OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

I had a friend in college who was visited one night by a couple of evangelical Christians. I think many of us were visited one night in college by a couple of evangelical Christians. They kept pestering him to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. They kept badgering him, “Don’t you want to get to heaven? Don’t you want to get to heaven? Don’t you want to get to heaven?” Finally he said, “Will you guys be there?” They said, “Well, yes, we will.” He said, “Then, well no,” he didn’t want to get to heaven.

Does heaven exist? If heaven exists, what is heaven like? Is heaven somewhere over the rainbow? Does God exist? If God exists, is God a white-bearded man sitting on a cloud someplace in heaven? Where is heaven? Is it out among the stars? Is it on Neptune? Where is heaven? What will heaven be like for us?

I heard a preacher say once that in heaven we’ll have the body we had when we were eighteen. But I’ve heard others say, “No, we won’t have that, we’ll be disembodied spirits.” I guess we’ll kind of be like Casper the friendly ghost in heaven.

I like to watch the Oscars, and the Emmys and the Grammies, all the awards shows really, and you always hear about the after party. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to this after party and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes will go to that after party. Is heaven the after party of life?

I’ve heard Christians say that heaven will be one eternal worship service, where we’ll all sing praise hymns to God. But I know people who don’t even like to go to church for one hour a week. To have heaven be an eternal church service with praise hymns to God, that wouldn’t be heaven for those folks; that would be hell. Now I don’t know anybody in this congregation who believes in hell. Except me. I believe in hell whenever I’m opening a CD. I believe that there’s got to be a special place in hell for whoever created packaging for CDs.

Steve Jobs died a few months ago. Steve Jobs was a genius, of course. Brilliant! Created Apple Computers. If it wasn’t for Steve Jobs, I don’t think I’d ever use a computer. I can’t really use a PC; I’d rather type on my grandmother’s old Royal black typewriter. But I can use an Apple, my Macbook Pro. He created ipads and ipods and iphones. He’s been called the Thomas Edison of his day. But I think people have that backwards. I think that Thomas Edison was the Steve Jobs of his day. I think if Steve Jobs had lived, ten years from now he would have created a flying car.

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few years ago. His doctors wanted to immediately operate, to cut out the cancer. But he wanted to try to cure himself, so he ate lots of fruits and vegetables, and whole foods. And then he went back to the doctors nine months later. The cancer had grown and spread. They got rid of it then. Some say that if the doctors had operated when they had originally wanted to, Steve Jobs might be alive today. We don’t know.

A few years ago, after he knew he had cancer, he gave the commencement address at Stanford University. He said these fine words, “Your time is limited; so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried to do that over my life. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be Bret Maverick, the James Garner character in the old Maverick series. Then when I was a little older, I wanted to grow up to be Jim Rockford, the James Garner character in the old Rockford Files series. (I think there’s a pattern here.) But now I humbly submit, I kind of like being…me. I hope you like being you. I just want to be the best me that I can be. I hope you want to be the best you that you can be. I think Steve Jobs was the best Steve Jobs that he could be.

At his memorial service, his sister, Mona Simpson, an author, described Steve Jobs last moments. She said he looked at his loved ones. Then he looked past his loved ones in the distance and said, “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.” What was that? What did he see, if anything? Did he see heaven?

I sometimes get the feeling that if I could reach out just beyond my grasp I could kind of split open the real world and see the spiritual world. If I could just reach a little farther. That sounds a little crazy, I know, but is that what Steve Jobs saw? Did he see beyond the real world into the spiritual world? Did he see what the Nicene Creed calls (and I don’t usually quote the Nicene Creed), but did he see what the Nicene Creed calls “the seen and the unseen.” Did he see the unseen that none of us can see? I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

A couple years ago, one of my parishioners asked me if I’d read “90 Minutes in Heaven.” I said I hadn’t. So the next week he gave me a copy and I read it. It was written by Don Piper. Don Piper is a Southern Baptist preacher. About ten years ago or so he was at a Southern Baptist Conference. When he left the conference, he was driving along and a semi-truck crossed the center line and drove right over his car and right over him. Paramedics showed up, but there really wasn’t anything they could do. They pronounced him dead at the scene.

Then a little while later another Southern Baptist preacher came from that conference. He didn’t know the man in the car was a Southern Baptist minister who had come from the conference. He just stopped because he saw the accident and he thought he’d see if he could pray for the man. So he asked the paramedics, “Could I go pray for the man in that car?” They said, “Sure, but it won’t do any good. He’s been dead for about 90 minutes now.” The minister said, “That’s OK. I just want to pray for him.” Now when the semi drove over his car, it flattened the car, but opened up the back end of it somehow. So the minister crawled in through the back of the car and touched Don Piper and prayed for him. Then he sang a hymn. As he was singing the hymn, Don Piper started singing along with him!

