Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Unitarian Universalism

  • Can You Fix It, Dad?

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Bridging ceremony

    Each year, a few young people from this church end their time in high school. Usually after they are through with high school, they head off to find a job, to join the military, or to attend college or further education. And often that means that these young people move out of town, or have busy schedules that don’t permit them to come to church as often.

    Our young people enrich the life of this church immeasurably. They bring their own perspective to church life, they bring their own talents and enthusiasms. Sometimes, they can help to challenge the assumptions of older generations, which can inject new energy and life into this church. So when the end of high school requires some young people to move on, it’s a real loss to the church.

    But it’s also a time of excitement. We are so pleased that these young people are entering a new phase of life! They may not be around as much as in the past, but we want them to know that we will always be glad to see them here, that we hope they continue to be a part of this church. We want them to know, too, that we will support them as they make the big transition away from high school and into something new — we will support them in their dreams, and their emerging new lives.

    This is our chance to recognize these people in what has become known as a “Bridging Ceremony,” bridging the gap between youth and adulthood.

    ***

    First, I’d like to ask anyone who, like me, spent part or all of their growing-up years in a Unitarian, Universalist, or Unitarian Universalist church, to join me up here at the pulpit.

    Next, I’d like to ask everyone who is in high school, and those adults who have served as youth advisors, to come stand up here in front of the pulpit.

    Jarrod Hines and Dani Everton have graduated from high school and both will be attending Bristol Community College. Would you two please join us up here in the pulpit?

    Welcome, Dani and Jarrod! We welcome you into the community of adult Unitarian Universalists.

    Those of us standing here at the pulpit also grew up as Unitarian Universalists, and we have either stayed, or we have come back. Know that you will be welcomed into other Unitarian Universalist churches (and if you aren’t welcomed, you can do what some of us did and demand to be welcomed in!). Know that you will always be welcome here — come back and visit, or remain here as members.

    And I deliver this charge to all the adults in this church: whenever you meet a young adult who grew up in a Unitarian Universalist church, you have the privilege and the responsibility to welcome them here in this church — just as other Unitarian Universalist congregations will have the privilege (and responsibility) to welcome some of our young people into their congregations.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning comes from Kenneth Patton:

    “The family is the center of devotion; we declare it so. The child justifies the family, for no child survives without its nurture. We live for the family, more than we live for nation, corporation, or religion. Parents have one superlative function, to bring new lives into the world, to share in the creation of persons. The old man, sorting essential works from trivia, knows fatherhood was the best of what he had to do.”

    [Patton, Hymns for Humanity.]

    (I would add, that those of us whose families are child-free are equally responsible for children, for all children, the children of humanity.)

    The second reading consists of two aphorisms from Ben Franklin’s 1739 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac:

    “Honour thy Father and Mother, i. e. Live so as to be an Honour to them tho’ they are dead.”

    “Let our Fathers and Grandfathers be valued for their Goodness, ourselves for our own.”

    So end this morning’s readings. Though I have to admit, as I thought about these two sayings, the less sure of them I became. The sermon will, in part, be an attempt to make these sayings a little less slippery.

    Sermon

    “Can you fix it, Dad?” I’m not sure I ever asked that exact question of my own father, but it’s the classic question for children to ask of their parents.

    And right at the outset, I should point out that even though we’re in the fourth wave of feminism in North America, our culture still thinks that men are better at fixing things and women are better at nurturing;– thus, in families with two parents of opposite gender, when we hear the question, “Can you fix it?” many of us are likely to imagine that the child is asking her or his father to fix something. Of course, that’s not necessarily the case in the real world. In my family of origin, both my mother and my father were equally good at fixing things for us when we were small. So both mothers and fathers are perfectly good at fixing things. But because it’s Father’s Day today, I’m going to talk about fathers.

