Dan Harper | Sermons

  • A Christmas Carol

    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) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    The first half of the worship service consisted primarily of readings from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, abridged and adapted by Dan Harper; this book is in the public domain.

    Readings

    The opening words come from the opening of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens:

    Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner; Scrooge signed it. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

    Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

    Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

    Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye!”

    But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call “nuts” to Scrooge.

    Words for lighting a flame in the chalice:

    Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve — old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already — it had not been light all day — and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.

    Scrooge had a very small fire in his counting-house, but his clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.

    Responsive Reading

    A cheerful voice cried out:

    “A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

    “Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!” This nephew of Scrooge’s had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

    “Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

    “I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

    “Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? You’re rich enough.”

    Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”

    “Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.

    “What else can I be,” said Scrooge indignantly, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!”

    “Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.

    “Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”

    “I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time,” returned the nephew, “when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

    First reading

    Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands.

    Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change — not a knocker, but Marley’s face.

    Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.

    Up Scrooge went to his rooms, closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.

    It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.

    His glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

    “It’s humbug still!” said Scrooge. “I won’t believe it.”
    His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, “I know him; Marley’s Ghost!” and fell again.

    The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

    Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now….

    Second reading

    “How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. “What do you want with me?”

    “Much!” — Marley’s voice, no doubt about it.

    “Who are you?”

    “Ask me who I was.”

    “Who were you then?” said Scrooge, raising his voice. “You’re particular, for a shade.”

    “In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”

    “You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

    “I don’t,” said Scrooge.

    “Why do you doubt your senses?”

    “Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are! Humbug, I tell you! humbug!”

    At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

    Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.

    “Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”

    “I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?”

    “It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is me! — and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!”

    SERMON — A Christmas Carol

    “It is required of every one of us,” says the Ghost to old Scrooge, that our spirits within ourselves should walk abroad among humanity, and travel far and wide. To travel far and wide does not mean that you must immediately head off to a far continent. However, sitting in your counting house counting all your money does not count towards such travel. What the Ghost is telling Scrooge (and us) is that our spirits must rove beyond the narrow limits of making money; or for that matter, spending it.

    You all know this as well as I do. We hear this all the time during the Christmas season. We are reminded over and over that the importance of Christmas lies, not in the toys and gifts, not in how much money you spend, but in human contact, human relationships. The advertisements tell us this, and tell us that the gifts we buy are what will cement those human relationships. And I believe the advertisements.

    Yes, our spirits must rove beyond the narrow limits of the counting house, the office, and the mall. And if we don’t let our spirits rove during our lives, says the Ghost, why then we’re condemned to do it after death. As an ultra-Universalist, I say there is no punishment after death; but I’m willing to accept the Ghost’s admonition as a good metaphor. When Scrooge first sees the Ghost of Marley, he notices the chain Marley wears about his middle: “It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.” When Scrooge asks the Ghost about this chain, the Ghost replies: “I wear the chain I forged in life…. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you? Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?” At which Scrooge trembles, for he knows full well that he, too, is wound about with chains: chains which bind him to his cold, cheerless, circumscribed world. And even though we chuckle at Scrooge’s stubbornness, we who hear this story are left with an uncomfortable feeling as if perhaps there are chains bound about our own waists — terrible thought! — no wonder the doctor tells us we need to lose weight!

    The Ghost of Marley gives Scrooge hope that he might be saved from the Ghost’s fate. Three Spirits will come and haunt Scrooge: one to show him the past, one to show him the present, and one to show him the future.

    Scrooge falls asleep; the bell chimes the hour, and Scrooge awakens. The first of the three spirits comes, saying: “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” Scrooge is whisked off to see to see how he spent past Christmasses. The Ghost takes him to see his boyhood home: “They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.” Like so many of us, Scrooge had had sadness and loneliness in his life, which he had conveniently forgotten. And the Ghost of Christmas Past brings him to see him at his first job, where his boss kept the fires burning brightly and warmly for Scrooge and the other workers, and stopped all work on Christmas Eve so that all might celebrate together. In those days, Scrooge had heartily celebrated Christmas; but then his thoughts had turned increasingly to money; and because money had meant so much to him, he had ended his engagement to a young woman: and so it was that he found himself old and alone, alone except for his money, alone except for his possessions.

