A Misguided Benevolence?

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday January 15, 2006

I know that folks have kinda become accustomed these past few months to hearing me start out my sermon with something funny, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a funny story about Martin Luther King Jr? This was the best I could come up with:

Q: Why did the Chicken cross the road?

A: Because she had a dream....

Ok, here’s another one...One afternoon while the zoo-keeper was making his rounds he noticed that the orangutan was reading two books: the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species. Surprised, he asked the ape, "Why are you reading those?"

"Well," replied the orangutan, "I just wanted to figure out whether I am my brother's keeper or my keeper's brother."

In any event, thought I’d try something a little different this year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Generally I like to use this Sunday as an opportunity to celebrate Dr. King’s life -- to talk about what a great man he was, and the important things he accomplished (or at least tried to accomplish) for our nation, and also the many ways his life has inspired me personally in my own ministry over the years. But this year I want to try something a little different. This year I want to talk about the unfinished business of Dr. King’s legacy: about the challenges that are still before us a half century after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, and set in motion the chain of events that would eventualloy lead to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and in the process elevate this young, southern, profoundly eloquent black Baptist clergyman to national and then world-wide attention.

I’ve been thinking about these issues not only because of the ways that they’ve come up during the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings, but more particularly as I’ve been reflecting about the racial overtones and subtexts of the recent riots in France, and of course the tragedy of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. I sincerely believe that thanks in large part to the work of Dr. King and of those who followed him, America potentially has a great deal to teach the world about diversity, pluralism, and how to live together peacefully and prosperously in a multicultural democracy. But before we can effectively teach these lessons to others, we first have to finish learning them for ourselves.

We’ve certainly had more than enough time to do our homework. The first black African slaves were imported into North America by the Dutch in 1619, although both the Portuguese and the Spanish had already introduced African slavery into their American colonies almost as soon as the New World had been “discovered” by Europeans a full century earlier. By 1776, when Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress declared to the world that “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...” there were approximately half a million Americans of African descent living in a condition of involuntary servitude in the territory that would soon become known as the United States -- a number that would grow to nearly four million by the time of Emancipation four score and seven years later, despite the fact that the Jefferson administration had outlawed the further importation of slaves into the United States in 1808, and that all of the northern states had already abolished slavery within their borders by 1804.

But Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 had revolutionized the economy of North America, and in the process created a vast internal market for slave labor, which domestic slave traders were more than happy to supply. The happiness of both southern planters and northern mill owners was pursued at the expense of both the liberty and often the lives of a captive labor force whose only real share of the prosperity they generated was to be beaten and whipped, to be raped, and to witness the systematic destruction of their families as husbands and wives, sons and daughters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces were “sold down the river” in order to pick the cotton that made the textile industry here in New England possible.

And then it was only after another century of discrimination and exploitation, of segregation and sharecropping, and an intentional and systematic suppression of liberty and denial of justice often violently enforced by night riding lynch mobs, that Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and addressed the quarter of a million people who had gathered there to listen to him, and countless more who would hear his message through the media, both that day and on down through the years. The words King uttered that day, and especially his vision of a time when “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” and where “little children will...live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” remain so vividly in our minds that we can easily overlook the point he was trying to make earlier in the speech: that the people assembled there that day had “come to our nation’s capital to cash a check....a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice....”

We Americans like to believe that we live in a Land of Opportunity: a “melting-pot” of immigrants from all over the world, where anyone who is willing to work hard and sacrifice can create a better life, if not for themselves, than at least for their children. And yet there is one significant and easily-recognizable group of our citizens who still have not fully shared in this promise. Their families have typically been in this country far longer than mine, for instance; and for generations they have done much more than their fair share of the truly difficult, back-breaking menial work that has made American prosperity possible. The persistent influence of this long-established cultural racism becomes even more problematic when we recognize that the idea of “race” itself is simply a social construction. It has no basis in modern biology; it is merely something we have taught ourselves to see. Biologically, the children of former slaves and the children of former slave-owners often ARE literally brothers and sisters to one another, or at the very least distant cousins. It’s not a pretty story, but it is a scientific and a historical fact. Racial inequality is the lingering legacy of a 500 year old ideology which was used by one side of a large, extended family to justify and excuse the buying and selling of the other side of that family as property, exploiting them as if they were merely another form of livestock, and shamelessly profiting from that exploitation.

There’s at least one additional complicating factor in this already complex social equation, which is that because of this long heritage of economic exploitation, skin color has also become a marker of social class in this supposedly-classless society of ours. Yes, it’s a stereotype, and yes it’s also a form of prejudice, but the sad reality is that even today, if your skin happens to be dark, the immediate assumption (often not without reason) is that you are poor as well. And if you also happen to be young, and male, and wearing a particular style of clothing, a lot of people are automatically going to presume that you are dangerous and up to no good as well. All too often these kinds of negative expectations become self-fulfilling, as young people learn to see themselves as others see them, and give in to the pressure to live up to the stereotypes. And on some level it doesn’t seem to matter how hard you work or how much you study, how well you dress or how wealthy you become, even whether your image becomes a beloved international cultural icon and your name a familiar household word. Michael Jordon or Michael Jackson, Oprah or OJ. You may be rich, but you’re still not white...and in a world where black or white still seems to matter, it can often seem like that’s the ONLY thing that matters.

The complexities of healthy race relations are baffling even for the most perceptive and well-intentioned. No one now living in America today is individually responsible for the injustices of slavery, even though many of us have benefited indirectly and collectively from the legacy of that peculiar institution. I think it’s a little more difficult to make the case that the descendants of former slaves do not somehow still suffer from the vestigial consequences of their ancestors’ oppression, even though it’s unpopular to acknowledge that reality in a society which values the ideal of self-reliant individualism. How can we possibly hope to have repaired the social damage done by four and a half centuries of legally sanctioned injustice in a mere four decades? Certainly we’ve made a great deal of progress since that day two score and three years ago when Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln memorial and insisted that Uncle Sam make good on his bad check. But the interest alone on that enormous debt may well be more than we can pay back in our lifetimes. And the longer we wait to pay what we owe, the harder it will be to pay it back in full.

I know there are many people in our society, and probably many people right here in this church, who dismiss the idea of paying reparations for the injustices of slavery as hopelessly naive: at best a form of misguided benevolence intended primarily to assuage liberal guilt, and with little real chance of correcting the situation it presumes to address. And if it were simply allowed to become a matter of writing out checks to every living descendent of slaves now residing in America, this would doubtlessly be true. But it also occurs to me that once we accept the undeniable truth that the children of former slaves and the children of former slave-owners are in fact members of the same family, there is another tried and true method for giving a hand-up to one’s down and out relatives.

Try to imagine how you would react if one of your children dropped out of high school and started hanging out with a tough crowd, experimenting with drugs and running afoul of the law. I know it happens, even here in a place like Carlisle; but I also imagine that most of us would make every possible effort and spare no expense to get our child back on the right track again, and that even if we ultimately failed in our task it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. None of us want to spoil our children, but none of us want to see them fail either...so we try to give them the skills they need to succeed in the world, while at the same time attempting to shield them as best we can from at least the potentially most disastrous consequences of their inevitable mistakes. And if they need a favor, or a loan, or a job, or simply a helping hand from the old man...well, who among you, if your child asked for bread, would give them a stone?

Of course, there is a down-side to old-fashioned Nepotism which needs to be taken into account as well. When people mistakenly learn to take their advantages and privileges for granted; when success comes too easily, and certain individuals are promoted over other deserving souls solely because of their family connections, not only does it call into question the legitimacy of all their other achievements, but they may also fail to develop the abilities they need to confront and overcome real adversity when they meet it. Finding that right combination of challenge and preferment, which allows individuals to learn from their mistakes without being destroyed by them, is a delicate matter. The pressure to succeed in a community where expectations are high and failure is simply not an option can feel overwhelming. But it is marginal compared to the stress of living in a fundamentally hostile environment where the consequences of even the slightest failure are often fatal.

Navigating a world where the idea of race is understood as just a fiction, but the consequences of racism are still very real; where individual resonsibility and achievement are valued, but collective obligations conveniently overlooked, and collective privileges taken for granted; where skin color has become an indelible marker of social class, but the harsh economic and cultural realities of a society divided by class are often ignored or denied by those who benefit from them most; and where stereotyped expectations and prejudices shape the perceptions and the experiences of both the Privileged and the Marginalized, is certainly not easy for even the most humble and enlightened souls. Yet the path from where we are to the world envisioned by Dr. King leads through that complex labyrinth, and up a steep (and often slippery) slope to the top of a mountain, and then beyond. Let’s not be afraid to follow where it leads. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because she found the courage to pursue her dreams, and to sing aloud as she walked, in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

“Free at Last! Free at Last! Thank God Almighty, we are Free at last....”

