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Time After Time A Seeker Service by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Presented to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday August 28, 2005
Reading From The History of Unitarianism (Vol. II) Earl Morse Wilbur [This history was not intended to] present a history of Unitarianism as a doctrinal system, but to trace the development of three controlling principles that have characterized the movement, namely: complete mental freedom, unrestricted reason, and generous tolerance of differences, in religion. The movement began by calling in question the authority of the creeds that restricted the thinking of [people] in religion. But this step did [not] allow complete freedom to religious thought; for [people] abandoned the authority of the creeds only to substitute that of Scripture as supreme. The Socinians in Poland came to realize that in at least some cases even scripture had to be submitted to the test of reason . . . In England . . . Unitarians . . . reluctantly began to abandon scripture as the prime source of religious truth; and the Americans, stimulated by Emerson and Parker, took the same step and the leaders of their thought have now for . . . generations ceased to seek . . . proof texts as authority for their religious beliefs. Acceptance of mutual tolerance as a guiding principle in religious thinking has been last to be achieved. Of course it is inevitable that free minds guided by the individual reason and conscience, and influenced by different factors, should often reach differing conclusions, and it is natural that having reached them they should conflict with each other . . . Now there are but two ways in which such conflicts may be resolved. The parties may abandon the hope of mental freedom and submit to the judgement of another, or else they may waive the effort to think alike as futile, or at all events incidental, while they agree nevertheless in working for the ends they have in common. This is the way of tolerance, in which [people] though disagreeing in incidental matters, allow each other equal liberty of belief, and unite happily for practical ends which they have in common. Freedom, reason and tolerance then are not the final goals to be aimed at in religion, but only conditions under which the true ends may best be attained. The ultimate ends proper to a religious movement are two, personal and social; the elevation of personal character, and the perfecting of the social organism, and the success of a religious body may best be judged by the degree to which it attains these ends. Only if the Unitarian movement, true to its principles of freedom, reason and tolerance, goes on through them and finds its fulfillment in helping [people] to live worthily as children of God, and to make their institutions worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven, will its mission be accomplished.
Prayer and Meditation Forgive Us Vivian Pomeroy (SLT 477) Forgive us that we
forgive ourselves so easily and others so hardly;
Time After Time A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday August 28, 2005 Perhaps you’ve seen the bumper sticker—“In Case of the Rapture This Car Will Be Unmanned.” Which begs the tailgating response—“In Case of the Rapture … Can I Have Your Car?” Or the this variant—“In case of rapture, this car will meander aimlessly” and the variant of the variant “In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned. It will then recklessly careen into children at a school crossing -- killing all of them.” There is, of course, nothing funny about driver-less cars on highways or in school crossings. The tension between the “classic” rapture bumper sticker and its responses is indicative of a religious tear in our social fabric. There are many who think that our goal in life is simply to escape from our bodies to a time beyond time … a time when time, itself, shall be no more … a “Time after Time.” Many seem to believe that. Still, there are others of us who believe that life provides its own goal, that our purpose for living is to extract all we can from the moments we have. Those are two varying responses to what philosophers and theologians have identified as a prime existential problem: the awareness that we are alive and one day we won’t be. Religion, it has been said, arises in the knowledge that we are alive yet all of us will surely die. Many seem to favor the “Get Out Of This World And On To the Next” approach that leads them to behave as though the “Here After” is more important than the “Here and Now.” In this tradition, our approach is rooted in “This Time” as opposed to a “Time after Time.” So much so that Garrison Keilor used it in one of his skits a few years back. In this skit a young girl is worriedly looking for her parents. We learn that she fears that they have been raptured (is that really a verb?) and she has been left behind. Are you Baptist? Yes. Are you thinking the same thing I'm thinking? Yes. You're thinking maybe they were raptured. Yes. I guess we could look around and see if there are other saved people here. Okay. Do you see people carrying a black leather-bound King James Bible with a concordance and a little yellow ribbon to mark where you are in your daily Scripture reading? Do you see any WWJD bumper stickers? No. How about people with their eyes closed and their hands in the air? See any of those? No. How about people with little crosses on chains around their necks? Just Catholics. After calls to Billy Graham, the White House and the Vatican reveal no answers, intrepid duo flip on the radio to hear this report— Meanwhile, in Boston, hundreds of men and women who were protesting the war in Iraq suddenly disappeared, according to eyewitnesses, leaving their clothing lying in the street, all of which was made from natural materials by native people and had political slogans written on it, as well as Native American jewelry ---- Leading to the concluding eternal question—“If a Unitarian ascends to heaven and no one is around to see it, did it actually happen?”
