A couple weeks ago, I stood outside a hotel in Muskegon and held a sign. The sign said, “Jesus was a Liberal.” Inside the hotel was a presidential candidate. [Rick Santorum.] He’s a well-known conservative. The media said over 500 people came to hear him. I would guess that 99.9% of them are conservatives. When many of them walked past my sign that I was carrying, many of them said, “Oh, no. That’s not right. Jesus was a conservative.” I said, “I don’t think so, because Jesus said to feed the hungry and house the homeless and care for the poor.” I said, “If Jesus was a conservative, I don’t think he would have said that.” Not that conservatives don’t feed the hungry or house the homeless or care for the poor, but those are more traditionally liberal values. One woman told me, “Go to hell!” Now I try to look on the positive side of anything and try to think the best of everyone, so I assumed that she was telling me that this particular presidential candidate was going to make a campaign stop in Hell, Michigan and she was inviting me to go there with my sign.
I didn’t see the presidential candidate go into the hotel, because he went in the back and I was in the front. But by the end of his talk, I realized that and stood at the back where his SUV was. He got inside his SUV on the passenger side and took off and looked over and saw, I hope, my sign and kind of smiled and waved.
I didn’t do that to try to antagonize those hundreds of people going in. I was exercising justice. I was trying to speak truth to power, which I think is one definition of justice and has been for thousands of years.
Moses went to Pharaoh in Egypt and said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh said, “No.” This happened repeatedly and Pharaoh continued to say, “No,” even when, according to the story, God sent many calamities and catastrophes to fall on Egypt. Finally Moses said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh said, “No,” and according to the story, God killed the first born male of every family in Egypt. Then Pharaoh said, “Go!” And the Israelites left Egypt to search for their own land, to worship as they saw fit.
Now I tell you that story, not to make you think that I believe that it’s true. I think it was a mythological story, a story told to show the Israelites that they are God’s chosen people. And I don’t tell you that story in the event that you’re pro-choice, so that whenever you encounter an anti-choice person and they say God is pro-life, you could tell that story and say, “Well, God killed the first-born male of all the Egyptians and that doesn’t sound pro-life to me.” That’s not why I tell you this story. I tell you this story because Moses was engaging in justice, Moses was speaking truth to power, Moses was bringing justice to the powerless. Pharaoh’s response was a political one. He didn’t want to free the slaves. He didn’t want to free the Israelites. In part, I think, because of the negative economic impact on Egypt.
Justice has a long history and it means different things to different people. To some people, justice means what it means in Texas – hang ‘em high. That’s not how I use the word justice. I use the word justice the way religious people of different faiths use it. The way non-religious people use it. It’s used in a sacred way and a secular way to mean speaking truth to power, to mean caring for the poor, to mean housing the homeless and feeding the hungry. The prophets in the Hebrew scriptures talked about justice – taking care of the widow and the orphan. All that’s what I mean by justice.
Scholars say that the entire Bible can be summed up in one verse. The Hebrew scriptures and the Christian New Testament can be summed up in one verse, found in the book of the prophet Micah. Micah 6:8: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does God require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God.”
To many people that just means individual action. Justice means what one person does for another person. I’d go along with that, except that I believe in American Exceptionalism. I think that American Exceptionalism doesn’t just mean that we can invade any country we want to whenever we want. I think American Exceptionalism means that we care about everybody in our country. Because I believe in American Exceptionalism. And because of three pesky words in the Preamble to the Constitution: We the People. If only that said, “I the dictator,” or “We the special committee of folks,” but it says “We the people.” To me that means that “We the people” is the government. That collectively we elect the representatives to the House and Senate and the White House. So I don’t think the justice that was talked about by the prophets of old or by secular groups or by other faith traditions is just an individual thing. Especially here in America. I think it’s more expansive than that. It’s “We the people.” Perhaps that means we the people are going to act prophetically and do justice for all of our citizens. If that was just an individual thing or if churches could just take care of justice in America, there wouldn’t be 49 million people without health insurance. There wouldn’t be 45,000 people who die every year because they don’t have health insurance. To stop that kind of thing, it can’t just be fixed by individuals or churches or synagogues. It has to be “We the people” in the form of our government.
I am proud and pleased to be the minister of two different churches that both care about justice. Interfaith Congregation in Holland serves breakfast to needy people every Saturday morning. Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Muskegon serves supper through Mission for Area People, the MAP Supper House, and sponsors a food truck periodically to provide for people in need. Those actions are part of justice, but I think they are different than justice. They’re charitable acts, they’re compassionate acts, they’re random acts of kindness or planned acts of kindness. And charity, I think, is different than justice. Justice tries to get at the root cause of poverty. Charity helps those who are in poverty, but justice tries to get at the root cause of poverty. Charity deals with the symptoms, justice tries to get at the disease.
Archbishop Dom Helder Camarra of Brazil said once, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.” Doing justice, speaking out for justice, trying to get at the root cause of poverty, might cause you to be called a communist or a socialist or what, in some people’s minds, is even worse – a liberal! But we need to get at the root cause of the systems that cause things like poverty in order to eliminate poverty. Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you,” but that was not a directive. He was not saying make sure you always have the poor with you. He knew that we would always have the poor with us because we’d always have greedy people and whenever you have greedy people, you have needy people.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was the personification of justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. started his ministry in 1954, basically with the Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks, who was the secretary for the NAACP, refused, as you know, to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery to a white man and refused to sit in the back of the bus, which started the Montgomery bus boycott which went on for months and months. Finally, justice prevailed and discrimination was no longer allowed on Montgomery buses. Dr. King was the leader of that as he was the leader of many demands for justice – civil rights, voting rights, equal rights. He led marches, as you know, that got some people killed and eventually got him killed.
Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” He knew it couldn’t happen overnight. Barack Obama, before he became president, said, “Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. It bends towards justice, but here is the thing: it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice.”
The interesting thing is that justice oftentimes needs politicians to become reality. Justice needed Dr. King to demand civil rights and voting rights, but it took Congress to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and for the President to sign them. A lot of times justice requires politics to become reality.
A few years ago when I and several other ministers went to Washington, D.C., we lobbied Congress to pass a hate crimes bill, the Matthew Shepard Bill. But we could only do so much and then the politicians, the elected people, “We the people,” had to act on justice for it to become reality, and they did. They passed the Hate Crimes Bill and the President signed it.
A couple of years ago, I and other ministers went to Lansing to lobby legislators to pass the anti-bullying bill. It took a lot of demands for justice, but it finally happened when enough politicians did justice and passed the anti-bullying bill and the governor signed it into law.
I was thinking the other day about what ministry means, what does it mean to be a minister? I think it’s in the name. The best that a minister can hope for, I think, is to create a “mini stir” among us. [Groans.] Forgive me for that. But that’s what we did in Lansing and in Washington. Justice needs politicians, oftentimes, to become reality.
This past week we were working on a new booklet for this church to describe all the aspects of this church for first-time visitors and long-time regulars. We did that. As we did that, we said we should make a brochure, so I took different parts of that booklet and made a brochure. A brochure is too small to put the entire booklet in it, but I thought I took the highlights of what this church is all about, what we’re like on Sunday: the music program, the education program, our theology (or lack of same). Tuesday night I went to bed thinking, “It’s perfect. I wouldn’t change a word of it. The brochure says exactly who we are.” Then I woke up on Wednesday and thought, “I forgot to include justice in the brochure.” A church without justice isn’t a church. A church that isn’t welcoming of everyone, a church that doesn’t help everyone they can, a church that doesn’t speak out against discrimination, a church that doesn’t speak for justice for all isn’t a church. People would just come in and sit down and listen to a lecture and go have coffee afterwards and that’s all it would be. A church without justice isn’t a church. A church without justice is just a country club.
Now you can look at this next example as coincidence or providence, I’ll leave that up to you. That happened on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday evening I went to the Holland City Council, as I have been known to do, and first I told them about my little adventure with the brochure and how I realized that a church without justice isn’t a church, it’s just a country club. Then I asked them again, as I often do, to add the words “sexual orientation and gender identity” to their already existing anti-discrimination ordinances, to be fair to lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender people. Then I said, “It seems to me that a city without justice isn’t a city. A city that doesn’t welcome everyone isn’t a city. A city that allows discrimination against anyone isn’t a city. A city that isn’t about justice for all isn’t a city. A city that isn’t about justice for all is just a country club.” And the five people who voted no in the past stood up and said, “Bill, that was brilliant! We’re going to change our vote!” No, they didn’t. My words, as usual, fell on deaf ears.
But I’m not going to quit speaking those words. I’m not going to quit speaking truth to power. I just can’t. I have to go before the city council whenever I can and say, “Be about justice for all.” Because if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t feel like I was a minister. I would feel like I was the leader of a country club. We all, or many of us, have that need to speak out for justice whenever we can, to work for justice whenever we can. We all, or many of us, have to do our part to bend that arc of the moral universe towards justice.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
I'm A Naturalist, Christian, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist
When I first started in television many years ago as a local news reporter, after a couple of days on the job, my news director called me into his office. He wondered if there were any religious reasons why I couldn’t work weekends. I said, “Well, you know, my mom is Jewish so I go to synagogue with her on Friday nights; and my father is Seventh Day Adventist, so I go to church with him on Saturday; and I’m a traditional Christian and I go to church on Sunday.” I laughed and he laughed and I said that I was just kidding and that no, there’s no religious reason why I couldn’t work weekends, because at that time I wasn’t religious. Or was I? I mean, I think we’re all spiritual people, whether we go to church or not.
