Country singer Alan Jackson has a song called, “Where I Come From.” He sings, “Where I come from, tryin’ to make a livin’ and workin’ hard to get to heaven, where I come from.” Well, where I come from, you don’t get arrested.
On October 19, after being inspired by Occupy Wall Street, I occupied Holland City Hall. It didn’t last long. They locked the doors, the police came, asked me to leave, I refused and they arrested me. “What Was I Thinking?” (That’s the title of another country song, by Dierks Bentley.)
I was thinking about how I asked the Holland City Council in May 2010 that the words “Sexual orientation and gender identity” be added to the city’s anti-discrimination ordinances in housing, employment, education and services. I was thinking about how the city’s Human Relations Commission studied the issue for nearly a year and unanimously recommended that the council approve changing the ordinances. I was thinking about how the council voted 5-4 in June of this year against the recommendation. I was thinking about how I and others have spoken at every regular council meeting since June, urging the five “no” voters to reverse their opinion. I was thinking about how, at the last meeting, one council member told us to come up with a new tactic, because what we’d been doing wasn’t working. I was thinking, “Hey, I could occupy city hall, draw attention to gay rights, maybe others would eventually join me. Nobody would have a problem with that, right?”
I asked one of the officers at the police department what I was being charged with. He said there were several possibilities, including disturbing the peace. Disturbing the peace? I thought I was promoting peace. While I may have been violating the law, I think 5 members of the council are violating a more serious law, or at least a more serious principle, by allowing LGBT people to be treated unfairly, unjustly and unequally.
Over the past few months, many speakers told the council how they’ve been discriminated against for being gay in Holland or how they or a relative have moved away because they didn’t feel welcome in the city of tulips. If your heart didn’t go out to them, you needed to check your pulse. After hearing their stories, I’m glad I became a minister following a career in the media. Even if I got in trouble with the law.
If I’m not a follower of every law, it’s because I’m a follower of Dr. King, who said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If I’m not a follower of every law, it’s because I’m a follower of Gandhi, who said, “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience.” If I’m not a follower of every law, it’s because I’m a follower of Jesus, who said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” All three were arrested for what could be called promoting peace and all three were eventually killed. What I did was nothing compared to what they did.
I’m to be arraigned in Holland District Court on November 8 at 9 a.m. After that I may again promote peace, even if some say I’m disturbing it. And if I get arrested again, I’ll welcome it, because I now realize that being arrested for promoting peace is a good thing – where I come from.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Thine, Mine and Ayn
Ronald Reagan had a guaranteed applause line in many of his speeches. He would say, “Government is not the solution; government is the problem,” and people would applaud, “Yea, Ronnie, way to go!” I imagine this little scenario that I play in my head now and then. There’s a flood that hits a place in, let’s say, the south. A guy is perched on the roof of his house, water all around, when up comes a rowboat, being rowed by a Federal Emergency Management Agency worker. The FEMA worker comes up to the guy on the roof of his house and says, “Hey, buddy, you’re in a bad way.” The guy says, “Yeah, come give me a hand.” The FEMA worker says, “Just a minute, I want to ask you a question first. Ronald Reagan used to say, ‘Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.’ What’d you think of that?”
“Oh, that’s great! Ronnie was right! Right on, Ronnie, I love that! ‘Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.’” Then the FEMA worker rows away, saying, “OK, good luck to you, buddy! Take it easy. See ya!” Now I don’t really want that to happen, but it just reminds me that, when it comes to government help, some of us are schizophrenic. Many people don’t want the government to be very large at all, but when they’re in need, they want the government to help. I think I’ve figured out the way people feel. If I’m in need and the government helps me, well, the government’s just the right size. But if you’re in need and the government helps you, the government’s too big!
I found out in researching this sermon that the government is the largest employer in the country. It employs 2.3 percent of the work force. That makes sense when you think about it – when you think of all the military people and postal workers and teachers and everybody – that the government would be the largest employer. Some people have a problem with that though. They have a problem with the government employing people.
At the recent Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, sponsored by CNN and the Tea Party, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked a question of Ron Paul, a Libertarian, about a hypothetical 30-year-old guy. Now, as you probably know, when you’re thirty years old you think you’ve got the world by the tail. You’re going to live forever. You’re going to be healthy forever. You’re going to have your job forever. So Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul about this 30 year old, who, because he felt so healthy, decided not to buy health insurance. But then the guy gets catastrophically ill. He has to go in the hospital for six months. Wolf Blitzer asked, “What should happen with that guy? Who should pay for it?”
Ron Paul said, “Well, that’s what freedom’s all about.” The crowd went wild, “Yea!” Then Wolf Blitzer asked the question heard ‘round the world, “Should the guy be allowed to die?” And a couple members of the audience, presumably Tea Party members, yelled out, “Yeah!” I don’t know about you, if you watched that, I watched it and kind of cringed. I imagine some people gasped. Some people probably said, “Who are these people?” Tea Party members, as I understand it, are mostly made up of Republicans and many of them are Libertarians.
Libertarianism has been around for hundreds of years. It used to be called “anarchy.” But then people said, “Well, it’s about liberty,” so they became Libertarians. Libertarians believe in a limited government and unlimited personal freedom. They don’t want the government telling them what to do. They want to be able to do whatever they want to do, and while Libertarianism as I understand it runs a spectrum of different beliefs, most of the Libertarians think that the government should only pay for the military to protect us and then we’re kind of all on our own. We can hire our own security guards, I guess, and take care of ourselves and pay for our own health care, do everything on our own.
There are many famous people who are Libertarians or have Libertarian leanings. Drew Carey, the host of The Price is Right, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings. Penn Jillette, the speaking half of the magical duo, Penn and Teller, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings. John Larroquette, the Night Court actor and an actor in many other things, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings.
Believe it or not, I am a Libertarian, at least when it comes to some issues. I’m a Libertarian when it comes to same sex marriage. I don’t think the government should tell two adults in love, even if they’re the same sex, that they can’t get married. That should be up to the two people involved.
I’m a Libertarian when it comes to drugs. I don’t think the government should be in the drug enforcement business. Haven’t we learned anything from Prohibition? Prohibition is a PBS documentary by Ken Burns. I saw him interviewed a few weeks ago by John Stewart on The Daily Show. He said that before Prohibition alcohol wasn’t that big of a deal to people. They drank some, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Once Prohibition hit, then people said, “I’m not going to let the government tell me I can’t drink! I think I’ll put a still in my back yard.” Then after Prohibition people kept on drinking. I don’t think the government should tell people they can’t grow a marijuana plant in their backyard. I certainly don’t think that some college kid should be shot by mistake by drug enforcement officers because he’s suspected of selling a little marijuana to college students as happened two years or so ago in West Michigan. Now I don’t want you to think I’m some sort of a big druggie. Or even a little druggie. I am almost embarrassed to admit I’ve never tried marijuana. I had the opportunity in high school and college, but I didn’t do it, I think, because I believed the propaganda films they showed us when we were kids that said it killed brain cells. I was smart enough to know that I didn’t have any brain cells to spare. Now if you think that my position is radical, then you must think that the late conservative writer William F. Buckley Jr. was a radical, because he believed in drug decriminalization.
I’m also a Libertarian when it comes to capital punishment. I don’t think the government should have the right to kill someone, to execute criminals. I wish Timothy McVeigh had lived out his days in a prison cell, surrounded by pictures of all his victims in the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, so that every morning he would wake up and see pictures of his victims, including many children, because I’m in the redemption business, the transformation business. I would’ve hoped that one day Timothy McVeigh would wake up and go, “My goodness, what have I done?” But instead the government killed him. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think the government should be in the execution business.
I’m a Libertarian when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. I don’t think the government should tell a woman what she can do with her body. I think there’s nobody better to decide what’s best for her health than the woman herself in consultation with her doctor. Certainly she’s better able to decide that than some bureaucrat or politician in Lansing, or some bureaucrat or politician in Washington, or members of the U.S. Supreme Court. If the government can tell a woman that she can’t have an abortion, then the government can tell a woman that she has to have an abortion, as they reportedly do in China. So I’m a Libertarian when it comes to that as well.
Ayn Rand is considered the godmother of Libertarians. Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant. Presumably, she was a legal immigrant. She came to this country in the early 1900s and went to Hollywood where she was a Hollywood screenwriter. She was a writer of novels and a philosopher. She wrote Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, in which she detailed her philosophy. She said that people should be able to decide for themselves what they do and not depend on a nanny state, not depend on the government to help them out. People should be rugged individualists. Libertarians like Ron Paul liked her so much that he named his son Rand, Rand Paul, who is now a U.S. Senator. Ayn Rand’s philosophy is said to be rational egoism as opposed to ethical altruism: Everybody taking care of themselves and not worrying about anybody else, which I think I’d call rational selfishness as opposed to ethical selflessness.
Now I think many Libertarians would consider themselves Christians, although Ayn Rand was an atheist. It seems to me that many Tea Party members are Libertarians or have Libertarian leanings. For the life of me, I can’t reconcile Libertarianism and Christianity. It seems to me they are diametrically opposed to one another. Now I suppose somebody could be a Libertarian and be a traditional Christian and say, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior,” but that’s it. But I don’t know how you could be a Libertarian and a follower of Jesus, somebody who believes that you should house the homeless and clothe the naked and feed the hungry and help your neighbor. If you’re a Libertarian, your neighbors should take care of themselves. Perhaps the Christian ideas about ethical altruism are best described by James, the brother of Jesus. James said, If someone comes up to you naked and hungry, you can’t say to them, “Well, peace be with you. Have a good day. Be on your way.” You can’t do that. If somebody comes up to you naked and hungry, you can’t use the wonderful line that Garrison Keillor uses at the end of the Writer’s Almanac, “Be well, do good work and keep in touch.” You can’t do that. If somebody comes up to you naked and hungry you can’t give them a religious tract and say, “This will clothe your soul and this will feed your spirit.” You actually have to help them if you can. You have to clothe them if they’re naked and feed them if they’re hungry, according to James, who said, “Faith without works is dead.”
