Dan Harper | Sermons

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson Speaks

    Worship service conducted by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. See note below.

    Readings

    The first reading is from Ellen Tucker Emerson’s biography of her mother, Lidian Jackson Emerson. In this passage, Ellen describes the first time her mother saw Ellen’s father, in 1829 :

    “On one Sunday when Mother was in Boston she went to Dr. Barrett’s church at Chambers St. and had a seat at the side of the pulpit. When she looked at the minister she was struck by his long neck, she didn’t know a human being could have a neck so long. He began the service. When church was over she found herself leaning eagerly forward, and as she looked back on the whole dear and beautiful service, and noticed that she now felt tired of her position, she made up her mind that she must have taken that position when the minister said his first words and had been too much absorbed to move from beginning to end. She inquired who the preacher was and was told it was Ralph Waldo Emerson….”

    Second reading —

    I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

    [Psalms 139.14]

    Sermon

    This is a re-creation of a sermon preached by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Please read the “Note on the sermon” below.

    Everybody knows that he is wonderfully made. And yet it will occur sometimes to a thoughtful mind as strange, that we do not continually break out into expressions of astonishment at ourselves. When an Asiatic prince came to Paris and was asked what seemed to him most surprising in that capital, he replied “to find himself there.” With better reason, a man might say that, to himself, his own existence in the world was more amazing than any other fact. I believe almost no few person does perceive the exceeding strangeness of their own constitution, and yet it is more wondrous than any fiction that was ever conceived. “Truth is strange — stranger than fiction.”

    The proposition that “we are wonderfully made,” is applied by people generally to the external condition of men and admitted without debate and without afterthought. And surely our external constitution is ingenious enough to justify the expression.

    The fine contrivance in every part of our frame, the perfect fitting of the members, the admirable working of the whole machine transcend all praise : Then, the fitness of man to the earth; and his peaceful dwelling among the cattle, the birds, and the fish, turning the earth into his garden and pleasure ground, the round of the seasons, and the universal order of the plants, is all set down in the books. The external fitness is wonderful indeed ; — but I doubt if to those who saw this only it would have ever occurred (in the first instance) to remark upon the marvel. It has been said with some ingenuity of conjecture that “without the phenomenon of sleep, we should be atheists” ; because, if we had no experience of the interruption of the activity of the Will, “we would never be brought to a sense and acknowledgment of its dependence on the Divine Will.” With more assurance it may be said of the things apprehended by the senses, that they are so nicely grooved into one another that the sight of one suggests the next preceding and this the next before, that the understanding would run forever in the round of second causes, so that we see men go through life and die without surprise, but that the Reason sometimes grows impatient of the narrow circlet, and demands tidings of the First Cause. Were there not graver considerations to be remembered, there is something almost comic in seeing such a creature as is a man growing up with perfect senses and faculties, and going in and out for seventy years amid the shows of nature and of humanity making up his mouth every day to express all degrees of surprise at every impertinent trifle, and never suspecting all the time that it is even remarkable he should exist.

    But superficial views will not always satisfy us. It will not always suffice us to ask why this bone is thus terminated and be answered that it may fit that socket, or why is this animal thus configured, and be answered that the residence and the food of the animal requires such frame but the question starts up and almost with terror within us, why the animal or any animal exists? to what farther end its being has regard beyond this nice tissue of neighboring facts? Why organization, why order exist? Nay, why this interrogator exists, and what he is?

    Indeed if you will steadily contemplate the bare fact of your existence as a man, it is one of such bewildering, astonishment that it seems it were the part of reason to spend one’s lifetime in a trance of wonder — altogether more rational to lift one’s hands in blank amaze — than to assume the least shadow of dogmatism or pride.

    I say these things because I think that man has not yet arrived at a just perception of his own position and duties in the Creation, who is not yet alive to the miracle that surrounds him. “Let others wrangle,” said the pious Augustine, “I will wonder.” It is related of the wisest man in the ancient world, the Athenian Socrates, that on one occasion he stopped short in his walk and stood stock still in a fast contemplation from sunset to sunrise in a rapture of amazement.

    But we may be conscious of the mystery without always saying so. Certainly ; and a man might be well forgiven his omission to express his admiration of that which is, if his employments indicated any sense of his powers and relations.

    But see the oddity of his demeanor. This little creature set down, he knows not how, amid all the sublimities of the moving universe, sharp-sighted enough to find out the movement not only of the sphere he inhabits but of all the spheres in the depths around him ; and not only so, but capable by the subtle powers of intellect and affection of acting upon remote men as upon himself : Yes, and from his little hour extending the arms of his influence through thousands of years, and to millions of millions of rational men : Nay, by means of virtue of entering instantly upon a life that seems to make the whole grandeur of the Creation pale and visionary : — Yet this little creature, quite unmindful of these vast prerogatives, struts about with immense activity to procure various meats to eat, and stuffs to wear, and most of all salutations and marks of respect from his fellows. He seems to think it quite natural he should be here, and things should be as they are, — so natural, as not to deserve a second thought : And the moment he has got a neat house to sit down and to eat and to sleep in, he is so possessed with a sense of his importance, that he not only thinks he deserves much more attention than if he knew the whole order of the creation, but he expects confidently great deference from his fellow men.

    We go so gravely about our ordinary trifling employments that we are apt to lose the sense of the absurdity of much that we do. We allow by acquiescence a man that has more houses and ships and farms than his neighbors, to assume consequence in his manners on that ground. Although we know very well, when we ponder the matter, that if instead of a few thousand acres of land, or a score of ships or houses, he owned the entire property of the civilized world, he would be as much in the dark, as mortal, and as insufficient to himself as he is now. He could not then solve not so much as one word of the vast mystery that envelopes us ; he would not have a particle more of real power. In the great All, he would be the very insect he is now.

    Yet the extent and consistency of the world’s farce keeps each particular puppet in countenance, and we go on in the universal hunt for station and real estate and horses and coaches and ships and stocks and attentions and compliments, hiding the vanity of the whole thing in the confusion of the particulars. Is it not as if one should have a nest of a hundred boxes, and nothing in the last box?

