A Sermon Delivered August 11, 2002
First Unitarian Church, Portland, Oregon
Cole Brecheen
It’s so hard for a Sunday School teacher to know
what is actually getting across and what’s not. My own nine-year-old son has been in the Learning Community here
all his life, several years in classes that I’ve taught. A couple of months ago he was listening to
one of my wife’s phone conversations where the subject of Jehovah’s Witnesses
had come up. Toward the end of the
conversation she said something like, “We’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses, but we
have friends who are, and they’re pretty ordinary people …,” etcetera,
etcetera. After she hung up, my
little boy said, dead serious, “Mom, we are part Jehovah’s
Witness.” Marsha was a little startled
by that, and asked him how he figured it.
He said, “Well, we’re Unitarians, and Unitarians are a little bit of
everything, so that makes us part Jehovah’s Witness, too.”
I don’t remember that being an explicit part of the
message in any class I’ve taught, but I guess you can’t blame him for making
that deduction. For some reason this
chasm of years between little children and us is harder to bridge with matters
of religion than it is with all the other subjects they have to master. We can have our own theories about why that
is, but it’s important to call on memory as much as possible so as to see
things from their point of view. The
way they see it, the reason we fail to get our point across about religion is just
that we are ancient and incredibly dull.
As they grow, of course, that perspective
changes. They take classes that make
their old Sunday School teachers seem lively by comparison, and a lot of them
start to think that their early religious instruction didn’t take because the message
was flawed. That is certainly a phase
that I went through, and may not be out of completely. I should give you a little context here to
help you understand what I mean. I grew
up in a little West Texas farm town where my mother’s family had lived for
several generations, all members of the Church of Christ. We were theologically a lot like the
Baptists – I think we differed with them on the meaning of John 3:16 or
something like that – but really the main difference was more a matter of form
and style: worship services in the
Church of Christ don’t use instrumental music, and generally speaking are a
little quieter and more reserved.
I believe, and have believed for a long time, that a
lot of what young people learn in conservative religious environments like that
is mean-spirited and just plain wrong, in more ways than one. I filtered out almost all of it, and spent
most of my Sunday School years slouched in my chair looking out the
window. But I never thought that the individuals
who taught us were mean-spirited, and now, many years later, some of what I had
filtered out seems to be coming back.
I’ve begun to think about some of the teachers who
genuinely seemed to care about our spiritual well being, and sometimes to
speculate about what they would do and say if they were in my shoes, because
they did live with a certain amount of grace and dignity that is hard to
duplicate. Many of the people who
taught us were what my grandmother used to call “dashboard farmers.” They spent a big part of every week driving
around in their pickups visiting with people, mostly spreading gossip, but
performing a useful social function.
When you were having a hard time – going through a divorce or a
foreclosure or a terrible loss – you could always count on one of these
dashboard farmers to stop by and talk because you were the source of news. The more gregarious they were during the
week, the less they seemed interested in talking to us about John 3:16 or the
other more negative parts of Church of Christ doctrine. They were more interested in telling us
stories about the people they knew and the great variety of ways they had seen
people make good and bad decisions.
My guess now is that they didn’t reach me, or a lot
of the other kids I knew, just because we weren’t mature enough to hear and
understand. But they may have had some
success in reaching through time. That
seems to be the way that communication works best between Sunday School
teachers and students; it takes full effect only after it has been mediated through
about thirty or forty years. So I
thought this morning that I would cut to the chase and attempt, or at least
pretend, to accomplish that kind of communication directly.
I want to imagine this morning that you are the kids
from all the classes that my co-teachers and I have taught over the last four
or five years, all grown up now, capable of understanding, possibly capable of
sitting still for twenty minutes and not throwing things at each other. I particularly want to finish some thoughts
from the 5th/6th-grade class that Denise Bauman and I
taught this past year. I can’t presume
to speak for her or any of the other wonderful teachers and parent helpers I
work with here in the Learning Community every Sunday – I know that a lot of
what I have to say here is idiosyncratic – but I have a powerful sense that all
of these teachers, and many of the teachers you remember from your own
childhood, would speak to you now in the same spirit, if they could, even if
they might sound a little different.
There is so much I would want to say if I really could reach out through time and talk to these children as grown ups. But if I had to boil it down into one last, brief message, I think I would tell them just three things.
For you to fully understand the first one, I need to
explain something about our purposes and methods. Memory plays tricks after such a long time, and I want to make
sure you understand that, even though our class time when you were small was
seldom spent in the main sanctuary, and was more often in some little room
tucked far away from it, you were the main focus of our community, not
the periphery. And our work with you
was not just about arts and crafts and socialization. There was an important theme and message in it, and my guess is that
all of you did somehow absorb it. At
least I hope you did. I hope you carry
it in your heart and think about it every day.