Elizabeth Warren speaks to this somewhat. She’s a law professor at Harvard; she’s a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. She said in a campaign gathering a month or two ago that nobody got rich on their own. Nobody. If you built a factory and make a lot of money, good for you. But you send your goods to market on roads that all of us paid for. You hired workers that all of us paid to educate. You are protected by police and fire departments that the rest of us paid for. Elizabeth Warren says that nobody does this on their own. If you made a lot of money, fine, keep a big hunk of it. But also, as part of the social contract that we all should live by, you need to pay part of that forward for the kids coming up in the next generation. In other words, we all need to pay our fair share of taxes. The factory owners, they need to pay their fair share. Libertarians have a hard time hearing that, or at least they have a hard time accepting it.
Also at that Tea Party/CNN sponsored debate, a young man stood up and asked a question. I think it was kind of a smart-alecky question. He was maybe 30 years old. He said, “How much of the money that I make should the government allow me to keep?” Cute. But that was the wrong question. He should have asked, “How much of the money that I make should I gladly pay in taxes to live in – what I have to believe he believes is – the greatest country on the face of the earth? How much should he make and gladly pay in taxes for the privilege of living in a free-market capitalist democratic country that allowed him to make that money? How much should he gladly pay in taxes from what he makes to live in freedom and liberty? Those are the questions he should have asked.
I get a little sick and tired of people who complain about paying taxes. Not that I don’t do that around April 15 myself. I really shouldn’t, though. But whether you pay 10 or 15 or 25 or 36 or 39 percent in taxes, that’s just money. There are thousands of people – our military men and women – who have laid down their lives for this country, who paid the supreme sacrifice, who paid the ultimate tax. They paid 100 percent and they don’t get a refund after April 15. They died for this country. How dare millionaires and billionaires, complain about having to pay 3 percent more in taxes? They should be ashamed of themselves. If a millionaire has to pay 3 percent more in taxes, that’s $30,000 compared to a soldier on the battlefield who laid down their life for this country and who paid the ultimate tax.
It seems to me that today’s Libertarians were born a couple hundred years too late. If they would have been born a couple hundred years ago they could have blazed their own trail. They could have created their own path. Instead, Libertarians today have to travel highways that we pay for. If they could have been born a couple hundred years ago, they could have killed their own food, and maybe many of them still do. But they could have killed their own meat and known that it was fresh. Instead, I imagine many Libertarians go to the grocery store and they buy meat inspected by the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, the U.S. government. If they would have been born a couple hundred years ago, they could have been their own weather forecasters. They could have looked out on the horizon and said to themselves, “Red at night, sailor’s delight” or “Red in morning, sailors take warning.” Instead, they’ve got the National Weather Bureau telling them what the weather is. They’ve got the government putting up sirens in towns warning of an oncoming tornado. They’ve got government workers evacuating places in Florida because a hurricane is coming. Libertarians were just born a couple hundred years too late.
Whenever I think of Libertarians, I think of one of my favorite songs ever, by Bill Withers, Lean on Me. Bill Withers sings, “Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.” Now there may be some Libertarians who believe in helping their neighbor, doing for others, maybe they don’t want the government to help their neighbor, but they do. But, as I understand Libertarianism – and I understand Libertarianism about as well as I understand Christianity – as I understand Libertarianism it’s not about helping your neighbor. It’s about taking care of yourself and your neighbor taking care of him or herself and then the world will run perfectly. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. One of the Republican candidates for president, Herman Cain, who is a Libertarian or at least has Libertarian leanings, says, “If you’re not rich, it’s nobody’s fault but your own.” That’s Libertarianism in a nutshell, I think. And I think that what we need to be about is selflessness, not selfishness.
Oh, one more thing, I almost forgot. Ayn Rand, who wrote all those books about Libertarianism and taking care of yourself and not relying on the government, she died in 1982. As far as I could tell, after she retired, she collected Social Security and she was on Medicare.
“Oh, that’s great! Ronnie was right! Right on, Ronnie, I love that! ‘Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.’” Then the FEMA worker rows away, saying, “OK, good luck to you, buddy! Take it easy. See ya!” Now I don’t really want that to happen, but it just reminds me that, when it comes to government help, some of us are schizophrenic. Many people don’t want the government to be very large at all, but when they’re in need, they want the government to help. I think I’ve figured out the way people feel. If I’m in need and the government helps me, well, the government’s just the right size. But if you’re in need and the government helps you, the government’s too big!
I found out in researching this sermon that the government is the largest employer in the country. It employs 2.3 percent of the work force. That makes sense when you think about it – when you think of all the military people and postal workers and teachers and everybody – that the government would be the largest employer. Some people have a problem with that though. They have a problem with the government employing people.
At the recent Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, sponsored by CNN and the Tea Party, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked a question of Ron Paul, a Libertarian, about a hypothetical 30-year-old guy. Now, as you probably know, when you’re thirty years old you think you’ve got the world by the tail. You’re going to live forever. You’re going to be healthy forever. You’re going to have your job forever. So Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul about this 30 year old, who, because he felt so healthy, decided not to buy health insurance. But then the guy gets catastrophically ill. He has to go in the hospital for six months. Wolf Blitzer asked, “What should happen with that guy? Who should pay for it?”
Ron Paul said, “Well, that’s what freedom’s all about.” The crowd went wild, “Yea!” Then Wolf Blitzer asked the question heard ‘round the world, “Should the guy be allowed to die?” And a couple members of the audience, presumably Tea Party members, yelled out, “Yeah!” I don’t know about you, if you watched that, I watched it and kind of cringed. I imagine some people gasped. Some people probably said, “Who are these people?” Tea Party members, as I understand it, are mostly made up of Republicans and many of them are Libertarians.
Libertarianism has been around for hundreds of years. It used to be called “anarchy.” But then people said, “Well, it’s about liberty,” so they became Libertarians. Libertarians believe in a limited government and unlimited personal freedom. They don’t want the government telling them what to do. They want to be able to do whatever they want to do, and while Libertarianism as I understand it runs a spectrum of different beliefs, most of the Libertarians think that the government should only pay for the military to protect us and then we’re kind of all on our own. We can hire our own security guards, I guess, and take care of ourselves and pay for our own health care, do everything on our own.
There are many famous people who are Libertarians or have Libertarian leanings. Drew Carey, the host of The Price is Right, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings. Penn Jillette, the speaking half of the magical duo, Penn and Teller, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings. John Larroquette, the Night Court actor and an actor in many other things, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings.
Believe it or not, I am a Libertarian, at least when it comes to some issues. I’m a Libertarian when it comes to same sex marriage. I don’t think the government should tell two adults in love, even if they’re the same sex, that they can’t get married. That should be up to the two people involved.
I’m a Libertarian when it comes to drugs. I don’t think the government should be in the drug enforcement business. Haven’t we learned anything from Prohibition? Prohibition is a PBS documentary by Ken Burns. I saw him interviewed a few weeks ago by John Stewart on The Daily Show. He said that before Prohibition alcohol wasn’t that big of a deal to people. They drank some, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Once Prohibition hit, then people said, “I’m not going to let the government tell me I can’t drink! I think I’ll put a still in my back yard.” Then after Prohibition people kept on drinking. I don’t think the government should tell people they can’t grow a marijuana plant in their backyard. I certainly don’t think that some college kid should be shot by mistake by drug enforcement officers because he’s suspected of selling a little marijuana to college students as happened two years or so ago in West Michigan. Now I don’t want you to think I’m some sort of a big druggie. Or even a little druggie. I am almost embarrassed to admit I’ve never tried marijuana. I had the opportunity in high school and college, but I didn’t do it, I think, because I believed the propaganda films they showed us when we were kids that said it killed brain cells. I was smart enough to know that I didn’t have any brain cells to spare. Now if you think that my position is radical, then you must think that the late conservative writer William F. Buckley Jr. was a radical, because he believed in drug decriminalization.
I’m also a Libertarian when it comes to capital punishment. I don’t think the government should have the right to kill someone, to execute criminals. I wish Timothy McVeigh had lived out his days in a prison cell, surrounded by pictures of all his victims in the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, so that every morning he would wake up and see pictures of his victims, including many children, because I’m in the redemption business, the transformation business. I would’ve hoped that one day Timothy McVeigh would wake up and go, “My goodness, what have I done?” But instead the government killed him. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think the government should be in the execution business.
I’m a Libertarian when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. I don’t think the government should tell a woman what she can do with her body. I think there’s nobody better to decide what’s best for her health than the woman herself in consultation with her doctor. Certainly she’s better able to decide that than some bureaucrat or politician in Lansing, or some bureaucrat or politician in Washington, or members of the U.S. Supreme Court. If the government can tell a woman that she can’t have an abortion, then the government can tell a woman that she has to have an abortion, as they reportedly do in China. So I’m a Libertarian when it comes to that as well.
Ayn Rand is considered the godmother of Libertarians. Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant. Presumably, she was a legal immigrant. She came to this country in the early 1900s and went to Hollywood where she was a Hollywood screenwriter. She was a writer of novels and a philosopher. She wrote Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, in which she detailed her philosophy. She said that people should be able to decide for themselves what they do and not depend on a nanny state, not depend on the government to help them out. People should be rugged individualists. Libertarians like Ron Paul liked her so much that he named his son Rand, Rand Paul, who is now a U.S. Senator. Ayn Rand’s philosophy is said to be rational egoism as opposed to ethical altruism: Everybody taking care of themselves and not worrying about anybody else, which I think I’d call rational selfishness as opposed to ethical selflessness.
Now I think many Libertarians would consider themselves Christians, although Ayn Rand was an atheist. It seems to me that many Tea Party members are Libertarians or have Libertarian leanings. For the life of me, I can’t reconcile Libertarianism and Christianity. It seems to me they are diametrically opposed to one another. Now I suppose somebody could be a Libertarian and be a traditional Christian and say, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior,” but that’s it. But I don’t know how you could be a Libertarian and a follower of Jesus, somebody who believes that you should house the homeless and clothe the naked and feed the hungry and help your neighbor. If you’re a Libertarian, your neighbors should take care of themselves. Perhaps the Christian ideas about ethical altruism are best described by James, the brother of Jesus. James said, If someone comes up to you naked and hungry, you can’t say to them, “Well, peace be with you. Have a good day. Be on your way.” You can’t do that. If somebody comes up to you naked and hungry, you can’t use the wonderful line that Garrison Keillor uses at the end of the Writer’s Almanac, “Be well, do good work and keep in touch.” You can’t do that. If somebody comes up to you naked and hungry you can’t give them a religious tract and say, “This will clothe your soul and this will feed your spirit.” You actually have to help them if you can. You have to clothe them if they’re naked and feed them if they’re hungry, according to James, who said, “Faith without works is dead.”