    “Can you fix it, Dad?” It seems to me that young children are most likely to ask to have very concrete things fixed:– a broken doll loses its arm, or a broken toy truck loses a wheel, and the child asks, “Can you fix it?” What adult could resist such an appeal from a child? Dad bends down and fixes the doll or the toy truck. Maybe it’s not the best repair job in the world, but from the child’s point of view it’s a miracle, and the child is impressed by Dad’s love and power and kindness.

    A string of repair jobs follows. Dad stitches together a toy tiger which has somehow lost its head. The repair jobs get more complex. The child presents Dad with a broken tricycle, and Dad has to ask some friends at work how in tunket you repair a broken spoke on a tricycle, and then Dad has to borrow a spoke wrench, find out where you can buy a tricycle spoke, turn the cussed thing upside down, tell the child to go away so as not to hear Dad’s swearing, and repair the stupid thing. At last it’s done, and again the child is impressed by Dad’s love and power and kindness — and perhaps has learned some new words too boot.

    These repair jobs get progressively more difficult. The difficulty increases exponentially with the age of the child. Soon they get so difficult that even Dad can’t fix it. The family cat or dog dies, the child is at last old enough to understand death, and the child realizes that Dad can’t fix death. The family experiences discrimination of some kind, the child is old enough to realize the emotional impact of discrimination, and the child sees that Dad can’t seem to do anything about it. In my own case, Dad and I were playing baseball in the back yard. I pitched the ball to Dad, he hit a little pop fly straight at me, and I was too slow and clueless to either duck or put my glove in front of my face. The ball whacked me on the forehead, and though it didn’t hurt that much, that whack on the head provided a moment of enlightenment that made me realize first of all that Dad couldn’t protect me from myself; and then I realized that Dad couldn’t fix my essential inability to play team sports.

    At some point, each one of us realizes that our parents aren’t all-powerful. That moment came for me with a dramatic whack on the head when I was seven or eight years old. That’s a pretty common age for children to come to the realization that our parents aren’t quite as all-powerful as we had originally believed. The effects of this realization can reach far and wide in the child’s life. The effects can be relatively trivial — not long after I got that whack on the head, I gave up on baseball, joined the Cub Scouts, and followed in Dad’s footsteps by pursuing outdoors sports like fishing and boating and hiking.

    Or the effects can be quite profound….

    By the age of seven or eight, many children have finally become aware that their parents are not all-powerful, and I think that’s why many traditional religions have a rite of passage for children of that age. Some traditional Christian churches allow children to participate in their first communion when the child is seven or eight. Although I can’t accept the theology behind it, the ritual of first communion makes good psychological sense. Just when the child has come to doubt that his or her own father is all-powerful and capable of fixing anything, the religious community comes along and affirms the existence of an all-powerful father-God with whom one can have mystical union through the ritual of communion.

    Of course, the idea of an all-powerful father-God doesn’t work any better in the long run than the idea that your own flesh-and-blood father is all-powerful. In some traditional religious communities, people of that religion learn to talk to their father-God through prayer and they might even ask, “Can you fix it, Father? Can you fix it, God?” From what I’ve seen, the notion that God can fix anything only lasts until the teenage years. But the moment always seems to come when the young person’s prayer goes unanswered, at which point the young person either has to develop a more subtle way of understanding God, or the young person winds up rejecting the notion of an all-powerful father-figure and often rejecting her or his childhood religion. Both options seem to be perfectly valid — perfectly valid, that is, as long as the young person comes to realize that the world is a flawed place, filled with injustice and many kinds of evils, and that there is no one out there — not your own dad, not God — who can fix your life and make everything all better.

    And if you want to know why some young teenagers seem to be really, really cranky, who wouldn’t be cranky when you have to face up to the fact that the world is filled with injustice and evil and no one’s going to fix it for you?

