the air, because he did not feel himself worthy to be executed in the same manner as Jesus. He had answered the call, and then risen to the challenge; he had truly become a "fisher of men," just as the Rabbi had promised when he had said to him "follow me."

The challenges we face in finding our own wings may not be so dramatic as those faced by Peter and Paul. But the thrust of it all is still very much the same: to grow beyond our fears, to rise to the challenge, to use the things which we have learned in the service of others, to become the solid rocks upon which a community can be built. When we rise to this challenge, it is the miracle of Easter all over again: the renewal of faith, the renewal of hope, the resurrection of the spirit of truth and love and fellowship. Through the willingness to serve, to become teachers as well as learners, to act as witnesses to the truth of our beliefs and our ideals, we become active participants in the process of “saving” the world: a world in which evil and falsehood retreat before the power of the Truth plainly spoken, and no challenge is too great for the community of those who faithfully seek it.

DISCIPLINE

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, MA
Palm Sunday, April 4, 2004

[extemporaneous welcome to New Members]

In its essence, Unitarian Universalist religious faith is grounded in a very simple premise: the premise that Truth, vigorously sought and plainly spoken, will win out over falsehood every time. A “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” is the cornerstone of our religious practice; ultimately, it's the reason that a free church like this endures. But the triumph of truth doesn't always happen quickly or easily; that requires both a long season of seeking, and an even longer season of speaking...which is why I thought that today, on Palm Sunday, I would conclude this season of Lenten sermons by preaching on the notion of Discipline, and more specifically , about Discipleship; which is to say, about what it means to be a dedicated (or disciplined) religious seeker, and thus hopefully a religious "learner" as well (which is what the word "disciple" really means).

This seems like an especially appropriate topic for this particular season, simply because of the nature of the events which the Christian tradition has historically commemorated during Holy Week. It's the great irony of the Gospels, that one cannot really appreciate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, accompanied by a chorus of Hosanas and a sea of waving Palm fronds, without looking ahead to his rejection by that same crowd later in the week, and his painful execution alongside two common criminals on a Roman cross at "the Hill of Skulls." And likewise, one cannot really make sense of the Crucifixion without looking ahead to the events of Easter, and the “anastasis” -- the "standing again" -- of the departed teacher in the transformed lives of his surviving students. The “popular acceptance” of the truth of an idea ebbs and flows with the whims of the world. But Truth itself is not so easily put to death so long as there are those who continue to live to learn it. And this choice, this willingness to dedicate oneself to learning and living "the Truth," is what I like to think of as the “Call to Discipleship.” Not a blind obedience to an easy truth which never seeks to move beyond itself. But rather, a curious, questioning, probing truth, which constantly challenges existing assumptions in the effort to achieve a greater understanding.

As I mentioned earlier, the word disciple literally means "learner." But we also see in it the root of yet another familiar English word: the word discipline, which is an essential component of the idea of Discipleship. I don't know what it was like growing up in your household, but in my family “discipline” was and remains one of my father’s favorite words, even though it wasn’t exactly the most popular concept in my own mind when I was a kid. Basically, to my young ears, be disciplined meant to be punished -- it was something that I tried to avoid as much as possible. And as I grew older, and my father began to preach to me about the virtues of "self-discipline," I figured that he must be crazy: why would anyone go out of their way to punish themselves when there are so many other folks out there who are willing to do that for you?

Now, had my father explained to me back then that all he was really trying to do was simply to encourage my brothers and me to cultivate the quality of being lifelong, committed, dedicated, self-motivated learners, he might have had a lot more success getting his point across. As things worked out, it wasn’t until after I started college that I finally figured out for myself what he had been talking about all those years. I think it was Mark Twain who once observed that when he was fourteen he was amazed at how ignorant his father was, but by the time he’d turned twenty-one he couldn’t believe how much smarter the old man had gotten in just seven years. That was basically my experience when it came to learning about “discipline.” It wasn’t the sort of lesson easily learned by lecture alone. I kind of needed to figure it out for myself, by trial and error in the laboratory of my life.

