Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: Jesus of Nazareth

  • White Poverty

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Story: How To Feed Five Thousand People

    Once upon a time, Jesus and his disciples (that is, his closest followers) were trying to take a day off. Jesus had become very popular, and people just wouldn’t leave him alone. Jesus and the disciples wanted a little time away from the crowds that followed them everywhere, so they rented a boat and went to a lonely place, far from any village.

    But his fans figured out where they were going. By the time Jesus and his friends landed the boat, there were five thousand people waiting there for them. So Jesus started to teach them, and he talked to them for hours.

    It started getting late, and the disciples of Jesus pulled him aside and said, “We need to send these people to one of the nearby villages to get some food.”

    “No,” said Jesus. “The villages around here are too small to feed five thousand people. You will have to get them something to eat.”

    “What do you mean?” his disciples said. “We don’t have enough money to go buy enough bread for all these people, and even if we did, how would we bring it all back here?”

    “No, no,” said Jesus. “I don’t want you to go buy bread. Look, how many loaves of bread have we got right here?”

    The disciples looked at the food they had brought with them. “We’ve got five loaves of bread, and a couple of fried fish. That’s it.”

    “That’ll be enough,” said Jesus.

    His disciples looked at him as if he were crazy. There was no way that would be enough food for five thousand people!

    Now, Jesus had spent the whole day teaching people about the Kingdom of God, teaching them that everyone is dependent on someone else. And while he was sitting up in front of the crowd teaching, he looked out and saw that many of the five thousand people had brought their own food with them. He watched them as they surreptitiously nibbled away at their own food, ignoring the fact that many of the people around them had no food at all.

    Jesus brought out the five loaves of bread. Being a good Jew, he blessed the bread using the traditional Jewish blessing: “Blessed are you, O Holy One, Creator of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” Then he broke the bread, cut up the fish, and gave it to the disciples so they could hand it around.

    Everyone saw that even though Jesus and his disciples had barely enough food for themselves, they were going to share it with everyone. The truth began dawning in people’s eyes. All day long, Jesus had been teaching them that the Kingdom of Heaven existed here and now, if only people would recognize it. Now Jesus was giving them a chance to show they understood, and to act as if the Kingdom of Heaven truly existed.

    The disciples began to pass around the bread and the fried fish, shaking their heads because they knew there wasn’t going to be enough food for everyone. Yet, miracle of miracles, there was plenty of food to go around. People who had brought their own food put some of theat food into the baskets so it could be shared. People who hadn’t brought food with them took some food from the baskets. By the time the followers of Jesus had passed the baskets to all five thousand people, everyone had gotten enough to eat, and there was so much food left over that it filled twelve baskets.

    Today, many people tell this story differently. They believe that Jesus performed some kind of magic when he blessed the bread and fish, so that somehow Jesus and/or God turned a dozen loaves of bread and two fish into thousands of loaves of bread and thousands of fried fish. To my mind, that’s easier to believe than to believe that humans could perform the same miracle by simply sharing. Why is it easier to believe? Because if humans could perform this miracle back then, we could do the same thing today: to share with those who need it, and to live as if the Kingdom of Heaven existed here and now. (1)

    Readings

    The first reading was from an essay by Andrew Tait titled “Living in the Shadow of the American Dream,” published on August 1 on DailyYonder.com. The author is White.

    I live in Shenandoah County, Virginia. I’m a factory worker. A farmer. A father of two girls, one still in diapers. I get up before the sun, and most days I don’t sit down until after it’s gone. My partner Hannah and I raise our girls on a small farm in the Valley. She works full-time too — though nobody calls it that. She’s a caregiver, a homemaker, a livestock handler, and a mother. She doesn’t get a paycheck….

    …We heat with firewood I cut myself. We raise animals for milk, eggs, and meat because the grocery bill outpaces my paycheck. We’ve stayed unmarried — not because we don’t love each other, but because getting married would kick my partner and our daughters off the Medicaid that keeps them healthy. My employer offers insurance, sure — but only if I pay nearly as much as our mortgage. I can’t, so we stay as we are; in love but locked out.

