Sermon

DOA

The Rev. Jack D. Bryant

Hope Unitarian Church

May 7, 2006

First Reading: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Second Reading: The Cold Within. James Patrick Kinney?

Six humans trapped by happenstance

In bleak and bitter cold,

Each one possessed a stick of wood,

Or, so the story's told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,

The first woman held hers back,

For on the faces 'round the fire,

She noticed one was Black.

The next man looking 'cross the way

Saw one not of his church,

And couldn't bring himself to give

The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes.

He gave his coat a hitch.

Why should his log be put to use

To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought

Of the wealth he had in store.

And, how to keep what he had earned

From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man's face bespoke revenge

As the fire passed from sight.

For, all he saw in his stick of wood

Was a chance to spite the white.

And, the last man of this forlorn group

Did naught except for gain,

Giving to those who gave

Was how he played the game.

The logs held in death's still hands

Were proof of human sin.

They didn't die from the cold without.

They died from the cold within.

Sermon

I first planned about a year ago to consider issues of life and death during this month of May. I did not know exactly how I would do so. In the last few weeks my thoughts about this morning’s sermon began to come together around life and death in a spiritual rather than physical context and in the institutional as well as personal sense, - and that is where I will go in a moment. But events overtake us and yesterday I found myself confronting the reality of life and death in the physical sense - and found it led me back to the spiritual. As I drove to the church yesterday morning I received a phone call informing me that Sienna Lyn Lavanhar, the three year old daughter of Anitra and Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, Senior Minister of All Souls Unitarian Church, had suddenly and unexpectedly died earlier that morning. Such things are not supposed to happen. Since this time last year we’ve lost four members of our church. Their loss was and is painful, but because of their age we knew it might happen. There is a measure of preparedness in such events. But children aren’t supposed to die. I think that’s why a few minutes after arriving at the church yesterday someone asked me, “How do you explain it?” The question brought back memories of the second memorial service I ever performed. I was the intern minister at All Souls and had been asked to perform a service for the parents of a stillborn infant. They were Quakers in town for her medical residency and a Unitarian church was the closest thing to home they could find. Out of respect for their tradition I incorporated silence into the service, silence that followed these words which I feel touch the deeper source from which that question arose.

Fairest one, folded in flowers,

Wrapped in the warmth of the hidden heart of the rose,

While the cold hand traces the edges of empty hours,

And the light comes and goes.

Help us, in this final meeting

In a room blessed with the echo of words unspoken,

Discover our peace in the knowledge that life, though fleeting,

Leaves love unbroken.

Here, among friends, in sorrow,

Let the living Love in the silence reveal the seed of your strength, that we may share it in facing tomorrow,

The time of our need.

--Quaker Funeral

W. H. Matchet (adapted)

I think part of being human is the need to have answers. But sometimes silence is the only honest answer we have.

I chose the title for this morning’s sermon with a bit of flippancy which no longer seems appropriate. I had the Sach’s quote in mind, the one that says “everyone dies but not everyone lives” and DOA seemed - at the time - an appropriate reminder of the truth of his words. I actually began thinking about this subject not in the context of the life and death of individuals, but the life and death of institutions - although it applies to both. Institutionally it’s a thought that goes back to the work on leadership we started three years ago with the help of Tim Peterson. Tim told a story about research into the life cycle of businesses. He told the story because he thought there was a lesson in it for churches. He said that most businesses - assuming they survive the first few years - will last about forty years - the average working lifetime of an individual. Only a handful survive longer. Some may last for much longer. What makes the difference is a sense of vision and purpose and meaning that is larger than the business’s founder.

I know this only too well. My stepfather, Alfred Greenfield, who married my mother when I was in my thirties, had a successful printing business in Dallas. He was well known and he and his business were widely respected. Alfred was the recipient of several awards for his generosity in time and money over the years, including years of work with Big Brothers of Dallas that culminated in his presidency of that organization. And he made a very good living. But when he retired and tried to sell his business, it disintegrated. It was painful to watch. It fell apart because as successful as he was, he had never created anything in his business that was larger than himself.

That was what I understood Tim’s message to be about churches: Some institutions - be they businesses or churches - start with great success. They are founded by good people; they are founded by exceptional people. They may be smart and kind and generous to a fault. But after that first generation is gone, the institution begins to fade away. Businesses will just die - and quickly. Churches, however, are different. They may continue for a hundred years, but they aren’t really alive. They are just shadows of what they once were compared with other churches that continue to grow and thrive in countless ways. The difference is in having a sense of vision and mission and purpose that is larger than any individual or collection of individuals. The difference is an understanding of the church not as a static thing to be preserved like a fly in amber, nor as a projection of the personality of the founders - no matter how good, wonderful or exceptional they may be, but an understanding of the church as a verb, as a living idea that is constantly doing, constantly re-inventing itself, constantly becoming something new, something bigger and different than what it was yesterday.

