by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

Come into this circle of love and justice;

Come into this community of mercy, holiness, and health;

Come and you shall know peace and joy.

Come now and let us worship together!

I was researching the subject of envy on the internet in preparation for my sermonizing on the subject, and I decided to google “envy/sermons/ UnitarianUniversalist.”  Imagine my surprise when I found that one of my colleagues, a woman who was in my seminary class, had written a confessional sermon about envy, with me as the subject envied!  As I remember, the sermon went on at length about her struggle with this.  I was flabbergasted.  I had always admired her so much!  She is a lovely woman, with a lively intellect and a quick wit; she has been highly successful in the ministry and apparently successful in her marriage as well.  Why in the world should she be jealous of me? 

Isn’t that the way it is?  We know our own weakness, our own troubles, and we look at someone else and we imagine that their life is unmarred with failure and discontent.  They are happier or smarter or more successful or luckier in love—and on the other hand, we—we are so bogged down in our ordinariness.  Why can’t we soar like this other?  Why can’t we be more like that?  The demon envy raises its ugly head, and we are caught on the tines of that pitchfork.

When we figure out—as my friend does in her sermon—that this kind of comparison is a futile and noxious exercise, and begin to laugh at ourselves—as my friend does—we’re moving toward redemption of this very human impulse.  Our success in this earthly life will not be measured against the supposed success of others, but by our ability simply to accept our own unique gifts and to give them freely.  No, my friend is not like me—she is beautifully like herself.  We need to learn simply to own who we are—without imagining that we are not as pretty as Samantha or as clever as Joe—and then give what it is we have to give, out of a thankful, generous heart. 

Reflect for a moment upon the amazing uniqueness of each one of us.  Consider this.  How did your parents meet?  Do you know?  Was it some accidental encounter?  What if he had been ten minutes later, or she ten minutes earlier, and they had never met?  No you.  Consider.  Then consider your conception and birth.  I know we don’t like to think of our parents as actually making love, but they did—at a particular time and place—and out of all of the combinations of eggs and the jillions of wiggle-tailed sperm that might have joined at that very particular time, there was the very special combination that turned out to be you.  Do you realize that if one sperm had been a bit swifter, you would never have existed—or that is to say, someone else would have existed, but that particular combination of agents that came together in time and space, that one in a billion-billion-billionth chance, created the unique being that you are?  You are a total, fantastic, miracle!

How then do we get bogged down in the negative so often?  How then do we begin to lose the sense of ourselves as the miracle that we are?  Sometimes it’s the messages that sneak in from our family of origin.  Sometimes it’s the messages from the culture. 

I think back to a visit I had from an old friend, a man I used to teach with as a young woman in New Orleans.   He’s brilliant, and he’s rich—but he’s so negative about so much.  The restaurant wouldn’t seat us where he wanted to sit.  The restored Victorian home we toured wasn’t restored properly.  And on and on, in a never ending stream.  Finally after hanging out with him for a couple of days, I had had enough of this, and I said, “Do you realize how much energy you give to negative thought?”  He laughed and said, “Yes, all my friends get tired of it.”  I thought to myself, “Well, why don’t you stop?”  But why don’t we all stop doing the self-destructive things we do? 

Later that evening we were sitting in the wicker chairs on my front porch, both of us now much older, both of us with our graying hair, and he revealed to me thoughts almost too tender to speak of.  He said he was often lonely, especially now that his dog Skipper had died.  I remembered Skipper, the brown and white mongrel who always seemed to be smiling.  My friend had never been partnered.  He knew that I had had a crush on him in those early days of our lives, and he said to me that evening on the porch, some thirty-five years later: “How different my life might have been if I had married you and had children.”  He told me that he had been to Europe seven times in the past four years.  And he had been to other, more exotic places.  “You can only travel so long,” he said.  “And then you have to come home to something.”  I felt bad then because I had criticized him earlier.  I saw that his negativity was his way of dealing with his own pain.  I didn’t like it any better, but I understood it better.

I cannot begin to understand all that went into my friend’s life decisions.  I know that he always has been very protective of his money.  I know that in his brilliance he could often find others lacking, and seem arrogant.  But what he could never truly accept about himself and act upon was the fact that he is gay.  You see, when we were younger, I had moved toward him romantically, and when I made my move, he had seemed awkward and confused.  He told me that he cared for me deeply, but that it wouldn’t work between us because he was gay.  But sadly, this man could never be openly, freely gay.  In all the years that I’ve known him, he’s never again spoken of being gay.  He never even spoke the word.  And he’s never been in a relationship at all.

We’re not home free yet in this society—there is still a level of prejudice with gays and lesbians and bi’s—but those of us who will be participating in the Pride Parade will see just one manifestation of the difference today.  This church has been an important part of that freedom movement in this city and this state.  This is a community in which you are invited to be precisely who you are—gay, straight; Jew, Christian, agnostic; white, Black, Hispanic, Native American; and yes, hear me—Democrat or Republican.

Here at this church spirituality does not attempt to constrain you, to put you in a theological or any other kind of box.  Religion here is not a means to an end.  This church is about relationship.  Relationship with one another, and with the broader community of people we seek to serve.  And of course our grounding is in a relationship with the Divine.