When I was three, four, five years old, before I remember going to church, I saw the sacred in everything. I didn’t know to call it the sacred, but I saw the divine in everything; I saw the holy in everything. Later I learned that I was a Naturalist. I saw God, if you will, in all of nature. Later, I read folks like Henry Nelson Wieman - Henry Nelson Wieman was a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School - he was a Naturalist. Henry Nelson Wieman said, “Nothing can transform [humankind] unless it operates in human life.” It’s all part of nature. I think every child starts out as a natural-born Naturalist. Every child is filled with wonder and awe, as I was as a child, probably as you were as a child. So I was and I think I still remain, in part, a Naturalist.
On Sunday mornings when I was like, six, seven, eight years old, I would run to my grandma’s garage. My grandma lived next to us, and I would get into her bulky old blue Chevrolet Bel Air and I would get behind the wheel and pretend I was driving. She thought that was okay, as long as I didn’t press on the gas, because then I would flood the engine. So I would pretend to drive and she would come out in her blue flowered dress and her white hat and drive us to Sunday School and church. We went to this little chapel. They’ve since expanded to seat hundreds of people. The chapel sat probably seventy-five, eighty people. It was big to me, because I was little at the time.
I learned Christianity at that church. Not the dogmatic, doctrinal, creedal codes, you know, the rules and regulations of Christianity. But the kinds of hands-on Christianity, where I made a candle for my mom out of what looked like honeycomb and we rolled it up and put a wick in it and it was a candle. We had an Easter egg hunt there. We would play musical chairs and duck, duck, goose in the basement. And in church we would hear the words of Jesus, like “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and I probably also recited things like the Apostles Creed, but that never made much sense to me back then. And I haven’t progressed much since then, because it still doesn’t make sense to me.
I never have seen Jesus as God. Even when I went to a Christian seminary. I asked what I thought was a fellow liberal student, “You all don’t really believe Jesus is God, do you?” And he said, “Well, yes, we do,” and the implication was that I shouldn’t ask that again, because I might induce doubt in somebody’s mind. So I was a Christian, I think, because of that little church. And I remember my minister at the time, who is still a part-time minister there - he’s like ninety years old - he invited a Catholic priest to preach on Thanksgiving. I think he did that every Thanksgiving. That planted a seed in me about ecumenism and interfaith. So it was at that church where I learned about Christianity and I think that a part of that is still with me today.
When I was in college I remember hearing about transcendental meditation, TM. I heard that you needed to pay to go to a TM meeting and a guru would tell you a secret word or phrase that would help you to meditate. While I was tempted to do that, I think that part of me thought it was a scam, so I didn’t do it. Years later I would learn about meditation, mainly through Buddhism. I would learn that you didn’t really need a secret word or phrase, you could use “love” or “peace on earth” and just repeat that to yourself and meditate on it just by clearing your mind of all thoughts. I think people have a difficulty or anxiety over meditation. They think it’s this weird something. But meditation is really just relaxation. It’s “Don’t just do something; sit there,” for ten minutes or twenty minutes or two hours.
I remember reading a Mortimer Adler book. Mortimer Adler was one of the founders of The Great Books Program, a philosopher who said, “We all need to be idle sometime during the day.” He called it “idling” like a car does. Just sit there not moving any place while you meditate. That led to my study of Buddhism. I read several books about Buddhism by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama; about happiness, compassion and ethics.
One book in particular which was very profound for me was “The Four Noble Truths.” The first noble truth almost made me stop reading the book because, as you may know, the first noble truth is “Life is suffering.” I thought: Had the Dalai Lama never heard of Norman Vincent Peale and “The Power of Positive Thinking”? Life is not suffering, as long as you’re thinking happy thoughts. Of course, the more I thought about what he wrote, the Dalai Lama not Norman Vincent Peale, the more I realized he was right. The Dalai Lama said that even little babies are suffering. A newborn baby is suffering because it has just come from the warmth of its mother’s womb into real life and one day, like all of us, even though it’s hard to think about, a little bitty baby will die. The Dalai Lama said that an eighteen year-old young woman and an eighteen year-old young man, even if the young woman is gorgeous and the young man is handsome and they have the world by the tail, the Dalai Lama said that they, too, are suffering because one day when they’re not eighteen, maybe when they’re eighty, they’ll have lost their looks, long ago. That hasn’t happened to me yet. [Laughter.] But I’m sure it’s happened to others. Anyway, we all suffer, we all will one day die, but we can look beyond that, we can detach ourselves from our worldly possessions, the Dalai Lama says, and we can help other sentient beings to have happiness in their lives.
I was so convinced by what the Dalai Lama said about kind of losing yourself and helping others, that I thought about going to the University of Michigan and saying I want to donate my organs. I imagined that somebody behind the counter would say, “OK, fine, just fill out this card and you’ll have a notation on your driver’s license that you want to donate your organs.” And I’d say, “No, no, you don’t understand, I want to do that now. I want to give up my heart and lungs and liver and kidneys and corneas so that somebody else can live.” I wanted to do this selfless act, but I figured if I did that, they would either send me to the psych ward or put me in a cell next to Jack Kevorkian for trying to commit assisted suicide. Well that feeling passed in a day or two and I realized that I do want to live, but I also want to help others.
The Buddha said, “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.” And that’s what I hope to bring to the world is peace and love and justice and equality. That’s why I still consider myself, in part, a Buddhist and I think I always will.
I think the first time I visited Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids many years ago we sang a hymn called, “This is My Song,” and it blew me away. It’s found in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal. Fountain Street Church isn’t Unitarian Universalist per se, but it’s had Unitarian Universalist ministers for the past 60 years or so. That song, “This is my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for lands afar and mine,” blew my mind. I thought: What do they mean by “God of all the nations”? You mean God isn’t just the God of America? It goes on to talk about how in other countries people have blue skies, just like we do and they love their homeland, just like we do. And I thought: Now wait a minute, you mean not everyone in the world wants to emigrate to America and become United States citizens and achieve happiness? At the time I thought that’s what everyone wanted to do. But, of course, I realized that wasn’t true. And that, I think, began my path to Unitarian Universalism.
As some of you know, a couple of years ago I joined the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship, the church without walls. I joined on Christmas Day, 2010. A couple months ago, I joined Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation, because I’m now on a path to hopefully being a Unitarian Universalist minister. I appreciate the Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes. The principals of seeing the dignity and worth of every human being, respecting all faiths, pursuing truth and meaning and purpose in our lives. It all makes so much sense to me, as I’m sure it does to you. One of the most famous Unitarians was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” So many people, so many churches, so many religious faiths, believe all you have to do is accept the truth of their faith at the age of 11 and then you don’t have to think about it again. But what I appreciate about Unitarian Universalism is we’re always thinking about the purpose of our lives and the meaning of our lives and we’re always on the spiritual journey that isn’t a destination, but is a journey. That’s why, while a part of me still is a Naturalist, a part of me still is a Christian - in a following Jesus who said, “love your neighbor” kind of way - and part of me still is a Buddhist, now I see myself as a Unitarian Universalist, which I believe embraces all those faiths.
Lately we’ve been seeing on the news all the death and destruction from all the tornados that have torn through much of the heartland. Dozens of people have been injured or died. But as usually happens with these kinds of tragedies, neighbor helps neighbor. Nobody goes to their neighbor and says, “Well you know, I’m a Naturalist and if you’re a Naturalist, too, I’ll help you.” Or “You know, I’m a Christian and if you’re a Christian, too, then I’ll help you.” Or “I’m a Buddhist and if you’re a Buddhist, too, I’ll help you.” Or “I’m a Unitarian Universalist and if you’re a Unitarian Universalist too then I’ll help you.” Nobody does that. In times of tragedy, we all see the common humanity of each one of us and we do whatever we can to help. And isn’t that what every group, whether secular or sacred does and teaches? That we help our neighbor, whoever they are, because we see the common humanity in each one of us, whether we consider ourselves Naturalists or Christians or Buddhists or Unitarian Universalists. Or none of the above. Or all of the above.
When I was three, four, five years old, before I remember going to church, I saw the sacred in everything. I didn’t know to call it the sacred, but I saw the divine in everything; I saw the holy in everything. Later I learned that I was a Naturalist. I saw God, if you will, in all of nature. Later, I read folks like Henry Nelson Wieman - Henry Nelson Wieman was a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School - he was a Naturalist. Henry Nelson Wieman said, “Nothing can transform [humankind] unless it operates in human life.” It’s all part of nature. I think every child starts out as a natural-born Naturalist. Every child is filled with wonder and awe, as I was as a child, probably as you were as a child. So I was and I think I still remain, in part, a Naturalist.
On Sunday mornings when I was like, six, seven, eight years old, I would run to my grandma’s garage. My grandma lived next to us, and I would get into her bulky old blue Chevrolet Bel Air and I would get behind the wheel and pretend I was driving. She thought that was okay, as long as I didn’t press on the gas, because then I would flood the engine. So I would pretend to drive and she would come out in her blue flowered dress and her white hat and drive us to Sunday School and church. We went to this little chapel. They’ve since expanded to seat hundreds of people. The chapel sat probably seventy-five, eighty people. It was big to me, because I was little at the time.
I learned Christianity at that church. Not the dogmatic, doctrinal, creedal codes, you know, the rules and regulations of Christianity. But the kinds of hands-on Christianity, where I made a candle for my mom out of what looked like honeycomb and we rolled it up and put a wick in it and it was a candle. We had an Easter egg hunt there. We would play musical chairs and duck, duck, goose in the basement. And in church we would hear the words of Jesus, like “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and I probably also recited things like the Apostles Creed, but that never made much sense to me back then. And I haven’t progressed much since then, because it still doesn’t make sense to me.