A Religion Like Sunshine

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday January 8th, 2006

Opening Words: “Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. Keep the juices flowing by jangling about gently as you move. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain’t restful. Avoid running at all times. Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”


--Leroy “Satchel” Paige, How to Stay Young [Colliers, 1953]


******

When I was living down in West Texas many years ago, I heard a story about a fundamentalist preacher who was driving home from a holiday party one New Year’s Eve when he was pulled over by a Texas Ranger.

Smelling alcohol on the minister’s breath, and noticing an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car, the officer asked: “Sir, have you been drinking?”

“Only water,” the evangelist replied.

The Ranger shined his flashlight on the bottle and said: “Then why do I smell wine?”

The preacher bent over and picked up the bottle, sniffed it and exclaimed “Praise Jesus! He’s done it again!”


I don’t know about you, but I for one am happy to have the holidays behind us. Even though the nights are still long and the weather bitter cold, and in many ways the worst days of winter are still ahead of us, it’s comforting to feel like we’ve at least turned a corner and are starting something new -- that from here on out the days are going to grow longer and longer (at least for the next six months) -- that the light is slowly but inexorably coming back into the world, and with it (eventually) warmer weather and the rebirth of new life in the spring.

Images of light and darkness are commonplace in the realm of theology. We seek enlightenment, see the light, or perhaps give ourselves over to the dark side, succumb to the temptations of the Prince of Darkness. And of course as you all know, virtually every week I like to conclude our service with a benediction that begins “Be ours a religious which like sunshine, goes everywhere.” These words (and the others which accompany them) were originally written by the 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker (who is perhaps best known around here as the minister for whom my dog is named).

Theodore Parker was a remarkable man. He grew up in Lexington in a farming family (in fact his grandfather, Captain John Parker, had commanded the Minutemen on the Lexington Common in 1775). Parker attended Harvard College, but was never granted a degree because he couldn’t afford to pay his tuition, even though he completed the entire four year curriculum in about a year and a half. He was a prodigious scholar, an outspoken abolitionist and social activist, and he had some very radical ideas about theology as well, which at first were not very well received by his colleagues in the ministry, but eventually became widespread throughout our movement as a younger generation of ministers who greatly admired Parker and who shared his views began to preach about them to their congregations.

One of Parker’s most influential ideas was his concept of “Absolute Religion.” Parker believed that spirituality (or what would have been called in those days “the religious sentiment”) was something instinctive to the human soul, and that all historical religions were simply imperfect cultural manifestations of an underlying natural or “absolute” religion, which, like sunshine, was everywhere under the sun. These ideas weren’t original to Parker, but he expressed them with such eloquence and enthusiasm that his “new views” soon became known as “Parkerism,” while those who agreed with his “abundant heresies” were called “Parkerites.” Theodore Parker died of tuberculosis in 1860 at the age of 49, while on a trip to Italy which he hoped would restore his health. But his theology lived on in the hearts and minds of his many admirers, some of whom formed an organization known as the “Free Religious Association” in order to carry the flame of Parkerism beyond the boundaries of the Unitarian Church.

In the early 1870’s the Unitarian minister James Freeman Clarke published a two-volume work titled Ten Great Religions which explored this idea of “the sympathy of religions” in great depth. Two decades later, Unitarians (and Universalists) in Chicago were the principal organizers of the first ever “World Parliament of Religions,” which brought together representatives of faith traditions from all across the globe in order to discuss the common themes among their faiths. By this time, Parker’s “new views” had become old hat, and his notion of “Absolute Religion” was an almost Universal article of faith among religious liberals and other freethinkers.

In the brief introduction to Unitarian Universalism he wrote in collaboration with his colleague John Buehrens titled Our Chosen Faith, Forrester Church uses an extended metaphor of a cathedral to describe the unity within diversity which undergirds this style of understanding the religious life of human kind....


*****
Imagine awakening one morning from a deep and dreamless sleep to find yourself in the nave of a vast cathedral. Like a child newborn, untutored save to moisture, nurture, rhythm, and the profound comforts at the heart of darkness, you open your eyes upon a world unseen, indeed unimaginable, before. It is a world of light and dancing shadow, stone and glass, life and death. This second birth, at once miraculous and natural, is in some ways not unlike the first. A new awakening, it consecrates your life with sacraments of pain you do not understand and promised joy you will never full call your own.

Such awakenings may happen only once in a lifetime, or many times. But when they do, what you took for granted before is presented as a gift: difficult, yet precious and good. Not that you know what to do with your gift, or even what it really means, only how much it matters. Awakening to the call stirring deep within you, the call of life itself -- the call of God -- you begin your pilgrimage.

Before you do, look about you; contemplate the mystery and contemplate with awe. This cathedral is as ancient as humankind, its cornerstone the first altar, marked with the tincture of blood and stained with tears. Search for a lifetime, which is all you are surely given, and you shall never know its limits, visit all its apses, worship at its myriad shrines, nor span its celestial ceiling with your gaze....

Welcome to the cathedral of the world.

Above all else, contemplate the windows. In the cathedral of the world there are windows without number, some long forgotten, covered with many patinas of dust, others revered by millions, the most sacred of shrines. Each in its own way is beautiful. Some are abstract, others representational; some dark and meditative, others bright and dazzling. Each tells a story about the creation of the world, the meaning of history, the purpose of life, the nature of humankind, the mystery of death. The windows of the cathedral are where the light shines in....

Fundamentalists of the right and left claim that the light shines through their window only. Skeptics can make a similar mistake, only to draw the opposite conclusion. Seeing the bewildering variety of windows and observing the folly of the worshipers, they conclude that there is not light. But the windows are not the light. The whole light -- God, Truth, call it what you will -- is beyond our perceiving. God is veiled.... Consequently, not only the world’s religions, but every ideology, every scientific worldview, every aesthetic school, has its windows in the cathedral of the world. In each the light and darkness mingle in ways that suggest meaning for those whose angle of vision is tilted in that particular direction. Attracted to the patterns of refracted light, the playing of shadows, the partial clarification of reality, these people are also worshippers; their windows too become shrines.

None of us is fully able to perceive the truth that shines through another person’s window, nor the falsehood that we may perceive as truth. Thus we can easily mistake another’s good for evil, and our own evil for good. A true, and therefore humble, universalist theology addresses this tendency, which we all share, while speaking eloquently to the overarching crisis of our times: dogmatic division in an ever more intimate, fractious, and yet interdependent world. It posits the following fundamental principles:

1. There is one Reality, one Truth, one God.

2. This Reality shines though every window in the cathedral...

3. No one can perceive it directly, the mystery being forever veiled.

4. Yet, on the cathedral floor and in the eyes of each beholder, refracted and reflected through different windows in different ways, it plays in patterns that suggest meaning, challenging us to interpret and live by the meaning as best we can.

5. Therefore, each window illumines Truth (with a large T) in a different way, leading to different truths (with a small t), and these in differing measure according to the insight and receptivity of the beholder.
*****

In his subsequent, companion chapter of Our Chosen Faith, co-author John Buehrens makes the following observation: “I have one problem with the image of ‘the cathedral of the world,’ John writes. “Within the cathedral, no one seems to be talking to anyone else.” It’s one thing to be able to appreciate the artistry of windows other than one’s own favorites, but a deep and abiding understanding of different faith traditions requires dialogue, which in turn produces new insights which become the common property of all. And this is also true for people who nominally share the same faith tradition, but whose individual experiences perhaps give them different perspectives on the same set of symbols and concepts.

Mere words will never be able to express completely the full spectrum of our collective individual experiences of the sacred, the holy, the divine. No image, graven or otherwise, can capture the awesome and terrifying magnificence of God’s countenance (assuming that God even has a countenance, or that we will ever see it face to face and live). And as Forrest also reminds us, “God is not God’s name, but our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each.” We use words and pictures and metaphors and images to communicate with others our often life-changing experiences of something which is essentially invisible and unspeakable, and which often (at least at first) leaves us speechless. Yet until we find the voice to speak our truth in love, and the attentiveness to listen lovingly to the truths of others, we remain alone in our faith, isolated from the rest of the human community.

