by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

Good morning!

Our call to worship this morning comes to us from the words of the poet Rilke:

“God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

Go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.” 

--from The Book of Hours

                       

Come, let us worship together!

This is Palm Sunday, and for those of you with a Christian background, you know that this is the day Jesus makes a triumphal entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey, and is greeted by his followers, who lay palm fronds beneath his path.  It is the beginning of the end, for all too soon these same ones will be saying, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

Jesus belonged fully to God.  He never said he was God—no, he said, “I am the way”—I point you to God, through the Godness that is revealed in me.  Who was this amazing man, Jesus, who told us to turn the other cheek?  To speak the truth to hypocrites in high places?  To go after the lost sheep?  To forgive the prodigal son?  To forgive even the soldiers who were nailing him to the cross.  Who was this man?  With Jesus, some amazing God-consciousness entered our world—we even measure time, B.C. and A.D., before and after his coming.  His message of love has been distorted and even used as a pretext for conquering and killing, but it stands in its purity for all who have ears to hear.  Some amazing miracle occurred in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.  And I say resurrection, because some change, some lasting newness of life came to us in the person of Jesus, and because next Sunday, some 2,000 years after his death, we will celebrate Easter once again, and we will remember his message of sacrificial love. 

We are in the midst of the Christian Holy Season.  This Thursday we will have our Maundy Thursday communion service here at the church, as Tom said, and then I will be participating in the Good Friday service at the First Congregational Church at noon on Friday.  Unitarians came out of the Protestant Reformation, so this is our heritage, too, but we have since then broadened the net that contains our faith. The question arises, then, for Unitarian Universalists, “Who is Jesus for us, now?” 

I grew up in both the Catholic and then the Southern Baptist faith, and in both of those traditions the doctrine of atonement is taught—that is, God sent his only son, Jesus, to die on the cross to save us from our sins.  His suffering and death, then, atoned for our sins—and if we accept that sacrifice, we will be “saved” and will go to heaven when we die.  That is the conventional Christian message about salvation.

Now our faith is a creedless one, and so I cannot say what all Unitarian Universalists believe about Jesus, but I will give you my take on the story.  I think that the doctrine of atonement, as widespread as it is, is a perversion of the Jesus story.  I believe that Jesus came, not to die for us, but to show us how to live.  I don’t believe Jesus wanted to die—he made that pretty clear in the Garden of Gethsemane—but his death was the inevitable result of his radical love.  Yes, he died for our sins, all right—in the same way that Martin Luther King, Jr., died for our sins, or Gandhi died for our sins, or Archbishop Romero died for our sins.  When radical love comes into the world, forces rise up against it.  Be forewarned.

I am often asked by newcomers to Unitarian Universalism, do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?  Well, yes, I say, but I also believe we are all sons and daughters of God.  Within each one of us is a divine spark that is a remnant of our beginning, the place from whence we came, and we want to be in touch with that divine spark and let it shine in our lives as brightly as possible.  How was Jesus different from the rest of us, then?  I believe Jesus was in full possession of this divine spark, this “Godness” within, more so than anyone else who ever lived.  He was the most spiritually gifted of any person we have seen thus far. 

Now some of you are having trouble with the word God—I know that.  I have trouble with the word myself, for it is often used to designate some being in the sky with a long white beard reaching down to an imploring human, a la Michelangelo.  That is not the God I’m speaking of.  The word God itself, in fact, and all other designations for God, such as the Holy One, the Mystery, the Ground of Our Being, the Great Spirit, Father, Mother, etc., etc., must be thought of as metaphor—that is, a name for something we cannot name, and so we use some term that compares what we cannot name to something we know.  “Our Father, which art in Heaven . . . .”  God is like a loving father . . . well, you get the drift.  The word God is simply a convenience for our total and complete ignorance of the subject matter.  Please understand that.  That understanding will bring a little theological humility to all of us.

