Sermon: "Faith's Future, Humanity's Future" (Delivered 5-19-13)

Call to Worship

[This call to worship was read by a member of the youth group.]

Good morning.  My name is Reverend Thom Belote.

Today I was going to preach about the future.  So I built a time machine to see what the future would hold.  I made a mistake and crossed the wires by accident, and sent myself twenty years into the past.

This is me in 1992, twenty years ago, a youth saying the opening words at a UU church.

Twenty years ago the United States was withdrawing troops from Iraq following a war, just like today.

Twenty years ago the Rodney King trial showed us that racism and the criminal justice system were serious issues in our country, just like today.

Twenty years ago the Rolling Stones went on tour, even though they seemed to be getting a little old for touring.  They are touring North America right now.

Twenty years ago there were one hundred and fifty thousand Unitarian Universalists in the United States, the same number there are today.

But some things have changed in the last twenty years.

Today twelve states recognize gay marriage.  None did twenty years ago.

Today there is greater diversity in politics, business, and education.

Today smartphones, Facebook, Skype, and Twitter change the way we communicate.

Today our church is more than twice as large as it was in 1992 and worship is held here instead of in the Barn Chapel.

While you think about what the next twenty years will hold, while we worship together, I’m going to see whether time travel is reversible.

Sermon

My thanks to Jim C. for purchasing the right to assign me a sermon topic at last November’s Auction.  Here is what Jim requested from me in the sermon.  He wrote, “I've been thinking about the sermon I purchased at the auction and I have an idea for your consideration: ‘Welcome to the Year 2038.’  I'd like you to consider what life will be like 25 years from now.  What will life in the U.S. look like?  Will current trends of income inequality plunge us into a land of nobles and serfs, or will we have overcome our greed-based economic system?  What will the religious and racial makeup of our society look like?  Will SMUUCh be a mega-church, the rest of the world finally realizing that loving support of our individual paths is the way to true spiritual growth and fulfillment?  Will there be air to breathe, or will we be purchasing it in portable tanks in order to survive?  Think you might get out your crystal ball and have some fun with this?”

A funny thing happened right around the time that I received Jim’s sermon idea.  Right around that time I picked up a copy of a book by Nate Silver entitled The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t.  Nate Silver began his career as a wayward mathematician, spending his nights earning a living playing on-line Poker and his days mostly failing to devise a better mathematical model for predicting the performance of baseball players.  In 2008 Nate Silver started a blog using math to predict the outcomes of elections.  He was wildly successful.  In the 2008 presidential election, he called 49 out of 50 states correctly.  He missed Indiana.  He went back to the drawing board, improved his model, and went a perfect fifty for fifty with the 2012 presidential election.  In my circle of friends a saying emerged, “Keep calm and trust Nate Silver.”

Silver’s book looks at a number of fields that are in the business of prediction, everything from meteorology to seismology, from sports betting to investing in the stock market.  One of the main take-aways from Silver’s book is that for the most part human beings are abysmally bad at making predictions.  Sorry, Jim.  I have a favorite example of prediction folly.  Starting before the year 2000 the New York Times paid a so-called football expert to predict the exact final score of every NFL game.  In the year 2000, a journalist began tracking these predictions.  That year the author went a perfect zero for 256 with his predictions.  The next season the column returned and he went zero for 256 a second year in a row.  The third year he still had a job and in the middle of that season he finally made one correct prediction.  For a period of several years Nate Silver tracked the political predictions of a panel of talking heads on The McLaughlin Group, a political talk show.  He found that they were all very bad at making predictions.  Any of them could have just flipped a coin and not done any worse.  So, I hope that you are at least entertained this morning by my misguided predictions.  I certainly won’t be giving you hot stock picks or telling you to lay your money on the Spurs in the NBA playoffs.

Turn on the news, open the paper, or read a book about current events and you may find yourself convinced that the world is doomed and that humanity is utterly hopeless.  Or do the same and you may find your spirits buoyantly lifted as you regain your faith in the progress of humankind.  I wonder if this happens to you.  You hear about a shocking act of senseless, wasteful violence and you despair for the human condition.  You learn that marriage equality wins in Delaware and Minnesota and your faith in humanity is restored.  Then a ridiculous law is passed in Topeka or Jefferson City and you swear the world is ending.  But then great piece of legislation is passed and you allow hope to creep back in.  You learn some catastrophic information about global poverty or global climate change but then you learn about a groundbreaking development in medicine or clean energy.  Which way do the signs point?  Towards a world going to hell in a hand basket?  Towards a nobler world than we have known today?  Or do the signs point to the status quo, nothing new under the sun, same as it ever was?

Historically speaking, Unitarian Universalists have tended to embrace a more positive view of the future.  Writing in 1886, Unitarian James Freeman Clarke wrote his answer to what Unitarians believe.  He said Unitarians affirm “the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, salvation by character, and the continuity of human development in all worlds, or, the progress of mankind onward and upward forever.”  Theodore Parker claimed that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.  Search our hymnal and you will find an entire section of hymns under the theme “In Time to Come.”  The time to come imagined by these hymns sounds pretty good to me.  “These things shall be: a loftier race than e’er the world hath known shall rise, with flame of freedom in their souls, and the light of science in their eyes.”  “Hail the glorious golden city, pictured by the seers of old: everlasting light shines o’er it, wondrous things of it are told.  Wise and righteous men and women dwell within its gleaming wall; wrong is banished from its borders, justice reigns supreme o’er all.”

This bright optimism is one of the distinguishing characteristics of liberal religion.  It is one of the many things that differentiates us from the brand of religion that declares the end is nigh, that the rapture is coming.  We have hymns called “Now is the Time Approaching” and “Soon the Day Will Arrive,” but the future they imagine is cheerful, not doom and gloom.  It occurs to me to ask, are we as a religious movement still as sunny in our disposition as our forebears from decades and centuries ago?  Does their faith in “onward and upward forever” strike us as naïve, or does their hope still inform our own?

In my own life, I am a person who tends towards optimism.  But what about you?  Where do your predictions lie when it comes to the future of humanity?  Are you a person who imagines things getting better – do you imagine human well-being improving on our planet and human suffering diminishing?  Are you a pessimist – do you see things growing worse for more of the world’s people?  Do you predict an increase of human suffering?  Or, are you one of those people who believe that past is prologue?  Do you think that the amount of misery and happiness in the world will stay more or less level in the future?  And, when it comes to the future of faith, do you see liberal religion as a vanguard, actively moving the world forward, or as a rearguard, doing what we can to hinder the inevitable rising tide of injustice, dysfunction, and destruction?

