SERVING HUMANITY IN FRIENDSHIP

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 10, 2004


It occurred to me this past week, as I was thinking about what I was going to say here this morning, that after today there are only three more Sundays until the election. We've got one more debate to go, the polls are tightening, in a lot of states voter registration has already closed (although I think here in Massachusetts you still have until Friday to sign up -- does anyone know for certain?) Interestingly enough, I find myself feeling a lot more calm and relaxed than I did even a few weeks ago now that election day is just around the corner. It's not that I don't think the election will be close, or that I've stopped caring about who will win. It's just that I feel like I've already done my bit, and I'm ready for it to be over. I know who I'm going to vote for (and at this point I can't really think of anything that would get me to change my mind), I've contributed all the money that I'm going to contribute, I may still sign up to help people get to the polls on election day or something like that, but I don't really think that the outcome is in any doubt here in Massachusetts, and I'm not really sure that I want to vote absentee just so that I can travel to someplace like Florida or Pennsylvania (like so many of my colleagues are) simply to watch other people cast votes that might actually count if they're actually counted. I feel a little like my son Jacob did back in 1988, when he was only 15 and Michael Dukakis was running against the President's father. I think we might have been watching the World Series [that was the year that the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Oakland A's, and Kirk Gibson hit that dramatic 9th inning home run to win Game One], or maybe it was just some meaningless football game...but whatever it was, at one point Jake looked up from a particularly vicious attack ad and announced to no one in particular "I'll be so glad when this election is over, and we can go back to watching beer commercials again."

Of course, it's not just the Presidency that's up for grabs on November 2nd. There's a complete slate of State and Local issues and candidates on the ballot, plus (technically at least) the entire House of Representatives and one third of the Senate. Between gerrymandering and the absence of effective campaign finance reform, the power of incumbency is so great these days that there are really very few Congressional races that are actually that competitive...but even so, House Majority leader Tom Delay made certain that before the Congress recessed for the election there were a series of essentially meaningless procedural votes on issues like same-sex marriage and the assault weapons ban, just so that he could get Democratic Representatives from more conservative southern and western states on the record as having voted in favor of gun control, and against traditional marriage.

But think about it for a moment. If you had a choice, where would you rather live: in a place where assault weapons were banned, and it was OK for people to marry whoever they loved; or someplace where everyone had an assault rifle, and it was illegal to be gay? Denmark, or Afghanistan? Canada, or Iraq? Or what about Carlisle, Massachusetts or Midland, Texas? I don't have any trouble knowing how I would answer these questions, and I don't imagine that many of you do either. But we live in a diverse nation, where people are free to have different opinions. And while I may like to believe that it's simply because they don't know any better, or that they've never really BEEN to Midland Texas...it may well be that they've just never been anywhere else.

In any event, it occurred to me that with all the flash polling trying to track likely voters in the so-called "battleground states," and the media pundits talking about NASCAR Dads and "Security" Moms, and which candidate appeared most "Presidential" at the most recent debate, that we've kinda lost track of what good ol' "Joe Six-Pack" really thinks. And so I thought I'd sponsor an informal poll of my own. [take out the empty beer cartons - Sam Adams and Lone Star] Just bring your empties and put them in the appropriate place, and who knows? -- maybe in another few weeks or so we'll all be able to put up our feet and breath a little easier, crack open a cold one, and just enjoy the game.

OK, I suppose it's time now to turn to my real topic for the day.

We say it together out loud every week, but how often do we take just a moment or two to reflect upon what it really means? "Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is our sacrament, and service is our prayer." These are basically our dogmas (although technically, Unitarian-Universalists aren't supposed to have any dogmas) -- they represent our most profound opinions, the things we believe are ultimately true. And then we follow them with a series of three parallel duties or responsibilities: "To dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, [and] to serve humanity in friendship" all working toward our ultimate goal of "the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine." It's an agreement, a mutual promise or Covenant, that we make "with each other, and with God."

I'll have more to say about the actual "covenant" part of our Covenant next week, but today I want to focus in on the idea of service, and especially these twin notions that helping our fellow human beings is both an act of friendship, and a form of prayer. I hope by now it is abundantly clear that the order in which each of these items appears in our covenant isn't exactly random. There's an obvious, dynamic logic to it it all: our commitment to love and to dwelling together in peace makes us naturally curious about one another's lives, and discovering the commonalities which link us together in community despite our many differences. As our wisdom and knowledge of one another grow over time, we likewise come to recognize our obligation to help one another out in times of trouble or need...and this vocation, this call to be useful, to be of service, is both the culmination and the fulfillment of our free religious quest. It's more than merely an act of friendship, or "neighborliness." It's more than just the tangible satisfaction of rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands a little dirty doing God's work in the world. It's also an act of worship, of faith and faithfulness -- a form of prayer by which we communicate our feelings of devotion and gratitude to our Creator....