    I’m not ashamed of our life. It’s honest work, and it’s full of love. However, I am ashamed that in a country as wealthy as ours, people like us are left out in the cold….

    I’m not writing this as a Democrat or a Republican. I’m writing this as a man watching families like mine wear themselves thin; working hard, doing the right things, and still falling behind. This isn’t about Red or Blue. It’s about the fact that we’re being divided against each other while both sides forget that real Americans bleed the same when the cost of insulin triples or the cost of groceries goes up again.

    The second reading was one of the most famous scenes in the book “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens.

    The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

    “Please, sir, I want some more.”

    The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.

    “What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice.

    “Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”

    The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

    The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said,

    “Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!”

    There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.

    “For more!” said Mr. Limbkins. “Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?”

    “He did, sir,” replied Bumble.

    “That boy will be hung,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. “I know that boy will be hung.”

    Sermon

    I’d like to speak with you this morning about White poverty; that is, about poor people who happen to be White. This may sound like a political topic, but there’s a spiritual reason behind this. I’ve borrowed the phrase “White poverty” from another minister, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, who used this phrase in the title of a book he wrote last year: “White Poverty: How Exposing the Myths about Race and Class and Reconstruct American Democracy.”

    Barber is a minister, but he is probably best known for his “Moral Mondays,” which he started in his home state of North Carolina. Now we have to touch upon politics for just a moment. The state of North Carolina is dominated by Republican politicians, and because William Barber’s Moral Mondays were protests aimed at state government, it would be easy to assume that Barber is a Democrat. I know I assumed he was a Democrat. But reading his book, I realized that he is motivated not by partisan politics, but by religion and spirituality. I’ve come to feel that both the Democrats and the Republicans have lost their religion and spirituality, so while I may not agree with everything Barber says, I feel he is well worth listening to as we try to find a way out of the mess that partisan politics has gotten us into.

    Barber in fact claims that the battles between the two parties hide a basic fact that we should not ignore. He says: “While these same [political] fights are regularly recycled for our public consumption, nearly half of Americans — people of every race, creed, and region — are united by the experience of being poor. They share the hardship, but they do not share a name because our formal definition of poverty has left tens of millions of Americans in the shadows. Even when we hear reports about poverty, they are based on numbers that severely undercount Americans who are living with their backs against the wall, unsure of how they are going to make it.” So writes William Barber.

    We heard the story of one of those people in the first reading this morning, a White man named Andrew Tait living in the South. Tait and his family just about manage to keep their heads above water. But you can hear in his story that just one crisis — unforeseen medical expenses, for example, or getting laid off — could put his family over the edge.

    There are many families in this same situation right here on the South Shore. A year or so ago, the town social worker here in Cohasset asked to meet with the Cohasset clergy. The town social worker wanted to talk with us, because she kept encountering situations where people in crisis who needed immediate financial assistance. She was adept at finding sources of assistance for Cohasset residents with long term needs — home heating assistance, food assistance, and so on. But she had no source for immediate one-time crises — such as a landlord who doubled the rent for a family who just couldn’t move before the end of the month. We clergy had been helping such people in an ad hoc manner with one-time gifts; we tried to help out the town social worker when we could, but sometimes that involved one of us writing a personal check to the town social worker and getting reimbursed later. But there was no other source for these kinds of one-time grants here in Cohasset. There are groups that can provide grants to organizations, but not to individuals. The town social worker urged us to get together and start a fund similar to Scituate’s “Christmas Fund” (which actually has nothing to do with Christmas, it’s just the name of a fund that provides one-time financial assistance). So began the Cohasset Community Assistance Fund, a fund which grew out of the needs of a town that’s 96% White. Poverty exists in towns like Cohasset, it’s mostly White poverty, and it’s mostly invisible.

    To return to partisan politics for just a moment: Neither of the two major political parties is very good at addressing White poverty. The Democrats, for some very good reasons, have focused on the financial needs of historically marginalized groups, such as African Americans, Native Americans, and so on. The Republicans, for some very good reasons, have focused on fostering a pro-business environment that will in the long term create jobs. But what if you’re White and poor right now? Then it can feel as though both political parties have abandoned you, as Andrew Tait said in the first reading.