In his chapter on predicting the weather, Nate Silver makes an interesting observation.  He says that despite the jokes we make at the expense of meteorologists, computer models that predict weather a few days in advance are actually among the best predictions we have.  However, these models take into account so many variables, so much chaos, that more than a handful of days out the predictions become very inaccurate.  Silver points out that the best predictor of weather more than a week away is actually the long-term historical average for that day.  So, if we can’t predict the weather more than two weeks in advance, except to say that the best we can say is that it will be an average of what came before, what chance do any of us have of predicting the future twenty five years from now?

As I was researching for this sermon I ran across a number of predictions that seemed hopeful and positive, as well as a number that were much less so.  Nate Silver recently updated his projections about marriage equality in the United States.  Four years ago he predicted that all 50 states would support marriage equality by 2024.  I also encountered several studies about war.  These authors claim that there is less war today than at almost any time in recorded human history, that warfare has been steadily declining for the last six decades, and that a world without war is a likely possibility within our lifetime.  These predictions were so fascinating that I decided to make them the subject of my sermon next week for Memorial Day weekend.

That’s the good news.  The bad news, as Jim pointed out in his questions, is that recent trends in the environment and in economic inequality show us heading in the wrong direction, trending towards increased suffering for more of the world’s people.

In environmental terms, here is what I see in the next 25 years.  I see an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather and I predict this will have a harmful effect on different populations across the globe.  I see a rise in movements of environmental counterculturalism, of backyard gardens and urban farming.  And I see some of the more cataclysmic possibilities being mitigated in part by new technologies and human adaptability.  We are very flexible creatures and we’re going to have to be.  Many future crises could be lessened or even averted if we saw immediate major behavioral changes among the populations in developed, developing, and third world countries.  Unfortunately, it is really hard to change human behaviors.

As far as economic inequality, the widening gap between rich and poor, I predict that if this trend is to be slowed down or even reversed, it won’t happen because of a sudden spiritual and ethical awakening of those who hold and control gross amounts of wealth.  If it is to happen, it will happen through a sustained and serious revolution on the part of the poor, lower class, and the declining middle class.  It will take a movement exponentially larger than occupy Wall Street.  It will require organized resistance and organized non-compliance.  What if the victims of predatory home loans refused to move out of their homes?  What if students refused to pay back their loans?  For such a revolution to succeed public perception would have to change; the media must no longer serve the interests of the corporate state.  And, for such a revolution to succeed, the agents that serve corporate interests would have to decide to side with the people.  I do not see massive restructuring of the economic systems of our country happening except through revolutionary dissent.  [Note: the shape of these remarks more than likely has to do with the fact that I’ve been reading a book about the rise of socialism in Russia during the first half of the 20th century.  To quote Leo Tolstoy, “It is not necessary to kill Tsars Nicholas and Alexander… but only to leave off supporting the social condition of which they are the product.”]

But Jim also asked about the changing face of religion in America and about my predictions about America’s religious future.  Probably the biggest religious story of the last decade has been the decline of religious participation in America.  Most historic denominations are shrinking.  Presbyterianism and Congregationalism have each shrunk by 25% over the past decade.  The Episcopalian Church and the Lutheran Church have each shrunk by nearly 20%.  Membership in the United Methodist Church has declined by 7%.  Even the Southern Baptists are shrinking.  Meanwhile, Unitarian Universalism has stayed pretty much exactly the same size.  Only a handful of religious traditions are growing.  Roman Catholicism is growing slightly.  Pentecostal denominations, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are also growing.

Some might predict that this trend will continue and that the decline of the mainline will continue.  Evangelical and mega-churches may already be showing similar signs of decline.  Some might see the trends and predict that in the coming decades American religion will move in the direction of religion in Europe, will be more and more tiny and mostly ignored.

My prediction is that the decline in American religion that we’ve seen is not a sign of what is to come.  Rather, I see religion continuing to play a major role in the American landscape although some religious movements are sure to thrive while others decline.  Religion will still be a big thing in 25 years and the reasons for this are several-fold.  For one thing, the contemporary American landscape is designed to promote private space and commercial space and to minimize community space and civic space.  Human beings, however even us individualistic American loners, long for connection and community.  We want to escape isolation and loneliness and we can’t do that in our homes and we can’t do that at strip malls.  Churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, gurdwaras, and Zen centers are leading institutions for providing civic space focused on questions of longing and meaning.  They are also significant providers of social services in a nation that is radically underinvested in the services it provides to its citizens.  There is a need, but there is also a need for congregations to understand what that need is all about.

So, what of Unitarian Universalism?  Jim asks will we become a mega-church when our community realizes that we offer a path towards personal fulfillment and true spiritual growth?  Unitarian Universalism is doing better than the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and even the Methodists.  However, there are pretty much just as many UUs in the United States today as there were a decade ago.  In fact, there are pretty much as many UUs in the United States today as there were 50 years ago.  Unitarian Universalism, on the whole, has been frozen in place for the last half century, a fact that has proven vexing, frustrating, and upsetting to the national leaders of our faith.

Our church, at least for the past decade and a little more, has been one of the congregations that has bucked this inertia.  As far as I can tell there are three UU congregations in our district that have exhibited significant growth within the past decade.  Three congregations out of more than fifty.  One of those congregations, in suburban Minneapolis, the fastest growing, has grown from around 400 members to around 800.  Another, the UU church in Des Moines, Iowa, has grown from around 300 to more than 450.  And, in the past decade or so, we’ve grown from a little under 200 members to a little over 300.  We’re the only three.

About six years ago I participated in a UU growth consultation held in Louisville.  I was one of twelve ministers of growing churches from all around the country selected to be a part of the gathering.  (Then afterwards I edited a book on what we had learned.)  I remember a couple of things vividly.  One thing was that we were different in all sorts of ways.  Some of the congregations were more humanist, others more theist.  Some had an organ; others had a rock band.  Some were social justice leaders in their community, really out there on the front lines.  Others emphasized community and spiritual growth more than social justice.

What they all had in common, what we all had in common, was that we resisted seeing growth as a technical problem to fix.  As Rev. Christine Robinson of Albuquerque writes, “My congregation in Albuquerque has doubled in size in the past 25 years, outperforming the Methodists (30% decline), the UUA in general (flat), and the population of the city (up 50%)  And could I tell you, even in retrospect, how my budgets each year contributed to that growth?   I cannot.  The best I can do is make some educated guesses.  Bringing on a second minister, for instance, was clearly a part of our growth, although it had to be not only the right line item but the right minister to work.  Funding a church band was probably helpful.  On the other hand, our numbers of children have gone up and down without regard to the money we have poured into our RE program.   All my prospective guesses about what might bring those elusive guests, growth and vitality, into our church have been just that.  Guesses, Hopes, Optimistic plans…”

Rather, when the twelve of us gathered we talked mostly about attitudes that growing UU congregations need to embrace.  Those attitudes, among others, include the belief that the church is offering something important and promoting the type of transformation needed in society, an attitude of radical hospitality and welcome, an embrace of change and innovation, and a sense of pervading love.  [These themes are echoed in the book of essays I edited following the growth gathering.]

