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A Better Future A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday August 27, 2006
Readings From “Religion and Nostalgia” By A. Powell Davies in The Faith of an Unrepentant Liberal First a story from the ministry of Powell Davies-- ...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... I didn't talk much; I kept her talking, 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." Now a statement of his theology— There never was a golden age, but there’s going to be one. We have been mistaken — all except the prophets and the pioneers. We have misguidedly referred to the past the vision of the future. We have projected out of our world what we must cause to come true in our world. We are nostalgic for something that never was, but which surely shall be; we are homesick not for a home we have left, but for one we are going to make…Let us get it very clear: in our immaturity, in the childhood of our race, we mistook our longing for a better world for something that belonged to the past — a golden age behind us. We have done this, in one way or another, ever since — all except the prophets and the pioneers — but the better world is in the future, waiting to be made.
Prayer and Mediation Beginners Denise Levertov Denise Levertov dedicates this poem to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla, and opens it with an epigraph from A. C. Swinborne. Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla “From too much love of living, Hope and desire set free, Even the weariest river Winds somewhere to the sea—“ But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope? — so much is in bud. How can desire fail? — we have only begun to imagine justice and mercy, only begun to envision how it might be to live as siblings with beast and flower, not as oppressors. Surely our river cannot already be hastening into the sea of nonbeing? Surely it cannot drag, in the silt, all that is innocent? Not yet, not yet—there is too much broken that must be mended, too much hurt we have done to each other that cannot yet be forgiven. We have only begun to know the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes in the communion of struggle. So much is unfolding that must complete its gesture, so much is in bud.
A Better Future A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday August 27, 2006 Last Sunday I got a chance to step out of time. For a couple of hours, the line of demarcation between past, present and future became, well, fuzzy. Now before you assume this was some kind of a chemically induced flashback, I should tell you that I was working. Sunday evening, (my wife) Linda and I drove over to Shawnee where I led worship with, and talked about this free faith with, the emerging Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Shawnee. The reason that this was a step out of time for me was that when Linda and I first came together as a couple she was living in Shawnee. We met in this church in 1983 and circa 1984-89 we lived in the Shawnee area. Linda and I have driven past Shawnee many times since then, but this was one of the few occasions when we actually drove to Shawnee in the last 17 years. I had this strange since of déjà vu—having already been there. Actually in a surreal sort of way it was more what comedian Robin Williams calls vu-jà-dé—“I ain’t never done this”—because while the street names were familiar, very little else was. Funny what a couple of decades will do to a town when you aren’t paying attention. I was somewhere I used to live but I was in a role I could have scarcely imagined some 20 years ago. I remembered where things were sort of—and when I looked carefully I could find landmarks and old haunts—but the idea that this place was once quite familiar to me seemed, well, impossible. Perhaps the coup-de-grace was when we drove past the mobile home that we used to own a few miles outside of town. I saw that the oak and maple trees I transplanted when they were seedlings now overarched the trailer that had been perched so visible and vulnerable atop of the hill where we once lived. For a moment I was absolutely adrift in time. How could those little tiny things become—that? Perhaps for the first time in my life I had existential proof of the old saying that “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.” In visiting with the dozen or so folks gathered forming a new religious community—a community that this church has taken on to “mentor”—I wondered when is the best time to plant a church? Surely it would have been 20 years ago—but if not then…then now! Linda and I both began to wonder how our lives would have been different if there had been a Unitarian presence in Shawnee when we lived there. If this community takes root, in what kinds of ways will the future be different? How might the past and present be different—if only? The reason I share this story in the context of this sermon focused on unlocking something of the nature of this church for spiritual seekers and the religiously curious is tied up in the deep wisdom of that marvelous and prolific writer—Anonymous. We build on
foundations we did not lay. We are ever bound in community. We are ever—and forever—bound in community. This church, this community, was gathered some 114 years ago. I can say with certainty that none of our present-day members have contact with anyone who was among that group who saw fit to gather a Unitarian congregation 1893. Church lore proclaims that it all began with a funeral. Just four years after the birth of this city, someone died and someone else saw to it that their companion had a Unitarian funeral. Perhaps in the depth of our modern bright red conservatism we need to remember that there were theological liberals here in Oklahoma City from the beginning—even in 1893! The lore is that a Unitarian minister was lured to OKC to do a funeral and then convinced to stay giving birth to this church. The rest, as they say, is history. What could have convinced him to stay? What could have made a group of citizens decide they needed to find a way to get the minister to stay and form the soon to be named “All Souls” Unitarian Church? The name was changed to First Unitarian in the 1920s. The best answer to that puzzle I can proffer is that someone had a vision of their community as a different and better place than it had been before. Someone had the vision of “A Better Future” for All Souls and someone had the will to make that vision manifest. That vision is still alive today. We are its current manifestation. That vision was not once-upon-a-time but continues to inspire us toward the future. I shared that sense of being temporally un-tethered on my trip back to Shawnee because I believe that—in a way that sounds mystical but really isn’t—a community like this one exists in the past, present and future