I never have seen Jesus as God. Even when I went to a Christian seminary. I asked what I thought was a fellow liberal student, “You all don’t really believe Jesus is God, do you?” And he said, “Well, yes, we do,” and the implication was that I shouldn’t ask that again, because I might induce doubt in somebody’s mind. So I was a Christian, I think, because of that little church. And I remember my minister at the time, who is still a part-time minister there - he’s like ninety years old - he invited a Catholic priest to preach on Thanksgiving. I think he did that every Thanksgiving. That planted a seed in me about ecumenism and interfaith. So it was at that church where I learned about Christianity and I think that a part of that is still with me today.
When I was in college I remember hearing about transcendental meditation, TM. I heard that you needed to pay to go to a TM meeting and a guru would tell you a secret word or phrase that would help you to meditate. While I was tempted to do that, I think that part of me thought it was a scam, so I didn’t do it. Years later I would learn about meditation, mainly through Buddhism. I would learn that you didn’t really need a secret word or phrase, you could use “love” or “peace on earth” and just repeat that to yourself and meditate on it just by clearing your mind of all thoughts. I think people have a difficulty or anxiety over meditation. They think it’s this weird something. But meditation is really just relaxation. It’s “Don’t just do something; sit there,” for ten minutes or twenty minutes or two hours.
I remember reading a Mortimer Adler book. Mortimer Adler was one of the founders of The Great Books Program, a philosopher who said, “We all need to be idle sometime during the day.” He called it “idling” like a car does. Just sit there not moving any place while you meditate. That led to my study of Buddhism. I read several books about Buddhism by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama; about happiness, compassion and ethics.
One book in particular which was very profound for me was “The Four Noble Truths.” The first noble truth almost made me stop reading the book because, as you may know, the first noble truth is “Life is suffering.” I thought: Had the Dalai Lama never heard of Norman Vincent Peale and “The Power of Positive Thinking”? Life is not suffering, as long as you’re thinking happy thoughts. Of course, the more I thought about what he wrote, the Dalai Lama not Norman Vincent Peale, the more I realized he was right. The Dalai Lama said that even little babies are suffering. A newborn baby is suffering because it has just come from the warmth of its mother’s womb into real life and one day, like all of us, even though it’s hard to think about, a little bitty baby will die. The Dalai Lama said that an eighteen year-old young woman and an eighteen year-old young man, even if the young woman is gorgeous and the young man is handsome and they have the world by the tail, the Dalai Lama said that they, too, are suffering because one day when they’re not eighteen, maybe when they’re eighty, they’ll have lost their looks, long ago. That hasn’t happened to me yet. [Laughter.] But I’m sure it’s happened to others. Anyway, we all suffer, we all will one day die, but we can look beyond that, we can detach ourselves from our worldly possessions, the Dalai Lama says, and we can help other sentient beings to have happiness in their lives.
I was so convinced by what the Dalai Lama said about kind of losing yourself and helping others, that I thought about going to the University of Michigan and saying I want to donate my organs. I imagined that somebody behind the counter would say, “OK, fine, just fill out this card and you’ll have a notation on your driver’s license that you want to donate your organs.” And I’d say, “No, no, you don’t understand, I want to do that now. I want to give up my heart and lungs and liver and kidneys and corneas so that somebody else can live.” I wanted to do this selfless act, but I figured if I did that, they would either send me to the psych ward or put me in a cell next to Jack Kevorkian for trying to commit assisted suicide. Well that feeling passed in a day or two and I realized that I do want to live, but I also want to help others.
The Buddha said, “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.” And that’s what I hope to bring to the world is peace and love and justice and equality. That’s why I still consider myself, in part, a Buddhist and I think I always will.
I think the first time I visited Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids many years ago we sang a hymn called, “This is My Song,” and it blew me away. It’s found in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal. Fountain Street Church isn’t Unitarian Universalist per se, but it’s had Unitarian Universalist ministers for the past 60 years or so. That song, “This is my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for lands afar and mine,” blew my mind. I thought: What do they mean by “God of all the nations”? You mean God isn’t just the God of America? It goes on to talk about how in other countries people have blue skies, just like we do and they love their homeland, just like we do. And I thought: Now wait a minute, you mean not everyone in the world wants to emigrate to America and become United States citizens and achieve happiness? At the time I thought that’s what everyone wanted to do. But, of course, I realized that wasn’t true. And that, I think, began my path to Unitarian Universalism.
As some of you know, a couple of years ago I joined the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship, the church without walls. I joined on Christmas Day, 2010. A couple months ago, I joined Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation, because I’m now on a path to hopefully being a Unitarian Universalist minister. I appreciate the Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes. The principals of seeing the dignity and worth of every human being, respecting all faiths, pursuing truth and meaning and purpose in our lives. It all makes so much sense to me, as I’m sure it does to you. One of the most famous Unitarians was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” So many people, so many churches, so many religious faiths, believe all you have to do is accept the truth of their faith at the age of 11 and then you don’t have to think about it again. But what I appreciate about Unitarian Universalism is we’re always thinking about the purpose of our lives and the meaning of our lives and we’re always on the spiritual journey that isn’t a destination, but is a journey. That’s why, while a part of me still is a Naturalist, a part of me still is a Christian - in a following Jesus who said, “love your neighbor” kind of way - and part of me still is a Buddhist, now I see myself as a Unitarian Universalist, which I believe embraces all those faiths.
Lately we’ve been seeing on the news all the death and destruction from all the tornados that have torn through much of the heartland. Dozens of people have been injured or died. But as usually happens with these kinds of tragedies, neighbor helps neighbor. Nobody goes to their neighbor and says, “Well you know, I’m a Naturalist and if you’re a Naturalist, too, I’ll help you.” Or “You know, I’m a Christian and if you’re a Christian, too, then I’ll help you.” Or “I’m a Buddhist and if you’re a Buddhist, too, I’ll help you.” Or “I’m a Unitarian Universalist and if you’re a Unitarian Universalist too then I’ll help you.” Nobody does that. In times of tragedy, we all see the common humanity of each one of us and we do whatever we can to help. And isn’t that what every group, whether secular or sacred does and teaches? That we help our neighbor, whoever they are, because we see the common humanity in each one of us, whether we consider ourselves Naturalists or Christians or Buddhists or Unitarian Universalists. Or none of the above. Or all of the above.
Whitney Houston's Spirit Lives On
A few days ago, Kathleen and I were in the car, singing along to a song. The song was by Alan Jackson, accompanied by Jimmy Buffett, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” Pour me something tall and strong, make it a Hurricane before I go insane. It’s only half past twelve, but I don’t care. It’s five o’clock somewhere. After the song was finished, my wife said, “That song doesn’t make any sense. A guy goes to lunch, to a bar, and drinks his lunch away and then blows off the rest of work and drinks the rest of the day and all night.” She said, “That song doesn’t make any sense.” I said, “It’s country music, it doesn’t have to make sense.” I said a few years ago, Carrie Underwood sang a song, “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” about a woman turning her life over to Jesus. Then Carrie Underwood sang a song about taking a Louisville slugger to her cheating boyfriend’s car. It’s country music. It doesn’t have to make sense.
I’m glad my wife and I had that discussion because I like to begin my sermons with a story or a joke or something to lighten the mood, but I wondered what I could do to start off with a joke or a humorous story for this sermon.
Last Sunday when we were driving home from church, we were singing along to another song. A Whitney Houston song. The DJ played it, he said, because he wanted to pay tribute to Whitney Houston, who died the day before. As I was singing the song, tears came to my eyes and I wondered why. I mean, I didn’t know Whitney Houston personally. I liked her music, but I like a lot of music. Then I sent out an email to parishioners, saying that I was going to change what I was talking about today and I was going to preach a sermon entitled, “Whitney Houston’s Spirit Lives On.” A couple of people wrote me and asked, “Why are you doing this? Why do a sermon about Whitney Houston?” And I wasn’t sure. Why would I do a sermon about Whitney Houston? It’s not because she was a glamorous superstar, was it?
Several years ago, back in 1997, Princess Diana died in a car crash. There was a huge funeral service for her in London. All of the network anchors went and covered it. People wondered, “Why are you doing that? It’s because she’s a glamorous superstar.” They said, “Oh, no, no, no. It’s not that. It’s because of her humanitarian efforts.” People were skeptical, but the anchors stuck to their guns. That’s why they were there. Then, less than a week later, perhaps proving that if God exists, God has a sense of humor, Mother Teresa died. Not that that’s humorous, but then the network anchors who had gone to Princess Diana’s funeral because “she was such a humanitarian,” had to go to Calcutta in the middle of summer in the heat and humidity and cover Mother Teresa’s funeral because, obviously she was at least as much of a humanitarian as Princess Diana. So am I talking about Whitney Houston because she’s a glamorous superstar?
I remember years ago hearing her song on the radio: “The Greatest Love of All.” Whitney Houston sings The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. I thought at the time, “Man, that’s arrogant and egotistical and self-centered, isn’t it? Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all?” Then I remembered the words of a rabbi from a couple thousand years ago. Someone asked him, “What is the greatest commandment?” and he said, “To love God with all your heart, strength, soul and mind, that is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.” And I thought, well, actually that’s three commandments, isn’t it? Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. I think that rabbi knew something that Whitney Houston knew: that before you can love God and before you can love your neighbor, you need to love yourself, not in an egotistical, self-centered, arrogant way, but in an accepting way. You need to love yourself, warts and all, flaws and all. You have to accept the fact that you’re not perfect, that you have shortcomings, but still you have to love yourself and then you can go on to love your neighbor and to love God (if God exists). I think that’s part of the reason why I wanted to preach about Whitney Houston, because the lyrics of that song alone could warrant a sermon all by themselves.
