Healing

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.

Reading

The reading this morning is from a sermon by Theodore Parker, a sermon which almost split the Unitarians in the middle 19th C., by minimizing or denying the importance of the miracles of Jesus which are reported in the Christian scriptures. The sermon was called “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity,” and Parker wrote:

“Let us look at this matter a little more closely. In actual Christianity — that is, in that portion of Christianity which is preached and believed — there seem to have been, ever since the time of its earthly founder, two elements, the one transient, the other permanent. The one is the thought, the folly, the uncertain wisdom, the theological notions, the impiety of man; the other, the eternal truth of God. These two bear perhaps the same relation to each other that the phenomena of outward nature, such as sunshine and cloud, growth, decay, and reproduction, bear to the great law of nature, which underlies and supports them all. As in that case, more attention is commonly paid to the particular phenomena than to the general law; so in this case, more is generally given to the Transient in Christianity than to the Permanent therein.”

SERMON — “Healing”

If you had read our church’s newsletter, or our church’s Web site, you would have seen that I gave my sermon topic for today as “Forgiveness.” No doubt some of you actually came here this morning to hear me preach on forgiveness; and no doubt some people stayed at home so they wouldn’t have to hear me preach on forgiveness. Well, I started to prepare a sermon on forgiveness, but I didn’t get very far before it turned into a different sermon. Yet even though this isn’t quite the sermon that was advertised, I hope it will do nonetheless. And some Sunday, I promise you that I will return to the topic of forgiveness.

As I was preparing the sermon this week, I found myself thinking about something that happened late last winter, when I wound up at the beside of a man who was unconscious and who… but let me back up a little, and tell you a little bit about where I was late last winter.

Last year, I was serving as the interim associate minister with the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, Illinois. They were a congregation of down-to-earth, no-nonsense Midwesterners without an ounce of pretension. And they have long been a congregation of radicals and skeptics. The Geneva Unitarians took the word “God” out of their congregational covenant in the 1880’s, with the result that the congregational church in Geneva broke off having shared worship services with them in the 1880’s because, said the Congregationalists, the Unitarians couldn’t be trusted to actually believe in God. Even more radical, the Geneva Unitarians had three women ministers before 1910. In other words, they were and are typical Midwestern Unitarian radicals who have had no truck with the supernatural for over a century.

The current senior minister in Geneva is a woman named Lindsay Bates, a hard-headed New England Yankee who grew up in the Bridgewater Unitarian church. Like many of us New Englanders, Lindsay is plain-spoken to the point of being sharp-toungued. She does not tolerate sloppy thinking, and she’ll let you know when she thinks you’re not quite up to snuff. Which meant I liked her pretty well.

I was surprised, therefore, to learn that Lindsay was a certified Reiki master. I admit that I know next to nothing about Reiki, except that it is a kind of system of healing based on the old Chinese concept of “ch’i,” or the energy flow within a person. (I’m sure some of you know quite a bit about Reiki, and will be able to tell us more during social hour.) I don’t know much about Reiki, but it didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of Lindsay’ Bates’s personality. There were some members of the congregation who were also Reiki practitioners; and, since it is a Unitarian Universalist congregation, there were also those who thought the whole Reiki thing was a crock of beans.

Yet no matter what people thought of Reiki, there was this strong sense throughout the congregation that part of the business of the congregation was healing. Not just spiritual healing, or emotional healing, but physical healing as well. Lindsay was widely credited with one or two definite physical heaings (not that she’d make that claim herself). Now I realize that historically religions have been in the business of healing. But my sense has been that for the large part North American Unitarian Universalists feel that healing is a very small part of what we do in our congregations. Many of us don’t even pray, and we certainly don’t do anointing or laying-on-of-hands, or anything like that.

The Geneva church, however, placed some stock in the healing powers available at that church; even the ones who didn’t believe in Reiki. And as I thought about it, even a skeptic like me could think of some good and reasonable explanations for the repots of healing: coincidence; the mind-body connection we’re learning about; the reported power of prayer; and so on. And I found myself becoming more attuned to the possibility that even Unitarian Universalist congregations might have something to do with healing. Maybe I had missed something in the past. I was willing to keep an open mind.

