by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given December 23, 2007

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come to this house of worship this day

To give thanks

To ask for forgiveness

And to confirm once again

The power of love to transform us and the larger world.

The Talmud, wisdom from the Jewish tradition, often uses stories to make a moral point, and the following tale appears there.  It seems a highly respected rabbi found the Messiah at the gates of Rome and asked him, “When will you finally come?”  The rabbi was quite surprised when he was told, “Today.”  Overjoyed and full of anticipation, the man returned to the synagogue and waited.  But nothing extraordinary happened.  No Messiah.  The next day he returned, disappointed and puzzled, and asked, “You said the Messiah would come ‘today’ but he didn’t come!  What happened?”  The Messiah replied, “The Scripture says, ‘Today, if you will but hearken to His voice.’”  In other words, the Holy One is present with you always.  You are in the midst of the Holy.  Just hearken to the voice.  Today, if you will but hear.

What does this word Messiah mean, anyway?  In Judaism, the Messiah meant simply “the Anointed One,” and at first the term meant any person who, upon arising to a high position, was anointed with oil, such as High Priest, King, or prophet.  The term is used today in a Jewish context to refer to the anticipated savior, prophesied by Isaiah.  Among Christians, the term refers to Jesus of Nazareth, identified as the Christ, or in Greek, the Anointed One.  And of course other less well known traditions claim their own Messiahs. 

In the scripture we see the Holy or the numinous bursting into the everydayness of human lives.  It is the angel coming to Mary and saying, “Fear not, the Lord is with thee.”  It is the burning bush that frightened Moses, calling him to lead his people out of the bonds of slavery.  It is the voice, confronting Saul, blinding him on the road to Damascus, saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” and Saul of course becomes Paul, the founder of the church.  The Messiah figure, then, would be a human being that represents, that embodies, the Holy, the numinous force, breaking into human life.

It’s not something we generally welcome.  We sing carols about the sweet baby Jesus and his loving mother, but we’re not so comfortable with the revolutionary that Jesus was.  Christmas is about God’s revolutionary love breaking into our everyday, humdrum lives, and calling us to greater meaning and joy.  On the other hand, a cursory look at various figures who embody God’s message tells us plainly why we don’t want the Messiah to come.  In fact, generally, the Messiah is trouble—well, look at what happened to Jesus.  Ended up on a cross.  Couldn’t be plainer, could it?  Look at Gandhi, look at Martin Luther King, Jr., look at Bishop Romero.  Being a messiah is a very dangerous career line. 

Now why is this?  Why don’t we welcome these figures who bring messages of truth and love into our lives?  Why do we, instead, generally kill our anointed ones?

I think it’s because the Messiah will ask us to change, always, and change is hard.  We’d really just rather not, thank you very much.  But that difficulty in changing is not because we’re stubborn or bad—it’s built into us, physiologically.  Neuroscientist and linguist George Lakoff tells us that concepts are not changed by somebody telling us the facts.  He says that neuroscience shows us that each of the concepts we have—and I mean these long-term concepts that structure how we think—each of these becomes hard-wired in the synapses of our brain.  To make sense of new concepts, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain—otherwise the facts are just simply not heard.  My brother, for example, joins the 30% of the American people who still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the carnage of 9/11.  This may explain why you don’t want to talk with some of your relatives about religion or politics over the holiday.

Can people change, though?  Yes, of course, we can.  The change message, according to John Kotter, who consults with businesses around change, must be “simple, easy to identify with, emotionally evocative, and evocative of positive experiences.”

Let me give you an example of something that worked.  And something that usually doesn’t.  It appears that patients with clogged arteries can go the surgical option, or they can change their lifestyle and achieve the same results.  Doctors, though, have proved remarkably unsuccessful in telling people that if they don’t change their lifestyle, they are going to die.  It appears that telling people they are going to die makes them depressed, and they tend to withdraw, and lonely and depressed people really don’t care whether or not they die.  They just want to sit in a corner and eat more fatty foods.  On the other hand, Dr. Dean Ornish took a positive approach with a group of heart patients, telling them all of the good things that would happen if they changed their lifestyle—they would have lots of new energy, they would feel like making love again, they would have more fun in life—and he put them on a regime of diet and exercise, plus a support group that met twice a week, for a year.  At the end of three years, even though the support group did not continue, 77% of Ornish’s group was still able to avoid surgery.