simultaneously. In some odd sort of way we are unstuck in time. There is a great scene in the classic novel Moby Dick, where Herman Melville—himself a Unitarian—compares the church to a great ship at sea. Melville’s parson, the mythical Father Mapple, enters the church like a New England sea captain one stormy Sunday. He climbs into the pulpit like it was both helm and lookout perch. To quote Melville: What could be more full of meaning? - for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow. I really believe that the world is on a passage out not a voyage complete. I also believe for many of who gather in this community the church is the prow of the boat. It is the part that cuts through breaking wave and carries forth our hopes of the future. This church exists in the present. It can do no other. The Taoist part of me believes that in a very real sense there is no time other than the present. Everything else is either memory or imagining. In a humanistic sort of way we affirm that “This is the day we have been given” each week. Yesterday is past and tomorrow is only dreamed. We are, though, more than a church of the eternal present. Truth is, we don’t exist without the past. We can’t. You can’t live in the past—but it shapes and conditions us. You can’t change the past but it changes and creates the present. This church is here because of those folks in 1893 who wanted a church—and those in 1903 and 1913 and 1933 and 1973 and 2003 and recently as last night who did what was necessary to keep us alive. It seems there is a tendency among some churches these days to want to break free of 2006 and go back to 1966 or 1906 or 1806 or 1606 or 606. Some want to escape today and return to the past—thinking it purer and preferred to this day. They dream of a world without the challenges we face today. They don’t think the church, while in their care, is to be accountable for using up the worlds oil and fresh water, they don’t want to accept responsibility for using up finite resources and destroying critical habitats. Those were not the concerns of the primitive church—so they feel immune from those demands. Instead of owning our place in the present—a place shaped by our past—they seem to prefer imagining a way to reclaim the past as a place to live. The church, they say, is just about salvation and saving souls. Those who would look for salvation of souls are partially right—our difference of opinion is that we believe the focus can’t be backward. “The thick glasses if we are to focus ourselves into the past. The truth is that even when marginally successful—that means reclaiming a Pollyanna past that never really was. The past is profoundly real. It effects us—for good and ill. It just isn’t the only reality we must consider. The proper role of the church, at this point, is to help us understand the forces that buoy us like the tide and tug on us like currents. This church neither ignores the past nor longs for a false nostalgia. We do, however, believe the past to be a shaper of the present and, more importantly, a powerful influence on the future. It is the future that beckons us. That was Powell Davies lessons from our readings. Some religious communities set their course from their past. They say that heritage or theology or revelation received once-and-for-all-time dictates their future. That is not our way. That thinking leaves a taste not unlike burnt popcorn in our mouth. We can’t escape the past—we shouldn’t even if we could. We live in the present but the important truth is that the stars we steer by are neither past nor present—they are future. “The world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete.” To be mired in the past is to be myopically nostalgic. To be over-focused on the present lures us into the trap of becoming what comedian Flip Wilson called “The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now.” If you are new among us and you looking for either nostalgia or a constant stream of current events from this pulpit—I will tell you that this is not the community for you—we steer by the future. We are shaped by the past. We act in the present. Our aim and allegiance, though, is to the future. Welcome to those of you new among us. It may seem that you stepped inside this community and had a feeling like I did last week when I went back to Shawnee. Perhaps you found something familiar in a new and strange sort of way. Perhaps it feels like you know the street names but the landmarks aren’t quite what you remember—or expect. Perhaps you felt a deep connection but can’t quite figure out why. Let me assure you all of those things are pretty normal around here. My message for those of you who are new among today is that if you feel a bit cut loose in time and place. Don’t worry—find yourself in the future. All of this is a form of liberation and I suspect you will discover that many of the people you find here are similarly un-tethered—forever seeking, eternally curious and infinitely questioning. A Hymn we sang earlier claims that we are a community that “Reveres the past but trusts the dawning future more.” That is why we focus so much time and money and energy on the children of this church. They are our children right now—but more importantly they are the future. They are our future. That is also why we give our weekly offering to the organizations in the community. They do good work here and now—but we hope and pray that they will make a better future. We suspect that they will stand a better chance with our help. That is why you will soon be seeing significant changes in our physical plant—we want to fulfill the needs of a dawning future. When this church is at its best we stand firmly in the present, steeled by our proud heritage, in service to the future. That same hymn that urges us to take our reverence for the past and our trust of the dawning future urges us to “Adventure boldly and explore.” That is a point that I cannot over stress. “Adventure boldly and explore” is precisely what I try to do when I climb into this prow of a pulpit. It is what I hope you do as you gather in the pews. The world we share is on a voyage out—destination unknown. Our lives are not voyages complete. We are not headed for homeport and dry dock. Sometimes we seek safe harbor here from storms. Sometimes we drop anchor to re-supply. Sometimes we come here in search of new and better maps. The exploration, however, always pulls us forward into the future. Until the day we die we are forever on an outbound adventure of the human spirit in a world alive with wonders unknown. This church exists “Transforming People Who Transform the World.” We seek a world which is more caring, more loving and more just. Our goal is to grow better souls and build a better world so that we may all share the blessings of A Better Future. AMEN
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