The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

“The Hopes and Fears of All the Years”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
January 18, 2009

Just a month ago we would have been seasonally attuned to the strains of that 19th century Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Rev. Phillip Brooks, a Philadelphia minister, first authored the lyrics as a poem. He had recently visited Bethlehem and was inspired by the Christmas celebrations at the Church of the Nativity. Brooks later urged his church organist, Lewis Redner, to set his poem to music, and the lasting treasure of this carol came into being. It’s an enchanting carol and one that allows us to envision an enchanted village referenced by the Gospel writers Matthew and Luke in their accounts of the birth of the baby Jesus—in Brooks’ terms, “The everlasting Light.” The first verse concludes with the lyrical reference to what was long hoped for and at long last realized in Bethlehem: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”

The ancient Jews had hoped for a Messiah who would deliver them from yet another oppressive force in a long history of oppression. This time it was the Roman occupation. It was in this milieu that Jesus was born, grew into manhood, taught, and was ultimately subjected to the horrific capital punishment so commonly decreed by the Roman Empire, crucifixion. The powers of Rome feared such a charismatic figure, who would bring to the oppressed a message of liberation. That message came in terms unexpected.

The Jesus deemed the Messiah didn’t arrive as a militant hero who would lead his people into a resistance in the tradition of the ancient Maccabees. He came with a force far more subtle and disarming, a liberation of heart and soul that would transform the hearts and souls and actions of women and men for millennia to come. The power of nonviolence was embodied in the brand of liberation brought by the babe of Bethlehem. Indeed, the hopes and fears of all the years were met in this tiny village, but in ways unexpected. Nonviolent resistance to the power of Rome wrought havoc with the images of what had been hoped for. The call of Jesus of Nazareth was not to take up arms, but to open hearts and minds. It was a Gospel of nonviolence, a Gospel of strategic love.


In the spirit of Jesus, but through a distinctly different window of faith, the person of Mahatma Gandhi brought liberation to an occupied India. It was a liberation just as hoped for and just as unanticipated. Through a decades-long strategy of non-violent non-cooperation, 1900 years after Jesus, Gandhi inspired his fellow countrymen to outwit and undermine the stranglehold of the British Empire. His strategy? Nonviolent resistance. It was savvy, intentional, and effective. Five months before Gandhi’s life came to an end, India won its independence from Great Britain. In January of 1950 the Republic of India was proclaimed. It will be 140 years ago this coming October that “the hopes and fears” of so many years for the people of India were met in Pobandar, a city on the shores of the Arabian Sea in western India, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi.

Eleven years after Gandhi’s death, a rookie Baptist minister from the United States would visit Gandhi’s family in India. Martin Luther King, Jr. aspired to liberation in circumstances quite different from those faced by Gandhi or Jesus. Rather than an imperialist occupation, King strained at the shackles of Jim Crow racism in a nation whose early economy rested on the sin of slavery, the practice of buying and selling human beings as property. It is the fault line on which the economy of this nation was built—a tenuous foundation for any society. King’s ancestors were slaves. King and everyone who bore Negroid features carried the legacy of slavery in the brutal realities that marked Jim Crow America. It was a racism that was overt, and not just in the South. Many of the practices that the powers of this nation denied or ignored or both were as barbaric as those of the Roman Empire in Jesus’ day.

King’s meeting with Gandhi’s family was transformative for this 30-year-old Baptist minister from Atlanta. Through them he became intimately acquainted with the tactics of non-violent resistance used so effectively so recently however disparate the political context. He became intimately acquainted with the quality of leadership it had taken for Gandhi to convince his countrymen to adopt such tactics. To follow in the footsteps of Gandhi for the oppressed of India had been no easier than to follow in the footsteps of Jesus for the oppressed of Palestine.

Gandhi, along with the African American Bayard Rustin, served as core influences on this high energy young man with a mission. I find it not coincidental that we so seldom hear about Rustin’s influence, since Bayard Rustin was gay and on the far fringes of the political left. He was also a strong advocate and practitioner of non-violence, and King heeded his savvy counsel. Rustin, after all, bore the burdens of at least two counts of oppression.