Now the kind of changes that we need to make these days are huge—much more difficult than these heart patients are asked to make.  We are being asked to make, not just personal changes, but huge cultural changes, if we are to sustain ourselves ecologically.  In fact, I think we make a big mistake suggesting that systemic problems can be fixed by personal virtue, as we often do.  We say, “Oh, we all consume too much.  We eat too much meat.  We drive too much.”  But consider—is it even possible for an average person with an average North American lifestyle to live sustainably?  In fact, if everyone on the earth lived the way the average American lives, we would need 5 planets for all the world’s people.  So we’re not going to get where we need to go by shopping green.  We’re not going to get there by recycling and changing our light bulbs and riding our bicycles.  Should we do these things?  Absolutely.  We should try to live with every ounce of integrity we can muster—our living is always a kind of witness—but we should understand that we are living within a system that is unworkable, and it is time that we stopped privatizing responsibility.  We need to demand that our political leaders act heroically, in a critical time that demands heroes, not frightened, passive poll watchers.  We need to throw them out of office if they refuse to grasp the realities of our world, and to act on the basis on those realities. 

We desperately need transformation, and not just a message of the disaster that awaits us if we don’t change, but we need a positive message of what we can become.  And we all need to live “as if,” as if the kingdom of God was already here, as if the Messiah had come—we can’t afford to wait until our leaders lead—we have to lead at the grassroots, from the ground up, wherever we have power.

What is our vision of this brave new world that we must create?  We must go to the human imagination for that, and we must do that in community.  The church has a number of classes and groups that are doing imaginative and significant work, and I invite you to consider being a part of one of these:  to name a few, our UU Community for Earth has a “Low Carbon Diet” campaign; the Rev. Kate Lore is leading a weekly spiritual practices class that will focus on living life with more heart; Barbara Ford will be leading a class called “Grounding and Grace,” on the work of Joanna Macy, supporting activists spiritually; Betsy Tolle, founder of Living Earth, will teach a class that focuses on balance and setting limits.  There will be a class called “The Real Wealth of Nations,” which is about creating a caring economic system.  This spring we’re going to be starting support groups for people who want to be more intentional about living sustainably and creating a culture in which that is possible for more of us.  So look for that in the spring.  Today you can sign up for one of the many retreats we offer—and I know of no better way to get connected deeply in community than to attend one of these.  Or you may sign up for one of the classes that I mentioned.  Our program fair will be on January 6, of course, and the whole array of offerings will be here for you.

And now a story.  The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times.  Once a great order, as a result of waves of persecution in the 17^th and 18^th centuries and the rise of secularism in the 19^th, all of its branch houses were lost.  It had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age.  Clearly it was a dying order.  In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage.  As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut.  But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him.  “I know how it is,” he exclaimed.  “The spirit has gone out of the people.  It is the same in my town.  Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.”  So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together.  Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things.  The time came when the abbot had to leave.  They embraced each other.  “It has been wonderful to speak with you,” the abbot said, “but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here.  Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?”

“No, I am sorry,” the rabbi responded.  “I have no advice to give.  The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.”

When the abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”

“He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered.  “We just wept and read the Torah together.  The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving—it was something cryptic—was that the Messiah is one of us.  I don’t know what he meant.”

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words.  The Messiah is one of us?  Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery?  If that’s the case, which one?  Do you suppose he mean the abbot?  Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot.  He has been our leader for more than a generation.  On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas.  Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man.  Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light.  Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred!  Elred gets crotchety at times.  But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right.  Often very right.  Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred.  But surely not Brother Phillip.  Phillip is so passive, a real nobody.  But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow being there when you need him.  He just magically appears by your side.  Maybe Phillip is the Messiah.  Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me, each monk thought.  He couldn’t have possibly meant me.  I’m just an ordinary person.  Yet suppose he did?  Suppose I am the Messiah?  O God, not me.  I couldn’t be that much for you, could I?

As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah.  And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even, and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate.  As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place.  There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it.  Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray.  They began to bring their friends to show them this special place.  And their friends brought their friends.

Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the older monks.  After a while one asked if he could join them.  Then another.  And another.  So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.

And so that’s the way it happens.  Transformation, I mean.  With love, with respect, in community.  Through ordinary people, like you and like me, each of whom, imperfect as we are, has some of the messiah within.  Transformation comes when we dare to see the Holy in others and in ourselves and then live out of that vision.  And that’s how it will happen in the church, in the larger community of Portland, in our state, in our nation, and in the world.  On the eve of Christmas, may this be our prayer.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

God of Life and God of Love, we ask for nothing less than transformation.  We admit we are afraid, and we ask for courage.  We know our weaknesses, we know our temptations to look away, all too well.  But let us also know our strength and our goodness, and let us rest in that, in this Holy Season.  Let us know the power of love and the power of community, and let us welcome the Messiah in whatever way the Holy breaks into the darkness of our lives.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

May you welcome the Messiah in others and in yourself as the Holy seeks a path to love and justice in this world—go now in love, and go in peace.  Amen.

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Copyright 2007, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell. All rights reserved.