    You know how the story goes. The Ghost of Christmas Past departs; Scrooge falls asleep again, and is awakened by the Ghost of Christmas Present, a hearty, likable sort of Ghost, who takes Scrooge off on a journey to see how the rest of the world celebrates Christmas: not grouchily sitting alone, saying “Humbug!”; but celebrating in the company of others, and relishing the human contact. The Ghost of Christmas Present takes old Scrooge to see how his clerk, Bob Cratchit, celebrates Christmas; you wouldn’t think that a man so poor as Bob Cratchit could be merry at Christmas time, but he is, with his family gathered around him. Even Tiny Tim, Bob’s son who can’t walk without crutches, is merry at Christmas. And then off to see Scrooge’s nephew celebrating Christmas, and to hear the nephew’s assessment of his miserly old uncle: ” ‘He’s a comical old fellow,’ said Scrooge’s nephew, ‘that’s the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. His wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it. He don’t make himself comfortable with it. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.’” Indeed, Scrooge’s offences do carry their own punishment, here and now, in this life: for he is miserable, even though he doesn’t quite know it himself. Although the visits of the Ghost of Christmas are beginning to show himself how miserable he truly is.

    Scrooge receives one more visitor, a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, the grimmest and silentest and most frightening of all the Ghosts. Most frightening, because this ghost shows Scrooge how he will die, unmourned by all, dismissed with the phrase: “Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?” Scrooge will die, and his house be plundered by common thieves as he lies dead on his deathbed, for he will have no one to look after him and care about him. Scrooge will die, and the only people who feel any emotion at his death are a young couple who rejoice because they owed Scrooge money and his death will buy them a little more time to pay off that debt.

    You know the rest of the story. Scrooge awakens in the morning to find that it is Christmas Day — imagine that, all those visits by all those Ghosts had occurred in one short night! — and of course Scrooge has thoroughly reformed. He sends a giant Christmas turkey to Bob Cratchit, his clerk; he gives money to charity; he dines with his nephew; and the day after Christmas, he increases Bob Cratchit’s salary. And as the years go by, he becomes like a second father to little Tiny Tim.

    Yet the funny thing is that we best remember Scrooge as he is before he reforms. We remember him as the mean, penurious, cranky old man who says, “Bah!” and “Humbug!” We remember Scrooge as the man who won’t let his clerk add even one tiny piece of coal to the fire in the office, even though it is frightfully cold. We remember Scrooge as the man who won’t give money to charity to help the poor, for after all that’s what the prisons and poor houses are for. We remember Scrooge as the man whom even loveable, forgiving Tiny Tim doesn’t like.

    We get a delicious sense of enjoyment watching Scrooge in action, before he’s reformed. I think we feel that enjoyment because we have a sense that he’s in each of us. Oh yes, he is indeed. I myself take pride in being a “Scrooge,” and I enjoy saying “Bah! Humbug!” in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and I like to say that there is so much humbug in Christmas these days that it is easy to be a Scrooge. It’s fun being a Scrooge.

    But there’s a deeper reason why we remember Scrooge best before he reforms. The reason is quite simply this: just like Scrooge, we all do like money. We would all like a comfortable life. Perhaps the only thing we despise in the unreformed Scrooge is his unwillingness to enjoy a little bit more of his money; although when you come right down to it, he gets plenty of enjoyment: he eats out at a restaurant every night of his life and he has a big huge house. Really, the unreformed Scrooge is no different than the typical American worker today: we work long hours, we take pride in working so hard that we can’t find time to do anything but eat, sleep, and work — and we do love our money. Yes we do. We are the wealthiest society on earth, and we like it that way, even if it means we have to put aside some of our humanity.

    It might not be a bad idea to face up to our own ghosts: the ghosts of our past, both our individual pasts, and our shared past as the wealthiest country in the world; to face up to the true reality of our present; and to look ahead at what the future might hold for us if we keep on going on the way we’ve been going on. As a society, we are becoming more like the unreformed Scrooge every day: unforgiving, uncharitable, unpleasant, and even unkind. Let us not forget that we are at war on this holiday that supposedly proclaims peace on earth. Let us not forget that the numbers of the poor in our country, our wealthy country, have been growing by leaps and bounds. Let us not forget that money is worshipped above all else in our society.

    I think Dickens’s story is best summed up when Scrooge’s nephew tells what Christmas should be: “a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

    To say this is to say, more simply, that at Christmas-time we really should try to remember the golden rule:– to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. How fitting that we try to live out this great ethical teaching on the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, who presented this wisdom of the ages to humanity once again. It was Jesus who put this great moral teaching into such a memorable form that we still quote his words. Except that while we quote his words, we also seem to need to be constantly reminded of them again and again — by people like Charles Dickens — and, well, by each other.

    So here I stand on this day before Christmas, reminding us all of this again. Love the people around you; love all creation; allow yourself to be loved by others. That is the essence of Christmas; that is what lies at the core of our religious faith: Love humanity; love the people around you; love all creation; allow yourself to be loved.

