This past summer I was having lunch in downtown Holland with a friend of mine. We were eating outside, it was a gorgeous day, a ton of people were walking by. I jokingly said to my friend, “You know, I’m not going to live forever. I was kind of hoping God would make an exception in my case, but I don’t think she will. So I look around and I ask myself, ‘How will these people carry on? How will they get along without me?’” My friend chuckled and said, “Don’t worry. They won’t even notice you’re gone. They won’t miss a beat.” Gee thanks. Of course I know that was true.
Even though many of us will probably only be remembered by those who love us (hopefully), there are people who are remembered sometimes for millennia. I’m thinking of spiritual people, prophets, teachers, whose words and wisdom are remembered for many, many years by millions and millions of people.
Henry Adams was a descendent of the famous political Adams family. His great-grandfather was John Adams, his grandfather was John Quincy Adams. He lived around the turn of the last century. To paraphrase Henry Adams, “A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops.” I can imagine, or at least I hope, all of us have had that kind of teacher, who influenced us, who influences us still. I know I had a couple of them. Probably the most influential teacher I ever had was my preaching prof in seminary.
Now you have to understand, before I went to seminary I was a TV news reporter, many, many years ago, and TV news reporters do what’s called a standup. They hold a microphone and stand up in front of a building like city hall, saying 20 seconds worth of memorized words. Well, whenever I did a standup, it would take me like 20 takes, because I couldn’t memorize even 20 seconds. Then I went to seminary and our preaching prof said that what he was going to teach us to do was to speak for 20 minutes from memory. Without notes. Without a manuscript. I thought: Good luck. But I took a preaching class every semester, and eventually somehow it happened. He taught us not to just speak from our head, but to speak from our heart. When you speak from your heart, you can memorize twenty minutes worth of words. Hopefully.
Teachers can affect us forever. As my preaching prof did. Now you also have to understand the fact that he’s not exactly bragging that he taught me because we’re from opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum. He is a conservative Trinitarian and I am a progressive Unitarian, but he taught me nonetheless.
I want to talk to you about three teachers, three prophets, who many of us still remember years, even millennia, after their deaths.
The first prophet I want to talk about said, “I have a dream that one day little black boys and little black girls will be able to hold hands with little white boys and little white girls as brothers and sisters.” Of course I’m talking about Dr. King, who said that in his famous 1963 “I have a dream” speech. Dr. King was an amazing man, as you know. He started college at the age of fifteen. He went on to get a bachelor’s degree and a divinity degree and a PhD by the age of twenty-six. Just recently I read his PhD dissertation and I was surprised by its content. He compared the theology of Henry Nelson Wieman, a Unitarian Universalist, a long time professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Paul Tillich, who I don’t believe was a Unitarian, but many Unitarians look to his theology for insight and inspiration. I was surprised by that, I guess, because I figured that Dr. King was a traditional Baptist minister. But obviously he had very liberal leanings, not just politically, but theologically as well.
As you know, Dr. King began his ministry leading the Montgomery bus boycott after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man and sit in the back of the bus. He went on to march for peace and justice and equality. He led peaceful, non-violent protests. Because of him, the voting rights and civil rights laws took effect in the 1960’s. Then on April 4, 1968, he was killed, murdered, assassinated. Why would anyone want to kill Dr. King? He was a man of peace! I think it gets back to the quote I mentioned at the beginning of this section of the sermon. “I have a dream that one day little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” Not everyone today wants that to happen. Can you imagine what it was like 50 or 60 years ago? “But Bill, we have a black President!” Yes, we do. And according to the Southern Poverty Law Center the number of death threats against Barack Obama since he took office compared to when George W. Bush left office, the number of death threats have increased 400%. So we have a ways to go to achieve Dr. King’s dream. Although they could kill his body, they could not snuff out his spirit, they could not erase his words, they could not wipe out his wisdom. His spirit, his words, his wisdom live on in many of us years later and I think will continue to live on for millennia.
The second prophet I want to tell you about said once, “I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew, and so are all of you.” Of course I am talking about Gandhi. Gandhi was an amazing man. He was born in 1869 in India. He was a Hindu, in spite of what he said. He became a lawyer and traveled to South Africa, where he began his foray into civil disobedience, peaceful protests. Dr. King said his civil disobedience, his peaceful protests, were influenced by Gandhi. Gandhi returned to India, where eventually he convinced the British government, through peaceful protest and non-violent resistance, to end their Imperial rule of India. Gandhi was the main force for India gaining their independence. On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi, he was called Mahatma or “great soul”, Mahatma Gandhi went for a walk and as usually happened there was a throng of people around him. One man bowed before him, then pulled out a gun and shot and killed Gandhi. Gandhi’s last words were, “Oh, God!” Why would anyone want to kill Gandhi? He was a man of peace! Again, it gets back to the quote I mentioned at the beginning of this section of the sermon. “I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew, and so are all of you.” Some people today would hate that phrase, would hate that idea, would reject being interfaith. Can you imagine what it was like eighty years ago? Although they killed his body, they could not snuff out his spirit, they could not erase his words, they could not wipe out his wisdom. His spirit, his words, his wisdom live on in many of us all these years later and I think they will continue to live on for millennia.
The third prophet I want to talk about has said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, ‘Love your enemies!’” Of course I am talking about Jesus. Jesus was an amazing man. He was a Jew. At the age of thirty he became a rabbi, a teacher. His ministry lasted one to three years, depending on which gospel you read. I think it would have lasted three years because if it had been just a year he would have been just another flash in the pan. He was followed by at least a dozen disciples they say, but I’ve got to believe dozens and dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, followed Jesus because of his words. Not because he walked on water, not because he changed water into wine; I’m a “Jefferson’s Bible” kind of guy, I don’t believe those things actually happened. But he spoke truth to power, he spoke peace to those who wanted war, I do believe he showed us how to live – that you don’t stone to death an adulterous woman even though the Scriptures say to.
At the age of thirty-three they say, a couple thousand years ago, commemorated this past Friday, Jesus was killed, crucified. Why would anyone want to kill Jesus? He was a man of peace! Again, it gets back to the quote I mentioned earlier. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, ‘Love your enemies.’” What he was doing there was wrong on so many levels to the religious extremists of his day. It is written in the Hebrew scriptures, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemies.” But I say to love your enemies. Who does this Jesus think that he is, changing the scriptures, saying to ignore what the scriptures say and instead follow what he says. The religious leaders of his day, I think their heads were ready to explode. It would be as if today someone said, “It is written in the Christian New Testament, that homosexuals are an abomination, but I say to you, they deserve dignity, and worth, and respect and love.” There would be religious extremists of today who would say, “Who do you think you are saying that? Saying that what you believe is better, is more important, is more right than what is written in the Christian scriptures.” That’s why they killed him. They didn’t kill Jesus for anyone’s sin. They killed Jesus because of their own sin, because they wanted to cling to the sin of hate instead of love, they wanted to cling to the sin of war rather than follow peace, they wanted to cling to the sin of revenge rather than follow Jesus’ words of forgiveness. So they killed him. But even though they snuffed out his body, they could not kill his spirit. They could not erase his words, they could not wipe out his wisdom. So Jesus’ spirit and words and wisdom live on in many of us. And will for millenia. You can’t keep a good prophet down.
Matthew Fox, not the actor from “Lost,” but Matthew Fox the theologian who was kicked out of the Catholic Church for his beliefs, wrote a book several years ago called “Original Blessing.” It was a counterpoint to those who believe in Original Sin. The first chapter of Genesis says that God created humankind and God blessed them. Original Blessing. Not Original Sin. I think we are all born into Original Innocence, not Original Sin, and I think that even evangelical Christians go along with that because they speak about innocent human life in the womb. It seems to me that human life can’t be innocent in the womb one moment and the next moment be born into sin. It doesn’t make any sense. It seems to me that we each are born with original innocence, that every baby born is not a tangle of sin but a bundle of joy and we each keep that original innocence, that spark, that sacred spirit within us for all time. It can never be diminished, it can never be decimated, it can never be dispirited. No matter what anybody does to us, no matter what any of us does, by mistake, we always have within us original innocence, that spark, that sacred spirit always within us.
The other day I turned on the radio and the song came on that I thought was perfect for this sermon. It was either coincidence or providence that that happened. I’ll let you decide. The song is called “Perfect” by Pink. At least that’s what I thought it was called until I looked up the lyrics and found out the song I heard was the G-rated version. There is a PG-13 version that may be more popular with young people. I’m not going to quote that one. I’m going to quote the G-rated one. Pink sings, “Pretty, pretty please, don’t you ever, ever feel like you’re less than, less than perfect. Pretty, pretty please, if you ever ever feel like you’re nothing, you are perfect to me.” You are, we all are perfect. Born perfect in original innocence, born with a spark of life, born with a sacred spirit that lives on until the end of our days.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Confessions Of A Secular Humorist
I used to be a stand-up comic. At least for a few weekends, many years ago, at the old Comedy Den in Grand Rapids. I MC’d there, which means I introduced the real comics. And I told a few jokes and did a few impressions. Unfortunately, the impressions I did were of people who are either long since retired or are no longer with us. “This is Casey Kasem. Time now for our long-distance dedication.” “Hello, Americans! This is Paul Harvey. Stand by for news!” “This is Walter Cronkite. And that’s the way it is.” “I’m Andy Rooney. Why is it I talk like this? I wonder about that.” I learned a lot about comedy watching those real-life comics do their acts. I saw their acts on Thursday night; two shows on Friday night and two more shows on Saturday night. It’s hard not to learn about telling jokes and telling funny stories and timing after watching all that. Whatever I know about comedy I learned back then.
When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a stand-up comic. But then when I did it those few weekends, at the old Comedy Den, I thought: You know, this isn’t for me. I don’t want to stand up in front of people and...tell...jokes. I don’t want to have to learn new stuff every week...and...memorize...it. Hmmm…? [Laughter]
The Buddha said, “Happiness is never decreased by being shared.” It’s the first day of April. April Fool’s Day. Let’s share a little happiness. Let’s laugh a little. Maybe tell a few jokes, and maybe learn something along the way.
Nobody knows exactly where April Fool’s Day came from. The best guess is that, in the 1500s, they changed the calendar to what we have today. Before that, the first day of the new year was considered to be April 1st. Then they changed it to January 1st. But some silly folks insisted on celebrating the new year on April 1st. They were called “April Fools.”
As the old lyrics say, “Everybody plays the fool sometimes.” In the immortal words of Chuckles the Clown, for those who remember the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.” Now we probably don’t want a little seltzer down our pants, but we do all want to laugh. Not that anybody here worries about sin, but I want to assure you that it’s not a sin to laugh in church.
Mel Brooks, in his movie, “The History of the World, Part I,” gave us an idea of where stand-up comedy came from. He said it was from hundreds of thousands of years ago, during the cave man days. He showed a cave man comedian, talking to other cave men in a cave, telling jokes. But nobody was laughing. He couldn’t get anybody to laugh. Then a dinosaur stuck his head in the cave and grabbed the cave man comedian between his teeth and yanked him out. People thought that was a hoot! They thought it was hilarious! Of course it wasn’t so funny to the cave man comedian.
Eckhardt Tolle says, “Don’t seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it because seeking is the antithesis of happiness.” So let us not seek happiness but let us try to be happy. Or at least try not being unhappy.
When I was a kid, my favorite comedian was Red Skelton. I loved Red Skelton. He had different characters: Clem Kadiddlehopper, the seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliff. Red Skelton was funny. He said there was a guy in prison, about to be electrocuted, sitting in the electric chair. The warden said, “Do you have a last wish?” The man said, “Yeah, I wish you was sitting on my lap.”
Milton Berle was one of pioneers of comedy on TV. Milton Berle said, “Laughter is an instant vacation.” We all need a laughter instant vacation now and then. We all need to laugh.