King, armed with the legacy of a strong family, a deep faith, a doctorate from Boston University, and a passion for equal rights, became the lodestar of this recent chapter of the Civil Rights movement in these more or less United States. To follow in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to go to Selma, to march to Montgomery, to picket and boycott and resist nonviolently forces that had the imprimatur of “legal” was no easier than to follow in the footsteps of Gandhi for the oppressed of India or the footsteps of Jesus for the oppressed of Palestine.

As a white person, it is not for me to say what African Americans hoped for during the years of slavery and Reconstruction and Jim Crow, or for that matter, what my fellow Americans who are African American hope for now. I can only speak for myself as a woman who has known oppression as such that there is a seductive inclination to want someone else—some towering giant of a savior or Messiah—to do the job for me. Then I can follow along behind as the accolades are sung and the flowers strung. But such is not the way of discipleship, of non-violent resistance to oppression, of love.

Dr. King filled the shoes of leadership, but he was not a Messiah or a lone-star Savior. Charisma he embodied and used brilliantly, but he would not and did not “save” the oppressed. He led the oppressed. It took life-threatening sweat equity to walk the walk alongside him. The hopes and fears and yearnings of African Americans and every committed white ally were met in the Atlanta of King’s birthplace 80 years ago this month only in our glazed over memory; because King was a mesmerizing, remarkable, visionary, courageous leader, but neither he nor Gandhi nor Jesus Christ himself was a high riding derring-do superman of a Messiah.

King stood on the shoulders of Rustin and Gandhi, who stood on the shoulders of Jesus, who stood on shoulders that have faded into a certain degree of historical myopia, because, in the words of the late Unitarian Universalist minister, Clinton Lee Scott:

“…it is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their vision.”

Of Jesus of Nazareth, we have just an inkling of the life that he lived. The Gospels give no clues as to Jesus’ “shadow” sides. Of Gandhi, it may be said that he did not properly affirm the rights of women. Of King, it may be said that he strayed too easily into the affections of women other than his wife. All were humans with feet of clay. All were leaders who inspired and perspired and embodied hopes and fears that took root over years and years in people oppressed by fellow humans who were tied into the seemingly permanent knots of their own fears and who chose privilege and power over the common good.

It is no less so in our own day. While many in this congregation are hurting amid an economy that has been on a roller coaster ride for years—not months, years; while some in this congregation have known the oppression of other systems of government and yes, other approaches to faith so intensely that they can barely acknowledge the scars; while some in this congregation have known the oppressions of sexism and classism and ableism; while a few in this congregation have known the oppressions of racism and homophobia; and while almost all of us in this congregation have been complicit in some form of oppression—IF we are paying attention at all, we know that our nation is at a crossroads of moral choice.

Gathering as we did yesterday morning to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a program of fellowship and discernment, gathering as we are this morning in the framework of worship to honor the life and legacy of Dr. King and to anticipate a historical presidential inauguration, gathering as we are this morning with our children echoing the words of Dr. King, gathering as we are this morning with the increasingly familiar cadences of an eloquent President-Elect singing in our ears, we are at a crossroads of moral choice that is above all communal. What hopes and fears do we harbor? What hopes and fears do we own? What do we hope for? What do we fear? We stand uneasily on the shoulders of the prophets. We stand anxiously in this slice of history. And we hold hope. We hold hope.

How to dismount from the shoulders of the prophets? How to transform an uneasy stance into a steady walk? As people of faith, we’re called to meld our aspiring spirituality with that of the prophets—with Amos’ cry to “let justice roll down like water” (Amos 5:24); with Micah’s call “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly…;” with Jesus’ discomforting response to the trick question: “Who is my neighbor?”; with Gandhi’s perseverance against imperialist odds; with King’s unswerving proclamation that “We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now;” and with Barack Obama’s declaration of our choice between “a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism” and the will to “come together” and take on the hard issues of our time in the service of a union that “may never be perfect” but “can always be perfected.”