The basic message was just “Wake up, Sweetheart. There is something more to this life than
you see right in front of you. There is
an important mystery here. Parts of it
might be capable of solution. Others
have had useful things to say about it.
All these things are worthy of your interest.”
So what we were mostly trying to do when you were
young was awaken your interest in the inner life. I know it must have seemed that the
principles of civil conduct were the main subject a lot of the time, but even
if none of that Golden Rule stuff sank in, you have surely learned it the hard
way by now. We knew that’s how it would
be. We just wanted to save you a little
heartache.
But it was your interest that we really cared
about. And so we tried to emphasize
variety. We talked about the many
different religious traditions, the many interpretations of the old stories,
the many ways people worship and try to make sense of their own existences, the
“many different paths to God.” You
heard us say that over and over, but I’m not sure you ever heard us say that you
need to choose one of them.
Six or seven years ago I heard Huston Smith, the
great scholar of world religions, say something about the importance of
choosing a path, and I can’t remember if it was from an interview I heard on Fresh
Air or from his talk one evening over in the Salmon Street sanctuary, both
of which were at about that time. I
think he was repeating a proverb, but what he said was this:
When you’re looking for water, it’s generally better
to dig one deep well than many shallow ones.
So that’s the first of the three things I would say,
now that you’re all grown up: choose
a path. Choose a wisdom tradition
to follow, a religion of some kind that does have doctrine and
scripture. I know that in a certain
sense all of us are on a path, and I don’t want to discount the value of
living with awareness and compassion, even if you do it completely without
guidance, independent of any religious tradition. But it’s harder that way, and most people who try run out
of steam at some point short of the mark.
The vast majority of us need to make a lifelong commitment to a
tradition in which we can find guidance.
It’s not something you should do lightly, or hastily, but don’t put it
off for a better day, either. You’ll
know when the time is right. Once
you’ve chosen a path, don’t give up on it and choose a different one when you
get far enough along to see all the potholes and broken bridges. Every human activity has its ugly sides, and
religion is no exception.
The second thing I would say is going to seem like it contradicts one of the principal messages that you absorbed so long ago in Sunday School. Do you remember that, on the day we learned to sing “This Little Light of Mine,” we talked about something Jesus said? It was from the Sermon on the Mount:
14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill
cannot be hid.
15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a
bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.
16 Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good
works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
We talked about that passage, and then we made
little lamps that you took home and used to pester your parents about matches
for the next several days. You probably
thought all this time that the lesson was only an excuse to make those little
fire hazards.
To be honest, that was a big part of it, but the
main point was to help you see that it’s not so bad to be a good kid, and to
set a good example. That’s an important
message when you’re small, because you have to survive in such a savage culture. This year, when Denise and I talked about
Jesus’s injunction to turn the other cheek, a little boy in our class said,
“That might be good advice for grown ups, but it would never work in my
school.”
When you get older, however, the different strata of
people separate pretty widely, and most of us wind up in social
environments where there are no obvious disincentives for “letting our lights
shine before others,” and where in fact we have to struggle with some
temptations along those lines. When
you’re a grown-up in the world that most of us inhabit, what you need to
do at some point is turn just one page over in the book of Matthew, and read
what Jesus said only few minutes later in the very same sermon:
1.
Beware
of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then
you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
2.
Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the
hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that others may praise
them. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
3.
But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right
hand is doing,
4.
so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret
will reward you.
5.
And
when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and
pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that others can see them.
Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
6.
But
when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who
is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
So that’s the second thing: once you’ve chosen a path, be careful
about how you share it.
I don’t want to dwell too much on the question of
public prayer; the gospels do make clear that Jesus sometimes led ceremonial
public prayers: blessing the loaves and
fishes, for example. His point most
likely was that your personal relationship with the great underlying mystery
that works in all our lives is a private thing. You need to protect it, tend to it in your quiet time, and before
you share it with someone, you need to search your heart and make certain that
there is no trace of ego in your motives.
The temptation to feed your ego with the fruits of
spiritual work becomes a powerful thing when you get older. That’s something you weren’t well prepared
to understand when you were in Sunday School, maybe because your ego was still
under construction at that point, maybe because you were praised enough for
small things that you became numb to it.