    We adults know that the world is filled with injustice and evil, and we know that no one is going to fix things for us. When I hear the question, “Can you fix it, Dad?”, I have a twinge of nostalgia, remembering my days as a young child when I thought Dad could fix anything. As an adult, I now know that no one can fix everything. From my religious point of view, that means that I can’t honestly believe in a God that is all-knowing, completely good, and all-powerful — because such a God would surely know when bad things happen to me, such a God would want to fix the bad things that happen to me, and such a God would have the power to fix the bad things that happen to me. And since bad things keep happening to me, the evidence leads me to conclude that there is no God that is all-knowing, completely good, and all-powerful. The answer to the question, “Can you fix it, Dad?” is always — No, not really.

    Many people, when they reach to this conclusion, just give up the whole notion of God — I’ll talk about that option in just a moment. But many people find alternative ways to understand God, and I’ll tell you about two such God-concepts that happen to be current in Unitarian Universalist circles.

    First, there’s so-called “process theology,” which I have to admit that I don’t fully understand. But as I understand it, the process theologians tell us that God is changing and growing and evolving — that’s why it’s called “process theology,” because God is in process. Well, that would imply that God is not all-knowing, completely good, and all-powerful. It’s sort of like when you go into the photocopy shop, and you see the sign on the wall that says, “Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick two.” So maybe if you walk into the office of a process theologian, you’d see a sign on the wall that says: “All-knowing. Completely good. All-powerful. Pick two.” But I’ll tell you what it’s really like. It’s really like your younger self suddenly realizing that your Dad can’t fix everything in the world, and that he is fallible and growing and changing, just as you yourself are. That’s process theology.

    Another way that some Unitarian Universalists understand God goes under the general heading of Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is a pretty vague term these days, and it can include everyone from Emersonians to Goddess worshippers to ecological activists. Most Transcendentalists see divinity in the processes of Nature, and some would even say that all of Nature is divine, is God. Transcendentalists impress me as being essentially optimistic, believing that the arc of the universe tends towards goodness, which leads to them fighting against human-created injustice. If Transcendentalists had to choose from all-knowing, completely good, and all-powerful, I think most of them would choose just one — that God is completely good — the rest is up to us. And that’s like your younger self realizing that what your dad really offers you is his love, and pretty much everything else is going to be up to you.

    What about those among us who don’t believe in God? There are many ways to not believe in God, but I’ll just talk about the one most common option that happens to be current in Unitarian Universalist circles today.

    The best-known option for religious people who don’t believe in God is humanism. I would define humanism as deep trust in the human capacity for good. Humanists also acknowledge that humans beings do not always act in good ways, which means that we have to figure out how to build a society that helps us act in the best ways possible. Humanism requires of us that we work together with other human beings to address the very real problems that we’re facing. Perhaps humanism can best be compared to your younger self coming to the long, slow realization that your dad is not superhuman, but that he is human just like you, he’s just another human being that maybe you can work with to address the world’s problems.

    At some point in your life, you realize that your dad can’t fix everything because your dad is fallible, and he is growing and changing. At some point in your life, you realize that what your dad really offers is his love, and even though it must be admitted that not all dads are able to offer that we can acknowledge more generally that love is the most powerful force in the universe. At some point in your life, you realize that your dad is fully human, with all that statement implies.

    I began by asking the questions: “Can you fix it, dad?” The short answer is no. When I finally figured that out, I got along much better with my dad; and it was easier on my dad when he knew that I knew that he couldn’t fix everything about my life. I know my dad can’t fix the world. My dad doesn’t try to fix my world. We’ve gotten to the point where we just talk like two human beings.

    And what do Dad and I talk about? Well, we often talk about what’s wrong with the world; that is to say, we often talk about what needs to be fixed.

    I don’t want to speak for my dad, but I think he and I both agree that the primary moral and ethical problem confronting anyone living in the United States today is the fact that we are involved in a long-running war in Iraq. My dad and I both happen to believe that the Iraq war is immoral and unethical; but neither one of us believes that some father-God is going to come and end the war for me. Nor do we believe that the United States has some father-God on my side, and that therefore anyone who disagrees with our country is automatically wrong.