As you can imagine, the man kind of freaked out and scrambled out of the car, ran to the paramedics and said, “That guy’s still alive in that car!” They replied basically, “You’re crazy. He’s been dead for 90 minutes.” “No, no, he’s alive! He’s singing a hymn! Go hear it for yourselves!” “OK, we’ll go hear it for ourselves.” They heard it! They called for the Jaws of Life! They opened up the car! They got him out of there; they took him to the hospital! The hospital he went to – Coincidentally? Providentially? – had a doctor on staff who had worked on the problems that Don Piper had. What happened when the semi drove over his car, the femurs in his legs somehow flew out of his body. He did not have thigh bones. I don’t know any more about it than that. I tell people I have an MDiv degree, not an MD degree. One of the doctors on duty that day at the hospital had been part of an experiment where they grew bone in the body. So they grew his thigh bones back. Don Piper can now walk and talk. And he wrote a book about his experience; he lectures about it.

He said that when he died, he went up to heaven and he saw his relatives, who he’d known, who had passed on. He also saw other relatives, who he’d never met, but he’d seen pictures of them. Then he kind of hovered over to a gate. He didn’t know how he got there, but he all of a sudden was at this gate. The pearly gates? (Heaven is apparently is a gated community!) He looked into the gate and that’s when he woke up.

What do you think of that? Did that really happen? Scientists would say that when our brain is dying we have hallucinations and that’s what this was, an hallucination. Maybe he made the story up. But what fascinates me is, this guy’s a Southern Baptist minister. Who didn’t he see when he went to heaven? He didn’t see Jesus! You would think that if a Southern Baptist preacher is going to make up a story about going to heaven, the first person he’d say he saw in heaven is – Jesus! But he doesn’t say he saw Jesus. For me that adds a little credibility to the story. But again, it’s a mystery.

A minister friend of mine e-mailed me when she heard what my topic was going to be. She said that she had had a life after life experience. That’s all she said, so I wrote her back and asked, “Would you tell me about it?” She wrote back and said that many years ago when her kids were little and they were off to school and her husband was at work, she was home alone. All of a sudden she had an asthma attack, a severe asthma attack, the worst asthma attack she’d ever had. She passed out. And she woke up and she said it was the classic story you always hear about near death experiences. She went through a tunnel, she saw a light, she saw a figure in front of her and the figure indicated she had to go back. Obviously she did. She said that she felt so peaceful, so calm, so serene that now she doesn’t worry about death, she doesn’t worry about life after death, she’s not anxious about it at all. What do you make of that? Did that happen or was she hallucinating or what? I have a tendency to believe her, but I don’t know. It’s all a mystery.

A few years ago, I was asked to preach in a church and I did. After the service an elderly woman came up to me and said that her husband had died a few years before. She said that in life he couldn’t move his right arm. But at the moment of his death he looked up at the ceiling? The Sky? The Heavens? Heaven? And he reached up with his right arm and then he was dead. What was that?

A couple months ago, on the tenth anniversary of 9-11, the New York Times printed a picture they’d printed ten years before, after the planes had struck the towers. They had a picture of a guy falling to the earth, to his certain death. What struck me about the picture then as when I saw it a couple months ago was how peaceful, how calm, how serene the man looked. If that had been me, I would have been flapping my arms, trying to learn how to fly. But he was just falling, with no expression on his face, nothing. I wonder, I have no idea but I wonder, was that just his body falling? Was his spirit already rising to heaven? It’s a mystery. And not a mystery like “The Rockford Files.” A mystery like we won’t know the answer on this side of the rainbow.

A couple of years ago, Los Lonely Boys recorded a hit song, “How Far Is Heaven?” Los Lonely Boys sing: “How far is heaven? Lord, can you tell me, how far is heaven? I just gotta know how far it is.” How far is heaven? Is heaven just in the hereafter or is it in the here and now?

I did a funeral for a woman a few years ago. When I prepare for a funeral, I talk to the family, like most ministers do and find out what her life was like and what her spiritual life was like. Then, during the funeral, I talk about her life and celebrate her life and mourn her loss. (I don’t use a funeral as some ministers do, as an excuse to get people to come to Jesus.) I said that I didn’t know whether heaven exists or not. Out of the corner of my eye I could see one of her daughters wince. I quickly said, “But if heaven does exist, I have no doubt that she is there.” Then I said, I didn’t get the impression that she waited until she died to get to heaven. I said that she was in heaven on earth whenever she was with her loved ones. I said that she was in heaven on earth whenever she was doing what she loved. I said that she was in heaven on earth whenever she was helping someone, whenever she was acting compassionately, whenever she was seeking justice for more than just us.