I think it was also Twain who quipped that he tried never to let schooling interfere with his education (which, when you’ve spent as many years in school as I have, takes on a particular poignancy). It's a clever remark, but behind it lies yet another very important truth about “The Truth:” the insight that serious learners tend to learn for the love of learning, and not merely because they are motivated either by the fear of punishment, or the promise of external rewards like good grades, or praise, or the expectation of a better paying job. A passionate curiosity is the first characteristic of the Call to Discipleship: a curiosity which must then become disciplined through the commitment to an organized, methodical, self-challenging learning process in order to achieve its full potential.

But curiosity alone, even a disciplined curiosity, is not enough. There also needs to be, somewhere in one’s character, an understanding that The Truth really matters: that this is not just some sort of abstract, intellectual exercise we are engaged in, but rather potentially an activity of life-transforming significance. The Call to Discipleship is not just an invitation to know the truth, but also the imperative of being "set free" by the truth: a willingness to live, truly, by what one has learned, to come into the light rather than skulking in the darkness. It is on this level, I believe, that we can see most clearly why Discipleship truly is a "religious" discipline: it represents a profound commitment to something which is larger than the self, larger than one's personal preferences and desires -- a commitment which is open to the possibility of surrender, of losing one's self in order to find it. Knowledge becomes transformative only when one is willing to be changed by what one has learned. Yet the willingness to change -- and by this I mean not only a willingness to accept change, but also to seek and to embrace change -- is perhaps the most difficult lesson of all. We seek out knowledge in order to be able to change the world, but the most significant thing that we can ever learn to change is our own selves. Self-discipline not only requires self-understanding, it also creates it. And this in turn is what ultimately empowers us to change the world around us as well.

For my own part, when I first felt the "call" to ministry, it was precisely because of my commitment to Social Justice. If you think I have outspoken political opinions now, you should have heard me twenty-five years ago! Very quickly though after beginning my theological studies at Harvard, I started to develop an interest in the more contemplative aspects of religious life. I was looking for a language with which to express my own mystical sense of who I was in this vast Universe we inhabit; and I discovered that as I learned, this new knowledge helped both to shape and to expand my understanding. It not only gave form to what I already felt, but it also drew me out beyond it: the "discipline" of Discipleship became in itself a vehicle for personal religious transformation, the source of a new understanding which grew upon itself rather than merely reorganizing what it found. And likewise, this same process ultimately brought me to a much deeper appreciation of the Church as an institution: not merely a potential springboard for social change, nor even a convenient forum for intellectual stimulation, but also a dynamic institution in its own right: an institution built on a very human scale, unlike the huge banks, and corporations, and governmental entities which exert so much control over the way we live our lives.

Indeed, over the years more and more of my own personal understanding of what it means to be a "disciple" has come to center around my relationship to a church community -- and not merely as a minister, as the so-called "professional" Unitarian -- but even more significantly simply as a "fellow traveler," a learner who seeks a deeper knowledge of himself and the meaning and purpose of his life, and who finds that it is only in community, in the often-times extremely difficult challenge of collaborating with other people and creating some kind of a common life together, that the really important lessons are to be learned. I’m sure you’ve all heard it said that knowledge is power, and also that power corrupts, which naturally leads some to the logical conclusion that we must disempower the knowledgeable in order to prevent them from corrupting the democratic process. But this twisted syllogism becomes true only when the power of knowledge is allowed to remain in the possession of only a few, select individuals, when information is hoarded rather than shared, and knowledgeable “insiders” are allowed to take advantage of the ignorance of others by keeping them in the dark and manipulating events from behind the scenes.

It’s an insidious temptation for even the most wise; think of how easy it can be simply to remain confident in one’s own enlightenment, scoffing at the foibles of the fools around us, and taking advantage of our “superior” understanding to get our own way, or at least insulate ourselves from the demands of the outside world. But within a community of disciples, a community of committed learners, the discipline of the group keeps us constantly on our toes, while the challenge of collaboration, of sharing our knowledge for the good of all, helps to draw us away from our smug complacency to a place of humble and well-intentioned openness.