Twenty five years from now may seem like a long time, but I happen to believe that the spiritual issues with which we wrestle are perennial and universal.  Transformation and welcome and change and love will be needed in the future as much as they are needed today.  Amen.

Sermon: "Spirituality & Motherhood" (Delivered 5-12-13)

Call to Worship

[Inspired by the lyrics to hymn #311 “Let it be a Dance.]

Welcome partners,

welcome dancing partners,

welcome to this dance of life,

this dance of spring,

this dance of the human family

This is the dance of joy and pain,

the dance of gratitude, disappointment, and forgiveness.

This is the dance of learning and growing,

of opening our hearts wider than we could imagine,

of increasing love by magnitudes.

This is the dance of courage and leaping faith,

challenging us to lead in one moment and then

asking us for the trust to allow ourselves to be led in the next.

Welcome dancing partners as in the middle of these dances of life and love, we also turn our attention this day to the dance of motherhood, a dance that cannot be perfectly choreographed but requires improvisation, intuition, and responsiveness.

Hold to your chest.  Hold in your lap.  

Hold on your hips.  Hold by the hand.  

Let go.  Let go again and again and hold always in the heart.

Come dancing partners.  Share the laughter.  Bear the pain.

Round and round we go again.

Let us worship together.

Sermon

Disclaimer #1:  While for many Mother’s Day is a joyful day, for many others it is a day that brings some measure of pain.  Everything I’m going to say this morning is said with an awareness that in our community there may be mothers who have lost a child, who are estranged from a child, or who feel some other hurt related to motherhood.  There are others for whom Mother’s Day reminds them of having lost their mother or of estrangement or hurt in their relationship with their mother.  And, there are still others who grieve not having been able to have a child, for whom this day is painful too.  This sermon is given with awareness of the emotional complexities that surround Mother’s Day.

Disclaimer #2:  All the obvious disclaimers about consumerism and the commercialization of our emotional lives and the societal pressure to express sentiments such as love, admiration, and appreciation through greeting cards, brunch, flowers, chocolate, et cetera, et cetera.  I’m aware of all of these protestations and that’s just not what this morning is about.  (Now would probably be the right time to mention that Mother’s Day has transcended its status as a holiday driven by the greeting card industry.  A survey done a year ago asked 1,000 Protestant ministers what days of the church year had the largest attendance.  Easter was first.  Christmas Eve was second.  Mother’s Day was third.  In other words, following the resurrection of Jesus and the birth of Jesus, Mother’s Day has become the third most important Christian holy day.)

Disclaimer #3:  It has been said that in a Unitarian Universalist church the minister can expect that, whatever subject he or she chooses, there will be someone in the congregation who is an expert on the subject, whose knowledge far exceeds the minister’s.  Well, this morning I’ve chosen a subject that so many of you in the congregation know infinitely more about than I know.  I’m just being real with you here.

On October first, a few short and exhausting weeks before our last service at our old building, our move, and our first service in our new building, our baby Lydia was born.  I became a dad and Anne became a mom.  Back in the fall I had an awareness that when Father’s Day rolled around in June I would probably want to say something about my new identity as a father.  Then I thought that it wouldn’t be right to make a big deal out of Father’s Day and slight Mother’s Day.  So, I decided that on Mother’s Day we should hear from the newest moms in our church community.  For half a minute I considered writing this group of women and asking them to create a worship service on Mother’s Day but then I realized that this might be a bad idea.  Hey, I know you’re sleeping way fewer hours than is humanly possible, that sometimes showering and brushing your teeth on the same day is a daunting task, that a trip to the store requires the development of a strategic plan, but do you think you could develop a worship service and present that service on Mother’s Day, which is supposed to be your day and all?

What I did was send all the new mothers in our congregation an email asking them if they would share some reflections about how becoming a new parent has changed their identity and what motherhood has meant to them spiritually.  And I plan to do the same thing with the new dads in the church for Father’s Day.  New dads, the pressure is on.

I want to share with you what these new moms in our church community wrote about their feelings and experiences of motherhood, about how their identity has changed, and about motherhood as a spiritual experience.  I invite you to listen as I share from their reflections, to listen for differences and commonalities, and to allow yourself to be touched by the wonder, the worry, the hope, and the courage that accompanies the beginning of all brave new adventures.  These are the words of new parents with a child a little over a year old or less than a month old.  Some of their children are firstborn and others have a brother or sister a little bit older.  Some of these email responses were sent to me during the day, some during the evening, and a few at three o’clock in the morning.

One of the things that I believe is that our identities have a sacred quality to them.  In my correspondence the first question I asked was whether becoming a mom changed your identity, your sense of who you are.  One new mom wrote, “I am amazed that I am even a mother at all. In many ways, where I am now in life is a complete 180 from where I saw myself in high school… Growing-up I just knew in my gut that there would never be time in my ‘conquer the world’ life for anything as time consuming as family… For my high-school graduation gift I asked to have my tubes tied.  My mother thoughtfully requested that I wait a few years and then reconsider.  In the first hours of [our daughter’s] life, as she was becoming more real to me, a part of me was slowly dying. Life was no longer about me, it was about her and becoming the best parent that I could be for her.”

Another mom responded quite differently.  “I don’t know that being a new parent has changed my identity,” she wrote.  “The driving force of my life is a desire to care for others, so being a mom slides right into my identity.”

How has the experience changed you so far, I asked.  “Being a mom has pretty much obliterated all my inhibitions that once kept me from making a fool of myself,” one respondent wrote.  “There are nearly no limitations for what I will do for a smile, or even more so, a laugh, from my little guy. Who needs beer to dance like a monkey or contort your face into pure ugliness?”

Another wrote, “I feel like the contrast has been turned up on my life. There are definite low moments when you're really exhausted or frustrated (often bedtime, for us) or honestly bored of pretending to be a my little pony for the nth time. Self-doubt when you are trying to decide how to parent. Then there are the lovely warm wonderful feelings you get when your baby smiles at you like the sun shining on your face or your child makes you proud by being a doting, sweet sister or cracks you up with her tricky chicken dance moves.”