Jesus told his disciples, “As you go, proclaim the good news, the kingdom of heaven has come near.” I think I mentioned before that what I think he was saying was: the kingdom of heaven is all around us. We just have to have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. It’s not just Jesus that said that, I think many spiritual leaders say that. Ram Dass, “Be here now.” This is all that matters. This is all we have. Eckhart Tolle talks about the Power of Now. We have to be aware of it, to appreciate it, to be grateful for it. So I don’t know whether heaven exists or not. I’d like to believe it does. But we can have heaven on earth when we’re with the ones we love. We can heaven on earth whenever we do what we love. We can heaven on earth whenever we act compassionately, when we seek justice for all. We can heaven on earth if we just have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. [Looking off into the distance and reaching up with his right arm] OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Beginning. Becoming. Belonging.

One of my few brushes with fame came several years ago. I was vacationing in England and around nine o’clock at night I was walking out of a pub. As I walked through the door, a man who was bald with a big long cigar was walking in. I recognized him immediately – at least I thought I did – and I said, “My goodness, aren’t you Telly Savalas?” He didn’t break stride, he just did one of those (in a growling voice), “Yeah.” Now why I didn’t run in there and get his autograph or go in and say the famous line from Kojac, “Who loves ya, baby?” I don’t know. I guess I was just in shock.

I was reminded of that this week when I read that Harry Morgan had died at the age of 96. Harry Morgan was from Muskegon. I did not know that. He was a longtime actor, of course. Probably his most famous role was on M.A.S.H., where he played Colonel Potter. As far as I know, his first name in that series was not Harry, so he was not Harry Potter. Colonel Potter’s right-hand man was Radar. Radar would bring Colonel Potter things before he even realized he needed them. I remember one episode where Radar was going to make a little extra money by selling shoes. He sold shoes for a company that had the slogan, “If your shoes aren’t becoming to you, you should be coming to us.” I thought that was cute. Obviously I remembered it after all these years. Maybe that should be our slogan, “If your church isn’t becoming to you, you should be coming to us!” Maybe not.

I want to talk with you about being a part of this congregation. My sermon is titled, “Beginning, Becoming, Belonging.” I think we all begin to come to a place like this and then eventually feel that we’ve become part of it and then eventually we feel like we belong here. Why do you come here? How do we fit into your spiritual journey?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says some statements that are statements of dichotomy. You have heard this, but I tell you that. You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth , but I say to you, turn the other cheek. You see what Jesus is doing there? He is proving himself not to be a scriptural literalist. You have heard that it was said, in the scriptures, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, turn the other cheek. This is the way it was hundreds of years ago, but now it’s a new way. There’s a new way of thinking. Jesus is demonstrating that, I think to all of us, that the scripture can be changed over time. I think maybe Christians would say, well of course Jesus can change the scriptures, he’s Jesus. But I think what Jesus is doing is demonstrating to all of us that we can do that, too. You have heard that it was said in the scriptures this homophobic passage, but now we should be loving of everyone. So Jesus was showing those people how to change the way things were. I think the people of this congregation can and do appreciate that.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a great writer and Unitarian minister, says, “Be not a slave to your past.” In other words, just because your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents believed something, you don’t have to do that, you don’t have to believe that. Just because they believed in some dogma or some doctrine, or code or creed or rule or regulation, that doesn’t have to apply to your life today. I think the people of this congregation can and do appreciate that.

Michael Servetus was killed, martyred, murdered in John Calvin’s Geneva. He didn’t believe in the Holy Trinity. He said, “Do not be surprised if I see God in humanity.” I think some people’s heads would explode today if they heard that. Imagine what it was like for people several hundred years ago. He saw God in people. He was considered a heretic and they killed him. But he’s a hero to people in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. I think people here can and do appreciate that.

A man grew up feeling like he was an orphan in his family. He was an odd duck. He didn’t really fit in. His family took him to church, but he didn’t believe the things he heard there. He didn’t believe in the virgin birth or a resurrected human being or a Son of God. He was skeptical; he wouldn’t accept easy answers to complex questions. Today he feels like he’s all alone in the world. It’s too bad he doesn’t come to a congregation like this, where I think he’d feel right at home.