When I was a little older, my favorite TV comedian was Flip Wilson. I loved Flip Wilson. Flip Wilson had characters, like Reverend Leroy. Reverend Leroy was the minister of the Church of What’s Happenin’ Now. Flip Wilson said he didn’t care about what happened a long time ago, he didn’t care about what was going to happen in the future, he only cared about “What’s happenin’ now!” (You don’t know how close I came to suggesting that Interfaith Congregation in Holland be called The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now!) Flip Wilson didn’t really tell jokes, he told funny stories. He told about a kid who sold lemonade, put a lemonade stand in his front yard and put up a sign that said, “Lemonade: All You Can Drink for a Dime.” A guy stopped, said “I’d like a glass of lemonade,” and the kid said, “That’ll be a dime.” The guy paid the dime. The kid gave him a glass of lemonade. The guy drank it and said, “That’s very good. I’d like another glass. The kid said, “That’ll be another dime.” The guy said, “Wait a minute. Your sign says, ‘Lemonade: All You Can Drink for a Dime.’” The kid said, “That’s right. But you had a glass, didn’t you?” The guy said, “Yeah.” The kid said, “Well, that’s all you can drink for a dime.”
There’s a difference between humor and comedy. Humor is comedy with a college education. Comedian Jay Leno says, “The difference between men and women is that men think The Three Stooges are funny, and women think they’re idiots.” Probably true. I saw a trailer for a new movie coming out about The Three Stooges. Based on the trailer, I think that at best the movie is going to be about comedy rather than humor. (But I’ll go see it anyway.)
A stand-up comic said, “I specialize in self-deprecating humor, but I’m not very good at it.” I don’t think I’m very good at self-deprecating humor, but I don’t like laughing at other people. I look back at my life and think of all the stupid things I’ve done, and notice how kind of funny they are. When I was a kid, I had a stand by my house, too, but I didn’t sell lemonade, I sold rocks! Now they were pretty rocks, I’d get them down the street, brush them off, polish them up and sell them. That was the plan, anyway, but nobody bought any. My family says that I was just a pioneer of the pet rock craze a few years later. Right.
While I try to just pick on myself, I do see funny things about other people do. My sister for example. My sister is a literalist, biblically and otherwise. She and her daughter, my niece, went to the beach along Lake Michigan. They came upon a sign that said, “Senior Pictures.” My sister said, “Oh, isn’t that nice! Some elderly folks must be here today, they’re going to get their picture taken before they go to Florida for the winter.” My niece said, “Uh, Mom, high school senior pictures?” We still laugh about that. Even my sister laughs about it now.
Whenever you see somebody claiming to be a Christian comedian, be very skeptical. You see, usually “Christian comedian” is an oxymoron. They might be funny to a church lady or something, but not to the general public. Although, several years ago I was channel surfing on a Saturday afternoon and I came across somebody who called himself a Christian comedian. And I’m like, “Yeah, right.” But really, this guy was funny. His name was Mark Lowry. I think he sings also, he sings with the Gaither group. I was cracking up listening to this guy. He said, “People ask me what I think about something. I tell them I’m a Lowry; I don’t know what I think about something until I hear the words coming out of my mouth.” I know how he feels. Sometimes I don’t know how I feel about something until I hear the words coming out of my mouth on a Sunday morning.
We all need to laugh. Whenever we can, because life is too short not to laugh. Norman Cousins, the editor of the old “Saturday Review,” was in the hospital. His doctors told him he didn’t have long to live, he had some kind of rare disease and he was going to die soon. So he checked himself out of the hospital and into a hotel. In the hotel, he spent days and days and days watching old comedy movies and funny TV shows. Then he went back to his doctors and they told him he was cured. He had cured himself with laughter. He laughed himself to life. “Reader’s Digest” says laughter is the best medicine and Norman Cousins proved that.
I remember a couple years ago watching the funeral of Tim Russert on TV. Tim Russert, the host of “Meet the Press.” “If it’s Sunday, it’s “Meet the Press.” People told touching and humorous stories about Tim Russert. One of those people was Mike Barnicle. Mike Barnicle was a writer for a newspaper in Boston and now he’s a commentator on MSNBC. Mike Barnnicle said that the Russerts and the Barnicles were close friends, so they decided to vacation together. They drove out West together, but in separate vehicles. As the Barnicles and the Russerts were driving out West, they got stopped by the police. The policeman pulled them over. Mike Barnacle and Tim Russert got out of their cars. The officer said, “Did you realize you were speeding? I’m going to have to give you both a ticket.” The trooper opened his ticket book and there was only one ticket left. “I’ve only got one ticket left; I’m not sure what to do.” Tim Russert pointed at Mike Barnicle and said, “Well, Officer, I was only following him, if that helps.” We all need a laugh, even at a funeral, sometimes especially at a funeral. We need that release; it helps us cope with tragedy. We all need to laugh sometimes.
An old English proverb says, “What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.” We all need our soul cleansed by laughter, as often as possible.
The other night I was watching comedian David Letterman. He was talking to Rachel Maddow from MSNBC. They were talking, of course, about current events. During the conversation, David Letterman said, “It’s 2012. Why are we still shooting and killing other people. Why hasn’t that worn off?” Sometimes comedians can break through our defenses and make us see things that maybe we wouldn’t see if it were someone else. If a politician had said that, I think it would have gone in one ear and out the other, with possibly a few exceptions. But David Letterman was able to punch through to us. (Maybe that’s why they call it a punch line.)
Lao Tzu, author of many spiritual sayings, said, “Happiness has nothing to do with wealth or status. It’s a matter of harmony.” On this April Fools Day, may we all live in harmony through happiness. May we all giggle and chuckle, not just this day, but every day, as often as possible. May we all laugh ourselves to life.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Seven Steps To Living Fully Alive
In a previous life I was a radio talk show host. One day I got to interview one of my favorite people, Coleman McCarthy. Some of you may not know who he was, or is, but he was a columnist for the Washington Post and a syndicated columnist. He also started a peace center in Washington, D.C. We got to talking about Gandhi, and I think I wanted to impress him with my knowledge of Gandhi because, you know, I’d seen the movie [laughter] and I also had read Gandhi’s autobiography. So I mentioned that to him and he said ,”Well that’s good, Bill. Gandhi wrote about 80 books, so you only have 79 more to go!” When I think of someone who lived their life fully alive, I think of Gandhi. Gandhi was a very spiritual person. He knew how to live fully alive as we all need to do.
St. Irenaeus was an early church leader, a second century bishop. He said once, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” But how can we live fully alive, how can we achieve that? I think there are at least seven steps to living life fully alive: being aware, being thankful, being loving, being kind, being curious, being creative and being playful. Now each one of those seven steps probably deserves their own sermon or their own chapter of a book, or their own book. So I’m going to give you the Reader’s Digest version of those seven steps and maybe in a year or so I’ll preach a seven part series on each of the seven steps to living fully alive.
When I was seven or eight years old, I was playing in my aunt’s backyard and I climbed a tree. I was clinging to a branch and it broke! I fell to the ground. Gravity! For the first time I was aware of my breath, because the wind was knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. To be aware begins, I think, with being aware of our breath. Although it may be the most difficult of the seven steps, to be aware, because to be aware you have to be aware that you’re not aware and how can you be aware that you’re not aware unless you’re aware? It’s kind of a circular thought. But I think being aware, achieving awareness, takes maybe a spark of enlightenment or an epiphany or an “ah hah” moment. But once we are aware, I think we can enhance our awareness with our breath. Aristotle said, “The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness,”and I think we can enhance our awareness through meditation. If that’s a difficult concept for some of you to wrap your mind around, consider it relaxation, just sitting and being for awhile. Don’t do something, just sit there. Sit down and shut up, but also sit down and wake up. I think the first step to living fully alive is being aware.
Sometimes I’ll go for what I call a Thanksgiving walk. I’ll walk and I’ll see the blue sky, as I did yesterday, and I’ll give thanks. I’ll hear birds singing and I’ll give thanks. I’ll feel a cool breeze on a warm day and I’ll give thanks. I’ll smell flowers and I’ll give thanks. When I’m done with my walk I’ll go home and drink a cold glass of water and I’ll give thanks. We all need to be thankful, grateful. Meister Eckhart was a spiritual mystic, a German theologian in the Middle Ages. He was, for a time, considered a heretic, so he’s my kind of guy! Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you ever said in your whole life is ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.” We all need to be thankful, we all need to have “an attitude of gratitude,” as they say. We have to be aware of what we’re thankful for, but we all need to give thanks more often than once a year on a Thursday in November. I think we should be thankful every day. I think the second step to living fully alive is being thankful.
One of my favorite political satirists lived basically before I was even born – Will Rogers. It was Will Rogers who said, “I belong to no organized political party; I’m a Democrat.” It was Will Rogers who also said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” I want to broaden and deepen that a little bit and say we all need to strive to say that we never met a man, woman or child we didn’t love. We all need to love everyone. Now it’s easy to love someone you just met. It’s more difficult to love someone you’ve gotten to know. They may be filled with flaws and imperfections different than your own and so you may not like them. I know it’s not easy to love everyone, but I think it’s something we need to strive for. Whenever I do a wedding, I often quote one of the most profound pieces of literature ever written: “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Our love for others should never end. I think the third step to living fully alive is being loving.
We were visited recently by a couple of window salesmen. Thankfully my wife answered the door. They sat in the living room and I, thankfully, had to go do some things. When I came back about an hour later, they were still there; she was still listening to them and they were there for another half hour or so. My wife is very kind. I think in a lot of ways she personifies kindness. She was too kind to say to these guys, “We’re not going to buy these windows,” after just a few minutes and so she listened to them. Maybe it wasn’t kind to lead them on [laughter], but she was too kind to shuffle them out the door. We all need to be kind, maybe not spending an hour and a half with window salesmen, but to do something nice for someone. We can all do something nice for someone. If we can’t be kind, we can at least not be cruel. If we can’t be helpful, we can at least not be hurtful to someone. We all need to be kind. Plato said, “Be kind because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” We are all fighting a hard battle of life and we need to be kind to each other. If we can be kind to people whom we know, then maybe we can be compassionate with someone we don’t know. And then maybe we can work for justice for people we’ll never even meet. We all need to be kind. The fourth step to living life fully alive is being kind.
I spoke on my radio show the other day (I have a one day a week radio show now, instead of a five day a week one) and I spoke about the difference between ignorance and deliberate ignorance. We are all ignorant to a certain extent. We all don’t know everything. We don’t even know what we don’t know. But there are people who are deliberately ignorant. I’ve got to believe that somebody who thinks the earth is only 6,000 years old knows in their heart of hearts, their mind of minds, that scientists are more accurate than that when they say that the earth is billions of years old. These people are just being deliberately ignorant, perhaps for religious reasons, to follow whatever scripture they believe, but I think some people are sometimes deliberately ignorant. All the rest of us are curious. We want to know the truth. Mortimer Adler, the long-time editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica – he was one of the founders of the Great Books Program – Mortimer Adler said, “We all crave knowledge, the way our body craves food.” We all want to know (or most of us do anyway), we want to know the answers to life’s big questions. We want to know the meaning of life. What is our purpose in being? I think the fifth step to living fully alive is being curious.
What must it have been like, to be Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creating Apple computers? A second important question that follows that is, in order to be creative, do you have to be named Steve? [Laughter] We can all be creative. I think we should all be creative. There are those who say that when we are creative is when we are like God, the Creator. (I don’t know that anyone here would say that, but there are those who do say that.) We all need to be creative. Bill Moyers is a creative genius. He introduced us to Joseph Campbell and the power of myth. Bill Moyers says, “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.” We can all pierce the mundane to find the marvelous. Now, maybe we can be creative at home or at work. In cleaning the house we can be creative, or in mowing the lawn we can be creative, or we can be creative in making widgets. But if we can’t be creative at work, maybe we can be creative away from work – we can paint or write or garden. Somehow I think we can all be creative. I think the sixth step in living fully alive is being creative.