Elizabeth Warren speaks to this somewhat. She’s a law professor at Harvard; she’s a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. She said in a campaign gathering a month or two ago that nobody got rich on their own. Nobody. If you built a factory and make a lot of money, good for you. But you send your goods to market on roads that all of us paid for. You hired workers that all of us paid to educate. You are protected by police and fire departments that the rest of us paid for. Elizabeth Warren says that nobody does this on their own. If you made a lot of money, fine, keep a big hunk of it. But also, as part of the social contract that we all should live by, you need to pay part of that forward for the kids coming up in the next generation. In other words, we all need to pay our fair share of taxes. The factory owners, they need to pay their fair share. Libertarians have a hard time hearing that, or at least they have a hard time accepting it.
Also at that Tea Party/CNN sponsored debate, a young man stood up and asked a question. I think it was kind of a smart-alecky question. He was maybe 30 years old. He said, “How much of the money that I make should the government allow me to keep?” Cute. But that was the wrong question. He should have asked, “How much of the money that I make should I gladly pay in taxes to live in – what I have to believe he believes is – the greatest country on the face of the earth? How much should he make and gladly pay in taxes for the privilege of living in a free-market capitalist democratic country that allowed him to make that money? How much should he gladly pay in taxes from what he makes to live in freedom and liberty? Those are the questions he should have asked.
I get a little sick and tired of people who complain about paying taxes. Not that I don’t do that around April 15 myself. I really shouldn’t, though. But whether you pay 10 or 15 or 25 or 36 or 39 percent in taxes, that’s just money. There are thousands of people – our military men and women – who have laid down their lives for this country, who paid the supreme sacrifice, who paid the ultimate tax. They paid 100 percent and they don’t get a refund after April 15. They died for this country. How dare millionaires and billionaires, complain about having to pay 3 percent more in taxes? They should be ashamed of themselves. If a millionaire has to pay 3 percent more in taxes, that’s $30,000 compared to a soldier on the battlefield who laid down their life for this country and who paid the ultimate tax.
It seems to me that today’s Libertarians were born a couple hundred years too late. If they would have been born a couple hundred years ago they could have blazed their own trail. They could have created their own path. Instead, Libertarians today have to travel highways that we pay for. If they could have been born a couple hundred years ago, they could have killed their own food, and maybe many of them still do. But they could have killed their own meat and known that it was fresh. Instead, I imagine many Libertarians go to the grocery store and they buy meat inspected by the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, the U.S. government. If they would have been born a couple hundred years ago, they could have been their own weather forecasters. They could have looked out on the horizon and said to themselves, “Red at night, sailor’s delight” or “Red in morning, sailors take warning.” Instead, they’ve got the National Weather Bureau telling them what the weather is. They’ve got the government putting up sirens in towns warning of an oncoming tornado. They’ve got government workers evacuating places in Florida because a hurricane is coming. Libertarians were just born a couple hundred years too late.
Whenever I think of Libertarians, I think of one of my favorite songs ever, by Bill Withers, Lean on Me. Bill Withers sings, “Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.” Now there may be some Libertarians who believe in helping their neighbor, doing for others, maybe they don’t want the government to help their neighbor, but they do. But, as I understand Libertarianism – and I understand Libertarianism about as well as I understand Christianity – as I understand Libertarianism it’s not about helping your neighbor. It’s about taking care of yourself and your neighbor taking care of him or herself and then the world will run perfectly. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. One of the Republican candidates for president, Herman Cain, who is a Libertarian or at least has Libertarian leanings, says, “If you’re not rich, it’s nobody’s fault but your own.” That’s Libertarianism in a nutshell, I think. And I think that what we need to be about is selflessness, not selfishness.
Oh, one more thing, I almost forgot. Ayn Rand, who wrote all those books about Libertarianism and taking care of yourself and not relying on the government, she died in 1982. As far as I could tell, after she retired, she collected Social Security and she was on Medicare.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Baby You're A Firework
My favorite television commercial these days is about a car company. A dad is leaning into the passenger side window of a car. He’s talking to his apparently little girl. She looks to be about three years old. He has a set of car keys in his hand. He’s telling her things like, drive carefully, buckle up, stuff like that. She says, “Daddy, OK!” Then he hands her the car keys and of course she turns out to be a teenager, apparently driving alone for the first time.
I am that dad. My daughter is a sophomore in college and yet I see her as a little girl. I’m trying not to. I’m working on it. But I think of her like I thought of her when she was two or three years old and I thought, OK, she’s the President and I’m the Secret Service; it’s my job to protect her. I know I shouldn’t do that now, but I still sometimes do. I’m working on it.
I heard somebody say once that a two year old is willful and that what we need to do is break the will, break the spirit of a two year old. That’s sick! You don’t need to break the will, break the spirit, of a two year old, we need to lift up the spirit of a two year old. We need to nurture the spirit of a two year old. We need to enhance the spirit of a two year old, and a four year old, and a six year old, and a sixteen year old. We need to nurture our children in body, mind and spirit, not break their spirit, not tear them down, not belittle them. We need to give them everything that we can.
In a previous life I was a radio talk show host. I interviewed a state lawmaker one time. We were talking about education funding and how he was going to support cutting funds for public schools. He said, “Bill, you can’t solve the problem by throwing money at it.” I said, “Well, that’s how they solve the problem in rich school districts, they throw money at it and it solves the problem.” It’s not right, it’s not fair, it’s not just to spend sometimes twice as much per pupil in a rich school district as is spent in a poor school district. But if we’re going to do that, then we shouldn’t wonder why students in poor school districts don’t do as well as students in rich school districts. It should be pretty obvious.
The only state that I know of that is fair about all of this is the state of Vermont. A few years ago, I believe it was the state supreme court in Vermont, that looked at educational funding and saw a disparity between rich school districts and poor school districts, between kids who live in rich districts and kids who live in poor districts, and said, as if it were the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, separate and unequal is unconstitutional. Now I believe in Vermont the same amount of money is spent on every child for public education, as it should be. I wonder when Michigan will come to that same conclusion, that it’s unconstitutional to apparently care more about students in rich districts than students in poor districts. We need to raise up all children, to nurture all children in body, mind and spirit.
I never have understood the Christian doctrine of original sin. I know it, you probably know it, the whole idea that in the beginning of creation, in the mythological story of Adam and Eve being told by God not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they did it anyway and when they did that they disobeyed God, they sinned and it led to the fall of humankind. Sin was ushered into the world when they did that. I understand all that, I mean I know it, I just don’t believe it. For one thing, the definition of the word “sin,” really means missing the mark, making a mistake, making an error. It’s not some sinister thing. It’s just making a mistake. I don’t get it. I don’t think Jesus got it.
A couple thousand years ago, according to the Christian New Testament, people would bring their children to this apparently holy man, to this prophet, to this Jesus. They would just want Jesus to tousle their hair, say a little prayer over them, but the disciples said, “No, no, you can’t do that. This is Jesus. He’s got more important things to do than mess with kids. He’s got to walk on water, and turn water into wine. He’s got to tell people to love their enemies and love their neighbor. He doesn’t have time for your children.” Then Jesus caught wind of this and said, “You guys just don’t get it. Let the little children come to me and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” Then the children were brought forward and he laid his hands on them.
I agree with Jesus. If heaven exists, at least on this side of the rainbow if not somewhere over the rainbow, then the kingdom of heaven, heaven on earth, belongs to little children. They are such a joy. They aren’t some bundle of sin. I just don’t understand this whole concept. You know it’s one thing to think of adults as inherently sinful; I don’t believe that either, I believe we are inherently good. But to hold a little bitty baby in your arms and to look at that little baby and see, not a bundle of joy, but a tangle of sin, I just don’t get it. A child is not some vessel of the devil. A child is a joy to behold.
I can’t even think that when little Adolf was in his parents’ arms, or somebody’s arms, that they looked at him and saw anything but a bundle of joy. Now he may have grown up to be Hitler, but as a child I think he was a bundle of joy, not a vessel of the devil. I think Jesus knew that, too. Certainly philosopher and author Jean Jacques Rousseau knew that. He said in one of his novels - don’t begrudge children the chance to be children. Let them be little children. Let them have the hardest job they’ll ever have: playing all day, having fun from morning until night. That’s what we expect from them.
Little children are not miniature adults. I think some people have the exact opposite of the problem I have with my daughter, seeing my adult daughter as a little child, some people see little children as miniature adults. They’re not. You can’t tell a two year old something and then expect them to salute as if they’re a recruit and do it. They’re not fully mature, they’re not fully grown, they haven’t grown up. They haven’t physically and spiritually and emotionally grown up. I think part of the problem of child abuse and neglect is because some people see little children as miniature adults or vessels of sin and they have to have sin beat out of them or shaken out of them. It’s a shame that we don’t treat little children like little children.
I saw a comedian named Emo Philips years ago in a comedy club. If you know him, you know that he’s very strange, but wonderfully funny. He said that when he was a kid, his parents always told him, “Don’t go near the cellar door!” That’s all he ever heard as a child. “Don’t go near the cellar door!” Almost every day: “Don’t go near the cellar door!” But one day the door was open and he did go near it. He went through it and he said he saw some amazing things on the other side, things he’d never seen before – green grass, blue sky, trees!
Some people, some parents, some churches see little children, not as a blessing but as a bother. I don’t think this congregation does, but some churches, some parents, some adults do see children as a nuisance, not as people to be nurtured. Children are a blessing. Children are full of joy, full of playfulness, they show us wisdom and fairness sometimes. The things that come out of the mouths of children are amazing. We need to see them as a blessing, not a bother.