One Sunday afternoon in late winter, we got two pastoral calls – crises, really – that needed the immediate attention of the ministers. A long-time member of the congregation died suddenly (but not unexpectedly), and it made the most sense that Lindsay, as the minister who had been there 28 years, should visit that family. And a man in the congregation had been in a terrible car accident, was in the Intensive Care Unit or ICU at a nearby hospital, having just come out of surgery. I’d spent some time doing volunteer chaplaincy in a hospital, so I went of the visit him.

I arrived at the hospital to find the family in shock. Only his wife had been allowed in to see him yet. She came out to get her children, and invited me to go with them into the ICU. He was still unconscious, completely unresponsive, and he looked pretty bad. His doctor came to talk with his wife; the doctor was pretty non-committal: He’d probably recover (probably!), he’d likely have some cognitive impairment, there was a good chance he’d wind up in a wheelchair or he’d probably need crutches or a cane for the rest of his life. All the nurse would say was that they had the best ICU around. It’s always very worrying to me when the doctors and nurses remain so noncommittal.

After the doctor left, I talked with the family. They wanted to pray (one never knows with Unitarian Universalists, because some of us don’t do that kind of prayer, or don’t pray at all). We gathered around the bed, they held his hands, and we did some praying together.

Then I thought it might be a good idea to do a little praying for healing – not something I ordinarily would do, but it was a part of that congregation’s culture. So I had his wife take his hand, and I took his hand, and we prayed in silence for a while — I emptied my mind of all thoughts, and just focused on healing.

And that was that. From then on, what I did was pretty conventional pastoral care and counseling. Much of pastoral counseling involves what are known in the trade as “active listening” and “presence.” Back in the 1950’s, psychologist Carl Rogers did research at the University of Chicago demonstrating that listening and just being present contribute to mental and emotional health, and the pastoral care and counseling I do is a kind of healing that draws from the research of Rogers and others. So that’s what I did, and after two hours at the hospital with this family, I went home.

When I got home, though, I wondered: when it comes to healing, what did my religion actually provide? I borrowed a few healing techniques from psychologists, true. And I thought then, as I have often thought: our liberal faith can claim to provide some relief from spiritual distress in times of accident, crisis, or illness; and that little bit is enough. There exist religious traditions which offer the certainty of healing –- physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual healing. We Unitarian Universalists do not deal in such certainties. We offer a “faith without certainty,” in the words of theologian Paul Rasor. We do not claim to have religious certainty of any kind; we know that we are limited beings and that we cannot ever know for sure about the mysteries of life and death, or of sickness and health. While you may feel that our religious uncertainty is not as comforting as you would like, I try to remember this: knowing that we are uncertain about many things is better by far than a certainty that doesn’t work in the end; consider what it would be like to pray to your God in the certainty that you will be healed, only to find your prayers don’t work; you pray for a loved one to recover and he or she doesn’t.

Religious certainty can back-fire, and I would rather accept the uncertainties that must come with my limited understanding as a limited being. I don’t want to pray that Lazarus is going to rise from the dead because odds are pretty good that when Lazarus is dead he’s going to stay dead.

At the same time, there is more than one kind of religious healing. We don’t have to ask for people to rise from the dead. We don’t have to ask for the cure of uncurable illness. There is the healing that comes after grief. If someone close to you dies, it is possible to become so burdened by the weight of grief that you are smothered by it and literally die of grief. I’ve seen it happen: one member of a couples dies, and the other, though in perfect health at first, dies within a year or two. Or if someone close to you dies, it is also possible to deny your grief, to the point where something inside you becomes frozen and you can never fully love again. Hatred and anger can consume us, when we find it impossible to forgive, leading to physical disease.

For all these: — grief, hatred, anger, and so on –- religion can provide healing. But this seems different than physical healing. Yes, I know body an mind are connected, are truly one, but I also know that a supernatural miraculous healing of physical illness requires a suspension of the generally accepted natural laws. I don’t need to believe in supernatural miracles of healing. But I do know that within ourselves we human beings to have the ability to heal ourselves; and perhaps to heal others. We get sick and somehow our immune system fights off the disease and we are well again; that is a true miracle. We get sick, and a doctor or nurse helps us to heal, sometimes with medical procedures and sometimes with just a good bedside manner; that’s a true miracle. We suffer from a broken heart, grieving over lost love, but with time we can heal and love again: another miracle.

That we heal at all is a kind of miracle; that we can promote healing in ourselves and in others is a miracle; these small miracles are enough, and help me be more understanding when the day inevitably comes when healing does not take place.