I get a kick out of watching my wife’s grandsons (well now they’re also my grandsons) just play. They are eight and ten years old and they can take an old piece of wood and find a way to play with that. They can find fun in anything and when they giggle and laugh about it, it’s such a delight! We all need to take time to play, to carve out some time in life to play. We can learn so much from children in doing that. It doesn’t have to be play with a purpose, it can be purposeless, meaningless fun, play. Maybe it’s playing cards with friends or going bowling or golfing or shooting pool or swimming in a pool, whatever it is that brings us joy, we should do that and have fun. George Bernard Shaw, the great playwright, said, “We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” He should know because he lived to be 94 and his plays were often playful, humorous. He always could find ways to play. I think the seventh step in living fully alive is being playful. Deepak Chopra is another person I think of when I think of people who are living fully alive, living a spiritual life. When I talk about living a spiritual life, I mean someone who’s living fully alive. Someone who recognizes that we are spiritual beings in bodies, not bodily beings with spirits. We are not fallen creatures, we are rising spirits. I was surprised about a year ago to see Deepak Chopra in an ad for a computer or Microsoft or something. But what he said in that ad was profound and you don’t usually hear something profound in a television ad, but this was. He said, “I am a human being. Not a human doing.” Each one of us is a human being, not a human doing. But if it’s possible, I think we can better ourselves as human beings by living fully alive, by being aware, being thankful, being loving, being kind, being curious, being creative, being playful. It’s like a song by Tom Cochran that has been sung by different groups, Rascall Flats, I think did it: “Life is a highway. I wanna ride it all night long.” My hope for each one of us is that we ride life like a highway: all night long, all day long, for all time.
St. Irenaeus was an early church leader, a second century bishop. He said once, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” But how can we live fully alive, how can we achieve that? I think there are at least seven steps to living life fully alive: being aware, being thankful, being loving, being kind, being curious, being creative and being playful. Now each one of those seven steps probably deserves their own sermon or their own chapter of a book, or their own book. So I’m going to give you the Reader’s Digest version of those seven steps and maybe in a year or so I’ll preach a seven part series on each of the seven steps to living fully alive.
When I was seven or eight years old, I was playing in my aunt’s backyard and I climbed a tree. I was clinging to a branch and it broke! I fell to the ground. Gravity! For the first time I was aware of my breath, because the wind was knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. To be aware begins, I think, with being aware of our breath. Although it may be the most difficult of the seven steps, to be aware, because to be aware you have to be aware that you’re not aware and how can you be aware that you’re not aware unless you’re aware? It’s kind of a circular thought. But I think being aware, achieving awareness, takes maybe a spark of enlightenment or an epiphany or an “ah hah” moment. But once we are aware, I think we can enhance our awareness with our breath. Aristotle said, “The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness,”and I think we can enhance our awareness through meditation. If that’s a difficult concept for some of you to wrap your mind around, consider it relaxation, just sitting and being for awhile. Don’t do something, just sit there. Sit down and shut up, but also sit down and wake up. I think the first step to living fully alive is being aware.
Sometimes I’ll go for what I call a Thanksgiving walk. I’ll walk and I’ll see the blue sky, as I did yesterday, and I’ll give thanks. I’ll hear birds singing and I’ll give thanks. I’ll feel a cool breeze on a warm day and I’ll give thanks. I’ll smell flowers and I’ll give thanks. When I’m done with my walk I’ll go home and drink a cold glass of water and I’ll give thanks. We all need to be thankful, grateful. Meister Eckhart was a spiritual mystic, a German theologian in the Middle Ages. He was, for a time, considered a heretic, so he’s my kind of guy! Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you ever said in your whole life is ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.” We all need to be thankful, we all need to have “an attitude of gratitude,” as they say. We have to be aware of what we’re thankful for, but we all need to give thanks more often than once a year on a Thursday in November. I think we should be thankful every day. I think the second step to living fully alive is being thankful.
One of my favorite political satirists lived basically before I was even born – Will Rogers. It was Will Rogers who said, “I belong to no organized political party; I’m a Democrat.” It was Will Rogers who also said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” I want to broaden and deepen that a little bit and say we all need to strive to say that we never met a man, woman or child we didn’t love. We all need to love everyone. Now it’s easy to love someone you just met. It’s more difficult to love someone you’ve gotten to know. They may be filled with flaws and imperfections different than your own and so you may not like them. I know it’s not easy to love everyone, but I think it’s something we need to strive for. Whenever I do a wedding, I often quote one of the most profound pieces of literature ever written: “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Our love for others should never end. I think the third step to living fully alive is being loving.
We were visited recently by a couple of window salesmen. Thankfully my wife answered the door. They sat in the living room and I, thankfully, had to go do some things. When I came back about an hour later, they were still there; she was still listening to them and they were there for another half hour or so. My wife is very kind. I think in a lot of ways she personifies kindness. She was too kind to say to these guys, “We’re not going to buy these windows,” after just a few minutes and so she listened to them. Maybe it wasn’t kind to lead them on [laughter], but she was too kind to shuffle them out the door. We all need to be kind, maybe not spending an hour and a half with window salesmen, but to do something nice for someone. We can all do something nice for someone. If we can’t be kind, we can at least not be cruel. If we can’t be helpful, we can at least not be hurtful to someone. We all need to be kind. Plato said, “Be kind because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” We are all fighting a hard battle of life and we need to be kind to each other. If we can be kind to people whom we know, then maybe we can be compassionate with someone we don’t know. And then maybe we can work for justice for people we’ll never even meet. We all need to be kind. The fourth step to living life fully alive is being kind.
I spoke on my radio show the other day (I have a one day a week radio show now, instead of a five day a week one) and I spoke about the difference between ignorance and deliberate ignorance. We are all ignorant to a certain extent. We all don’t know everything. We don’t even know what we don’t know. But there are people who are deliberately ignorant. I’ve got to believe that somebody who thinks the earth is only 6,000 years old knows in their heart of hearts, their mind of minds, that scientists are more accurate than that when they say that the earth is billions of years old. These people are just being deliberately ignorant, perhaps for religious reasons, to follow whatever scripture they believe, but I think some people are sometimes deliberately ignorant. All the rest of us are curious. We want to know the truth. Mortimer Adler, the long-time editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica – he was one of the founders of the Great Books Program – Mortimer Adler said, “We all crave knowledge, the way our body craves food.” We all want to know (or most of us do anyway), we want to know the answers to life’s big questions. We want to know the meaning of life. What is our purpose in being? I think the fifth step to living fully alive is being curious.
What must it have been like, to be Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creating Apple computers? A second important question that follows that is, in order to be creative, do you have to be named Steve? [Laughter] We can all be creative. I think we should all be creative. There are those who say that when we are creative is when we are like God, the Creator. (I don’t know that anyone here would say that, but there are those who do say that.) We all need to be creative. Bill Moyers is a creative genius. He introduced us to Joseph Campbell and the power of myth. Bill Moyers says, “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.” We can all pierce the mundane to find the marvelous. Now, maybe we can be creative at home or at work. In cleaning the house we can be creative, or in mowing the lawn we can be creative, or we can be creative in making widgets. But if we can’t be creative at work, maybe we can be creative away from work – we can paint or write or garden. Somehow I think we can all be creative. I think the sixth step in living fully alive is being creative.
I get a kick out of watching my wife’s grandsons (well now they’re also my grandsons) just play. They are eight and ten years old and they can take an old piece of wood and find a way to play with that. They can find fun in anything and when they giggle and laugh about it, it’s such a delight! We all need to take time to play, to carve out some time in life to play. We can learn so much from children in doing that. It doesn’t have to be play with a purpose, it can be purposeless, meaningless fun, play. Maybe it’s playing cards with friends or going bowling or golfing or shooting pool or swimming in a pool, whatever it is that brings us joy, we should do that and have fun. George Bernard Shaw, the great playwright, said, “We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” He should know because he lived to be 94 and his plays were often playful, humorous. He always could find ways to play. I think the seventh step in living fully alive is being playful. Deepak Chopra is another person I think of when I think of people who are living fully alive, living a spiritual life. When I talk about living a spiritual life, I mean someone who’s living fully alive. Someone who recognizes that we are spiritual beings in bodies, not bodily beings with spirits. We are not fallen creatures, we are rising spirits. I was surprised about a year ago to see Deepak Chopra in an ad for a computer or Microsoft or something. But what he said in that ad was profound and you don’t usually hear something profound in a television ad, but this was. He said, “I am a human being. Not a human doing.” Each one of us is a human being, not a human doing. But if it’s possible, I think we can better ourselves as human beings by living fully alive, by being aware, being thankful, being loving, being kind, being curious, being creative, being playful. It’s like a song by Tom Cochran that has been sung by different groups, Rascall Flats, I think did it: “Life is a highway. I wanna ride it all night long.” My hope for each one of us is that we ride life like a highway: all night long, all day long, for all time.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
The Difference Between Politics And Justice
A couple weeks ago, I stood outside a hotel in Muskegon and held a sign. The sign said, “Jesus was a Liberal.” Inside the hotel was a presidential candidate. [Rick Santorum.] He’s a well-known conservative. The media said over 500 people came to hear him. I would guess that 99.9% of them are conservatives. When many of them walked past my sign that I was carrying, many of them said, “Oh, no. That’s not right. Jesus was a conservative.” I said, “I don’t think so, because Jesus said to feed the hungry and house the homeless and care for the poor.” I said, “If Jesus was a conservative, I don’t think he would have said that.” Not that conservatives don’t feed the hungry or house the homeless or care for the poor, but those are more traditionally liberal values. One woman told me, “Go to hell!” Now I try to look on the positive side of anything and try to think the best of everyone, so I assumed that she was telling me that this particular presidential candidate was going to make a campaign stop in Hell, Michigan and she was inviting me to go there with my sign.
I didn’t see the presidential candidate go into the hotel, because he went in the back and I was in the front. But by the end of his talk, I realized that and stood at the back where his SUV was. He got inside his SUV on the passenger side and took off and looked over and saw, I hope, my sign and kind of smiled and waved.
I didn’t do that to try to antagonize those hundreds of people going in. I was exercising justice. I was trying to speak truth to power, which I think is one definition of justice and has been for thousands of years.
Moses went to Pharaoh in Egypt and said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh said, “No.” This happened repeatedly and Pharaoh continued to say, “No,” even when, according to the story, God sent many calamities and catastrophes to fall on Egypt. Finally Moses said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh said, “No,” and according to the story, God killed the first born male of every family in Egypt. Then Pharaoh said, “Go!” And the Israelites left Egypt to search for their own land, to worship as they saw fit.
Now I tell you that story, not to make you think that I believe that it’s true. I think it was a mythological story, a story told to show the Israelites that they are God’s chosen people. And I don’t tell you that story in the event that you’re pro-choice, so that whenever you encounter an anti-choice person and they say God is pro-life, you could tell that story and say, “Well, God killed the first-born male of all the Egyptians and that doesn’t sound pro-life to me.” That’s not why I tell you this story. I tell you this story because Moses was engaging in justice, Moses was speaking truth to power, Moses was bringing justice to the powerless. Pharaoh’s response was a political one. He didn’t want to free the slaves. He didn’t want to free the Israelites. In part, I think, because of the negative economic impact on Egypt.
Justice has a long history and it means different things to different people. To some people, justice means what it means in Texas – hang ‘em high. That’s not how I use the word justice. I use the word justice the way religious people of different faiths use it. The way non-religious people use it. It’s used in a sacred way and a secular way to mean speaking truth to power, to mean caring for the poor, to mean housing the homeless and feeding the hungry. The prophets in the Hebrew scriptures talked about justice – taking care of the widow and the orphan. All that’s what I mean by justice.
Scholars say that the entire Bible can be summed up in one verse. The Hebrew scriptures and the Christian New Testament can be summed up in one verse, found in the book of the prophet Micah. Micah 6:8: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does God require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God.”