The Call to Discipleship is a challenge to seek a wisdom beyond ourselves, and to use it in the service of a purpose larger than ourselves. It is a call to remain curious, to cultivate discipline, to open ourselves to the possibility of transformation as we endeavor to live our lives according to the lessons we have learned. Ultimately, I believe, it finds it's fullest expression within the context of a community, in the give and take of attempting to create a common life together. It is the fundamental vehicle for our religious fulfillment; but there is also a price to be paid, a challenge to be met, and it is to that challenge that I will turn my attention next week, when we gather again as a community of faith, on Easter Sunday.

TEAMWORK

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle MA
Sunday March 21st, 2004


Opening Words: "Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are; your reputation is merely what others think you are." --John Wooden


[extemporaneous thanks to the Skyloom Dancers....]

This is one of my favorite times of the year. It’s the annual return of the “Big Dance” -- the NCAA college basketball tournament, or “March Madness” as it is sometimes called -- an opportunity to watch some of the most exciting basketball played anywhere, by both Men’s and Women’s teams....in an intense, single-elimination format that always seems to produce more than its fair share of dramatic, buzzer-beating finishes, and exhilarating human drama, and unexpected triumphs and defeats....all in the space of three long weekends. For a basketball fan in particular, there’s nothing quite like it...especially for those of us of a theological bent. Last night the DePaul Blue Demons were easily eliminated by the Huskies of U Conn (as in the University of Connecticut, not the Canadian territory), but at least both Duke and Wake Forest will be advancing to next week’s Sweet Sixteen, which means that it’s still theoretically possible for the Blue Devils and the Demon Deacons to meet in the championship game in San Antonio on April 5th: now wouldn’t that be a match-up made in heaven? (Not that I had it that way on MY bracket; I was expecting Stanford to go all the way this year, but they lost last night to Alabama after nearly sending the game into overtime at the buzzer, which was almost as painful as seeing my precious Gonzaga get blown out of Key Arena by a team like Nevada).

But I honestly think that the most emotionally intense game played yesterday was the Wilmington Lady Quakers’ comeback victory over the previously undefeated Bowdin Polar Bears, 59-53, in the Women’s Division III championship game. This was one of those great games where you just wish that both teams could go home winners, and I kinda like to think that maybe in this particular instance, they both did. My daughter was a Division III college athlete, so I know firsthand that there are no scholarships in Division III; these kids truly do play “for the love of the game,” and thus exemplify the advertisements that have been running throughout the tournament, which conclude with the tag: “There are over 360,000 NCAA student athletes, and just about all of us will be going pro in something other than sports.” But they still practice and compete as hard as they can; they still “play their hearts out,” and “leave it all out on the floor.” They still know what it means to be a part of a team, working together over the course of a season to achieve the shared goal of winning a championship.

When we first started thinking about and planning this particular Sunday service several months ago now, the theme was originally going to be “Peace.” But as the time grew closer, and I had a chance to watch the dancers rehearse together, and work out their choreography and adapt it to this space, this other theme of “teamwork” came to mind. Teamwork is a concept I have always associated with competition, first with sports and then by analogy with business, or even war. But teamwork is also obviously about cooperation, and ultimately about performance; and teams not only work, they also play. As a kid growing up, I played on lots of teams. I was told that TEAM was an acronym for “Together Everyone Achieves More” and also that There is no “I” in “Team.” But no one ever bothered to mention the more basic definition of “two or more animals (typically horses or mules, but also often oxen and even dogs) yoked together to the same vehicle or plow,” and driven (naturally) by a “teamster.” Being part of a team certainly empowers its members to accomplish more together than any one of them could alone. But there is also a price to be paid with respect to a loss of individuality and personal freedom (sometimes expressed in the sentiment “unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes”); which is just a colorful way of saying that the same yoke that allows a team to pull together also binds them together in such a way that unless they move together, they are incapable of moving at all.