    And hence the wise laughter of the ancient philosopher Democritus who made a jest of all human society and pursuits. No wise man he said could keep his countenance in view of such utter folly.

    There is much that is ludicrous in the solemnity with which we labor year after year until we fall sick and die in the work of taking a little from that heap and adding it to this other which we are pleased to call mine. We have no leisure to laugh, we are so intent upon the work. We keep each other in countenance and as all are agreed to consider it in the ludicrous language of the world “the main chance,” the nonsense of the whole thing is carefully kept out of sight.

    But why call it ludicrous? Is it not necessary that we acquire property? –Assuredly it is. Let us carefully distinguish between wisdom and folly. We are of an animal constitution and have animal wants, which must be supplied and indispensably demand continual exertion. This whole matter of commerce, — a net woven round every man — grows out of it and it is good that every man should do his part ; and one sow the field, and one weave the cloth, and one draw the contracts, and one plough the sea, and one build the ship, one throw the harpoon. There’s much that is wonderful but nothing that is ludicrous in this simply considered.

    The ludicrous part of it is in the acting as if it were the ultimate end ; just that for which we lived ; and the entire oversight of the end for which this is only means. The proud man, the sensualist, the denier of divine power, the avaricious, the selfish : — By such earthworms the wonder of our being is not perceived, they are merely the highest class of animals, and like ants and horses and elephants, they do not perceive anything extraordinary in their life.

    And what remedy? What can save us from this capital error, or repair it? The exercise of Reason, the act of reflection redeems a man at once out of this brutishness; the man who reflects is a man, and not an animal. I take it to be a main object of that education which this world administers to each soul, to touch the springs of wonder in us, and make us alive to the marvel of our condition. That done, all is done. Before, he was so wrongheaded, so at discord with things around him, that he was ridiculous : now, he is at one with all. He accepts his lot : he perceives the great astonishment. He adores. Awaked to truth and virtue, he perceives the wonder he did not perceive before. The chief wonders of the human condition begin with the act of reason.

    Let me, for more accurate consideration, separate a few of the particulars that amaze the contemplative spirit.

     

    See how cunningly constructed are all things in such a manner as to make each being the centre of the Creation. You seem to be a point or focus upon which all objects, all ages, concentrate their influence : nothing past but affects you ; nothing remote but through some means reaches you. Every superficial grain of sand may be considered as the fixed point round which all things revolve, so intimately is it allied to all, and so truly do all turn as if for it alone. This is true to the least leaf or moss.

    Who has ever selected one individual from the annual reproduction of nature without profoundest astonishment? — Who has not seen the summer blackberry lifting his polished surface a few inches from the ground without wondering : How did that little chemist extract from the sandy soil the spices and sweetness it has concocted in its cells? The whole creation has been at the cost of its nurture. A globe of fire near a hundred millions of miles distant in the great space has been flooding it with light and heat as if he shone for no other. It is six or seven months that the sun has made the tour of the heavens every day over this little sprout before it could bear its fruit. The sea has evaporated its countless tuns of water into the atmosphere that the rain of heaven might wet the roots of this little vine. The elastic air exhaled from all creatures and all minerals and yielded the small pensioner the gaseous aliment it required. The earth by the attraction of its mass determined its form and size ; and when we consider how the earth’s attraction is fixed this moment in equilibrium by the innumerable attractions, on every side, of distant bodies, we shall see that the summer blackberry’s form and history is determined by causes and agents the most prodigious and remote.

    What then shall we say of the manner in which one man is made the center round which all things revolve and upon which all things scatter gifts? Let us take one from the crowd — not one of the sons of prosperity but a poor solitary virtuous man who is capable of reflection.

    He stands on the top of the world : he is the centre of the horizon. Morning and Evening lavish their sweetness and their solemnity upon his senses; summer and winter bring to him the instruction of their harvests and their storms. All that he sees and hears, gives him a lesson. Do not the ages that are past record their experience for his tuition, and millions and millions of rational spirits epitomize their fate for his behoof? Is he not continually moved to joy or grief by things said a thousand years ago? He understands them. His soul embraces the act or the sentiment, as if it were done or said for him only. Is not his condition different for every one of the men that has acted upon the world? See how much Luther ; — see how much Calvin, Newton, Columbus, have affected his condition ; — and all the inventors of arts. Do they not give him the unshared total benefit of their wisdom? Does not Socrates, Solomon, Bacon, and Shakespeare counsel him alone? Does not Jesus live for him only? Does not God exist for him only? — and Right, and Wrong, and Wisdom, and Folly? — and the whole of Pleasure ; and of Pain ; and all the Heaven of thought ; — Are they not all poured into his bosom as if the world had no other child?

    And this perfect world exists thus entire to every man, to the poorest drover in the mountains, the poorest laborer in his ditch. Quite independent of his work, are his wonderful endowments. There is enough in him, (granting that he is capable of thought and virtue) to puzzle and outwit all our philosophy. The history of one man, inasmuch as it is searching and profound, is as valuable as the history of a nation. Thoroughly acquaint me with the heart of one living man, though the humblest — and what can Italy or England teach me more, with all their wars and all their laws? Sharpen the insight of these obtuse perceptions of ours and show us the motives, the fancy, the affection, the distorting and coloring lenses that pauper makes use of, and the redeeming power that still sets him right after countless errors, and that promises him a kingdom of heaven whilst he shuffles about in his field; and we shall be able to do without Tacitus, Hume, and Clarendon.

    Thus, in the first place, is each man placed in the focus, at the heart of the world. But that is only half of his power. That is merely to receive influence. He receives only to impart. He is appointed to action. He is an active being and is not designed to be an idle eye before which Nature passes in panorama but is by his action enabled to learn the irresistible properties of moral nature perceived only by the mind as laws difficult to be grasped or defined yet everywhere working out their inevitable results to the last jot and tittle in human affairs, whereupon if a man fall it will grind him to powder. There is nothing in material nature, certainly nothing in fiction, so splendid and perfect as the law of compensations, — the law according to which not an act is done by any moral being draws after it its inevitable fruit which no chance and no art can elude.