To many people that just means individual action. Justice means what one person does for another person. I’d go along with that, except that I believe in American Exceptionalism. I think that American Exceptionalism doesn’t just mean that we can invade any country we want to whenever we want. I think American Exceptionalism means that we care about everybody in our country. Because I believe in American Exceptionalism. And because of three pesky words in the Preamble to the Constitution: We the People. If only that said, “I the dictator,” or “We the special committee of folks,” but it says “We the people.” To me that means that “We the people” is the government. That collectively we elect the representatives to the House and Senate and the White House. So I don’t think the justice that was talked about by the prophets of old or by secular groups or by other faith traditions is just an individual thing. Especially here in America. I think it’s more expansive than that. It’s “We the people.” Perhaps that means we the people are going to act prophetically and do justice for all of our citizens. If that was just an individual thing or if churches could just take care of justice in America, there wouldn’t be 49 million people without health insurance. There wouldn’t be 45,000 people who die every year because they don’t have health insurance. To stop that kind of thing, it can’t just be fixed by individuals or churches or synagogues. It has to be “We the people” in the form of our government.
I am proud and pleased to be the minister of two different churches that both care about justice. Interfaith Congregation in Holland serves breakfast to needy people every Saturday morning. Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Muskegon serves supper through Mission for Area People, the MAP Supper House, and sponsors a food truck periodically to provide for people in need. Those actions are part of justice, but I think they are different than justice. They’re charitable acts, they’re compassionate acts, they’re random acts of kindness or planned acts of kindness. And charity, I think, is different than justice. Justice tries to get at the root cause of poverty. Charity helps those who are in poverty, but justice tries to get at the root cause of poverty. Charity deals with the symptoms, justice tries to get at the disease.
Archbishop Dom Helder Camarra of Brazil said once, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.” Doing justice, speaking out for justice, trying to get at the root cause of poverty, might cause you to be called a communist or a socialist or what, in some people’s minds, is even worse – a liberal! But we need to get at the root cause of the systems that cause things like poverty in order to eliminate poverty. Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you,” but that was not a directive. He was not saying make sure you always have the poor with you. He knew that we would always have the poor with us because we’d always have greedy people and whenever you have greedy people, you have needy people.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was the personification of justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. started his ministry in 1954, basically with the Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks, who was the secretary for the NAACP, refused, as you know, to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery to a white man and refused to sit in the back of the bus, which started the Montgomery bus boycott which went on for months and months. Finally, justice prevailed and discrimination was no longer allowed on Montgomery buses. Dr. King was the leader of that as he was the leader of many demands for justice – civil rights, voting rights, equal rights. He led marches, as you know, that got some people killed and eventually got him killed.
Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” He knew it couldn’t happen overnight. Barack Obama, before he became president, said, “Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. It bends towards justice, but here is the thing: it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice.”
The interesting thing is that justice oftentimes needs politicians to become reality. Justice needed Dr. King to demand civil rights and voting rights, but it took Congress to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and for the President to sign them. A lot of times justice requires politics to become reality.
A few years ago when I and several other ministers went to Washington, D.C., we lobbied Congress to pass a hate crimes bill, the Matthew Shepard Bill. But we could only do so much and then the politicians, the elected people, “We the people,” had to act on justice for it to become reality, and they did. They passed the Hate Crimes Bill and the President signed it.
A couple of years ago, I and other ministers went to Lansing to lobby legislators to pass the anti-bullying bill. It took a lot of demands for justice, but it finally happened when enough politicians did justice and passed the anti-bullying bill and the governor signed it into law.
I was thinking the other day about what ministry means, what does it mean to be a minister? I think it’s in the name. The best that a minister can hope for, I think, is to create a “mini stir” among us. [Groans.] Forgive me for that. But that’s what we did in Lansing and in Washington. Justice needs politicians, oftentimes, to become reality.
This past week we were working on a new booklet for this church to describe all the aspects of this church for first-time visitors and long-time regulars. We did that. As we did that, we said we should make a brochure, so I took different parts of that booklet and made a brochure. A brochure is too small to put the entire booklet in it, but I thought I took the highlights of what this church is all about, what we’re like on Sunday: the music program, the education program, our theology (or lack of same). Tuesday night I went to bed thinking, “It’s perfect. I wouldn’t change a word of it. The brochure says exactly who we are.” Then I woke up on Wednesday and thought, “I forgot to include justice in the brochure.” A church without justice isn’t a church. A church that isn’t welcoming of everyone, a church that doesn’t help everyone they can, a church that doesn’t speak out against discrimination, a church that doesn’t speak for justice for all isn’t a church. People would just come in and sit down and listen to a lecture and go have coffee afterwards and that’s all it would be. A church without justice isn’t a church. A church without justice is just a country club.
Now you can look at this next example as coincidence or providence, I’ll leave that up to you. That happened on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday evening I went to the Holland City Council, as I have been known to do, and first I told them about my little adventure with the brochure and how I realized that a church without justice isn’t a church, it’s just a country club. Then I asked them again, as I often do, to add the words “sexual orientation and gender identity” to their already existing anti-discrimination ordinances, to be fair to lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender people. Then I said, “It seems to me that a city without justice isn’t a city. A city that doesn’t welcome everyone isn’t a city. A city that allows discrimination against anyone isn’t a city. A city that isn’t about justice for all isn’t a city. A city that isn’t about justice for all is just a country club.” And the five people who voted no in the past stood up and said, “Bill, that was brilliant! We’re going to change our vote!” No, they didn’t. My words, as usual, fell on deaf ears.
But I’m not going to quit speaking those words. I’m not going to quit speaking truth to power. I just can’t. I have to go before the city council whenever I can and say, “Be about justice for all.” Because if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t feel like I was a minister. I would feel like I was the leader of a country club. We all, or many of us, have that need to speak out for justice whenever we can, to work for justice whenever we can. We all, or many of us, have to do our part to bend that arc of the moral universe towards justice.
I didn’t see the presidential candidate go into the hotel, because he went in the back and I was in the front. But by the end of his talk, I realized that and stood at the back where his SUV was. He got inside his SUV on the passenger side and took off and looked over and saw, I hope, my sign and kind of smiled and waved.
I didn’t do that to try to antagonize those hundreds of people going in. I was exercising justice. I was trying to speak truth to power, which I think is one definition of justice and has been for thousands of years.
Moses went to Pharaoh in Egypt and said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh said, “No.” This happened repeatedly and Pharaoh continued to say, “No,” even when, according to the story, God sent many calamities and catastrophes to fall on Egypt. Finally Moses said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh said, “No,” and according to the story, God killed the first born male of every family in Egypt. Then Pharaoh said, “Go!” And the Israelites left Egypt to search for their own land, to worship as they saw fit.
Now I tell you that story, not to make you think that I believe that it’s true. I think it was a mythological story, a story told to show the Israelites that they are God’s chosen people. And I don’t tell you that story in the event that you’re pro-choice, so that whenever you encounter an anti-choice person and they say God is pro-life, you could tell that story and say, “Well, God killed the first-born male of all the Egyptians and that doesn’t sound pro-life to me.” That’s not why I tell you this story. I tell you this story because Moses was engaging in justice, Moses was speaking truth to power, Moses was bringing justice to the powerless. Pharaoh’s response was a political one. He didn’t want to free the slaves. He didn’t want to free the Israelites. In part, I think, because of the negative economic impact on Egypt.
Justice has a long history and it means different things to different people. To some people, justice means what it means in Texas – hang ‘em high. That’s not how I use the word justice. I use the word justice the way religious people of different faiths use it. The way non-religious people use it. It’s used in a sacred way and a secular way to mean speaking truth to power, to mean caring for the poor, to mean housing the homeless and feeding the hungry. The prophets in the Hebrew scriptures talked about justice – taking care of the widow and the orphan. All that’s what I mean by justice.
Scholars say that the entire Bible can be summed up in one verse. The Hebrew scriptures and the Christian New Testament can be summed up in one verse, found in the book of the prophet Micah. Micah 6:8: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does God require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God.”
To many people that just means individual action. Justice means what one person does for another person. I’d go along with that, except that I believe in American Exceptionalism. I think that American Exceptionalism doesn’t just mean that we can invade any country we want to whenever we want. I think American Exceptionalism means that we care about everybody in our country. Because I believe in American Exceptionalism. And because of three pesky words in the Preamble to the Constitution: We the People. If only that said, “I the dictator,” or “We the special committee of folks,” but it says “We the people.” To me that means that “We the people” is the government. That collectively we elect the representatives to the House and Senate and the White House. So I don’t think the justice that was talked about by the prophets of old or by secular groups or by other faith traditions is just an individual thing. Especially here in America. I think it’s more expansive than that. It’s “We the people.” Perhaps that means we the people are going to act prophetically and do justice for all of our citizens. If that was just an individual thing or if churches could just take care of justice in America, there wouldn’t be 49 million people without health insurance. There wouldn’t be 45,000 people who die every year because they don’t have health insurance. To stop that kind of thing, it can’t just be fixed by individuals or churches or synagogues. It has to be “We the people” in the form of our government.
I am proud and pleased to be the minister of two different churches that both care about justice. Interfaith Congregation in Holland serves breakfast to needy people every Saturday morning. Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Muskegon serves supper through Mission for Area People, the MAP Supper House, and sponsors a food truck periodically to provide for people in need. Those actions are part of justice, but I think they are different than justice. They’re charitable acts, they’re compassionate acts, they’re random acts of kindness or planned acts of kindness. And charity, I think, is different than justice. Justice tries to get at the root cause of poverty. Charity helps those who are in poverty, but justice tries to get at the root cause of poverty. Charity deals with the symptoms, justice tries to get at the disease.
Archbishop Dom Helder Camarra of Brazil said once, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.” Doing justice, speaking out for justice, trying to get at the root cause of poverty, might cause you to be called a communist or a socialist or what, in some people’s minds, is even worse – a liberal! But we need to get at the root cause of the systems that cause things like poverty in order to eliminate poverty. Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you,” but that was not a directive. He was not saying make sure you always have the poor with you. He knew that we would always have the poor with us because we’d always have greedy people and whenever you have greedy people, you have needy people.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was the personification of justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. started his ministry in 1954, basically with the Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks, who was the secretary for the NAACP, refused, as you know, to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery to a white man and refused to sit in the back of the bus, which started the Montgomery bus boycott which went on for months and months. Finally, justice prevailed and discrimination was no longer allowed on Montgomery buses. Dr. King was the leader of that as he was the leader of many demands for justice – civil rights, voting rights, equal rights. He led marches, as you know, that got some people killed and eventually got him killed.
Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” He knew it couldn’t happen overnight. Barack Obama, before he became president, said, “Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. It bends towards justice, but here is the thing: it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice.”
The interesting thing is that justice oftentimes needs politicians to become reality. Justice needed Dr. King to demand civil rights and voting rights, but it took Congress to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and for the President to sign them. A lot of times justice requires politics to become reality.
A few years ago when I and several other ministers went to Washington, D.C., we lobbied Congress to pass a hate crimes bill, the Matthew Shepard Bill. But we could only do so much and then the politicians, the elected people, “We the people,” had to act on justice for it to become reality, and they did. They passed the Hate Crimes Bill and the President signed it.
A couple of years ago, I and other ministers went to Lansing to lobby legislators to pass the anti-bullying bill. It took a lot of demands for justice, but it finally happened when enough politicians did justice and passed the anti-bullying bill and the governor signed it into law.
I was thinking the other day about what ministry means, what does it mean to be a minister? I think it’s in the name. The best that a minister can hope for, I think, is to create a “mini stir” among us. [Groans.] Forgive me for that. But that’s what we did in Lansing and in Washington. Justice needs politicians, oftentimes, to become reality.
This past week we were working on a new booklet for this church to describe all the aspects of this church for first-time visitors and long-time regulars. We did that. As we did that, we said we should make a brochure, so I took different parts of that booklet and made a brochure. A brochure is too small to put the entire booklet in it, but I thought I took the highlights of what this church is all about, what we’re like on Sunday: the music program, the education program, our theology (or lack of same). Tuesday night I went to bed thinking, “It’s perfect. I wouldn’t change a word of it. The brochure says exactly who we are.” Then I woke up on Wednesday and thought, “I forgot to include justice in the brochure.” A church without justice isn’t a church. A church that isn’t welcoming of everyone, a church that doesn’t help everyone they can, a church that doesn’t speak out against discrimination, a church that doesn’t speak for justice for all isn’t a church. People would just come in and sit down and listen to a lecture and go have coffee afterwards and that’s all it would be. A church without justice isn’t a church. A church without justice is just a country club.
