Discipline Matters

A Worship Service by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday April 9, 2006

Reading

Connections Are Made Slowly (The Seven of Pentacles)

By Marge Piercy (SLT 568)

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.

You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.

More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.

Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet

Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.

Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.

Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.

Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving.

Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in, a thicket and

  bramble wilderness to the out side but to us interconnected

  with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you like yourself, and it may happen:

Reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.

This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,

For every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,

  after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

Prayer and Meditation

Some Things Will Never Change

Thomas Wolfe (SLT 555)

Some things will never change.  Some things will always be the same.  The voice of forest water in the night, a woman’s laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked concrete, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children’s voices in bright air—These things will never change.  The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of sea in harbors—These things will always be the same.  The feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be capture, the thorn of spring, the sharp and toungeless cry—These things will never change.  The leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees, whose still arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth—All things belonging to the earth will never change.  All things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change an come again upon the earth, these come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever—One the earth endures, but it endures forever.  The tarantula, the adder and asp will never change.  Pain and death will always be the same.  But under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower—Something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful, coming to life again like April.

Discipline Matters

A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday April 9, 2006

I didn’t tell anyone, but this morning’s service is something of a test.  Congratulations, you passed—and you didn’t even have to study!  What exactly, you may be wondering, was on the exam?  That’s a fair question.  The answer is the title of the sermon “Discipline Matters.”  You see, I wondered how a title like “Discipline Matters” would play.  I wondered what you might expect from a sermon thusly titled—old school parenting tips?  Perhaps “Discipline Matters” is a treatise on control in the public schools or a plea for penalties against Tom Delay or someone in the Bush Administration?  But no.  Many of you know me well enough, though, to anticipate that I probably wouldn’t go in such a literal direction.  Still, I congratulate you for showing up to invest an hour of your life here in this community.  That is the discipline, you see, that matters.

Over a year ago, we abandoned providing descriptions of sermons in the newsletter and our electronically delivered “Weekly Update.”  This change does not signal abandoning planning or coordination.  Believe me, the procrastinator in me needs the discipline of coming up with titles in advance.  We decided to stop printing a short synopsis because it’s better if people come to church because it is their church rather than choosing attend or skip because of what they expect to hear or because of a clever write up in the newsletter.  Deep down I believe that something like attending church should be a routine part of life, it should be a something of a spiritual discipline.  That is what I mean when I say “Discipline Matters.”  I suppose I could have titled this “Routine Matters” just as easily since Unitarians profess to prefer novelty over routine about as much as we hold discipline and obedience in disdain.

Those of you who have attended one of the Roots courses we offer for new members may recall reading in the not-required-but-suggested essays that I hand out.  This reading reports the results of a study done among Unitarians which disclosed that we were the only group for whom “Obedience” came in dead last in a series of instrumental values.  For what it’s worth—cleanliness didn’t test well either.  The important point is that as a group, we simply don’t equate being obedient as a characteristic of good religion.  We don’t like being told what to do.  I don’t think we even like holding ourselves (and each other) to a set of expectations—thus I believe we rail against obedience and discipline as religious values.

I see this resistance to discipline and obedience come up in some interesting ways.  We hosted the UU ministers from across the state for a gathering last Thursday.  When a new minister arrives in the Southwestern Conference they are told of our conference “Discipline.”  The discipline is pretty simple, it involves wearing a hair shirt and going without air conditioning for a week at Lake Texoma.  Not really!  The discipline, as our most senior colleague will impart to the gathering, is simple.  We covenant to attend certain gatherings so that we can bond together and learn from each other.  We agree to take on certain important leadership tasks in a rotation based on seniority in order to spread the work of the Conference around.  Most importantly, though, our Discipline is summed up in a very simple equation—“If a colleague asks, the answer is Yes.”  Knowing someone is honor bound to respond “Yes” means you don’t ask lightly—but it also serves as an assurance that none of the ministers here in the Southwest have to work alone.

Perhaps I am old school—OK, growing up with ministers of this church who relied on this discipline, I am definitely old school.  Still, I find nothing onerous or dastardly in this commitment—quite the opposite.  Still, I see new colleagues recoil when they are told we hold ourselves, and we expect them to hold themselves, to a “Discipline.”  I’ve seen good ministers squirm at the notion of being obedient to an agreement they didn’t create.  I have even heard one of my colleague’s brag of their intention to “Stick a fork in the Discipline.”  The odd thing is that none of these ministers would routinely deny an honest request for help or shirk responsibilities.  It’s more that they simply don’t like the idea of accepting a discipline that predates them. 

If that sounds a lot like Unitarian Universalism—or at least the shadow side of our faith—that’s because it is.  Particularly as we approach major Christian holidays—like Christmas and Easter (which is one week from today) I often sense something of that “Stick a Fork in it” mentality.  I should admit that I feel that way from time to time.  No one asked me if I wanted to include Easter in my religious calendar.  I don’t believe in the Easter Miracles or that Jesus gave seven specific teachings while dying on the Cross.  I don’t even necessarily believe there was a cross.  So why should I re-orient my life to observe a holy day I can barely comprehend?  Just for the sake of discipline?  Well, maybe.