So, Marilyn, you say, what is the equivalent of being saved for a Unitarian Universalist?  Do we get to be saved, too?  Well, as most of you know, the Universalist message is that of universal salvation—we can’t really imagine a God who would throw anyone into a burning lake of fire, metaphorically speaking or not. 

Anyway, back to the question.  And again, I will speak for myself.  I believe that salvation is the turning of one’s life in a new direction—that is, making one’s spiritual relationship the center of one’s life.  More important than work.  More important than money.  More important than friends.  More important even than family.  Central.  Now does this mean that you will do as Saint Francis did, and strip yourself of all your clothing and stand naked on the city streets of Portland and say that you are going to depend entirely on the good will of others to support you?  No, that was Saint Francis, that’s not you.  Do I mean that you should neglect your family in your efforts to save the world?  That’s between you and God, but that sounds like an ego trip to me.  No, what I’m saying is that you are simply called to be the most fully yourself that you can be, to allow the Holy to work through your own uniqueness.  And you are unique.  There is no one else like you, and no one ever will be.  Your life will come, and then will go, oh so quickly.  Let the Holy work through you while you’re here.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?  Well, it’s just about the hardest thing in the world.  And that’s why we need friends with values we can trust.  And that’s why we need a church that can help keep us on track.  Because we have just this one life and we don’t want to blow it.  Why is it so hard to stay on track?

Well, several reasons.  First of all, our culture is almost entirely secular and is spiritually degrading.  Example: for months every time I crossed the Broadway Bridge I would find myself staring at this huge vertical billboard just as I turned onto the expressway.  It was an image of a young, disheveled blonde, a man’s oversized sweatshirt falling off her shoulders, her bare legs suggesting that she had on nothing underneath.  The caption said, “Do you want some?”  I don’t even know what it was supposed to be advertising—it may have been a Blazer’s ad.  Think about the messages on that billboard, which thousands upon thousands of us saw day after day after day—messages about women, about men, about men and women together, about sex.  Pretty basic messages about who we are as human beings and how we are together.  And don’t think those messages don’t sink in.  That’s what we’re up against.

And then another problem with our developing spiritually—we learn in school that truth comes to us empirically, through our senses—that is, what we can see, taste, touch, measure, quantify, put into a formula.  Yes, that kind of knowledge is crucial, when you want to buy a computer or create a vaccine—but it doesn’t tell us what to do when our kids begin living in front of their computers and we don’t ever see them at dinner anymore—and empirical knowledge doesn’t tell us who gets the vaccine, at what cost—that is, who lives and who dies.

And then there are just so many distractions from the life of the spirit.  The Spirit comes in a “still, small voice,” and when we are multi-tasking already, there’s not much room for that still small voice.  We are over stimulated—there is too much of everything: too much noise, too much food, too much visual stimulation, too many consumer items to choose from, too many ads about those items everywhere we go.  And on top of that many of us have too much responsibility in our lives.  Some of you are working full time and taking care of children and caring for aging parents, as well.  And the workplace is not structured for families—it is mostly structured for the convenience and well-being of the company.  Americans are working longer and longer hours for less and less pay.  When we lead these strenuous work lives, we are distracted from much of anything else—distracted from our role as citizens in a democracy and certainly distracted from the grounding that sets everything else right—our spiritual grounding.

Once in a while, we are given an opportunity to “wake up.”  We lose someone we love.  A job disappears.  We face a serious illness.  We come to know in these moments that our illusion that we are in control is just that, an illusion.  We can take this invitation, in the midst of our vulnerability, to deepen spiritually.  We move into a place of openness that in spiritual terms might be called “relinquishment.”  We know we need help, that the vaunted independence we fought so hard for is a myth, and we reach out, to others, and to the leadership of the Spirit.  Hardship and loss are not the only paths to spiritual growth, but we often have to be dragged, kicking and screaming into consciousness.  I’m reminded of a quotation I read from Mother Teresa—she said, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle.  I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”