What will it be? Come Tuesday, we will inaugurate Barack Obama as the 44th president of this nation, this union. Come Wednesday, we cannot expect President Obama to do the work for us. Without our will toward the common good, this union will falter. Without our will to transform an economy that serves the privileged few; without our will to transform what it means to be a functional member of the family of nations; without our will to pay our citizen’s fare share so that every woman, man, and child knows the rights of health care and decent housing and fine schools; without our will to justice that is as compassionate as it has been harsh; our 44th President cannot lead as I believe so many of us hope he will.

We are the vanguard. The hopes and fears of all our years will be met in a covenant of leadership whose promise can be realized only if we take up the mantle of everything we espouse—the worth and dignity of each of us and the connectedness of all—and “take one more step, say one more word, say one more prayer, and sing one more song” and then do it all again and again and again until our hopes for peace and compassionate justice are met and our fears of whatever power and privilege any of us might lose en route will dissolve in a great sigh of enlightened gratitude.

This is our now. It’s fierce, and it’s urgent. Amen.

Sources:

Amos, Micah, and The Gospel According to Luke in the Bible (Revised Standard Version)

Phillip Brooks (lyrics) and Lewis Redner (music), O Little Town of Bethlehem, described in Best-Loved Christmas Carols, Ronald M. Clancy, Edited by William E. Studwell, Christmas Classics, Ltd., North Cape May, NJ 2000, 68-69.

Indian independence movement, from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Independence_Movement

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#cite_note-55.

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam—A time to Break Silence,” Speech delivered at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967,
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.

Martin Luther King, Jr., from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr#Influences.

Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” Speech delivered in Philadelphia, PA, March 18, 2008, http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords/.

Joyce Poley, “One More Step,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 168.

Clinton Lee Scott, “Prophets,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 565.

God: A Multiple Choice Test

“God: A Multiple Choice Test”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
January 11, 2009

God is… God is not… Surely these are among the most loaded of lead-ins. They can start conversations, or they can stop them cold. It all depends. See, already we’re into the realm of relativity, true to the spirit of conventionally unconventional Unitarian Universalists. It all depends on a, b, c, d and so on. Yet this matter is far more than an intellectual premise with contingencies. I’m betting that your notion of God or non-God is more emotion-filled than intellectual.

What kind of a God did you grow up with? I’ll start with mine. The God of my childhood was something like Santa Claus, but not always as jolly. He—and it was definitely He—had a long white beard and probably flowing robes. A red and white suit with a snowy white pom-pom on the tail of a floppy red cap would have served him better, and such attire would have led me to believe he was cutting me some slack if I did something “bad” whatever that might be—from being snippy to a friend to saying a cuss word to not doing my homework to talking back to the real gods of my childhood, my Mom and Dad! At least neither Santa nor God would say to me, “Janice Marie, come here right now!” when the jig was up. Not that my parents weren’t also loving and tender. Both were, but I tested the limits enough to evoke their no-nonsense discipline, as if they were God’s very own representatives on the be-good-or-else front.

The God with whom I first became acquainted was the God of my Sunday school. Even a Presbyterian Sunday school unwittingly set forth lots of notions for a child to consider, from a God of love to a God vindictive and vengeful, from a God who forgives to a God who would send his only son into the world and let him be crucified. There was a lot that never quite gelled. No wonder I ended up in this living tradition of liberal faith and doubt.

We as Unitarian Universalists have strong Judeo-Christian roots which inform this elusive living tradition that we espouse. So let’s begin with the Bible, with a promise to get nothing more than our theological toes wet when it comes to the myriad manifestations of divinity set forth in what Christians call the Old and New Testaments and Jews call the Law and the Prophets.

God the Creator

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” reads the very first verse of the Book of Genesis. The writers of Genesis—and there were more than one—go on to deliver two Creation stories and a dramatic sequence of what was created when and who ruled over whom. It’s a high drama story of what some call “intelligent design.” Given our hurting world, even one who cleaves to “intelligent design” would do well to reconsider that adjective, “intelligent.” Nonetheless, many millions, even billions, of humans understand the world as we know it and the world as it was first formed as the creation of a transcendent being called God, an English translation for Adonai, Elohim, and Yahweh for starters.