Likewise, we all know that sunshine doesn’t really go everywhere. Sometimes it’s night, sometimes it is cloudy or overcast, and there are some places where “the sun don’t shine” and where we would really rather not go, either literally or figuratively. Yet the metaphor of sunshine, which gives the world light and warmth and life, and is literally the ultimate source of everything that is (at least here in our corner of the universe) is a powerful image for describing the natural, universal, Absolute religion which is the ultimate source of enlightenment for every historical faith tradition, and remains the source of our own spiritual experience as well. There are countless varieties of plants in God’s garden, and even more in the wild, wild wood beyond our cultivation. But with fertile soil, and ample water, and just the right amount of organic compost, they all bloom under the same sunshine, and bear whatever fruit they are capable of bearing. And they all have inherent worth and value in God’s sight.

My wish for us all in this season of new beginnings is that we give ourselves the opportunity, the space, and the sunlight to bloom. And yes, we will probably need to do a little weeding and pruning, and yes we are also going to need to water and fertilize and cultivate our garden, and protect our seedlings as best we can from the unwanted nibbles of wild creatures. But this is all certainly well within our ability. By working together, side by side, communicating honestly and sharing our dreams and our collective vision, by rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands just a little dirty, the perennial seeds we plant this spring will provide us with a miraculous harvest in seasons to come, when the days once more grow shorter and darker, and sunshine seems only a distant memory.

*******

READING: (authorship unknown)


‘Twas the month after Christmas, and all through the house
Nothing would fit me, not even a blouse
The cookies I’d nibbled, things I just HAD to taste
At those holiday parties had gone straight to my waist.
When I stepped on the scales there arose such a number
That I dashed from the room! (well, less a dash than a lumber).
I recalled all the marvelous meals I’d prepared;
All the gravies and sauces and beef nicely rared,
The cakes and the pies, the bread and the cheese
And the way that I’d never said “No thank you, please.”
As I dressed myself in my husband’s old shirt
And prepared once again to do battle with dirt--
I said to myself, as only I can
“You can’t spend all winter disguised as a man!”
So -- away with the last of the sour cream dip
Get rid of the fruit cake, every cracker and chip
Every last bit of food that I crave must be banished
Till all the additional ounces have vanished.
I won’t have a cookie -- not even a lick.
I’ll want only to chew on a celery stick.
I won’t have hot biscuits, or corn bread, or pie,
I’ll munch on a carrot and quietly cry.
I’m hungry, I’m lonesome, and life is a bore--
But isn’t that what January is for?
Unable to giggle, no longer a riot.
Happy New Year to all, and to all a good diet!

ANOTHER CHRISTMAS CAROL

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachussetts
Sunday December 18, 2005


A man and his wife were sitting together in their living room one Sunday afternoon when suddenly he turned to her and said "Just so you know, I never want to go on living in a vegetative state dependent on some machine. If that ever happens, just pull the plug." So his wife got up and unplugged the TV.

We are now, of course in the midst of the season when television abounds with football games, feel-good advertising, and of course those classic Christmas stories, the annual Holiday Specials we’ve all doubtlessly seen dozens if not hundreds of times. Movies like Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” starring Jimmy Stewart in the role of George Bailey, and Donna Reed as his devoted wife. Or “Miracle on 34th Street” staring Maureen O’Hare as a progressive single mom and Edmund Gwenn as the kindly but eccentric Kris Kringle, and featuring a young Natalie Wood as Mrs. Walker’s precocious daughter Susan, who grows to discover that there is a Santa Claus after all. How many of us have been tempted to bring home a less-than-perfect Christmas tree after being inspired by “A Charlie Brown Christmas?” And who could possibly forget Ralphie Parker’s quest for a Red Ryder BB gun in the aptly-named “A Christmas Story?”

But perhaps the best-known and most widely-broadcast sentimental Christmas Story of all time is the one which essentially defined the genre: Charles Dickens’ often-adapted Victorian novella “A Christmas Carol,” which turned the characters of Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim into both household names and enduring icons of Popular Culture, and made the phrase “bah-humbug” part of our common Christmas lexicon. I don’t know for a fact whether Dickens’ original tale is the most frequently-dramatized non-biblical Christmas story ever, but I do know that a quick Google search will turn up dozens of different variations. The benchmark, of course -- the standard against which all other Scrooges are measured -- is still Alastair Sim’s 1951 performance (which has now been colorized for the appreciation of a whole new generation of digital cable viewers). But let’s also not forget Albert Finney’s brilliant 1970 characterization, or those of George C. Scott (who had already won an Oscar for his performance as General Patton) and Patrick Stewart (perhaps better known for his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: the Next Generation).

And then of course there are the knockoffs. Bill Murray, one of the original Ghostbusters, played the title role in 1988’s Christmas Turkey “Scrooged,” while Henry Winkler (who in happier days was better known as “The Fonz”) tried his hand back in 1977 in a version set in Concord New Hampshire during the Great Depression entitled “An American Christmas Carol.” More recently Kelsey Grammer, who has made an entire career out of playing the character of psychiatrist Frazier Crane on “Cheers” and its subsequent Seattle-based spin-off, starred in a musical adaptation that also featured Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander in the role of Marley’s ghost.

And finally there are the animated versions: not only my personal favorite, “Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol” (from 1962), but also “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” (from Disney), and “The Muppets Christmas Carol” (with Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit, and actor Michael Caine in the role of Scrooge), not to mention versions featuring both the Flintstones and the Jetsons. Let’s just face facts: at this time of year, Scrooge is ubiquitous. And it’s a miracle that there’s enough Christmas to go around.

So what is the enduring appeal of Dickens’ one hundred and sixty-two year old Christmas morality tale? And could it possibly have anything to do with the author’s own Unitarian beliefs? That’s what I really want to know: is the timeless popularity of “A Christmas Carol” simply a manifestation of its straightforward expression of the classic Unitarian values of liberality and compassion, together with its profound belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and its unshakable, optimistic faith that no person is ever beyond redemption, simply through the power of honest, introspective self-examination to evoke transformative change?

Dickens wrote his novella at a time when the celebration of Christmas itself was undergoing a dramatic transformation in the English-speaking world. Seventeenth-century New England Puritans had essentially outlawed the celebration of Christmas in this part of the world, objecting among other things to the obvious fact that many of the most recognizable symbols of the season: holly, mistletoe, and the yule log, for example, were all unquestionably of pagan origin. Meanwhile, back in Merry Olde England (as well as in other parts of North America) “keeping Christmas” had all the solemnity of the old Roman Saturnalia from which the holiday is originally descended: a rowdy celebration of the Lord of Misrule, during which gangs of intoxicated working-class men would “go a’wassiling,” presenting themselves at the front doors of the gentry to demand their “figgy pudding” and other gifts of food and drink, and refusing to go until they got some.

Dickens and his Unitarian co-religionists, on the other hand, represented an element of society which was literally attempting to “domesticate” Christmas: to move it (in the words of historian Stephen Nissenbaum) out of the streets and into the parlour, by transforming the season from a drunken revel into a pious, child-centered “frolic” devoted to the celebration of family, the exchange of uplifting, inspirational gifts, and acts of Christian charity directed toward the less fortunate. We see these same sentiments expressed in the opening chapters of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, where the March sisters celebrate the holiday with “a good deal of laughing, and kissing, and explaining, in the simple, loving fashion which makes these home-festivals so pleasant at the time, so sweet to remember long afterward....” Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy keep Christmas by exchanging small, practical gifts, putting on a play of their own creation, and accompanying Marmee on her charitable errands to the immigrant poor of Concord.

Yet there is another dimension to these sentimental 19th century Unitarian Christmas stories as well. Many literary critics have read Dickens’ tale as a commentary on the increasing sharp class divisions brought about by industrialization, and a plea for a return to more traditional, interpersonal values, when the physical and material distance between employer and employee was not nearly so great. We see this sentiment clearly expressed at the conclusion of Dickens’ story, where Scrooge feigns anger at Bob Cratchit when he arrives late to the office on the morning after Christmas, and then, after declaring “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer” proceeds to discipline his tardy clerk by raising his salary, while at the same time promising to assist the struggling Cratchit family in whatever way he can, and sending Bob out to buy another coal scuttle before he dots another “i”.

“Scrooge was better than his word,” the narrative continues. “He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing every happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him.”

Scrooge’s personal transformation in many ways mirrors the metamorphosis that Dickens would have liked to see take place throughout Victorian society. But there’s a lot more going on here than the simple, cartoon-like, childish notion that the “Spirit of Christmas” somehow has the magical power to change even the most recalcitrant old miser. University of Tennessee professor Richard Kelly put it this way:

“A Christmas Carol is built upon numerous contrasts: rich and poor, warmth and cold, plenty and hunger, family and loneliness, generosity and miserliness, affection and cruelty, dream and reality, freedom and compulsion, past and present, and present and future. Most of these opposing forces are recapitulated within the character of Scrooge himself. The cold-hearted, compulsive, lonely, miserly man, who eats his abstemious meal in the shadows, emerges from his dreams, memories, and fears, into a generous, fun-loving, warm, caring fatherly man. The texture of the story, rich with contrasting imagery, prepares the reader for Scrooge's conversion well in advance of the concluding chapter. True, this is hardly a realistic tale -- indeed, it resembles a fable with its cautionary note about human behavior -- but it renders a powerful psychological account of the fruits of introspection.