Keilor’s humorous take on our side of this dialectic was stated as more directly by Thoreau when he asked— Why should we live in such a hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not lived. I believe that one of the things that characterizes this religious tradition is our intent, borrowing from Thoreau, to not arrive at the end of our days only to discover that we have not lived.
All of this may lead some to think that our philosophy is well captured by a sentiment you can find in a 1960’s song by the Grass Roots, “Sha La La La La La La … Live for today.” Live for today. Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Be careful, that’s a trick question because that really isn’t it, either. Do any of you remember the line that came after that refrain? “Sha La La La La La La Live for today…and don’t worry about tomorrow any more.” In fact, when you complete the refrain you end up with something so far removed from our approach that you might expect to hear it blaring from a car with the “In Case Of Rapture This Car Will Be Unmanned” bumper sticker.
To not worry about tomorrow is really no better than assuming you can avoid it! Both of these approaches advocate the escape from this time to a time beyond time—whether it’s in the form of a heavenly rapture or the rapture of the unaware. Neither of those really captures the core of this tradition. It isn’t even as easy as the Latin phrase that you can also see on bumper stickers—Carpe Deim—Seize the Day. You see, we’re not just about living for today or seizing the day. Our approach is more about using the day. Using this day in service to something larger than ourselves.
My good friend and colleague, Art Severance, from San Antonio, a few years back married the Carpe Deim notion to the dominant Hispanic culture of central Texas when he printed up tee-shirts that said “Carpe Deim—Mañana.” Art was having fun, but that’s not quite our goal either. Actually I should tell you my experience from ministering in Southern New Mexico is that the notion of “Mañana,” that Hispanic people put things off, is patently false to the point of being racist. I saw much more of the Mañana culture among Anglos than I did among the Mexican majority of the Las Cruces. Still, Mañana is a useful notion and perhaps just the one we need. With a little tweaking, Art’s phrase can be turned right I think. It’s not Carpe Deim—Mañana. It’s just Carpe Mañana. You see, we live in the here and now—but our task is to seize tomorrow, to seize the future.
If we just seize this day we can be easily led down the path of a consumerist culture. Consume, consume, consume—acting as though we are starved before we are hungry. It seems that in a time when the dominant religious culture, at least here in the Red States, favors the other worldliness of the rapture, that the secular culture encourages us to live as though we are trying to consume all our natural resources in a single generation pretending that tomorrow is impossible as well as irrelevant.
As an aside, I saw a county by county breakout of the 2004 Presidential Election this week and it confirmed what most of us here already suspected. Oklahoma is, indeed, among the reddest of the Red States. The proof is that ours is one of only four Red States without a single “Blue County.” The other all red states are Kansas, Nebraska and Utah. The only all blue state turns out to be, surprise, Massachusetts. But I digress.
I’m not sure why you needed to know that but there you are. Where were we? Oh yes, we were busy seizing the morrow while standing firmly in the present. As if seizing the future without denying the present isn’t enough of a trick. It isn’t that easy, either. There is another element that we have to incorporate if we are to be true to our deepest spiritual callings and traditions—namely the past. Would you be surprised if I told you that even that isn’t as simple as it seems?