The roots of this faith tradition are in Protestant Christianity, whose roots are in what is now called Roman Catholicism, whose roots are in Judaism, whose roots are in an amalgam of ancient near east religious cults.  There is a piece of this chain of causality that I think it wise to remember when considering a discipline, like Lent, that feels a bit foreign and distant.  None of us spring from the earth fully formed and independent.  Even though I believe that our particular amalgams of belief may be unique to us—I seriously doubt that any of us hold individually unique beliefs.  Our beliefs come to us through time, through culture, through conditioning—this means that there may be value in looking beyond our own sphere of reference to find depth and meaning in life.  This is why I want to take a few moments from our liturgical year to consider the discipline of Lent—the idea of giving something up as a way of removing impediments that linger between our lives and the ultimate source of life.

I have come to believe that the prime reason we find Christmas hollow is because we ignore Advent.  Similarly, I think we struggle with Easter because we have tended to ignore—and worse evade and avoid—the time of preparation that leads up to Easter, Lent.  Let me say that this is no less true for me than for anyone.  Giving something up for Lent?  Really?  What kind of mumbo jumbo is that?  What kind of magical thinking links getting ashes smeared on the forehead, and intentionally giving something up with nurturing a depth of being?  Really.

As I said a moment ago, I believe we exist in a chain of causality—a series of beliefs and experiences—and as much as we might want to imagine ourselves free of religious artifacts like Easter and Lent that simply isn’t likely to happen.  In the same way that one never really escapes their family of origin—that DNA is handed down from generation to generation without our intent or assent—one cannot really abandon our religious and spiritual antecedents.  One can seek to clarify them, understand them, put them to use, intentionally act against them, but one cannot escape them.

So it is with the spiritual disciplines we encounter this time of year.  One could write a whole book on the interdependent symbology of Passover and Easter.  One could do a series of essays on the way the ideas, ideals and metaphors of Judaism that are encoded into the Christ event, and thus Passover into Lent and Easter.  Those, though, are topics for a different venue.  The piece I really want you to understand today is that for the ancient Hebrews it was essential that they remembered the time of trial that led to them becoming a free people.  It wasn’t enough just to have a feast, the seder.  The feast had to be imbued with meaning.  It wasn’t even enough that the seder be meaningful.  It also required preparation—not just logistical preparation—but spiritual preparation.

The first Christians reinterpreted the Exodus based myth of Passover with the ideal of a Messiah thus creating the Easter story.  In much the same way those early Christians took the idea of clearing out all the leaven from Jewish homes—in remembrance of the Exodus—they developed the ritual setting aside of parts of their normal life in preparation for the new Exodus, their rebirth through the Christ event, Easter. 

There is a spiritual discipline and preparation that both Passover and Lent hold in common.  That spiritual preparation is where I so often fail.  These days we tend to value things like multi-tasking.  I often think proudly of my ability to shift quickly from one way of thinking, acting, being, doing, to another—it may be that this isn’t as much of an asset as I’d like to believe.  These day’s drive-thru windows are timed in seconds because a minute is too long to wait for a burger.  These days three days is too long to take for a package to travel across the continent and not instantly returning a call is seen as sloth.  Is it any wonder that in a world such as this, we—I, have lost the notion that disciplined preparation is part of spiritual experience—not simply the thing we do before being spiritual.

This is what Lent means.  This is what Passover means.   These things mean that sometimes there are things we need to get out of the way, things which we need to abandon, things we need to set aside—at least for a while—if we are to open ourselves to new spiritual growth.  These things take discipline and I am convinced that “Discipline Matters.” 

This kind of growth and discipline begins with the notion that none of us are beyond improvement.  There are none among us who are ultimately and finally complete.  Thus discipline, whether it’s giving up leavened products in memory and thanks for an ancestral sacrifice or giving up something we have come to rely on because we know (or need to discover) that it isn’t essential to our existence is important because it prepares us for something new.  It prepares us for new truth, new depth, new understanding, a new self.

On this day I pray that you open yourself up to the spirit of transformation that is alive in the holy days of this holy season.  Easter, Passover, Equinox—meditate on these things but do so in the knowledge that finding meaning, being transformed, takes effort and intention.  It is far too easy to simply go through the motions and languish in the apathy of our lives by avoiding the acts that speak of discipline. 

One does not need a season, be it Lent, or Passover or Spring, to initiate the quest for new life in the soul, for a rebirth of the Spirit.  One simply needs to feel the lack of wholeness that lives in each of us, position and prepare ourselves in such a way that a new, truer, self can rise to consciousness.  One does not need a season—but the things that precede us offer opportunity if we have the willingness and discipline to undertake them.  It takes discipline to open ourselves to the miracle of rebirth and new growth.  It takes risk.  It takes risking not being what we were before.  It takes the discipline of expecting more.

I pray we go from this time together renewed in our common quest and our common bond.  I pray we find strength to set aside the things that are not ultimate in the hope that the infinite and eternal may find deeper root in our soul and spirit.  I pray that the blooming of this new self within us will cause us to live more fully, care more openly, act more justly and love more compassionately.  These things are our disciplines—and remember, Discipline Matters.  AMEN