But when we get older no one praises us for our penmanship any more, and we all become a little bit like Mark Twain. He said, “I can live a month or two on a good compliment,” and few compliments are more seductive than the ones that relate to your inner life. A grown-up who does take the inner life seriously has to work hard at not developing a taste for that kind of thing, and I don’t know how to tell you to do it. All I can tell you is that there is no form of pride that is more ugly or more destructive than the kind Jesus was talking about in the passage we read a minute ago.
How we reconcile the value of letting our lights
shine – what some people might call “witnessing” – with the importance of modesty
and privacy in our spiritual lives is a difficult subject. Denise and I tried to talk to our class
about it a little this year, but it was clearly not a subject for fifth
graders. I couldn’t quit thinking,
though, that it was important, and something they needed eventually to
understand. That experience, actually,
was the principal motivation for choosing this sermon topic. I will say that my own life would be a lot
less rich if it weren’t for things that some of you have shared with me over
the years about your personal journeys.
So it is the right thing to do sometimes. When that kind of sharing is a natural outflow from the personal,
engaged outreach and contact that we all need to be doing with the suffering
folks we meet every day, it’s life changing.
When your heart is right, and the time is right, and the place is right,
then you need to speak up.
Now here’s the third and final thing. It relates directly to this issue of right time and right place.
When you were small you never heard us take much of
a position on exactly what kind of religious community you ought to choose, and
we wouldn’t say the somewhat evangelistic things that I’m about to say to just
anyone on the street. Knowingly or
unknowingly, Unitarian Universalists tend to follow the Buddha’s example in the
matter of evangelism. The story is that
a famous representative of a different religion once paid a visit to the Buddha
and attempted to convert him, but wound up being so impressed with the Buddha’s
presence and teaching that he decided on the spot to give up his own religion
and become a student of the dharma. When
he asked the Buddha how to do this, the Buddha said, “Make a proper
investigation first.”
But today is special, you’re special, and you’ve had
long enough to investigate, so I’ll say just a little about why a Unitarian
Universalist community is a particularly good choice for someone who has chosen
a path and learned to treat it as a precious and private thing. In other religious communities, people
generally assume that everyone present is more or less on the same path. A place like this, a genuine community in
which we all search, but in which we understand that people search in different
ways, is better for the kind of private religious life that I think
Jesus wanted us to lead. We don’t
compete with each other to exaggerate the certainty of uncertain things; it
doesn’t go over well. We focus instead
on the lowest common denominators of our inner lives: awareness of the smallest and largest things, the worth of acting
for the common good, the importance of love and compassion. We remember the Buddha’s answer to the
question of how big a part friendship plays in spirituality: “It’s not a part at all,” he said. “It’s the whole of spirituality.”
And I think I’ll say one more thing about how you
should make this choice, because it is tremendously important. You need to be careful not to set your
standards too high when you’re looking for the right religious community for
you. A real community, especially one
that can be of genuine help to you in doing the kind of long-term growing-up
work that you need to do as an adult, is going to have lots of rough edges and
lots of prickly characters. Don’t go
looking for a religious community in which every person is a saint. You won’t find it, and it’s not what you need. And don’t withdraw from the religious
community you’ve chosen when you get your feelings hurt or when you see ugly
behavior. Those things may very well
happen. But they are part of what gives
the experience its power. The reason
that my little West Texas hometown is a real community, with a life-shaping
life of its own, is that most people can’t easily leave it. When you make a foolish decision and lose
your job or your house or your family in some splashy way, or when you learn
that people are starting to talk about how much you drink, or when you suffer
one of this life’s many other humiliations, you can’t easily move on to a
different social circle in a place like that.
Instead, you share your story with the dashboard farmers, and in
exchange they tell you about other folks who have it worse, and in the end you
realize that you’re in the right place.
I don’t know that it’s essential for me to explain why
you need the support of a community to help you stay on the path. You are grown up now, you already know how
much harder it is to face any draining long-term task by yourself, and you
already know how important it is for you to find support in pursuing anything
in life that is important to you. So
that’s the one question to which it all boils down: Are you awake yet, Sweetheart?
Has the inner life become genuinely important to you?
If it has, and if you’ve chosen your path, and you’ve come to understand the need to be careful about how you share it, then you don’t need to despair that it must also be lonely. It doesn’t have to be. Right here, in this very place, you have a home. You are in the company of like-minded people. We may not have chosen the same path, we may not wear the effort of walking it on our sleeves, but we do love you, and we will do whatever we can to help you find your way, even if it requires reaching through time to do it.
So be it.
References:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/prayer.htm
http://www.forestsangha.org/amaro3.htm
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/to-learn.htm