A woman, as a child, felt like she didn’t fit in with her family and friends. They seemed to all accept the theology that was handed down to them. She wouldn’t accept that. She didn’t believe in the authority of the Church. She didn’t believe in the authority of the minister. She didn’t believe in the authority of the Bible. She didn’t accept pat answers that everyone around her seemed to. She felt like she was alone. It’s a shame she doesn’t find a place like this. We can hope that she does, because then I think she’d feel at home.

A teenager is just beginning to be aware, to be aware of herself, of her surroundings, of how she thinks differently than her parents, her siblings, her friends. She too is skeptical. She doesn’t accept all that she was taught in Sunday School. She thinks that there must be other truths out there, but she feels like she is all alone. No one else in the world thinks the way she does, she thinks. If only she would find a place like this congregation, I think she’d finally feel at home.

Some of you may know that I co-host a radio show with Fred Wooden, senior minister at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids. It’s called “Faith and Reason.” It airs on Friday mornings from 10 to noon. We talk about religious issues, current event issues, anything. We’ve been doing it for about two and a half years. Shortly after we began, we invited a couple of atheists to be on the show, to have a dialog with us. I think that they thought we were kind of fundamentalist Christians or something because they would say things like…

“Well you all believe in the inerrancy of the Bible.”
“No, not really. We believe the Bible is poetical in places. We believe it contains some truth, but we don’t believe it dropped out of heaven.”
“Oh. Well you believe in the resurrection of Jesus.”
“No, not really. We think Jesus lived on in the hearts and minds of his followers as he does today,”
“Oh. Well you believe in miracles, that he turned water into wine, walked on water.”
“No, not really. We think that those stories were made up and told about Jesus so people would think he was the Son of God and certainly somebody special.”
“Oh.”

I’m Facebook friends with one of the atheists that we had on and he wrote on his Facebook page that “trying to pin down liberal ministers is like trying to nail Jello to the wall.” I like that. I don’t like to be pinned down theologically because I sometimes change week to week. I don’t like to be nailed to the wall. I wouldn’t like to be nailed to the cross either. I think that’s what this congregation is like, too. We don’t like to be nailed down.

[Loud] The people of this congregation believe in JESUS! [Soft] Or Buddha.
[Loud] The people of this congregation believe in GOD! [Soft] Or Goddess.
[Loud] The people of this congregation believe in EVERTHING! [Soft] Or nothing.

It’s up to each person to use their reason, their rationality, their mind, their heart, their spirit to decide what to believe. We don’t have doctrines and dogmas or creeds and codes or rules and regulations that you have to submit to. If you want to believe in Jesus because he said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” go right ahead. If you want to believe in Gandhi because he said, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” go right ahead. If you want to believe in the Dalai Lama because he said, “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness,” go right ahead. You can believe what you want to believe here. That’s the beauty of this place.

When I was a kid we lived in the Detroit area for a couple of years. There was a TV weatherman on a Detroit
station that I really liked. Sonny Eliot. What a great name for a weatherman, isn’t it? Sonny Eliot. Like Storm Field. Sonny Eliot’s schtick or technique or the way he did things was to take two words describing what the weather was going to be and then combining them into one. He would say, “Tomorrow it’s going to be sunny and warm, or SWARM,” or “In the morning it’ll be foggy and cold, or FOLD.” Or “tomorrow we’re going to have freezing drizzle, or FRIZZLE.” I would like to do something similar to describe this congregation. This is a congregation that has common unity or community around the idea of freedom. People here have freedom, the common unity of freedom to think what they want to think, to believe what they want to believe, to forge their own theology. It’s up to each one of us to do that.

The other day I saw an old tape of a “Nightline” program from around ten years ago. It featured Christian high school students – just boys, not girls – because they were preaching and of course we all know only boys can preach [said sarcastically]. But anyway, they had a national contest for the best high school preacher. The contest was held at Bob Jones University, so you know where they were theologically, evangelical and fundamentalist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. These kids, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, preached about sin and salvation, heaven and hell. They all preached about it. Each of their sermons was about how, if you don’t accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you’ll face eternal damnation. But the good news is, if you do accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you’re good to go for all eternity. You’ll spend eternity in heaven with God. The even better news is that’s all you have to do – accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You don’t have to feed the hungry or house the homeless or clothe the naked or help the hurting. You just have to believe in Jesus. Now even many Christians would call that “cheap grace.” They believe and I believe and I think most of you believe there’s more to it than that.