    The Creation is so majestically woven that nothing can do him any mischief but himself ; an invisible immortal fence surrounds his whole being, which forever defends him from all harm he wills to resist; that the whole Creation cannot bend him whilst he stands upright ; but on the other hand that every act of his, is judged not hereafter; but instantaneously judged and rewarded : that the lightning loiters by the speed of Retribution ; that every generous effort impulse of his is to its full amount compensated by the instant enlargement and ennobling of his soul ; that his patience disarms calamity ; his love brightens the sun ; his purity destroys temptation ; — Whilst falsehood is a foolish suicide and is never believed ; selfishness separates itself from the happy human family idleness whips itself with discontent ; malice multiplies foes. So that ever it seems, as some have maintained, that he is solicited by good and by evil spirits and that he gives himself up to them whose bidding he does and they labor continually to make him more entirely their own, and induce him and confirm his last action by repetition and by fresh energy of the same kind.

    To open to ourselves, to open to others these laws — is it not worth living for, to make the slavish soul acquainted with the mighty secrets of its own power? — that by self-renouncement a kingdom of heaven of which indeed he had no conception begins at once in his heart ; — by the high act of yielding his will, a total sacrifice, — that little individual heart becomes dilated as with the presence and inhabitation of the Spirit of God.

     

    Shall I select a third trait of our human condition so wonderful, which only begins with reflection, that it turns all our evil to good? — Thus the moment Reason assumes its empire over a man, he finds that he has nothing low and injurious in him but it is, under this dominion, the root of power and beauty ; that which was debasing him, will now prove the very sinew of his character ; his petulance, is the love of order ; and out of his natural necessities grew this complex structure of civilization.

    Nay what he blushes for, and reckons his weakness, because it is different from other men whom he admires, — the odds are, it is what he should throw himself on his knees and thank God for, as his crowning gift. For there is somewhat peculiar in every man, which is, on that account, apt to be neglected, but which must be let grow, and suffered to give direction to the other faculties, if he would attain his acme and be dear and honorable to his brethren. — He finds that whatever disadvantages he has labored under ; whatever uncommon exertions he has been called to make ; whatever poverty ; what sickness ; what unpopularity ; what mistake ; yes, even what deep sin he has been given up to commit ; when once his soul is awaked to truth and virtue, touched with the veneration of God, and stung with the insatiable desire of making every day his soul more perfect — then all these, the darkest worst calamities, the sorest sorrows, are changed, are glorified ; — he owns his deep debt to them and sees (with even rapture) the omnipresent energy of the God who transforms all things into the divine.

    And what is this Admiration? What is it but a perception of his true position in the Universe and his consequent obligation. This is the whole moral and end of such views as I present. I desire a man to consider faithfully in solitude and silence the unknown nature within him, that he may not sink into his own contempt, and be a spectacle of folly to the Universe. I would have him open his eyes to true wonder, that he may never more be agitated by trifles. I would have him convinced that by the act of his own will alone can that which is most worth his study be disclosed to him. I would have him open his eyes to see that the unreflecting laborer is a brute ; that the reflecting laborer only is a man. Let him consider that all riches though convenient to the senses cannot profit himself ; but that a true thought, a worthy deed, puts him at once into harmony with the real and eternal. Let him consider that if he loves respect, he must seek it in what really belongs to a man and not in anything accidental such as fortune or appearance. Instead of making it his pride to be announced as a person of consideration in the state or in his profession, or in the fashionable world, or as a rich or a traveled or a powerful man, let him delight rather to make himself known in all companies by his action and by his discourse as one who has attained unto self-command ; one who has thought in earnest upon the questions of human duty ; one who carries with his presence the terrors and the beauty of justice ; and who, even in the moment when his friends ignorantly censure him, is privy to the virtuous action he has performed, and those he has in hand.

    It is a maxim of state that that an ambassador carries his country with him, so that he and they who belong to him, are not amenable to the laws of the country where they reside, but to their own. The good man always carries his country with him. The miracle which his soul contemplates is so much more to him than all outward objects and events that wherever God is, there is he at home.

    What is in this Admiration of which I speak? Is it not the fountain of religion in his soul? What is it but an acknowledgment of the incomprehensible? — not a sight only but a love and adoration of the Wisdom and Love which breathes through the Creation into the heart. What does the world inspire but a lofty Faith that all will be, that all is well, that the God who thus vouchsafes to reveal himself in all that is great and all that is lovely, will not forsake the child whom every hour and every event and memory and hope educate. What does it intimate but presages of an infinite and a perfect life? What but an assured Trust through all evil and danger and Death.

    Why should we fear Disease, let it come in what unwanted forms it will? — when the soul has once awakened to duty and love no change that merely touches the body can affect its everlasting peace. It is defended and embosomed in the love of God.

    Brethren, I aim in presenting these truths to awaken the divine spirit in us, not to specify single duties. If a man will admit these thoughts, will listen to the pleadings of God through the voice of Nature and the wonders of human life, he will then be not less but more disposed to a faithful performance of his specific duties. He will feel that though all else is visionary and may come to nothing, the love of God remains forever, that Duty which is God’s law is never one moment relaxed, and only in a sacred obedience to it in every moment in every alternative do we bring ourselves into unity and accord with good spirits and with God.

    Note on the sermon

    The following essay is copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    This sermon was originally preached by Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson to the Unitarian congregation in New Bedford on September 7, 1834, in the old wood-frame Unitarian church that once stood on the corner of William and Purchase Streets.

    Why Emerson was in New Bedford

    From 1823 through 1834, Orville Dewey was the minister of the Unitarian church in New Bedford, then known as the First Congregational Society of New Bedford. Dewey was prone to overwork, and by 1833 had so worn himself down that he felt he needed to take several months away from his parish duties. He asked a number of other Unitarian ministers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, to fill the pulpit while he was away.