One notion that defines God the Creator is the Latin phrase, deus ex machina, god from the machine literally. It was a device used by ancient dramatists when a plot became so entangled that the construct of a god was introduced to resolve the confounding strands. It seems to apply just as well to the improbable creation from nothing of the sky and the seas and the continents and women and men and all the non-human creatures that populated the earth in its earliest days. Rather like a plug-in device. Blame Creation on God. Praise God for Creation. Take your pick! For some the notion evokes wonder. For others, it stunts it. Yet I can’t imagine anyone who affirms the observations of Charles Darwin suggesting that the man lacked a sense of wonder!

God the Intervener
It’s confusing sometimes to pray to a Spirit of Life. So much easier to direct our hopes and wishes and gratitude even to an invisible albeit image-laden form, who listens and responds and alters her/his marionette strings in the affairs of history. Now remember, we’re talking in terms of this earth, and there’s a lot more out there in space that no one has begun to measure from the vantage point of our tiny planet spinning in it.

Does God intervene in human history? We read in the 20th chapter of the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Torah,

“And God spoke all these words, saying,
‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage,
You shall have no other gods before me.’”
(Exodus 20:1-3)

This would indicate a faith tradition that holds to the notion of God as intervener, liberator, and the one and only manifestation of divinity. The writer of this segment of Exodus continues:

“You shall not make yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
(Exodus 20:4-6)

By now, some of you have surely recognized the narrative of what has come to be known as the Ten Commandments. The God of Exodus is intervener, liberator, and “commander in chief,” with severe consequences for anyone who doesn’t lend full allegiance to him and constant love to all who do.

God the Forsaker
Among the questions raised by mortals who have initially bowed to an almighty seemingly merciful God is the cry of the same mortals who have been visited by suffering that seems too much to bear: Where is God when we suffer? Volumes have been written by angst-filled theologians struggling with this age-old question. Prayers unending have been raised by common folk who could care less about the fine points of theology but whose torments of body and soul have evoked the same question. Where is God when we suffer?

In the words of the psalmist:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.

Yet thou art holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
To thee they cried, and were saved;
in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed.

But I am a worm, and no man;
scorned by men, and despised by the people.
(Psalm 22:1-6)

In other words, where in the blankety-blank are you, God, and why me?

The scribes of both the Gospels According to Matthew and Mark echoed this cry of ultimate despair through the voice of Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and suffering. In Matthew:

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,

'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
(Matthew 27:45-46)

And in Mark, the earliest written Gospel, we read exactly the same words.
(Mark 15:34)

For him whom millions understand to be the Son of God, indeed a manifestation of God himself, came the most mortal of cries to a God experienced as a forsaker. Yes, there were later words that suggested Jesus commended his spirit into the hands of a loving and ready God. Yes, there is the legend of resurrection. But this cry of utter wretchedness is a cry ultimately human.

God the Giver, God the Taker
How can one begin to describe the deity cast into the plot of perhaps the most haunting book of Old or New Testaments, the Book of Job? It is God who meted out Job’s early wealth and happiness—his family, his land, his power, his position. The story goes that one day Satan came to God with a challenge. God had held up to Satan the goodness and faithfulness of his servant Job, and Satan essentially said, “Of course Job is good and faithful. He has everything any man could possible need. But ‘put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face.’” God proceeded to do just that. Job lost all that he had except the last shred of his own life. He lost his family, his land, his power, his position, and his health. Then friends come who end up rebuking and accusing him. Job himself despairs of his plight, but he does not curse God.

The story of Job is far more complex than this. It is nuanced, multi-stranded, a story credible for our understanding of how some among us suffer so much without having done anything “to deserve it” as we glibly say. Toward the end of the Job narrative, God declares his power:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding,
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?”
(Job 38:4-5)

followed by a long string of evidence.

Job is broken, but he does not curse God. Rather he declares:

“…I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
(Job 42:6)

In the end, God “restored the fortunes of Job,” his faithful servant. It is written that “the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning...” (Job 42:10a, 12a)

Did this “justify” the actions God? In the tenor of Job, we who are mortal are in no position to even suggest that God needs to be justified. Like no other book in the Old or New Testament, the Job narrative embodies the God who gives and the same God who takes away. In the very first chapter lies the seeming kernel of an answer to the seemingly futile question of why God allows us to suffer. Job has just learned of the death of his children. He is bereft, AND he falls upon the ground and worships, saying:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return;

the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
(Job 1:21)

As the Book of Job concludes, the character of Satan is not even mentioned.

