by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We gather in community this morning

To give thanks,

To make confession,

And to be inspired and strengthened,

That we might become the persons we were meant to be.

Come now, and let us worship together!

It was the day of my comprehensive exams for my Ph.D.  I had already passed the written, and now for the orals—I was to spend three hours being questioned by members of my committee, all scholars for whom I had immense respect.  I was as prepared as I could be, but still I was scared—you never know what questions might emerge.  We sat in the small dusty conference room, around a simple table, and the questions began.  At times I struggled, at times, the right words wouldn’t come.  I had hoped to do better than this.  The three hours passed quickly, and my teachers went out to discuss my fate, while I waited, drumming my fingers on the table.  I thought I would probably pass, but I couldn’t be sure.  Certainly I didn’t think I had done very well.  But would they fail me?

The three returned and quietly took their places at the table, and the chair of the committee began to speak.  “Marilyn,” she said, “you passed with distinction.”  And I said in response, “You’re kidding.”  They all looked at one another.  “No, you heard our decision correctly,” the chair said.  And then she paused, “But we do have a concern that we want to discuss with you.” 

“Uh-oh, here it comes,” I thought.  “I passed, but there’s something terribly wrong with me—I’m a deeply, fatally flawed human being.  Just as I suspected.”

But the chair just said, “We’re concerned that you do not sufficiently honor your gifts.  We are afraid that you will never realize your potential unless you are willing to recognize and use your gifts.”  All six eyes looking at me.  All six eyes sending the same message.  I was stunned.  What did these trusted and wise teachers see in me that I could not see in myself?  In what ways was I disowning myself and refusing to be who I am?  I walked out of that room sobered and reflective—as I suppose a graduate student should be.

Why does any one of us decide on some subconscious level to be less than we could be?  It is a compelling question.  For me, this is a struggle I have had all of my life.  This scenario described above took place, not when I was young and tender and unaware of myself—I was in fact in my late 40s.  I’ve come to understand to some extent why I doubt myself so often, and why I have thought my gifts less than perhaps what they are.  I was the neglected child of a mentally ill mother and a charming alcoholic father.  The grown-ups in my life were not bad, but they were weak in certain ways and just didn’t have much energy to parent.  They had so many needs there weren’t room for mine.  So I grew up feeling a tremendous lack of trust in my own worthiness and in my goodness. 

And then there is the gender thing.  All women face this to some extent.  We are supposed to be sweet and compliant and cute.  I have never been accused of any of these things.  And I have found that in my love relationships, I have paid a price.  My husband didn’t take my writing seriously—but then neither did I.  So I stashed it under the kitchen cabinet and pulled it out when the babies were sleeping.  Once my young sons got into that cabinet, and they pulled out my writing, and I found them innocently coloring on the pages on the kitchen floor.  I didn’t myself even understand my fury when I grabbed up the pages and screamed, “These are mine, mine!” 

And then the men in my life—we don’t even have time to get into that.  It seems that they were always telling me to “get small,” in one way or another.  Could you just be a little less bold, or not so smart, or not so emotional.  The message is, could you just be a little less than what you are?  If you could just get small, I could be more comfortable. 

And sometimes I regret to say, I’ve tried to be less than I am—and I’m here to tell you that it’s a spiritual dead-end to agree to do that—for whatever reason—and the reasons are myriad.  You can pull back because of your social class, for if you grew up poor or working class, you may never have been taught that you don’t have the same rights and privileges as others; you can pull back because of your race, because the legacy of slavery tells you you’re less than; you can pull back because you’ve been abused and misused and neglected and you’ve learned, incorrectly, that you’re somehow at fault for all that’s wrong in the family.  You can pull back because you’re a gay man or a lesbian woman, and some people in this culture put you down.  You can pull back because you are a woman, and women are supposed to be quiet nurturers, not bold leaders. 

But if I am correct, and I think that I am, there is that in each one of us that which longs for its fullest expression—perhaps it is part of that divine spark that I have spoken of so often—that potential, that sublime something, that pulls at us, nags at us, and will not leave us at peace unless and until we acknowledge its presence and allow it to be expressed for the common good.  It is to our great detriment that we repress the sublime.

Let’s talk for a moment about the meaning of sublime.  The sublime has to do with what is the highest and the best—it is a seeking of what is true and what is beautiful.  The sublime is encountered when we, for no good of our own, seek to do good for others.  It is the pleasure that we have in the growth and well-being of others.  It has to do with trusting life, with giving freely out of a sense of abundance.  It is leaving one’s own concerns on the shore with certain kind of confidence and taking a dip into the endless sea of generosity.  It means moving towards a goal or an ideal that is way beyond our own immediate needs, one that reaches far into the future, beyond even the years we know we will be allotted on this earth.

I believe that each one of us is made for the sublime—and I acknowledge that I, along with most other human beings, try to escape it, to repress it.  You see, to reach beyond where we are now requires courage, and we are afraid.  Growth requires the breaking of old patterns, and this kind of change or dissolution of a current mode of being reminds us, perhaps, of the final dissolution, or death, and the result is anxiety.  But the willingness to die to the old is a precondition of living.  Jesus said it long ago:  you must lose your life to find it.

But change is scary.  What if we said to God, “Take all of me?”  This reminds me of the woman who went on a diet in which she was promised that she would lose a pound a week.  She stopped, terrified, because she realized that in 150 weeks, she would be all gone.  We’re afraid we’ll lose something if we give ourselves away.  Well, yes, we will—we’ll lose the old, outworn self, and we’ll be born into the new—born again, as it were.