In this age of the automobile, and the internal combustion engine which makes autonomous mobility possible, teams of draft animals are not really a big part of our daily experience any more. Instead, as I mentioned earlier, we tend to associate teams with both sports and the workplace -- where the emphasis on competition sometimes obscures the more basic sense of cooperation essential to effective teamwork. In this context, members of teams sometimes compete with one another as well as with their “external” opponents -- for promotions and raises, for glory and “playing time.” Sometimes this competition becomes so intense that it destroys the integrity of the team itself, so that no one wins and everybody loses. The real success of a team is measured, not by its momentary victories, but by its ability to continue to work together smoothly over time, while adapting itself effectively to changing circumstances.

This cooperation need not always be so rigid as that of two oxen yoked together. So long as the skills of the teammates compliment and support one another, almost any combination is possible. For example, the most basic kind of a team is a simple partnership -- two individuals working together toward a shared goal. Like a marriage. Have you ever thought about the fact that every marriage is the same, yet no two marriages are alike? Or maybe it’s the other way around.... This paradox has been on my mind a lot lately, especially now that same-sex marriage has jumped to the front burner and boiled over as a potential wedge issue in the upcoming Presidential election. Within the structure of the institution of marriage, each couple has the freedom to work out the nuances of their own unique partnership, to form a team. And this publicly sanctioned privacy is what makes marriage sacred.

There’s a passage from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea that I often like to read at weddings because it expresses this insight so articulately. Lindbergh wrote that “a good relationship has a pattern like a dance, and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate, but also gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart’s To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back -- it does not matter which, because they know that they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it. The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined....”

As a minister, helping people create this kind of partnership in their marriage is part of my job. But as you may have already figured out, as a human being my real passion is not dancing, but basketball. Five players, one ball, and an equal number of opponents standing between you and your goal...and the most complicated part is that you can’t just walk up and put the ball in the basket, because the basket is ten feet off the ground and walking with the ball is not allowed. And so you have to learn how to play as a team -- how to share the ball and communicate with your teammates in order to outwit your opponents and prevent them from preventing you from doing what you want to do more often than they are able to do it themselves. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? But it’s really very simple. The only game more simple is soccer, where the goal is still at ground level, and the only real rule is that you can’t use your hands.

But simply because something appears to be simple doesn’t meant that it is easy. Because the challenge is not in the task. The challenge is learning to work as a team, as the tasks themselves grow increasingly more difficult and more complicated. I’ve already covered all the basics, but let’s just go over them one more time so that we can all see how they fit together. Teamwork is about learning to play together. Or about performing together in a cooperative way in order to achieve a shared goal. The key concepts here are “shared,” “cooperative,” and “together,” and the one essential element which makes all these things possible is good communication. Communication allows a group to identify the goals, and to articulate plans for achieving them which every member of the team understands and can agree to. It allows the team to share information about how things are going, and to make adjustments, to offer encouragement, to interact.

In time, good communication also creates something we sometimes call “chemistry” -- a shared knowledge of one’s self and one’s teammates -- your skills, your role, and the skills and roles of everyone else as well, grounded in shared experience and mutual trust, and which allows teammates to anticipate what the others on the team are going to do, sometimes even before they seem to know themselves.

And the catalyst of this chemistry is leadership: the ability to make the people around you better, through teaching and planning, organization, motivation, analysis and correction. Leadership is a complicated topic -- one worthy, no doubt, of at least one sermon all its own. But the great irony of leadership is that leaders typically end up limiting their own individual performance in order to improve the overall performance of the group. A good coach can lead a winning team, yet never score a single point...nor even touch the ball for that matter, except maybe to hand it to the players at the beginning of practice, and pick it up again when practice is over. And at the same time, talented players can sometimes try to “take over” a game to the detriment of a team’s overall performance, essentially taking their teammates out of the game through their own misguided attempts to dominate their opponents single-handedly.