But I think that idea isn’t just restricted to Christianity. I think there are people in other faith traditions who believe all they have to do is go climb to the top of a mountain and contemplate their navel. They’re spiritual people. All they have to do is meditate for a couple of hours a day and they’re good to go. I call it “cheap spirituality.” I think everybody here knows it’s more than just that. It’s more than just cheap spirituality. We do need to work for justice and act compassionately and seek peace in our lives and in the world.

Olive Garden, the “authentic” Italian restaurant chain, had an ad campaign a couple of years ago that said, “When you’re here, you’re family.” Maybe that should be our slogan. “When you’re here, you’re family.” Maybe not. But if you’re just beginning to come to this congregation, welcome home – you’re family. If you’ve been becoming part of this congregation for weeks and months, welcome home – you’re family. If you feel like you belong to this congregation because you’ve come here for months and years, you have that sense of belonging, welcome home – you’re family. If you want to have a deeper commitment than you already have at this congregation, see me after the service.

This congregation cares about people’s spirit, about nurturing people in body, mind and spirit, about helping people along their spiritual journey. Maybe a slogan we ought to adopt, is one that is well-known because it’s associated with the United Negro College Fund. But we need to change it just slightly. We care about helping people’s spirit along because: a spirit is a terrible thing to waste.

Everyday Should Be Thanksgiving

They celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada on the same day we celebrate Columbus Day. I did not know that. This past Columbus Day I heard that the way we were supposed to commemorate Christopher Columbus discovering America was we were supposed to pick a house at random, and walk inside and say, “I declare this is my property.” It would probably be best if you chose a house where you knew they didn’t have a gun. That would be wise. I’ve heard that the problem that Native Americans had was they didn’t have a very good Office of Homeland Security. They didn’t have a very good immigration policy either. But I don’t like to make jokes about the pain suffered by people who were almost wiped out.

This coming Thursday, as we celebrate every year, the fourth Thursday of November, we will celebrate Thanksgiving. Now that wasn’t declared a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln’s time, but the first Thanksgiving was celebrated about 400 years ago. Native peoples helped the Pilgrims learn how to plant seeds and learn how to fish. Back then, as now, it was a celebration of the harvest, and so many of us will sit down to a feast on Thanksgiving Day. Turkey, or for vegans tofu turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green bean casserole (so thank God for Campbell’s mushroom soup), stuffing, dressing, perhaps a pumpkin pie, if there is a God: pecan pie.

Comedian Jim Gaffigan makes jokes about pretty much all the holidays we celebrate. He says of Thanksgiving, “It’s like we didn’t even try. Let’s have a holiday where we overeat. Oh, we do that every day. Ok, let’s have a holiday where we overeat and invite people over who annoy us.” That’s probably not very nice. I like Thanksgiving. I like having people over who are loved ones and I enjoy all the food. My only problem with Thanksgiving is we only celebrate it once a year. I think we should celebrate Thanksgiving every day of the year. I think we should give thanks every day of the year, 365 days a year, not just one day.

Meister Eckhart, the Christian mystic from hundreds of years ago says, “If the only prayer you ever pray is ‘Thank you,’ that will suffice.” I think the first step to saying thank you is awareness. I think awareness is the first step along just about every spiritual path. It’s the first step to forgiveness. It’s the first step for loving your neighbor and loving your enemy. But it’s definitely the first step to thanksgiving because you have to be aware of what you’re thankful for. You have to be aware of all your blessings.

One of the best known psalms in the Hebrew Scriptures about Thanksgiving is Psalm 100. “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence with singing.” Tradition holds that this was written by King David, who says to give thanks and praise to God. The only problem I have with the word Thanksgiving is it’s as if you’re saying thanks to someone or something – God. So it might leave atheists out of the picture. The word I like better is gratitude, because you can have a feeling of gratitude, gratefulness, an attitude of gratitude, without being thankful to a Supreme Being or somebody. We could all be grateful or have a feeling of gratitude.

I think one of the best expressions of gratitude, one of the best calls to worship that I’ve ever heard was written by Duncan Littlefair, a longtime minister at Fountain Street Church. In fact, it’s all around the walls of the narthex of Fountain Street Church: “This is indeed a day which the Lord has made. Let us then rejoice in it and be very glad, and let us count our many blessings. Let us be grateful for the capacity to see, feel, hear, and understand. Let us be grateful for the incredible gift of life. And let us be especially grateful for the ties of love, which bind us together, giving dignity, meaning, worth and joy to all our days.” I think you’d be hard pressed to come up with a better call to worship or invocation than that. I know; I’ve tried. It tells us what we should do, too, we should count our blessings because we do have the capacity to see, feel, hear and understand. We are blessed with the incredible gift of life and we are blessed with the ties of love that bind us together. We need to count our blessings sometimes; maybe every day.