Now you can look at this next example as coincidence or providence, I’ll leave that up to you. That happened on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday evening I went to the Holland City Council, as I have been known to do, and first I told them about my little adventure with the brochure and how I realized that a church without justice isn’t a church, it’s just a country club. Then I asked them again, as I often do, to add the words “sexual orientation and gender identity” to their already existing anti-discrimination ordinances, to be fair to lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender people. Then I said, “It seems to me that a city without justice isn’t a city. A city that doesn’t welcome everyone isn’t a city. A city that allows discrimination against anyone isn’t a city. A city that isn’t about justice for all isn’t a city. A city that isn’t about justice for all is just a country club.” And the five people who voted no in the past stood up and said, “Bill, that was brilliant! We’re going to change our vote!” No, they didn’t. My words, as usual, fell on deaf ears.
But I’m not going to quit speaking those words. I’m not going to quit speaking truth to power. I just can’t. I have to go before the city council whenever I can and say, “Be about justice for all.” Because if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t feel like I was a minister. I would feel like I was the leader of a country club. We all, or many of us, have that need to speak out for justice whenever we can, to work for justice whenever we can. We all, or many of us, have to do our part to bend that arc of the moral universe towards justice.
I'm A Naturalist, Christian, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist
When I first started in television many years ago as a local news reporter, after a couple of days on the job, my news director called me into his office. He wondered if there were any religious reasons why I couldn’t work weekends. I said, “Well, you know, my mom is Jewish so I go to synagogue with her on Friday nights; and my father is Seventh Day Adventist, so I go to church with him on Saturday; and I’m a traditional Christian and I go to church on Sunday.” I laughed and he laughed and I said that I was just kidding and that no, there’s no religious reason why I couldn’t work weekends, because at that time I wasn’t religious. Or was I? I mean, I think we’re all spiritual people, whether we go to church or not.
When I was three, four, five years old, before I remember going to church, I saw the sacred in everything. I didn’t know to call it the sacred, but I saw the divine in everything; I saw the holy in everything. Later I learned that I was a Naturalist. I saw God, if you will, in all of nature. Later, I read folks like Henry Nelson Wieman - Henry Nelson Wieman was a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School - he was a Naturalist. Henry Nelson Wieman said, “Nothing can transform [humankind] unless it operates in human life.” It’s all part of nature. I think every child starts out as a natural-born Naturalist. Every child is filled with wonder and awe, as I was as a child, probably as you were as a child. So I was and I think I still remain, in part, a Naturalist.
On Sunday mornings when I was like, six, seven, eight years old, I would run to my grandma’s garage. My grandma lived next to us, and I would get into her bulky old blue Chevrolet Bel Air and I would get behind the wheel and pretend I was driving. She thought that was okay, as long as I didn’t press on the gas, because then I would flood the engine. So I would pretend to drive and she would come out in her blue flowered dress and her white hat and drive us to Sunday School and church. We went to this little chapel. They’ve since expanded to seat hundreds of people. The chapel sat probably seventy-five, eighty people. It was big to me, because I was little at the time.
I learned Christianity at that church. Not the dogmatic, doctrinal, creedal codes, you know, the rules and regulations of Christianity. But the kinds of hands-on Christianity, where I made a candle for my mom out of what looked like honeycomb and we rolled it up and put a wick in it and it was a candle. We had an Easter egg hunt there. We would play musical chairs and duck, duck, goose in the basement. And in church we would hear the words of Jesus, like “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and I probably also recited things like the Apostles Creed, but that never made much sense to me back then. And I haven’t progressed much since then, because it still doesn’t make sense to me.
I never have seen Jesus as God. Even when I went to a Christian seminary. I asked what I thought was a fellow liberal student, “You all don’t really believe Jesus is God, do you?” And he said, “Well, yes, we do,” and the implication was that I shouldn’t ask that again, because I might induce doubt in somebody’s mind. So I was a Christian, I think, because of that little church. And I remember my minister at the time, who is still a part-time minister there - he’s like ninety years old - he invited a Catholic priest to preach on Thanksgiving. I think he did that every Thanksgiving. That planted a seed in me about ecumenism and interfaith. So it was at that church where I learned about Christianity and I think that a part of that is still with me today.
When I was in college I remember hearing about transcendental meditation, TM. I heard that you needed to pay to go to a TM meeting and a guru would tell you a secret word or phrase that would help you to meditate. While I was tempted to do that, I think that part of me thought it was a scam, so I didn’t do it. Years later I would learn about meditation, mainly through Buddhism. I would learn that you didn’t really need a secret word or phrase, you could use “love” or “peace on earth” and just repeat that to yourself and meditate on it just by clearing your mind of all thoughts. I think people have a difficulty or anxiety over meditation. They think it’s this weird something. But meditation is really just relaxation. It’s “Don’t just do something; sit there,” for ten minutes or twenty minutes or two hours.
I remember reading a Mortimer Adler book. Mortimer Adler was one of the founders of The Great Books Program, a philosopher who said, “We all need to be idle sometime during the day.” He called it “idling” like a car does. Just sit there not moving any place while you meditate. That led to my study of Buddhism. I read several books about Buddhism by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama; about happiness, compassion and ethics.
One book in particular which was very profound for me was “The Four Noble Truths.” The first noble truth almost made me stop reading the book because, as you may know, the first noble truth is “Life is suffering.” I thought: Had the Dalai Lama never heard of Norman Vincent Peale and “The Power of Positive Thinking”? Life is not suffering, as long as you’re thinking happy thoughts. Of course, the more I thought about what he wrote, the Dalai Lama not Norman Vincent Peale, the more I realized he was right. The Dalai Lama said that even little babies are suffering. A newborn baby is suffering because it has just come from the warmth of its mother’s womb into real life and one day, like all of us, even though it’s hard to think about, a little bitty baby will die. The Dalai Lama said that an eighteen year-old young woman and an eighteen year-old young man, even if the young woman is gorgeous and the young man is handsome and they have the world by the tail, the Dalai Lama said that they, too, are suffering because one day when they’re not eighteen, maybe when they’re eighty, they’ll have lost their looks, long ago. That hasn’t happened to me yet. [Laughter.] But I’m sure it’s happened to others. Anyway, we all suffer, we all will one day die, but we can look beyond that, we can detach ourselves from our worldly possessions, the Dalai Lama says, and we can help other sentient beings to have happiness in their lives.
I was so convinced by what the Dalai Lama said about kind of losing yourself and helping others, that I thought about going to the University of Michigan and saying I want to donate my organs. I imagined that somebody behind the counter would say, “OK, fine, just fill out this card and you’ll have a notation on your driver’s license that you want to donate your organs.” And I’d say, “No, no, you don’t understand, I want to do that now. I want to give up my heart and lungs and liver and kidneys and corneas so that somebody else can live.” I wanted to do this selfless act, but I figured if I did that, they would either send me to the psych ward or put me in a cell next to Jack Kevorkian for trying to commit assisted suicide. Well that feeling passed in a day or two and I realized that I do want to live, but I also want to help others.
The Buddha said, “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.” And that’s what I hope to bring to the world is peace and love and justice and equality. That’s why I still consider myself, in part, a Buddhist and I think I always will.
I think the first time I visited Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids many years ago we sang a hymn called, “This is My Song,” and it blew me away. It’s found in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal. Fountain Street Church isn’t Unitarian Universalist per se, but it’s had Unitarian Universalist ministers for the past 60 years or so. That song, “This is my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for lands afar and mine,” blew my mind. I thought: What do they mean by “God of all the nations”? You mean God isn’t just the God of America? It goes on to talk about how in other countries people have blue skies, just like we do and they love their homeland, just like we do. And I thought: Now wait a minute, you mean not everyone in the world wants to emigrate to America and become United States citizens and achieve happiness? At the time I thought that’s what everyone wanted to do. But, of course, I realized that wasn’t true. And that, I think, began my path to Unitarian Universalism.
As some of you know, a couple of years ago I joined the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship, the church without walls. I joined on Christmas Day, 2010. A couple months ago, I joined Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation, because I’m now on a path to hopefully being a Unitarian Universalist minister. I appreciate the Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes. The principals of seeing the dignity and worth of every human being, respecting all faiths, pursuing truth and meaning and purpose in our lives. It all makes so much sense to me, as I’m sure it does to you. One of the most famous Unitarians was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” So many people, so many churches, so many religious faiths, believe all you have to do is accept the truth of their faith at the age of 11 and then you don’t have to think about it again. But what I appreciate about Unitarian Universalism is we’re always thinking about the purpose of our lives and the meaning of our lives and we’re always on the spiritual journey that isn’t a destination, but is a journey. That’s why, while a part of me still is a Naturalist, a part of me still is a Christian - in a following Jesus who said, “love your neighbor” kind of way - and part of me still is a Buddhist, now I see myself as a Unitarian Universalist, which I believe embraces all those faiths.
Lately we’ve been seeing on the news all the death and destruction from all the tornados that have torn through much of the heartland. Dozens of people have been injured or died. But as usually happens with these kinds of tragedies, neighbor helps neighbor. Nobody goes to their neighbor and says, “Well you know, I’m a Naturalist and if you’re a Naturalist, too, I’ll help you.” Or “You know, I’m a Christian and if you’re a Christian, too, then I’ll help you.” Or “I’m a Buddhist and if you’re a Buddhist, too, I’ll help you.” Or “I’m a Unitarian Universalist and if you’re a Unitarian Universalist too then I’ll help you.” Nobody does that. In times of tragedy, we all see the common humanity of each one of us and we do whatever we can to help. And isn’t that what every group, whether secular or sacred does and teaches? That we help our neighbor, whoever they are, because we see the common humanity in each one of us, whether we consider ourselves Naturalists or Christians or Buddhists or Unitarian Universalists. Or none of the above. Or all of the above.
When I was three, four, five years old, before I remember going to church, I saw the sacred in everything. I didn’t know to call it the sacred, but I saw the divine in everything; I saw the holy in everything. Later I learned that I was a Naturalist. I saw God, if you will, in all of nature. Later, I read folks like Henry Nelson Wieman - Henry Nelson Wieman was a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School - he was a Naturalist. Henry Nelson Wieman said, “Nothing can transform [humankind] unless it operates in human life.” It’s all part of nature. I think every child starts out as a natural-born Naturalist. Every child is filled with wonder and awe, as I was as a child, probably as you were as a child. So I was and I think I still remain, in part, a Naturalist.
On Sunday mornings when I was like, six, seven, eight years old, I would run to my grandma’s garage. My grandma lived next to us, and I would get into her bulky old blue Chevrolet Bel Air and I would get behind the wheel and pretend I was driving. She thought that was okay, as long as I didn’t press on the gas, because then I would flood the engine. So I would pretend to drive and she would come out in her blue flowered dress and her white hat and drive us to Sunday School and church. We went to this little chapel. They’ve since expanded to seat hundreds of people. The chapel sat probably seventy-five, eighty people. It was big to me, because I was little at the time.
I learned Christianity at that church. Not the dogmatic, doctrinal, creedal codes, you know, the rules and regulations of Christianity. But the kinds of hands-on Christianity, where I made a candle for my mom out of what looked like honeycomb and we rolled it up and put a wick in it and it was a candle. We had an Easter egg hunt there. We would play musical chairs and duck, duck, goose in the basement. And in church we would hear the words of Jesus, like “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and I probably also recited things like the Apostles Creed, but that never made much sense to me back then. And I haven’t progressed much since then, because it still doesn’t make sense to me.