I have spoken of the longing for truth as an aspect of the sublime.  But knowing the truth is dangerous, is it not?  Because when we are informed, we must act.  Truth means responsibility.  So there are things we prefer to be misinformed about, or hazy about.  Whites don’t really want to know how people of color experience their lives, for if we did, we would have to change.  We don’t really want to know about the specific, concrete lives of people in poverty.  We would rather deal in statistics.  We’d rather say, “The poor,” and objectify them.  We don’t want to really see or touch or smell poverty or mental illness.  We’d rather not know what it’s literally like for a child to go hungry to school. Because you know what?  We’d have to do something about hunger.  We’d have to change.

There is a voice within that will guide us, if we will let it.  Why, why don’t we just co-operate with the Holy One, the Voice Within, sooner?  Maybe we don’t want to stand out in the crowd.  It is true that we are profoundly ambivalent about excellence and goodness, brilliance and beauty.  Oh, yes, we love and admire people who incarnate the true, the good, the just, the beautiful—but don’t they also make us just a little uneasy, just a little anxious?  Don’t they make us feel just a little envious, maybe a little awkward—the greatest people simply by their presence make us feel aware of what we have yet to make of ourselves.  If only we understood—what we most admire in others is what is most alive and ready to ripen in ourselves.

In our Western culture, we don’t talk much about destiny, but I believe that there is such a thing.  I believe that because of the circumstances of our birth—the time in history, and the place in which we live, and the people who are our kin—that because of inherent aptitudes and inclinations which are not much amenable to change, that because of all these things coming together, and other mysteries that are too subtle to know, I believe that we have a destiny that calls to us.  It is a holy calling, and we have to listen and look for the signs that draw us to that calling, and we ignore those signs at our peril.

The same is true of institutions.  Let’s think about our church for a moment.  We did not set a goal like—let’s become the largest Unitarian Universalist church in the nation. Not at all.  In fact, I can remember being asked by Alan Deale, the former minister, right after I was called to this church—he said, “What are your goals for the church?”  I said, “I don’t have any goals.  I just want to get to know the people and see what they want.”  But guess what happened.  The demographics of Portland, and Ballot Measure 9 and our very public stand on that, and the urban growth boundary, and the spiritual evolution of the baby boomers and other factors all conspired to lead us where we are today—1,600 members, undergoing yet another growth spurt, and getting ready now to build the Eliot Center, which will move us into a whole new era, in terms of our ability to give witness to our liberal values in this community.  We are a beacon church for Unitarian Universalism not just for the Northwest, but for whole the nation.  I say, without exaggeration, that churches all over the country are looking to us as a possible model of what a large Unitarian Universalist church can be.  This is who we are.  We can choose to accept it and live up to it, or to deny it and hide from our greatness.

Forrest Church, long-time minister of All Souls in New York, our largest church on the East Coast, says this:  “We’re more afraid of failure than we are eager for success.  More afraid of pain than eager to seek pleasure.  More afraid of embarrassment than willing to take chances on new experiences.  Yet it is precisely when we overcome those fears,” he says, that “all of the amazing things in our life happen.”  The other side of fear is freedom.  And freedom is driven by one thing alone—faith in a future that is possible.

We need to decide what kind of church we want to be, a big-minded church focusing on our mission, on witnessing to a world of hurting and frightened people—or a small-minded church involving itself in petty quarrels while the world goes to hell in the proverbial hand basket. 

Unitarian Universalist folks are known for finding it more interesting to argue among themselves than to come together to make needed changes in the world.  You know the old joke—a Unitarian leaves this world and is on his way to the next—his celestial home—when he comes to a fork in the road, and there are a couple of signs.  One says, “THIS WAY TO HEAVEN,” and the second says, “THIS WAY TO A DISCUSSION ABOUT HEAVEN,” and of course he takes the second.  One church in this district spent two years arguing over the design on their General Assembly banner.  Another church spent two years in a fierce conflict over whether or not the minister should be allowed to use religious language—words like worship or prayer.  We need to ask where we’re putting our energies, and to what end.  We need to pull together, for the common good, acknowledging our fears, but clinging fiercely to our faith, keeping our eyes on the prize.

Somebody came to my office the other day to talk about his calling.  He said to me, “I think I’m supposed to go to seminary, but I’m afraid.”  “And why are you afraid?” I asked.  “I come from a poor background,” he told me.  I just looked at this beautiful young man, and I said, “So you’re afraid?  So?  I’m afraid, too.  Everybody’s afraid.  We can’t let that stand in the way of our calling.”

The repression of the sublime.  It is a constant temptation to slide through and hope no one will notice.  Especially God.  But if in fact, as I believe we are, essentially spiritual creatures, there is no escape.  There will be a time of reckoning.  I do believe that we’ll be terribly regretful if we get to the end of our lives and realize that we have given in to our fears and have failed to be faithful. 

And make no mistake about it, history will judge this church.  Will we live up to the challenges set before us in this troubled time?  My friends, I wouldn’t be here if I thought we would not.  I deeply believe in the strength of this church, and in the goodness of its people.  I have no doubt that we will do what we are called upon to do.  So let us come together in our strength, loving one another, empowering one another, to serve the common good.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

O Holy One, you alone know how frightened we are of our own goodness and beauty.  But today we acknowledge that these good gifts come from you, and we thank you for them, and we pray now that we might use them well, that more light and love might come to our troubled world.  Forgive us when we give way to our fears and forget our strengths.  Let us rather join together in a community of service in a mission of love.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

Be not afraid, for the light that illumines your soul is the light divine, and it will lead you in the way that you should go.