Last February, I stood by the man in the ICU, and I was convinced it was going to be one of those situations where complete healing does not take place; I was ready for him to make only a partial recovery. I left the hospital feeling down, worried about him and his family.

But he did recover. He recovered consciousness with all his cognitive faculties intact; after a couple of months he was able to walk without assistance, and has had essentially a complete physical recovery. His recovery is a kind of miracle.

Did our little beside prayer help effect that recovery? Perhaps it helped, but of course it’s more complex than that. He was in excellent physical condition before the accident, and that always betters the odds for recovery and healing. He was immediately surrounded by love and support, and that must have helped. His entire extended family came as soon as they heard he had been hurt; the church provided the family with casseroles and child care and rides; and as a result of all that support his immediate family were able to devote their time and attention to helping his healing. I think that the presence of all that love from friends and family and church must have had positive effect. We do not heal completely on our own. Doctors and nurses and primary caregivers promote healing, sometimes by what they do and sometimes by their mere presence. That’s why we visit people in hospitals: just the presence of a friend or a family member can promote healing; you don’t even have to say or do anything besides sit there.

I have come to believe that healing is one things that our Unitarian Universalist congregations can actually do pretty well. Now you and I know that churches don’t do everything well, and sometimes they can be frustrating places. You can wind up arguing and fighting with people at church, sometimes about minor matters. And you and I know that churches can be boring places at times. We come for that blast of inspiration but wind up with a dull sermon or music you don’t. Yet the core of what our congregation does well is it allows us to be with other people, to be present with other people. As when you visit someone in the hospital, healing can take place in churches just be present for one another; as we sit side by side with other people who care about truth and goodness. I’ve never been healed by sitting on a crowded subway car, so I know there’s something qualitatively different about sitting in a church: being in the presence of other people who are willing to be present for you, willing to sit near you while recognizing your human value and worth; recognizing that we heal each other, that we can be healed by each other.

We can come to church to be healed and to heal others by our presence: when we are in grief or in joy; when we are dying or sheltering new life; when we are embarking on a new relationship or ending one that has gone wrong. We come to church for healing. And while being a Reiki master might help some people, you don’t need to be a Reiki master; nor do we need miracles or supernatural explanations. All we have to do is show up, and be present. We need the caring presence of others to begin to promote our own healing; we can join in the collective caring presence of the congregation to help others heal.

That’s one of the main reasons to come to church, my friends: to heal ourselves; to help each other heal; that we may in turn begin to heal the world.

Ingathering water ceremony

The following words were given by Rev. Dan Harper at the annual ingathering water ceremony. As usual, the text below is a reading text. Copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.

INGATHERING WATER CEREMONY

It has become the custom in many Unitarian Universalist congregations to hold an ingathering water ceremony each year at the close of summer.

The water ceremony started in the 1970’s, when Lucile Shuck Longview, Carolyn McDade, and other strong feminists wondered about creating a worshipful ritual which would recognize the strength and power of women. They created a ceremony where women got together, each woman bringing a small amount of water to represent some part of her life; and then the waters from each woman were gathered into one communal bowl to symbolize that we are all connected, that we are all a part of life.

Each person here this morning will have an opportunity to come forward, and add a small amount of water to this bowl. Perhaps you read the newsletter or the announcement in last Sunday’s order of service and brought water from some place that is important to you, or from some place you visited this summer. Or perhaps you brought a memory, or an idea of a place that is important to you, and you will use one of the small cups of water up here to symbolize water from some place that is important in your life, or from some place you visited this summer.

One by one, we will pour water into the communal bowl. Each of us is an individual, each of us is important to this community: even if this is your first time here, this morning you are as important to this worshipping community as someone who has gone to this church all their lives. Our worshipping community is made up of the hopes and dreams and aspirations that each of us brings here this morning. We symbolize that by pouring a bit of water, a bit of who we are, into this bowl.

And water connects us with the wider world as well. When it rains, the water tha falls on this church drains into the harbor just down the hill from where we sit, and flows into Buzzards Bay, and out into the stormy Atlantic Ocean: so rain becomes oceans, oceans become clouds, clouds become rain –– become us become the world. Water connects us with each other, and with the whole world.

The original ingathering water ceremony was created in protest and in anger, and some of that remains as we gather together today. Bodies of water around the world are threatened by pollution and misuse. Our own New Bedford harbor is a Superfund site due to years of pollution with PCBs. Fresh water sources are getting contaminated, or overused. Water ties us to everything around us, and so this ceremony also represents a responsibility and a commitment for making the world a better place.