I never have seen Jesus as God. Even when I went to a Christian seminary. I asked what I thought was a fellow liberal student, “You all don’t really believe Jesus is God, do you?” And he said, “Well, yes, we do,” and the implication was that I shouldn’t ask that again, because I might induce doubt in somebody’s mind. So I was a Christian, I think, because of that little church. And I remember my minister at the time, who is still a part-time minister there - he’s like ninety years old - he invited a Catholic priest to preach on Thanksgiving. I think he did that every Thanksgiving. That planted a seed in me about ecumenism and interfaith. So it was at that church where I learned about Christianity and I think that a part of that is still with me today.
When I was in college I remember hearing about transcendental meditation, TM. I heard that you needed to pay to go to a TM meeting and a guru would tell you a secret word or phrase that would help you to meditate. While I was tempted to do that, I think that part of me thought it was a scam, so I didn’t do it. Years later I would learn about meditation, mainly through Buddhism. I would learn that you didn’t really need a secret word or phrase, you could use “love” or “peace on earth” and just repeat that to yourself and meditate on it just by clearing your mind of all thoughts. I think people have a difficulty or anxiety over meditation. They think it’s this weird something. But meditation is really just relaxation. It’s “Don’t just do something; sit there,” for ten minutes or twenty minutes or two hours.
I remember reading a Mortimer Adler book. Mortimer Adler was one of the founders of The Great Books Program, a philosopher who said, “We all need to be idle sometime during the day.” He called it “idling” like a car does. Just sit there not moving any place while you meditate. That led to my study of Buddhism. I read several books about Buddhism by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama; about happiness, compassion and ethics.
One book in particular which was very profound for me was “The Four Noble Truths.” The first noble truth almost made me stop reading the book because, as you may know, the first noble truth is “Life is suffering.” I thought: Had the Dalai Lama never heard of Norman Vincent Peale and “The Power of Positive Thinking”? Life is not suffering, as long as you’re thinking happy thoughts. Of course, the more I thought about what he wrote, the Dalai Lama not Norman Vincent Peale, the more I realized he was right. The Dalai Lama said that even little babies are suffering. A newborn baby is suffering because it has just come from the warmth of its mother’s womb into real life and one day, like all of us, even though it’s hard to think about, a little bitty baby will die. The Dalai Lama said that an eighteen year-old young woman and an eighteen year-old young man, even if the young woman is gorgeous and the young man is handsome and they have the world by the tail, the Dalai Lama said that they, too, are suffering because one day when they’re not eighteen, maybe when they’re eighty, they’ll have lost their looks, long ago. That hasn’t happened to me yet. [Laughter.] But I’m sure it’s happened to others. Anyway, we all suffer, we all will one day die, but we can look beyond that, we can detach ourselves from our worldly possessions, the Dalai Lama says, and we can help other sentient beings to have happiness in their lives.
I was so convinced by what the Dalai Lama said about kind of losing yourself and helping others, that I thought about going to the University of Michigan and saying I want to donate my organs. I imagined that somebody behind the counter would say, “OK, fine, just fill out this card and you’ll have a notation on your driver’s license that you want to donate your organs.” And I’d say, “No, no, you don’t understand, I want to do that now. I want to give up my heart and lungs and liver and kidneys and corneas so that somebody else can live.” I wanted to do this selfless act, but I figured if I did that, they would either send me to the psych ward or put me in a cell next to Jack Kevorkian for trying to commit assisted suicide. Well that feeling passed in a day or two and I realized that I do want to live, but I also want to help others.
The Buddha said, “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.” And that’s what I hope to bring to the world is peace and love and justice and equality. That’s why I still consider myself, in part, a Buddhist and I think I always will.
I think the first time I visited Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids many years ago we sang a hymn called, “This is My Song,” and it blew me away. It’s found in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal. Fountain Street Church isn’t Unitarian Universalist per se, but it’s had Unitarian Universalist ministers for the past 60 years or so. That song, “This is my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for lands afar and mine,” blew my mind. I thought: What do they mean by “God of all the nations”? You mean God isn’t just the God of America? It goes on to talk about how in other countries people have blue skies, just like we do and they love their homeland, just like we do. And I thought: Now wait a minute, you mean not everyone in the world wants to emigrate to America and become United States citizens and achieve happiness? At the time I thought that’s what everyone wanted to do. But, of course, I realized that wasn’t true. And that, I think, began my path to Unitarian Universalism.
As some of you know, a couple of years ago I joined the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship, the church without walls. I joined on Christmas Day, 2010. A couple months ago, I joined Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation, because I’m now on a path to hopefully being a Unitarian Universalist minister. I appreciate the Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes. The principals of seeing the dignity and worth of every human being, respecting all faiths, pursuing truth and meaning and purpose in our lives. It all makes so much sense to me, as I’m sure it does to you. One of the most famous Unitarians was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” So many people, so many churches, so many religious faiths, believe all you have to do is accept the truth of their faith at the age of 11 and then you don’t have to think about it again. But what I appreciate about Unitarian Universalism is we’re always thinking about the purpose of our lives and the meaning of our lives and we’re always on the spiritual journey that isn’t a destination, but is a journey. That’s why, while a part of me still is a Naturalist, a part of me still is a Christian - in a following Jesus who said, “love your neighbor” kind of way - and part of me still is a Buddhist, now I see myself as a Unitarian Universalist, which I believe embraces all those faiths.
Lately we’ve been seeing on the news all the death and destruction from all the tornados that have torn through much of the heartland. Dozens of people have been injured or died. But as usually happens with these kinds of tragedies, neighbor helps neighbor. Nobody goes to their neighbor and says, “Well you know, I’m a Naturalist and if you’re a Naturalist, too, I’ll help you.” Or “You know, I’m a Christian and if you’re a Christian, too, then I’ll help you.” Or “I’m a Buddhist and if you’re a Buddhist, too, I’ll help you.” Or “I’m a Unitarian Universalist and if you’re a Unitarian Universalist too then I’ll help you.” Nobody does that. In times of tragedy, we all see the common humanity of each one of us and we do whatever we can to help. And isn’t that what every group, whether secular or sacred does and teaches? That we help our neighbor, whoever they are, because we see the common humanity in each one of us, whether we consider ourselves Naturalists or Christians or Buddhists or Unitarian Universalists. Or none of the above. Or all of the above.
Whitney Houston's Spirit Lives On
A few days ago, Kathleen and I were in the car, singing along to a song. The song was by Alan Jackson, accompanied by Jimmy Buffett, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” Pour me something tall and strong, make it a Hurricane before I go insane. It’s only half past twelve, but I don’t care. It’s five o’clock somewhere. After the song was finished, my wife said, “That song doesn’t make any sense. A guy goes to lunch, to a bar, and drinks his lunch away and then blows off the rest of work and drinks the rest of the day and all night.” She said, “That song doesn’t make any sense.” I said, “It’s country music, it doesn’t have to make sense.” I said a few years ago, Carrie Underwood sang a song, “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” about a woman turning her life over to Jesus. Then Carrie Underwood sang a song about taking a Louisville slugger to her cheating boyfriend’s car. It’s country music. It doesn’t have to make sense.
I’m glad my wife and I had that discussion because I like to begin my sermons with a story or a joke or something to lighten the mood, but I wondered what I could do to start off with a joke or a humorous story for this sermon.
Last Sunday when we were driving home from church, we were singing along to another song. A Whitney Houston song. The DJ played it, he said, because he wanted to pay tribute to Whitney Houston, who died the day before. As I was singing the song, tears came to my eyes and I wondered why. I mean, I didn’t know Whitney Houston personally. I liked her music, but I like a lot of music. Then I sent out an email to parishioners, saying that I was going to change what I was talking about today and I was going to preach a sermon entitled, “Whitney Houston’s Spirit Lives On.” A couple of people wrote me and asked, “Why are you doing this? Why do a sermon about Whitney Houston?” And I wasn’t sure. Why would I do a sermon about Whitney Houston? It’s not because she was a glamorous superstar, was it?
Several years ago, back in 1997, Princess Diana died in a car crash. There was a huge funeral service for her in London. All of the network anchors went and covered it. People wondered, “Why are you doing that? It’s because she’s a glamorous superstar.” They said, “Oh, no, no, no. It’s not that. It’s because of her humanitarian efforts.” People were skeptical, but the anchors stuck to their guns. That’s why they were there. Then, less than a week later, perhaps proving that if God exists, God has a sense of humor, Mother Teresa died. Not that that’s humorous, but then the network anchors who had gone to Princess Diana’s funeral because “she was such a humanitarian,” had to go to Calcutta in the middle of summer in the heat and humidity and cover Mother Teresa’s funeral because, obviously she was at least as much of a humanitarian as Princess Diana. So am I talking about Whitney Houston because she’s a glamorous superstar?
I remember years ago hearing her song on the radio: “The Greatest Love of All.” Whitney Houston sings The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. I thought at the time, “Man, that’s arrogant and egotistical and self-centered, isn’t it? Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all?” Then I remembered the words of a rabbi from a couple thousand years ago. Someone asked him, “What is the greatest commandment?” and he said, “To love God with all your heart, strength, soul and mind, that is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.” And I thought, well, actually that’s three commandments, isn’t it? Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. I think that rabbi knew something that Whitney Houston knew: that before you can love God and before you can love your neighbor, you need to love yourself, not in an egotistical, self-centered, arrogant way, but in an accepting way. You need to love yourself, warts and all, flaws and all. You have to accept the fact that you’re not perfect, that you have shortcomings, but still you have to love yourself and then you can go on to love your neighbor and to love God (if God exists). I think that’s part of the reason why I wanted to preach about Whitney Houston, because the lyrics of that song alone could warrant a sermon all by themselves.
Whitney Houston, as you probably know, unless you’ve been living in a cave this past week, was born in Newark, New Jersey 48 years ago. She, like many African American singers, got her start in church, singing in the choir, singing solos beginning at age 11. Perhaps it’s not surprising that she was quite a wonderful singer, even at that age. Her cousin is Dionne Warwick, her mother was a singer, so maybe it isn’t so surprising that within about a decade she would be a superstar.
Whenever I do a funeral, I say we want to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of the person who’s died. I don’t dwell on somebody’s shortcomings, because we all make mistakes in our lives. I’ve done a funeral for a man who was an alcoholic for much of his life, but I didn’t dwell on that because he was also a man who brought love into the world, who was loved by many people; that’s what I focused on. Whitney Houston was human like the rest of us. She made mistakes. She had a rough life in a lot of ways, even though she was a superstar. I think, as one of her songs says, I’m every woman, I think she’s every woman, she’s every human that doesn’t always live an idyllic life.
When I first heard about her death – that she was found in a bathtub, that there were prescription drugs and alcohol nearby, I wondered whether she had committed suicide. I don’t think we know the answer to that yet. She did have a mixture of prescription drugs in her system, but I don’t want to judge, certainly, but whenever I think of a suicide, I think of one of the phrases that I loathe, usually said by perky people, who mean well, but are oblivious: “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” Really? Doesn’t suicide demonstrate that God gives some people more than they can handle? I would say that to these perky people, but I think their heads would explode. And then usually, the same perky people say that if you commit suicide, then you immediately go to hell. Really? If God is a God of Love, a God of Compassion and Understanding, first of all I don’t think God would allow hell to exist, but if God is a god of love and compassion and understanding and mercy and forgiveness, why would God send a suicide victim, who’s already lived hell on earth, why would God send a suicide victim to hell? It seems to me that if God were a God of love and mercy and compassion and understanding, God would welcome a suicide victim into heaven with open arms, with loving arms.
This week has been kind of bookended by the Grammies on Sunday and Whitney Houston’s funeral yesterday. The Grammies were a tribute to her and yesterday the commentators said that America, meaning white America I guess, got a glimpse of the black church, a three hour and forty-five minute glimpse of the black church. I watched it all.
I agree with Stevie Wonder, who said at the Grammy Awards last Sunday, “Whitney, we know you’re in heaven.” I have no doubt that if heaven exists, if God exists, Whitney Houston is there, like every person. I think that’s part of the reason why I wanted to preach a sermon about Whitney Houston, because I think that her life demonstrates a truth for all of us, that we all end up in heaven, if heaven exists.