    In 1833, Emerson was at a crossroads in his life. His first wife was dead after they had been married only three years; then he had resigned as minister of Second Church in Boston, saying that he could no longer in good conscience preside at communion services (at that time a part of the liturgical life of all Unitarian churches); and then he had gone to Europe, where he had met Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, and other intellectuals, and had imbibed the heady atmosphere of Romanticism. When he returned to the United States in the fall of 1833, he needed money and so was pleased to be able to preach for an extended period in New Bedford.

    Emerson was no stranger to New Bedford, having preached here for three Sundays in November, 1827. During the 1833-1834 season, Emerson preached more than a dozen Sundays to the Unitarian congregation in New Bedford : November 10 through December 8, 1833; January 26 through March 30, 1834 (though not on February 23 or March 2 when he was preaching to the Unitarian congregation in Plymouth, at which time he met Lydia Jackson Emerson, the woman who was to become his second wife); and finally on September 7, 1834. In those days, there were services on Sunday morning and evening, so Emerson preached approximately 30 sermons in New Bedford in 1833-1834. Of the sermons Emerson preached here for which we have texts, only one was delivered first in New Bedford; all the others were sermons he had previously preached to other Unitarian churches. But the sermon you will hear this morning is one that Emerson apparently wrote specifically for the New Bedford congregation.

    The scholar Robert D. Richardson, Jr., tells us that in 1834 Emerson had at last reached his full maturity as a writer. Thus the Emerson who preached in New Bedford in 1834 had already arrived at his mature prose style, “an appropriate language for the direct statement of personal intuition” (Richardson, pp. 179-180). You can hear Emerson’s mature writing in this sermon.

    Emerson after New Bedford

    New Bedford wound up having a permanent effect on Emerson. While staying here in 1833-1834, he got to know Mary Rotch, a remarkable religious thinker in her own right. By 1833, Rotch, a Quaker by birth, had become a member of the Unitarian church after having been ejected from the city’s Quaker meeting for her too-liberal theology. Emerson met this profound and liberal thinker at a key moment in his intellectual life, and many scholars have pointed out his indebtedness to Rotch’s theology.

    Emerson could have remained in the city, had he wished. Orville Dewey’s health had been so broken down that in 1834 he resigned as minister of the New Bedford congregation. The congregation asked Emerson to replace Dewey, but Emerson said that he could not in good conscience preside at the communion table, and that he could only offer a prayer if he happened to be moved to do so. Surely he knew this would be unacceptable, and of course the church balked at his terms. Instead of serving the Unitarian church in New Bedford, Emerson made the choice to devote himself to writing and lecturing. By October, 1834, Emerson was living in his grandfather’s house in Concord, Massachusetts, and writing the essays and poems that would first make him famous.

    About the text of the sermon

    The text of the sermon today is taken from The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 4. Emerson rarely provided titles for his sermons, so this is known as sermon no. 169.

    Sermon 169 exists in two variants, 169A and 169B. The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson offers both variants, but considers 169B to be the definitive version. Since 169A was the earlier version, the version he preached in New Bedford, I have generally chosen to preach the earlier, non-definitive, text, although I sometimes included material from the later sermon when that later material helped clarify the earlier version.

    In The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 169A appears as an exact transcription from the manuscript, including deleted phrases, insertions, incomplete sentences, etc. No doubt Emerson could preach from such a text, since he knew what he wanted to say; however, I had to make many decisions between alternate words and phrases, and I have had omitted what seemed to me to be extraneous material. I have also modified punctuation in several places, to help me read the text. Thus, while I have done my best to stay true to Emerson’s original intent, the sermon you are hearing today is in fact my editorial creation.

    Finally, it should be said that Emerson was a gifted preacher, a genius as a public speaker. My own ability as a speaker does not come close to his level. Yet sermons are meant to be spoken, not read; so while I cannot match his delivery it is always better to hear Emerson’s sermons read aloud than to merely read them in a book.

    — Dan Harper

    References

    Allen, Gay Wilson. Waldo Emerson: A biography. Viking Press, 1991.
    Emerson, Ellen Tucker. The life of Lydian Jackson Emerson. Ed. Delores Bird Carpenter. Michigan State University Press, 1992.
    Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 4. Ed. Wesley T. Mott; series editor, Albert J. Frank. University of Missouri Press, 1992.
    Richardson, Robert D., Jr. Emerson: The mind on fire. University of California Press, 1995.

  • Christmas Envy

    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.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning comes from the ancient story of Joseph, as it is told in the Torah. The Hebrew Joseph has been sold into slavery down in Egypt by his brothers, and though he had a kind master, after a time he was thrown into jail on unjust charges. Meanwhile, the rule of Egypt, Pharaoh, had a very unpleasant dream one night, and that’s where this reading picks up the story:

    “In the morning, Pharaoh’s spirit was troubled; so he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but there was no one who could interpret them to Pharaoh.

    “Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, ‘I remember my faults today. Once Pharaoh was angry with his servants, and put me and the chief baker in custody in the house of the captain of the guard. We dreamed on the same night, he and I, each having a dream with its own meaning. A young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. When we told him, he interpreted our dreams to us, giving an interpretation to each according to his dream. As he interpreted to us, so it turned out; I was restored to my office, and the baker was hanged.’

    “Then Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and he was hurriedly brought out of the dungeon. When he had shaved himself and changed his clothes, he came in before Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.’ Joseph answered Pharaoh, ‘It is not I; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.’ Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘In my dream I was standing on the banks of the Nile; 18and seven cows, fat and sleek, came up out of the Nile and fed in the reed grass. Then seven other cows came up after them, poor, very ugly, and thin. Never had I seen such ugly ones in all the land of Egypt. The thin and ugly cows ate up the first seven fat cows, but when they had eaten them no one would have known that they had done so, for they were still as ugly as before. Then I awoke. I fell asleep a second time and I saw in my dream seven ears of grain, full and good, growing on one stalk, and seven ears, withered, thin, and blighted by the east wind, sprouting after them; and the thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears. But when I told it to the magicians, there was no one who could explain it to me.’