    Do this until it becomes a habit that continues beyond Christmas-time. Keep on doing that all the year ’round.

  • The 2006 No-rehearsal Christmas pageant

    The “No-Rehearsal Christmas Pageant” is borrowed from Rev. Jory Agate of First Parish in Cambridge, and she got it from someone else; to the best of our knowledge, it is in the public domain. This version is rewritten and modified by Rev. Dan Harper for use at First Unitarian in New Bedford. The story about Hannukah is also in the public domain.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is from the Hebrew scriptures, words written by the prophet Isaiah. Early Christians interpreted this passage as a prediction of the coming of the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth.

    “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

    “Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

    “For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian….

    “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

    “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.” [KJV, Isa. 9.2-4, 6-7]

    The second reading this morning is by the humanist and Universalist minister, Kenneth Patton.

    Ours is the mood for mythologies —
    tales of gods and heroes,
    virgin mothers and shining babes.
    Our myths are of dying huntsmen,
    weeping goddesses, jeweled gifts
    for a king’s son, nostalgic promises
    of miracles and forever.
    In the pause of the year
    — when time stops, —
    — when reality is no longer real: —
    We make a feast of poems,
    a celebration of telling tales,
    a delight of songs.

    [from Hymns of Humanity, heavily adapted by Dan Harper]

    Story for all ages

    [This story was acted out with help from members of the congregation.]

    You all know about Christmas, right? Christmas is the story of the birth of a little baby. Christmas is the story of how some people thought that little baby was going to grow up to be a new King of Israel. Because even though when Jesus was born, the Romans ruled over the land of Judea (what we now call Israel), it had once been a free country. You see, it’s like this….

    A hundred and seventy years before Jesus was born, the Seleucid Empire ruled the land where the Jews live. Antiochus IV, the local Seleucid ruler, wanted to destroy the Jewish religion, and one day he and his soldiers took over the Jewish temple.

    But they hadn’t reckoned with brave Judah Maccabee, who was leading a rebellion against the evil Seleucids.* Judah and his sons and other soldiers beat back the Seleucids…

    Then brave Judah Maccabee dumped out the statue of Zeus that evil King Antiochus had put there, they cleaned out the remnants of the pigs that had been sacrificed to anger them. Then they discovered that the Ner Tamid, the eternal light, had gone out.

    They had only enough pure oil to last for one day; yet, a miracle, it lasted eight days, long enough for them to get new oil.

    So began the festival of Hannukah, a festival of the rededication of the Temple. Today Hannukah reminds us how precious a thing religious freedom is — Hannukah reminds us to light a candle against the darkness, to show our willingness to fight for our freedom.

    [from * — adapted from words by Rabbi Michael Feshbach]

    But the kingdom that Judah Maccabee rebuilt didn’t last very long. Sixty years before Jesus was born, the Romans took over the kingdom founded by brave Judah. At first, the Romans gave the Jews independence and freedom, but gradually, gradually the Romans took over more and more and more control until at last the Jews began to think once again of rebelling against foreign rule which had been imposed upon them….

    The No-Rehearsal Christmas Pageant

    The story appears in plain type, instructions to the congregation appear in italic type, and stage directions in square brackets [ ].

    The Christmas story is rooted in old, old tales of the winter solstice. In ancient times in Europe, when the solstice came, our distant ancestors sometimes told stories of a miraculous child born to return us to the light. Throughout the world, people tell stories of a child born to a royal family, or to an important and rich family, who would grow up to lead humankind into a time of truth and justice.

    The early Christians adapted these stories of miraculous births — but they added a twist to the old stories. Their miraculous child was not the son of a king, but was merely the son of a carpenter; he was not the son of a wealthy queen, but was instead the son of a woman whose only wealth was her moral purity. And that Christian story has been told and retold innumerable times since those early Christians first began telling it 18 or 19 hundred years ago.

    We are going to recreate the old story of the miraculous birth of Jesus this morning, but we are going to give it our own slant. We’ll draw on two early Christian accounts of Jesus’s birth, from the books of Matthew and Luke. Since we take the story of Hannukah seriously, we are going to make this a story of freedom and liberation. And drawing on our own Universalist heritage, we are going to make this a story of hope for all people.

    Instead of just listening to or watching the story of the birth of Jesus, we are going to get inside it. Try to forget that you’ve ever heard this story before: even though you recognize the familiar characters, even though you remember the familiar plot, try to hear this story as if this if the first time you’ve heard it. At various points in the story, I am going to ask if some of you would be willing to come up here with me, and play the parts of some of the characters in the story. Don’t worry, you won’t have to speak! When I pause and ask for volunteers to play parts in the story, if you want to be in the story raise your hand, and I will call on you to take a part. Then you will move over there [point to Robers] (always walking slowly and calmly) where you will be dressed in a simple costume. Emma will then place you in the growing tableau.

