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No Island Alone A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone The First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday March 26, 2006
Reading From “Guiding Principles For A Free Faith” James Luther Adams We deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnation. There is no such thing as goodness as such; except in a limited sense, there is no such thing as a good person as such. There is the good husband, the good wife, the good worker, the good employer, the good churchman, the good citizen. The decisive forms of goodness in society are institutional forms. No one can properly put faith in merely individual virtue, even though that is a prerequisite for societal virtues. The faith of the liberal must express itself in societal forms… Without these, freedom and justice in community are impossible. The faith of a church or of a nation is an adequate faith only when it inspires and enables people to give of their time and energy to shape the various institutions…of the common life. A faith in the commanding, sustaining, transforming reality is one that tries to shape history. Any other faith is thoroughly undependable; it is also, in the end, impotent… The creation of justice in community requires the organization of power. Through the organization of power, liberated persons tie into history; otherwise they cannot achieve freedom in history. Injustice in community is a form of power, an abuse of power, and justice is an exercise of just and lawful institutional power.
Reading We Need One Another George Odell (SLT 468) We need one another when we mourn and would be comforted. We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid. We need one another when we are in despair, in temptation, and need to be recalled to our best selves again. We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone. We need one another in the hour of success, when we look for someone to share our triumphs. We need one another in the hour of defeat, when with encouragement we might endure, and stand again. We need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey. All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.
Meditation and Prayer A responsive reading by Jane Mauldin. Response: We give thanks this day. For our community gathered here, for the spirit that called us together and drew us to this place: We give thanks this day. For the moments that we have shared with others; for the times that have reached out and been touched, across barriers of distance and fear: for the moments when we have discovered another along our path: We give thanks this day. For this community of celebration, growth, introspection, times of solitude and, perhaps, a moment of "that peace which passeth all understanding:" We give thanks this day. For our gathering together out of distant place, for our weaving together out of many separate selves, in this hour of celebration and worship together: We give thanks this day. Spirit of Love, which fills and inspires this Community: We give thanks for all that we have gained from one another. We appreciate even the difficult moments, the challenges of disagreement, disappointment, even of anger and anxiety. We know these often lead to a deepening of relationship and spiritual growth. And when they don’t, we are sad and grieve for what has been lost. Yet, we know we do better when we are connected than when we are alone. In community, we become most fully human. May we keep growing richer relationships. May we be forgiving and forgiven. May we treasure what we have and strive to polish it, so that it shines ever more, a mirror for ourselves and a beacon for others. So may it be. AMEN
No Island Alone A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday March 26, 2006 In 1975, as a High School Senior, I took an Original Oration to the State Speech Tournament. I didn’t win. The text is long ago misplaced. Its relevance today is that I began the oration with a homage to Henry David Thoreau— If a man does not
keep pace with his companions, perhaps I suppose in some ways I was writing Unitarian sermons, even 30-plus years ago. I identify that as a proto-sermon primarily because I can remember the themes that coursed through the oration as being the things I learned here at church. I am nothing if not a product of this place. The speech was all about respecting differences. It was about the need to be tolerant of differences in style and speech, dress and interests. It was an anthem of individualism and that stepper of differing beats, Thoreau, was my conductor. Looking at what I now know of 17 year-olds and High School seniors I can see that my “Original Oration” was anything but original. First of all, with hindsight, I see the irony of turning to another person’s thoughts to establish my individuality. More than that, though, I see now that I was doing what those in late adolescence have always done—find ways to self differentiate, find ways to say “That’s not me. This is me. Let me be me.” That’s a noble theme—but hardly unique. That is more than a teen-aged task, though. Here in this church we continue to chant the mantra, we continue to sing the refrain, “That’s not me. This is me. Let me be me.” In a “heretical,” meaning choice, “liberal,” drawing on liberty, faith tradition we constantly hearken back to sentiments like those