Sermons

Sources as Resources
Rev. Douglas Taylor
1-4-04
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Binghamton, NY

One of the first weddings I ever performed took place in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota. I had met the couple while serving my internship in a suburb of Chicago. When they asked me to officiate at their service over the summer I was flattered, but I warned them saying I would not be in the Chicago area over the summer. I would unfortunately be in upstate New York serving as camp chaplain at Unirondack, our UU summer youth camp in the Adirondacks. They said, “No problem, the wedding is not going to be in the Chicago area anyway. We are going to get married up in the Boundary Waters. We’ll fly you to Minnesota for this.” So I said, “Yes.” (Well, first I said, “Wow!” Then I said, “Yes!”)

Now, I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the geography of Minnesota, so I’ll tell you that the Boundary Waters are an extensive series of lakes and rivers way up in the northern part of Minnesota. Camping and canoeing enthusiasts flock to the area every summer. I flew into Duluth, which is on the western edge of the first of the great lakes. The Duluth International Airport is considerably smaller than its name implies. It has four gates. It is an international airport because it has flights to Canada. So I flew into Duluth and waited in that little airport for one of the bridesmaids who was also flying in that afternoon. She rented a car and we drove two hours north along long stretches of road to a town called Ely.

The next afternoon we all piled into cars and went another half-hour or so north to a parking lot on the side of the road. Then we hiked in about a mile to the lake. Waiting for us at the lake were the ushers who paddled us across the lake in canoes, two at a time, to the little rocky clearing next to the waterfall. I was wearing sneakers, jeans, and a t-shirt. My robe and stole were rolled up in my back pack along with a water bottle and some trail mix.
A half-hour later when every one was assembled, and I had my robe on, and I had started the ceremony. I wanted to tell them, “be sure you start your relationship on sure footing. Be careful, this marriage stuff is dangerous and you need to be certain of one another.” I wanted to tell them, “Look out, what you’re about to start here is not a simple thing. The journey ahead of you is fraught with peril and hardship so make sure you really mean it and you’re ready for this.” But I looked out over the lake to the path on the other side leading back to the cars and I thought, “They all ready know all that.” Besides, this was only the third wedding I had ever done, I didn’t know how to say all that stuff anyway.

How we start things is very important. Our beginnings have a distinct impact on who we are and how we grow. In our reading this morning, Charles Stephen said we like the idea of new beginnings and starting over, but it is really all continuations. It is human nature to mark out beginnings and endings to give definition to our experiences. When we arrive at small landmarks, we pause in our steady tumbling forward to recognize the passage of time. One of the hymns in our hymnal is entitled “The Ceaseless Flow of Endless Time.” We do indeed find ourselves in this ceaseless flow, this ever progressing push of time. Charles Stephen said we find stability in these new beginnings. Generally speaking, life is a journey without particular beginnings and endings other than birth and death. It becomes very important to set aside special times to celebrate the changes, brief moments to pause and recognize our progress.
This idea which says ‘our beginnings and endings are our own arbitrary human constructions’ is a useful idea because it can help us to recognize that our past does not need to own us. Starting again is possible. Transformation and change are possible. However, this idea can also be equally unhelpful if we think we can escape our past. If we think of new beginnings as a break from yesterday, we are bound for trouble. All of your past is a part of you, all of the good stuff and all of the bad stuff. And no amount of New Beginnings will make it otherwise. Where you come from is important.

It seems to me there are three choices as to how we can deal with our past. We can choose to dwell in it; to either revel in the glory or wallow in the guilt. Most people recognize this to be unhealthy. All those wonderful self-help books are filled with the sort of wisdom that warns us against dwelling in our past: Don’t let guilt consume you. Acknowledge and move on. Don’t rest on your laurels. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Our second option is to ignore the past. This is also an unhealthy choice. This will allow us to have fake New Beginnings. We can talk about starting over, and turning over a new leaf, and having today be the first day of the rest of our life. But often all this does is allow us to continue to make the same bad mistakes, or to not capitalize on the gains we’ve made. If we try and say, “That was the old me, now I’m married, or, now I’m born again, or, now I’m all better so just forget all that old stuff about me.” This is a fake New Beginning because it ignores the past or pretends it doesn’t matter.

Our last option, and thus the healthy one, is to learn from the past and grow. This is where change and transformation are possible, this is where New Beginnings can take place, this is where we step forward and say, “All my gifts and all my warts are why I’m deciding to live my life in this new way from this day forward.” I picked up a great quote recently. It is from an interview with a George Shearing, Big Band pianist who is blind. The reporter asked, “Have you been blind all your life?” To which the musician replied, “Not yet.” I like this quote because it is forward looking, without ignoring the truth of the past.