Whitney Houston, as you probably know, unless you’ve been living in a cave this past week, was born in Newark, New Jersey 48 years ago. She, like many African American singers, got her start in church, singing in the choir, singing solos beginning at age 11. Perhaps it’s not surprising that she was quite a wonderful singer, even at that age. Her cousin is Dionne Warwick, her mother was a singer, so maybe it isn’t so surprising that within about a decade she would be a superstar.
Whenever I do a funeral, I say we want to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of the person who’s died. I don’t dwell on somebody’s shortcomings, because we all make mistakes in our lives. I’ve done a funeral for a man who was an alcoholic for much of his life, but I didn’t dwell on that because he was also a man who brought love into the world, who was loved by many people; that’s what I focused on. Whitney Houston was human like the rest of us. She made mistakes. She had a rough life in a lot of ways, even though she was a superstar. I think, as one of her songs says, I’m every woman, I think she’s every woman, she’s every human that doesn’t always live an idyllic life.
When I first heard about her death – that she was found in a bathtub, that there were prescription drugs and alcohol nearby, I wondered whether she had committed suicide. I don’t think we know the answer to that yet. She did have a mixture of prescription drugs in her system, but I don’t want to judge, certainly, but whenever I think of a suicide, I think of one of the phrases that I loathe, usually said by perky people, who mean well, but are oblivious: “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” Really? Doesn’t suicide demonstrate that God gives some people more than they can handle? I would say that to these perky people, but I think their heads would explode. And then usually, the same perky people say that if you commit suicide, then you immediately go to hell. Really? If God is a God of Love, a God of Compassion and Understanding, first of all I don’t think God would allow hell to exist, but if God is a god of love and compassion and understanding and mercy and forgiveness, why would God send a suicide victim, who’s already lived hell on earth, why would God send a suicide victim to hell? It seems to me that if God were a God of love and mercy and compassion and understanding, God would welcome a suicide victim into heaven with open arms, with loving arms.
This week has been kind of bookended by the Grammies on Sunday and Whitney Houston’s funeral yesterday. The Grammies were a tribute to her and yesterday the commentators said that America, meaning white America I guess, got a glimpse of the black church, a three hour and forty-five minute glimpse of the black church. I watched it all.
I agree with Stevie Wonder, who said at the Grammy Awards last Sunday, “Whitney, we know you’re in heaven.” I have no doubt that if heaven exists, if God exists, Whitney Houston is there, like every person. I think that’s part of the reason why I wanted to preach a sermon about Whitney Houston, because I think that her life demonstrates a truth for all of us, that we all end up in heaven, if heaven exists.
Then there are more of her lyrics that are just profound. “One Moment In Time:” I want one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me. Just those lyrics, that could have been written by a liberal Christian, a liberal religionist, a humanist, a Unitarian Universalist! I want one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me. It’s lyrics like that that convince me that Whitney Houston’s spirit lives on. It lives on in the loved ones that spoke yesterday at her funeral, her family and friends. But it lives on in other people and will continue to live on whenever we hear a Whitney Houston song on the radio, a song like that one. She will be remembered, just like all of us I think will be remembered, by those we love, by those who love us. Whitney Houston, and all of us, will live on in the hearts of those we love.
I’m glad my wife and I had that discussion because I like to begin my sermons with a story or a joke or something to lighten the mood, but I wondered what I could do to start off with a joke or a humorous story for this sermon.
Last Sunday when we were driving home from church, we were singing along to another song. A Whitney Houston song. The DJ played it, he said, because he wanted to pay tribute to Whitney Houston, who died the day before. As I was singing the song, tears came to my eyes and I wondered why. I mean, I didn’t know Whitney Houston personally. I liked her music, but I like a lot of music. Then I sent out an email to parishioners, saying that I was going to change what I was talking about today and I was going to preach a sermon entitled, “Whitney Houston’s Spirit Lives On.” A couple of people wrote me and asked, “Why are you doing this? Why do a sermon about Whitney Houston?” And I wasn’t sure. Why would I do a sermon about Whitney Houston? It’s not because she was a glamorous superstar, was it?
Several years ago, back in 1997, Princess Diana died in a car crash. There was a huge funeral service for her in London. All of the network anchors went and covered it. People wondered, “Why are you doing that? It’s because she’s a glamorous superstar.” They said, “Oh, no, no, no. It’s not that. It’s because of her humanitarian efforts.” People were skeptical, but the anchors stuck to their guns. That’s why they were there. Then, less than a week later, perhaps proving that if God exists, God has a sense of humor, Mother Teresa died. Not that that’s humorous, but then the network anchors who had gone to Princess Diana’s funeral because “she was such a humanitarian,” had to go to Calcutta in the middle of summer in the heat and humidity and cover Mother Teresa’s funeral because, obviously she was at least as much of a humanitarian as Princess Diana. So am I talking about Whitney Houston because she’s a glamorous superstar?
I remember years ago hearing her song on the radio: “The Greatest Love of All.” Whitney Houston sings The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. I thought at the time, “Man, that’s arrogant and egotistical and self-centered, isn’t it? Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all?” Then I remembered the words of a rabbi from a couple thousand years ago. Someone asked him, “What is the greatest commandment?” and he said, “To love God with all your heart, strength, soul and mind, that is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.” And I thought, well, actually that’s three commandments, isn’t it? Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. I think that rabbi knew something that Whitney Houston knew: that before you can love God and before you can love your neighbor, you need to love yourself, not in an egotistical, self-centered, arrogant way, but in an accepting way. You need to love yourself, warts and all, flaws and all. You have to accept the fact that you’re not perfect, that you have shortcomings, but still you have to love yourself and then you can go on to love your neighbor and to love God (if God exists). I think that’s part of the reason why I wanted to preach about Whitney Houston, because the lyrics of that song alone could warrant a sermon all by themselves.
Whitney Houston, as you probably know, unless you’ve been living in a cave this past week, was born in Newark, New Jersey 48 years ago. She, like many African American singers, got her start in church, singing in the choir, singing solos beginning at age 11. Perhaps it’s not surprising that she was quite a wonderful singer, even at that age. Her cousin is Dionne Warwick, her mother was a singer, so maybe it isn’t so surprising that within about a decade she would be a superstar.
Whenever I do a funeral, I say we want to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of the person who’s died. I don’t dwell on somebody’s shortcomings, because we all make mistakes in our lives. I’ve done a funeral for a man who was an alcoholic for much of his life, but I didn’t dwell on that because he was also a man who brought love into the world, who was loved by many people; that’s what I focused on. Whitney Houston was human like the rest of us. She made mistakes. She had a rough life in a lot of ways, even though she was a superstar. I think, as one of her songs says, I’m every woman, I think she’s every woman, she’s every human that doesn’t always live an idyllic life.
When I first heard about her death – that she was found in a bathtub, that there were prescription drugs and alcohol nearby, I wondered whether she had committed suicide. I don’t think we know the answer to that yet. She did have a mixture of prescription drugs in her system, but I don’t want to judge, certainly, but whenever I think of a suicide, I think of one of the phrases that I loathe, usually said by perky people, who mean well, but are oblivious: “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” Really? Doesn’t suicide demonstrate that God gives some people more than they can handle? I would say that to these perky people, but I think their heads would explode. And then usually, the same perky people say that if you commit suicide, then you immediately go to hell. Really? If God is a God of Love, a God of Compassion and Understanding, first of all I don’t think God would allow hell to exist, but if God is a god of love and compassion and understanding and mercy and forgiveness, why would God send a suicide victim, who’s already lived hell on earth, why would God send a suicide victim to hell? It seems to me that if God were a God of love and mercy and compassion and understanding, God would welcome a suicide victim into heaven with open arms, with loving arms.
This week has been kind of bookended by the Grammies on Sunday and Whitney Houston’s funeral yesterday. The Grammies were a tribute to her and yesterday the commentators said that America, meaning white America I guess, got a glimpse of the black church, a three hour and forty-five minute glimpse of the black church. I watched it all.
I agree with Stevie Wonder, who said at the Grammy Awards last Sunday, “Whitney, we know you’re in heaven.” I have no doubt that if heaven exists, if God exists, Whitney Houston is there, like every person. I think that’s part of the reason why I wanted to preach a sermon about Whitney Houston, because I think that her life demonstrates a truth for all of us, that we all end up in heaven, if heaven exists.
Then there are more of her lyrics that are just profound. “One Moment In Time:” I want one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me. Just those lyrics, that could have been written by a liberal Christian, a liberal religionist, a humanist, a Unitarian Universalist! I want one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me. It’s lyrics like that that convince me that Whitney Houston’s spirit lives on. It lives on in the loved ones that spoke yesterday at her funeral, her family and friends. But it lives on in other people and will continue to live on whenever we hear a Whitney Houston song on the radio, a song like that one. She will be remembered, just like all of us I think will be remembered, by those we love, by those who love us. Whitney Houston, and all of us, will live on in the hearts of those we love.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Love Means Always Having To Say You're Sorry
A couple years ago I bought a new cell phone. I had to because my previous cell phone was in my pocket when I went tubing down a river. Not a good idea. I told the salesman, “I just want a cell phone. I don’t want a cell phone that takes pictures. I don’t want a cell phone where you can text. I don’t want a cell phone that does the dishes. (Well, maybe that would be OK.) I just want a cell phone and that’s what I’ve had the past couple of years. Then a month or so ago, my wife said, “Let’s get iPhones.” I don’t want an iPhone. Truth be told, I’m a technophobe. I have an irrational fear of technology. I have a computer, but I use it basically as a glorified typewriter. Yes, I get my e-mail and check the internet and stuff, but basically it’s a glorified typewriter. But I said, “OK, let’s get iphones.”