So let me be clear.  When I am talking about “spiritual growth,” I’m not talking about becoming a monk or spending more time in meditation or giving up your well-paying job to become a UU missionary, even if there were such a thing.  No, I’m saying that as you deepen spiritually, you will move toward those things which give you the greatest satisfaction and you will naturally begin to move away from those things which drag you down.  You will begin to grow in what we call “the gifts of the spirit”—you’ll become more compassionate, more forgiving, more generous.  You will begin to use yourself well in the world, and your unique talents and gifts will blossom, and what people call true joy, deep-down peace, will begin to be yours—even in the midst of hard times—yes, it’s true, even in the midst of hard times, and everyone has hard times, trust me. 

Now let’s get down to our individual excuses.  What prevents us from becoming the person we could become, from moving into the fullness of our being?  You see, I believe this is what God wants of us, to be the creation we were meant to be.  But our fears hold us back.  Are these thoughts familiar?

--“But what would happen if I became big—that is, well-known or a creative artist, or a leader, or something?  What would I lose, if I lost my smallness?”

--“I’m afraid of that word you used, Marilyn—relinquishment.  That sounds too much like, like surrender.  My gosh, are you asking me to surrender?  To what?  Something I can’t even name?  That requires more faith than I have.”

--“How much money did you say I’d have to give up?  How much is this going to cost me?”  (Incidentally, this is not really a relevant question—you might even end up with more money—who knows?  That’s not the issue.)

--“But I’m too old to start now.”  News flash—you’re not going to be any younger tomorrow.  And this is the bad news—you could easily live to be 100 years old or older, these days.  If you’re 80, you might live 20 more years!  Think about it!  You’ll be somewhat limited, if you’re 80—you can’t start a career in ballet dancing—but you can ask the single question: how can I make love manifest in my life?  So long as there’s not enough love in the world, we can all ask that question, at whatever age or stage.  I recently heard a story on NPR about a woman who was, I think it was 102, and she was providing home nursing care for both her mother and her brother, getting up two or three times in the night to meet their needs.  “How do you do it?” the interviewer asked.  She answered, “I made a promise to the Lord.  Just as long as He gives me the strength to do it, I’ll do it.” 

I could go on with these excuses, these fears, but you get the picture.

You know, I’ve got dead people on my fridge.  Not in my fridge—on my fridge.  I follow the obituaries—that started happening when I got to my 50s—and I put pictures of various people I admire up on my fridge when they die.  I’ve got Richard Avedon, the photographer; I’ve got Mr. Rogers; I’ve got Johnny Cash; I’ve got Elliot Smith.  Now what do all these people have in common?  They’re not particularly good looking, any one of them.  Yes, each one has talent, has gifts—but so does everyone have gifts.  The thing that they have in common is that they had a vision that was their own, and they followed it.  No matter what other people said, no matter what had been done in the past.  No matter what they had to give up, to become what they were meant to become. 

Our living saints, so to speak, are not the most brilliant and the most talented among us—they are the ones who are the most given over.  They are the ones who dare to change the world by becoming their truest selves, and through their daring, through their radical living, we are redeemed, we are bought with a price, we are shown the way to live. 

Two thousand years ago some consciousness of good, some God-consciousness, some force of creative love, came upon this earth to teach us how to live fully, with love as our guide, and you can partake of that same consciousness.  Ally yourself with the Spirit of Life at the heart of the universe, and this I promise you, you will begin to unfold in the way you have always hoped you would.  Go ahead and try it, I double-dog-dare you—and see what kind of miracle flows out of that union.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we would live fully during the days we have been given.  We would live out of love and not out of fear.  We ask for courage to meet the demands of the day, and for wisdom to know our own true path.  Guide us, Holy One, today and every day that we might be the persons we were meant to be.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go now, and surrender, and in that surrender, grow into your fullness of being.  Go in love, and go in peace.  Amen.

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Copyright 2006, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.