“The three stages of Scrooge's conversion--the detailed memories of a lonely childhood, an awakened vision of the suffering and joys of those presently around him, and his fear of future loneliness and an awareness of his own mortality -- combine to change him into a decent man, one who goes on to earn from those who knew him this crowning accolade: ‘it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge’.”

The very word “conversion” implies a certain degree of religious or spiritual transformation. Yet consider the actual source of Scrooge’s rebirth. On one hand Scrooge realizes through his encounter with the Spirits that, compared to the people he sees around him, he has the financial means to be generous if he chooses: he has accumulated enough personal wealth that he can afford to keep Christmas as well as he likes, if only he wishes to do so. But more importantly, he has also discovered the price that he has paid personally in order to acquire those riches -- how his single-minded pursuit of “more” has cost him love, joy, his youthful happiness, family connections and human warmth, even his physical health and material comfort. He lives, not like a truly wealthy person, but like a miser whose own greed prevents him from enjoying the fruits of his supposed prosperity. Scrooge has been measuring his wealth in the wrong currency. And when he realizes how impoverished he truly is, THEN he becomes a changed human being.

Today’s sermon is supposed to be the last in the series I’ve been preaching all this past fall about “The Purpose Driven Unitarian.” And the topic for today was Affirmation: Witness, Outreach, Evangelism, Mission...transforming our lives by giving ourselves the purpose of transforming the lives of others, by sharing the good news of our saving message of hope, that people are precious and that together we have the ability to make the world better for everyone.

Many contemporary Unitarian Universalists feel a litle uncomfortable about thinking of themselves as “evangelists” or “missionaries.” The idea of “sharing” our faith with others feels a little pushy, especially if we’ve ever felt afflicted by someone who wanted to share their faith with us. But if we reflect upon the example of Dickens’ “Christmas Carol,” we will see that it is certainly possible to promote the ideas and values of our liberal faith without being obnoxious or domineering or imposing ourselves on others, and that the best example of the value of our beliefs is our own lives well-lived in the compassionate service of all humanity.

We need MORE Scrooges in this world. Not the old, stingy, small-minded Scrooge, huddled in his dark, cold counting-house hoarding even the lumps of coal in his coal-scuttle. But the enlightened, transformed and generous Scrooge, who has become the Spirit of Christmas incarnate, a living (albeit fictional) symbol of the redemptive power of self-understanding, compassionate service, and loving relationships. May our own lives also embody and testify to these same values, not only in this holiday season, but throughout the entire year. And in the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us, Every One!”

SALVATION BY BIBLIOGRAPHY

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle Massachusetts
Sunday December 4th, 2005


Opening Words: My Symphony by William Henry Channing

To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
To bear all cheerully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never;
To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.



[Extemporaneous Introduction]

I know it may seem a little strange to some of you who are perhaps still a little new to Unitarian Universalism, that the minister should take a Sunday off every once in awhile, and let someone else -- and not just another minister, but someone from the congregation -- have a turn in the pulpit. But the way it was explained to me is that, if a minister is any good, then we deserve a Sunday off every now and then; and if we aren’t, then the congregation deserves one. But from my perspective, the best thing about letting somebody else have their say every once in awhile is that once they’ve done it themselves, they generally develop a lot more appreciation for what I do all the other weeks of the year. And it sounds to me like Roy also had a chance to experience how much fun it can be as well, simply to follow the thread of your own curiosity while at the same time attempting to shape a message that will be inspiring, and enlightening, and encouraging for others. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it can be quite rewarding, especially on those rare occasions when everything comes together just right. But mostly it’s just a discipline which takes on a rhythm all its own, and around which every other aspect of a preacher’s life revolves.

Today we come to the fourth topic in this informal series I’ve been preaching about “the Purpose-Driven Unitarian,” which Rick Warren would call “discipleship” but which I generally refer to under the more general heading of “education.” A disciple is basically just a disciplined religious learner; and discipleship is simply a specialized kind of apprenticeship, where the learner/the apprentice/the disciple is not only expected to master a particular set of skills or techniques, but also to develop certain insights, personal beliefs, and ethical values, along with a profound sense of principled moral integrity -- qualities which educate the soul as well as the mind. Discipleship is about both Doing and Being: not just how well we perform, but who we ARE and how well we express that identity in every other aspect of our lives.

The title of today’s sermon -- Salvation by Bibliography -- is actually something that was once said to me by an older colleague who was trying to explain why so many UU ministers have such huge personal libraries, and why whenever someone comes to us with a problem, more often than not one of the first things we do is recommend a book about it. It was a tongue in cheek remark, with a sharp edge of truth, all based on the realization that none of us in this line of work really feel like we are smart enough to do the job the way it really ought to be done. So we surround ourselves with the wisdom of the ages, hoping that perhaps some of it will sink in. During his lifetime, Theodore Parker (the 19th century Unitarian minister for whom my dog is named) had a private library of some fifteen thousand volumes -- it was the largest library of its type anywhere in North America at the time, and (just for purposes of comparison) was about five times as large as mine, which (as some of you know) is already overflowing my office and crowding me out of the parsonage as well. Bibliomania is an obsession not only tolerated, but actively encouraged among Unitarian Universalist ministers, “...an innocent habit” the Rev. John Haynes Holmes wrote in his autobiography I Speak for Myself, “to be indulged, I believe, to the limit of ambition.”

***My library proliferated like a biological organism. It grew into hundreds, then into thousands of books. Each new volume, like a newborn infant, was classified and then placed upon the shelves, there to produce a little library of its own, in its own proud field of learning. Just to look at this collection of books, lined up like soldiers at drill, was to be instructed, inspired, uplifted by the discipline of imagination and order. To handle them by taking them one after another haphazardly from the shelves, if only to caress their handsome bindings, and consult afresh their learned indices, is to feel the gates of wisdom swing wide to our approach. Then there are the first editions to be sought out once again, the authors’ inscriptions and signatures to be re-examined, the classics to be consulted for fresh study and delight. “Have you read all these books, Grandpa?” asked a skeptical young miss on a certain day of intimate disclosure. “No, my dear,” was my reply, “I don’t believe I have read half of them. But I know what’s in them all, and why they are here.” I count this the real justification of the private library. To have the great books on hand, and the current books as they pass by, to be used when needed or desired!***

I can also still remember the first time I ever read that passage, shortly after receiving a copy of Holmes’ autobiography as a gift from the personal library of the retired Universalist minister Tracy Pullman, when I was still a divinity student at Harvard. Tracy actually gave me two huge paper grocery sacks full of books, which I had to carry home with me on the Red Line in the dead of winter. But when I was finally able to unpack them and put them up on the shelves of my snug little room in Divinity Hall, they warmed the place better than a fire in the grate, and made me feel cozy and at home. It was more than just a gift of paper. It was an intellectual legacy being passed down from generation to generation: an act of faith and trust that I would carry on the good work which Tracy had done for an entire lifetime.

It used to be that erudition and personal piety were the two criteria on which aspiring ministers were examined prior to being approbated for ordination. Nowadays we’ve changed the labels somewhat, but the qualifications are still pretty much the same: an appropriate academic credential, plus good “people skills” and a somewhat vaguely-defined quality known as “ministerial presence,” which as best I can tell is a delicate balance of gravitas and levity which allows good clergy to take their work seriously without necessarily taking themselves TOO seriously. Good ministers need to be sensitive, but not thin-skinned; we need to be smart but not arrogant; confident, but also humble. And since none of these combinations really comes naturally to a normal human being, it takes a lot of practice to get them kind of close to right, which is why clergy consider it such a blessing to serve generous and forgiving congregations, especially early in our careers.