Then there are more of her lyrics that are just profound. “One Moment In Time:” I want one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me. Just those lyrics, that could have been written by a liberal Christian, a liberal religionist, a humanist, a Unitarian Universalist! I want one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me. It’s lyrics like that that convince me that Whitney Houston’s spirit lives on. It lives on in the loved ones that spoke yesterday at her funeral, her family and friends. But it lives on in other people and will continue to live on whenever we hear a Whitney Houston song on the radio, a song like that one. She will be remembered, just like all of us I think will be remembered, by those we love, by those who love us. Whitney Houston, and all of us, will live on in the hearts of those we love.
I’m glad my wife and I had that discussion because I like to begin my sermons with a story or a joke or something to lighten the mood, but I wondered what I could do to start off with a joke or a humorous story for this sermon.
Last Sunday when we were driving home from church, we were singing along to another song. A Whitney Houston song. The DJ played it, he said, because he wanted to pay tribute to Whitney Houston, who died the day before. As I was singing the song, tears came to my eyes and I wondered why. I mean, I didn’t know Whitney Houston personally. I liked her music, but I like a lot of music. Then I sent out an email to parishioners, saying that I was going to change what I was talking about today and I was going to preach a sermon entitled, “Whitney Houston’s Spirit Lives On.” A couple of people wrote me and asked, “Why are you doing this? Why do a sermon about Whitney Houston?” And I wasn’t sure. Why would I do a sermon about Whitney Houston? It’s not because she was a glamorous superstar, was it?
Several years ago, back in 1997, Princess Diana died in a car crash. There was a huge funeral service for her in London. All of the network anchors went and covered it. People wondered, “Why are you doing that? It’s because she’s a glamorous superstar.” They said, “Oh, no, no, no. It’s not that. It’s because of her humanitarian efforts.” People were skeptical, but the anchors stuck to their guns. That’s why they were there. Then, less than a week later, perhaps proving that if God exists, God has a sense of humor, Mother Teresa died. Not that that’s humorous, but then the network anchors who had gone to Princess Diana’s funeral because “she was such a humanitarian,” had to go to Calcutta in the middle of summer in the heat and humidity and cover Mother Teresa’s funeral because, obviously she was at least as much of a humanitarian as Princess Diana. So am I talking about Whitney Houston because she’s a glamorous superstar?
I remember years ago hearing her song on the radio: “The Greatest Love of All.” Whitney Houston sings The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. I thought at the time, “Man, that’s arrogant and egotistical and self-centered, isn’t it? Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all?” Then I remembered the words of a rabbi from a couple thousand years ago. Someone asked him, “What is the greatest commandment?” and he said, “To love God with all your heart, strength, soul and mind, that is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.” And I thought, well, actually that’s three commandments, isn’t it? Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. I think that rabbi knew something that Whitney Houston knew: that before you can love God and before you can love your neighbor, you need to love yourself, not in an egotistical, self-centered, arrogant way, but in an accepting way. You need to love yourself, warts and all, flaws and all. You have to accept the fact that you’re not perfect, that you have shortcomings, but still you have to love yourself and then you can go on to love your neighbor and to love God (if God exists). I think that’s part of the reason why I wanted to preach about Whitney Houston, because the lyrics of that song alone could warrant a sermon all by themselves.
Whitney Houston, as you probably know, unless you’ve been living in a cave this past week, was born in Newark, New Jersey 48 years ago. She, like many African American singers, got her start in church, singing in the choir, singing solos beginning at age 11. Perhaps it’s not surprising that she was quite a wonderful singer, even at that age. Her cousin is Dionne Warwick, her mother was a singer, so maybe it isn’t so surprising that within about a decade she would be a superstar.
Whenever I do a funeral, I say we want to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of the person who’s died. I don’t dwell on somebody’s shortcomings, because we all make mistakes in our lives. I’ve done a funeral for a man who was an alcoholic for much of his life, but I didn’t dwell on that because he was also a man who brought love into the world, who was loved by many people; that’s what I focused on. Whitney Houston was human like the rest of us. She made mistakes. She had a rough life in a lot of ways, even though she was a superstar. I think, as one of her songs says, I’m every woman, I think she’s every woman, she’s every human that doesn’t always live an idyllic life.
When I first heard about her death – that she was found in a bathtub, that there were prescription drugs and alcohol nearby, I wondered whether she had committed suicide. I don’t think we know the answer to that yet. She did have a mixture of prescription drugs in her system, but I don’t want to judge, certainly, but whenever I think of a suicide, I think of one of the phrases that I loathe, usually said by perky people, who mean well, but are oblivious: “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” Really? Doesn’t suicide demonstrate that God gives some people more than they can handle? I would say that to these perky people, but I think their heads would explode. And then usually, the same perky people say that if you commit suicide, then you immediately go to hell. Really? If God is a God of Love, a God of Compassion and Understanding, first of all I don’t think God would allow hell to exist, but if God is a god of love and compassion and understanding and mercy and forgiveness, why would God send a suicide victim, who’s already lived hell on earth, why would God send a suicide victim to hell? It seems to me that if God were a God of love and mercy and compassion and understanding, God would welcome a suicide victim into heaven with open arms, with loving arms.
This week has been kind of bookended by the Grammies on Sunday and Whitney Houston’s funeral yesterday. The Grammies were a tribute to her and yesterday the commentators said that America, meaning white America I guess, got a glimpse of the black church, a three hour and forty-five minute glimpse of the black church. I watched it all.
I agree with Stevie Wonder, who said at the Grammy Awards last Sunday, “Whitney, we know you’re in heaven.” I have no doubt that if heaven exists, if God exists, Whitney Houston is there, like every person. I think that’s part of the reason why I wanted to preach a sermon about Whitney Houston, because I think that her life demonstrates a truth for all of us, that we all end up in heaven, if heaven exists.
Then there are more of her lyrics that are just profound. “One Moment In Time:” I want one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me. Just those lyrics, that could have been written by a liberal Christian, a liberal religionist, a humanist, a Unitarian Universalist! I want one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me. It’s lyrics like that that convince me that Whitney Houston’s spirit lives on. It lives on in the loved ones that spoke yesterday at her funeral, her family and friends. But it lives on in other people and will continue to live on whenever we hear a Whitney Houston song on the radio, a song like that one. She will be remembered, just like all of us I think will be remembered, by those we love, by those who love us. Whitney Houston, and all of us, will live on in the hearts of those we love.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Love Means Always Having To Say You're Sorry
A couple years ago I bought a new cell phone. I had to because my previous cell phone was in my pocket when I went tubing down a river. Not a good idea. I told the salesman, “I just want a cell phone. I don’t want a cell phone that takes pictures. I don’t want a cell phone where you can text. I don’t want a cell phone that does the dishes. (Well, maybe that would be OK.) I just want a cell phone and that’s what I’ve had the past couple of years. Then a month or so ago, my wife said, “Let’s get iPhones.” I don’t want an iPhone. Truth be told, I’m a technophobe. I have an irrational fear of technology. I have a computer, but I use it basically as a glorified typewriter. Yes, I get my e-mail and check the internet and stuff, but basically it’s a glorified typewriter. But I said, “OK, let’s get iphones.”
I LOVE MY iPHONE!
It’s got my address book in it. It takes notes. I just talk into it and it types out the notes. Ahhh. I love my iPhone! Actually I don’t love my iPhone, because you’re not supposed to love an inanimate object. You’re supposed to like your phone. You’re supposed to like your car. You’re supposed to like your favorite TV show. So I really, really, really like my iPhone. I really, really, really like my red convertible. I really, really, really like “Modern Family.”
Love is a many-splendored thing; it’s a complicated thing though. It means many different things. Two people in love get married. Their significant other, their partner, their spouse is someone they love. The Greeks called it “eros,” or romantic love. It’s where we get the word “erotic.” That‘s one kind of love. Then there’s a love between friends: two or more people love each other in friendship. The Greeks called it “philia,” which is where we get the word “Philadelphia,” the “city of brotherly love.” That’s another kind of love. And then there’s love for the perfect stranger, or the imperfect stranger – someone we don’t even know, but we care about. Christians would call that “agape,” the love for the poor, the homeless, the hurting. That’s another form of love. Love means many different things.
The first Valentine that I remember buying, I think I was in the second grade. I had a crush on a little girl in my class. I went to the store and found a card. It had a Dutch theme. There was a wooden shoe on the card and it said, “Wooden shoe be my Valentine?” I thought that was hilarious! Unfortunately my sense of humor hasn’t progressed much over the years.
Valentine’s Day, I thought, was a Hallmark holiday, one created just to sell cards. But it’s not. It’s been going on for hundreds of years. Now Sweetest Day, that’s a Hallmark holiday, but Valentine’s Day has been around since Chaucer’s time. But we’re not completely sure who it’s named for. It’s named for St. Valentine, of course, but there were something like 14 St. Valentines. All of them martyred, killed, executed for not giving up their beliefs, so apparently having the name Valentine is not such a good thing. But what did that have to do with Valentine’s Day? What would that have to do with romantic love? I can’t think of anything. But there are a couple of stories, legends, myths surrounding St. Valentine that originated hundreds of years ago.
The first story was that the emperor at that time decreed that no young men should be allowed to marry because he wanted young men to be available to be conscripted into the military. He wanted them to go off to war and not pine for their wives left behind. So he decreed that no young men could marry. St. Valentine held secret weddings. He married young men and young women and was arrested for it and executed. So that’s one possible explanation as to why Valentine’s Day is about romantic love and named after St. Valentine.
The other St. Valentine story is that he was arrested and put in jail for not giving up his beliefs. While he was in jail, he fell in love with the daughter of the jailer. Legend also has it that she was blind and he healed her of her blindness. Then on the night before his execution, February 14, he wrote a love letter, a Hallmark card if you will, to his beloved. He signed it, “From your Valentine.” That’s the other explanation. I wish I could end this the way Paul Harvey always ends his stories, “and now you know the rest of the story,” but now you know a couple of possible stories.
Erich Segal wrote a best-selling novel in the 70’s, a huge best-seller, “Love Story.” It was made into a movie starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal. I saw the movie and I read the book. In both of them there’s the famous line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Now at the time I was a teenager. Probably like many teenagers I thought, “Awww. Isn’t that just beautiful – love means never having to say you’re sorry.” But as the years went by I realized: that’s a bunch of hooey. (That’s a theological term.) It seems to me that love means ALWAYS having to say you’re sorry. Maybe that’s just me, but it seems to me I’m always saying, “Sorry, honey, I forgot to buy a gallon of milk.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to do the dishes.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to mow the lawn.” Love means always having to say you’re sorry. And I think forgiveness, seeking forgiveness and granting forgiveness, are an essential part of love.
If we were perfect, if we weren’t human beings, if we were angels, say, and we never made any mistakes, we never made an error, we never made what some people call “sins,” then we wouldn’t need to seek forgiveness or grant forgiveness. But we’re “a little lower than the angels.” We’re not perfect. We’re still evolving. So sometimes we need to seek forgiveness. Sometimes we need to grant forgiveness. It seems to me the essence of forgiveness is love. You wouldn’t seek forgiveness, it seems to me, from someone unless on some level you loved them. You wouldn’t grant forgiveness, I don’t think, unless on some level you loved the person seeking forgiveness. So I think forgiveness is an essential part of love.
The Dalai Lama has a definition of religion that I really like. He says, “My religion is very simple; my religion is kindness.” I like that. I wish every faith tradition, every religion, had kindness at its core. By kindness I think the Dalai Lama means compassion, love for everyone, even for people we don’t know.