    We don’t have to go as far away as Andrew Tait in ?Virginia to find example of how White poverty I’m going to cite four figures on the Cohasset Community Assistance Fund website. One: 21% of Cohasset households are considered low income, because they earn less that 80% of the area’s median income of $187,060. Two: 34% of Cohasset households experience what’s known as housing cost burden, where the housing cost is too high for income; 15% of Cohasset households are severely cost burdened. Three: Nearly 1 in 5 town residents use public health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid). Four: 142 people in town get Snap benefits, or food stamps; and the Cohasset Food Pantry gives crucial support to 80 Cohasset families. These figures are for Cohasset, but nearby towns like Scituate and Hull and Hanover and Pembroke and Hingham all have similar figuresw.

    These are community portraits showing people, mostly White, who are more financially vulnerable than they should be. Most of these people would not be poor by standard political definitions of poverty. But as William Barber and others have pointed out, the political definition of poverty may be too restrictive. A better definition of poverty might be something like this — If your household had a sudden expense of $1200, such as a major car repair, could you pay it without a problem? Or would you have to choose between paying the rent, or buying food, and fixing the car? By this latter definition of poverty, nearly half of all Americans are poor or on the edge of being poor. If nearly half of all Americans are poor, we cannot avoid the issue of poverty. This also puts the lie to the myth that poverty just a Black issue; it’s an issue that all of us, no matter what race or political party, need to face head on.

    The prevalence of poverty in America today reminds me of the story I told this morning, about Jesus feeding the five thousand. This story comes from the Christian scriptures, the book of Mark, chapter 6, verses 32 through 44. This story is usually interpreted as recounting a miracle performed by Jesus with the help of God: after seeing the five loaves of bread and two pieces of fish that his disciples have, Jesus increases this meager store of food by supernatural means until there’s enough to feed everyone. However, from a religious perspective, I would say that this usual interpretation of the story completely underestimates divine power, turning a major miracle into a very meager miracle. If you magically produce enough bread and fish for everyone, that really doesn’t change anything, does it? A major miracle would be to actually change human hearts from selfishness to sharing. I interpret this as a story of a major miracle, not a meager miracle.

    On a smaller scale, by the way, this is a miracle that preschool teachers perform on a regular basis: they teach children how to share. Alas, by the time most Americans reach adulthood, they seem to have forgotten what they learned in preschool. As a result, we have the Democrats saying that there’s nothing to worry about, because they passed a big infrastructure bill that’s going to provide jobs five years from now; and yet Andrew Tait struggles to make ends meet right now. Then we have the Republicans saying that there’s nothing to worry about, because they’re going to get rid of immigrants and slap tariffs on overseas manufacturers which will produce jobs five years from now; and yet Andrew Tait struggles to make ends meet right now.

    In the current political environment, it appears that divisive American politics have made our political leaders powerless to help people like Andrew Tait. But this was the same situation faced by Jesus in the Roman empire of two thousand years ago. Things were much worse in the ancient Roman empire than they are in America today, with even less political will to address the problem. Yet Jesus pointed out that the problem of poverty could be solved. A partial solution could come from a spiritual change emerging in the hearts of ordinary people. Of course that spiritual change would require a reduction in selfishness, and an increase in generosity; that is, it was a spiritual change which would require individual human beings to understand that they were connected to all other human beings.

    In my interpretation of the story, this is the real miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand. When those five thousand people were gathered in front of him, listening to him teach, he was teaching about how we are all interconnected. Yet he saw that some people had no food while others had brought their own food. So he performed a miracle: he helped people understand that because of their essential interconnectedness, sharing was the normal, natural thing to do. He was teaching them: do not separate yourself from community, and one way that you separate yourself from community was by not sharing. What a great miracle this was! — such a great miracle that we really cannot believe it happened. We would prefer to believe that God somehow magicked enough food for all five thousand people. If it was just magic, then we don’t have to change our hearts. But if it was not magic, then we ourselves must change.