If you would like to add water to the communal bowl, please come forward now, and line up over there (point to my right). One by one, walk up and put your water in the bowl. If you would like to tell us where your water came from, please say your name first, and speak clearly into the microphone. And please limit yourself to one or two sentences, so everyone can have an equal chance to speak –– and so we’re not here all afternoon.

I’ll begin: My water comes from the Fox River in Geneva, Illinois, where I lived up until month ago. The Fox River is a quiet little Midwestern River currently suffering from a severe drought….

*****

So we have mixed water from different places, water of memories and thoughts and emotions. So we come together again as a worshipping community. Rivers and oceans run though us….

Remembering

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.

Reading

The first readings was a poem titled “11th of September, 2001” by Maggi Pierce, and it was read by the poet.

Excerpt from “With a Wrench of the Gut,” an article from the New York Times of Wednesday, September 7, 2005

“Mark Scherzer, like perhaps thousands of New Yorkers, finds himself looking up with mild panic when he hears a plane flying low, or a sudden noise, even though, he says, the attack “has significantly receded in my consciousness.”

“Steven DeGennaro, 34, stops by the wall of victims near ground zero once a week on the way to the Staten Island ferry terminal, to look at the name of his cousin. Then he boards the boat, hoists a Heineken, and thinks.

“Four years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, many New Yorkers seem trapped between a daily life free of the terrible memories of that day, and an inability to fully forget. Many go for weeks or even months without thinking about it at all, but then feel eerily transported back to that morning by a sudden sound, or the sight of a police officer searching bags in the subway, or a certain hue of the sky….

“Sunil Chugh, 25, who lives and works in Jackson Heights, Queens, has a daily reminder of of a neighbor who died. ‘They never moved his car,’ Mr. Chugh said. ‘It is still parked outside his house, and his picture is in the car window with a sign that says “September 11, 2001″. Every day, I pass by that and I look and I think….”

SERMON — “Remembering”

I don’t know about you, but I thought I had pretty much gotten over nine-eleven. I did my grieving. I even got my HMO to pay for therapy because I had been helping people in the congregation I was then serving and hadn’t had time to deal with my own grieving. All that’s four years ago now. I know children who are six or seven who really have no memory of the terrorist attacks. My own memories are fading — what with the war in Iraq, and violence on our streets, and ongoing news of drugs and poverty and hunger, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that happened back in 2001 had receded into the dusty back corners of my memory. So I thought.

But as I followed the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and the desparate relief efforts, and the political fingerpointing, I find myself remembering once again. And I have been finding that other people are finding the same thing — this new disaster is bringing up memories of nine-eleven.

You heard a reading from a New York Times article that said, in part: “Four years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, many New Yorkers seem trapped between a daily life free of the terrible memories of that day, and an inability to fully forget. Many go for weeks or even months without thinking about it at all, but then feel eerily transported back to that morning by a sudden sound, or the sight of a police officer searching bags in the subway, or a certain hue of the sky….” Even if you’re not a New Yorker, even if you were basically unaffected by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, even if you’re six years old and have no direct memory of those events, you are still affected — because what happened on September 11, 2001, affected our society at large. The attacks have become a part of the memory, the mythos, of this country. I had gotten sick of people saying, “The United States has been forever changed by nine-eleven” — I’m still sick of hearing that platitude, but it’s true, too. We cannot forget — we are unable to forget. As a society, we find that we cannot forget.

Which brings me to Frog and Toad. Frog and Toad are reading a book together, a book about brave people who fight dragons and giants, people who are never afraid. “I wonder if we would be afraid,” asks Frog. “We look brave.”

To which Toad responds, “Yes, but are we [brave]?” As it turns out, Frog and Toad are not particularly brave. At the end of the story, they wind up hiding in a closet — but if you are confronted with a snake who’s much bigger than you and who greets you by saying, “Hello lunch!” I think you have every right to run away as fast as you can. Indeed, in all the situations they faced — hungry snakes, avalanches, and so on — Frog and Toad did the right thing by running away. Bravery can take many forms. But I’m not sure Frog and Toad did the right thing by continuing to insist that they are not afraid.