    That is to say, we do not believe that some magically powerful figure is going to fix all the problems of the world. And that means that we know full well that if something is going to be done about the war in Iraq, it’s up to us to do it. Dad belongs to Veterans for Peace — he’s a veteran of the Second World War — and he marches with the Veterans for Peace in town parades. He also witnesses for peace in his Unitarian Universalist church. For my part, I preach peace from this pulpit once in a while — not so much as to bore you — and I try to carve out enough time to witness publicly for peace; so I joined some Quakers in a public witness for peace in front of the Capitol building in Washington, DC, a couple of months ago.

    I no longer say to my father, “Can you fix it, dad?” Now we say to each other, “How can we fix it together?” My wish for fathers, and for all parents, is that their children grow and mature enough so that they can ask that same question of their children: How can we fix it together? And my wish for all children is that they might have a relationship with their parents where they can ask: How can we fix it together? This will not be possible for all parents nor for all children; it is an ideal, limited by the realities of parent-child relationships.

    But if I had one wish on this Father’s Day, this is what I would wish: That, to the extent possible, children will grow up and mature to the point where they can look their parents steadily in the eye and say, Let’s work together to fix this mess we’re in. That allows us to value our parents for their Goodness, and it allows us to value ourselves for our own goodness. So we would honor the human race, honor ourselves by fixing injustices as best we can, slowly building a heaven here on earth.

  • Flower Celebration

    This worship service was conducted by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the homily below is a reading text. The actual homily as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Homily copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Child dedication

    This worship service included a child dedication ceremony for two children of the church.

    Minister’s introduction to the child dedication

    In just a moment, we’re going to celebrate the christening of two children. But before we do that, let me tell you a little bit about what a christening is, and how it differs from a child dedication.

    You probably know that our church has Universalist roots — First Universalist merged with First Unitarian in 1930. The Universalists have long done child dedications instead of baptisms. By 1793, the celebrated Universalist minister John Murray was performing child-dedications rather than baptisms [Life of Murray, 1854 ed., pp. 243-244], since as a Universalist Murray did not believe in the necessity of washing away some mythical original sin through baptism.

    Unitarians evolved somewhat differently. By the time I was christened in a Unitarian church, just before merger with the Universalists, a Unitarian christening welcomed the child into a church that recognized, as I was taught as a child, the spiritual leadership of Jesus. But in both ceremonies, the children were formally welcomed into the church family.

    These days, during a child dedication we dedicate a child to the highest ideals of morality and ethics; while a Unitarian Universalist christening more specifically acknowledges our spiritual roots in the teachings of that great spiritual master, Jesus of Nazareth.

    Gathering the flowers

    83 years ago, Norbert and Maja Capek were ministers of a Unitarian congregation far away from here in Europe, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Most members of their congregation had left other religions to become Unitarians, and many of these people did not want to be reminded of the religions they had left behind. So Norbert and Maja Capek decided to create a new ritual for their congregation — a Flower Celebration.

    One Sunday in June, they asked everyone in the congregation to bring a flower to the worship service. When people arrived on Sunday morning, all the flowers were gathered together in vases, and Norbert Capek said a short blessing over the flowers. Thus the flowers became symbols of what it means to be a human being: every flower was different, every flower was beautiful in its own way. And at the end of the worship service, everyone went up and took a flower, a different flower from the one that they had brought, took that flower home with them as a symbol of their connection to everyone else in the congregation.

    We are going to have our own Flower Celebration, or Flower Communion, right here in our own congregation. In just a moment, we will all have a chance to come forward and place a flower in the vases on the table here. If you forgot to bring a flower with you this morning, or if you didn’t know that you were supposed to bring a flower, you will find extra flowers on the table over there, and you can come up, pick a flower you like, and place it in one of the vases here.

    Because we value our children highly — for our children represent new beginnings and new possibilities — I am going to let the children be the first ones to bring their flowers forward. I invite the children to come forward now, and you may bring an adult along if you wish….

    [Children come forward]

    And now I invite everyone to come forward and place a flower in the vase here.