    Ready? Then let’s begin…

    If you wish, close your eyes for a moment. Transport yourself to another time and another place. Imagine that a story is going to unfold before your very eyes, a brand-new story you’ve never heard before.

    Imagine that after years and years of hearing stories about women and men bowing down before powerful kings and emperors and dictators and tyrants, you finally hear a story in which three powerful wise people kneel down alongside some shepherds before one tiny, new-born child.

    Imagine that after years of hearing story after story telling of terrible wars, you are at last hearing the friendly story of a baby: the story of a humble carpenter and his wife, the baby that is born to them in a stable, shepherds in a star-lit field who go to see the new-born child, and peaceful animals who gather round in the stable where the baby lies in the cow’s feeding trough. Imagine that at last you are going to hear a story in which everyone is longing for peace on earth and good will to all persons, everywhere.

    Imagine that after years of hearing stories about the results of hatred and oppression and persecutions, you finally are hearing a story about the transforming power of love.

    Now slowly open your eyes. Listen and watch carefully. Let the story begin!

    To start the story, I need someone to be Caesar Augustus, Emperor of Rome.

    [A member of the congregation volunteers to be Caesar, gets gold laurel to wear, is placed in pulpit.]

    In those days, long, long ago, a decree went out from the Emperor, Caesar Augustus, saying:

    “All the world should be registered so they can pay taxes to me!”

    [Caesar moves to stand beside pulpit, arms crossed]

    Now I need two people, one to be Joseph, a carpenter, and one to be Mary, who’s engaged to Joseph.

    [Two members of the congregation volunteer, Mary gets a blue robe to wear, and Joesph a red robe.]

    Mary and Joseph, once you have your robes on, could you please walk slowly (because you’re making a long journey) up these stairs right, along the chancel stage past the pulpit, and back down those stairs. Oh, and this first scene is a starlit night, so could everyone else please hold up your hands like this, as if your hands are twinkling stars…

    All the people were required to go to the town where they had been born to register. For some people, that meant a long journey. Joseph, a carpenter, had to go all the way from the town of Nazareth in Galilee [point to rear of auditorium], to Judea, to Bethlehem, the city of David. He went with Mary, the woman he was planning to marry, because she was expecting a child. They started on their long journey, traveling by day, and sometimes even by night, their road lit only by stars.

    Joseph and Mary knew it was not going to be easy, what with Mary almost ready to have her baby. At least they had a donkey that Mary could ride on. And at least the twinkling stars made the road seem friendly.

    [Joseph and Mary move to two chairs on platform in front of pulpit.]

    Thank you for the stars — now that Joseph and Mary are in Bethlehem, you can put your hands down.

    When Joseph and Mary got to Bethlehem, they discovered that there was no room at the inn. But the inn was the only place in town with comfortable beds. The only place Mary and Joseph could find place to take shelter was in a stable cut into the side of a hill. So they settled in to sleep there among the animals.

    Now I need some animals: a cow; a pig; two chickens; I’m sure there was a mouse; and since this was the middle east, let’s add a camel.

    [Members of the congregation volunteer, receive animal noses to wear, and gather around Mary and Jospeh.]

    The gentle animals welcomed Joseph and Mary into their stable. And that very night, the time came for Mary to give birth. It was a stable, so when the baby was born of course there was no cradle for Mary to lay her baby in. But one of the cows was kind enough to lend her feeding trough for a cradle, and Joseph and Mary laid their new baby there among the hay in the feeding trough.

    Now I’m going to need two Shepherds. Of course, I will also need Sheep for the Shepherds to watch! And I need one person who is willing to be a Messenger from the God of the Israelites, also known as an Angel of the Lord.

    [Members of the congregation volunteer to be Shepherds, receive robes to wear. Four Sheep get Sheep masks to hold in front of faces. Sheep and Shepherds stand to one side of pulpit. Member of the congregation volunteers to be the Angel, receives wings and tinsel halo to wear.]

    In that region, there were shepherds who lived for months at a time out in the fields, watching over their flocks of sheep by night. They had to watch over their sheep because there were wolves in the hills that would gladly eat a sheep, if they could get one.

    [Angel goes into pulpit.]

    On this night, as the shepherds stood watch in their fields, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and this angel was truly magnificent, and the glory of the God of the Israelites shone around the shepherds. Not surprisingly, the shepherds were terrified. But the angel spoke gently, saying to them:

    “Do not be afraid, for I have appeared to bring you good news of great joy for all the people of Israel. To you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is the messiah. This will be a sign to you: you will find a child wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a cow’s feeding trough.”