    “Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, ‘Pharaoh’s dreams are one and the same; God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good ears are seven years; the dreams are one. The seven lean and ugly cows that came up after them are seven years, as are the seven empty ears blighted by the east wind. They are seven years of famine. It is as I told Pharaoh; God has shown to Pharaoh what he is about to do. There will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt. After them there will arise seven years of famine, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt; the famine will consume the land. The plenty will no longer be known in the land because of the famine that will follow, for it will be very grievous. And the doubling of Pharaoh’s dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about. Now therefore let Pharaoh select a man who is discerning and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land, and take one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plenteous years. Let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming, and lay up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to befall the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through the famine.’

    “The proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants….”

    …

    The second reading is also from the Torah, from Exodus 20.17:

    “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

    Sermon

    I have to tell you, Christmas is not one of my favorite holidays. You can probably guess why: it’s the commercialization of Christmas that I dislike. Here’s a holiday that started out as a celebration of the a celebration of the return of longer days after the winter solstice; then Christians turned the solstice celebration into a celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth; then in 17th C. Massachusetts, the Puritans banned Christmas and even made it illegal to celebrate the holiday; in the 19th C., Christmas got Victorianized into a sentimental holiday for families to celebrate together; and finally in the 20th C. Christmas got transmogrified yet again, this time into a holiday of excessive consumption.

    If you recall the old medieval Christian list of the “seven deadly sins” — lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride — it will be immediately apparent to you that Christmas today, in the 21st C., is a blatant glorification of envy. Christmas envy is the natural outcome of the ongoing evolution of the commercialization of Christmas. These days, we expect to give and to receive lavish gifts at Christmas. Even those who don’t celebrate Christmas find themselves getting sucked into the Frenzy of gift-giving and money-spending — atheists buy generic holiday gifts, Jews give Hanukkah presents, and pagans have solstice gifts. And if we don’t have the money to afford expensive gifts for all our near relations and close friends, we feel that we have somehow failed. Worse yet, if we don’t receive lots of fancy gifts — the latest laptop of video game, expensive clothing, exclusive perfume, whatever it is you long for — if we don’t receive expensive gifts, we feel somehow cheated.

    I define this Christmas excess as a species of envy. It is covetousness. We covet what we don’t have. We covet what our neighbors do have — whether those neighbors are our actual flesh-and-blood neighbors, or the virtual neighbors that we see on television or in photographs in magazines or on the World Wide Web. Rather than coveting our neighbor’s spouse or ox or donkey, we covet our neighbor’s toys and gadgetry and lifestyle.

    But you already know all this. We all know about Christmas envy. Every year, pundits and preachers rail against the commercialization of Christmas, and every year we ignore them. Envy it may be, but it’s also good fun. It’s fun to find just exactly the perfect gift for someone you love. It’s even more fun to watch that person as he or she opens that gift, to see his or her face light up with pleasure. And it’s fun to receive gifts; it’s fun to get cool things, of course, but it’s also fun to see what someone thinks is just the perfect gift for you, because it reveals something of their character, and it reveals something of how they understand their relationship to you.

    So I will not join the preachers and pundits who tell us that we should stop giving gifts at this time of year. If you want to give Christmas gifts or Hanukkah gifts or solstice presents at this time of year, I say: Go for it! Moderation in all things, of course, so don’t go into debt, but if you find gift-giving to be fun, then why not have some fun.

    And having said that, I want to turn to the old story of Joseph that is found in the book of Genesis, beginning at chapter 37, and really extending right through the end of the book of Genesis into the beginning of the book of Exodus. Te weekly Torah portion for the sabbath which comes during Hanukkah comes from the middle of the story about Joseph, and we heard part of that weekly Torah portion in the first reading this morning. But before I get to the first reading, let me remind you of the story of Joseph.

    It all begins in the land of Canaan. This is the beginning of the story as it is told in the Torah:

    “Now Jacob was settled in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan…. At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers… And Joseph brought bad reports of them to his father. Now [Jacob] loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age; and he had made him an ornamented tunic. And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him so that they could not speak a friendly word to him.” [Genesis 37.1-4, the New Jewish Publication Society translation]

    As you can see, envy lies at the beginning of this story. Joseph’s brothers are envious of his coat of many colors, a coat given to him by their father. Actually, his brothers are envious of the fact that their father loved Joseph better than any of them, but the coat serves as the symbol for the greater love their father bestowed on Joseph. And they are really annoyed when Joseph tells them about a dream he had one night, in which all his brothers and even his father and mother would wind up bowing down to him.

    So what do Joseph’s brothers do? They attack him, tie him up, rip off his distinctive coat of many colors, and then they sell him to a passing caravan as a slave. Off went the caravan, taking Joseph with them. Joseph’s brothers smeared his coat with some blood, then off they went to tell their family that Joseph must have been devoured by wild animals. They may have been envious of Joseph, but I feel that was taking things a little too far: selling your brother into slavery just because you’re envious of him!

    Fast forward a little bit, and we find Joseph, now a slave, taken to Egypt and sold to one Potiphar, who is the chief steward of Pharaoh, the king and ruler of all Egypt. Joseph prospers for a while, but then winds up getting thrown into prison on the basis of false testimony — of course, as a slave, we can be sure that Joseph was not allowed to testify in his own defense. So now Joseph is not only a slave, he is in prison: this is what his brother’s envy has done!

    While Joseph is in prison, he gets something of a reputation as an interpreter of dreams. He manages to correctly interpret the dream of a fellow prisoner, and that prisoner is later pardoned by the Pharaoh, and returned to his old job as Pharaoh’s cupbearer. Well, one night, Pharaoh has a dream: In the dream, he sees seven beautiful cows come up out of the Nile River, the greatest river in Egypt, and the cows grazed contently in the grass along the river. Then seven scrawny, emaciated, sickly cows come up out of the Nile River, and they ate up all the beautiful cows. At that point, Pharaoh awakened. But he fell asleep and dreamed a second time: this time, he dreamed of seven plump ripe ears of grain that sprout, only to be swallowed up by seven thin, scrawny, misshapen ears of grain.