I used to baptize children. I don’t do that anymore; I bless children, but I used to baptize them. But I would try to turn baptism on its head. I would say that the church doesn’t confer or convey anything on the children when they are baptized that they don’t already have. We don’t make children sacred or holy or divine by baptizing them. They already are. I said that baptism is when the church realizes that children of creation are really children of God. Sacred. Holy. Divine. Then I changed the words you’re supposed to say at a baptism. I’d say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, who is a Mother to us all. I baptize you in the name of the Son, who is a Brother to us all. I baptize you in the name of the Spirit, who is a connection to us all.” That’s probably why I am no longer a Christian minister. I don’t baptize children anymore, I bless them. But really, when you think about it, we don’t bless children, they bless us. They bless us with their playfulness and their joy and their sense of fun and sense of humor and their sense of fairness and their wisdom. They bless us; we don’t bless them.
One of my favorite songs these days is a tune by Katy Perry. It’s called “Firework.” Katy Perry sings, “Baby, you’re a firework. Come on, let your colors burst. Make ‘em go ah, ah, ah.” The video that goes with it shows fireworks coming out of the middle of Katy Perry and the children and the young people who are in the video. It’s wonderful. It kind of reminds me of the old Christian song, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” That’s what Katy Perry is saying to children and young people. Let your light shine. You are a divine spark. Don’t be ashamed of who you are or embarrassed of who you are. Be thankful for who you are. We should all be thankful for who they are. They are a firework. They are a light to the world. We don’t want them to hide that light under a bushel basket. We want them to glow and grow.
I’ve seen a couple of movies about the life of the Dalai Lama. Maybe you have, too. One of them stars Brad Pitt. And I’ve read several of the Dalai Lama’s books about happiness and the four noble truths and other ideas and ideals. So I know that the Dalai Lama, before he was recognized as the Dalai Lama, when he was about two years old, Buddhist monks were traveling back and forth across Tibet, looking for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, looking for the reincarnation of the Buddha. They came upon this little boy and he was inquisitive and intelligent and they thought This might be him! They put him through a battery of tests, including spreading out several sacred and secular objects and having him pick out the sacred ones and he did. They came to believe that this was the new Dalai Lama, this was the reincarnation of the Buddha. So with his parents’ permission they whisked him away to a mansion or a castle and they gave him everything a child would need. They gave him the best education, both sacred and secular. They gave him food, all the food he would need. They gave him toys and games to play with. They nurtured him in body, mind and spirit and he grew up to be the Dalai Lama because they saw him as sacred, holy, divine.
What if we, what if society, saw all children as the reincarnation of the Buddha or the Christ child? What if society saw all children as sacred, holy, divine? There would be no more child abuse. If we saw all children as sacred, holy, divine there would be no cuts in education funding. Children would get the best education. There would be no more poor children. There would not be a quarter of the children in America (not some third world country), living in poverty. There would be no more poor children. Every child would be nurtured. Every child would be seen as sacred, holy, divine. And then every child would feel like they were living in the kingdom of heaven. Every child would feel like they were living in heaven on earth. As every child should.
I am that dad. My daughter is a sophomore in college and yet I see her as a little girl. I’m trying not to. I’m working on it. But I think of her like I thought of her when she was two or three years old and I thought, OK, she’s the President and I’m the Secret Service; it’s my job to protect her. I know I shouldn’t do that now, but I still sometimes do. I’m working on it.
I heard somebody say once that a two year old is willful and that what we need to do is break the will, break the spirit of a two year old. That’s sick! You don’t need to break the will, break the spirit, of a two year old, we need to lift up the spirit of a two year old. We need to nurture the spirit of a two year old. We need to enhance the spirit of a two year old, and a four year old, and a six year old, and a sixteen year old. We need to nurture our children in body, mind and spirit, not break their spirit, not tear them down, not belittle them. We need to give them everything that we can.
In a previous life I was a radio talk show host. I interviewed a state lawmaker one time. We were talking about education funding and how he was going to support cutting funds for public schools. He said, “Bill, you can’t solve the problem by throwing money at it.” I said, “Well, that’s how they solve the problem in rich school districts, they throw money at it and it solves the problem.” It’s not right, it’s not fair, it’s not just to spend sometimes twice as much per pupil in a rich school district as is spent in a poor school district. But if we’re going to do that, then we shouldn’t wonder why students in poor school districts don’t do as well as students in rich school districts. It should be pretty obvious.
The only state that I know of that is fair about all of this is the state of Vermont. A few years ago, I believe it was the state supreme court in Vermont, that looked at educational funding and saw a disparity between rich school districts and poor school districts, between kids who live in rich districts and kids who live in poor districts, and said, as if it were the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, separate and unequal is unconstitutional. Now I believe in Vermont the same amount of money is spent on every child for public education, as it should be. I wonder when Michigan will come to that same conclusion, that it’s unconstitutional to apparently care more about students in rich districts than students in poor districts. We need to raise up all children, to nurture all children in body, mind and spirit.
I never have understood the Christian doctrine of original sin. I know it, you probably know it, the whole idea that in the beginning of creation, in the mythological story of Adam and Eve being told by God not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they did it anyway and when they did that they disobeyed God, they sinned and it led to the fall of humankind. Sin was ushered into the world when they did that. I understand all that, I mean I know it, I just don’t believe it. For one thing, the definition of the word “sin,” really means missing the mark, making a mistake, making an error. It’s not some sinister thing. It’s just making a mistake. I don’t get it. I don’t think Jesus got it.
A couple thousand years ago, according to the Christian New Testament, people would bring their children to this apparently holy man, to this prophet, to this Jesus. They would just want Jesus to tousle their hair, say a little prayer over them, but the disciples said, “No, no, you can’t do that. This is Jesus. He’s got more important things to do than mess with kids. He’s got to walk on water, and turn water into wine. He’s got to tell people to love their enemies and love their neighbor. He doesn’t have time for your children.” Then Jesus caught wind of this and said, “You guys just don’t get it. Let the little children come to me and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” Then the children were brought forward and he laid his hands on them.
I agree with Jesus. If heaven exists, at least on this side of the rainbow if not somewhere over the rainbow, then the kingdom of heaven, heaven on earth, belongs to little children. They are such a joy. They aren’t some bundle of sin. I just don’t understand this whole concept. You know it’s one thing to think of adults as inherently sinful; I don’t believe that either, I believe we are inherently good. But to hold a little bitty baby in your arms and to look at that little baby and see, not a bundle of joy, but a tangle of sin, I just don’t get it. A child is not some vessel of the devil. A child is a joy to behold.
I can’t even think that when little Adolf was in his parents’ arms, or somebody’s arms, that they looked at him and saw anything but a bundle of joy. Now he may have grown up to be Hitler, but as a child I think he was a bundle of joy, not a vessel of the devil. I think Jesus knew that, too. Certainly philosopher and author Jean Jacques Rousseau knew that. He said in one of his novels - don’t begrudge children the chance to be children. Let them be little children. Let them have the hardest job they’ll ever have: playing all day, having fun from morning until night. That’s what we expect from them.
Little children are not miniature adults. I think some people have the exact opposite of the problem I have with my daughter, seeing my adult daughter as a little child, some people see little children as miniature adults. They’re not. You can’t tell a two year old something and then expect them to salute as if they’re a recruit and do it. They’re not fully mature, they’re not fully grown, they haven’t grown up. They haven’t physically and spiritually and emotionally grown up. I think part of the problem of child abuse and neglect is because some people see little children as miniature adults or vessels of sin and they have to have sin beat out of them or shaken out of them. It’s a shame that we don’t treat little children like little children.
I saw a comedian named Emo Philips years ago in a comedy club. If you know him, you know that he’s very strange, but wonderfully funny. He said that when he was a kid, his parents always told him, “Don’t go near the cellar door!” That’s all he ever heard as a child. “Don’t go near the cellar door!” Almost every day: “Don’t go near the cellar door!” But one day the door was open and he did go near it. He went through it and he said he saw some amazing things on the other side, things he’d never seen before – green grass, blue sky, trees!
Some people, some parents, some churches see little children, not as a blessing but as a bother. I don’t think this congregation does, but some churches, some parents, some adults do see children as a nuisance, not as people to be nurtured. Children are a blessing. Children are full of joy, full of playfulness, they show us wisdom and fairness sometimes. The things that come out of the mouths of children are amazing. We need to see them as a blessing, not a bother.
I used to baptize children. I don’t do that anymore; I bless children, but I used to baptize them. But I would try to turn baptism on its head. I would say that the church doesn’t confer or convey anything on the children when they are baptized that they don’t already have. We don’t make children sacred or holy or divine by baptizing them. They already are. I said that baptism is when the church realizes that children of creation are really children of God. Sacred. Holy. Divine. Then I changed the words you’re supposed to say at a baptism. I’d say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, who is a Mother to us all. I baptize you in the name of the Son, who is a Brother to us all. I baptize you in the name of the Spirit, who is a connection to us all.” That’s probably why I am no longer a Christian minister. I don’t baptize children anymore, I bless them. But really, when you think about it, we don’t bless children, they bless us. They bless us with their playfulness and their joy and their sense of fun and sense of humor and their sense of fairness and their wisdom. They bless us; we don’t bless them.
One of my favorite songs these days is a tune by Katy Perry. It’s called “Firework.” Katy Perry sings, “Baby, you’re a firework. Come on, let your colors burst. Make ‘em go ah, ah, ah.” The video that goes with it shows fireworks coming out of the middle of Katy Perry and the children and the young people who are in the video. It’s wonderful. It kind of reminds me of the old Christian song, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” That’s what Katy Perry is saying to children and young people. Let your light shine. You are a divine spark. Don’t be ashamed of who you are or embarrassed of who you are. Be thankful for who you are. We should all be thankful for who they are. They are a firework. They are a light to the world. We don’t want them to hide that light under a bushel basket. We want them to glow and grow.