God who so loves the world

As a child, I learned from memory that lodestar of a verse from the Gospel According to John, the most enigmatic of the four gospels that made it into the biblical canon:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,

that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
(John 3:16)

It is a topic of centuries of controversy that led to centuries of murder and mayhem, this matter of God and the relationship of Jesus, who millions believe was indeed the incarnate Son of God. Among Unitarian Universalists there are Christian grounded believers who might debate how woven into the fabric of a Godhead Jesus was, but who deem the life and teachings of Jesus so highly that they are not willing to forsake the term, Christian. I understand myself to be Christian inclusively but not exclusively, given the seeming truth in so many other faiths.

What seems wholly credible, given our most limited knowledge of the life and teachings of Jesus, is the centrality of love and compassion in the Jesus narratives. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in that passage from the Gospel According to Matthew that describes Jesus going up onto a mountain and teaching his disciples about who is blessed:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

On into:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
(Matthew 5:3-5, 9)

Underdogs, unpopular, non-mainstream describe those who were deemed blessed by this teacher of love and compassion. Of all the figures of the Judeo-Christian tradition, Jesus was wholly about love and preached a God of love. It is a teaching held up more than any other in that outer branch of the Judeo-Christian tradition that is our Unitarian Universalist faith. It has always confounded me that for a faith that holds doubt in such high esteem, we are so opinionated and quickly contrary in our dealings with one another about what matters, when our grounding lies in a relationship of covenant based on love.

_______________

None of us has the last word on God or on how many there might really be and what forms deity assumes. All of us are challenged to consider the context, including the personal history, which we bring to our statements of belief, disbelief, affirmation, and worship of what we sometimes call “God.” As Karen Armstrong reminds us,

“…there is no one unchanging idea contained in the word ‘God;’ instead, the word contains

a whole spectrum of meanings, some of which are contradictory or even mutually

exclusive. ….the reality that we call ‘God’ exceeds all human expression.’”

Hers is a perspective echoed in the lyrics of the hymn we sang earlier:

“Great, living God, never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing….”

If “God” exceeds our expression, how is it that we speak or write a name at all? The ancient Hebrews didn’t. Yahweh was an acronym for “I am who I am,” that ineffable elusive non-name given to Moses by the ineffable elusive voice in the third chapter of the Book of Exodus.

By now, you may have realized that this isn’t a multiple choice test at all, but a reflection on how we might consider the multi-faceted, perhaps infinitely-faceted notion of transcendence. If we who are mortals understand that we are not Creation’s last act, we strive for a language of transcendence, a language of reverence. This in no way denies scientific discovery. Rather it unleashes our capacity for awe and humility on all fronts of being. “Reverence,” suggests Paul Woodruff, “is the virtue that keeps human beings from trying to act like gods.”

Unitarian is in many ways a misnomer. We hold in our religious imagination a panoply of gods, even as we hold up the notion of One God. Perhaps like our Muslim sisters and brothers, we can embrace an Allah, who is the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the God of Jesus, the God of Muhammad, the God of all. Perhaps like all mortals who have ever wondered beyond ourselves, we can embrace a wisdom grounded in awe, embodied in compassion, and fluid with gratitude.

Amen.

Sources:

Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Ballantine Books, New York, 1993, xx-xxi.

The Book of Genesis, The Book of Exodus, The Psalms, The Book of Job, The Gospel According to Matthew, and The Gospel According to Mark in the Bible (Revised Standard Version)

Paul Woodruff, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001.

Brian Wren, “Bring Many Names,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 23.