    And in fact the early Christian community did change their hearts. One of the earliest Christian liturgies we have record of says that during communion services, the communion table would have on it not just bread and wine, but cheese and fruit and enough food to make a full meal. Thus the earliest Christian communion services provided not just some kind of spiritual food, but actual literal food so that if you were poor and hungry, you were fed; and if you were rich, you could give of what you had and thus grow spiritually. No wonder the early Christian church spread so quickly, across racial and national and class divisions: the earliest church fed body and soul, erasing divisions and hatred.

    I want to be clear that this same spiritual impulse appears in all the great religious traditions. One of my favorite ethical thinkers, Rabbi Hillel, gave voice to the same spiritual impulse from within the Jewish tradition. Hillel taught that we cannot blind ourselves to the suffering of others, saying, “Do not separate yourself from the community” [Avot 2:4]; that is, in your over-confidence, do not think that you can live your life solely on your own, without needing the wider human community. And this same spiritual impulse is present in the Sikh tradition. When American Sikh communities build a gurdwara, or temple, they include a commercial kitchen capable of cooking meals for dozens or hundreds of people; then each week they offer a free meal to all want to join them.

    Sadly, this spiritual impulse seems to have mostly disappeared among our allegedly Christian political leaders. Too many American Christians believe that Jesus said that we’d get pie in the sky when we die; that we’ll all have enough to eat, not now, but in the sweet bye-and-bye. These political leaders seem to have forgotten that Jesus was talking about the here and now when he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” Jesus united the spiritual with the physical: when there are people who are poor, then the Kingdom of God is not truly present; when if there are people who are hungry, then none of us can be spiritually filled.

    This ancient spiritual impulse does live on in many of today’s Christians, people like Rev. William Barber. And this ancient spiritual impulse lives on in many of today’s Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and Sikhs and atheists — anyone who understands that true spirituality means recognizing that all human beings are interconnected. This deep knowledge of human interconnectedness is a kind of Enlightenment, arising from our hearts when we realize we can never be an isolated individual; the spiritual promptings of our hearts teach us that we are always connected to all other human beings. Then we can begin to see how artificial divisions keep us from working together to create a world where there is no hunger or poverty.

    We can let go of those artificial divisions, like the myth that poverty is a Black problem; and we can recognize that half of us in America, including a great many White people, are either in poverty or close to poverty. While we have come to think of this as a political problem, it is also a spiritual problem, and to solve that spiritual problem we have to remember how to work together in harmony; beginning in our immediate neighborhoods, then extending out into our towns and the South Shore region and maybe eventually through the rest of our country, and even the rest of the world. The more we can work together across borders and across divisions, the easier it will be to ignore those who promote division and hatred and violence; and if we persist, this spiritual revolution could wind up changing the world.

  • Gardens, not Walls

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Reading

    The reading was the poem “Set the Garden on Fire” by Chen Chen. (The poem is not reproduced here out of respect for copyright.)

    Homily for the annual Water Ritual

    Every year, when we have this water ritual, we talk about how we are all connected. Or more precisely, how all human beings are connected to each other, and how all human beings are connected with all other living beings and indeed with the non-human world as well. We are literally, physically connected by the water cycle (as Kate and I pointed out during the moment for all ages), and we are also connected by ethical concerns, concerns that may not be physical but are just as literal as the water cycle.

    In the first reading, we heard a poem by Chen Chen, a now-middle-aged poet who was born in China and grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. This is a poem about a suburban community. It could be a poem about Newton, or it could equally well be a poem about Concord, Massachusetts, where I lived and worked for the first forty years of my life, or it could just as well be a poem about Cohasset or Scituate or any South Shore suburban community. Here in the suburbs, we are both good at nurturing human community, and we are bad at nurturing human community.

    We are good at nurturing human community when we keep our communities safe so that we don’t have to fear interactions with strangers. We are good at nurturing human community when we support local organizations like parent-teacher groups, and elder affairs councils, and congregations, and scouting groups, and community aid groups like food pantries and the Cohasset Community Assistance Fund, and so on. Indeed, many of us move to the suburbs precisely because we think it will be easier to be part of human community here.