So I’m going to come right out and say it: After nine-eleven, I am afraid. I was afraid of many things before nine-eleven, I was afraid of crime and violence and poverty, and I still am afraid of all those things. But now I’m also afraid of terrorism in a way that I wasn’t before. Now I’m afraid of this new postmodern world of ours where there are people who really really hate us here in the United States, who hate us because of our culture and our lifestyles and our deep love of our democracy. Sometimes I like to say to myself, but if they only knew me personally, they would like me! — but I know in my heart that some of the hatred that is directed at the United States is so strong, that there is no real possibility of them ever knowing me personally. After nine-eleven, I am afraid. I suspect many of you here this morning have also been a little more afraid since nine-eleven.

There’s the fear, and then there’s the anger. I know we’re all good religious liberals, and religious liberals never get angry, do we? We’re too nice to get angry. We have polite discussions, and study issues to deepen our understanding of other cultures and of oppressed peoples, and we vote on resolutions of concern, but we don’t get angry. But I am angry about nine-eleven. I am angry at the twisted minds that could kill themselves and innocent people by flying a jetliner into the World Trade Center or teh Pentagon, or into the ground out in Pennsylvania. I am angry at death toll. I am angry that children were killed. I remember the faces of the people I knew who had friends and co-workers who died on the planes, and I am angry. I read the news stories about the surviving husbands and wives and children of those who were killed on nine-eleven, and it breaks my heart, and I find that I am indeed angry. I suspect that many of you are just as angry as I am — if not angrier.

And here’s where I really struggle. As a Universalist, I believe that every human beings is worthy of dignity and respect. The old Universalists said that God is love, and because God is love all persons will be saved. Like those old Universalists, I reject any religion that tries to tell me that some people are going to be punished for all eternity for their sins. I cannot accept a universe that is based on punishment, on vidictiveness, on hatred — I cannot accept a universe that is run by some angry God who threatens us into good behavior by dangling us over the fires of hell. I am a Universalist, and I tell you that there is no hell — I tell you that the most powerful force in the universe is love.

So the most powerful force in the universe is love — yet when we are full of fear, when we feel abiding anger, it’s hard to remember that the most powerful force in the universe is love.

Maggi Peirce tells me that she wrote her poem, the one she just read for us, after she heard about a man who jumped from the burning, collapsing World Trade Center — and he stretched our his arms as if he were flying. Maggi says news stories about this man interviewed his sister, who said this was typical of him — he always embraced life. Maggi writes in her poem:

“But one flew. We have all dreamed of flying. Salute this one small mortal who, taking his life into his own hands, winged his way earthwards with such aplomb.”

We have all dreamed of flying.

It is easy to succumb to fear and anger. It is equally easy to insist that we are not angry and not afraid, to insist like Frog and Toad that we are brave — all while hiding in the closet or while hiding in bed under the covers. And it is easy to blame politicians for our woes, to blame the president, or more recently to blame the head of FEMA, or to blame anyone at all. But by hiding in the closet, or letting fear and anger rule over us, or blaming the politicians — none of those actions affirms that love is the most powerful force in the universe.

And each of those actions ultimately makes us smaller and less human.

Maybe you are perfectly happy hiding in the closet, or blaming the politicians, or remaining afraid and angry. That is understandable, and perfectly OK. But let me suggest an alternative. I suggest that we begin with forgiveness — we forgive the politicians (who, after all, are limited human beings just like us), we forgive ourselves for feeling afriad and angry, and maybe we even find it in ourselves to forgive the twisted minds who could fly those jetliners into buildings. We forgive, and we still hold people accountable for their actions. We must hold others and ourselves accountable for our actions. But remember that forgiveness is something takes place in our own hearts. It is not a gift that we bestow on other people; it is not even a gift that we give to ourselves. We forgive in the hope that we can heal the universe. We forgive trusting that forgiveness will take the weight off our shoulders, will allow us to open our arms, and embrace life.

I try to imagine what it would be like to stand near the top of a burning World Trade Center, knowing that there was no hope of escape. Would I have the courage to leap out into the unknown, arms spread wide, embracing the universe? I don’t know if I could do that or not, but I salute that one small mortal who could, and did — who took his life into his own hands.

We have a choice. The memories will be there, and they may come back at odd moments. But let us choose to embrace life, to embrace love. In forgiveness, we can find a fresh start, we can turn to the work that awaits us — the new work of Gulf Coast relief, the ongoing work of ending hunger and poverty and violence. Let us choose to embrace life, to embrace love. It will take courage, but in doing so, we will bring new hope to a world that desparately needs it.