Several wrote about feeling more deeply connected with others.  “Becoming a mother made me look at other parents with a new realization, a new feeling of solidarity. They, too, have gone through this crazy/wonderful thing.”  Another wrote, “Motherhood immediately increased my awareness and awe for single mothers. There have been so many days that I would never have showered, slept, or eaten a meal were it not for dad being there.”  She continued, “Becoming a parent has most certainly increased my patience and compassion. It has raised issues regarding my capacity to love and care for children. At this moment, I can't imagine how people have multiple children.”

Interestingly, more than one person wrote about trying not to let motherhood completely swallow her identity.  “I'm occasionally concerned that I am a less interesting person to talk to because my entire world revolves around this little person. I used to talk about world news, food, music, and local politics…  I continue listening to NPR… to try to ensure that I'm armed for non-baby conversation about the rest of the world.”

I also asked about how becoming a mother has changed your view of Mother’s Day.  I received some different responses to this question.  “My pre-motherhood thoughts about Mother's Day [were that it was] an overly-commercialized, superficial holiday. Now having an infant, I look forward to receiving cute little homemade cards and art projects from my son.  I will happily accept any kind of gratitude for the 3 a.m. feedings, sleep deprivation, and other sacrifices of motherhood.”  A different mother responded, “Personally, since I actively chose to bring this child into the world I think being a good mom is the least I can do, and I don’t need to be celebrated for it.” 

UU minister Jane Rzepka, in a piece she wrote called “Humanizing Mom,” identifies with this latter view of Mother’s Day,

In my family, mothers do not suffer any more than other mortals, nor are we particularly unsung. We complain when we trip over shoes on the living room floor, and we expect a little praise for carrying the daily Grand Accumulation at the bottom of the stairs up the aforementioned stairs.

We do not deserve or expect devotion from our children. We wanted to have children. It was our idea. If they come around from time to time when they are grown-ups, we are ever so glad. But if they live their lives as secure and independent souls, we value that.

I also asked many of new moms to share with me how motherhood has affected them spiritually.  The answers I received ranged from being more aware about the impact of choices, to having a larger concern for the world, to cultivating a greater ability to be present in the moment.

One person wrote, “There has not been one decision I have made that hasn’t been focused on how it would affect them.   I recycle like crazy now because it’s good for THEIR world.  I eat better for myself because I’m THEIR mom.”

One wrote, “I’ve found myself more concerned about all the bad things in the world – violence, environmental problems, world economic problems.  Will she be safe and happy?”  Another wrote, “Now that I am a mom, I find horrifying events, such as terrorist attacks or the Newtown mass killing, even more horrifying. My worries have substantially multiplied. Morbid thoughts can easily reign if I am not careful to keep them in check.”

On one hand, motherhood brings a heightened vigilance, a greater sense of urgency, and a feeling of gravity.  On the other hand, several mothers wrote about how interacting with their child makes them feel present and even whimsical.  Motherhood asks them to be in the moment and to regard even simple, everyday objects with awe and fascination.

Taken as a whole, how should we regard these shared experiences and perspectives?  If, as one mom wrote, motherhood means feeling like your heart is walking around outside of your body while at the same time feeling like your heart is expanding three sizes, Grinch like, I wonder if listening to these reflections might cause our own heart to expand.  Does our concern for the world grow, does our compassion increase?  Can we live life with awe and fascination?  Can we be present to our fellow beings?  As you go forth today, I bid you go forth with appreciation and admiration, with the intention to grow a larger heart, and with compassionate care for our always interconnected world.

This is the dance of joy and pain,

the dance of gratitude, disappointment, and forgiveness.

This is the dance of learning and growing,

of opening our hearts wider than we could imagine,

of increasing love by magnitudes.

This is the dance of courage and leaping faith,

challenging us to lead in one moment and then

asking us for the trust to allow ourselves to be led in the next.

It is the dance of mothers and it is the dance of parents of all kinds, and of aunts and uncles, teachers and guides, friends and companions.

May it be so.

Benediction

Hear this last line written by one of the new mothers in our congregation:

“Baby is laying down now, wish me luck! She's a little wiggly. Preschooler is still running around getting water and fighting for more stories, requesting that tomorrow be Christmas morning. Good luck to you for a good night of sleep.”  Amen.

Sermon: "Daring Greatly" (Delivered 5-5-13)

The original title I selected for this sermon was “A Book Everyone Is Reading.”  Kind of a misleading title, I know, but it sets the scene for how I chose this morning’s topic.  Following a sermon I gave earlier this church year several members of the church asked me whether I had ever seen the TED talk given by Brené Brown.  Just so we are on the same page, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design and began as an annual conference on California’s central coast in which powerful thinkers in diverse fields such as science, art, business, technology, the humanities, and more are invited to give talks of 20 minutes or less and offer ideas that stimulate, provoke, challenge, and ultimately change the way we see the world.  These TED talks became extremely popular and spun off a number of regional TED gatherings.  (Most of the talks are available for free on the web.)

In 2010, Brené Brown’s talk on “The Power of Vulnerability” was a runaway hit and became one of the most viewed TED talks of all time, with more than 9 million views to date.  Like I said, I had about a half dozen members of the church ask me if I had seen her talk.  I kept running into her name seemingly everywhere I went.  My wife Anne read all three of Brené Brown’s books and recommended them to me.  I noticed that Brené Brown was being referenced and quoted in sermons in Unitarian Universalist churches across the country.  Last week during church I announced that I’d be talking about her most recent book today and by the time I had the chance to check my email after the service, a member of our church had sent me a video link to a sermon from another church where Brown was mentioned.  UU minister Rev. Naomi King says of Brené Brown’s bestselling book Daring Greatly, “Faith leaders and faithful people need to read this book and take it into home, congregation, and community.  We need vulnerability to really lead lives of steadfast love.”

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead may not be a book that literally everyone is reading, but after running into mentions of it time and time again it certainly felt that way.  So that is why I decided I’d pick it up, read it, and preach on it.

Brené Brown has a master’s degree and doctorate in social work and is a researcher who studies people’s stories.  She explains the trajectory of her research this way.  “I wanted to develop research that explained the anatomy of connection…. Connection is why we’re here.  We are hardwired to connect with others, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering.”

She continues, “Studying connection was a simple idea, but before I knew it, I had been hijacked by my research participants who, when asked to talk about their most important relationships and experiences of connection, kept telling me about heartbreak, betrayal, and shame – the fear of not being worthy of real connection.”  She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

The course of Brown’s research led her to focus on studying shame.  She wanted to learn about shame operates as a barrier to connection, but she found out that it was difficult to come at shame so directly with her research subjects.  So, she turned the topic on its head and asked a different question, “What do the people who are the most resilient to shame, who believe in their own worthiness – [she calls] these people the Wholehearted – have in common?”