We cannot co-opt this Mystery of all Mysteries to sell vacuum cleaners or to win football games.  We come before the Holy knowing that we don’t know, we can’t define its parameters, can’t make it come when we need it, can’t control it—and yet we feel its suasive power in our lives.  We can only make ourselves ready to receive.  Says Annie Dillard:  “Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.” 

To receive the gifts of the Spirit, then, you spread your sail, you prepare yourself for grace.  This practice seems easy when the blessings of the world seem to fall around our feet, when we’re going with the flow, and the flow is flowing, but it’s harder to look for the gift when our assumptions crumble in the face of sudden illness or personal loss.  What happens when who we thought we were shifts dramatically?  What happens when we are confronted with our limitations, when we feel so inadequate to the task?  Can we still give what it is we have to give?

I have mentioned in the past that I was in spiritual direction with a Catholic nun, a woman of great good cheer and deep compassion.  One day when I went for my visit, I settled into my chair and asked her casually how she was doing.  She said that she had had some difficulty with her eyes and her doctor had told her that she might go blind.  I was horrified.  I could hardly believe her words.  I asked her how she was doing with this news, and I’ll never forget her response.  She said, “I’m wondering what new direction God has in store for me now.”  She did not lose her sight, thankfully, but I have no doubt that she would have found a way to serve, a way to live thankfully, without sight, but with some new sight, some light from another place.

Through her powerful witness, my spiritual director taught me the meaning of what she calls “the theology of indifference”—that is, being indifferent to whatever state you happen to be in: to desire only to be in right relationship with God.  As St. Paul wrote:  “Whatever state I am in, therein to be content.”  When I first started seeing my director, I expected her to tell me how to “shape up” spiritually, the way a personal trainer might do at the gym.  But no—she just loved me.  Month after month, she just kept accepting me as I am, and just loving me, as I am.  I think her greatest gift to me what that she helped me understand the nature of God.  God is not always trying to get us to shape up—God just wants to be better and better friends with us, I think.  Partners, maybe.  God as Beloved.  As we feel more loved, we become more loving, less ego driven, perhaps.  But that comes as a natural unfolding in the context of the relationship. 

Through the years I watched various ones of you in the congregation go through difficult times, and you’ve taught me a lot—you’ve taught me a lot about courage and you’ve taught me about finding the gift in a bad turn of events.  Nine years ago, a young man came through the line to shake hands with me after the sermon.  As he took my hand, he began to weep, big tears unashamedly rolling down his face.  He told me that he had AIDS, and that he was dying.  True, he was beginning to look gaunt.  I held him close to me for a moment.  And then as he pulled back and looked at me again, a beautiful smile broke through his tears.  “But I’ve received so many gifts from this illness,” he said.  The tears and the smiles, together.  Time passes.  Six or eight months later, he came through the line again, looking I must say, very healthy and fit.  “I have a problem,” he said.  “With the new drugs that have come out, it looks as if I’m going to live!  But I have to figure out how.  Nothing is the same as it used to be.  I have to start my life over.”  And he smiled, again through his tears. 

I saw this man again just a few weeks ago.  We had lunch together.  He has the same wonderful partner.  And he has gone on to create and sell one successful business and then has moved on to another.  His partner has also been very successful financially. He and his partner are saying to me that they want to find a way to spread the message of liberal religion.  And they want to put some money behind their wish.  “In whatever state, therein to be content.”

The good news, you see, is that we can be of use, in spite of our circumstances, in spite of our shortcomings.  Sometimes because of them, ironically enough. 

Sometimes in our personal journey a possibility rises up before us—and it is possibility that frightens us the most.  Here is a person I could love.  (Intimacy alert!)  Here is a book I could write.  (And the voice comes whispering, “Who do you think you are, to write a book?”)  The fear is that we might mess up.  Or we might not be accepted.  I know of a person who dreads the end of his Shabbat service because the rabbi always says to turn to the person next to you and say, “Shabbat Shalom.”  This individual has the terrible fear that the person next to him won’t want to reciprocate—that he’ll put out his hand, and the other person won’t respond.  It has never happened.  It’s an irrational thought, of course.  But it strikes at something deep within.  We’ll reach out to someone, and we’ll be rejected.  We’ll set out on a challenging project, and we’ll screw it up, and everybody will know.  How often do our irrational fears keep us from our deepest longings?  What would we choose to do if we knew beyond a doubt that we would succeed?

Remember, my dear people, that under the doubts, the mistakes, the fears, the injustices, there is something more.  There is the One Whose Name Is Love, the Abiding Presence, the Everlasting Arms.  You are not responsible for the fruits of your labor, you are responsible only for making yourself available to the Spirit.  We want to hold back—I’ll give you this much, but not everything, Holy One.  If I gave everything, I would stand to lose—what?  Your life?  That’s gone anyway, isn’t it?  What potential would be there if you gave everything?  This is what I think: I think when we offer all of ourselves to the Holy One, withholding nothing, knowing that we’re imperfect, knowing that we’re not as smart or as good as we wish we were, I think miracles can happen—miracles in our lives and miracles in the myriad ways we can bless this hurting world.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, help us when hard times come to look for the gift in every circumstance, to see how we yet can serve.  Out of our pain, may we grow compassionate; out of our failure, wise.  May we be thankful for the uniquely gifted person we are, and may we offer all we are and all we yet may be.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

And now as you go from this place, may you value all that you are and give generously what is yours to give.  Go in love, and go in peace.  Amen.