Where you come from and where you have been and all that you’ve been through will never leave you. Now, this is true for cultures and countries and congregations as well. I remember a friend once complaining about our national anthem saying it is the only national anthem with rockets and bombs in the lyrics. I remember at the time agreeing with my friend and saying, “Aren’t we awful as a country to have this song that glorifies war as our national anthem. We should change it.” But as I was preparing this sermon, I thought, “Well, at least it is honest.” This country was founded as a result of war. The song says that the principles of liberty and freedom are worth fighting for and even dying for. I may not like the song, but at least it is honest about how we started.

Another example, all three of the great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have a significant amount of violence in connection with how they began. The early years of Islam were filled with strife, persecution, and war. Christianity’s seminal moment is the violent execution of its leader. Judaism began not with Adam and Eve or even with Abraham or Jacob, figures which literary and historical scholars generally agree were mythic characters rather than actual people. Judaism formed when Moses took the Hebrew people out of bondage, across the wilderness and into the promised land, a land filled with other people they has to conquered before they could really move in.

Over these past few years, much attention has been given to the accusation that Islam is a violent religion. Thankfully we have also heard the counterpoint saying Islam is basically a peaceful religion. I certainly can’t stand in judgment as to which statement is true, and I tend to think that both statements are somewhat true and somewhat false depending on where you are looking and what you are wanting to see. Certainly there are passages in the Koran and practices believers do and events littered throughout history which we can point to and say, “look, here we see peace” or, “look, here we see violence.” Of course, we can do that with Judaism and with Christianity. And it is not an insignificant connection that all three of these great religious traditions began amid violence.

This is not so with Unitarian Universalism. For one thing we don’t have a sacred book with which to contradict ourselves. But I think we can fairly say that both Unitarianism and Universalism as they began here in America, did not have violent beginnings. Now, European Unitarianism has a few martyrs, but there was not for example a Michael Servetus movement or following. Instead, we have stories about how radical we have been and how upsetting we were to mainstream religion and society. This is not to say we are exempt from having character flaws sown into our origins, just that violence is not one of them.

The major negative component to crystallize in our beginnings as Universalists was the over-focusing on one message. If you follow the history of the Universalist denomination, you’ll notice that when we were no longer the only church focusing on God’s love, there was a sharp decline in our membership. As one Universalist minister put it, “Hell became less of a burning issue.” When we found ourselves to be no longer the only show in town with that message, it was difficult to expand our message to met the changing world. For Unitarians it was character flaws crystallized in our beginnings were flaws such as arrogance, elitism, and a cold intellectualism which detests emotional responses in religion matters. Between you and me, I’ll take those flaws over violence any day.

We, as a movement, are making efforts to address our communal original character flaws, but they will never not be the flaws we’ve had from our beginning. The good side to this is that we will always be known for the social advancement and justice work recorded in American history, whether or not we are still working for justice today. We will always have the freedom of individual conscience as our first principle regardless of how much emphasis we place on community. Who we were when this all started has a lasting and important impact on who we are now and on who we may possible grow to be. When the two traditions merged, we experienced a balancing that will serve as a true New Beginning so long as we remember both traditions and how they started and grew. I am not suggesting that every Unitarian Universalist today is over focused on one message and is struggling to be less arrogant, elitist, and overly-rational. I’m simply saying this was our starting point and always will be.

At nearly every formal or semi-formal gathering of new members or visitors we intentionally go around the circle and invite everyone to share a little of their journey which brought them to this congregation. More and more we are hearing that people come here for community and a humbling respect for the mystery surrounding the major religious questions.

We don’t ask new people to tell us their name and theological perspective, their least popular belief, or their favorite middle-centuries pope. We ask, “Who are you, where did you come from, and how did you end up hear?” One time I sat down and wrote out my most eloquent response yet to those questions.

We have, within each of us, echoes of memories beyond us. There are traces of lives and loves which are not ours, and yet belong to us and shape who we are and how we see the world. I am a fourth generation Unitarian Universalist. My personal religious and spiritual history would be incomplete without saying something about the echoes of the lives and loves I carry.
My mother’s mother’s mother, Cora Arvilla Beadle Miller, was one of the founding members of the Old Stone Universalist Church of Schuylur Lake, NY. That is the same church where my mother’s mother, Marie Elizabeth Miller Strong, played the organ and was Superintendent of the Church School, and where my mother’s father, Ashley Walter Strong, was Moderator and then President of the New York Convention of Universalists in the mid 1950’s. It is the same church, The Old Stone Universalist Church, where my mother, Elizabeth May Strong, now a Minister of Religious Education, grew up and began teaching when she was in eighth grade.