Ours is a religious tradition based on congregational polity. This church is not an extension or local franchise of a mother church. We advocate congregational polity and local governance and the democratic process. We often say the congregation is the church. I have said that for years. I have argued that position for years. But as I was thinking about this sermon it occurred to me that I was wrong. The congregation is not - or perhaps I should say, the congregation should not be the church, because if the congregation is the church, then the church can never be anything more than the congregation, can never be anything more than the individuals who are its members from time to time. That’s just what many churches are - the sum total of the congregation. And such churches may thrive for a time, but their life will be short, because their end is written in the finiteness of their members. What a church should be is an idea, because ideas are the only things I know that are immortal. Congregations - collectively and individually - are not and can never be a church that is an idea. Congregations and individuals can only be those who serve such a church. The very essence, therefore, of a congregation - and of membership in a congregation - should be service to something greater than the congregation.

That doesn’t mean we ignore the needs of those who are here. That would be to misunderstand what I mean. Look at the vision this church adopted as a result of our work on leadership: Seeking Truth, Sharing Love: Within - Among - Beyond. Service begins at home, it begins with the need to feed and clothe yourself. It continues with the need, the necessity to see those among us fed and clothed - physically and spiritually. But it is not complete until it addresses the need of that which is beyond us. This church should be a safe place, a haven - if you will, a home for the religiously disenfranchised, a home for those who cannot believe as others say they must unless they want to burn in hell. It should be something along lines of what J.R.R. Tokien said about the mythical Rivendell - that place he called the last homely house. But if that’s all it is then we will have failed, we will have a church that is a servant to lesser things, not the place where we have the opportunity to serve something greater. The church that will last a hundred years or longer and be truly alive will always be the church that is an idea and whose congregation - which will change over time - will be there to serve that idea. And through service to that idea the church and the individuals and the congregation that serve it will be transformed in ways they cannot anticipate.

The same is true of individual lives. I know a man now in his eighties, an old family friend. He is intelligent - above average in intelligence - and hard working. He has achieved much in his life, overcoming adversity that would have crippled most people. He has done many good and admirable things. He has his admirers. But at the end of his life he has grown increasingly angry and bitter. As I put the pieces together and tried to understand why that has happened, I realized that from the beginning of his life he thought others were responsible for his happiness, he thought others should serve him, serve his needs. From the very beginning he sold himself short on life. He understood life as being about what he could get out of it rather than what he might give to it. His years on this earth produced - for a long time - the appearance of life. But as I look at his closing years I am persuaded that it was more the illusion of life than reality.

Six humans trapped by happenstance

In bleak and bitter cold,

Each one possessed a stick of wood,

Or, so the story's told.

James Patrick Kinney’s poem captures the reality of life. This world is a bleak and bitter cold place. It is a world where companies collapse and retirement benefits are lost. It is a world where emergency air packs don’t work and miners die. It is a world where young men and women who love their country are dying in its service - not because they did something wrong, but because they were willing to risk their lives for love of country. It is a world where three year old children die. It is a bleak and bitter cold world. And it is a world where set before us “is life and prosperity, death and adversity”. It is a world where both individually and institutionally we face a common challenge, a common choice: the choice between “life and death, blessings and curses”.

Kinney speaks the truth:

The logs held in death's still hands

Were proof of human sin.

They didn't die from the cold without.

They died from the cold within.

So it is with all men and all women and all institutions - especially all churches. We may begin our lives, we may live our lives with a cold hard grip on what is ours always calculating what we can gain from it. We will have a life. Much of it may be good. But I believe when the end comes, be it sooner or later, we will discover more anger and bitterness than we counted on - because what such choices gives us is only a shadow of what life can be.

On the other hand we may choose to grasp life, to choose life and blessings. But the way we grasp life is not by grabbing for what we can get. That is the path that leads to the closing scene in Kinney’s poem. It’s not by grasping, but by giving away, by letting go that we embrace life. The tighter we grasp the less we have. The more we are willing to give away the more we will have. The Deuteronomist and the poet understand this. Somehow I think it is always the poets who know it best. We see the fruits of this kind of thinking in the all church pledge drive we are just completing. It has not been a campaign to raise money as much as a celebration of the generosity of the members of our church - the generosity of those who have given to us financially, the generosity of those who have been so generous with their time and efforts last weekend for our church work party, the generosity of those who sing in our choir. The list of the generous goes on and on, a generosity that is proof that we, at this church, are choosing the path of life and rejecting the cold within that leads so many people and so many institutions to shadow lives that are really dead on arrival.

I don’t know how long this church will live. I hope it is forever. If we choose to be the congregation that serves the idea this church was founded upon it will be a long, long time. I don’t know how long you will live. Physical life is uncertain. Yesterday’s reminder is painfully close. But I know this. “Life is to be spent.” It is to be lived not in grasping, but in giving. “And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.” Let us choose life.

Amen