    On the other hand, suburbs can also be places that are actually destructive of human community. I’ll tell you a couple of stories to show what I mean, both taken from my home town of Concord. First story: A friend of mine had a new family move in next door, and when she saw her new neighbor getting his mail at the mailbox, she ventured to go up and say hello. He retrieved his mail from the mailbox, and then said into the air — not looking at her — “One of the things that I like about the suburbs is that you don’t have to talk to people.” Second story: When I was in my thirties, I was talking with an older friend about an affordable housing project that the town proposed building near her house. She was vehemently opposed, because, she said, “Black people might move in.” (She was so vehement I decided not to tell her that it was much more likely that I’d move in, because as a current town resident in the right income bracket, I’d get preference.) From these two stories, you can see that sometimes people in suburban towns do not nurture human connections.

    Of course this is true of people everywhere, not just in the suburbs. In the current political environment, we have two political parties whose primary vision for the future seems to be the eradication of the other political party. I have friends who are Democrats who seem to mostly want to talk about how much they hate Trump, and I have friends who are Republicans who seem to mostly want to talk about how much they hate liberals. Neither party are exemplars of nurturing human connection. Similarly, in the current ethical environment, too many of our thought leaders are people like the former CEO of Steward Health Care, who received hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, while at the same time the hospital chain didn’t have enough money to pay for critical supplies, or to pay staff salaries. Again, this man is not an exemplar of nurturing human connection.

    I’m reminded of a story in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sabbath 31a. A man approached the famous Rabbi Hillel. “I would like to convert to Judaism and become a Jew,” he said. “I know I have to learn the Torah, but I’m a busy man. You must teach me the Torah while I stand on one foot.”

    “Certainly,” said Rabbi Hillel. “Stand on one foot.”

    The man balanced on one foot.

    “Repeat after me,” said Rabbi Hillel. “What is hateful to you, don’t do that to someone else.”

    The man repeated after Rabbi Hillel, “What is hateful to me, I won’t do that to someone else.”

    “That is the whole law,” said Rabbi Hillel. “All the rest of the Torah, all the rest of the oral teaching, is there to help explain this simple law. Now, go and learn it so it is a part of you.”

    Of course we all know that we shouldn’t do to someone else what is hateful to ourselves; as another rabbi put it, we all know that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But notice that Rabbi Hillel adds the instruction: “That is the entire Torah, the rest is its interpretation. Go study.” (1) When Rabbi Hillel tells the man to go and study, he’s not talking about some academic kind of study; he’s talking about study as a sacred act; he’s talking about knowing something so well that it becomes a central part of who you are. An implicit part of this kind of study is that it must happen in community. This isn’t the kind of studying where you sit down alone somewhere and memorize a bunch of stuff. This is the kind of study where you engage with the biggest possible moral and ethical questions by talking and arguing with other people. Indeed, I’d argue that serious moral and ethical study can only be done in community, can only be done with other people.

    Actually, this is more or less what we do here each week on Sunday morning. Unlike some Christian traditions where the minister’s job is to preach from on high, telling the congregation what is right and what is wrong, our tradition is supposed to engender argument. (At least, that’s what I’d say, though it’s open to argument.) I would say that in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, oftentimes the role of the preacher is merely to articulate a problem or concern currently facing the congregational community, and to propose a preliminary resolution of that problem or concern. Then it is up to the members of the congregation to further think about and discuss the problem or concern, and to decide for themselves how this might affect their own lives.

    And when the preacher is wrong or inaccurate, it’s up to the elders of a Unitarian Universalist congregation to let the preacher know. When I was the minister at the New Bedford Unitarian church, Everett Hoagland, a poet and college professor, used to sit in the back pew in the center, and listen carefully to what I said in the sermon. He would tell me when something I said seemed particularly accurate or true; and when I got something wrong, he’d gently tell me where I went wrong. In that same congregation, Ken Peirce, a retired schoolteacher, sat in the center about a third of the way back. He would take notes during the sermon, and after the service hand me the notes as he greeted me on his way to social hour. His notes would often prompt a follow-up sermon.