Equally errant to those who would forfeit the present for a time beyond time are those who would abandon the present for a time that came before. Still, there are some who seem intent on rolling back the calendar to, say, the 1950s. I don’t know, maybe they’d prefer the 1850s or the 1750s or perhaps the Dark Ages. You know, the Good Old Days when the earth was the center of the Universe. Some seem to long for a time when everyone believed that we were created “a little lower than the angels” instead of “a little higher than the apes.” Some are nostalgic for the days when God sat on a throne beyond the clouds in a distant and unchanging heaven and the human task was simply to prostrate ourselves in fearful devotion. In truth, though, most of these retro-religionists don’t really want to roll back the whole of time. They are more selective than that. They want to hold on to modern medicine, to the 700 Club on Cable TV, to air conditioning and to their car complete with its bumper sticker...at least until the rapture finally arrives.
In an odd—or perhaps not so odd—way, the same people who look forward to the rapture are those who work hardest to selectively restore the past. Meanwhile we who would embrace the present are those who see our calling as seizing the future. Many, these days, are seduced by a kind of false nostalgia. They are driven by their fear of the unknown to embrace a past that never was. Don’t get me wrong. The future is plenty scary. If the future doesn’t scare you then it is obvious you don’t understand what the hell is going on. But we have to do more than cower in fear.
A. Powell Davies is a name I speak with highest esteem. Davies was one of the most successful ministers of the 20th century. From the pulpit of All Souls Unitarian in Washington D.C. he became a conscience to our nation’s leaders. He once wrote of an exchange that points us in the direction we need to look. ...Some years ago I took the marriage of a fine young man and a very lovely bride. It was a marriage that gave every promise of success. After a few weeks, however, the young wife came to see me. She loved her husband...loved him tremendously...but she wanted to go back home. She was homesick, terribly homesick. She didn't want to be, but she just couldn't help it. What could she do? she asked...We talked for some time... and presently I began to see the picture rather clearly. "Why," I said, "you are all wrong about yourself. It's just that after the excitement of getting married you have now come to the point of emotional transition. You are not homesick for the past at all. You may not know it, but you are homesick for the future. You are not longing for the home you have left. You are impatient for the home you will make." When I christened her baby, a year or so after, she whispered to me, "You were right. I was homesick for the future." Our task is not to be homesick for the past—but homesick for the future. That is the time after time that rightly draws our hearts and minds and hands. Our task is to hear and feel and sense and see the possibilities of the future and commit the present to bring it into being.
I guess the question is, What are we to do with the energy created in response to the challenges of the future? Are we to dream ourselves into a future beyond our control? Are we to long for a past that never was? Or are we to transform the present so that the future (which will, of course, be the present when it arrives) is more just, more compassionate, and more caring than the world in which we live today?
We all know the right answer to that question but this isn’t easy. The important stuff rarely is. It starts, though, with an attitude that points us in the right direction. That attitude is the belief (even when it seems irrational) that we can shape the world.
Our lives matter. The days we are given are a gift. It’s not the “Time After Time” that matters. What matters are the days we have been given. The moments between our birth and our death will be the measure of our days. How shall we use them? This is a community that takes that question seriously. How we use our days is infinitely more important than wondering what happens when our days come to their end. Ours is a profoundly religious task—Transforming People Who Transform the World … this world. None of us can do as much of this alone as we can together so we gather in free association.
I close with these words from William Earnest Hocking in the hope that Time After Time we will have “The Courage to Believe.” There is no choice but to immerse oneself in the stream of history, accept one’s time-location, breathe in—with shared memories and hopes—the contamination of tradition, become defined as (a person) of this cause, this party, this emergency. Failure to accept responsibility, refusal to take a stand on vital issues, timid rejection—as one must reject false tags—of the ties of a true belonging, these are denials of life—in effect they are deeds of death. To understand the times in which we live, to add our weight to the scales on the side of (humanity) and equality within valid difference, this is ‘life with shape and character’—the one eternity worth having. May our lives find the shape and character of our deepest convictions for this time and always. AMEN
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