When I was a kid I remember watching a cartoon about a Canadian Mountie (I seem to have a Canadian theme today), Dudley Dooright. Dudley Dooright’s nemesis was Snidely Whiplash. Snidley Whiplash would plot and plan some evil scheme every time, usually involving kidnapping Dudley Dooright’s girlfriend, Nell, and tying her to a railroad track. Then Dudley Dooright would come along and thwart Snidely Whiplash’s evil plan by rescuing Nell. Snidely Whiplash would say, “Curses, foiled again!” Maybe a curse is the opposite of a blessing. But sometimes what seems like a curse can turn out to be a blessing.

Some of you may know my first church when I graduated from seminary was this little church in this little town about a half hour northeast of Grand Rapids, called Belding. When I took the call to that church, my daughter was in the ninth grade and I thought: this will be perfect; I’ll stay in this church for four years until she graduates from high school and then she’ll go off to college and I’ll go someplace else, if I need to. That was my plan. Their plan was to get rid of me after a year and three days. At the time I was devastated. I thought it was a curse. I thought, what am I going to do? Then I thought about the Sunday School class I’d taught, a Bible study, and I remembered one Sunday we read the story in the first chapter of Genesis, the creation story about how God created the heavens and the earth in six days. When we were done reading that I said something about how of course this isn’t a scientific textbook, this is a poetic way of describing the beginning of time, but scientists tell us about the Big Bang theory and Evolution. The moderator of that church, who was in the class, the highest ranking person in the church, like the president of this church, said, “Well I believe in creationism; I don’t believe in evolution.” [Noise of disbelief]

So maybe it wasn’t a curse that they fired me after three days, maybe it was a blessing, because if they hadn’t and I’d been there four years I was afraid that I’d be a Stepford pastor or something; I’d be a dead spiritual man walking. I’d be preaching sermons about “I don’t believe in evolution; I believe in creationism, that the earth was built in six days.”

Labor Day weekend was my last weekend there. I knew they were going to fire me the day after Labor Day. So Labor Day, when I still thought this was a curse, I was worried, what am I going to do? Now for whatever reason, Labor Day is a big deal in Belding. They hold a big parade – marching bands, floats, police cars, fire trucks, the whole works. I’m standing along the parade route going, “God, show me a sign! I’m going to lose my first church, this little church in this little town. Show me a sign!” Just then a fire truck went by. On the back of the fire truck were the initials: BFD. [Laughter] Now of course that stands for Belding Fire Department, but some of you seem to realize that in my mind it stood for something else. As I was asking God for a sign, there were the initials BFD, “Big Freakin’ Deal. You’re going to lose this little church in this little town, don’t worry about it.” I looked up to heaven and I said, “Thank you!” Now I don’t know if it was a providential thing or a coincidental thing, but it was a blessing for me. Sometimes what seems like a curse turns out to be a blessing.

Rick Warren is the pastor of a mega-church out in California. I read something about him once where he said he can’t tell if a song is Christian until he hears the words. I thought, really? Didn’t Bach write all kinds of Christian music that didn’t have any words? And Beethoven and Mozart? It seems to me that the most joyful songs of praise and thanksgiving to God or whatever that I’ve heard, I hear outside my window in the spring, birds singing. Now I don’t know what they’re saying, but it seems to me they’re saying thank you. They’re expressing gratitude. Now scientists would probably say they’re saying something else, to each other, but I prefer to think they’re expressing gratitude. And it’s beautiful.

Now I myself love music. I think many of you know that. I can’t hardly carry a tune and I can’t really play an instrument, except maybe a Davy Jones tambourine or something like that, but I like music; I like to sing. So every day, or almost every day, I do sing. I sing a song of thanksgiving and praise and gratitude. [Singing] “Oh, what a beautiful morning! Oh, what a beautiful day!” It drives my wife crazy, because sometimes I’ll sing that at night when it’s raining. She doesn’t understand that. My grandsons say, “Opa, it’s raining out,” or “It’s evening, not morning!” But that’s not the point. The point is expressing gratitude, expressing thankfulness, and I think we all need to do that as often as we can.

Now I’m not naïve. I know that not everything is something that we should give thanks for. I know that there are wars and rumors of wars; I know people have sickness and disease. I know people die. Obviously we’re not thankful for that. But it’s because of those calamities and tragedies in life that I think that when we do see something we’re thankful for that we should hold onto that, we should cling to that, that we should give thanks for that, that we should have a feeling of gratitude for that, because we know we have joys and concerns, but when we do encounter those joys, let’s be grateful.