    Now, not everyone is a college professor or retired schoolteacher. Most people are not going to take notes during a sermon and correct errors the way Ken and Everett did. I remember the old Universalist in one congregation who worked as the butcher at a local supermarket. What she wanted from a Sunday service, she said, was something to think about while she was at work during the week, something to turn over in her mind, something that might help her to live her life better. Or I think about Gladys, who was dying of cancer when I knew her; she had little interest in intellectual exercises, but she was facing the biggest possible human questions about life and death and mortality, and she came each Sunday to be part of a community where it normal and acceptable to talk about such big issues. Or I think about Nancy, who was in her seventies and homeless when I knew her; she came to Sunday services to have a time when she could think about something more than basic survival.

    To my mind, these people exemplify, each in their own way, what Rabbi Hillel meant when he said, “That is the entire Torah, the rest is its interpretation. Go study.” None of these people was Jewish, none of them read the actual Torah; but each of them, in their own way studied what it mean to be part of a community and a tradition that dealt with the highest moral and ethical and religious questions. For some of these people, study took the form of notes and verbal discussions. For others, study too the form of mulling over thoughts and ideas that might help one to lead a better life. Still others were confronting pressing questions of survival and life and death, and they needed a community where they could confront those questions openly and without shame.

    Because of this, I sometimes think the most important part of our Sunday services is social hour. That’s when you get a chance to have conversations with other people about life’s big issues. In our tradition, those conversations might not take the form of formal religious and theological discussion and argument; instead, those conversations are more likely to take the form of conversations about life and job and volunteer commitments and political actions and of course family (which includes both biological family and chosen family). Rabbi Hillel said that studying Torah was important, not for the sake of abstract religious and theological arguments, but rather for the sake of determining how to live by the dictum: “That which is hateful to you do not do to another.” For Rabbi Hillel, study was not merely an academic matter, but a matter of the highest ethical values and concerns; study was not something you do in your head, study is something that affects your entire life.

    Socrates said something similar when he was facing the death penalty. According to Plato, Socrates told his accusers, “I say again that daily to discourse about virtue, and of those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest good of [humanity], and that the unexamined life is not worth living.” (2) This, too, is what it means to study. To talk about virtue and other big questions is to lead a life that is well worth living.

    And now let me return to the suburbs, and to the poem by Chen Chen. In the poem, a Chinese family buys a house in the suburbs. At this point, the people living in the house next door have a couple of options. On the one hand, they could get to know this new family (and if they felt some resistance to getting to know the new family, they’d engage in a little self-examination to figure out why). On the other hand, they could plant a hedge of rose bushes, and begin to whisper rumors of drub money and illegals and so on. In the poem, the neighbors choose the second option. And in response, the poet says:

    “Friend, let’s really move in, let’s
    plunge our hands into the soil.
    Plant cilantro & strong tomatoes,
    watermelon & honey-hearted cantaloupe,
    good things, sweeter than any rose.
    Let’s build the community garden
    that never was. Let’s call the neighbors
    out, call for an orchard, not a wall.
    Trees with arms free, flaming
    into apple, peach, pear — every imaginable,
    edible fire.” (3)

    While the poet doesn’t talk about Torah study, I think he’s saying much the same thing as Rabbi Hillel. Both of them are teaching us the importance of nurturing human community. Whether you choose to use the metaphor of study, as Rabbi Hillel did; or the metaphor of discourse and conversation, as Socrates did; or the metaphor of planting a community garden, as Chen Chen does — the end result is the same. All these are ways of learning how to embody the dictum “That which is hateful to you do not do to another.” At the same time, all these are ways of learning how to embody the dictum “that the unexamined life is not worth living.” And finally, all these are ways to call for an orchard, rather than a wall; to nurture human community, and further to nurture human community that is also a part of a community of all living beings.

    So those are the kinds of things that arise for me when I consider the imagery of the annual water ritual; that’s what arises for me when I ask myself how it is that all of us human beings are interconnected, and how it is that all human beings are connected with the rest of the universe. This is not to say that what comes up for me is any better than what comes up for you; you and I are both fallible beings, and it is only by talking together that we have a hope of coming closer to the ultimate truth.

    Notes

    (1) The William Davidson Talmud (Koren-Steinsaltz), www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.31a
    (2) Plato, The Apology, 38a; trans. Benjamin Jowett.
    (3) Chen Chen, “Set the Garden on Fire,” Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, ed. Melissa Tuckey (Univ of Georgia Press, 2018).