    And this brings us to the second reading this morning. In the second reading, Pharaoh called all his magicians and other wise people, and asked them the meaning of these dreams. No one was able to figure out what these dreams meant. But Pharaoh’s cupbearer remembered that Joseph could interpret dreams accurately, so Pharaoh brought Joseph up out of prison. Sure enough, with the help of the God of the Israelites, Joseph was able to correctly interpret Pharaoh’s dreams: there will be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. Therefore, said Joseph to Pharaoh, during the seven years of plenty you must put aside enough grain that when the seven years of famine come you can feed all the people.

    Pharaoh liked this idea — and that’s where the second reading left off. Pharaoh gave Joseph oversight over all food production, with the power to take surplus grain and store it in the Pharaoh’s granaries. By this point, some six or seven years had passed since Joseph was kidnapped by his brothers and sold into slavery. The seven years of prosperity came, just as in Joseph’s interpretation of the dream, and Joseph went out and bought up something more than a fifth of all the grain produced throughout Egypt. And then the seven years of famine came. The farmers produced very little grain. The Egyptians came to the Pharaoh’s granaries and bought grain from Joseph, the Pharaoh’s representative. The famine continued over the next few years, and when the people ran out of money, Joseph took their cattle in exchange for grain, and when they ran out of cattle, he accepted title to their land in exchange for grain. So it was that by the end of the seven years of famine, Pharaoh owned all the land and all the cattle in all of Egypt — thanks to Joseph’s good management.

    The famine extended even as far as Canaan, where Josephs’ father Jacob and all his brothers still lived. Starving, Joseph’s brothers came to buy grain from Pharaoh. They didn’t recognize Joseph when they came before him to buy grain; and they did indeed bow down before Pharaoh’s representative, just as Joseph’s dream had predicted all those years ago.

    In the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi tells us that twenty-two years elapsed from Joseph’s first dream, the dream that predicted that his brothers would all bow down to him, to the moment when Joesph’s brothers actually did bow down to him in reality. Twenty-two years to wait for a dream to come true! Twenty-two years of kidnapping, enslavement, and imprisonment! Twenty-two years is a significant portion of a human lifespan. And based on this, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi tells us that that we ourselves can expect to wait as much as twenty-two years to fulfill our own dreams. [“Miketz,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miketz&oldid=175158548 (accessed December 7, 2007).]

    This is a good story to remember at this time of year; it is a good antidote to Christmas envy. Envy arises in part because we want something now; we see our neighbor’s ox or donkey or video game, and we want it now. Even if it’s completely impossible! Envy arises in part when we are hard on ourselves, when we set ridiculously high expectations for ourselves. It is easy to think that we must have perfect lives. And too often, “perfect” is defined for us by someone else; someone else defines perfect for us as we should all be living in a house in the suburbs with 2.5 children, 3 cars, a dog, and a lucrative career in business that allows us to buy fun electronic gadgets. Nor should we have to wait for this dream of perfection to be accomplished.

    Or maybe perfect is defined like this: if you’re a man, “perfect” means you look like Matt Damon, and if you’re a woman “perfect” means you look like Lindsay Lohan, and if you’re transgender, or don’t have white skin, or are over 35, well you’re just out of luck and you can never be perfect. In other words, our society makes it impossible to be perfect, and too often we wind up striving for a kind of perfection that just doesn’t exist.

    The story of Joseph reminds us that mostly life is not perfect at all. Our lives, just like Joseph’s life, our lives are full of setbacks and disasters and impediments, and our lives most certainly lack perfection. Yet like Joseph we have dreams, and our dreams might not be unreasonable. But Rabbi Joshua ben Levi reminds us that dreams can take decades to come true. And the story of Joseph reminds us that even if our dreams do come true, they may come true in ways that we could not have imagined. When Joseph first dreamt that his brothers would bow down to him, do you think could possibly have imagined how that would come true? — with Joseph working for Pharaoh, so that really his brothers weren’t bowing down to him at all, they were bowing down to this representative of the all-powerful Pharaoh.

    If you want to go out and have the perfect Christmas, and spend thousands of dollars and get the perfect lavish gift for everyone on your list and host the perfect Christmas party in your suburban house with 2.5 children, I for one won’t stand in your way (especially if I’m one of the people for whom you will purchase the perfect lavish gift, and by the way I could use a new computer).

    But I’m also here to tell you that it’s OK to lower your standards for Christmas, or Hanukkah or solstice or whatever you celebrate. You do not have to give the perfect gift to everyone — and if your children complain that they didn’t get very good gifts this year, feel free to do what a mom of my acquaintance did; when her son complained that he “didn’t get anything good this year,” she told him that if he didn’t want his gifts she would be happy to send them to someone who would appreciate them. You do not have to give the perfect gift to anyone, and you do not have to receive the perfect gift yourself. You do not have to send out Christmas cards (or the Hanukkah cards which I see in the stores these days) — it is perfectly fine to delay and send out Valentine’s Day cards instead. You do not have to decorate your house unless you feel like it. You do not have to attend parties unless you want to do so.

    In fact, as your minister I will tell you that there are only two things you have to do to meet your complete religious obligations as a Unitarian Universalist at this time of year. You must give a gift to, or otherwise help, someone less fortunate than yourself; and you must take the time to light a candle and sit in silence watching it burn. If you want, you can meet both those religious obligations by coming to the Christmas eve candlelight service here on December 24, lighting a candle, and giving some money when we pass the collection plate for a charity. Or you can simply go home tonight and light a candle after sunset, and after the candle burns down write a check to the charity of your choice. Or whatever.

    Everything else about this season is optional. If you want to go all out and celebrate madly, that’s fine. But this can be a stressful time of year, and you don’t need to be hard on yourself. Which means that you don’t need to envy anyone else’s gifts, or anyone else’s celebration.