I’ve seen a couple of movies about the life of the Dalai Lama. Maybe you have, too. One of them stars Brad Pitt. And I’ve read several of the Dalai Lama’s books about happiness and the four noble truths and other ideas and ideals. So I know that the Dalai Lama, before he was recognized as the Dalai Lama, when he was about two years old, Buddhist monks were traveling back and forth across Tibet, looking for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, looking for the reincarnation of the Buddha. They came upon this little boy and he was inquisitive and intelligent and they thought This might be him! They put him through a battery of tests, including spreading out several sacred and secular objects and having him pick out the sacred ones and he did. They came to believe that this was the new Dalai Lama, this was the reincarnation of the Buddha. So with his parents’ permission they whisked him away to a mansion or a castle and they gave him everything a child would need. They gave him the best education, both sacred and secular. They gave him food, all the food he would need. They gave him toys and games to play with. They nurtured him in body, mind and spirit and he grew up to be the Dalai Lama because they saw him as sacred, holy, divine.
What if we, what if society, saw all children as the reincarnation of the Buddha or the Christ child? What if society saw all children as sacred, holy, divine? There would be no more child abuse. If we saw all children as sacred, holy, divine there would be no cuts in education funding. Children would get the best education. There would be no more poor children. There would not be a quarter of the children in America (not some third world country), living in poverty. There would be no more poor children. Every child would be nurtured. Every child would be seen as sacred, holy, divine. And then every child would feel like they were living in the kingdom of heaven. Every child would feel like they were living in heaven on earth. As every child should.
Friday, September 23, 2011
9/11 At 10
I co-host a radio show with Fred Wooden who’s the senior minister at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids. He’s a Unitarian and he’s probably one of the brightest guys I’ve ever met. Fred knows everything about everything. I kid him about it. He kids himself about it. He calls himself “Mr. Know-It-All” from the old “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” Listeners know how smart Fred is. One listener called up a few weeks ago and said, “Well, as you know, Fred…” And I said, “What am I? Chopped liver?” And he said, “Well, no, but I think Fred would know something about this.” A month or two before we got Osama bin Laden, we were talking on the radio about how come it’s taking so long to get him. I said that I just don’t understand why we don’t send a Navy Seals team to take him out. Fred said, “Well, there’s a simple explanation for that Bill. Osama bin Laden is on land and the Navy Seals only operate in the water.” As you know, it was the Navy Seals that got Osama bin Laden on land. I will never let Fred forget that!
I was home sick on that day, lying on the couch, watching television when the news report came on. President Kennedy had been assassinated. They say you never forget where you were when you heard the news on November 22, 1963 if you were alive when President Kennedy was assassinated.
I turned on the computer that morning about nine o’clock. At the time I was the editor and publisher of a little political magazine in Grand Rapids and I wanted to read the morning papers. I was on the USA Today website and there was a little blurb about a plane that hit the World Trade Center. My first thought was, it must be a foggy morning and it was a little Cessna or something. As I went to turn on the TV, I remembered that a few months before I’d taken my daughter to New York City and we went to the top of the World Trade Center during spring break. We saw a video that said the World Trade Center buildings were constructed in a way to take a hit from a 707 and keep standing. As I turned on the Today show, the second plane hit the second tower. Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were saying we could no longer say this was an accident. It was obviously a terrorist act, a terrorist attack. As the day went on, as probably all of you know, we heard about a plane that hit the Pentagon and another plane that went down in a field in Pennsylvania. About 3000 people were killed in those 9-11 attacks. They say you never forget where you were if you were alive on 9-11-2001 when you heard about the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil.
Later we’d hear from loved ones of the victims and their heart-wrenching stories. We’d hear about the heroes and heroines of that day, the police officers and firefighters who, while everyone was running from the buildings, went into the buildings before they collapsed. Some of you may know that I felt called to the ministry on that day, which happened to be my 47th birthday. I just knew that one day I wanted to preach love in a sometimes hateful world. So I moved from the media to the ministry to pursue a path to pastoring. I get the feeling sometimes when I tell people that, that they think I’m bragging or something. You know, mere mortals are called to the ministry on any other day of the week or of the year, but me, I had to be called to the ministry on 9-11-2001, my birthday, the worst attack on American soil. I get the feeling people think that I think I’m somebody special because of that. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Forty years before that, give or take, when I was about seven years old, I set up chairs in my basement and I had my siblings and my neighbors sit in those chairs and I conducted a worship service. If that was my first call to ministry, I ignored it. When I was in high school, I read Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking. I came away from that book not really impressed with the positive thinking aspects of it, but I was taken by what I now know is called the pastoral care aspects of it. Norman Vincent Peale was the minister of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and he traveled around the country and made speeches and talked about how after he made a speech somebody would come up to him and say how they needed to talk to him about some personal problem and he took the time to talk to them. I was taken by that, I was impressed by that, I was moved by that. But if that was my second call to ministry, I ignored it. When I was 35 years old, I was sitting in my then church, Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, listening to my then minister, David Rankin, a Unitarian, talk about having just turned 50. He preached about looking back on his life and how he was so grateful that he became a minister because the ministry gave his life purpose and meaning and I was so impressed by that, I was so taken by that, I was so moved by that. But if that was my third call to ministry, I ignored it.
Moses felt called to the ministry when he saw a burning bush. For me it took two burning towers before I finally felt it, after what I think was a lifetime of being called to the ministry. Now don’t think that I think that God caused 9-11 so that I would become a minister. No, I don’t believe that.
In the Hebrew Scriptures King David reportedly wrote Psalm 140. Psalm 140 begins, “Deliver me, O Lord, from evildoers.” But it’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are. Oh, sure, the people who flew those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania, they were obviously evildoers. Osama bin Laden, who masterminded 9-11, was obviously an evildoer. But some people take from that, because they were Muslims, that all Muslims, therefore, are evildoers or terrorists or at the very least all terrorists are Muslims.
But a moment’s reflection tells us that can’t be the case. Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, at that time the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. But we don’t conclude from that that therefore all Christians are terrorists or that all terrorists are Christians.
Eric Robert Rudolph blew up an abortion clinic in the south, killing an off-duty police officer who was a security guard there. Eric Robert Rudolph was a Christian. But we don’t conclude from that that therefore all Christians are terrorists or that all terrorists are Christians. It’s hard sometimes to know who the evildoers are.
Natalie Maines is the lead singer with the Dixie Chicks. Before the war started in Iraq, as you probably remember, she went to Great Britain and gave an interview in which she said she was embarrassed by her fellow Texan, who just happened to be the President of the United States. Immediately country radio stations across America banned the Dixie Chicks’ music. I know this because I called one up just for kicks and requested a Dixie Chicks song. They never played it. Natalie Maines said that after that she received death threats. One woman wrote her and said she hoped that she’d die. It’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are.
On the night of March 20, 2003, I was supposed to be studying for a prophets test in my seminary class the next day. Instead, probably like many of you, I was glued to the television, watching as bombs were bursting in Baghdad. Even though I wasn’t studying for a prophets test, I feel like I was acting like a prophet. I didn’t respond to that attack with shock and awe. I responded with sadness and anger that my country attacked a country that hadn’t attacked us and had nothing to do with 9-11. As the war went on, we heard that thousands of American military men and women were killed and thousands more were wounded and that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iraqis were killed in that war. We heard about how America doesn’t torture, but it engages in something every other country calls torture – waterboarding – but we call it enhanced interrogation techniques. We heard about Abu Ghraib, where our military personnel acted horrendously. It’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are.
When you look back on 9-11, it’s hard not to ask, “Why did they do this? Why would anybody attack us?” In part, it’s difficult to ask that because if you ask it, you’re sometimes branded in some circles a traitor for asking such a question, or at least un-American or unpatriotic, because there could be no reasonable explanation. And I don’t think there is a reasonable explanation why they attacked us, but they must have some reason that they hate us so much. And I’ve got to believe it’s more than just they don’t like our freedoms. I don’t think it’s the other pat answer that you hear. They don’t like our Western way of life; they don’t like our lifestyle; they don’t like our Hollywood movies. Because if that’s why they hate us, then we should put all the members of the religious right on a terrorist watch list, because they hate us for the same reason. They don’t like our Western ways, they don’t like our lifestyle, they don’t like our Hollywood movies either.
It’s got to be something deeper than that. I wonder, along with others, if it isn’t because we have boots on the ground in their countries. We have boots on the ground, as you know, in dozens and dozens of countries. We have hundreds of military bases in countries around the world. How would we react if Russia had boots on the ground in Florida? Or China had boots on the ground in California? If Russian tanks rolled into Orlando or Chinese tanks rolled into San Diego, how would we react? You don’t have to think about that too long or hard to imagine it. We know how we reacted a couple hundred years ago, when the British had boots on the ground in America. In part, we had a revolution because of it.
After 9-11 we came together as a country. We responded to certain voices. I wonder, though, what America, what the world, would be like today if we had responded to other voices, less militaristic voices. Voices like Gandhi, a holy man from India who through civil disobedience convinced the British to turn over sovereignty to the people of India. Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” What if we responded to the voices of people like Dorothy Day? Dorothy Day was a devout Catholic, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, an activist for peace and justice. Dorothy Day said, “The challenge of the day is to have a revolution of the heart.” What would America or the world be like today if we would have responded to voices like Desmond Tutu? Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as you know, was one of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. When the white government was finally driven from power and Nelson Mandela took over, Desmond Tutu was named the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Forgiving is not forgetting. It’s actually remembering, remembering that we have the power to hit, but choosing not to.”
On 9-11, after watching all those horrific images on TV, I walked the three or four blocks to my daughter’s school. I thought I could offer some comfort to her and maybe some of her classmates. She was in elementary school. When I got to her classroom, her teacher was wondering whether to turn on the TV to allow the students to see the images that we’d all seen. The teacher asked the students how many of them would be going home to an empty house and therefore to a waiting television set. I think more than half the students raised their hands. So she decided to turn on the television and she and I were there when the students saw the terrible images of that day. It didn’t dawn on me until I was working on this sermon that on November 22, 1963, I was nine years old and in the fourth grade. On 9-11-2001, my daughter was nine years old and in the fourth grade. We try hard to protect our children from the horrors of life, but we can’t always succeed. Perhaps all we can do is be with our children as they face the horrors of life, to help them cope. And maybe that’s all we can do for each other is to walk together, to help each other cope with the horrors of life. Whether it’s on November 22, 1963, or on 9-11-2001, or on 9-11-2011.
I was home sick on that day, lying on the couch, watching television when the news report came on. President Kennedy had been assassinated. They say you never forget where you were when you heard the news on November 22, 1963 if you were alive when President Kennedy was assassinated.