Of course, sensitivity, intelligence, confidence, humility, a thick skin and an open-minded, non-defensive attitude are not merely attractive qualities for ministers only. Together they describe a style of spiritual wisdom which represents an important asset for any person of faith. And it’s not necessarily something that can be learned from books. Academic scholars often differentiate between formal theology and what is known as “lived religion” -- the kinds of spiritual beliefs and practices which shape and inform the everyday experiences of ordinary people’s lives. The two are obviously related, but they can also be quite distinct. You don’t need to have a graduate degree in theology in order to live an ethical and meaningful life. Most of the values by which we live our day to day lives we learned from our parents, or from our peers...from friends, family, mentors, colleagues, coaches, neighbors, perhaps even ministers or Sunday school teachers. These lessons may have started out in books, but now they have made their way into the very fabric of our lives and our society. Tell the truth. Be honest, and true to your word. Don’t take advantage of those who are weaker than you, but do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

What other lessons have you learned, and where did you learn them? And how has “reality” sometimes tempted you to compromise your “childish” beliefs about right and wrong? We all know that life isn’t always fair, and that often the experience of disappointment or betrayal can leave us feeling wounded, bitter and cynical. Often we may feel that our innocence makes us vulnerable, and that we need to protect ourselves by acting in ways that we know under “normal” circumstances wouldn’t be right. At times like that it takes a lot of moral courage to refrain from doing something you just know deep down in your heart is wrong, even though you can rationalize it in your mind as necessary and justified.

Of course, there are some people who never really do develop that basic ethical conscience most of us form in childhood...who are incapable of real empathy, or perhaps even of anticipating the consequences of their own bad behavior on the lives of others. Scholars call them “sociopaths,” and they generally do require very specific rules and a fair amount of supervision to keep them on the straight and narrow. But most of us are capable of policing our own lives, while at the same time protecting ourselves, to a large degree at least, from the bad behavior of others, without resorting to bad behavior ourselves. Even honest people can be victimized and exploited. But innocence does not necessitate naiveté -- it is possible to live one’s life in reasonable safety by faithfully practicing a few simple precautions, without necessarily assuming or expecting the worst from every situation we encounter.

Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors used to talk about this process of educating one’s conscience in terms of two closely related ideas. The first was the notion of “Self-Culture.” And the second was a doctrine known as “Salvation by Character.” Both shared a belief that the human soul was something organic, like a flowering plant, which if properly cultivated (or “cultured”) would blossom into something at once both beautiful and useful. The “fruit” of this process of cultivation was Character: a distinctive and essential pattern of personal attributes which embodied moral strength, self-discipline, and the various other exemplary characteristics of a principled and virtuous life. By educating the moral sentiment, through (for example) exposure to uplifting works of literature, and by exercising their moral fiber through acts of charity and the performance of other good works, our liberal religious forebearers attempted to transform their lives into living testaments of their religious values.

For Rick Warren, of course, discipleship is ultimately about following and imitating Jesus, and the list of uplifting books begins with the Bible. Character is formed by overcoming adversity and resisting temptation, as we grow to spiritual maturity “transformed by Truth.” The nineteenth Century Unitarians and Universalists who practiced Self-Culture would have agreed with all of this. But they also looked for inspiration beyond just the Christian tradition, to the scriptures and sacred writings of the world’s other great faith traditions, where they discovered passages like this in books like the Tao Te Ching:

Cultivated in the individual,
Character will become genuine;
Cultivated in the family,
Character will become abundant;
Cultivated in the village,
Character will multiply;
Cultivated in the state,
Character will prosper;
Cultivated in the world,
Character will become universal.

May it be as true in our time as it has been in all times, as we work to transform our lives into worthy testaments of our faith....

KOINONIA

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday November 20th, 2005

I want you to know that at the top of the pad of paper that I use each week to organize my thoughts, before sitting down on Saturday to write them out word for word, was the note “Find a better joke.” I guess last week’s offering (originally written by Carlislian Stephen Wright) about “breakfast anytime” being “French Toast in the Renaissance” was just a little too obscure, so this week I was prepared to spend several hours finding something better. And then yesterday morning I opened my e-mail and there was this, from Beliefnet’s Joke of the Day.

Three children were talking about their religions. "I'm a Catholic," said one, "And our symbol is the crucifix." "I'm Jewish," said the second, "And our symbol is the Star of David." The third child said, "I'm a Unitarian Universalist and our symbol is a candle in a cocktail glass!"

We’re about halfway through now this informal series I’ve been preaching this fall about “The Purpose Driven Unitarian.” This all started out, you may recall, when I realized that the five pillars around which I have built my ministry for the past fifteen years or so: Worship, Education, Fellowship, Community Outreach and Pastoral Care, were virtually identical to the five purposes described by megachurch pastor Rick Warren in his best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life: Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship, Ministry and Evangelism. And so I thought it might be kind of fun for me to explore how my ideas about these important spiritual topics might be a little different from his, and also where they overlapped. So two weeks ago I spoke on the topic of Worship, which is not only a celebration of the Creative Power which gives us life, but also an expression of our gratitude for that gift, which we demonstrate through our devotion to the things “that make God smile,” and the sacrifices we willingly make in order to achieve a higher purpose. And then last Sunday I spoke about the idea of Vocation, or “calling,” and how we might each discern our unique spiritual gifts for service by listening to our Hearts, applying our Abilities, empowering our Personalities, and employing our life Experience in order “to be of use” to our neighbors and the Greater Good. And on future Sundays, as we move on into the holidays, I intend to talk about Education, and the process of “self-culture” by which Unitarians and Universalists have traditionally continued to grow and improve ourselves spiritually; and also Outreach, or the ongoing commitment to affirming and sharing our free religious faith in ways that transform the world.

But today we are at the heart of the matter. Today’s topic is community, or in Greek koinonia -- a word whose core meaning is “shared” or “common,” and which is often translated into English as “fellowship” or “communion.” Community is about the common life we share with one another, our shared interest in a common whole, the communion we enjoy in fellowship with one another, within our communities of faith. It’s about our shared goals and values, our common dreams and aspirations. The experience of becoming part of an authentic community is one of the most commonly shared motivations for joining and attending a religious organization -- and this is true regardless of denomination, and across the entire spectrum of theological belief. Within Unitarian Universalism we sometimes describe our congregations as “communities of memory and hope,” shaped by covenants of mutual trust and support. But no matter how we may choose to frame the subject, a sense of community truly is at the heart of the matter. What do we commonly share, and with whom do we commonly share it? Answer these questions, and you will know in which community (or communities) you belong, and from which you are excluded.

The New Testament uses several other metaphors to describe what it means to be part of a community of believers. And the first of these is the word “church” itself, which in Greek is ecclesia -- those who have been “called out.” The Apostles Creed uses the phrases “holy catholic church” (hagian katholiken ecclesian) and “communion of saints” (hagion koinonian) to describe two of the key beliefs of second century Christianity. The Greek word hagios means literally something that is consecrated or set aside, while the word “catholic” (with a small “c”) literally means something that is liberal, universal, and all-inclusive (again, from the Greek words kata and holos: “completely whole”). Thus, one of the earliest understandings of Church in the Christian tradition was an all-inclusive community of those who had been called out and set aside to enjoy fellowship with one another. The Latin version is even more striking. To be called is to have a Vocation. To be set aside is to be Sanctified. And fellowship -- koinonia -- is Communion, which of course is how all communal communistic communities commonly communicate.

A second, and probably even earlier New Testament metaphor for the church is that of “the Body of Christ” with its “many members.” Those of you who have recently been to an Easter Service here at FRS will probably be familiar with this notion -- it is the community of the faithful who “stand again” in the place of their crucified teacher who comprise “the risen body of Christ.” And although the early church quickly moved away from this metaphorical understanding of the resurrection to a more literal teaching about the resurrection of the flesh, it is unquestionably a central image in the original letters of Paul, and remains a compelling understanding of community today: a diverse gathering of individuals who embody a shared heritage of instruction along with common traditions, goals, and values.

I know that on many occasions I’ve described one of the responsibilities of ministry as that of “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” It’s a cute little maxim, with its clever verbal parallelism, but in many ways it is also deceptively superficial in its cleverness. Ministers lead communities of faith, and they lead them through Service, by both precept and example. Ministers are expected to practice what they preach, and to be an inspiration to others, and of course it’s understood that we never screw up or make mistakes. Ministers attempt to embody the ministry of the church -- not so that the rest of the community can thereby be excused from their responsibility to serve, but rather so that they might be guided in it. And these responsibilities for shared ministry basically fall into two areas.

The first responsibility is to hold people safe. To let them know, by our physical presence if nothing else, that there are other people in the world who care for them, and are concerned about them, even at those times when they may feel most alone. We can’t always protect the ones we love from every contingency of human existence. People suffer, and feel pain; they experience failure and frustration and loss...but as long as there is a compassionate community of the faithful who are willing to share those burdens by making them common ones, life’s afflictions become a little easier to endure.