expressed by Thoreau. We wish to step to the tempo of the drums we hear, “However measured or far away.” Today I tell you marching to the beat of a different drummer is part of our tradition, but that it’s simply not enough. While the tendency toward individualism is very much alive in us—while that characteristic is a key component in Liberal Religion’s commitment to covenant over creed—I see now that we need more than Thoreau’s different drummer. I see now that we have to have more than a cacophony of drums each keeping beat for a single set of steps. We need a “We” not simply a “Me.” Thankfully our institutional DNA inclines us to more than simply asserting the primacy of the individual. It has to. If our different drummers were all that mattered we would have little need to come together as community. If individualism were all that mattered—then all this, our worship, our gathered voice, our common vision, our kindred passion, our unified actions would be for naught. We can’t, shouldn’t and won’t, abandon Thoreau but another Enlightenment thinker, John Donne, expressed something of the religious spirit that holds sway in our DNA as well. Taking the liberty of adapting the well known meditation “No Man Is An Island” to include persons of all genders, I came up with today’s sermon “No Island Alone.” Donne, recast for 21st century ears, still takes us beyond Thoreau’s boundary and border without abandoning the individual. No one is an island, entire of themselves All are pieces of the continent, a part of the main If a clod be washed away by the sea, A continent is the less, as well as if a promontory were, As well as if a home of a friend or our own were Anyone’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in humanity And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls It tolls for you, it tolls for me. One can, of course, take issue with the idea that the loss of a simple clod of dirt is really equal to house that slides into the sea or mountain that is laid bare but Donne’s sentiment holds true nonetheless. One can more easily ignore the funeral peal of someone we don’t know, but that diminishes us. One can send others to respond to bells that toll for us only at the risk of disengagement. One can ignore the erosion of a clod of dirt, one can ignore a far away drought and one can ignore a degree or two of global temperature change—but there is a part deep within us that that knows our ignorance is far from bliss. These bells toll for us. Donne’s point is that we are not fair judges of the value of a loss. Something beyond us, something larger than us, God or time or history, will provide measure and perspective. Our task is to respond to the call—even when we aren’t sure the bell tolls in time with our different drummer. That intersection of the importance of each individual and the primacy of things larger than ourselves is where we discover another Core Revelation of the Liberal Tradition. In this church we hold many personal beliefs about what it means to be human, about what it means to be religious. It is likely that you hold a different perspective about the proper ends of a human life than your neighbor. It is possible to discern personal belief and go off in relative bliss but those who simply want to walk to the beat of their own drummer are not drawn to religious community. In community you have to respond to the bell that “tolls for thee.” I think there is something of a Core Revelation, a Meta-Belief, that brings those of us who gather in this community into covenant. There is something, a promise or perhaps a perceived need, that separates those of us who find solace, direction and value in communal endeavor from those who find little need for this kind of communal gathering. We who are thusly inclined, become part of community in part because we know we aren’t excused from the tolling of the bell. A popular distinction holds that a person can be “Spiritual” all by themselves but being religious takes a community. I’m not sure I totally agree with that notion but it seems to carry some truth. Perhaps I am only playing a game of semantics but there is something in that distinction that holds true. A person all alone can pray and meditate. They can reflect on their world, seek, find and name inspiration. That is clearly spiritual but it seems to fall a bit short of true religion. Real religion, living religion, a living faith, requires more than getting clear (to borrow a phrase from the realm of Scientology). Real religion, a vital faith, an active credo, requires that our understandings be tested, sounded on the bell of community. No person, if they are really truthful, can claim to have real faith in their creation—be it a poem, a song, a dessert, an idea, a painting or a belief—until it has been tried out on others. This is what leads me to the seventh of the Core Revelations that I believe holds sway in the Liberal Tradition. Stated simply “Community Maximizes Humanity.” In review, understanding that these Core Revelations interdepend, I start with the idea that our lives are gifts and we are called to be good stewards of the life we live but didn’t create. Second, we are held together by a common understanding that nothing beyond our human capacity is required to come to terms with the ultimate aspects of life, living and the gift. The third of these Meta-Beliefs is that Good and Evil are both