I turned on the computer that morning about nine o’clock. At the time I was the editor and publisher of a little political magazine in Grand Rapids and I wanted to read the morning papers. I was on the USA Today website and there was a little blurb about a plane that hit the World Trade Center. My first thought was, it must be a foggy morning and it was a little Cessna or something. As I went to turn on the TV, I remembered that a few months before I’d taken my daughter to New York City and we went to the top of the World Trade Center during spring break. We saw a video that said the World Trade Center buildings were constructed in a way to take a hit from a 707 and keep standing. As I turned on the Today show, the second plane hit the second tower. Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were saying we could no longer say this was an accident. It was obviously a terrorist act, a terrorist attack. As the day went on, as probably all of you know, we heard about a plane that hit the Pentagon and another plane that went down in a field in Pennsylvania. About 3000 people were killed in those 9-11 attacks. They say you never forget where you were if you were alive on 9-11-2001 when you heard about the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil.
Later we’d hear from loved ones of the victims and their heart-wrenching stories. We’d hear about the heroes and heroines of that day, the police officers and firefighters who, while everyone was running from the buildings, went into the buildings before they collapsed. Some of you may know that I felt called to the ministry on that day, which happened to be my 47th birthday. I just knew that one day I wanted to preach love in a sometimes hateful world. So I moved from the media to the ministry to pursue a path to pastoring. I get the feeling sometimes when I tell people that, that they think I’m bragging or something. You know, mere mortals are called to the ministry on any other day of the week or of the year, but me, I had to be called to the ministry on 9-11-2001, my birthday, the worst attack on American soil. I get the feeling people think that I think I’m somebody special because of that. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Forty years before that, give or take, when I was about seven years old, I set up chairs in my basement and I had my siblings and my neighbors sit in those chairs and I conducted a worship service. If that was my first call to ministry, I ignored it. When I was in high school, I read Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking. I came away from that book not really impressed with the positive thinking aspects of it, but I was taken by what I now know is called the pastoral care aspects of it. Norman Vincent Peale was the minister of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and he traveled around the country and made speeches and talked about how after he made a speech somebody would come up to him and say how they needed to talk to him about some personal problem and he took the time to talk to them. I was taken by that, I was impressed by that, I was moved by that. But if that was my second call to ministry, I ignored it. When I was 35 years old, I was sitting in my then church, Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, listening to my then minister, David Rankin, a Unitarian, talk about having just turned 50. He preached about looking back on his life and how he was so grateful that he became a minister because the ministry gave his life purpose and meaning and I was so impressed by that, I was so taken by that, I was so moved by that. But if that was my third call to ministry, I ignored it.
Moses felt called to the ministry when he saw a burning bush. For me it took two burning towers before I finally felt it, after what I think was a lifetime of being called to the ministry. Now don’t think that I think that God caused 9-11 so that I would become a minister. No, I don’t believe that.
In the Hebrew Scriptures King David reportedly wrote Psalm 140. Psalm 140 begins, “Deliver me, O Lord, from evildoers.” But it’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are. Oh, sure, the people who flew those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania, they were obviously evildoers. Osama bin Laden, who masterminded 9-11, was obviously an evildoer. But some people take from that, because they were Muslims, that all Muslims, therefore, are evildoers or terrorists or at the very least all terrorists are Muslims.
But a moment’s reflection tells us that can’t be the case. Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, at that time the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. But we don’t conclude from that that therefore all Christians are terrorists or that all terrorists are Christians.
Eric Robert Rudolph blew up an abortion clinic in the south, killing an off-duty police officer who was a security guard there. Eric Robert Rudolph was a Christian. But we don’t conclude from that that therefore all Christians are terrorists or that all terrorists are Christians. It’s hard sometimes to know who the evildoers are.
Natalie Maines is the lead singer with the Dixie Chicks. Before the war started in Iraq, as you probably remember, she went to Great Britain and gave an interview in which she said she was embarrassed by her fellow Texan, who just happened to be the President of the United States. Immediately country radio stations across America banned the Dixie Chicks’ music. I know this because I called one up just for kicks and requested a Dixie Chicks song. They never played it. Natalie Maines said that after that she received death threats. One woman wrote her and said she hoped that she’d die. It’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are.
On the night of March 20, 2003, I was supposed to be studying for a prophets test in my seminary class the next day. Instead, probably like many of you, I was glued to the television, watching as bombs were bursting in Baghdad. Even though I wasn’t studying for a prophets test, I feel like I was acting like a prophet. I didn’t respond to that attack with shock and awe. I responded with sadness and anger that my country attacked a country that hadn’t attacked us and had nothing to do with 9-11. As the war went on, we heard that thousands of American military men and women were killed and thousands more were wounded and that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iraqis were killed in that war. We heard about how America doesn’t torture, but it engages in something every other country calls torture – waterboarding – but we call it enhanced interrogation techniques. We heard about Abu Ghraib, where our military personnel acted horrendously. It’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are.
When you look back on 9-11, it’s hard not to ask, “Why did they do this? Why would anybody attack us?” In part, it’s difficult to ask that because if you ask it, you’re sometimes branded in some circles a traitor for asking such a question, or at least un-American or unpatriotic, because there could be no reasonable explanation. And I don’t think there is a reasonable explanation why they attacked us, but they must have some reason that they hate us so much. And I’ve got to believe it’s more than just they don’t like our freedoms. I don’t think it’s the other pat answer that you hear. They don’t like our Western way of life; they don’t like our lifestyle; they don’t like our Hollywood movies. Because if that’s why they hate us, then we should put all the members of the religious right on a terrorist watch list, because they hate us for the same reason. They don’t like our Western ways, they don’t like our lifestyle, they don’t like our Hollywood movies either.
It’s got to be something deeper than that. I wonder, along with others, if it isn’t because we have boots on the ground in their countries. We have boots on the ground, as you know, in dozens and dozens of countries. We have hundreds of military bases in countries around the world. How would we react if Russia had boots on the ground in Florida? Or China had boots on the ground in California? If Russian tanks rolled into Orlando or Chinese tanks rolled into San Diego, how would we react? You don’t have to think about that too long or hard to imagine it. We know how we reacted a couple hundred years ago, when the British had boots on the ground in America. In part, we had a revolution because of it.
After 9-11 we came together as a country. We responded to certain voices. I wonder, though, what America, what the world, would be like today if we had responded to other voices, less militaristic voices. Voices like Gandhi, a holy man from India who through civil disobedience convinced the British to turn over sovereignty to the people of India. Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” What if we responded to the voices of people like Dorothy Day? Dorothy Day was a devout Catholic, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, an activist for peace and justice. Dorothy Day said, “The challenge of the day is to have a revolution of the heart.” What would America or the world be like today if we would have responded to voices like Desmond Tutu? Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as you know, was one of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. When the white government was finally driven from power and Nelson Mandela took over, Desmond Tutu was named the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Forgiving is not forgetting. It’s actually remembering, remembering that we have the power to hit, but choosing not to.”
On 9-11, after watching all those horrific images on TV, I walked the three or four blocks to my daughter’s school. I thought I could offer some comfort to her and maybe some of her classmates. She was in elementary school. When I got to her classroom, her teacher was wondering whether to turn on the TV to allow the students to see the images that we’d all seen. The teacher asked the students how many of them would be going home to an empty house and therefore to a waiting television set. I think more than half the students raised their hands. So she decided to turn on the television and she and I were there when the students saw the terrible images of that day. It didn’t dawn on me until I was working on this sermon that on November 22, 1963, I was nine years old and in the fourth grade. On 9-11-2001, my daughter was nine years old and in the fourth grade. We try hard to protect our children from the horrors of life, but we can’t always succeed. Perhaps all we can do is be with our children as they face the horrors of life, to help them cope. And maybe that’s all we can do for each other is to walk together, to help each other cope with the horrors of life. Whether it’s on November 22, 1963, or on 9-11-2001, or on 9-11-2011.
We Give Thanks For Time
Let us lift up our thoughts and prayers: All that is holy, loving and true...
We give thanks for time: May it heal all wounds.
We give thanks for time: May it cause us to reflect.
We give thanks for time: May it allow us to put things into perspective.
We give thanks for time: May it lead us to understanding.
We give thanks for time: May it reward us with wisdom.
Now and forevermore: Let it be. So be it. And: Amen.
We give thanks for time: May it heal all wounds.
We give thanks for time: May it cause us to reflect.
We give thanks for time: May it allow us to put things into perspective.
We give thanks for time: May it lead us to understanding.
We give thanks for time: May it reward us with wisdom.
Now and forevermore: Let it be. So be it. And: Amen.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror
This summer I was at a party. A bunch of us were sitting around and I mentioned that, in addition to my duties as minister of Interfaith Congregation in Holland, I was going to become, in the fall, minister of Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Muskegon. One of the people there, a retired university professor, said, “You know, I know a little something about the Unitarians. They’re very intellectual. Why did they hire you?” I have no idea. I’m not really intellectual. I find that now that I’ve been hired here I try to read more and watch TV less. And I do listen to NPR now! (Someone in the congregation: “You’re on the right path!”)
I was at Schuler Books in Grand Rapids a few weeks ago and I was in the Theology/Philosophy/Religion part, and I noticed there was a book, “Christianity for Dummies” and another book, “World Religions for Dummies.” But I didn’t see a book called “Unitarian Universalism for Dummies.” ‘Cause it’s not! I later went on Amazon.com and looked. It doesn’t exist. So I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I’m beginning my seventh year of ministry. While I’m grateful that I’m the minister of two churches, I have to admit that I’m not where I thought I’d be in my ministry. I thought I’d be kind of like Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Jesus by now. I thought I’d leave my house and dozens, if not hundreds of people would walk with me through town. There would be scribes writing down every profound thing I said. And everything I said would be profound. But that hasn’t happened.