    Ah — I see we’re going to need lots more angels all of a sudden. Perhaps I could prevail on everyone in the congregation to stand for a moment, as you’re willing and able, face the Shepherds and Sheep, and act as a host of angels?

    Then the angel who had spoken went on to say:

    “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth let there be peace and goodwill among all people everywhere.”

    And there was a whole host of angels singing and praising God, and the shepherds were amazed.

    Upon hearing the message from their God, and hearing the songs of the angel choir, the shepherds said to one another, “This is amazing! Let’s go up to Bethlehem and actually see the baby the first angel told us about!” Being good shepherds who cared about their sheep, they brought the sheep along.

    [Sheep and Shepherds gather around Mary and Joseph]

    So the shepherds went to Bethlehem with their sheep, and there they found Mary and Joseph and the new baby, just as that angel had told them. (Afterwards, the shepherds would tell everyone what the angel had said to them about Mary and Joseph’s new baby, and everyone who heard their story was amazed.)

    As for Mary, she already knew her baby was wonderful. But she listened carefully to what the shepherds said, and treasured all she heard in her heart.

    The shepherds and sheep gathered around the feeding trough admiring the baby. They praised their God for this wonder of new birth, and they prayed and hoped that what the angel said would come true — that there would be peace on earth and goodwill for all people, even for lowly shepherds.

    Now I’m going to need three Wise People, who are also royalty. After you get your crowns at the back of the church, please begin walking slowly up the aisle, and stop at the first pews.

    [Three volunteers from the congregation receive crowns, and begin walking up center aisle of church.]

    After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, three wise persons, who were kings and queens from the Far East, came to Jerusalem.

    As these three wise persons journeyed their long, slow journey to Bethlehem (actually, it took them 12 days to get there, which is why we talk about the twelve days of Christmas), they noticed that their way was lit by a large and bright star.

    It looks like I’m going to need someone to be the Star….

    [A member of the congregation gets a large silver star on a pole to hold over the whole scene.]

    First the wise persons went to visit King Herod.

    I’ll need someone to be King Herod, and you can stay seated right where you are.

    [A member of the congregation sitting near the front is crowned as King Herod.]

    And these wise persons went to Herod and asked, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the skies and we have come to praise him and bring him gifts.”

    The three wise persons learned from King Herod about a prophecy which had been spoken long ago, that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem. So the wise persons set out for Bethlehem, and as they walked, they saw ahead of them the star as they first had seen it in the Far East.

    The wise persons followed the star until it stopped over the stable where the newborn child was lying in the cow’s feeding trough.

    [The three Wise People go to the platform, stand to one side of Mary and Joseph — wherever they fit.]

    When the wise persons entered the stable and saw the new baby, they were overwhelmed with joy at this new life. They knelt down to worship him, and they opened their bags and brought out gifts of gold (because the crowns of kings were made of gold) and frankincense and myrrh (myrrh was what was put in the oil used to anoint kings).

    Now we are done. Let us pause for a moment. Look at this scene. It is a special night, with stars and angels and shepherds and wise persons and animals. And they are all admiring a special baby that has just been born.

    Why would all these people stand around for such a long time to admire a tiny new baby? There is only one reason I can think of — because the birth of a child always brings hope for the future. And for a people who lived under oppressive Roman rule, all the while longing for liberation, the birth of a child must have been fraught with extra meaning. Will this be the child who leads us to freedom? Will this be the child who breaks our bonds of slavery and establishes a reign of peace and righteousness?

    So it is in our world today. In a world that sometimes seems hopeless, we still look with hope to the future. Every time a baby is born, we hope that this child will be one of the ones who leads us to a world of righteousness. And every time we tell this Christmas story, it reminds us that we must go out and work for liberation and justice. We — you and I — are the ones who are responsible for making sure the world is a better place for all the babies that are born.

    As our cast of characters hold their places, let’s all sing together — both those sitting in the pews, and those up here with me — let us sing together hymn number 251, “Silent Night.” If you don’t have a hymnal, you can just sing the first verse over three times, or you can just hum the familiar tune. At the beginning of the second verse, I will signal to everyone up here to walk (quietly and calmly) back to where you were sitting.

    Closing Words

    The ancient sun warms us and spring follows winter or we perish; but no divine savior bears our salvation.

    Unto us children are born, new chances are given, refreshingly, creatively, generation upon generation.

    The celebrations of tomorrow will have good news of birth, and a sufficient answer to death. There will be stars of hope, and new angels singing new songs.