I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to recall. It’s a common fault, and the more talented a player is, the more stubbornly they cling to it. Jr. High School boys are the worst. You get the ball, and the first thing you do is put your head down and dribble as hard as you can with your strong hand toward the basket. It used to work every time in the driveway, but now instead of one-on-one you are going one-on-five, so the next thing you know you find yourself cut-off at the baseline and surrounded by your opponents, at which point you either fire up a wild shot somewhere in the direction of the basket (whether or not you can actually see it), or else finally get it in your head to try to pass the ball to one of your teammates, all of whom are circling around you like vultures, waving their arms and shouting out your name in the hope of getting a chance to do exactly the same thing themselves once they get their hands on the ball. And, of course, the worst thing that can happen at this point is that the ball goes through the basket -- because that will simply encourage you to try it again the next time you touch the ball.

But the point I want to make, metaphorically speaking of course, is that we all start out this way....trying to do it all ourselves, assuming no one else can do it as well as we can, reluctant to trust anyone else, blind to our own shortcomings and harshly critical of the perceived failures of others. But if we are lucky, we will fail often enough early enough to realize that there’s a better way. And we will start to watch the more experienced players, and the more successful teams; we will listen to what they have to teach us, learn from our mistakes, and in time discover what it truly means to be a part of a team ourselves, working together cooperatively in mutual trust and true partnership with others in order to achieve our common goals. And at this point we discover the REAL miracle of teamwork -- that by letting go of our desire to do it all ourselves, we acquire the freedom to do what we do best, in cooperation with others whose talents compliment our own. And thus together, as a team, we each are allowed to become more completely who we are.


READING: from Hoops Nation: a guided to America’s best pickup basketball by Chris Ballard.

Why You Should Always Pick the Old Guy Instead of the Young Guy When Choosing Teams

* More shots for you!
* Almost always a better passer and team player than younger guys.
* Might have a mean pet shot.
* Won’t hinder your triple-double quest by stealing any rebounds.
* You can blame him for any defensive lapses the team encounters.
* He’ll use up his full complement of twenty-five fouls.
* You’ll always have a trailer on the break.
* He could be an influential businessman who will hire you someday.

EQUITY

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, MA
Sunday March 7th, 2004

OPENING WORDS: “Not to give to those in need what to you is superfluous is akin to fraud.” -- St. Augustine


READING: Deuteronomy 15: 7-11 [12-18]


If you type the word “equity” into an internet search engine like Google or Yahoo, the first “hit” you will undoubtedly come across will be the web page for the British trade union for actors and other performing artists of that same name. But if you look over to the side of your screen, at the so-called “sponsored links,” what you will find will be a long list of solicitation after solicitation for home equity loans and credit lines. This is how “equity” is most commonly understood and used in ordinary conversation: the equity in our homes, or perhaps “equities” in which we invested the form of common stock, “shares” of some commercial enterprise which we own “corporately” in the company of other investors. And just as an aside, I learned the other day (from a very credible source), that there is now over a billion dollars worth of real estate equity here in the Town of Carlisle. A billion dollars is a lot of money, by any measure...and of course, because I live in a church-owned parsonage, I don’t actually share in any of it. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not invested in this community, or that I don’t have an interest in what goes on here, sharing in the ups and downs of the fortunes of my neighbors and fellow creatures.

The word “equity” itself comes from the Latin word “æques” meaning “equal” (and which should not be confused with the similar sounding “equus” meaning “horse”). If you look it up in any half-way decent unabridged etymological dictionary, you will basically find some combination of the same small handful of definitions, all of which build in slightly different directions on this original root meaning. In its most basic sense, “equity” means “fairness,” and “equitable” is essentially a synonym for “fair” or “even-handed.” More precisely, equity refers to the legal principle of impartiality, which asserts that every individual has the same right to be fairly heard, and to stand equally with all others before the law -- that we are all entitled to our day in court.

Then comes the financial sense that we’ve been talking about already -- the value of Property (most typically, but not exclusively, Real Estate) minus the amount owed against it...in other words, the part you own “free and fair,” without encumbrance, and which you have a right to redeem in a reasonable time even in the event of foreclosure by a creditor.