    [All come forward]

    This short blessing was written by Norbert Capek:

    “Infinite Spirit of Life, we ask your blessing on these [flowers], your messengers of fellowship and love. May they remind us, amid diversities of knowledge and of gifts, to be one in desire and affection, and in devotion to your will. May they also remind us of the value of comradeship, of doing and sharing alike. May we cherish friendship as one of your most precious gifts. May we not let awareness of another’s talents discourage us, or sully our relationship, but may we realize that, whatever we can do, great or small, the efforts of all of us are needed to do your work in this world.”

    Readings

    Not long before he was put to death by the Nazis, Dr. Capek wrote this prayer:

    It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals.
    Oh blow ye evil winds into my body’s fire; my soul you’ll never unravel.
    Even though disappointed a thousand times or fallen in the fight and everything would worthless seem,
    I have lived amidst eternity.
    Be grateful, my soul,
    My life was worth living.
    He who was pressed from all sides but remained victorious in spirit is welcomed into the choir of heroes.
    He who overcame the fetters giving wing to the mind is entering into the golden age of the victorious.

    The second reading comes from the book Norbert Fabian Capek: A Spiritual Journey, by Richard Henry. Henry quotes Maja Capek, Norbert’s husband, as saying:

    “During all his years in America Capek never had an interest in finding out more about the Unitarian church. Why should he be interested in a church that had no missionary spirit, was not willing to give a hand to a groping soul?”

    Homily — “Giving a Hand to a Groping Soul”

    In June, 1914, a Baptist minister named Norbert Capek came to the United States from Bohemia and Moravia — what we now call the Czech Republic. In 1913, Austria had taken away Bohemia’s autonomy, and by April, 1914, the outspoken Capek was on a police blacklist. Nor was he any more welcome within the Baptist church; a friend told him politely that he sounded like a Unitarian, while others less politely called him a heretic. So he left his homeland with his family and came to New York.

    Once in America, he served as minister to Slovak Baptist churches, though with increasing discomfort on his part. His new wife, Maja — his wife Marie had died not long after arriving in America — Maja encouraged his doubts, encouraged him to rethink his spiritual position. After the Baptists tried him for heresy twice, he finally resigned his ministry in 1919.

    So there he was, without a church, without a denomination. And at the same time, he and Maja watched avidly as the new country, Czechoslovakia, was born. They wanted to go back and be part of their homeland’s liberation. Specifically, they wanted to be a part of their homeland’s spiritual liberation. What we now know as the Czech Republic had been a Protestant country until 1620 when the Hapsburg monarchy began oppressing Protestants, eventually forcing all Protestants to convert to Catholicism. After World War One, when the Hapsburg monarchy ended, Czechs began leaving the Catholic church by the thousands. Maja and Norbert Capek wanted to be in Czechoslovakia to found a liberal church for those thousands of people. But where could they get support for such a liberal church?

    Ten years earlier, Norbert had approached the American Unitarian Association, asking them if they would support an earlier effort to found a liberal church in Czechoslovakia. But the American Unitarian Association had simply ignored Capek. It was as if someone came to our church, told us how they agreed with our religious values, felt in harmony with us — and in response we just ignored them and walked away. I feel ashamed at the way those Unitarians back in 1910 treated Norbert Capek. And so it was that Maja Capek later remembered, as we heard in the second reading: “During all his years in America Capek never had an interest in finding out more about the Unitarian church. Why should he be interested in a church that had no missionary spirit, was not willing to give a hand to a groping soul?”

    However… by 1920 the Capek children wanted to go to Sunday school. The Capek family was living in East Orange, New Jersey then. One Sunday, the children went off to Sunday school at one church. When they came back, their father and mother quizzed them about what they had learned; but that church was teaching their children the old repressive dogmas, and Norbert said that he wished the children would go to a different Sunday school the next week.

    Well, this went on for a few weeks. The children would go off to Sunday school, and their parents would quiz them when they got home. When Norbert and Maja heard the same old orthodox Christian doctrines, they asked their children if they would please try a new church the next week.