  • A Unitarian Universalist Easter

    Sermon and moment for all ages copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading is from the Christian scriptures, the last chapter of the Book of Mark, as translated by Hugh Schonfield, a Jewish scholar of the ancient Near East. Later copyists added a more upbeat ending to the Book of Mark; in this reading you will hear the original ending, filled with ambiguity.

    When the sabbath was ended, Mary of Magdala, Mary mother of James, and Salome, brought spices in order to go and anoint him. And very early in the morning of the day after the sabbath they came to the tomb as soon as the sun was up. “Who is going to roll away the boulder for us from the entrance of the tomb?” they asked themselves. But when they came to look they saw that the boulder had been rolled aside.

    On entering the tomb they were startled to see a young man sitting on the far right side clad in a flowing white robe. “Do not be alarmed,” he said to them. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look, here is the place where he was laid. Go now and tell his followers, and Peter particularly, he is preceding you to Galilee. You will see him there just as he told you.”

    They fled from the tomb, for they were trembling and unnerved. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

    The second reading is “The Hailstones,” by Ai Qing [aye ching], translated in 1983 by Angela Jung Palandri. This poem was written in 1979, after the poet was released from the prison camp where he had been spent the previous twenty years, because he had fallen out of favor with the Chinese Communist Party. The poem can be found in this online essay (scroll down to page 72).

    The final reading was by Joy Harjo, poet laureate of the United States. The title of the poem is “Singing Everything.” This poem is reproduced at the end of this newspaper article.

    [These two links go to webpages that reproduce the poems with full permission of the poets.]

    Sermon: “A Unitarian Universalist Easter”

    That last reading, the poem by Joy Harjo, tells a truth that is worth considering on Easter Sunday. We used to have songs for everything, “Songs for planting, for growing, for harvesting,” as the poet tells us, and songs “for sunrise, birth, mind-break, and war.” But today we are reduced to a narrow range of songs.

    Admittedly, Joy Harjo exaggerates a little when she tells us, “Now all we hear are falling-in-love songs and /Falling apart after falling in love songs.” We do have a few other kinds of songs such as political songs, and songs of interior landscapes by singer-songwriters. But Joy Harjo is an enrolled member of the Muscogee nation, and as a Native American she is aware of a broader range of songs that once existed. Most of those kinds of songs that once existed in indigenous cultures — including indigenous European and African and Asian cultures — have disappeared from today’s mass-produced culture.

    Mind you, I love the music of today’s culture. I love Taylor Swift’s song “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” It has to be the best falling-apart-after-falling-in-love song ever. And some of you will remember Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” a song at the roots of hip hop; this is a truly great political song. Perhaps you are now hearing in your head the many other great songs of our time. Even so, most of our popular songs today are love songs, or political songs, or songs of interior landscapes. We have very few songs about sunrise, or planting, or harvesting, or giving birth, or (as Harjo says in her poem) “songs of the guardians of silence.” We have many great songs today, but they mostly stick to a relatively narrow range of topics.

    The same is true of much of religion in today’s world. Most of today’s religion occupies a narrow range of feeling and values and being. Popular American culture thinks of religion as having to do with the Bible, except that the Bible is merely supposed to support the assumptions and prejudices of conservative American Christianity. One of my favorite examples of this is that conservative American Christianity assumes that the God of their Bible is entirely male; except that in the Bible, in Genesis 1:28, it very clearly states that God is non-binary gender: “God created humankind in his image… male and female he created them.” God may choose to use he/him pronouns, but God’s actual body is both male and female. Somehow the conservative American Christians manage to ignore that part of the Bible. This shows you what I mean when I say that today’s American religion occupies a too-narrow range of feeling and values and being.