As it turned out, in her research of Wholehearted people who live lives of courage, compassion, and connection, she found a common trait they all shared.  “The willingness to be vulnerable emerged as the single clearest value shared by all of the women and men whom I would describe as Wholehearted.  They attribute everything – from their professional success to their marriages to their proudest parenting moments – to their ability to be vulnerable.”

And, just to carry the story of Brené Brown’s research a little bit further, when she discovered that vulnerability, the ability to be vulnerable, was the common denominator shared among people who lived what she called wholehearted lives, she was upset.  She hated being vulnerable.  It was uncomfortable.  It was potentially embarrassing.  It was terrifying.  She had cultivated a professional persona as an expert, as a clinical researcher.  Vulnerability was something she went to great pains to avoid feeling and now her research was telling her that vulnerability was something that she would have to practice and even embrace if she was going to live into the fullness of the connections that make human life worth living.

So, just a couple of quick questions.  I don’t need to see a show of hands here.  How many of you are really uncomfortable with vulnerability?  How many of you struggle with it?  How many of you go out of your way to avoid it?  How many of you establish elaborate defenses to minimize your vulnerability?

Brené Brown writes, “Our rejection of vulnerability often stems from our associating it with dark emotion like fear, shame, grief, sadness, and disappointment… What most of us fail to understand and what took me a decade of my research to learn is that vulnerability is also the cradle of the emotions and experiences we crave.  Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity.  It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity.”

One of the ironic things about vulnerability is that even when it is a trait that we try to avoid, we find ourselves drawn to others who practice it.  Two weeks ago, we lived this in our church service.  Four members of our youth group spoke in a deeply personal way about the vulnerabilities they faced as teenagers.  I think just about everyone in the room was drawn towards their openness, their courage.  And, if we turned the tables, how many of us would be willing to stand up here and speak so vulnerably?  I don’t mean when you were fifteen.  I mean now.  Or, you go to a concert and the band you love says that they’re going to play a new song they’ve been working on but have never played it live before.  That’s vulnerability.  That’s risk.  And, we’re drawn towards this in others.  Both the examples I’ve given have to do with being vulnerable in front of a large group of people.  Vulnerability has to do with putting yourself out there, whether in a pulpit, or on a stage, or in a meeting, or with your beloved, or with something you’ve created.

Why is it so hard to be vulnerable?  Vulnerability is both necessary for creating those real connections that we crave as human beings, and it involves the risk of being rejected for the true and vulnerable selves that we might share with others.

In Daring Greatly Brené Brown has an entire chapter on habits that we cultivate to avoid being vulnerable.  Let me share a couple of them with you and you can sort of evaluate whether you identify any of these habits in your own life.  One of the habits that she mentions is practicing what she calls “foreboding joy” which basically means that in the midst of experiencing something that we should find joyful and fulfilling we instead turn on a message in our minds of all the things that can go wrong.  This hedging our bets distances us from connection and gives fear power over our vulnerability.  Another way of resisting vulnerability is to practice numbing.  Numbing can be anything we turn to in order to take the place of our authentic connections with other human beings.  Numbing can take the form of an addiction, a compulsive behavior, or any tried a true way of distracting ourselves from our connections.  A third way of resisting vulnerability is perfectionism.  Perfectionism isn’t the same as having high standards.  It is insisting of having control over all the variables before you open yourself up.  It is a way of removing all elements of risk.

Reading this chapter on ways we armor ourselves against vulnerability, I found myself feeling, well, feeling vulnerable.  To tell you the truth, I realized that I turn to all three – foreboding joy, numbing, and perfectionism – but especially perfectionism.  Man, she had me nailed.  In reading this book I saw how I practice perfectionism in ministry as a way of resisting vulnerability.  A situation will come up where I have to respond to something difficult or challenging, a question will come up that’s hard to answer.  And the voice inside of my head will say, “Thom, you should know the answer to this question.  Only a fraud wouldn’t know the answer.”  These questions are not like, “Do you know the combination for the lockbox to get into the church?”  These questions are like, “What is the nature of God?  What is the meaning of life?  Why do people suffer?”  And the voice inside of my head will demand that I not only offer an answer, but that the answer must carry the wisdom of the ages, must be brilliant, must be original, must be spoken poetically and with confident assurance.  No fumbling.  No hemming and hawing.  And, in the quest to come up with the perfect answer, what I sacrifice is vulnerability.  The ability to admit that these are hard questions.  The willingness to admit struggle.  Comfort with embracing mystery.  Connection is increased by the vulnerability to wrestle openly.  Connection is decreased by the insistence on having the right answers.  It’s one of the ways I struggle with vulnerability.

All this discussion of vulnerability, shame, connection, and resistance can be applied to us as individuals.  But, it also could apply to church communities and even to our Unitarian Universalist theology.

One UU church in the Midwest actually declared several years ago that helping its members to grow in vulnerability was one of its core objectives.  It said, “Our members cultivate the ability to go deep quickly in small groups and to connect with others across differences.”  That’s the language of vulnerability if I’ve ever heard it.

Goals like these are not only tied into helping us to live full lives as individuals, but they are also an expression of theological ideas about the nature of God and the Universe.  The God of Universalism was a God of connection who condemned no one to hell.  Such an understanding of the divine sees human vulnerability as strength rather than mortal weakness.  John Murray, the father of American Universalism, is quoted as saying, “Give them not hell, but hope,” an appeal to a religion of connection rather than a religion of shame, fear, and judgment.  Our UU seventh principle affirms that connection is the nature of our universe, that each is inextricably bound to all.  Our place in the web of all existence is a place of connection.

I want to conclude this sermon by asking several questions:  Are we a church community, are we a congregation, that fosters and promotes vulnerability?  Are we a place where it is safe to be vulnerable?  What would that look like?  What would it look like to say “The Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church” is a vulnerability leader in the greater Kansas City community?  How would we regard failure?  How would we regard error?  How would we regard the sharing of ourselves?  Where does shame live in our community and how do we become better resistant to it?  Brené Brown’s book has me asking questions like this.  I’m interested in your risky questions, your daring sharing, and the connection that vulnerability makes possible.

Sermon: "The Battle Over Religious Freedom" (Delivered 4-28-13)

Last summer our church marched in the Lenexa Fourth of July parade.  Celebrating one hundred years of women’s suffrage in Kansas we dressed as suffragists – well, some of us dressed as suffragists – and walked the parade route through Lenexa’s downtown, just across the railroad tracks from where we’re sitting this morning.