And the second responsibility is to hold people accountable: to help them see (and perhaps at times even to compel them to see) that the decisions we make and the actions we take all have consequences, which not only effect our own lives, but also the lives of others, in ways we can’t always even begin to imagine or anticipate. Life is a series of choices, and each decision we make typically cuts off the opportunity to make some other decision somewhere down the line. Not always, of course. Sometimes we recognize our mistakes in time; sometimes life offers us “do overs.” Some people simply blunder through life never worrying about the consequences of their behaviors (and typically leaving a broad trail of wreckage behind them), while others are so concerned about the possible consequences of their decisions that they become paralyzed, and incapable of taking any action at all. Holding people accountable (and perhaps more imporantly, our own willingness to be accountable to other people) is about both discouraging other members of the community from making bad choices, and encouraging them to act on the good ones.

These basic lessons of safety and accountability are nothing more than what any half-way decent parent would attempt to teach their own children. We want our young people to know that they are loved, and we want them to understand that their choices have consequences for good or ill. And this brings me to a third metaphor for what it means to be part of a religious community, which is the understanding that we are all children of God, and brothers and sisters to one another. The experience of being part of a family is our earliest experience of community, and in many ways we never really get over it. Likewise, the time we spend with our children is precious and irreplaceable -- and once it is gone, we will never get it back again. And this is why it is so important that, rather than allowing church to conflict with your family activities, you need allow church to BECOME a family activity. Church needs to be something that we all do together, so that our children can learn from our example that they are safe, that they are loved, that their decisions have consequences, and that they should always try to choose the path in life that leads them to the good: to joy, to happiness, to real and meaningful accomplishment, rather than that other path that leads disappointment and suffering and harm.

Creating a healthy community, and sharing in its common life, requires several important personal qualities. It requires Commitment -- a willingness to make the community a priority in our lives, and to give our best selves to it. It requires Honesty: the commitment to being truthful with one another, and to communicating openly and frankly. It also requires Humility: the recognition that none of us are perfect, or more important than those around us, and a conscious decision to be patient, to be understanding, to be forgiving of our natural human foibles as we all attempt to understand one another and find our common way. Healthy community requires Civility, or at least a certain degree of Common Courtesy. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we all need to insist on a lot of formality; rather it means respecting the dignity and integrity of everyone we meet, and recognizing that the values we share in common are much stronger than the disagreements that push us apart. Healthy community insists upon high levels of Trust, and Trustworthiness -- an attitude which is ready to believe the best about other people, and which respects privacy and confidentiality while resisting the temptation to gossip. Finally, healthy community requires high levels of Participation, so that being fully present for one another becomes a matter of habit rather than an act of will. The more time we spend with together, the more of ourselves we are willing to invest in our relationships with one another, the better we will get to know each other, and our community will be better and stronger for the experience.

Of course, even the best communities sometimes experience conflict. And this is where I find Rick Warren’s insights especially fascinating. (I suspect that with a congregation of more than ten thousand members, he’s had a fair amount of experience in these matters). According to the Sermon on the Mount, Peacemakers are blessed as the Children of God. Yet peacemaking is not about avoiding conflict, or running from it or pretending it doesn’t exist. Rather, peacemaking grows out of the recognition that relationships are always worth restoring, especially if we value being part of God’s family. Here are Rick Warren’s seven biblically-based steps for restoring conflicted relationships.

1) Talk to God before talking to the person. “Tell God your frustrations. Cry out to him. He’s never surprised or upset by your anger, hurt, insecurity, or any other emotions. So tell him exactly how you feel. Most conflict is rooted in unmet needs. Some of these needs can only be met by God. When you expect anyone -- a friend, spouse, boss, or family member -- to meet a need that only God can fulfill, you are setting yourself up for disappointment and bitterness....”

2) Always take the initiative. “It doesn’t matter whether you are the offender or the offended: God expects you to make the first move. Don’t wait for the other party. Go to them first....Delay only deepens resentment and makes matters worse. In conflict, time heals nothing; it causes hurts to fester....”

3) Sympathize with their feelings. “Use your ears more than your mouth....Begin with sympathy, not solutions. Don’t try to talk people out of how they feel at first. Just listen and let them unload emotionally without being defensive. Nod that you understand even when you don’t agree. Feelings are not always true or logical. In fact, resentment makes us act and think in foolish ways....”

4) Confess your part in the conflict. “Confession is a powerful tool for reconciliation. Often the way we handle a conflict creates a bigger hurt than the original problem itself. When you begin by humbly admitting your mistakes, it defuses the other person’s anger and disarms their attacks because they were probably expecting you to be defensive. Don’t make excuses or shift the blame; just honestly own up to any part you have played in the conflict. Accept responsibility for your mistakes and ask for forgiveness....”

5) Attack the problem, not the person. “You cannot fix the problem if you’re consumed with fixing the blame. You must choose between the two....”

6) Cooperate as much as possible. “Peace always has a price tag. Sometimes it costs our pride; often it costs our self-centeredness. For the sake of fellowship, do your best to compromise, adjust to others, and show preference to what they need....”

7) Emphasize reconciliation, not resolution. “It is unrealistic to expect everyone to agree on everything. Reconciliation focuses on the relationship, while resolution focuses on the problem. When we focus on reconciliation, the problem loses significance and often becomes irrelevant. We can reestablish a relationship even when we are unable to resolve our differences...we can disagree without being disagreeable....God expects unity, not uniformity, and we can walk arm-in-arm without seeing eye-to-eye on every issue. This doesn’t mean you give up on finding a solution. You may need to continue discussing and even debating -- but you do it in a spirit of harmony. Reconciliation means you bury the hatchet, not necessarily the issue...”


When we discover how to focus on the things we have in common, when we are realistic in our expectations for ourselves and others, and when we consciously decide to be encouraging and supportive, rather than critical and uncooperative, authentic community is close at hand. So reach out to your neighbors and fellow creatures, in a spirit of love and concern, with an attitude of honesty and accountability, and in a covenant of mutual trust and support, and know that we share both memories and hopes, which are the substance of our common life together.

TO BE OF USE

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle Massachusetts
Sunday November 13, 2005



I thought I might start out this morning by sharing one of my favorite stories from Divinity School. A chicken and a pig were walking down the street when they came to a diner with a sign in the window that said “Breakfast Anytime.” The chicken says to the pig, “you know, you and I should get together and do something like this to serve our neighbors and fellow creatures.” And the pig replies “that’s easy for you to say. For you, bacon and eggs is just a donation. For me it’s a life commitment.”

OK, here’s another variation. A chicken and a pig were walking down the street when they came to a diner with a sign in the window that said “Breakfast Anytime.” So they went inside and ordered French Toast...in the Renaissance....


I feel very strongly that laughter is an essential element of a healthy human spirituality. We all need to be reminded from time to time not to take ourselves too seriously, to keep our grandiose pretensions in balance, and to remember that sometimes the universe surprises us in ways we can’t avoid or control, and which make a mockery of all our attempts to do so. And this is true even when (and maybe even especially when) the world doesn’t seem to give us much to laugh about. Wars and riots and earthquakes and hurricanes: so much suffering, and so little we seem to be able to do about it. Our donations seem like only a drop in the bucket, and even if we were to commit our entire lives to the cause, it just doesn’t feel like it would be enough. Nor do we really have the option of simply walking through an open door and emerge in in a better place and time, no matter how much we may daydream about enjoying French Toast in the Renaissance.

Yet the temptation, at least, to attempt to seal ourselves of from the unwelcome intrusions of the wider world is almost as overwhelming as the events themselves. At times it seems to me as if our entire social economy is built around this seductive fantasy: that if we could just somehow acquire enough power, if we could just somehow acquire enough wealth and status and worldly “success,” we might also somehow insulate ourselves behind high walls and locked gates from all life’s suffering and the misery of the world. Personally, I’ve never been wealthy or powerful enough to know firsthand whether or not this is true, but everything I’ve ever read on the subject tends to make me skeptical. Wealth and Power can obviously buy a certain degree of physical comfort and security, and perhaps even a measure of envy and respect from one’s less-fortunate neighbors (emotions which unfortunately lead just as often to resentment as they do to admiration). But the obsessive urge to acquire more and more beyond a certain level of safety and comfort might easily be considered a form of mental illness, especially if it done at the expense of the more fundamental social relationships with friends, family, and neighbors which ultimately make like meaningful.

Figuring out “how much is enough” is one of those problems everyone should have. Yet I don’t want to make light of it either. The challenge of balancing our ambitions for worldly success with the spiritual wisdom that teaches us simply “to be of use” to others is a difficult one. It’s more than just an inability to distinguish between our “wants” and our “needs.”’ Rather, this challenge reflects a need to differentiate between our natural but often unhealthy desires to achieve, to acquire, and even to dominate, and the equally powerful human aspirations to create, to understand, to love and be loved, to achieve inner peace, and perhaps even leave a lasting and meaningful legacy that will endure beyond our lifetimes.