Threshold

“Threshold”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
January 4, 2009

Few of us get carried across a threshold…certainly not the temporal threshold we recognize as a new year. We look both ways before we step. Janus, the Roman god namesake of January, was well equipped to do exactly that, having sprouted from the pantheon with two faces, one for looking back, the other, for looking ahead. When I came to the age of wondering about my own given name, Janice in full, I never counted it as good fortune to carry the nominal legacy of a two-faced god. One face was quite enough. Then years later I chose to take care of two annoyances with one fell swoop. I chopped the “ice” (the i-c-e) off my name, removing the January chill attached to that second syllable, and took care of any possible confusion with that ill-topped Roman god. Besides I was born in September, and I’ve long thought that September was a more apt time to begin the year, as those among us who are Jewish do, with Rosh Hashanah, literally “the head of the year,” observed in this month that straddles summer and fall.

Nonetheless here we are atop a threshold widely recognized as the new year, January for better and worse. As I’ve moved through more seasons of living, I’ve found a wisdom attached to that two-headed god. It’s a wise thing to look behind us—to reflect, to ponder, to discern, to analyze even what has transpired beyond us and within us and in that dance between the two—and to look forward—to imagine, to envision, to hope, and to anticipate, even to plan, dangerous as that often is.

Remember, if you can and will, this time a year ago. What were you reflecting on from the previous year? What were you hoping for and anticipating in the year ahead? What has transpired that you couldn’t possibly have anticipated? Who has been born? Who has become ill? Who has died? How has it been with your career and with the job that you hold or held? What inklings did you have of the economic turmoil? What celebrations have you marked? What do you most remember about this year that came as a full-blown surprise? What promises—resolutions even—did you make at year’s outset that you’ve kept? I’m trusting here that there are New Year’s resolutions that are actually honored!

We stand on the present threshold anticipating the inauguration of a president many never thought could be elected in this country where race and racism still carve a fault line. We stand on the present threshold hoping that a new regime will hold strategies that work for the common good—to move us out of the hole of this economy; to bring to an end a war that for so many thousands, even millions, has become completely untenable; to forge a wise diplomacy that will prevent yet another war; to craft a system whereby all might know the benefits of comprehensive health care. Of course we don’t all agree on these matters, but they impact us all—intimately and ultimately.

As Kathleen McTigue reminds us:

“…we stand at a threshold, the new year something truly new,
still unformed, leaving a stunning power in our hands.”

How commonly do we consider new time as the receptacle of “a stunning power?” Yet it is. How we move through whatever time is ours to know is a precious and powerful gift. What do we want to reflect upon come the end of December 2009? What do we hope to have accomplished? How do we hope to have lived? With what quality of energy will we be satisfied at having expended and toward what end? And yes, how generous do we hope to regard ourselves with regard to this very faith community as we look in the rear-view mirror that captures our reflections 12 months’ hence?

The longer we’ve lived, the more residue of time we accumulate, the more promises we’ve made that we would be or do or act in such and such a way, the more times we’ve disappointed ourselves and others in following through and the more times we’ve also surprised ourselves and others in making good on what we say we’ll do and be. Early January is like standing on a ridge. On one side, we view the panorama of how we got there. We recall the encampments, the near slips, the encounters with other travelers, the respites, the celebrations, the days that we dare to regard as ho-hum days when nothing special seemed to have happened. With no particular logic, details come to mind that embody what matters to us. Sometimes it’s a conversation with a friend. Sometimes it’s a decision made to take a day, a whole day, with no plans at all. Sometimes it’s a moment shared with someone who’s no longer here to share such a moment. Sometimes it’s a detour in a route we thought we were on. On the other side, we look off into the distance and imagine, bringing the wisdom and folly of where we’ve already been, bringing the lessons learned and half-learned and ignored into view. With what wisdom and humility and necessary humor will we set off into the space-time markings of a new year?

One of my favorite gifts received this Christmas was a calendar, given to Dan and me by our daughter, Lisa, and son-in-law, Rob. The feature attraction of the month-by-month visuals is Oliver Daniel Lemon, born February 22, 2008. Can you guess what they chose for January? The ultrasound! There he was—“about-to-be” tiny Oliver, nestled in Lisa’s womb, squirming, not quite ready but almost, to make his debut. With the blizzard of February 22, he knew it was time to come on out and take a look. Oliver didn’t quite stand on a threshold last January; he swam in it.

With year’s end, he’s about to walk. He’s babbling coherently—not an oxymoron at all for a parent or grandparent.