I LOVE MY iPHONE!
It’s got my address book in it. It takes notes. I just talk into it and it types out the notes. Ahhh. I love my iPhone! Actually I don’t love my iPhone, because you’re not supposed to love an inanimate object. You’re supposed to like your phone. You’re supposed to like your car. You’re supposed to like your favorite TV show. So I really, really, really like my iPhone. I really, really, really like my red convertible. I really, really, really like “Modern Family.”
Love is a many-splendored thing; it’s a complicated thing though. It means many different things. Two people in love get married. Their significant other, their partner, their spouse is someone they love. The Greeks called it “eros,” or romantic love. It’s where we get the word “erotic.” That‘s one kind of love. Then there’s a love between friends: two or more people love each other in friendship. The Greeks called it “philia,” which is where we get the word “Philadelphia,” the “city of brotherly love.” That’s another kind of love. And then there’s love for the perfect stranger, or the imperfect stranger – someone we don’t even know, but we care about. Christians would call that “agape,” the love for the poor, the homeless, the hurting. That’s another form of love. Love means many different things.
The first Valentine that I remember buying, I think I was in the second grade. I had a crush on a little girl in my class. I went to the store and found a card. It had a Dutch theme. There was a wooden shoe on the card and it said, “Wooden shoe be my Valentine?” I thought that was hilarious! Unfortunately my sense of humor hasn’t progressed much over the years.
Valentine’s Day, I thought, was a Hallmark holiday, one created just to sell cards. But it’s not. It’s been going on for hundreds of years. Now Sweetest Day, that’s a Hallmark holiday, but Valentine’s Day has been around since Chaucer’s time. But we’re not completely sure who it’s named for. It’s named for St. Valentine, of course, but there were something like 14 St. Valentines. All of them martyred, killed, executed for not giving up their beliefs, so apparently having the name Valentine is not such a good thing. But what did that have to do with Valentine’s Day? What would that have to do with romantic love? I can’t think of anything. But there are a couple of stories, legends, myths surrounding St. Valentine that originated hundreds of years ago.
The first story was that the emperor at that time decreed that no young men should be allowed to marry because he wanted young men to be available to be conscripted into the military. He wanted them to go off to war and not pine for their wives left behind. So he decreed that no young men could marry. St. Valentine held secret weddings. He married young men and young women and was arrested for it and executed. So that’s one possible explanation as to why Valentine’s Day is about romantic love and named after St. Valentine.
The other St. Valentine story is that he was arrested and put in jail for not giving up his beliefs. While he was in jail, he fell in love with the daughter of the jailer. Legend also has it that she was blind and he healed her of her blindness. Then on the night before his execution, February 14, he wrote a love letter, a Hallmark card if you will, to his beloved. He signed it, “From your Valentine.” That’s the other explanation. I wish I could end this the way Paul Harvey always ends his stories, “and now you know the rest of the story,” but now you know a couple of possible stories.
Erich Segal wrote a best-selling novel in the 70’s, a huge best-seller, “Love Story.” It was made into a movie starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal. I saw the movie and I read the book. In both of them there’s the famous line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Now at the time I was a teenager. Probably like many teenagers I thought, “Awww. Isn’t that just beautiful – love means never having to say you’re sorry.” But as the years went by I realized: that’s a bunch of hooey. (That’s a theological term.) It seems to me that love means ALWAYS having to say you’re sorry. Maybe that’s just me, but it seems to me I’m always saying, “Sorry, honey, I forgot to buy a gallon of milk.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to do the dishes.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to mow the lawn.” Love means always having to say you’re sorry. And I think forgiveness, seeking forgiveness and granting forgiveness, are an essential part of love.
If we were perfect, if we weren’t human beings, if we were angels, say, and we never made any mistakes, we never made an error, we never made what some people call “sins,” then we wouldn’t need to seek forgiveness or grant forgiveness. But we’re “a little lower than the angels.” We’re not perfect. We’re still evolving. So sometimes we need to seek forgiveness. Sometimes we need to grant forgiveness. It seems to me the essence of forgiveness is love. You wouldn’t seek forgiveness, it seems to me, from someone unless on some level you loved them. You wouldn’t grant forgiveness, I don’t think, unless on some level you loved the person seeking forgiveness. So I think forgiveness is an essential part of love.
The Dalai Lama has a definition of religion that I really like. He says, “My religion is very simple; my religion is kindness.” I like that. I wish every faith tradition, every religion, had kindness at its core. By kindness I think the Dalai Lama means compassion, love for everyone, even for people we don’t know.
It’s easy to understand, I think, the love two people have for each other. They become partners, significant others, or spouses because they’ve agreed to share their lives together, to journey through life together, to share their stories, to become as one. That’s a kind of love we can easily understand. Then there’s the love that people have for their friends, either one or more persons. They’re people that support one another, that share their experiences and share their joys and concerns. That’s a love that we can understand. But why would somebody love a complete stranger? Why would somebody’s heart go out to somebody else who maybe is in need, who may need a place to live, who needs clothes on their back or food in their belly. Why would they do that? I think that many people, thankfully, do do that. But there are some who don’t. Their love isn’t that expansive; it’s more exclusive. They say to themselves, “Why should I help this person I don’t even know?” They figure they get nothing out of it and so they don’t help. Their heart doesn’t go out to somebody else. They say to themselves, “ I take care of me and mine. This person I don’t even know should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even if they don’t have any boots.” I think it’s inexplicable, although maybe it’s explained by different theologies.
Every religion that I know of posits a God, or a Yahweh, or an Allah, or a Source or a Spirit that is love. “God is love.” What does that mean? I think to some people God is loving of everybody. God loves all of God’s children (if God exists). Other people say, “No, God isn’t expansive; God is exclusive. God only loves certain people – me and a few others. God doesn’t love “them,” God loves “us.”
If God exists, I can’t fathom a God like that, because I know that even before my daughter was born, I loved her. I didn’t sit around and wait for her to love me. And I’m certain that most parents, hopefully all parents, are the same way. When your child is born you just naturally love your child. You don’t sit back and say, “Hmm, you’re 2 or 3 years old now. What are your feelings toward me? Because, you know, it’s all about me.” If the child says, “Oh Daddy, oh mommy, I love you.” Then they would say, “Well, okay , then, I’ll love you.” That would be crazy wouldn’t it? Creepy! Ugh! That would be conditional love.
Unconditional love says, “I love my child just because.” I think we can agree that unconditional love is a higher form of love than conditional love. So I don’t understand how people can say that God , if God exists, can have a lower form of love for God’s children than I have for my daughter. How can that be? If God exists, I have to believe that God is more inclusive than exclusive.
Henny Youngman was an old vaudeville comedian. He told jokes about his wife. He had the famous line, “Take my wife – please!” Henny Youngman said once, “The last fight was my fault. My wife asked, “What’s on the TV?” I said, “Dust.” Henny Youngman made a living telling jokes about his wife, but the funny thing is, he loved his wife, he was devoted to his wife, he adored his wife. I sometimes talk about Henny Youngman when I perform a wedding. Not often, though, because most young people go, “Henny who? What’s a Henny?”
Also, when I perform a wedding, I usually quote a piece of literature that describes love. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” I think that’s a perfect message.
One day I was meeting with a couple and I was going to do their wedding. I said that I say that passage when I do a wedding and the bride said, “Oh, I love that passage! That’s what I want at my wedding.” Interestingly enough, it was written by an apparent lifelong bachelor, the Apostle Paul, but in spite of that it’s a beautiful passage describing love.
I like to do weddings. A lot of ministers don’t like doing weddings. They think that they’re a necessary evil. People just want you to get to “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.” I don’t use that kind of language. I say, “You may now kiss your beloved.” I like doing weddings because at weddings you get to see love up close and personal, whether it’s young love or people who are older and in love – seventy somethings and eighty somethings – I like doing weddings. Oftentimes, I’ll quote a song in the sermonette I do, I talk about love and the different kinds of love, I talk about the story of the couple that’s getting married, and I’ll quote a song, as I often do in sermons. Often I’ll quote a Beatles song: All You Need Is Love: “All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”
That’s probably one of the simplest songs ever written, but it’s also one of the most poignant songs ever written. If only we lived it – all you need is love. But we try other things: all you need is lust, all you need is envy, all you need is revenge, all you need is hate, but the Beatles were right. If our every move, our every action were motivated by love, what a wonderful world it would be. How wonderful humankind would be, if we were just motivated by love, because really, when you get down to it: all you need is love. On Valentine’s Day and on every day of the year.
I LOVE MY iPHONE!
It’s got my address book in it. It takes notes. I just talk into it and it types out the notes. Ahhh. I love my iPhone! Actually I don’t love my iPhone, because you’re not supposed to love an inanimate object. You’re supposed to like your phone. You’re supposed to like your car. You’re supposed to like your favorite TV show. So I really, really, really like my iPhone. I really, really, really like my red convertible. I really, really, really like “Modern Family.”
Love is a many-splendored thing; it’s a complicated thing though. It means many different things. Two people in love get married. Their significant other, their partner, their spouse is someone they love. The Greeks called it “eros,” or romantic love. It’s where we get the word “erotic.” That‘s one kind of love. Then there’s a love between friends: two or more people love each other in friendship. The Greeks called it “philia,” which is where we get the word “Philadelphia,” the “city of brotherly love.” That’s another kind of love. And then there’s love for the perfect stranger, or the imperfect stranger – someone we don’t even know, but we care about. Christians would call that “agape,” the love for the poor, the homeless, the hurting. That’s another form of love. Love means many different things.