    So take it easy. And I really mean it about lighting that candle: it really is a religious obligation to sit quietly on a regular basis, even for a minute or two, and do nothing. Sitting quietly gives you a chance to put things in perspective, to reflect on dreams deferred, to understand that you and your soul are more important than whatever gadget your neighbor owns. It’s the sure cure of Christmas envy.

  • The Carpenter’s Son

    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.

    Readings

    The first reading was a short poem by Alan Powers titled “Carpenter’s Son.” Copyright laws do not permit the reproduction of an entire poem, so it is not reproduced here.

    The second reading is from the autobiography of Edward Emerson Simmons, the man who painted the picture that is reproduced on your order of service. He told this story about this painting:

    “In the year 1888 I sent two pictures to the Royal Academy which were duly accepted and hung. Imagine my joy when a large and formidable communication found it way to my studio in Paris, asking the price of one of my canvases and signed by the Chantry Bequest. This was a well-known fund created to buy pictures for the government to place in its permanent galleries, and everyone knew that, once the price had been asked, it amounted to the same thing as a sale….

    “The picture, which I called ‘The Carpenter’s Son,’ was a simple pose of one of my children in my studio. A blond boy with a light shining over his head sat dreaming, instead of sweeping out the shop, while his mother, in the back, told his father what a worthless son he had begotten. The shavings had accidentally fallen in the form of a cross [which you can see at the bottom right], and the light seemed to be a halo. The [Glasgow] Scotsman came out with a scathing denunciation of the work (not at the idea, mind you) but because, as they said, I had been sacrilegious enough to paint Christ in the costume of a French peasant boy! Of course, the Chantry bequest did not buy — for the first time — after asking the price.”

    Sermon

    The stories we tell about ourselves, about our beliefs, and about the world around us — these stories are vital to who we are. I believe that one of the most important tasks of religion is to shape the stories we tell about ourselves and about our lives, to the end that our stories affirm life and love; and to the end that the arc of our stories’ narratives bend towards justice.

    Let me give you an example of what I mean. The opening hymn this morning was a wassail song, and without a story, it would be nothing more than a silly song sung at Yuletide. But instead, we tell two stories about this wassail song.

    The first story we tell goes like this: Years ago in England, during the Yuletide season less wealthy people would walk around to the wealthy households in their village and sing wassail songs. The wealthy householders were required by anceint custom to give food, drink, and money to the wassailers. When we tell this story, we are saying that Yuletide is a time of year to remember ordinary people who may not have much money.

    The second story goes like this: Some folklorists believe that these apple wassail songs grew out of ancient pre-Christian rituals meant to re-awaken the fertility of apple trees at the time of the winter solstice. We know that hard apple cider was an important drink in the days before everyone had guaranteed access to clean, drinkable water because the modest alcohol content helped reduce the number of pathogens present; thus cider apples were a vital crop to ensure health. This second story tells us that the Christmas season holds many remnants of the old earth-centered pagan religions, religions which contained superstitions we may no longer follow, but which contained some good hard common sense.

    So you see, the stories we tell about ourselves and about our traditions help us to shape those traditions in meaningful ways. This morning, I’d like to tell some stories about a painting that was central to the life of our church, a painting that is relevant to the Christmas season. And I believe these stories reveal a great deal about who we are and what we stand for.

    Let me begin at the beginning. In 1888, the American painter Edward Emerson Simmons painted a painting which he called “The Carpenter’s Son.” You’ll find a reproduction of the painting on the cover of your order of service. This large painting by Simmons — some four feet wide and five and a half feet tall — showed a boy in a carpenter’s shop, sitting on a saw horse, surrounded by wood shavings and saw dust; while in the background two adults, presumably the boy’s parents, seem to be talking about him. The boy, rather than working, is simply sitting and staring meditatively off into space.

    Simmons showed “The Carpenter’s Son” at the 1888 Paris Salon, then later at the Royal Academy in England, and also in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1892 Simmons sold the painting to Amelia Jones of New Bedford. When Amelia Jones purchased it, Simmons wrote her a letter which said in part:

    “Dear Miss Jones,

    “There is little to tell you of the picture that you have greatly pleased me by wishing to own. The picture was painted in the season of 1888 and being unsatisfactory to me was scraped out, to a great extent and repainted, with my older boy as a model for the boy in the foreground.

    “It was painted at St. Ives — of cat fame — in the extreme east of Cornwall, England. The result of the repainting was an unusual success at the Royal Academy — joined to an offer of purchase from the trustees of the Chantry fund — withdrawn — I suspect from the opposition of the English Church people.

    “When sent to Scotland — Glasgow — it caused me to be the amused object of much fury and denunciation from the “Scotsman” — if I remember the paper….

    “I know very little of how the details of Christ’s surroundings should be told. I imagined no one knows enough to be worth listening to. Therefore we younger men fall back upon our own time — believing that man has always been fundamentally the same….

    “Faithfully, Edward E. Simmons.”

    This was, in fact, a heretical painting. As it happens, Simmons was raised a Unitarian. His father, George Simmons, was a Unitarian minister who was also a fervent abolitionist. Not only was Edward raised a Unitarian, but he grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, in the day when several great Unitarian writers and thinkers lived there — Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Alcott family, the poet Ellery Channing, and others — and as a boy, Simmons met and conversed with many of these radical Unitarians. Edward Emerson Simmons had radical Unitarianism in his very bones, and for the rest of his life he called himself a Concord Unitarian.

    When a Concord Unitarian goes to paint a picture of Jesus of Nazareth, he does not paint an orthodox picture of Jesus. Instead of painting some saintly, unearthly, barely human figure, Simmons choose one of his own boys as a model — not because that was what Jesus would have looked like, but because, good Concord Transcendentalist that he was, he believed that Jesus was fully human, and that human beings have been pretty much the same down through the ages; you can be sure that if Simmons had been African American, the boy in the picture would have been African American; had Simmons been Native American, the boy would have been native American; you get the idea.