The idea of prayer is sometimes a little problematic for Unitarian Universalists. If you're not really certain whether you even believe in God, what's the point in trying to talk to her? You might as well be talking to yourself, or to the Universe, or to thin air. If you look the word up in a good etymological dictionary you'll discover that prayer comes from the Latin verb precari which means "to beg." And this is certainly one very popular understanding of prayer: begging God for something we know we really don't deserve. For a trial lawyer, the "prayer" is a plaintiff's pre-trail request for the legal relief or monetary damages that they would hope to be awarded if the jury finds in their favor on every issue. This is one of the reasons why the current administration hates trial lawyers so much: it's because they realize that sometimes the prayers of deserving people are indeed answered, and they can't quite get it through their heads that litigation is NOT just another form of begging. Or maybe it's because they believe that some people are simply more deserving than others, and forget that it's only a frivolous lawsuit if your weren't the one who was injured in the accident.

But for more sophisticated people of faith, there is another dimension of prayer which reflects the reality that God really does help those who help themselves. Prayer in this sense is an appeal to the values and the principles which we hold most deeply, and the attempt to shape our lives in conformity to those same values and principles. It's not a matter of telling God what WE want, it's a process of discerning what God wants for US, and then asking for (and receiving) the strength, the wisdom, and the persistence to become the kind of person God wants us to be. And this process of discernment generally requires a lot more listening than it does begging. It asks us to look long and hard at who we really are, and what we truly believe. It asks us to question and challenge everything we have been told by others about who we "ought" to be, and what we "should" be doing, and demands instead that we search our souls for that small spiritual part of ourselves created in the image of God, and that we endeavor to make it larger, while at the same time learning to recognize and evoke that same spirit in those around us as well.

Now this isn't to say that there isn't potentially a lot of truth in what others tell us about who we ought to be, or what we should be doing. But if we simply take these pronouncements at face value, without doing the kind of prayerful reflection and contemplation I've just described, our faith will always be a little superficial -- it will be something we imitate, rather than something we live. And likewise, without the element of friendship, of service to others or some great purpose larger than ourselves, our faith potentially becomes too isolated and introspective, perhaps ultimately even narcissistic. Yet even here we must also be careful. There are people in this world who adamantly believe that God wants them to fly airliners into skyscrapers, or to cut off the heads of the infidels who occupy their country. There are people who believe that because they are self-proclaimed servants of God, on a mission from God -- a Crusade, a Jihad (call it what you will) -- that they are free to kill the evil-doers wherever they may find them, or to take them into custody without due process, maybe even torture them a little, because the nobility and the urgency of the Cause Itself does away with the need for any kind of “test:” of legitimacy, of credibility, or even subsequent accountability for the wisdom and appropriateness of their decisions. Yet this is simply wrong. When evil is answered with evil, evil wins...even if it is all done in the name of God, and with the best of intentions, or for the most noble purposes.

But when the obligation is simply "to serve humanity in friendship," the potential for inadvertently doing evil is dramatically diminished. Not that it becomes completely impossible: we human beings are incredibly creative when it comes to rationalizing our bad behavior, and sometimes equally incredibly shortsighted about the true consequences of our choices. Thoreau wrote in Walden that "there is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted," and that if he "knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." But to serve humanity in FRIENDSHIP, to do good for another human being knowing who they really are, and giving authentically out of the best part of ourselves, is an entirely different matter. "We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease..." Thoreau continued. "I would not subtract any thing from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind."

This is the ultimate test of prayerful service: do our lives and our works truly represent a blessing to humanity, to mankind? Are we, through our service, God's answer to our prayers? Do our endeavors lead to reconciliation rather than conflict; are we servants of peace, justice, wisdom, mercy, healing and redemption, rather than merely instruments of hatred and revenge? And yes, it IS a complicated business, and yes, we do the best we can. But by simply serving our fellow human beings in friendship, we become better people ourselves. Not just superficially, but deep within ourselves, in our hearts and spirits. We become indeed the people God intends for us to be.