I thought at the very least I wouldn’t be preaching sermons anymore. I’d just come to a place like this, maybe sit in a lotus position, and I’d just spew wise words, just off the top of my head. I didn’t think I’d still be agonizing over sermons. You know, this was an important sermon for me; I had to preach it in two different places. So I would wake up in the middle of the night and write things down on a little Post-It note. I can’t imagine Jesus doing that. I can’t imagine Jesus saying, “Oh, I’ve got that big Sermon on the Mount coming up.” I can’t imagine Jesus getting a big hammer and chisel and stone tablet and saying, (acts out chiseling on stone) “Oh, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ that’ll preach! ‘Love your enemies,’ that’ll preach! ‘Forgive and you’ll be forgiven,’ that’ll preach!” So I’m not where I thought I’d be in my ministry. And I have to confess, I’m not where I thought I’d be in my personal life.
I thought by now I’d be perfect. Or at least close to perfect. I thought everything I did would be just right. And everything I said would be just right. No. About a month or two ago, I’m driving down the road, a four-lane divided road, and I’m in the left lane of two lanes. I stop at a stop light. After a few minutes the light turns green. I take off. After two or three seconds, the person behind me is honking her horn! What’s the matter? She’s doing one of these, (motions with hand to hurry up) like I’m not going fast enough. So I speed up a little bit, but apparently not fast enough, so she passes me on the right, pulls in front of me and then she slows down. So I get angry and get on the horn myself (makes a sound like a car horn blaring) for about a hundred yards. What am I thinking? What am I doing? I’m a minister! I’m not supposed to be about road rage. I’m supposed to be about street serenity.
A week or two ago, I went to the Women’s Equality Day Dinner in Muskegon, co-sponsored by the National Organization for Women, the local chapter, and my new church. Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation is a co-sponsor of this dinner. It was a wonderful dinner and a wonderful program. But before dinner we were sitting around our table, talking politics, and somebody mentions one of the presidential candidates. I won’t say her name, but I think she’s the only female running. Somebody says, “She believes women should be submissive to their husbands.” So I, Mr. Comedian, Mr. Funny Guy, Mr. Hilarity, say, “You know, that’s one point I agree with her on.” Stunned silence. I think I heard a couple of gasps. Everybody turns and looks at me and I say, “I’m just kidding!” But what was I thinking? Why did I say something like that? I mean, talk about inappropriate humor. You guys were there; you know I did this. Why don’t I learn? I’m not where I should be. I have some changes to make in my life.
The first time I ever heard Michael Jackson, he was part of the Jackson Five. I was in my teens and he was probably eight or nine. Back then I was a big fan of Casey Kasem. So I probably heard Michael Jackson for the first time on American Top Forty. (Imitating Casey Kasem’s voice) “This is Casey Kasem. Time now for that new smash by Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five.”
That’s not the song I want to talk about. The song I want to talk about came much later in Michael Jackson’s life. I think it’s one of the greatest songs he ever did. It’s a song called “Man in the Mirror.” Michael Jackson sings, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways. No message could have been any clearer. If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that – change.” Michael Jackson was speaking to me. He’s still speaking to me.
If you came here today and thought I was going to preach to you, I’m sorry to disappoint you. If you came here today thinking I was going to preach to the choir, I’m sorry to disappoint you. If you came here today thinking I was going to preach to the whole congregation, I’m sorry to disappoint you. This sermon is just for me. I’m the one who needs to hear this. In fact, probably most of my sermons are for me. I need to hear them more than anybody else does. I need to change that man in the mirror. I need to say the things I should say and do the things I should do. I don’t always.
Jesus. He’s somebody some people don’t like to hear about. I think it’s because they think the preacher’s going to talk about Jesus the God. Jesus, one third of the Holy Trinity. But that’s not how I talk about Jesus. I think that Jesus was who he said he was, he was the Son of Man, the Son of Adam, just like all of us are sons and daughters of Adam, metaphorically speaking. So when I talk about Jesus, I’m talking about Jesus the man, who said some profound things. One day Jesus was speaking to his disciples, who followed him a lot of the time. He said, “Don’t worry about the speck in your neighbor’s eye. Be concerned about the log in your own eye. You hypocrite! You try to take out the speck in your neighbor’s eye and yet, you ignore the log in your own.” Jesus is speaking to me. I do that all the time. I can pick out the flaw, and that’s what Jesus was talking about – don’t worry about the flaw in your neighbor before you worry about the flaw in yourself. Take care of your own flaws before you deal with somebody else’s. But I do that all the time. I can spot somebody’s flaws a mile away. My own? Mmm. Not so much. And I need to change that.
Henry David Thoreau was a brilliant writer. He wrote Walden. He was a transcendentalist. And a Unitarian – probably one of the most famous Unitarians ever. Henry David Thoreau said that if you want to change your thinking, you need to think something over and over and over again. If you want to think good, positive thoughts, think them over and over and over again. Don’t just think them once. Henry David Thoreau was speaking to me. I think a good positive thought once. Then I go back to my usual bad negative thoughts. But I need to think those good thoughts over and over and over again in order to change. In order to become the person that I need to become.
My favorite movie ever would probably not make anyone’s top ten list of the greatest movies ever. It probably wouldn’t even make my top ten list of the greatest movies ever, but it’s my favorite movie ever because it spoke to me at the time when it came out. The movie was “Bruce Almighty.” Jim Carrey played Bruce and God was played by Morgan Freeman – no relation. As far as I know. Before I tell you about the movie, in case you haven’t seen it, let me tell you a bit about my life at that point. It’s 2003, I had been a TV feature reporter – I did funny stories in the news. At that time – 2003 – I was going through a painful personal relationship and I was wondering, if God exists, does God even know that I exist? Does God care that I exist? Does God care that I’m going through all this personal pain? So one Friday night I decide that I’m just going to escape my life. I’m going to go see “Bruce Almighty,” this new comedy with Jim Carrey – I love Jim Carrey! So I go to the movies and, if you’ve never seen “Bruce Almighty,” Jim Carrey plays a TV feature reporter. He does funny stories in the news. He’s going through a painful personal relationship. And he’s wondering if God knows whether he exists, cares whether he exists. I didn’t go there and escape my life. I went there and saw my life writ large on the big screen!
Toward the end of the movie, Jim Carrey is walking in the middle of the street, calling out to God to show him the light. He falls down on his knees and a light comes upon him. Unfortunately it was the light from a Mack truck! He gets hit. He goes to heaven. Morgan Freeman says, “You can’t kneel down in the middle of the street, son, and expect to live to tell about it.” Then Morgan Freeman says to Jim Carrey, “You have a divine spark. You have the ability to make people laugh.” He said, “I know. I created you.” Jim Carrey says, “Quit bragging.” Now of course I know that Morgan Freeman wasn’t speaking to Bill Freeman. I know that was just a coincidence. That wasn’t providence. I’m becoming more and more intellectual. Of course I know.
Jim Carrey says he basically wants to see other people through God’s eyes. I tell you all that to tell you this. A month or two ago, I thought of this person I used to know, somebody I didn’t really like. I thought to myself, I wonder what that person I don’t really like is up to. I go to his Facebook page, hoping that he’s miserable. I go to his Facebook page and I see his face and I gasp, because I see him for the first time, if you will, with God’s eyes, with compassionate eyes. I don’t see him as a person I dislike. I see him as my brother.
Now I don’t tell you that story so you’ll think, “Wow, our new minister is really open-minded and compassionate and caring.” I tell you this story to say that I don’t do that enough. I don’t see people enough as my brothers and sisters. Sometimes I see people as people I don’t like. And I don’t like that about myself and I need to change.
When I was in seminary, now remember I went to Western Theological Seminary in Holland, where I was probably the most liberal person. Everyone else was pretty orthodox and very Christian. I had a classmate who was about my age, maybe a couple of years younger, and he had a son in the military. This was at the height of the Iraq war. Even though I was opposed to the Iraq war, every once in a while I would walk up to my classmate, and I’d give him a big hug and I’d say, “How’s your son doing?” Then one day I overheard my classmate talking to another classmate about me. I’m not sure if he wanted me to overhear this or what, but he said, “You know, I disagree with him about everything – politically, theologically, philosophically – I disagree with him completely. I should hate this guy. But every now and then he walks up to me and gives me a great big hug and says, ‘How’s your son doing?’ So I like him.”
Now I didn’t tell you that story so you’ll think, “Wow, our minister is so open-minded, so caring and compassionate. He goes up to people he disagrees with – politically and theologically and philosophically – and he gives them a big hug and he wonders about their lives.” No, I tell you that story because I don’t do that enough. There are people I disagree with - philosophically, theologically, and especially politically – whom I don’t see as my brother and my sister and I need to.
About a month ago, probably all of us saw on TV or heard on NPR about how the government was basically melting down in Washington. Democrats and Republicans were at each other’s throats over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling. It was just ugly. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. You didn’t want to look at it. But then, like a flower growing in the desert, in comes Gabbie Giffords to the floor of the House. Everything stops and everybody hugs Gabbie Giffords and everybody says hi to Gabbie Giffords, the woman who eight months before had been shot in the head, and yet, there she was, having the courage of her conviction, doing the right thing. Now I’m not saying she did the right thing because she voted for raising the debt limit; that’s not what I mean. She did the right thing by coming to Congress, by doing her duty, by accepting her responsibility and doing it. I hope that Gabbie Giffords inspires me to always do the right thing.
I don’t have any obstacles to overcome really. I’m not walking around having been shot in the head. She was able to do the right thing and I hope she inspires me to do the right thing because one day, sooner rather than later I hope, I’d like to look in the mirror and see that I’ve made those changes, look in the mirror and see, I hope, a better man and a better minister.
I was at Schuler Books in Grand Rapids a few weeks ago and I was in the Theology/Philosophy/Religion part, and I noticed there was a book, “Christianity for Dummies” and another book, “World Religions for Dummies.” But I didn’t see a book called “Unitarian Universalism for Dummies.” ‘Cause it’s not! I later went on Amazon.com and looked. It doesn’t exist. So I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I’m beginning my seventh year of ministry. While I’m grateful that I’m the minister of two churches, I have to admit that I’m not where I thought I’d be in my ministry. I thought I’d be kind of like Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Jesus by now. I thought I’d leave my house and dozens, if not hundreds of people would walk with me through town. There would be scribes writing down every profound thing I said. And everything I said would be profound. But that hasn’t happened.