    Well, I’m sure you get the idea, but the orthodox Christians of the day did not get the idea. They did not like the painting one bit, because Jesus looked too human — he looked just like an ordinary boy who could have been anyone’s son — which they thought sacrilegious. Indeed, there are people today who do not like this painting.

    And who purchased this heretical painting from Edward Simmons? Amelia Jones, a member of First Unitarian in New Bedford, that’s who. She bought it, sent it off to be shown at the great 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and then it came to hang in her house in New Bedford, the house that is now the Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum just down County Street from here.When Amelia Jones died, she gave the painting to First Unitarian Church. What better place for such a painting to hang?

    This heretical painting hung for many years in our Parish House. If you talk to some of the people who grew up in this church, the painting was very much present in their consciousnesses. Here was a painting of a child who looked like an ordinary kid, yet this ordinary-looking kid grew up to be one of the great religious leaders of all time. Such a painting must have been an inspiration to at least some of the children in this church!

    Older people might have seen something a little different in this painting: Here’s this boy just sitting there and staring off into space when he is clearly supposed to be sweeping out his father’s carpentry shop — if you look closely at the front of your order of service, you can see the broom on the floor that Jesus has abandoned. And there in the background are his parents, clearly talking about their son. His mother is pointing to Jesus as if to say, “Look, he’s dropped his broom again, he’s just sitting there staring off into space.” And we can imagine his father saying, “He’d make a good carpenter some day if he’d just pay attention to what he’s supposed to be doing!”

    Or more generally we could say: What Edward Emerson Simmons has done in his painting of Jesus is to imagine what Jesus must have been like as a fully human boy. Being a Concord Unitarian, Simmons did not restrict himself to what might be found in the Bible. Unitarians like Edward Simmons feel comfortable telling new stories about the historical figure who was Jesus, whether or not those new stories might offend the orthodox.

    In true Unitarian Universalist fashion, there are many more stories for us to tell about this painting. Alan Powers, a poet and member of this church, tells another story in his poem: he tells us of a Jesus who was the son of an ordinary working class family, a Jesus who began his life dealing with very concrete things and who went on to teach in very concrete metaphors and parables; a man who in the end was put to death for his radical religious and social views. There is more than one story to tell about this painting, just as there is more than one story to tell about Jesus.

    Now let me finish the story of the painting itself. In 1993, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., planned a centennial exhibit of works of art that had been exhibited in the great 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, and they asked to borrow “The Carpenter’s Son.” So the painting was cleaned, and insured, and shipped off to Washington, where it hung from March through September, 1993, in the show “American Art from the 1893 World’s Fair.” After that show, the painting came back and hung once more in its accustomed place in our Parish House.

    And then in 1996, disaster struck. A vandal broke into our church, tipped over one of the grandfather clocks in the Parish House, broke the nose off one of the statues here in the sanctuary, and slashed a huge piece out of the middle of “The Carpenter’s Son.” The clock and the statue could be repaired, but with the piece gone from the painting, it was worthless. It was a great tragedy in the life of the congregation, and if you ask someone who was here that Sunday morning when they discovered the damage, they can tell you what a horrible shock it was.

    When I first arrived here at First Unitarian two and a half years ago, I heard the story of this painting. Whenever someone told me the story of the vandalism, they would add the fact that, horrendous as the destruction of the painting was, at least the insurance settlement made it possible for the church to install an elevator in improve handicapped accessibility. I liked this twist that the people of this church add to the story of the vandalism: this church took an act of vandalism, and turned it into an act of justice for persons with disabilities. How very like the Unitarian Universalist stories about Jesus! for we emphasize Jesus’s acts of social justice, we emphasize his deep humanity and his empathy with all persons.

    Then came our own Unitarian Universalist mini-miracle. Just over a year ago, the Women’s Alliance of this church donated a new refrigerator for the kitchen. As the old refrigerator was being removed, the man who was moving it saw something had been thrown behind it. He called to Claudette Blake, our church administrator, and she immediately realized that what she was seeing was the missing piece of the painting: there was the face of the boy Jesus. And, something of a miracle, the vandal had not slashed through the boy’s face — I like to believe that the vandal’s essential humanity asserted itself and prevented him or her from being that destructive.

    It turned out that the insurance company now owned the painting, and until we could buy it back we had to keep it safely locked up; we sent it up to an art restoration expert to hold for us. We also realized that we could not keep the painting any longer. We knew this building is not secure enough to house important works of art, nor do we have financial resources to restore the painting. Thanks to behind-the-scenes work on the part of many church members, the Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum agreed to purchase the painting from us, for the $20,000 that we had to pay the insurance company for it. What better place for the painting? The Rotch-Jones-Duff House used to be Amelia Jones’s house, and it was where the painting hung before it came here. Besides, the Rotch-Jones-Duff House could restore the painting and make it accessible to a wider public.

    I particularly like to think that the painting will have a wider audience, once it is restored. It will take perhaps another year before the painting is finally restored that is, assuming that the Rotch-Jones-Duff House is able to complete their fundraising, for as of now they have only $18,000 of the $30,000 needed to pay for the restoration. Many good people are working on raising funds, including our own Nancy Crosby and Bob Piper, and needless to say many members and friends of First Unitarian have given or are planning to give money to help pay for the restoration. Perhaps by next Christmas, a wider public will once again be able to see Edwards Simmons’s Unitarian vision of a Jesus who was a great religious genius and whose birthday is worth celebrating, but a Jesus who is fully human.

    I like the idea that in this way we are spreading one of our Unitarian stories about Christmas out to a world that needs to hear it. The world needs to hear our stories of a Jesus who cared more about creating a heaven here on earth, than getting people into some heaven in the sky. The world needs to hear our stories about a Christmas holiday that is not about spending more money, but is rather about remembering a religious prophet and sage who with his very humanity taught us about the essential humanity of all persons. The world needs to hear these stories, because it matters what stories we tell.