    Until one Sunday, when things were different. Years later, Maja Capek recalled:

    “One Sunday they came home and Capek was very much pleased with the lessons they had learned. He encouraged them to keep going there. And the, being curious about what this church had for adults, Capek and I went one Sunday. It was a small church, and we wanted to slip out unnoticed. But we could not get by the minister who stood at the entrance shaking hands and talking with everyone present. When our turn came, he said to us, ‘I believe you are new here. I have never seen you before.’ We said we were and then we confessed that we were the parents of three children in his Sunday school. And we told him how much we liked what the children were learning there.”

    Do I need to tell you that it was the Unitarian church in East Orange that Maja and Norbert Capek liked so much? Even though the American Unitarian Association had ignored Norbert ten years earlier, the local Unitarian church held out a hand to him and to Maja. The minister of that church, Walter Reid Hunt, arranged to introduce the Capeks to the president of the American Unitarian Association, Samuel A. Eliot. And once Eliot actually met Norbert, he realized that this was an experienced, capable minister who deserved the full financial and moral support of the American Unitarian Association.

    With that moral and financial backing, Norbert and Maja went back to Czechoslovakia. Before he left, on June 5, 1921, Norbert gave a farewell talk to his friends in the Unitarian church in East Orange New Jersey. He told them how they had restored his faith in Unitarians, after having been snubbed earlier. He told them what he liked about that Unitarian church:

    “…I found not only clear heads but warm hearts, too. I liked the deep and inspiring sermons of Mr. Hunt, I enjoyed the sweet music of Mr. Decker, I loved to join in the bouyant, light-winged singing of the congregation, and especially I was enthusiastic about my [children], what they told me about their Sunday school and their teachers. It is certainly the best Sunday school I ever saw.

    “But above all I liked what is so difficult to describe, what is more than a friendly smile, more than a kind word of greeting — it is that personal touch of a soul that has vision, it is the heart of religion in the heart of this congregation.”

    My friends, Norbert Capek could have been describing this very congregation, First Unitarian in New Bedford. I cannot claim to preach deep and inspiring sermons, but at least they’re religiously liberal. But Randy’s sweet music, the good singing of this congregation (when you like the hymns you are asked to sing, that is), the non-dogmatic teaching of our Sunday school, the friendly smiles, the kind words of greeting — we here have that personal touch of a soul that has vision. That is the heart of religion, which is the heart of this congregation.

    Not that we make a big deal out of ourselves. We are not like the hypocrites who have those television shows, the ones praying and wailing and asking for money, and putting on a grand show. That’s all you get from them, a grand show, but there’s no real religion at the heart of all that preaching and praying and weeping and wailing. We are quieter, and not so showy. But when you head out to social hour and start talking with the members and friends of this church, you realize that these are souls with vision.

    For many of us, our souls have visions of an earth made fair with all her people free; that is to say, we will not rest until we have instituted heaven here on earth. For others of us, our souls have intellectual and spiritual and artistic visions that extend beyond mere transient dogmas to that which is permanent in religion. Our souls have visions of personal integrity, where we try to treat each person as having that of the divine within. Our souls have visions of a universe in which love is the most powerful force. Go out into social hour, and in those ordinary-looking people I see souls of vision. Go out into social hour, and underneath the ordinary conversations, I hear souls with depth and intensity sounding forth.

    Each member and friend of this church is on his or her own spiritual journey, and most of us — maybe even all of us — take this pretty seriously. And I see individuals in this church reaching out to each other, and reaching out to visitors and newcomers, extending a hand to a groping soul. So it is that the strength of this church lies in the individual characters of each of us, its members and friends.

    Let me get back to Norbert and Maja Capek before I end. By 1922, they had begun a new liberal congregation in Prague. Soon, they realized the need for new religious ceremonies, and so on June 24, 1923, Norbert Capek organized the first flower celebration. He described that first flower celebration to Samuel Eliot:

    “…in my sermon I put emphasis on the individual character of each ‘member-flower,’ on our liberty as a foundation of our fellowship. Then I emphasized our common cause, our belonging together as one spiritual community…. And when we go home, each takes one flower just as it comes without making any distinction where it came from and who it represents, to confess that we accept each other as brothers and sisters without regard to race, class, or other distinction, acknowledging everybody is our friend who is a human and who wants to be good.”