Finally, and perhaps most specifically, “Equity” refers to a system of legal rules and doctrines which resorts to general principles of fairness and justice, at times even superseding existing statutes or the common law, whenever established law proves inadequate for just settlement and an equitable resolution of a problem or conflict. In other words, Equity law is basically carte blanc for all those so-called “activist judges,” who are empowered by centuries of British and American legal tradition to root out injustice whenever it comes before them, by relying upon their own best judgment, and a fundamental spirit of fairness and equity .

Now all this leads me to the real question that I want to look at today, which is How do we go about creating “equity” in a Society? -- the kind of community which not only embraces basic principles of fairness and impartiality, but also one in which everyone gets a fairly even-handed opportunity to “buy in” and enjoy an equitable share of its underlying “value.” This is obviously a very complicated topic, and certainly not one which we are going to be able to exhaust in just a few minutes preaching on a Sunday morning. But it’s also a problem that should deeply concern each and every one of us, since it directly affects the quality of both the local and the world community in which we live. Theologians and Social Ethicists in particular sometimes talk about this problem in terms of Economic or “distributive” Justice -- how do we fairly divide up the wealth of a society, so that everyone receives an equitable share?

Not necessarily an equal share, since that would probably be impossible even if it were desirable. But an EQUITABLE share -- a fair share -- whatever that may be. Enough, perhaps, to keep body and soul together. Or maybe enough to assure every individual of life, and liberty, and perhaps even a little happiness...or at least the opportunity to pursue it. Economic justice is about more than merely an equitable distribution of wealth. Ultimately, it’s about relationships -- about benefits and privileges, rights, duties and responsibilities, and how they are shared within a society. Who owes what to whom and why? What kind of obligations do those whom God has smiled upon owe the less-fortunate, and what must the latter do to collect?

Ideas about what is fair and equitable vary from place to place and over time, and even for a single individual over the course of a lifetime. A young child will scream “That’s Not Fair!” whenever they don’t get their way, but as we grow older we come to realize that life isn’t always fair even though we wish it were...and that sometimes we can’t get what we want, or even what we need, no matter how hard we try. Perhaps our ideas about what we “really need” also change over time, as we come to understand our own needs and the needs of others better and more completely. Food, Clothing, Shelter, Education, Health Care, the opportunity to earn an honest living (as contrasted with the opportunity to “make a killing”).

Think about it for a moment: what might you personally add to or subtract from this list? What about transportation, for example: the freedom to move efficiently and affordably from place to place? What about the opportunity to fall in love and form a family...with someone of a different religion? With someone from a different race? With someone the same sex as yourself? As Americans, we tend to be uniquely militant about defending our own perceived “rights” and “freedoms,” but we can sometimes become a little short-sighted when it comes to acknowledging the accompanying duties and responsibilities, or defending the rights of others....especially when they are asserting the right to be different than us.

But the principle of equity insists that all individuals be treated impartially and even-handedly. There should NEVER be two standards of fairness: one for people like us, and another for people different than us. If anything, society should go out of its way to protect those who are incapable of protecting themselves: the widows, the orphans, the strangers. This understanding of equity goes all the way back to the Bible, to the ancient legal codes of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. I’ve always been fascinated by the attempts of certain individuals to read these books “literally,” as a set of divinely-inspired rules and regulations appropriate to governing contemporary behavior. Because more often than not, they aren’t actually interpreting these Scriptures literally at all -- instead, they read them through the filters of their own prejudice, finding support for things they already believe and naively ignoring or misinterpreting what they find disagreeable or don’t understand. And because they read them out of context, they often overlook the more basic, undergirding ethical principles which still give these texts contemporary relevance, despite the fact that they were originally written for a society which no longer exists and which was very different from our own.