    We ever walk towards hope; and even in the depths of winter we know that the days will grow long once again, and the earth will turn green, and flowers will bloom, and the air grow soft and warm.

    [from Hymns of Humanity, adapted by Dan Harper]

  • God in Nature

    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) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, titled “Blight.”

    Give me truths,
    For I am weary of the surfaces,
    And die of inanition. If I knew
    Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
    Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and pimpernel,
    Blue-vetch, and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
    Milkweeds, and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew,
    And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
    Draw untold juices from the common earth,
    Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
    Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply
    By sweet affinities to human flesh,
    Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,–
    O that were much, and I could be a part
    Of the round day, related to the sun,
    And planted world, and full executor
    Of their imperfect functions.
    But these young scholars who invade our hills,
    Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
    And travelling often in the cut he makes,
    Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
    And all their botany is Latin names.
    The old men studied magic in the flower,
    And human fortunes in astronomy,
    And an omnipotence in chemistry,
    Preferring things to names, for these were men,
    Were unitarians of the united world,
    And wheresoever their clear eyebeams fell,
    They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes
    Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,
    And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
    And strangers to the plant and to the mine;
    The injured elements say, Not in us;
    And night and day, ocean and continent,
    Fire, plant, and mineral say, Not in us,
    And haughtily return us stare for stare.
    For we invade them impiously for gain,
    We devastate them unreligiously,
    And coldly ask their pottage, not their love,
    Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
    Only what to our griping toil is due;
    But the sweet affluence of love and song,
    The rich results of the divine consents
    Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
    The nectar and ambrosia are withheld;
    And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
    And pirates of the universe, shut out
    Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
    Turn pale and starve….

    The second reading this morning is by Bernard Loomer, Bernard, from his essay “The Size of God” [in The Size of God: The Theology of Bernard Loomer in Context, ed. by William Dean and Larry Axel. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press]:

    “In our traditions the term ‘God’ is the symbol of ultimate values and meanings in all of their dimensions. It connotes an absolute claim on our loyalty. It points the direction of a greatness of fulfillment. It signifies a richness of resources for the living of life at its depths. It suggests the enshrinement of our common and ecological life. It proclaims an adequate object of worship. It symbolizes a transcendent and inexhaustible meaning that forever eludes our grasp. The world is God because it is the source and preserver of meaning; because the creative advance of the world in its adventure is the supreme cause to be served; because even in our desecration of our space and time within it, the world is holy ground; and because it contains and yet enshrouds the ultimate mystery inherent within existence itself” (Loomer 1987, 42)

    SERMON — “God in Nature”

    In case you’re wondering, I’m not going to preach about Christmas this week. It’s only NOvember, and still too early to preach about Christmas. Instead, this sermon is the third in a series of sermons on Unitarian Universalist views on God.

    I’ve been thinking about the current hullabaloo raised by Richard Dawkins’s latest book, The God Delusion. Dawkins, as you probably know, is an evolutionary biologist; he is also an atheist who delights in pointing out the ridiculousness of believing in God; and as a result he has been getting lots of coverage in the popular press. I have to admit, I don’t even plan to read his book. Tending towards cynicism as I do, it’s hard for me to take Dawkins seriously, because it’s clear that the more he fulminates against established religion, the more books he will sell. In today’s world, iconoclasm can be very profitable.

    Come to think of it, maybe I should read Dawkins’s book, and learn how to write my own bestselling book in which I trash-talk religion from a minister’s point of view.

    On the other hand, while the media has been giving Dawkins lots of coverage, but they have not been covering how theological scholars are responding to Dawkins’s book; popular culture doesn’t want to hear experts on religion talk about religion. The theologians are politely saying that Dawkins’s book simply displays his ignorance of theology: that the God Dawkins describes is not a God that any theologian would take seriously either. They are also saying Dawkins should know better: in order to write seriously about a subject you should read up on the subject first, and Dawkins clearly knows nothing about theology.

    On the other other hand, the theologians are probably jealous that their books don’t sell as well as Dawkins’s. Which may be because too many of the theologians write about a traditional, abstract God that I can’t believe in. So where does that leave someone like me? I don’t believe in the cartoon-caricature of God that Dawkins vilifies; who does? Nor am I interested in the traditional God of the theologians, a lifeless God which I sometimes find even less believable than Dawkins’s cartoonish God.

    I suspect there are quite a few you out there who find themselves in this same position. The cartoon-God of the God-bashers, while entertaining, is also faintly embarrassing because it’s too easy to bash a cartoonish God. The traditional concepts of God hold little interest for us any more. The academic God of the theologians seems simply irrelevant. Yet here we are, sitting in a church; we’re still religious. Whether or not we believe in God, we still take religion seriously.