    We might imagine for ourselves a religion with a broader range. Consider with me the story of Easter as we heard it in the first reading, as it was originally told in the book of Mark. Here’s how I would retell this story:

    The Roman Empire executes Jesus of Nazareth, and he dies at sundown on Friday. The friends and followers of Jesus are all observant Jews. Since the Jewish sabbath begins at sundown of Friday, they want to wait until the sabbath is over to prepare the body for burial. So they place the body in a tomb. Promptly on the morning after the sabbath, Jesus’ mother, accompanied by Mary of Magdala and Salome (these three are leaders among the followers of Jesus, and as women would know more about preparing bodies for burial than any of the men), these three women go to the tomb to care for the body. There they encounter a stranger, a man who is strangely dressed, who tells them that Jesus has been raised, and will precede them to Galilee. The stranger tells the women not to tell the men these things. Not surprisingly, the three women find this strange and weird. They are unnerved. Fearing for themselves and for the other followers of Jesus, they quickly leave the tomb. They tell no one.

    That’s it. That’s the end of the story.

    Now, the book of Mark is accepted by most scholars as the earliest story we still have that tells about the life and death of Jesus. This means that all those traditional stories about Easter we hear — the stories of resurrection and triumph — that’s not the way the story was first told. The original book of Mark does not end in triumph, and so it sounds like some contemporary poetry — like the poem of Ai Qing we heard as the second reading. Ai Qing lived through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution in China; he was exiled to a labor camp for twenty years. His poem “The Hailstones” is a poetic retelling of how the Cultural Revolution brought his poetry to a violent end. Since he’s telling us this in a poem, we know that eventually his poetry was reborn. Yet when he looks back on those twenty lost years, he can only say: “What remains / Are sad memories of the calamity.”

    You notice that I’m using a poem by a disgraced Chinese Communist poet to talk about Easter. I’m not talking about Easter the way we’re “supposed” to talk about Easter; at least, the way the conservative American Christians tell us is the correct, orthodox way to talk about Easter. We Unitarian Universalists have never limited our religion to the narrow confines of conservative American Christianity. For us, religion and spirituality are broad and inclusive. We can look at the Easter story with fresh eyes.

    We don’t feel a need to shoehorn the Easter story into a confining orthodoxy. We don’t need the Easter story to somehow prove that Jesus was a god who could not actually be killed. If you want to interpret the Easter story in that way, that’s fine. Yet for us, the Easter story contains far more complexity. As with any good literature, we find multiple levels of meaning. I’ll give you an example from my own life. This past year has been a year of loss in my household: my father-in-law died just about a year ago, and my spouse’s stepmother died the day after Christmas. So this year when I read the Easter story in the book of Mark, what I feel is the emotional truth of that story: someone you love is alive one day, and then they’re no longer alive, and you know they are gone forever. This can leave you (as the story puts it) trembling and unnerved, and you can find yourself afraid and unwilling to talk about it.

    That is one emotional truth we can find in the story. We can also find another emotional truth carried in that story. After people die, we have not lost them. They live on in our love. If there’s a resurrection story that all Unitarian Universalists agree on, this it it: love transcends death.

    And we can find still more emotional truths in this simple story. For example: Jesus was a brilliant spiritual teacher, who encapsulated spirituality in simple, easy-to-understand stories and formulas. His most famous spiritual teaching is quite simple: love your neighbor as yourself. (Simple in the saying, but far more difficult in actual practice.) When the Roman Empire executed him, his teachings did not die. You cannot kill truth that easily. This another emotional truth of the Easter story that all Unitarian Universalists can agree on: you cannot kill truth so easily.

    With enough time, we can find still more emotional truths in this story. So it is that we can see how religion and spirituality have a much wider range than popular American culture would have us believe. Popular American culture tells us that religion is concerned with beliefs many of us find unbelievable, beliefs to which we are supposed to conform. In truth, however, religion and spirituality exist to help us understand the perplexities of life. From this, we gain comfort and support. Religion and spirituality concern the truth that never dies. From this, we remember that love transcends even death. Religion and spirituality teach a universal love that includes all people, no matter what gender or sexual preference, no matter what race, no matter what, period. And with that knowledge, we can create a world where we truly love our neighbors as ourselves.

    That’s why we keep coming back here to this community. That’s why we keep our religion and spirituality alive in our personal lives. We celebrate the incredible diversity of humankind, the diversity which exists among us here today. And we celebrate that which transcends us all and which unites us all — that which is highest and best, that which keeps us going from day to day.