I thought at the very least I wouldn’t be preaching sermons anymore. I’d just come to a place like this, maybe sit in a lotus position, and I’d just spew wise words, just off the top of my head. I didn’t think I’d still be agonizing over sermons. You know, this was an important sermon for me; I had to preach it in two different places. So I would wake up in the middle of the night and write things down on a little Post-It note. I can’t imagine Jesus doing that. I can’t imagine Jesus saying, “Oh, I’ve got that big Sermon on the Mount coming up.” I can’t imagine Jesus getting a big hammer and chisel and stone tablet and saying, (acts out chiseling on stone) “Oh, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ that’ll preach! ‘Love your enemies,’ that’ll preach! ‘Forgive and you’ll be forgiven,’ that’ll preach!” So I’m not where I thought I’d be in my ministry. And I have to confess, I’m not where I thought I’d be in my personal life.
I thought by now I’d be perfect. Or at least close to perfect. I thought everything I did would be just right. And everything I said would be just right. No. About a month or two ago, I’m driving down the road, a four-lane divided road, and I’m in the left lane of two lanes. I stop at a stop light. After a few minutes the light turns green. I take off. After two or three seconds, the person behind me is honking her horn! What’s the matter? She’s doing one of these, (motions with hand to hurry up) like I’m not going fast enough. So I speed up a little bit, but apparently not fast enough, so she passes me on the right, pulls in front of me and then she slows down. So I get angry and get on the horn myself (makes a sound like a car horn blaring) for about a hundred yards. What am I thinking? What am I doing? I’m a minister! I’m not supposed to be about road rage. I’m supposed to be about street serenity.
A week or two ago, I went to the Women’s Equality Day Dinner in Muskegon, co-sponsored by the National Organization for Women, the local chapter, and my new church. Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation is a co-sponsor of this dinner. It was a wonderful dinner and a wonderful program. But before dinner we were sitting around our table, talking politics, and somebody mentions one of the presidential candidates. I won’t say her name, but I think she’s the only female running. Somebody says, “She believes women should be submissive to their husbands.” So I, Mr. Comedian, Mr. Funny Guy, Mr. Hilarity, say, “You know, that’s one point I agree with her on.” Stunned silence. I think I heard a couple of gasps. Everybody turns and looks at me and I say, “I’m just kidding!” But what was I thinking? Why did I say something like that? I mean, talk about inappropriate humor. You guys were there; you know I did this. Why don’t I learn? I’m not where I should be. I have some changes to make in my life.
The first time I ever heard Michael Jackson, he was part of the Jackson Five. I was in my teens and he was probably eight or nine. Back then I was a big fan of Casey Kasem. So I probably heard Michael Jackson for the first time on American Top Forty. (Imitating Casey Kasem’s voice) “This is Casey Kasem. Time now for that new smash by Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five.”
That’s not the song I want to talk about. The song I want to talk about came much later in Michael Jackson’s life. I think it’s one of the greatest songs he ever did. It’s a song called “Man in the Mirror.” Michael Jackson sings, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways. No message could have been any clearer. If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that – change.” Michael Jackson was speaking to me. He’s still speaking to me.
If you came here today and thought I was going to preach to you, I’m sorry to disappoint you. If you came here today thinking I was going to preach to the choir, I’m sorry to disappoint you. If you came here today thinking I was going to preach to the whole congregation, I’m sorry to disappoint you. This sermon is just for me. I’m the one who needs to hear this. In fact, probably most of my sermons are for me. I need to hear them more than anybody else does. I need to change that man in the mirror. I need to say the things I should say and do the things I should do. I don’t always.
Jesus. He’s somebody some people don’t like to hear about. I think it’s because they think the preacher’s going to talk about Jesus the God. Jesus, one third of the Holy Trinity. But that’s not how I talk about Jesus. I think that Jesus was who he said he was, he was the Son of Man, the Son of Adam, just like all of us are sons and daughters of Adam, metaphorically speaking. So when I talk about Jesus, I’m talking about Jesus the man, who said some profound things. One day Jesus was speaking to his disciples, who followed him a lot of the time. He said, “Don’t worry about the speck in your neighbor’s eye. Be concerned about the log in your own eye. You hypocrite! You try to take out the speck in your neighbor’s eye and yet, you ignore the log in your own.” Jesus is speaking to me. I do that all the time. I can pick out the flaw, and that’s what Jesus was talking about – don’t worry about the flaw in your neighbor before you worry about the flaw in yourself. Take care of your own flaws before you deal with somebody else’s. But I do that all the time. I can spot somebody’s flaws a mile away. My own? Mmm. Not so much. And I need to change that.
Henry David Thoreau was a brilliant writer. He wrote Walden. He was a transcendentalist. And a Unitarian – probably one of the most famous Unitarians ever. Henry David Thoreau said that if you want to change your thinking, you need to think something over and over and over again. If you want to think good, positive thoughts, think them over and over and over again. Don’t just think them once. Henry David Thoreau was speaking to me. I think a good positive thought once. Then I go back to my usual bad negative thoughts. But I need to think those good thoughts over and over and over again in order to change. In order to become the person that I need to become.
My favorite movie ever would probably not make anyone’s top ten list of the greatest movies ever. It probably wouldn’t even make my top ten list of the greatest movies ever, but it’s my favorite movie ever because it spoke to me at the time when it came out. The movie was “Bruce Almighty.” Jim Carrey played Bruce and God was played by Morgan Freeman – no relation. As far as I know. Before I tell you about the movie, in case you haven’t seen it, let me tell you a bit about my life at that point. It’s 2003, I had been a TV feature reporter – I did funny stories in the news. At that time – 2003 – I was going through a painful personal relationship and I was wondering, if God exists, does God even know that I exist? Does God care that I exist? Does God care that I’m going through all this personal pain? So one Friday night I decide that I’m just going to escape my life. I’m going to go see “Bruce Almighty,” this new comedy with Jim Carrey – I love Jim Carrey! So I go to the movies and, if you’ve never seen “Bruce Almighty,” Jim Carrey plays a TV feature reporter. He does funny stories in the news. He’s going through a painful personal relationship. And he’s wondering if God knows whether he exists, cares whether he exists. I didn’t go there and escape my life. I went there and saw my life writ large on the big screen!
Toward the end of the movie, Jim Carrey is walking in the middle of the street, calling out to God to show him the light. He falls down on his knees and a light comes upon him. Unfortunately it was the light from a Mack truck! He gets hit. He goes to heaven. Morgan Freeman says, “You can’t kneel down in the middle of the street, son, and expect to live to tell about it.” Then Morgan Freeman says to Jim Carrey, “You have a divine spark. You have the ability to make people laugh.” He said, “I know. I created you.” Jim Carrey says, “Quit bragging.” Now of course I know that Morgan Freeman wasn’t speaking to Bill Freeman. I know that was just a coincidence. That wasn’t providence. I’m becoming more and more intellectual. Of course I know.
Jim Carrey says he basically wants to see other people through God’s eyes. I tell you all that to tell you this. A month or two ago, I thought of this person I used to know, somebody I didn’t really like. I thought to myself, I wonder what that person I don’t really like is up to. I go to his Facebook page, hoping that he’s miserable. I go to his Facebook page and I see his face and I gasp, because I see him for the first time, if you will, with God’s eyes, with compassionate eyes. I don’t see him as a person I dislike. I see him as my brother.
Now I don’t tell you that story so you’ll think, “Wow, our new minister is really open-minded and compassionate and caring.” I tell you this story to say that I don’t do that enough. I don’t see people enough as my brothers and sisters. Sometimes I see people as people I don’t like. And I don’t like that about myself and I need to change.
When I was in seminary, now remember I went to Western Theological Seminary in Holland, where I was probably the most liberal person. Everyone else was pretty orthodox and very Christian. I had a classmate who was about my age, maybe a couple of years younger, and he had a son in the military. This was at the height of the Iraq war. Even though I was opposed to the Iraq war, every once in a while I would walk up to my classmate, and I’d give him a big hug and I’d say, “How’s your son doing?” Then one day I overheard my classmate talking to another classmate about me. I’m not sure if he wanted me to overhear this or what, but he said, “You know, I disagree with him about everything – politically, theologically, philosophically – I disagree with him completely. I should hate this guy. But every now and then he walks up to me and gives me a great big hug and says, ‘How’s your son doing?’ So I like him.”
Now I didn’t tell you that story so you’ll think, “Wow, our minister is so open-minded, so caring and compassionate. He goes up to people he disagrees with – politically and theologically and philosophically – and he gives them a big hug and he wonders about their lives.” No, I tell you that story because I don’t do that enough. There are people I disagree with - philosophically, theologically, and especially politically – whom I don’t see as my brother and my sister and I need to.
About a month ago, probably all of us saw on TV or heard on NPR about how the government was basically melting down in Washington. Democrats and Republicans were at each other’s throats over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling. It was just ugly. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. You didn’t want to look at it. But then, like a flower growing in the desert, in comes Gabbie Giffords to the floor of the House. Everything stops and everybody hugs Gabbie Giffords and everybody says hi to Gabbie Giffords, the woman who eight months before had been shot in the head, and yet, there she was, having the courage of her conviction, doing the right thing. Now I’m not saying she did the right thing because she voted for raising the debt limit; that’s not what I mean. She did the right thing by coming to Congress, by doing her duty, by accepting her responsibility and doing it. I hope that Gabbie Giffords inspires me to always do the right thing.
I don’t have any obstacles to overcome really. I’m not walking around having been shot in the head. She was able to do the right thing and I hope she inspires me to do the right thing because one day, sooner rather than later I hope, I’d like to look in the mirror and see that I’ve made those changes, look in the mirror and see, I hope, a better man and a better minister.
Friday, September 9, 2011
We Give Thanks For Self-Evaluation
Let us lift up our thoughts and prayers.
All that is holy, loving and true:
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that we’re not perfect.
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that we make mistakes sometimes.
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that we can learn from our mistakes.
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that we do many things right.
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that each one of us is unique.
Now and forevermore:
Let it be. So be it. And: Amen.
All that is holy, loving and true:
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that we’re not perfect.
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that we make mistakes sometimes.
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that we can learn from our mistakes.
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that we do many things right.
We give thanks for self-evaluation,
for the capacity to realize that each one of us is unique.
Now and forevermore:
Let it be. So be it. And: Amen.
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