It’s easy to understand, I think, the love two people have for each other. They become partners, significant others, or spouses because they’ve agreed to share their lives together, to journey through life together, to share their stories, to become as one. That’s a kind of love we can easily understand. Then there’s the love that people have for their friends, either one or more persons. They’re people that support one another, that share their experiences and share their joys and concerns. That’s a love that we can understand. But why would somebody love a complete stranger? Why would somebody’s heart go out to somebody else who maybe is in need, who may need a place to live, who needs clothes on their back or food in their belly. Why would they do that? I think that many people, thankfully, do do that. But there are some who don’t. Their love isn’t that expansive; it’s more exclusive. They say to themselves, “Why should I help this person I don’t even know?” They figure they get nothing out of it and so they don’t help. Their heart doesn’t go out to somebody else. They say to themselves, “ I take care of me and mine. This person I don’t even know should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even if they don’t have any boots.” I think it’s inexplicable, although maybe it’s explained by different theologies.
Every religion that I know of posits a God, or a Yahweh, or an Allah, or a Source or a Spirit that is love. “God is love.” What does that mean? I think to some people God is loving of everybody. God loves all of God’s children (if God exists). Other people say, “No, God isn’t expansive; God is exclusive. God only loves certain people – me and a few others. God doesn’t love “them,” God loves “us.”
If God exists, I can’t fathom a God like that, because I know that even before my daughter was born, I loved her. I didn’t sit around and wait for her to love me. And I’m certain that most parents, hopefully all parents, are the same way. When your child is born you just naturally love your child. You don’t sit back and say, “Hmm, you’re 2 or 3 years old now. What are your feelings toward me? Because, you know, it’s all about me.” If the child says, “Oh Daddy, oh mommy, I love you.” Then they would say, “Well, okay , then, I’ll love you.” That would be crazy wouldn’t it? Creepy! Ugh! That would be conditional love.
Unconditional love says, “I love my child just because.” I think we can agree that unconditional love is a higher form of love than conditional love. So I don’t understand how people can say that God , if God exists, can have a lower form of love for God’s children than I have for my daughter. How can that be? If God exists, I have to believe that God is more inclusive than exclusive.
Henny Youngman was an old vaudeville comedian. He told jokes about his wife. He had the famous line, “Take my wife – please!” Henny Youngman said once, “The last fight was my fault. My wife asked, “What’s on the TV?” I said, “Dust.” Henny Youngman made a living telling jokes about his wife, but the funny thing is, he loved his wife, he was devoted to his wife, he adored his wife. I sometimes talk about Henny Youngman when I perform a wedding. Not often, though, because most young people go, “Henny who? What’s a Henny?”
Also, when I perform a wedding, I usually quote a piece of literature that describes love. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” I think that’s a perfect message.
One day I was meeting with a couple and I was going to do their wedding. I said that I say that passage when I do a wedding and the bride said, “Oh, I love that passage! That’s what I want at my wedding.” Interestingly enough, it was written by an apparent lifelong bachelor, the Apostle Paul, but in spite of that it’s a beautiful passage describing love.
I like to do weddings. A lot of ministers don’t like doing weddings. They think that they’re a necessary evil. People just want you to get to “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.” I don’t use that kind of language. I say, “You may now kiss your beloved.” I like doing weddings because at weddings you get to see love up close and personal, whether it’s young love or people who are older and in love – seventy somethings and eighty somethings – I like doing weddings. Oftentimes, I’ll quote a song in the sermonette I do, I talk about love and the different kinds of love, I talk about the story of the couple that’s getting married, and I’ll quote a song, as I often do in sermons. Often I’ll quote a Beatles song: All You Need Is Love: “All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”
That’s probably one of the simplest songs ever written, but it’s also one of the most poignant songs ever written. If only we lived it – all you need is love. But we try other things: all you need is lust, all you need is envy, all you need is revenge, all you need is hate, but the Beatles were right. If our every move, our every action were motivated by love, what a wonderful world it would be. How wonderful humankind would be, if we were just motivated by love, because really, when you get down to it: all you need is love. On Valentine’s Day and on every day of the year.
I LOVE MY iPHONE!
It’s got my address book in it. It takes notes. I just talk into it and it types out the notes. Ahhh. I love my iPhone! Actually I don’t love my iPhone, because you’re not supposed to love an inanimate object. You’re supposed to like your phone. You’re supposed to like your car. You’re supposed to like your favorite TV show. So I really, really, really like my iPhone. I really, really, really like my red convertible. I really, really, really like “Modern Family.”
Love is a many-splendored thing; it’s a complicated thing though. It means many different things. Two people in love get married. Their significant other, their partner, their spouse is someone they love. The Greeks called it “eros,” or romantic love. It’s where we get the word “erotic.” That‘s one kind of love. Then there’s a love between friends: two or more people love each other in friendship. The Greeks called it “philia,” which is where we get the word “Philadelphia,” the “city of brotherly love.” That’s another kind of love. And then there’s love for the perfect stranger, or the imperfect stranger – someone we don’t even know, but we care about. Christians would call that “agape,” the love for the poor, the homeless, the hurting. That’s another form of love. Love means many different things.
The first Valentine that I remember buying, I think I was in the second grade. I had a crush on a little girl in my class. I went to the store and found a card. It had a Dutch theme. There was a wooden shoe on the card and it said, “Wooden shoe be my Valentine?” I thought that was hilarious! Unfortunately my sense of humor hasn’t progressed much over the years.
Valentine’s Day, I thought, was a Hallmark holiday, one created just to sell cards. But it’s not. It’s been going on for hundreds of years. Now Sweetest Day, that’s a Hallmark holiday, but Valentine’s Day has been around since Chaucer’s time. But we’re not completely sure who it’s named for. It’s named for St. Valentine, of course, but there were something like 14 St. Valentines. All of them martyred, killed, executed for not giving up their beliefs, so apparently having the name Valentine is not such a good thing. But what did that have to do with Valentine’s Day? What would that have to do with romantic love? I can’t think of anything. But there are a couple of stories, legends, myths surrounding St. Valentine that originated hundreds of years ago.
The first story was that the emperor at that time decreed that no young men should be allowed to marry because he wanted young men to be available to be conscripted into the military. He wanted them to go off to war and not pine for their wives left behind. So he decreed that no young men could marry. St. Valentine held secret weddings. He married young men and young women and was arrested for it and executed. So that’s one possible explanation as to why Valentine’s Day is about romantic love and named after St. Valentine.
The other St. Valentine story is that he was arrested and put in jail for not giving up his beliefs. While he was in jail, he fell in love with the daughter of the jailer. Legend also has it that she was blind and he healed her of her blindness. Then on the night before his execution, February 14, he wrote a love letter, a Hallmark card if you will, to his beloved. He signed it, “From your Valentine.” That’s the other explanation. I wish I could end this the way Paul Harvey always ends his stories, “and now you know the rest of the story,” but now you know a couple of possible stories.
Erich Segal wrote a best-selling novel in the 70’s, a huge best-seller, “Love Story.” It was made into a movie starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal. I saw the movie and I read the book. In both of them there’s the famous line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Now at the time I was a teenager. Probably like many teenagers I thought, “Awww. Isn’t that just beautiful – love means never having to say you’re sorry.” But as the years went by I realized: that’s a bunch of hooey. (That’s a theological term.) It seems to me that love means ALWAYS having to say you’re sorry. Maybe that’s just me, but it seems to me I’m always saying, “Sorry, honey, I forgot to buy a gallon of milk.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to do the dishes.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to mow the lawn.” Love means always having to say you’re sorry. And I think forgiveness, seeking forgiveness and granting forgiveness, are an essential part of love.
If we were perfect, if we weren’t human beings, if we were angels, say, and we never made any mistakes, we never made an error, we never made what some people call “sins,” then we wouldn’t need to seek forgiveness or grant forgiveness. But we’re “a little lower than the angels.” We’re not perfect. We’re still evolving. So sometimes we need to seek forgiveness. Sometimes we need to grant forgiveness. It seems to me the essence of forgiveness is love. You wouldn’t seek forgiveness, it seems to me, from someone unless on some level you loved them. You wouldn’t grant forgiveness, I don’t think, unless on some level you loved the person seeking forgiveness. So I think forgiveness is an essential part of love.
The Dalai Lama has a definition of religion that I really like. He says, “My religion is very simple; my religion is kindness.” I like that. I wish every faith tradition, every religion, had kindness at its core. By kindness I think the Dalai Lama means compassion, love for everyone, even for people we don’t know.
It’s easy to understand, I think, the love two people have for each other. They become partners, significant others, or spouses because they’ve agreed to share their lives together, to journey through life together, to share their stories, to become as one. That’s a kind of love we can easily understand. Then there’s the love that people have for their friends, either one or more persons. They’re people that support one another, that share their experiences and share their joys and concerns. That’s a love that we can understand. But why would somebody love a complete stranger? Why would somebody’s heart go out to somebody else who maybe is in need, who may need a place to live, who needs clothes on their back or food in their belly. Why would they do that? I think that many people, thankfully, do do that. But there are some who don’t. Their love isn’t that expansive; it’s more exclusive. They say to themselves, “Why should I help this person I don’t even know?” They figure they get nothing out of it and so they don’t help. Their heart doesn’t go out to somebody else. They say to themselves, “ I take care of me and mine. This person I don’t even know should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even if they don’t have any boots.” I think it’s inexplicable, although maybe it’s explained by different theologies.
Every religion that I know of posits a God, or a Yahweh, or an Allah, or a Source or a Spirit that is love. “God is love.” What does that mean? I think to some people God is loving of everybody. God loves all of God’s children (if God exists). Other people say, “No, God isn’t expansive; God is exclusive. God only loves certain people – me and a few others. God doesn’t love “them,” God loves “us.”
If God exists, I can’t fathom a God like that, because I know that even before my daughter was born, I loved her. I didn’t sit around and wait for her to love me. And I’m certain that most parents, hopefully all parents, are the same way. When your child is born you just naturally love your child. You don’t sit back and say, “Hmm, you’re 2 or 3 years old now. What are your feelings toward me? Because, you know, it’s all about me.” If the child says, “Oh Daddy, oh mommy, I love you.” Then they would say, “Well, okay , then, I’ll love you.” That would be crazy wouldn’t it? Creepy! Ugh! That would be conditional love.
Unconditional love says, “I love my child just because.” I think we can agree that unconditional love is a higher form of love than conditional love. So I don’t understand how people can say that God , if God exists, can have a lower form of love for God’s children than I have for my daughter. How can that be? If God exists, I have to believe that God is more inclusive than exclusive.
Henny Youngman was an old vaudeville comedian. He told jokes about his wife. He had the famous line, “Take my wife – please!” Henny Youngman said once, “The last fight was my fault. My wife asked, “What’s on the TV?” I said, “Dust.” Henny Youngman made a living telling jokes about his wife, but the funny thing is, he loved his wife, he was devoted to his wife, he adored his wife. I sometimes talk about Henny Youngman when I perform a wedding. Not often, though, because most young people go, “Henny who? What’s a Henny?”
Also, when I perform a wedding, I usually quote a piece of literature that describes love. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” I think that’s a perfect message.
One day I was meeting with a couple and I was going to do their wedding. I said that I say that passage when I do a wedding and the bride said, “Oh, I love that passage! That’s what I want at my wedding.” Interestingly enough, it was written by an apparent lifelong bachelor, the Apostle Paul, but in spite of that it’s a beautiful passage describing love.
I like to do weddings. A lot of ministers don’t like doing weddings. They think that they’re a necessary evil. People just want you to get to “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.” I don’t use that kind of language. I say, “You may now kiss your beloved.” I like doing weddings because at weddings you get to see love up close and personal, whether it’s young love or people who are older and in love – seventy somethings and eighty somethings – I like doing weddings. Oftentimes, I’ll quote a song in the sermonette I do, I talk about love and the different kinds of love, I talk about the story of the couple that’s getting married, and I’ll quote a song, as I often do in sermons. Often I’ll quote a Beatles song: All You Need Is Love: “All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”
That’s probably one of the simplest songs ever written, but it’s also one of the most poignant songs ever written. If only we lived it – all you need is love. But we try other things: all you need is lust, all you need is envy, all you need is revenge, all you need is hate, but the Beatles were right. If our every move, our every action were motivated by love, what a wonderful world it would be. How wonderful humankind would be, if we were just motivated by love, because really, when you get down to it: all you need is love. On Valentine’s Day and on every day of the year.
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