The first Valentine that I remember buying, I think I was in the second grade. I had a crush on a little girl in my class. I went to the store and found a card. It had a Dutch theme. There was a wooden shoe on the card and it said, “Wooden shoe be my Valentine?” I thought that was hilarious! Unfortunately my sense of humor hasn’t progressed much over the years.
Valentine’s Day, I thought, was a Hallmark holiday, one created just to sell cards. But it’s not. It’s been going on for hundreds of years. Now Sweetest Day, that’s a Hallmark holiday, but Valentine’s Day has been around since Chaucer’s time. But we’re not completely sure who it’s named for. It’s named for St. Valentine, of course, but there were something like 14 St. Valentines. All of them martyred, killed, executed for not giving up their beliefs, so apparently having the name Valentine is not such a good thing. But what did that have to do with Valentine’s Day? What would that have to do with romantic love? I can’t think of anything. But there are a couple of stories, legends, myths surrounding St. Valentine that originated hundreds of years ago.
The first story was that the emperor at that time decreed that no young men should be allowed to marry because he wanted young men to be available to be conscripted into the military. He wanted them to go off to war and not pine for their wives left behind. So he decreed that no young men could marry. St. Valentine held secret weddings. He married young men and young women and was arrested for it and executed. So that’s one possible explanation as to why Valentine’s Day is about romantic love and named after St. Valentine.
The other St. Valentine story is that he was arrested and put in jail for not giving up his beliefs. While he was in jail, he fell in love with the daughter of the jailer. Legend also has it that she was blind and he healed her of her blindness. Then on the night before his execution, February 14, he wrote a love letter, a Hallmark card if you will, to his beloved. He signed it, “From your Valentine.” That’s the other explanation. I wish I could end this the way Paul Harvey always ends his stories, “and now you know the rest of the story,” but now you know a couple of possible stories.
Erich Segal wrote a best-selling novel in the 70’s, a huge best-seller, “Love Story.” It was made into a movie starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal. I saw the movie and I read the book. In both of them there’s the famous line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Now at the time I was a teenager. Probably like many teenagers I thought, “Awww. Isn’t that just beautiful – love means never having to say you’re sorry.” But as the years went by I realized: that’s a bunch of hooey. (That’s a theological term.) It seems to me that love means ALWAYS having to say you’re sorry. Maybe that’s just me, but it seems to me I’m always saying, “Sorry, honey, I forgot to buy a gallon of milk.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to do the dishes.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to mow the lawn.” Love means always having to say you’re sorry. And I think forgiveness, seeking forgiveness and granting forgiveness, are an essential part of love.
If we were perfect, if we weren’t human beings, if we were angels, say, and we never made any mistakes, we never made an error, we never made what some people call “sins,” then we wouldn’t need to seek forgiveness or grant forgiveness. But we’re “a little lower than the angels.” We’re not perfect. We’re still evolving. So sometimes we need to seek forgiveness. Sometimes we need to grant forgiveness. It seems to me the essence of forgiveness is love. You wouldn’t seek forgiveness, it seems to me, from someone unless on some level you loved them. You wouldn’t grant forgiveness, I don’t think, unless on some level you loved the person seeking forgiveness. So I think forgiveness is an essential part of love.
The Dalai Lama has a definition of religion that I really like. He says, “My religion is very simple; my religion is kindness.” I like that. I wish every faith tradition, every religion, had kindness at its core. By kindness I think the Dalai Lama means compassion, love for everyone, even for people we don’t know.
It’s easy to understand, I think, the love two people have for each other. They become partners, significant others, or spouses because they’ve agreed to share their lives together, to journey through life together, to share their stories, to become as one. That’s a kind of love we can easily understand. Then there’s the love that people have for their friends, either one or more persons. They’re people that support one another, that share their experiences and share their joys and concerns. That’s a love that we can understand. But why would somebody love a complete stranger? Why would somebody’s heart go out to somebody else who maybe is in need, who may need a place to live, who needs clothes on their back or food in their belly. Why would they do that? I think that many people, thankfully, do do that. But there are some who don’t. Their love isn’t that expansive; it’s more exclusive. They say to themselves, “Why should I help this person I don’t even know?” They figure they get nothing out of it and so they don’t help. Their heart doesn’t go out to somebody else. They say to themselves, “ I take care of me and mine. This person I don’t even know should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even if they don’t have any boots.” I think it’s inexplicable, although maybe it’s explained by different theologies.
Every religion that I know of posits a God, or a Yahweh, or an Allah, or a Source or a Spirit that is love. “God is love.” What does that mean? I think to some people God is loving of everybody. God loves all of God’s children (if God exists). Other people say, “No, God isn’t expansive; God is exclusive. God only loves certain people – me and a few others. God doesn’t love “them,” God loves “us.”
If God exists, I can’t fathom a God like that, because I know that even before my daughter was born, I loved her. I didn’t sit around and wait for her to love me. And I’m certain that most parents, hopefully all parents, are the same way. When your child is born you just naturally love your child. You don’t sit back and say, “Hmm, you’re 2 or 3 years old now. What are your feelings toward me? Because, you know, it’s all about me.” If the child says, “Oh Daddy, oh mommy, I love you.” Then they would say, “Well, okay , then, I’ll love you.” That would be crazy wouldn’t it? Creepy! Ugh! That would be conditional love.
Unconditional love says, “I love my child just because.” I think we can agree that unconditional love is a higher form of love than conditional love. So I don’t understand how people can say that God , if God exists, can have a lower form of love for God’s children than I have for my daughter. How can that be? If God exists, I have to believe that God is more inclusive than exclusive.
Henny Youngman was an old vaudeville comedian. He told jokes about his wife. He had the famous line, “Take my wife – please!” Henny Youngman said once, “The last fight was my fault. My wife asked, “What’s on the TV?” I said, “Dust.” Henny Youngman made a living telling jokes about his wife, but the funny thing is, he loved his wife, he was devoted to his wife, he adored his wife. I sometimes talk about Henny Youngman when I perform a wedding. Not often, though, because most young people go, “Henny who? What’s a Henny?”
Also, when I perform a wedding, I usually quote a piece of literature that describes love. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” I think that’s a perfect message.
One day I was meeting with a couple and I was going to do their wedding. I said that I say that passage when I do a wedding and the bride said, “Oh, I love that passage! That’s what I want at my wedding.” Interestingly enough, it was written by an apparent lifelong bachelor, the Apostle Paul, but in spite of that it’s a beautiful passage describing love.
I like to do weddings. A lot of ministers don’t like doing weddings. They think that they’re a necessary evil. People just want you to get to “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.” I don’t use that kind of language. I say, “You may now kiss your beloved.” I like doing weddings because at weddings you get to see love up close and personal, whether it’s young love or people who are older and in love – seventy somethings and eighty somethings – I like doing weddings. Oftentimes, I’ll quote a song in the sermonette I do, I talk about love and the different kinds of love, I talk about the story of the couple that’s getting married, and I’ll quote a song, as I often do in sermons. Often I’ll quote a Beatles song: All You Need Is Love: “All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”
That’s probably one of the simplest songs ever written, but it’s also one of the most poignant songs ever written. If only we lived it – all you need is love. But we try other things: all you need is lust, all you need is envy, all you need is revenge, all you need is hate, but the Beatles were right. If our every move, our every action were motivated by love, what a wonderful world it would be. How wonderful humankind would be, if we were just motivated by love, because really, when you get down to it: all you need is love. On Valentine’s Day and on every day of the year.
The State Of Spirituality 2012
A few weeks ago, for the first time ever, I saw something that I thought I’d never see. Some store some place was holding a Martin Luther King Day Sale. Now I’d never seen that before, where Martin Luther King was used for consumerism and commercialism and I was kind of dispirited by that. But then I thought, well now wait a minute, they do the same thing with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, in fact I saw an ad on TV a day or so ago where Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were dancing around for some President’s Day Sale. So maybe it’s a good thing that Martin Luther King is being used in this way because it puts him on the same iconic level as our previous presidents, so maybe it’s a good spiritual thing.
I want to talk with you today about the state of spirituality. What is the state of spirituality? I was going to call this sermon, “The State of Religion,” but more and more people would rather be spiritual than religious; religion is kind of a turn off for a lot of people, so I called it “The State of Spirituality.” What is the state of spirituality? In recent weeks we’ve seen Governor Snyder give the State of the State address and President Obama give the State of the Union address. I am, of course, not on their level, but I would like to present, with all humility, the State of Spirituality, to look back and to look ahead.
Now personally, I think the most significant spiritual story of the past year, was that a church in Muskegon hired a new minister!
I saw a couple lists of the most important religious or spiritual stories of the past year. At the top of one of the lists was the killing of Osama Bin Laden and I thought, “Ew, I wouldn’t call that a spiritual story.” I was disappointed that we killed him, but apparently that was the order, “Shoot to kill,” rather than capture and try him and let him live out his days in some type of prison. I don’t consider that a spiritual story, but I do think there are several military type stories that are spiritual stories and are at the top of the lists of spiritual stories of the year, the first being the end of the war in Iraq.
I don’t want to make this a political speech or anything, but thank goodness, or thank God if you so choose, that that’s over with. I wish we would have marked it with a ticker tape parade down Madison Avenue or something. It sort of ended with a whimper, but I understand many Americans, if not most Americans are kind of embarrassed by the war that happened in Iraq. Thank goodness, though, it’s over. It’s terrible that thousands of American troops and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iraqis were killed in that war. It’s good to have it over with. I can only imagine how that must lift the spirits of our troops and of their families and how I hope it lifts the spirits of all Americans.