While marching with our church I happened to spot a man sitting on a lawn chair in front of his home.  And, this man was holding a sign that simply said, “Defend Religious Liberty.”  “Defend Religious Liberty.”  Now, those words may be a little vague, they may be somewhat abstract, but I also knew that this man holding the sign was making reference to something very specific.

This man’s sign was a protest again President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, specifically a part of the law that requires health care plans to cover a range of preventative health care services for women including contraception.  If you will allow me to be wonky for just a bit, I might explain that the Affordable Care Act does allow a religious exemption to this part of the law but only to religious organizations that meet a narrow set of criteria.  To be exempt from offering a plan that covers contraception, a religious organization must have the inculcation of religious values as its purpose, must primarily employ people who share its religious tenets, must primarily serve people who share its religious tenets, and must be a 501(c)3 non-profit.  In other words, a congregation would not be required to follow this portion of the law, but a religiously affiliated hospital or a religiously affiliated university or a for-profit business whose owner has personal religious objections couldn’t decide to opt out of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act for religious reasons.  In other words, Shawnee Mission Medical Center, Avila University, Hobby Lobby, and Chick-fil-a can’t decide to opt out of the law for religious reasons.

So, to come back around, we find that this guy in the lawn chair with the sign at the Fourth of July parade was arguing that Obamacare violates the religious liberty of institutions and businesses by requiring them to make available services that the heads of those organizations might object to for religious reasons.

However, if you were to ask someone in this room about attacks on religious freedom that need to be guarded against, if you were to ask us what religious liberty needs defending, the examples that many of us might give would probably be quite different from the concerns of the man with the yard sign.  We tend to be concerned with things like attempts to teach creationism in public schools, attempts to offer prayer in public schools, and politicians who attempt to turn their own private religious values into public policy.  Here in Kansas and Missouri our concerns about religious freedom and the separation of religion and government are front and center.  In the news recently we’ve heard about a school district in western Kansas that scheduled a mandatory assembly entitled “The Truth About Dinosaurs” led by a religious organization that promotes Young Earth Creationism and teaches that the earth is less than 10,000 years old and that dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.  Here we are concerned when the Governor of Kansas writes religious notes on pieces of legislation that he signs, such as scrawling “JESUS + Mary” on the top of a piece of legislation restricting access to abortion and contraception.

The title of my remarks this morning is “The Battle Over Religious Freedom.”   And, I want to say that there are two substantially different views about what religious freedom entails that we encounter in society today.  I want to describe these opposing views, consider them, talk about why they are important to us as citizens and as Unitarian Universalists, and ultimately recommend to you an approach to issues of religious freedom.

This contrast between competing views of religious liberty is perhaps best seen by looking at two different websites.  On the website of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian organization with the stated goal of defending religious liberty, you find the following statement,

Throughout our history, America has been a land defined by religious faith and freedom. Religious freedom is our first and most fundamental, God-given right deemed so precious that our Founding Fathers enshrined it in the U.S. Constitution.  […]

[T]argeted attacks on religious liberty are more serious and widespread than you may realize. In courtrooms and schoolrooms, offices and shops, public buildings and even

churches…those who believe in God are increasingly threatened, punished, and silenced.

We might compare this statement to what we find on the website of the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, which has the expressed goal of promoting the “free exercise of religion.”  The ACLU writes,

The right to practice religion, or no religion at all, is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.  The ACLU works to ensure that this essential freedom is protected by keeping government out of religion.

Federal, state, and local governments frequently prevent individuals from practicing their faith in a variety of ways. These burdens often disproportionately effect members of minority faiths, who are often forced to remove religious garb in public places, denied basic governmental services or privileges, and generally treated as second-class citizens.

[…]

Safeguarding the right of free exercise of religion and individual conscience is of vital importance to the ACLU’s mission.

At first blush, these statements seem to be fairly similar, even complementary.  However, if we dig a little deeper, we find that each organization’s understanding of religious freedom is significantly different.  The Alliance Defense Fund’s website states,

So why is religious liberty under attack in America today?

For decades, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other radical anti-Christian groups have been on a mission to eliminate public expression of our nation's faith and heritage. By influencing the government, filing lawsuits, and spreading the myth of the so-called “separation of church and state,” the opposition has been successful at forcing its leftist agenda on Americans.

The battle for religious freedom is the battle between two very, very different visions of what religious liberty actually entails, and it has everything to do with the role of religion in the public arena, in government, education, health care, and in commerce and the marketplace.

The one place where religious liberty is most certainly not under threat is in houses of worship themselves.  Churches and synagogues and temples and mosques, by law, are allowed to do all sorts of things in the name of religious freedom that other institutions in our society are explicitly banned from doing.  Suppose the Catholic Church across the train tracks wanted to hire a new priest.  That church would be every bit within its rights to say, “Only Catholics are invited to apply.”  Sure, that’s discrimination, but someday you’ll get to choose a new minister and I guarantee that you won’t be fielding applications from Southern Baptists or Scientologists.  For churches, the right to discriminate is protected as a form of free religious expression.  Just as the Catholic Church is within its rights to say that only Catholics need apply, it is also constitutionally protected in saying “women are ineligible to apply for this position.”  People who try to argue that the government is scheming ways to regulate the free religious exercise practiced by houses of worship come across as rather delusional.  The truth is that religion, for better or for worse, and probably both for better and for worse, is one of the most unregulated areas of American life.

But what about the public square?  To what degree is a person protected in acting upon his own religious liberty, her own religious conscience, in arenas that are shared by the American public at large?  We have the First Amendment to the Constitution:  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  At what point does free exercise run up against other public duties of citizenship within a democratic nation?

Twenty percent of the budget of the United States government goes to the Department of Defense, but a dedicated member of a pacifist religious group – a Quaker, a Mennonite, or a Jain – does not get to claim a religious exemption and pay 20% less in taxes.  If they did, the Quakers would be the fastest growing religious group in America!  A business owner who happens to be a deeply committed conservative Christian would not be able to cite passages from Paul to combat a gender discrimination lawsuit.  A company owned by a Jehovah’s Witness does not have the option of offering a health plan that excludes coverage for surgical procedures requiring blood transfusions.

While this may seem like rhetoric, it actually speaks to at least five decades of individuals and organizations attempting to claim that their religious beliefs exempt them from laws.