These are the qualities that mark the difference between a life that is only self-serving, and life devoted to the service of others. It’s not just a matter of choosing between selfishness and selflessness. Rather, it’s the recognition that our own happiness is ultimately best served through a life that looks beyond ourselves alone to the safety and prosperity and happiness of others as well. It really is just that simple. And yet how quickly and easily we come to forget it when events in the world around us make us feel anxious and afraid, and our efforts to change things for the better seem futile.

The subject of altruism -- an unselfish concern for the welfare of others -- is something of interest not only to ethicists, but also biologists. One of the reasons that 19th century evangelical Christians like William Jennings Bryan (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) were so opposed to the teaching of evolution in schools was their belief that the philosophy of Social Darwinism, with its soulless doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” tended to undermine more traditional religious teachings about compassion for the poor (ironic when you think about how these respective ideologies have evolved in our own day). When I was a freshman at the University of Washington, I had a biology teacher who was determined to convince us that, in the natural world, so-called examples of real altruism were merely myths, and that animals always instinctively act in their own genetic self-interest. I especially remember him explaining how one of the classical examples of animal altruism form the ancient world, the famous stories about dolphins who rescued shipwrecked mariners from drowning by keeping them afloat and assisting them to shore, was actually just an anthropomorphic misinterpretation of the natural playfulness of these intelligent marine mammals. “We’ll never really know,” he told our class one morning, “how many shipwrecked sailors were almost safely to the beach when a group of dolphins swam along and pushed them out to sea again.”

But it turns out that my freshman biology professor didn’t have it entirely correct either. Many intelligent social animals -- not just dolphins, but also apes, and dogs, and even rats -- demonstrate a fairly well-developed sense of empathy, and at times behave in ways that might even be considered compassionate. Yet they are also capable of organized and premeditated violent aggression, as well as acting with both self-sacrificing courage, and self-centered cowardice. They can be both generous and duplicitous, both kind and cruel. So it would appear that the so-called “natural” world is actually a lot more complicated than perhaps at first we thought. And the great insight of biology is not so much that we are no different than other animals in our struggle for survival, but that in many ways some animals, at least, are little different from us.

Returning for a moment to the realm of human ethics, altruism might best be described as coming in at least three distinct flavors. The first of these is generally characterized as enlightened self-interest, in which our generous good works also contribute to a greater good from which either we or those close to us also benefit. The second consists of the proverbial “random acts of kindness” where our good deeds may not necessarily benefit us directly, but they don’t really cost us much either. And the third is the genuinely self-sacrificial, that “last full measure of devotion” which we praise so profoundly as a society at times like Veterans Day, and for which we reserve our highest public praise and honor. Biologists may be skeptical, but community, society, even civilization itself, all depend upon a certain degree of altruism -- a spirit of public service in which individuals do not merely seek to serve their own self-interests (whether enlightened or merely avaricious,) but also commit themselves “to be of use” to the greater good. True Community is built upon a foundation of reciprocal obligation and mutual trust, and without them Civil Society truly does devolve into the law of the jungle, and a Hobbesean war of all against all.

Ideals of public service and nobless oblige are deeply rooted in both the Universalist and the Unitarian traditions. The Scripture teaches that “from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded;” and both Universalist farmers and Unitarians merchants and mill owners took this prescription very much to heart. Yet “Christian Charity” was not considered merely an activity for the well-to-do. The “genteel poverty” of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, with its family values of service, duty, sacrifice, and love of neighbor, reflects an understanding of “usefulness” which places our ability to do good for others squarely at the center of our own self-worth, regardless of our family’s net worth. My favorite statement of this 19th century commandment “To Be of Use” is the motto of Edward Everett Hale’s “Lend a Hand Club” (which I know we have read here in church before). “I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”

These notions of usefulness were also intimately connected to the idea of Character, and to the traditional religious doctrine of Vocation. The belief that every individual not only has a general but also a specific “calling” from God -- a potential, a destiny, which is uniquely our own and which it is our duty to fulfill -- is a persistent theme in American religious life, from the days of the Puritans down to our own. Yet sometimes this encouragement to “follow our bliss” becomes disconnected from the more basic responsibilities of love of God and love of neighbor. People find their identity in their relationship to a community as much as they do from the introspective examination of their own souls. Who we are and what we do not only reflect one another, they also shape and define one another, as we grow over time into the individuals our Creator intends for us to be.

In his bestselling book The Purpose Driven Life (which you may recall was the inspiration for this series of sermons), Rick Warren uses the acronym SHAPE to describe his understanding of how people of faith might best determine the unique contribution which each of us is called to make, and through which our lives find their true meaning, when we commit ourselves fully to achieving it. ‘S’ stands for the discernment of “Spiritual Gifts.” These gifts are talents and abilities which have been freely given to us, but which we must first “unwrap” before they can be put to use. No one individual receives every gift, yet when we use our gifts together cooperatively everyone benefits. ‘H’ stands for listen to your Heart. One of the ways we discover our gifts is to pursue the things we truly love, to be honest with ourselves rather than following the tastes of the world. The things that excite us, the things which most interest us and command our attention, the activities which we naturally embrace with enthusiasm and enjoyment, are fantastic clues for determining where our true gifts may be found, and where they may find their best employment. And the opposite is also true: if there are some activities which you always seem to find frustrating, or which cause you to grow easily discouraged, perhaps your gifts lie in other areas.

‘A’ stands for applying your Abilities. We all have different gifts, but we also have abilities which we have worked to develop, and which reflect our spiritual gifts honed to a high level of skill. Applying our abilities means using our skills for the good of others rather than mere personal satisfaction, and remembering that whatever we do in life should somehow reflect our higher purpose. ‘P’ stands for empowering our Personalities. It’s not just our skills, but also our temperaments, that make us who were are. Some of us our introverts, and some of us are extroverts. Some of us are very practical and detail oriented, while others are more emotional, or perhaps enjoy vivid and creative imaginations which allow them to see things that others don’t. Some of us like variety, and some of us like routine...but understanding how our personalities work and what our preferences are likewise an important step in defining our unique call to service. Finally, ‘E’ stands for employing our Experience. Not everything we try in life turns out as well as we hope it might. But even our failures and disappointments can teach us things that will someday prove useful, and which are often more important than the things we learn from success.

So, discern your Spiritual Gifts, listen to your Heart, apply your Abilities, empower your Personality, and employ your Experience. And above all, remember than we live not for ourselves alone, but for all the living creatures who have come before us, or who will follow after.

Last Monday I attended the reception for Hal and Shirley Sauer at the town hall. And I was very moved by the brief speech Hal made after receiving his award, after all the other speeches describing Hal’s decades of service from being a Cub Scout leader to his current work on the Board of Appeals. It was just two sentences, and although I can’t remember it word for word, here’s the gist of it: “If all the work I did over the years did some good for the town, that’s great. But it was nothing compared to the good it did for me to do it.”

I personally find Hal’s example very inspirational. And I hope it will be an inspiration for all of you as well.

MORE THAN A CELEBRATION

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle Massachusetts
Sunday November 6th, 2005

It’s a fairly well-known point of minor historical trivia that the inspiration for Emerson’s “spectral” preacher, immortalized for generations of subsequent seminarians as the stellar example of what a minister should aspire NOT to become, was none other than the Reverend Mr. Barzillai Frost, junior colleague to Ralph Waldo’s own ninety-year-old step-grandfather Ezra Ripley just up the road at the First Parish in Concord. And I suspect that at least some of you knew this already, since it tends to be something that virtually every incoming Harvard Unitarian Universalist Divinity Student learns sometime during their first semester, and then often incorporates into one of their early student sermons. Emerson’s Divinity School address is perhaps the next best thing to scripture in our denomination, at least for clergy, and his admonition to “acquaint men [and one assumes women as well] at first hand with deity” is a charge which every rookie Unitarian Universalist preacher learns to take seriously. Yet one of the details often overlooked in those early student sermons is that Barzillai Frost faithfully served the people of Concord for two decades, and left those duties behind only when failing health forced him out of the ministry (and into an early grave) when he was still in his fifties, while Emerson resigned his pulpit at Boston’s Second Church after only three years, (although, in fairness, he then went on to become one of the most celebrated American writers of the 19th century, before finally passing away only a month shy of his eightieth birthday).