In a similar vein, another military story I think is one of the most important spiritual stories of the year, and that is the recent announcement that we’re going to leave Afghanistan early, by 2014. That, I hope, lifts everybody’s spirit. It would have been nice after we had killed Osama bin Laden to have declared victory and pulled out then, but at least we’re going to do it earlier than we had planned. I think that lifts all of our spirits.
The third military story that I think is spiritually significant would be ending “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.” They never should have implemented that, of course, but we can be thankful that it’s over with, and that our men and women, who proudly serve, can be all that they can be, can be who they are, whether they’re gay or straight, they don’t have to hide who they are any more, they don’t have to pretend they’re not who they are. I think that should lift all of our spirits, especially the spirits of those who are gay and lesbian.
I’ve preached several sermons over the years about gay rights, and I’ve always said that Jesus was so concerned about homosexuals and homosexuality that he never said a word about them. I thought that would prove the point because obviously Paul, who was a contemporary of Jesus spoke out against homosexuals, so if Jesus had wanted to he could have, but he didn’t. But recently I’ve had an epiphany, an aha moment, an insight, and it’s this: that Jesus did speak about homosexuals. When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor,” he wasn’t saying, “Love your neighbor except for homosexuals.” When Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” he wasn’t saying “except homosexuals.” When Jesus said, “Judge not and you will not be judged,” he wasn’t saying it’s OK to judge homosexuals. Jesus did speak out about homosexuals. He was inclusive. He said love your neighbor including homosexuals. Do to others as you would have them do to you including homosexuals. Judge not and you will not be judged including not judging homosexuals. Now I just bring that up, not because I think very many people are Christians, including me, but so many Christians are homophobes and they use the Bible, the seven passages, to prove their homophobia about homosexuals. It seems to me they now have to take into account what Jesus essentially said about homosexuals in his inclusive way. I think that’s significant, spiritually important. Now there have probably been other people who have thought of this before I did. I always think I’ve come up with something unique and new and then I Google it and ten thousand hits come up, but it’s new to me.
As you know, I’ve been in a contentious situation with the City of Holland’s Council about gay rights. Back in May of 2010, I asked the City of Holland to add the words, “sexual orientation and gender identity” to the already existing anti-discrimination ordinances in the city with regards to education, employment, services and housing. Then, this past June, the city council voted 5 to 4 not to do that. I attended every city council meeting with others to urge them to change their minds, except for the one a few weeks ago when I was on vacation, but that’s the only one I missed. Then, as you probably are aware, back in October, I decided to “occupy” City Hall after the council meeting, although the city insists on saying that I “trespassed.” I was arrested and that court case is still pending. We had a hearing on Wednesday and it may be postponed for a month or two, but I went to the Holland City Council meeting Wednesday night and the mayor started off the meeting saying “We don’t need to take roll because we’ve already met in closed session where we discussed pending litigation.” So after the meeting I asked one of the council members, who I’d asked a couple of months ago when they said the same thing, “Have you talked about the case against me?” and he, at that time said no. Wednesday night he said, “I can’t say whether we did or we didn’t, I couldn’t tell you either way.” I thought, “Hello!” So I asked another council member and he said, “Yes we talked about your case.” I said, “Did you make any decision, like perhaps to drop the charges?” He said, “We can’t make a decision behind closed doors; we have to come out in the open to make a decision, but no we didn’t make a decision.” So then I asked, “What about the City Attorney’s office (the City Attorney is the prosecutor in this case), have they decided what to do?” and I’m thinking drop the case. He said, “Yeah, but I can’t tell you what that decision is.” So there may be some news here soon. Not that I don’t like to make news or anything. I think that if the Holland City Council changes their mind or somehow all the people of the City of Holland are treated equally, that would be spiritually uplifting to so many people.
One spiritual story that some of you may not have heard or paid attention to in the last year or so is what’s being called the “Tebowing of America.” Now if you don’t know what that is, Tim Tebow is a quarterback for some football team or other – Denver? Anyway whenever he has success on the field, he drops to one knee and thanks Jesus and many Christians are excited about this, they think it’s wonderful. I don’t want to comment on that, but it always bugged me that after a big game, for example after tonight’s Super Bowl game, I’m sure they’ll go to the winning team’s locker room and they’ll talk to the quarterback or whoever and ask, “What happened? How come you won?” and they’ll usually say, “Well, it was because Jesus was on our side,” or God. But they never go to the losing team’s locker room and ask the losing quarterback or whoever, “What happened?” And they never say, “I did all I could, but Jesus dropped the ball,” or “God messed up.”
I want to talk about the deaths of a couple of people that I think are spiritually significant. Now anybody’s death is spiritually significant, but these two I would like to lift up. One of them probably wouldn’t like me including him in a sermon in church on the state of spirituality. Christopher Hitchens died a few weeks ago. Christopher Hitchens was a prolific political writer and analyst, he was also an atheist. As far as I know, and we would have heard about this if it had happened, he did not make a deathbed conversion. He did not become a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or whatever. He stuck to his guns and I respect that. I believe if there’s a God, God would respect that, too.
The other person is Steve Jobs, who died a couple of months ago. I preached about him and his final six words, “Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow!” But a month or two ago I talked with a fundamentalist Christian friend of mine. We had coffee and he knew that Steve Jobs had said those words and that Steve Jobs was a Buddhist. So it could not be possible, to him, that Steve Jobs was saying, “Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow,” perhaps to the opening up of the gates of heaven to welcome Steve Jobs. So this fundamentalist Christian friend of mine said that what he actually said was, “Oh ow, Oh ow, Oh ow!” We can only hope that fundamentalists of every religion will one day accept the possibility that if there is a heaven everybody gets there, not just those of their particular sect.
Then there was a death of a different kind this past year that I think was spiritually significant and that is the end of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Now I know some people snicker about this, but I think Oprah Winfrey, who continues on with her Oprah Winfrey Network and her magazine and all her other stuff, so don’t feel sorry for Oprah, but after 25 years she decided to end her show, a show I found very spiritually uplifting, as Oprah is. She is very spiritually empowering for many people, many women, and I think of Oprah as really the greatest preacher in America. She had as her congregation millions and millions of people. She was a preacher to the masses. I think the only other person who comes close is Garrison Keillor, who, if he were born 100 years before radio was invented, I think he would have been a minister up in Minnesota someplace. One thing that I like about Oprah is her philosophy: Live your best life. I think that’s what we all should do, live our best life. What do you do to live your best life?
Henry David Thoreau was a Unitarian and I think a mystic in many ways, certainly someone in touch with his spirit. Henry David Thoreau said, “To affect the quality of your day is the highest of arts.” What is it you do to affect the quality of your day?
Deepak Chopra is certainly someone in touch with his spirit. I saw a commercial he did a year or so ago in which he said, “I am a human being. Not a human doing.” I like that. Deepak Chopra says that to be all that we can be, to live our best life, we have to control our ego. What is it that you do to live a spiritual life and how do you control your ego? I think that’s important for our spirit, to control our ego.
As you know, Kathleen and I drove to Florida a few weeks ago. Whenever I drive in the car, I like to put the radio on scan and whenever I come across a song that I like, I stop the scan and listen to that. Or if I come across a preacher I will listen to the preacher. Well, when you drive in the south, about every other radio station has a preacher. One day on the way down, we heard a preacher who was going to explain what the Bible means by the word “justice.” I thought, this ought to be good. He said what the Bible means by the word justice is “government protecting our property.” What? I’d never heard that before. I’ve heard the Texas definition of justice – hang ‘em high – according to the Bible, but I never heard that what justice means according to the Bible is “government protecting our property.” I and Dr. King and others would say that what the Bible means by justice is what the Bible says: to protect the widow and the orphan, feed the hungry, house the homeless. It’s pretty simple, especially for people who are Biblical literalists, to find out what the Bible means by justice. That was the most hilarious spiritual event of my experience in the past year.
What is the state of your spirituality? How is your spirit? To put it the way Oprah does, are you living your best life? I think of living in the spirit as “living fully alive.” Are you living fully alive?
One person who inspires me I saw the night of the State of the Union address – Gabby Giffords. To see her in that chamber and to get greeted by people on both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat, and then to see the president give her a big hug and a little shake was just so wonderful. As you know, I’m sure, Gabby Giffords was shot in the head in an assassination attempt a little more than a year ago and she recovered. The day after the State of the Union address, she resigned from Congress. She did that to continue her rehabilitation, which has been miraculous. But she said she might be back. She might run for Congress again. How inspirational would that be?
When I think of Gabby Giffords, I think of one of my favorite songs. I think I might have mentioned this song to all of you before – I Hope You Dance. “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean. Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens. Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance. And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.” I hope you dance.
I want to talk with you today about the state of spirituality. What is the state of spirituality? I was going to call this sermon, “The State of Religion,” but more and more people would rather be spiritual than religious; religion is kind of a turn off for a lot of people, so I called it “The State of Spirituality.” What is the state of spirituality? In recent weeks we’ve seen Governor Snyder give the State of the State address and President Obama give the State of the Union address. I am, of course, not on their level, but I would like to present, with all humility, the State of Spirituality, to look back and to look ahead.
Now personally, I think the most significant spiritual story of the past year, was that a church in Muskegon hired a new minister!