    So this morning I’d like to talk about one concept of God that I find I can take seriously; and that’s the idea that God is inextricably intertwined with Nature, with the natural world. Not that you or I or anyone should unquestioningly accept this concept of God-in-Nature;– but I do think it’s worthy of our serious attention, for at least three reasons: first, because many people find personal religious inspiration in Nature; second, because it seems easy to reconcile such a God with the insights of science; and third, because it seems that such a God could help us understand the current ecological crisis, and help us understand why we should do something about that crisis.

    Let’s start with that first reason:– It’s worth considering God as Nature because many of us find personal religious inspiration in Nature. By “religious” inspiration, I mean an experience of awe and wonder, or an experience a sense of the sublime; a personal sense of religion often grows out of such experiences. Not that these experiences lead necessarily towards one narrow religious viewpoint. You can experience a religious awe and wonder at the coming of springtime and the rebirth of the natural world; but that doesn’t mean that you will necessarily fit that experience of awe and wonder into the traditional Western Christian celebration of Easter and the risen Christ; no more does it mean that you will fit that experience into the celebration of the ancient Celtic pagan holiday of Beltane. Or you can experience a religious sense of the sublime when you are in the eye of a hurricane, when you see and hear the storm raging all around you but overhead there is that small, quiet patch of blue sky; but that sense of the insignificant self being overwhelmed by the sublime power and grandeur of the universe does not lead to any specific religious theological belief system.

    I get a good deal of my own religious inspiration from Nature. When I’m in the White Mountains, hiking above treeline into the alpine ecosystem, being in the midst of the low shrubby trees and tiny delicate flowers, that is a religious experience for me. Or the other day when I was out on Pope’s Island, I flushed a Cooper’s Hawk out of some shrubs near the city marina, and the surprise of its sudden appearance, and the sight of it flying off low over the waters of the harbor, was a religious experience. I don’t know how to explain that feeling of connection to another living being except as a religious connection; I’m not going to eat a Cooper’s Hawk, nor will it eat me; seeing a patch of lichen above treeline is not going to give me some evolutionary advantage that will help me pass along my genes to the next generation. These powerful experiences of nature don’t move me to believe in the traditional God, but my personal experiences of the natural world make me think that it might make sense to describe Nature as God.

    And this is related to the fact that it is possible, even easy, to reconcile such a God, God-in-Nature, with the insights of science.

    Science can provoke awe and wonder and sense of sublime; at least, I suspect it can do so for nearly everyone in this room. Haven’t you ever been thrilled by one of those science programs on television? Admittedly, some of them are terminally boring, but I do get excited by the programs about astronomy. How can you not get excited when you hear about the Big Bang that (so it is theorized) was the beginning of our whole universe? How can you not react in awe and wonder when you learn about the vast distances in our universe? What’s even more thrilling is when you get to experience science first-hand. Last winter, one of the local astronomy clubs brought their telescopes out for AHA! Night one month, and I got a chance to look through their telescopes at Uranus and Mars — that was far more memorable than a television program, and it was certainly an experience of awe and wonder for me.

    On a more personal level, as an avid bird watcher I’m thrilled by bird biology. When you see two different kinds of sandpipers feeding side by side at the edge of the ocean, almost identical to one another except for the length of their bills, and you know that they evolved from a common ancestor, evolving different bill lengths so one could dig a little deeper in the sand and mud and exploit a slightly different ecological niche, I find that thrilling. Those two birds are living, breathing examples of how evolution works, which I find awe-inspiring and wonderful. Now I had better stop talking about birds before your eyes glaze over in boredom. The science of ornithology happens to fill me with awe and wonder; even if you find birds mind-numbingly boring, I trust that you will be able to think of other examples of science that fills you with awe and wonder.

    Richard Dawkins notwithstanding, many religious people have no problem reconciling God with science. Liberal Christians find it easy to reconcile a fairly traditional Christian God with science, as long as you don’t take the Bible literally. Pagans, Jews, and many other religious faiths say that science is completely compatible with belief in Goddess or God. But I would like to tell you about “religious naturalism,” a religious position which I probably adhere to.

    Jerry Stone, a philosopher of religion who is affiliated with Meadville Lombard Theological School, came up with the term “religious naturalism.” I went to hear Jerry give a talk about religious naturalism last June at General Assembly, our big annual denominational meeting. Jerry says that ‘naturalism’ means “a set of beliefs and attitudes that focus on this world,” whereas ‘supernaturalism’ would imply that there is something beyond the natural world. So according to Jerry Stone, “religious naturalism is a philosophy or theology that there are religious aspects of this world which can be appreciated within a naturalist framework.” Which means that religious naturalism is easily compatible with science.