What is it you’re thankful for? What blessings do you have? What expressions of gratitude do you make? I hope you’re thankful for life. I hope you’re thankful for love, for loved ones. I hope you’re thankful for the clothes on your back, a roof over your head. I hope you’re thankful for the earth that we walk on. I hope you give thanks as often as you can. I hope you don’t wait until the fourth Thursday of November to give thanks, but that you give thanks every day, or at least almost every day, that you find something in your life that you’re thankful for and you either say it within yourself or you speak it or maybe even sing it. That you’re thankful, that you’re grateful, that you appreciate life.

An Oxygen Tent In West Michigan

I thought of the title for today’s sermon a few weeks ago. “An Oxygen Tent in West Michigan.” But I couldn’t remember how to spell the word “oxygen.” My wife was in the next room, so I called out, “Honey, how do you spell ‘oxygen’?” She spelled out, “O-X-Y-G-E-N.” I said, “Thanks.” Then she said, “Why, are you having trouble breathing?” I said, “Yes, I’m having trouble breathing and I thought: if only I could spell the word ‘oxygen,’ my lungs would clear up.”

I told my daughter that story, she’s a sophomore at the University of Michigan. I thought she’d find it amusing, but her reaction was, “You didn’t know how to spell ‘oxygen’?!”

Back when I was in college, I didn’t go to church much at all. Then for a few years after college, I didn’t go to church much at all either. Even when I got my first job right out of college (does anyone get a job these days right out of college?), I was hired as the news director at a Christian radio station, even with that, I didn’t go to church every Sunday. Just about every Monday, my boss would ask me how things were yesterday at my “Bedroom Baptist Church.” Yeah, I slept in, what can I say?

I did get invited a couple of times when I was in college to go to church with some folks and I went. The first time I went, the minister talked about, “a Lutheran theologian, if you can imagine such a thing,” and everybody laughed. I thought, are they making fun of Luther? At that time I didn’t know a whole lot about church history, but I thought: well, if it wasn’t for Luther, wouldn’t we all be Catholics? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I say that because I’m an interfaith, ecumenical kind of guy.)

Later I got invited back to that same church and the preacher talked about, “those heathen Jews in Hollywood.” What? Did I hear that right? What was even worse was that people were taking notes in their Bibles – “those heathen Jews in Hollywood.” Oy vey!

A year or so ago I was meeting with some Christian ministers. One of the Christian ministers said, “We all have something in common!” Another minister piped up, “Yeah, we preach what we don’t believe!” I thought, we preach what we don’t believe? I don’t preach what I don’t believe. I’ve never preached what I don’t believe. Now granted there are times when one Sunday I believe one thing and then a week later I believe just the opposite, but I believe each one. But I knew what they meant. They meant that they had to preach an Easter sermon in which they said that Jesus was physically resurrected. Well, I would never preach that. They meant, I think, that around Christmas time, they had to preach about how Jesus was born of a virgin. Well, I don’t preach that either, which is probably why I am no longer a Christian minister. But I can’t help wondering, how many ministers are there who preach what they don’t believe? They have to preach a Sunday School theology, but they haven’t believed that since they were in Sunday School. But they have to preach it to keep their jobs.

Then I got to wondering how many people in the pews listen to sermons that they don’t believe. They hear sermons about a Sunday School theology that they left behind when they left Sunday School years before.

Then I got to thinking that well, there are other preachers who preach, unfortunately, what they do believe – things like God hates gays, things like women are inferior to men. Or they preach that God loves the rich and hates the poor. Or they preach that the earth is 6,000 years old. Really? They obviously don’t believe scientists that tell us the earth is billions of years old. They obviously don’t believe the Big Bang theory. They obviously have never even seen “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS on Thursday nights.

After I didn’t go to church during college and a few years after, I found a church that I did go to, faithfully. Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, where I went for fifteen years before I went into the ministry. Fountain Street Church has been, as you probably know, a liberal church for 150 years. For the last 60 years or so the senior ministers at Fountain Street Church have been Unitarian Universalists. I don’t think a minister at Fountain Street Church has ever preached what he or she doesn’t believe. I thought when I was there that Fountain Street Church was, for me, an oxygen tent in West Michigan. It was a place I could come every Sunday after breathing the religiously repressive air that permeates West Michigan. I could come and get my spiritual lungs filled up with intellectual enlightenment and spiritual sanity.