I saw a couple lists of the most important religious or spiritual stories of the past year. At the top of one of the lists was the killing of Osama Bin Laden and I thought, “Ew, I wouldn’t call that a spiritual story.” I was disappointed that we killed him, but apparently that was the order, “Shoot to kill,” rather than capture and try him and let him live out his days in some type of prison. I don’t consider that a spiritual story, but I do think there are several military type stories that are spiritual stories and are at the top of the lists of spiritual stories of the year, the first being the end of the war in Iraq.
I don’t want to make this a political speech or anything, but thank goodness, or thank God if you so choose, that that’s over with. I wish we would have marked it with a ticker tape parade down Madison Avenue or something. It sort of ended with a whimper, but I understand many Americans, if not most Americans are kind of embarrassed by the war that happened in Iraq. Thank goodness, though, it’s over. It’s terrible that thousands of American troops and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iraqis were killed in that war. It’s good to have it over with. I can only imagine how that must lift the spirits of our troops and of their families and how I hope it lifts the spirits of all Americans.
In a similar vein, another military story I think is one of the most important spiritual stories of the year, and that is the recent announcement that we’re going to leave Afghanistan early, by 2014. That, I hope, lifts everybody’s spirit. It would have been nice after we had killed Osama bin Laden to have declared victory and pulled out then, but at least we’re going to do it earlier than we had planned. I think that lifts all of our spirits.
The third military story that I think is spiritually significant would be ending “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.” They never should have implemented that, of course, but we can be thankful that it’s over with, and that our men and women, who proudly serve, can be all that they can be, can be who they are, whether they’re gay or straight, they don’t have to hide who they are any more, they don’t have to pretend they’re not who they are. I think that should lift all of our spirits, especially the spirits of those who are gay and lesbian.
I’ve preached several sermons over the years about gay rights, and I’ve always said that Jesus was so concerned about homosexuals and homosexuality that he never said a word about them. I thought that would prove the point because obviously Paul, who was a contemporary of Jesus spoke out against homosexuals, so if Jesus had wanted to he could have, but he didn’t. But recently I’ve had an epiphany, an aha moment, an insight, and it’s this: that Jesus did speak about homosexuals. When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor,” he wasn’t saying, “Love your neighbor except for homosexuals.” When Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” he wasn’t saying “except homosexuals.” When Jesus said, “Judge not and you will not be judged,” he wasn’t saying it’s OK to judge homosexuals. Jesus did speak out about homosexuals. He was inclusive. He said love your neighbor including homosexuals. Do to others as you would have them do to you including homosexuals. Judge not and you will not be judged including not judging homosexuals. Now I just bring that up, not because I think very many people are Christians, including me, but so many Christians are homophobes and they use the Bible, the seven passages, to prove their homophobia about homosexuals. It seems to me they now have to take into account what Jesus essentially said about homosexuals in his inclusive way. I think that’s significant, spiritually important. Now there have probably been other people who have thought of this before I did. I always think I’ve come up with something unique and new and then I Google it and ten thousand hits come up, but it’s new to me.
As you know, I’ve been in a contentious situation with the City of Holland’s Council about gay rights. Back in May of 2010, I asked the City of Holland to add the words, “sexual orientation and gender identity” to the already existing anti-discrimination ordinances in the city with regards to education, employment, services and housing. Then, this past June, the city council voted 5 to 4 not to do that. I attended every city council meeting with others to urge them to change their minds, except for the one a few weeks ago when I was on vacation, but that’s the only one I missed. Then, as you probably are aware, back in October, I decided to “occupy” City Hall after the council meeting, although the city insists on saying that I “trespassed.” I was arrested and that court case is still pending. We had a hearing on Wednesday and it may be postponed for a month or two, but I went to the Holland City Council meeting Wednesday night and the mayor started off the meeting saying “We don’t need to take roll because we’ve already met in closed session where we discussed pending litigation.” So after the meeting I asked one of the council members, who I’d asked a couple of months ago when they said the same thing, “Have you talked about the case against me?” and he, at that time said no. Wednesday night he said, “I can’t say whether we did or we didn’t, I couldn’t tell you either way.” I thought, “Hello!” So I asked another council member and he said, “Yes we talked about your case.” I said, “Did you make any decision, like perhaps to drop the charges?” He said, “We can’t make a decision behind closed doors; we have to come out in the open to make a decision, but no we didn’t make a decision.” So then I asked, “What about the City Attorney’s office (the City Attorney is the prosecutor in this case), have they decided what to do?” and I’m thinking drop the case. He said, “Yeah, but I can’t tell you what that decision is.” So there may be some news here soon. Not that I don’t like to make news or anything. I think that if the Holland City Council changes their mind or somehow all the people of the City of Holland are treated equally, that would be spiritually uplifting to so many people.
One spiritual story that some of you may not have heard or paid attention to in the last year or so is what’s being called the “Tebowing of America.” Now if you don’t know what that is, Tim Tebow is a quarterback for some football team or other – Denver? Anyway whenever he has success on the field, he drops to one knee and thanks Jesus and many Christians are excited about this, they think it’s wonderful. I don’t want to comment on that, but it always bugged me that after a big game, for example after tonight’s Super Bowl game, I’m sure they’ll go to the winning team’s locker room and they’ll talk to the quarterback or whoever and ask, “What happened? How come you won?” and they’ll usually say, “Well, it was because Jesus was on our side,” or God. But they never go to the losing team’s locker room and ask the losing quarterback or whoever, “What happened?” And they never say, “I did all I could, but Jesus dropped the ball,” or “God messed up.”
I want to talk about the deaths of a couple of people that I think are spiritually significant. Now anybody’s death is spiritually significant, but these two I would like to lift up. One of them probably wouldn’t like me including him in a sermon in church on the state of spirituality. Christopher Hitchens died a few weeks ago. Christopher Hitchens was a prolific political writer and analyst, he was also an atheist. As far as I know, and we would have heard about this if it had happened, he did not make a deathbed conversion. He did not become a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or whatever. He stuck to his guns and I respect that. I believe if there’s a God, God would respect that, too.
The other person is Steve Jobs, who died a couple of months ago. I preached about him and his final six words, “Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow!” But a month or two ago I talked with a fundamentalist Christian friend of mine. We had coffee and he knew that Steve Jobs had said those words and that Steve Jobs was a Buddhist. So it could not be possible, to him, that Steve Jobs was saying, “Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow,” perhaps to the opening up of the gates of heaven to welcome Steve Jobs. So this fundamentalist Christian friend of mine said that what he actually said was, “Oh ow, Oh ow, Oh ow!” We can only hope that fundamentalists of every religion will one day accept the possibility that if there is a heaven everybody gets there, not just those of their particular sect.
Then there was a death of a different kind this past year that I think was spiritually significant and that is the end of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Now I know some people snicker about this, but I think Oprah Winfrey, who continues on with her Oprah Winfrey Network and her magazine and all her other stuff, so don’t feel sorry for Oprah, but after 25 years she decided to end her show, a show I found very spiritually uplifting, as Oprah is. She is very spiritually empowering for many people, many women, and I think of Oprah as really the greatest preacher in America. She had as her congregation millions and millions of people. She was a preacher to the masses. I think the only other person who comes close is Garrison Keillor, who, if he were born 100 years before radio was invented, I think he would have been a minister up in Minnesota someplace. One thing that I like about Oprah is her philosophy: Live your best life. I think that’s what we all should do, live our best life. What do you do to live your best life?
Henry David Thoreau was a Unitarian and I think a mystic in many ways, certainly someone in touch with his spirit. Henry David Thoreau said, “To affect the quality of your day is the highest of arts.” What is it you do to affect the quality of your day?
Deepak Chopra is certainly someone in touch with his spirit. I saw a commercial he did a year or so ago in which he said, “I am a human being. Not a human doing.” I like that. Deepak Chopra says that to be all that we can be, to live our best life, we have to control our ego. What is it that you do to live a spiritual life and how do you control your ego? I think that’s important for our spirit, to control our ego.
As you know, Kathleen and I drove to Florida a few weeks ago. Whenever I drive in the car, I like to put the radio on scan and whenever I come across a song that I like, I stop the scan and listen to that. Or if I come across a preacher I will listen to the preacher. Well, when you drive in the south, about every other radio station has a preacher. One day on the way down, we heard a preacher who was going to explain what the Bible means by the word “justice.” I thought, this ought to be good. He said what the Bible means by the word justice is “government protecting our property.” What? I’d never heard that before. I’ve heard the Texas definition of justice – hang ‘em high – according to the Bible, but I never heard that what justice means according to the Bible is “government protecting our property.” I and Dr. King and others would say that what the Bible means by justice is what the Bible says: to protect the widow and the orphan, feed the hungry, house the homeless. It’s pretty simple, especially for people who are Biblical literalists, to find out what the Bible means by justice. That was the most hilarious spiritual event of my experience in the past year.
What is the state of your spirituality? How is your spirit? To put it the way Oprah does, are you living your best life? I think of living in the spirit as “living fully alive.” Are you living fully alive?
One person who inspires me I saw the night of the State of the Union address – Gabby Giffords. To see her in that chamber and to get greeted by people on both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat, and then to see the president give her a big hug and a little shake was just so wonderful. As you know, I’m sure, Gabby Giffords was shot in the head in an assassination attempt a little more than a year ago and she recovered. The day after the State of the Union address, she resigned from Congress. She did that to continue her rehabilitation, which has been miraculous. But she said she might be back. She might run for Congress again. How inspirational would that be?
When I think of Gabby Giffords, I think of one of my favorite songs. I think I might have mentioned this song to all of you before – I Hope You Dance. “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean. Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens. Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance. And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.” I hope you dance.
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