by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

May we be reminded here today

of our highest aspirations,

And inspired to bring our gifts

of love and service to the altar of humanity.

May we know once again

that we are not isolated beings,

But connected,

in mystery and miracle

To this community and to one another.

What does it mean to “witness”?  It means to give evidence of your truth, to testify.  When we are asked to go on the witness stand, we are sworn to fidelity, and the consequences are harsh if we lie.  But today I want to talk about witnessing in a broader sense of that term—I want to talk about how we witness with our very lives, because in truth, we witness not so much by what we say, but by who we are.  The saying of witnessing comes out of the very being of the person.

Let me illustrate with a story—actually, two related stories that moved me deeply.  The first is about a World War II hero named Butch O’Hare.  He was a fighter pilot on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.  One morning his entire squadron flew off on a mission—but after he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank.  He knew he would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to the ship, so his flight leader told him to leave formation and return.  As Butch was returning to the ship, he could see a squadron of Japanese planes heading toward his ship, to attack.  And with all the fighter planes gone, the ship was almost defenseless.  His was the only opportunity to distract and divert the Japanese planes.

Single-handedly, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes and attacked them.  He shot at them until all his ammunition was gone, and then he would dive and try to clip off a wing or tail or anything that would make their planes unfit to fly.  He made every desperate move he could to keep them from reaching his ship.  Finally, the Japanese squadron took off in another direction, and Butch O’Hare and his plane, both badly shot up, limped back to the aircraft carrier.  He told his story, but not until the film from the camera on his plane was developed did everyone realize what he had done, what he had risked to protect his ship.  He was recognized as a hero and received one of the nation’s highest military honors.  You may know—or you may have guessed—that O’Hare Airport in Chicago is named for him—for Butch O’Hare. 

The other story took place some years earlier.  You may not remember the name Easy Eddie, but you surely have heard of his boss, the notorious gangster Al Capone.  Easy Eddie was Al Capone’s lawyer, and apparently he was very good at his work.  He was able to keep Capone out of jail, no mean feat considering his client.  And as his reward, Easy Eddie had a very comfortable life.  Besides a generous salary, Capone provided him little extras, like a residence that took up an entire city block in Chicago, fenced in all around, and staffed with servants.

Now Easy Eddie had a son, whom he doted on, and as you would imagine, he provided his son with everything that money could buy: clothes, cars, and a good education.  He also loved that son enough that he tried to teach him right from wrong—but he ran into trouble there: he couldn’t give his son what he wanted most to give him—a good name, and a good example.  And ultimately—I think you could fairly call this a miracle, if you want to—ultimately, he decided that being a good example to his son was more important that all the material riches he had given him. 

So one day Easy Eddie went to the authorities in order to rectify the wrong he had done.  He knew it meant that he would have to testify against Al Capone, and he knew that very likely that would mean his own death.  But he wanted to do what he could to redeem himself in his son’s eyes, to try and provide an example, and to give back to his son, a good name.  So, he testified.  Within the year, he was shot and killed on a lonely street in Chicago.  What is the connection between these two stories?  Well, you see, Butch O’Hare was Easy Eddie’s son.

Sometimes our witness is more important than life itself.  Such a witness does not come simply from an idea or a concept that might seem appealing or compelling—it comes when a person has arrived at a place where he or she can do no other—where it would be unthinkable to do anything else except what they must do, no matter what the personal consequences.  It fell that way for Easy Eddie, and it fell that way for his son, Butch O’Hare.

We speak of “living with integrity.”  What does that mean?  Well, integrity means wholeness, completeness, means all the parts coming together into one—integrated.  As we mature in our living, spiritually speaking, we move towards greater and greater integrity: the dichotomy between the professional and the private begins to diminish and then to vanish—we are not one way at home and another on the job, we do not adhere to one set of values at church and then to another in our business dealings—no, one’s whole life becomes oriented, committed to the good.  The flesh, the mind, the spirit—all are turned that way.  The formal life that we show to the world, the care, the sensitivity, is the same that we show in our informal life, at home; the respect we show to the wealthy man is the same as the respect we show to the humblest of people, the man whose eyes are glazed over with drink who stumbles toward you asking for a quarter.  You may not choose to give the quarter, but you may always choose to give respect.  The outer life becomes a clear, clean reflection of the inner spirit—that is the life of integrity, and that is the life that gives witness with every breath that is taken, with every word that is spoken.  This kind of witness is not something one thinks through and then decides upon.  Rather, it has a kind of inevitability—you just know, “This is who I am—this is what I have to do.”

As I grow older, I think more about my own death, and I think, what do I want my life to count for?  It is clear to me that life is about loving, and that my path is to find those ways that allow me to love and to give most fully.  I’ve taken to reading obituaries more carefully, the older I get, reflecting in particular upon the lives of well-known people I’ve admired. 