William Ellery Channing, as you know, was a guiding light in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. William Ellery Channing says, “I call that mind free, which accepts light from whencesoever it may come.” We all need to do that. That’s what a church should be all about, is to be the light of truth for everyone.

Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” That’s what a church should be, is a light: A light of honesty and truth and love and peace for all the world.

Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave, a great orator and writer, a leader of the anti-slavery movement back in the 1800s. Frederick Douglass said, “Freedom is not a gift. Freedom is won through relentless effort.” A church should be about freedom for people who are enslaved in dogma and doctrine they no longer believe in.

The Dalai Lama says, “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” That’s a value I think this church could embrace, a religion of kindness. This church, this spiritual community, does not require people to recite doctrines or dogmas or creeds or codes that they don’t believe in. This spiritual community gives people freedom to believe what their conscience, what their reason, what their intellect tells them is right. That’s a basic value of this spiritual community. It doesn’t matter what we say so much as what we do. It’s not so much what we believe, but how we act. It’s not about the talk we talk, it’s about the walk we walk. That’s a value this spiritual community holds dear, I think.

A church is not a museum for dusty old doctrines and dogma; it’s a living, breathing spiritual place for people to live fully alive, for people to live fully aware, for people to live fully awake and free. I used to be a news reporter and occasionally I would report on a house fire. Every now and then we’d hear about how somebody would go running into a burning house to save a family member. But I’ve never heard of anybody, I’ve never reported on anybody, running into a burning house to save a family Bible. That’s another value I think we hold, I think everybody holds, but they really won’t admit it because they’re afraid they’ll be struck by lightning or something, that people matter more than a Bible, that a human being matters more than words on a page. That’s a value, I think, that we hold dear.

Jesus said to his disciples they should go proclaim the Good News: the kingdom of heaven has come near. What he meant by that, I think I’ve mentioned this before, was that heaven doesn’t just exist somewhere over the rainbow, it exists here below the rainbow, too. That it doesn’t just exist in the hereafter, but in the here and now. That there aren’t two separate worlds – the world of heaven and the world of earth – it’s all one, it’s all sacred, holy, divine. If that’s too religious for folks, it’s all precious, special, wonderful. Either the priest and the prostitute live in the holy, the sacred, the divine world, or neither of them does. There isn’t a secular and a sacred world; it’s all one world. We’re all one. I think that’s another value that we hold dear.

I get a kick out of it when people say that I do what I do before the Holland City Council when asking them to pass a gay rights ordinance because I’m looking for free publicity to grow my churches. Let me tell you, if you want to grow a church, you don’t do it by proclaiming gay rights. If I wanted to grow a megachurch, I would preach on Sunday morning, “God hates gays.” And I’d have people hanging from the rafters, as other megachurches do and TV churches do. If I wanted to grow a megachurch, I’d preach on Sunday morning that God thinks women are inferior to men, and I’d have people hanging from the rafters. Unfortunately many of them would be women. That’s what other megachurches do, that’s what they do on TV churches. If I wanted to grow a megachurch, I’d preach that God loves rich people and hates poor people. That’s what megachurches and TV churches do and they have people hanging from the rafters. If I wanted to grow a megachurch, I would proclaim that the earth is 6,000 years old and I’d have people hanging from the rafters. That’s what megachurches do, and TV churches, too.

But if I did that, I’d be preaching what I don’t believe. So, I’m stuck with a couple of little churches, but I’m OK with that.

This church, this spiritual community, is a beacon of freedom in West Michigan for people who feel they are enslaved by doctrines and dogmas, that probably even their preachers don’t believe. This church, this spiritual community, is a life preserver in the waters of religious repression that people are drowning in. This church, this spiritual community, is an oxygen tent in West Michigan for people whose spiritual air is polluted by hatred and ignorance.

When I was finished writing this sermon, or when I thought I was finished, I realized that I didn’t quote a song and I usually quote a song in all my sermons. But one didn’t come to me. But then it did and I’ll tell you what it is in a second. If this spiritual community is something that you value – because of the music, the beauty, the silence, the education, even the words spoken in the sermon – tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your co-workers, tell your family. Invite them to come here if they’re stuck in a pew listening to words they don’t believe, listening to a Sunday School theology they gave up back in Sunday School. Invite them here. Tell them that this is a place for them to think for themselves, where we don’t ask them to leave their brains at the door, where we invite them to forge their own theology using their intellect, their reason, their heart, their soul. If you find this place valuable, I imagine that you know other people who would, too. Invite them to come here. In other words, “Go, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere.”