real—one draws us toward fulfilling our human potential while the other tempts us to see ourselves as something larger, something smaller, something different, something disconnected, from that which is authentically human. The fourth sermon in this series held that coercion can never be a legitimate, or in the long term, effective means to foster religion. Fifth, revelation is neither sealed nor sealable—more truth and new perspectives on that which is ultimate are constantly inbreaking—so therefore we must be ever attuned to new lessons of the Spirit. Jonalu explored the sixth idea in this series last week by reminding us that the religious life centers on keeping first things first, knowing what is ultimate and not substituting lesser goods for the things that hold the power to set us free. That brings us to this the seventh and final sermon in this series—the understanding that one of the things that binds us together as a church is that Community Maximizes Humanity. Freely gathered communities have a greater capacity to recognize (and therefore resist) the allure of that which is not Ultimate and that which is Evil than does either the individual or a coerced community. Therefore, while human beings require no mediating structure to interact with the Ultimate, a free association of individuals is a valuable and useful means of recognizing the gift of Life, maximizing Human Potential and embodying the fullest exaltation of the gift of Life. In short, we believe church is important because we cannot, on our own, do everything we are called upon to appreciate the gift of life, do good instead of evil and become free, fully functioning, moral persons. I realize that this is a very “Heady” statement. This sermon series is based on a piece I wrote in 1997, back when I was fresh out of seminary. One of the requirements of a Systematic Theology course led me to write a 70-page exploration of the Liberal Tradition. Soon after landing in the parish, though, I recognized that a one-page statement would be a more useful tool than my lengthy, footnote riddled, essay on Liberal Religion. I’d like to repeat the statement I developed about the religious community because, although it employs a complex set of inter-linked ideas—it comes about as close as I can to explaining why those of us who come together forming a church do so. Community maximizes humanity. Freely gathered Communities have a greater capacity to recognize (and therefore resist) the allure of that which is not Ultimate and that which is Evil than does either the individual or a coerced community. Therefore, while human beings require no mediating structure to interact with the Ultimate, a free association of individuals is a valuable and useful means of recognizing the gift of Life, maximizing Human Potential and embodying the fullest exaltation of the gift of Life. An even more simple way describing this Core Revelation is to observe that “A person alone is not free. They are simply alone.” By ourselves we can discern things, true, but we can bend and shape an idea, a revelation or belief to fit our ends, if you will. When we are alone we can imagine ourselves God or Master of the Realm. We can imagine ourselves, or anything we choose, as possessing the power to save the humanity, to save the world, so save all that is. The problem is that when we are alone we can easily be deluded and seduced by false truths. Relying on untested truths is an aberration of freedom. It isn’t until we test our belief, our perception, our perspective, that we find out if it is truly valid. Who among us hasn’t lain awake at night—processing and reprocessing an event, or encounter, of the day? Who hasn’t run an experience through every angle and perspective until we knew we understood what someone had said or done or failed to say or failed to do? My success rate at that kind of venture is far from 100%. I have often decided that I had gained clarity on the matter and planned my response, retort or rebuttal, only to learn that I had a key fact wrong, I had missed something. Untested assumptions do us in. The best insurance we have against that kind of error derive from community. This is akin to the distinction in formal logic between validity and truth. A statement can be valid but untrue. One can construct a seemingly valid conclusion only to discover that it isn’t true because we included a premise that was simply wrong. It is impossible to judge the validity of the premises on which we base our lives, and the outlines of our faith, in isolation. We need community. We need others. We need something very much like the church, this church, to gain assurance about the things we think we know. We need this community because sometimes, when we are left to our own devices, the things we are convinced we know simply aren’t true. This final Core Revelation tells me that we are held together by a common bond. We are held together by a meta-belief, something that makes the wide array of our beliefs possible. This Core Revelation tells us that we can see more, do more, feel more, know more and be more, as a church than any of us can alone. For us seeing and feeling, knowing, doing and being, are profoundly human, profoundly real, profoundly religious undertakings. I pray we continue to seek them in honesty and in the sanctity of the Spirit. AMEN
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