It’s always struck me that the personas of a new year were “Father Time” and a brand new baby sparsely clad in a Happy New Year banner, as if one year were a lifetime for this incarnation of a single earth-arc around the sun. What if that were the case for us?

Imagine, you’re about to be born. Imagine, by deep December you’ll be old, ancient even, close to that other threshold that we know as death. Time is condensed. You have a year to do it all, to be who you want to be, to come to full blossom and to lend whatever you will to this earth-time that is your life. How different might it go for you? How different?

To begin, I suggest we go back as far in our memories as we possibly can. Some of us might stop short at five or six. Others can stretch our imaginings all the way into our cribs. Do you remember what it was like to greet the day standing up in your crib and letting out a holler of exuberance that sounded the alert to whomever was hopefully there to satisfy your needs? Maybe it was a cry of hunger: “I’m awake, and I’m famished!” Then again, maybe there was another element or two for which babies are known to greet the morning. What do we call it? A need to be “changed!” Change is what greets the infant and what follows us in endless variations throughout our lives. Change is the mark of life itself, though of course it does have particular significance when it comes to changing a baby. The baby responds by changing us in ways we couldn’t imagine at the outset of parenthood—even grandparenthood.

“O come let us adore him!” Not until he’s changed thank you!

A newborn, a new year, a fresh start, a threshold of possibility. Change is not just imminent; it’s a given.

Yet we’ve all heard the maxim that the more things change, the more they remain the same. This view finds particular eloquence in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. Futility, thy name is the Preacher of Ecclesiastes. In the very first chapter, we read:

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done;
and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"?
It has been already, in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who come after.
Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 (Revised Standard Version)

And all the way into the final chapter, the preacher continues, culminating with the proclamation:

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.”
Ecclesiastes 12:8 (Revised Standard Version)

Not exactly the life of the New Year’s party!

In contemporary voice, the reflections of yoga teacher Robert Levine on the Winter Solstice and the New Year seem at first hearing to echo the ancient Preacher:

….despite this change in the calendar, the events in the world seem to go on in the same way that they have gone on before. Wars continue. Poverty persists, authoritarian leaders consolidate their grip on power, and the ice caps melt as the mean temperature of the world continues to rise. It is a new year, but time passes on and the world seems not to notice.

Unlike the ancient preacher, Levine pulls us out of the well later in his narrative:

Despite the lack of apparent change, we still continue to hope, to hope and believe that we can make positive change in our lives and make positive change in the world.

The long night of the winter solstice and the long winter nights altogether invite reflection and hopeful imagination. Writes Levine:

When the sun rises and the new year begins it is up to us as spiritual and political beings sharing this planet to figure out how we can live with all our disagreements and conflicts. There is nothing idealistic about this, for do we really have any other choice?

Well yes, we do, I believe we do. We can retreat into the cocoon of despair and denial that there is nothing new, that all is vanity, that what can we do anyway in the face of the violence in Gaza, the economic uncertainties here, the threat of another conflict in Afghanistan, the maladies and illnesses and injuries that have befallen so many among us. We can retreat and step off that threshold of possibility. We can also pause here and say “Yes” to the “stunning power” of perspective that this time affords. Like that ancient Roman god gifted or cursed, whatever your perspective, with two faces—one to look backwards, the other, to look ahead—we can do both with one face, with one set of hands, with one heart. And we can do more with hands and hearts joined in community.

Through this very community in which we worship together this morning, we can reflect and discern and ponder and wonder aloud, “What if?” What if we take to heart whatever we’ve learned from this past year and all years past? What if we own our power to act spiritually and politically in the direction of the common good? What if we ingest the lessons of time past and with eyes and hearts and minds wide open step off this threshold into a new year with hope seasoned by our ponderings? What then?

Come January 2010, you tell me. What then will have come to pass?
Amen.


Sources:

The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible (King James Version)

Robert Levine, “Reflections on the Winter Solstice and the New Year,” lifesherpa.com/magazine, http://www.lifesherpa.com/magazine/society/2008-01-levine-time-solstice.htm

Kathleen McTigue, “New Year’s Day,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 544.