“Shortly after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race in public accommodations, the owner of a restaurant chain argued that the Act violated his religious beliefs opposing integration, and that he should therefore be allowed to exclude African Americans from his restaurant.  Two decades later, Bob Jones University used the same argument.  It wanted to maintain its policy denying admission to “applicants engaged in an interracial marriage or known to advocate interracial marriage or dating,” but still get special tax status reserved for institutions that don’t discriminate – all justified by reference to religious belief.

“Other entities have argued that they should be allowed to pay women less or give them inferior benefits based on religious beliefs that ‘the husband is the head of the house.’  When faced with equal pay and employment discrimination laws that require employers to treat women equally, these institutions said those laws were an infringement of their religious liberty.  Yet other institutions have attempted to evade labor laws by asserting that wage and hour rules or child labor prohibitions impede the religious liberty rights of groups who believe, for example, that children should work, even in hazardous commercial enterprises.”  [As quoted in this document.]

The two competing views are one that says that religious liberty means the right to do whatever I want in any segment of society as long as it is for religious reasons, and another that says that the laws of society can constrain certain actions, even if those actions are based on someone’s legitimate personal religious views.

Religious liberals have historically spoken of two ideals when it comes to religious liberty.  One ideal declares that religious beliefs are a private, individual matter but that the public sphere that we all occupy must be protected as secular space.  Here we might define secular as free from religious rules and teachings and neutral on matters of belief.  In 2006, then Senator of Illinois Barack Obama gave a speech at an event known as Call to Renewal which was sponsored by Sojourners, a movement of progressive Evangelical Christians who work to influence government to combat poverty and promote environmentalism.  Obama’s speech laid out his philosophy on the role of religion in government.  One of the things he said pointed to this idea of secular universality.  “Democracy,” Obama said, “demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason.”  In the battle over religious freedom, I think many of us would hold up this concept of neutral secularism as important.

There is, however, another ideal that I think we turn to when we look at this battle over religious freedom.  This ideal is not altogether incompatible with secularism, but it approaches these questions from a different angle.  This other ideal we might call pluralism.  Whereas secularism deals with truth and the privileging of certain forms of authority and argument, pluralism deals with community and the privileging of certain ideas about how we should exist together.

Pluralism asks, “Who is being included and who is being excluded?  Who is heard and who is silenced?  Who is being treated fairly and who is being treated unfairly?  Who is granted power and who is pushed to the margins?  According to the ideals of pluralism, religious freedom does not mean the absolute right to conform institutions in the public sphere to a specific religious doctrine.  Instead it means that values such as fairness, equality, inclusion, and tolerance are defended and promoted.

Even as the Affordable Care Act continues to be upheld as established law, even as discrimination is found by courts not to be a protected form of religious liberty, the conflict over religious freedom will doubtlessly continue.  It remains our task to articulate the ideal of pluralism, the ideal of equality and fairness, as both a democratic virtue and as a way of embodying our own faith.

Sermon: "Harmony in Holmes' Prairie" (Delivered 4-14-13)

Reading  “For a Five-Year-Old” by Fleur Adcock

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another,
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.

Sermon

In the springtime, the town of Holmes’ Prairie emerges from its somnolence and for a time a cacophony pervades the countryside before giving way to the listless, dusty days of summer.  The songbirds begin to chirp even before the breaking of the dawn.  Soon nests full of hatchling robins and sparrows will fill the air with their hungry cries.  In only a short time the incessant whirring of insects will commence, the days and nights filled by the static hum of insect life.  Listen, and soon enough you will hear the croak of bullfrogs, the barking of dogs, the engines of farm equipment, and the wild yells and laughter of children rediscovering their outside voices as they ramble about and explore down by the creek.

The combined band of the Unified school district is outside practicing for the Memorial Day parade and the melodies of John Philip Sousa are carried by the spring breeze that rustles the first leaves dotting the branches of trees.  The teens of Holmes’ Prairie have developed an elaborate evening ritual that mostly consists of repeatedly driving up and down Main Street in their pickups with their windows down, the radio blasting, honking and revving their engines and demanding to be noticed.  These are the noises of this allegedly quiet town.

Holmes’ Prairie is a town out on the Kansas prairie going the way that small towns go.  It is a town known for its stifling neighborliness and overbearing decency, a town where nothing ever changes because nothing ever happens.  But if you listen closely and take the time to notice, you discover that important things are happening all the time here.

If you want to locate Holmes’ Prairie, the place to look is well to the west of Wichita geographically but well to the right of Liberal geographically, as well as politically and religiously.  Drive west from Wichita until the radio stations have faded and be sure not to blink or else you’ll surely miss it.  Holmes’ Prairie is far away but feels closer when we can release ourselves from of our pretensions, let go of our self-importance, and relax from the false urgency that we often inflict upon ourselves.

It was not long after I arrived in Kansas that I received a letter from one of the crankiest residents of Holmes’ Prairie welcoming me to the Sunflower State.  (The letter was actually addressed, “Dear Preacher Boy.”  You can only imagine where it went from there.)  Why did he bother to send me a letter?  Your guess is as good as mine, although I might remind you that there is a historical connection between Unitarians and the town of Holmes’ Prairie.  Just as the City of Lawrence was founded by Unitarian abolitionists from the New England, Holmes’ Prairie was first established by Unitarian temperance activists.  However, they quickly realized that life in western Kansas was too sobering a proposition, picked up again, kept moving west, and eventually made their way to the San Francisco Bay Area where they found life much more agreeable.

Over the years, my friends in Holmes’ Prairie have sent me many letters informing me of the goings-on in their town.  From time to time, when it is perfect weather for a road trip, I’ve been known to take a trip out there to visit and hear the latest gossip.  One of the reasons I love going out there is because it gets me out of having to write a sermon.  I can just tell you about life there or even read one Pastor Sol’s newsletter columns.  It just so happens that my wife Anne took our baby Lydia to Washington D.C. this weekend so that Lydia could meet her brand new cousin.  Since I got out of dad duty for the weekend, I figured I’d day trip out to Holmes’ Prairie and pay them a visit.

If you ever find yourself passing through this town, you absolutely must stop in at Annie’s Pie Shop on Main Street for a slice of her amazing pie and a mug of her dreadful coffee.  Annie’s was my first stop and when I walked in I knew I wasn’t going to have to chase down any of my friends.  Around the center table sat the leaders of all three of Holmes’ Prairie’s houses of worship.  There was Pastor Solomon J. Samuels III, the longtime pastor of the First Full-Gospel Baptist Church of Holmes’ Prairie. Don’t let the severity of his name confuse you; Pastor Sol has seen it all and his years living out on the windswept prairie has turned him into a bit of a Christian existentialist.  Next to him sat Father Roberto Diaz, the only priest serving one of western Kansas’ largest geographic parishes.  St. John’s Catholic Church is a multiracial congregation that serves rural Kansas’ immigrant population that includes laborers at slaughterhouses, food processing plants, and field workers.  Finally, at the table sat Mabel Pool, the moderator and matriarch of the Holmes’ Prairie UU Fellowship, or HPUFF, which boasts seven members, six committees, and a five member choir that has been trying for years to get the other two members of the fellowship to join.  When Mabel saw me she gestured to an empty chair and waved for Annie to come by with another slice of pie.  “Come and join us,” Mabel exclaimed.  “We’re planning the annual Harmony celebration.” 