Not always, of course. There are still people who “get it” -- some of them very conservative people theologically -- but who understand that just because the Bible talks about slavery (a lot), it doesn’t mean that we have a God-given right to own slaves, or that we should execute adulterers and disobedient children by publicly pelting them to death with heavy stones just because that’s what someone said you ought to do 3000 years ago. In order to truly understand what these texts are all about, you need to read them anthropologically -- you need to understand them accurately in their original context, discern the underlying ethical principles which give them their coherence, and then apply those principles meaningfully to contemporary times. And it’s a very difficult process, because no matter how excellent a scholar one may be, it is impossible not to bring SOME level of contemporary bias to the task. And yet, properly handled, this can be an important tool of discernment in its own right. The things that seem the most strange and unusual are the ones we should be most attentive to. And those that feel the most familiar likewise those which should be approached most skeptically and suspiciously.

There are times (not many, but a few) when I kinda wish that I were a preacher in an honest-to-God Bible-believing church, so that I could have the liberty to go line by line through a passage like the one I read earlier from the Book of Deuteronomy, and really “open the Scripture” to all of you without being afraid of starting a riot. (Of course, if this really were an honest-to-God Bible-Believing church, I would probably cause a riot anyway, just because of the nature of my exegesis). Because even though that particular passage may seem like a relatively straight-forward exhortation to give generously to one’s less-fortunate neighbors, it comes in the midst of a series of similarly prescriptive passages concerning kosher dietary laws, the practice of tithing, the notion of the so-called “sabbatical year,” (a kind of mini-jubilee or “sabbath” every seventh year, at which time creditors forgave the outstanding debts of their neighbors), and finally the equitable treatment of someone who has sold themselves to you as a slave.

And when you examine these passages side by side and in their historical and cultural context, you start to realize that these “laws” are not really about doing nice things for your neighbors out of the goodness of your heart or because it pleases God; they involve instead a systematic redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor FOR THE GOOD OF THE COMMUNITY ITSELF, a community which includes both rich and poor, all of whom face changing fortunes, all of whom are God’s people. It’s not about charity, or doing good works. It is an investment in what is sometimes called “Social Capital” -- strengthening the relationships which bind us together as neighbors, and allow us to depend on one another in times of crisis.

Of course, here in America in the 21st century, we do things exactly the opposite -- we encumber our children and our children’s children with massive amounts of debt in order to put more money in the pockets of the wealthiest 1% of the population, while at the same time jeopardizing the retirement and health care benefits of an entire generation. And I know there are many who dismiss this kind of talk as partisan political rhetoric, but if you just take a step back from it for a moment and try to look at the situation dispassionately, I think you’ll see that there are fundamental questions of equity and social justice at issue here, and that they concern us all, regardless of our political sentiments.

I believe in the entrepreneurial spirit. I believe in free enterprise, and a market economy -- I believe that incentives are important, and that economic growth, increased productivity, and the creation of wealth are all good things. But I also believe in environmental regulation, in living wages, in health and safety standards, and a society that looks first to protect the lives and livelihoods of its most vulnerable members, rather than subsidizing the extravagant lifestyles of its most affluent. Who really needs meaningful financial incentives more desperately: middle-aged corporate executives like Ken Lay and Dennis Kozlowski, or the 17-year-old inner-city High School drop-out, who is convinced by his entire life experience that there will never be a place at the table for him, simply because of the color of his skin? And even if they all end up in prison, as so many young African American males do these days, do you really think that there’s even the slightest chance that he will find himself eating at the same table as Dennis and Kenny-boy?

A good rant is healthy every now and again; it gets the blood flowing, and inspires the heart to reach out once more into the community, and help to do God’s work in the world. And I just want to say, here at the end of the hour, that I’m very proud of the work that this congregation does in the area of Social Action. Through our on-going partnership with Habitat, through our support of the Open Pantry and the House of Hope, the Bartlett School, the Sharing Foundation, and the various other programs and community agencies we reach out to and are involved with, we help to make small but significant improvements in the lives of hundreds of our “neighbors and fellow creatures” every year; and I know that there are many individuals in this church who do even more in their private lives, and are an inspiration and a good example to us all. Yet as important as this work is, the problems are even bigger. Private Charities and faith-based organizations simply can’t do it all; society as a whole needs to be reminded to make enough room for everyone in the boat, so that we all can float with the rising tide, rather than leaving some of us behind to sink beneath the waves and drown.