    So it is that in just a moment, we will come forward and take a flower from the communal vase, take a flower without regard to race, class, or any other distinction. So it is that we recognize that we are all connected to one another, all humanity is connected, and in that connection lies whatever salvation we shall find. How could it be otherwise? –for whenever we extend our hand to a groping soul, to another human being — whenever we take a hand that has been extended to us — there is hope; there is true salvation; there is the power of love.

    The exchange of flowers

    The poet William Blake wrote:

        To see a World in a grain of Sand
        And a heaven in a Wild Flower,
        Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
        And Eternity in an hour.

    Please come forward now, and take one flower, a flower different from the one you put into the vase, without regard to where it came from, without regard to the race, class, sexual orientation, age, gender, or national origin of the person who put it there.

    [All come forward to take flower.]

    We have each taken a flower, a blossom unique and like no other. So we affirm that we are all brothers and sisters. This flower in your hand may fade, but every spring flowers bloom; nor will they ever stop. Everett Hoagland sent me a poem by the poet Bassho that tells us why:

        the temple bell stops
        but the sound keeps coming
        out of the flowers

    — trans. Robert Bly

  • Question and response sermon

    This service was conducted by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford.

    Readings

    Before the first reading this morning, I should a word or two about what a “Question and Response Sermon” is.

    In our religious tradition, what holds us together is not a creed, but a covenant, a set of voluntary agreements and promises we make to one another. In other words, our religious tradition emphasizes relationship, not belief.

    This state of affairs is confusing to some people — How, they ask, can you have a religion if you don’t believe in anything? One possible response to this question is that we think it’s better to concentrate on the promises that hold us together, rather than abstract beliefs which would more than likely drive us apart. Another possible response to this question is that of course we do believe in things — life and love and the power of truth. And another possible response to this question is that we believe in the power of questions — and when the glue that holds us together is relationships, we are freed to ask difficult and interesting questions; and the responses to those questions often lead us to engage in further questioning together.

    The first reading this morning comes from Henry Thoreau’s book Walden, the opening sentences of the chapter titled “The Pond in Winter.”

    “After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what — how — when — where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.”

    So writes Henry Thoreau, telling us either that questions may not be as important as we think, or that a sufficient answer to any question may be had by simply looking reality in the face.

    …

    Before I get to the second reading, let me say another word or two about this Question and Response Sermon. My sermons are usually written in response to something someone in this congregation has said to me. But in a question-and-response sermon, the relationship is a little more direct. You ask questions about religion, and I respond to them right here and now. You will note that I said I will respond to your questions, but I won’t pretend to answer them, for when it comes to religion I haven’t yet found a final answer to anything. If I don’t get to respond to all the questions this morning, I promise that I will provide written responses in the summer newsletters. And I’m sure some of the questions will be so meaty and interesting that I will want to address them more fully in sermon sometime in the next twelve months.

    The second reading this morning is one of the readings I used for last year’s Question and Response sermon, but it was just so good I can’t resist using it again. This is from one of Mark Twain’s speeches, given at a 1909 banquet honoring one of his friends, Mr. H. H. Rogers. I should tell you that at the time of this speech, a half crown would have been worth about sixty cents. Mark Twain said:

    “[Others have said] Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is. It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know lots of private things in his life which people don’t know, and I know how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to ask questions. He did not like to appear ignorant…. On board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. He did not like to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn’t know; but rather than be ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in bed he could not sleep. He wondered if he could afford that outlay in case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: ‘A king’s crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000.’ He could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.”

    Thus Mark Twain proves that we should ask questions….

    The Question and Response Sermon was entirely extemporaneous, and so cannot be reproduced here.