The Harmony festival was dreamed up by Mabel Pool a few years ago as a town wide celebration of all the diversity the town lacked.  “We’re celebrating in preparation.  One of these days,” Mabel declared, ever optimistically.  The Harmony Festival would include each of the three houses of worship offering a morning service on the subject of harmony followed by a fellowship lunch hosted together by the three churches to which the entire town was invited.  The Baptists would bring brisket.  The Catholics would bring beef enchiladas.  The UU Fellowship would supply dessert, a vegan, gluten-free chocolate cake made with fair trade cocoa.

 

Right off the bat, Father Diaz knew exactly what he planned to say on the subject of harmony.  He planned to talk about the newly-elected Pope Francis and his hopes for greater harmony within worldwide Catholicism.  Father Diaz’s homily would connect Pope Francis’ conspicuous humility with the idea of promoting harmony, and he would propose that greater humility could lead us in the direction of greater harmony with those from whom we find ourselves estranged.

Mabel announced that she was working with the worship committee to create a harmony program at the Fellowship.  Mabel’s service would start with the subject of music, and offer an exploration of how harmony works within music.  One of the readings she had chosen came from Frank Zappa who wrote, “The creation and destruction of harmonic… tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama.  Any composition which remains consistent and ‘regular’ throughout is, for me, the equivalent to watching a movie with only ‘good guys’ in it, or eating cottage cheese.”  Pastor Sol and Father Diaz had come to expect these types of things from Mabel, but quoting Frank Zappa in church, the Unitarians never failed to surprise.

Harmonies, Mabel explained, augment the melody, giving it height and depth, but they do this through the interplay of consonance and dissonance.  Too much consonance and it is bland.  Too much dissonance and it becomes painful on the ears.  Harmony, Mabel explained, does not mean sameness; harmonies are like many different paths towards the same goal.  When the goal is clear, our differences will not threaten, but can be appreciated.  If we love alike, we need not think alike.  Mabel’s faithful hope was that most human beings actually want the same sorts of things in life: a peaceful existence, personal and relational fulfillment, love, and the freedom to pursue happiness.

It was Pastor Samuels’ turn to speak and share his plans for the harmony service.  Pastor Sol hemmed and hawed; he had an idea he told us, but it was still being formulated and wasn’t yet ready to preach.

***

That very evening Pastor Solomon J. Samuels III stayed up late until the cacophony of barking dogs, singing birds, and teenagers honking their horns had died down.  He packed up a flashlight, a shovel, and some other tools and set out across town. 

Long ago, long before even Pastor Samuels had come to Holmes’ Prairie, one of the town’s leading businesses had been Helverson’s Farm Supply Company.  Old Man Helverson was getting up there in years and preparing to turn his business over to his son John.  In fact, Old Man Helverson had two sons, John and Eddie.  John was the responsible, dutiful son, the one who had taken a keen interest in the family business.  Eddie was not at all interested and was more than happy to let John have it.  When John first took over the family business, things didn’t run smoothly at first.  John messed up a couple of accounts.  His father, to his surprise, was understanding and quick to forgive.  “It happens,” he said.  After Old Man Helverson passed away, John had the idea of bringing Eddie back to work for him.  It was mistake from the beginning.  It was disaster.  John took it personally, turned on his brother Eddie, and told him to scram, that he was an embarrassment to the family, and that he never wanted to have anything to do with him ever again.  As the brothers grew older they never reconciled.  Eddie, for his part, was mostly sad and indifferent.  John seethed with an anger that burned almost constantly.

Time went on.  Helverson’s Farm and Supply Company eventually had to close its doors, losing out to the competition of the national supply companies, meeting the fate of so many of the mom and pop stores that were once woven into the fabric of towns like Holmes’ Prairie.  Eddie was the first brother to die.  John followed him to the grave a few years later but stipulated that he remain estranged from his brother even in death.  At the family plot of the old town cemetery, John Helverson stipulated that the back of his tombstone be turned to his brother.

Pastor Samuels, shovel over his shoulder, passed through the gates of the cemetery.  Following the beam of his flashlight he located the Helverson plot and grave markers facing away from one another.  The shovel sunk into moist spring earth.

As he worked, in his mind he talked through his sermon idea for the Harmony Service.  Over the years, many times Pastor Sol had been asked which of Jesus’ teachings was hardest to follow.  Was it the teaching about loving your enemy?  Was it the teachings about non-violence, about turning the other cheek?  Was it the instruction to sell everything and give it to the poor?  To leave your family to follow him?  All those were tough, Pastor Sol agreed, but if he had to choose just one teaching that is the most difficult to follow, it would be what Jesus tells Peter in the book of Matthew.  “Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord if someone sins against me, how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?  Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven.”  [Matthew 18:21-22]  Yes, that one seems like the most difficult teaching.

When Pastor Sol had first heard the story of the Helverson brothers and their grave markers indicating estrangement for all eternity he thought of Jesus’ insistence on harmony.  “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  [Matthew 18:18.]

Pastor Sol threw down his shovel, stepped back, wiped the mud off his gloves, and admired his work.  The grave markers for John and Eddie now had been turned so that they were now face to face.  Sol smiled.  The morning songbirds sung.  The breeze gently rustled the leaves.  The insects buzzed.  The engines of the tractors revved.  Symphony.

That is the news from Holmes’ Prairie, out there on the Kansas prairie, well to the west of Wichita but far to the right of liberal, a town where nothing much ever happens unless you take the time to be still, to listen, and to notice.

Questions

1) The story of Old Man Helverson and the Helverson brothers is actually a loose interpretation of the parable of the unforgiving slave in Matthew 18:23-35.  What is your reaction to this parable?

2) What is your reaction to the poem by Fleur Adcock?  Have you ever felt like the mother?  Have you ever felt like the five year old?

3) The Gospel of Matthew contains many of Jesus’ teachings about harmony, reconciliation, and forgiveness.  See  Matthew 5:21-26 and 18:15-35.  What is your reaction to these texts?