Here’s another seldom-mentioned bit of trivia about the Divinity School Address. Scholars believe that the “devout person who prized the Sabbath,” who Emerson overheard “say in bitterness of heart, ‘On Sundays, it seems wicked to go to church’...“ was actually Emerson’s own wife Lidian, and her comments were inspired, not by her local pastor Barzillai Frost, but by a visiting preacher, her husband’s half-uncle the Reverend Samuel Ripley. So even in the same family, people have different tastes. And although Emerson himself would later write in his essay on Self-Reliance “I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching,” like his wife he also prized both the sabbath and a good sermon. At the conclusion of the Divinity School Address he characterized preaching and the sabbath as the “two inestimable advantages Christianity has given us” and challenged his listeners to “let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing” rather than attempting to invent something new. The Sabbath he described as “the jubilee of the whole world, whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the vile, the dignity of spiritual being,” while good preachers “speak the very truth, as...life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts...with new hope and new revelations....”

Bold statements like these may suggest to some that Sunday is really all about the sermon, along with the implicit corollary that without good preaching, the sabbath is basically a waste of time. Yet I doubt this is truly what Emerson had in mind. People spend their Sabbath attending church and participating in public worship for all sorts of other (some might even say better) reasons than listening to a sermon. Some come for the music, so that they might feel uplifted and inspired in ways that mere words can never really manage to achieve. Some come simply to see their friends, and to feel connected to a society of “neighbors and fellow creatures” with whom they share a common history, common values, and a common vision of the future. Or perhaps they are feeling alone and fragile, and long for that sense of connection to something larger and more enduring than themselves.

These are all great reasons for coming to church, and investing (I won’t say “spending”) ...investing an hour or so of our lives each week in the routine attempt to forge a connection, a “communion,” with something greater than ourselves alone: to a wider community of friends and family, neighbors and strangers, each of whom has inherent worth and dignity, and who together form part of the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are also a part; or to that vital Force which gives us life, and the powerful Spirit which gives life meaning -- to become part of the Circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and to know, deep within our hearts, that we are both part of the whole and still whole within ourselves. This is why people come to church, and wouldn’t it be great if it happened for everyone every Sunday. But you’ll have to confess, that’s a pretty tall order. Yet hopefully, on any given Sunday it happens for someone, and over time we all have our turn.

These are some of the reasons people come to church. But what do we actually DO here? And by this I don’t mean the important but mundane (that word means “worldly” by the way) work of institutional maintenance. Rather, what do we do when we participate in an Act of Worship? The word “liturgy” means literally “the work of the people” -- so what kind of religious or “spiritual” work are we talking about when we create a “liturgy” together?

Obviously the preaching has something to do with it. Saint Augustine once wrote that the purpose of a sermon is “to instruct, to delight, and to inspire” which logically leads me to the assumption that the purpose of listening to a sermon is to be instructed, delighted, and inspired. But there’s obviously a lot more going on here than just a sermon, which at best takes up only about 25-30% of our time together. So what else do we do in the way of “people work” during this hour on Sunday morning? And what do we hope to get back in return for our efforts?

I’d like to suggest that there are actually at least four different activities that comprise the work of worship, some of which overlap, all of which go together, and which build upon one another in order to change both our lives and the world for the better.

And the first of these, the one we talk about all the time, is the work of Celebration. Celebration, in the sense of its original Latin root, is the work of honoring or praising publicly -- it is the same root as the word “celebrity” -- and it also has a technical meaning in the sense of performing the ceremony of the Roman Catholic Mass, or formally observing any other public “holy” day. But I prefer the colloquial definition, which is “to have a convivial good time.” Celebration is the unrestrained expression of pure human joy. It’s a party, where we loosen up and let our hair down and just take pleasure in the experience of being alive. To worship is to celebrate: to honor and praise the force which gives us life, and to manifest that force in meaningful ways which fill us with a spirit of love and compassion and transform us into something better and greater than we now are.

But worship is more than just celebration. Worship is also an act of Devotion, through which we demonstrate our commitment to the values and principles that make our lives meaningful. Devotion is one of those great religious words which we hear all the time, but rarely take the time to ponder. A devotee is basically anyone who has taken a vow, and who by doing so not only becomes devoted, but also devout. The word simply oozes with connotations of piety and holiness, but generally when we hear it in ordinary usage it is almost always in the context of marriage and family: the devoted husband, wife, parent, child...people who are bound together not only by formal vows, but by bonds stronger than any vow. Yet ultimately these avowed obligations which bind us together are religious in nature: they also bind us again (RE-ligious) to something larger than ourselves, which was here before we got here and will still be here when we’ve gone.

The work of Worship also often includes an act of personal Sacrifice. In fact, if you just think back a bit about the likely historical and anthropological origins of worship, sacrifice was probably right there at the top of the list from day one. Sacrifice means giving up something of value, typically with the expectation of receiving back something even more valuable. Primitive people offered sacrifices of animals and agricultural produce -- and sometimes even the lives of other human beings -- in order to appease angry gods, or perhaps in the hope of cultivating divine favor. When someone sacrifices in baseball it means giving up an out in order to get a run, or at least to move a runner into scoring position. Yet on another level sacrifice is also an act of submission, acceptance, and obedience: the recognition and acknowledgment that there are certain things which are simply beyond our own power to control, and that we sometimes need help from a higher power in order to obtain or achieve the things we truly desire.

In the ancient world the sacrificial system also often functioned as a vehicle for the redistribution of wealth and the creation of social capital. Those who had been blessed with a bountiful harvest were expected to offer the first fruits of their produce to God at the local temple, where it went to support the priests and was also redistributed to those in need. The word “sacrifice” itself means, literally, “to make sacred.” When we surrender or “give up” some portion of ourselves and our goods to a greater power or a greater good, we undergo a process of personal transformation which somehow brings us closer to the power of Goodness itself, creating a relationship of trust and mutuality in which we receive back in proportion to what we have given away. It’s almost as if, by letting go of some things we create an open space in our lives which can then be filled with something else. When we stop trying to grasp and cling to everything in reach, our hands miraculously become free to embrace something new and different and even more precious.

This brings me to the fourth thing I wanted to talk about today, which is that the work of worship is also often simply an expression of Gratitude, which manifests itself through acts of Love and Creativity, Charity and Generosity. And it’s funny how those two sets of words have such different connotations, even though they are essentially synonyms. Charity MEANS Love. Generosity IS Creativity.

Gratitude is an attitude of thankfulness, and is related to a variety of other familiar English words which share the same Latin root: gratify and gratification (as in to give or receive pleasure or satisfaction), gratuity (which is generally some sort of gift or monetary “tip” for service), gratuitous (something that is uncalled for or done without sufficient reason), and of course gratis (meaning “free”).

Both charity and generosity also carry with them this same deeper sense of something ”freely given,” which is one of the things that differentiates these words from more general understandings of love and creativity. A profound sense of Gratitude is at the heart of many of the core values which inform both authentic spirituality and a meaningful religious faith and practice: compassion, hospitality, humility, forgiveness, to name just a few. We express our gratitude for what we have received -- beginning with the precious gift of life itself -- by “paying forward” to those in need: a tangible celebration of our devotion to a greater good, and the sacrifices we willingly make in order to attain it.

A few weeks ago you may recall I mentioned Rick Warren’s idea that worship is anything that makes God smile. I love this image, and try to keep it in mind throughout the week as I prepare myself to stand up here and lead our weekly worship service. It is a work we do in partial fulfillment of the mission explicit in our covenant: “to the end that all souls might grow into harmony with the Divine.”

And over the years I have learned to look for God’s smile in the smiling faces I look forward to seeing here every Sunday, as together we “raise a joyous noise to the Lord” and gather for prayer, and to make our offerings, and to hear a little preaching which attempts, at least, to convert life into truth, and thus bring us closer to both God and one another.





READING:

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life. In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is [hu]man[ity] made sensible that [we are] infinite soul[s], that the earth and heavens are passing into [our] mind[s]; that [we are] drinking forever the soul of God?...

Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. We shrink as soon as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and offend us.... I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say, I would go to church no more....A snow storm was falling around us. The snow storm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no[t] one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, to convert life into truth, he had not learned. Not one fact of his experience, had he yet imported into his doctrine. This man had ploughed and planted, bought and sold; he had read books; he had eaten and drunken; his head aches; his heart throbs; he smiles and suffers; yet was there not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse, that he had ever lived at all. Not a line did he draw out of real history. The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life, -- life passed through the fire of thought. But of the bad preacher, it could not be told from his sermon, what age of the world he fell in; whether he had a father or a child; whether he was a freeholder or a pauper; whether he was a citizen or a countryman, or any other fact of his biography.