One such person is country music star Johnny Cash.  I heard Johnny Cash sing in person in New Orleans when I was teaching down there, in my first job, as a young woman.  I think one reason I was so drawn to him is that he looks a lot like my father, and like my father, he had a lot of the bad boy in him.  But then he found June Carter and Jesus and went on to face down his demons and sing until his death at the age of 71.  The headline of the NY Times obituary written just over a year ago reads “Music Bedrock and Poet of the Working Poor, Dies at 71.”  What a wonderful thing to have said about you at your death!  “Poet of the Working Poor.”  And he was. 

He was born into adversity, the fourth of five children of a cotton farmer in Kingsland, Arkansas, during the Great Depression.  Falling into drugs and alcohol, it was said of Cash that he knew God’s commandments well, because he had broken so many of them so many times.  He was comfortable singing to Presidents, but you really hear that great heart breaking when he’s singing to prisoners, as he did so often.  I have his 3-CD set entitled “Love, God, and Murder,” and that just about sums it up.  Let me tell you something about a choice Cash made.  A dentist who was trying to care for his teeth had broken his jaw and never fixed it properly.  Cash was then told he could have surgery, which might end his singing career, or he could take painkillers, which could re-trigger his drug addiction.  He chose instead to live with the pain.  One of his friends, Charles Hirshberg, said, “Johnny told me that the only time he didn’t feel pain was when he was onstage.”  Johnny Cash witnessed with his voice—rough, gravelly, real—and the pain that all of us as human beings endure came through in that voice.

I want to talk for a moment now about the role of institutions in witnessing.  Garrison Keillor once said—and this was on one Martin Luther King Day—he said, “Rosa Parks wasn’t an activist.  She was just a woman with her groceries who was tired.”  He was speaking of the momentous day when a black woman, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, thus sparking the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.  Now, as much as I love Garrison Keillor, he was wrong on this one.  By that day in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Rosa Parks had been a civil rights activist for 12 years—she was the secretary of the local chapter of the NAACP.  She acted not alone, but in concert with and on behalf of others.  The summer before her arrest, she had taken a ten-day workshop at the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee labor and civil rights and education center, which is still going strong today.  Martin Luther King, Jr., had been at that center, and many, many people had been trained there and empowered to bring witness to their beliefs.  I myself was at that center in the 1980s, at a gathering of regional writers.  Strolling around the campus, I ran into an elderly man—somehow, I knew he was someone of significance, though not by his clothing, which was non-descript—it was a certain energy I sensed.  I said, “Who are you?”  He smiled and said, “Why, I’m the gardener.” 

Later I learned this was Myles Horton, founder and long-time director of Highlander Center.  And years after that, I ran across a piece of his writing, entitled “Plant Good Seeds.”  He writes, in part:  “My job is to try to provide opportunities for people to grow (not to make them grow because no one can do that).  I grew up on a farm, so I know about growing things.  Your job is to plant good seeds and nurture them until they get big enough to grow up, and not to smother them while they are growing.  You shouldn’t overwater them, overfertilize them or overwork them.  And when bugs get on plants, you’ve got to get rid of them so the plants can continue to grow.  People have a potential for growth; it’s inside, it’s in the seeds.” 

I think about the institution that is our church.  How much I agree with Myles Horton here!  We provide opportunities for people to grow, not to make them grow, but to invite people to grow.  You plant good seeds, and you nurture those seeds.  And yes, sometimes, you have to get rid of bugs.  Organically, we hope.  But listen to what he says, “People have a potential for growth, it’s inside, it’s in the seeds.”  I deeply believe that.  The seed of goodness is within every one of you, the seed of love, and this church is one place where we water that seed and let it grow.

We are in a period of our national history just now when we desperately need a witnessing of the truth.  I can’t begin to tell you how sick and distressed I become when people in the highest places of our government can look us in the eye and lie through their teeth, when this ill-conceived war in Iraq continues to take so many lives, when the interests of the many are sold out for the benefit of the few.  We desperately need institutions like this church to be strong, to be there to support the growth and witness of its members, and so that the church itself can witness in the larger community and in the larger world.  You are called upon today to do your part to bring us together, to keep us strong, with your gifts.  I say without hesitation that there is no time since I’ve been in ministry that I have felt more deeply that we must take ourselves seriously and support our good work in the world.  Let us stand together, let us stand fast, in these troubling times.  I know that a new day will come, I am convinced of it.  I don’t know when.  But it will come.  Let us continue to be vigilant.  Let us continue on our course.  Let us continue to stand on the side of love.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we live with a lot of fear these days.  Keep us faithful to the good that we know, keep us witnessing with our lives, every day of our lives.  Help us to speak the words that we need to speak, and help us to act with integrity, out of lives given over to the good.  Bless us and keep us, we pray, in these hard times.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go now, and be a witness for the good—with every step you take, every breath you breathe, every word you speak.  If the Holy is to be known in this world, you will be the messenger.  Go now in love, and go in peace.