    And religious naturalism allows belief in God. (Jerry Stone also says that there are also religious naturalists who see no need for any concept of God at all; but that’s a topic for a different sermon.) Some religious naturalists would say that God is the whole universe, the totality of everything; as we heard Bernard Loomer say in the first reading this morning. Other religious naturalists would say that God is a part of the total universe; for example, a theologian named Henry Nelson Wieman said that the creative process in the universe is God. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau fall into one of these two camps: they found God in natural processes and in the connections between living beings, and it may be that they find God in everything.

    To find God in the interconnections between living beings: it seems to me that such a God could help us understand why we should do something about the current ecological crisis. This is the big problem I have with people like Richard Dawkins: he gives me no compelling reason why I should try to stop species extinctions, or try to clean up New Bedford harbor, or do anything at all about the ecological crisis.

    Our ecological crisis fascinates me. It horrifies me, too, but I’m fascinated by the fact that we have the science and the technological know-how to end the ecological crisis — and yet we aren’t ending the crisis. I’m fascinated by the fact that we have the financial resources to pay for solving global warming, to take one example, to pay for it with relatively little disruption to the economy — and yet we aren’t ending global warming, or any part of the ecological crisis. I’m fascinated from a religious point of view, because I think our society refuses to deal with the current ecological crisis because of certain prevailing religious beliefs. Let me outline what some of those religious beliefs might be.

    First, and most obviously, there are substantial numbers of right-wing Christians who don’t worry about the current ecological crisis because they fully expect the end of the world to come, and all the true believers will be “raptured” up to heaven. If you think you’re going to get “raptured” up to heaven, I’ll bet you don’t think you have to deal with global warming, species extinctions, or the PCBs in New Bedford harbor. Second, there are substantial numbers of people of many different religious persuasions who are willing to passively sit back and trust to God, or to Goddess, or whomever. If you think it was meant to be this way, ecological disasters and all, if you say “I’m sure God will provide”; I’d have to say there isn’t much incentive for you to take responsibility yourself to clean up the world.

    Thirdly, and least obviously, there are lots of people who believe that human beings are the most important life form, not only more important than any other plant or animal but also more important than the ecosystem considered as a whole. If you think you, as a human being, are so special then why would you cut back on your fuel consumption just because global warming is going to melt the polar ice caps thus killing off all the polar bears? This third group includes plenty of people who would not think of themselves as religious, but I count them as religious since they hold onto this belief with religious zeal in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Yet if the theory of evolution teaches us anything, it teaches us that human beings are not special and not unique; we’re just another organism that happened to develop through the chance processes of evolution.

    We human beings do have a deep need to feel special. At the moment, too many of us satisfy our need to feel special at the expense of all other life forms. If we are willing to affirm God as being intertwined with Nature in some way, that means that we, too, are a part of God. It doesn’t get any more special than that: there is that of God in each of us; or maybe it’s that there’s that of each of us in God; in either case, we too are divine, we too are Godly. If you prefer, you can substitute “Goddess” for “God” here, and everything will still be equally true.

    Yet if we say that God or Goddess is intertwined with Nature, we have every incentive to do no harm to Nature, for doing harm to Nature is not only doing harm to God or Goddess, it is also doing harm to ourselves; since we too are divine. It is morally and ethically wrong to cause harm to Nature.

    In the first reading this morning, Ralph Waldo Emerson tells us that we have become strangers to animals and plants, strangers to ocean and continent, strangers even to the night and to the day. Why is this so?: “For we invade them impiously for gain,/We devastate them unreligiously…”. Emerson tell us that it is morally and ethically wrong to cause harm to Nature. He also tells us that in causing such harm, we only harm ourselves: “The nectar and ambrosia” of the Gods “are withheld” from us; “And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves/ And pirates of the universe, shut out/ Daily to a more thin and outward rind,/ Turn pale and starve.” Causing harm to ourselves is itself morally and ethically wrong, to say nothing of being stupid.

    “Give me truths,” says Emerson, not delusions. The truth is that it wouldn’t do us any harm to start treating Nature as divine. I’m not trying to convince you that you should accept this idea of God; I’m not even sure that I accept this notion of God; I need to think about this some more. But the idea of God as Nature is worth taking seriously.

    Affirm that Nature is divine, and maybe humans will stop unleashing blight on the natural world. Affirm the divinity of Nature, and maybe we will figure out how to extend our morals and ethics beyond human beings to all of Nature. Such affirmations do not strike me as delusional, but as good practical common sense.