We have, within each of us, echoes of memories beyond us; traces of lives and loves which are not ours, and yet belong to us. My mother’s mother’s mother was a church builder. May I be so blessed as to be the same.”
What I learned here was that not only must I contend with my own past, that part of my history for which I was there; but I must also reconcile all that is a part of me that came before I even showed up! Thus it is, certainly with nations and congregations. You all inherit the great wonderfulness and all the blemishes and warts that this congregations has stood for over the years.

Seeing as I began with a story from Northern Minnesota, let me return there for my closing. There is a song I know with the line “The Mississippi is mighty, but it starts in Minnesota at a place that you could walk across with five steps down.” (Ghost by The Indigo Girls) That river which cuts across the whole country from top to bottom, is a major landmark on our map and has featured prominently in American history and in the contemporary lives of many people. It is a powerful river. And it is a powerful metaphor. It overflows now and then and floods towns and plains. Each of us is like that river. We all started in some small way in some remote place and lead mighty lives now. And I bet that a lot of you have experienced the analogous flooding in one form or another. You do well to know and understand the implications of what has gone on upstream. That is your past. If you can acknowledge the good and bad in your past, you will be prepared for the challenges coming from upstream. They can serve you and give you great strength. You will be better suited to be intentional about what you send downstream, into the beaconing future.

In a world without end,
May it be so.

God: A Creative Event
By Rev. Douglas Taylor
12-7-03

I love how preaching about God in a Unitarian Universalist church is still considered a bold move. Many of those among us who consider themselves theists tend to have a quietly fuzzy theology of God. Many of us seem content with being a few steps beyond a respectful agnosticism. Recently there has been a push to reclaim traditional religious language. The president of our Association, Rev. Bill Sinkford, has called for a renewed interest in a vocabulary of reverence. While this should not by any means be limited to conversations about God, God certainly is a featured word within the lexicon of traditional religious words, and thus deserves a sermon of two as we consider the retrieval and clarification of a reverent vocabulary.

To seek a definition of God is tricky business. When I was talking with my wife about this Sunday’s topic she asked, “Well, what can you really say about God. I mean, either you believe or you don’t and even then, what can you really say about God?” I thought about that for a moment as she looked at me. She had a good point, you know. Anything we can say about God must necessarily be filtered through our human language. As a means of discussing all that is Holy, human words and concepts are woefully inadequate. Rev. Fred Muir from the Annapolis Unitarian Universalist Church has pondered upon this very point. In his recent book, Heretics’ Faith, he writes this:

God is a word that we’ve come up with to describe what no other single word can. Just in that alone, the word is insufficient. The ancient Hebrews recognized this right off, and so they made their word for God unutterable: it was sacrilegious to say that word. So then they came up with a word that meant the word no one could say!

It’s because of this kind of thinking (Muir continues) that I’ve called myself everything from atheist to agnostic to pagan – all done, in part, as a reaction to the misuse, overuse, and perversion of the word God. The most profound abuse has been accomplished by orthodox Western religions that have accorded their God with humanlike qualities as well as raising God above nature. My God is neither anthropomorphic nor supernatural: to me is it absurd, meaningless, destructive, and oppressive to conceptualize a higher power as having attributes like humanity has in addition to being above and outside what we know, see, and feel. (p 96-97)

In the second half of that quote, Muir tells us about the God he does not believe in. It is easy to expound upon the God I do not believe in. I suspect many of you could speak at great length about the God you do not believe in (whether or not there is a God you do believe in!) When it comes to speaking in the positive about God, as my wife asked me earlier this week, what can you really say? However, “The turtle only gets where it is going by sticking out its neck.” (James B. Conant) Even though words are at best second-rate tools for the task of defining God, it is nonetheless a worthy task. So I will now stick my neck out and we’ll see where that gets us.

Often the first place we land is among labels, so let us begin there. Labels are tricky. Muir says he calls himself an atheist some times and a pagan other times. Labels are useful in the beginnings of defining yourself and your perspective, but they paint with such a broad brush that it is hard to be comfortable with simply a label. What is my theological label? The quick and dirty answer is that I am a Theist. However, I grew up in a Humanist church, so Humanism is my first religious language. Also I was raised in a Universalist home and while I did not know God not so much as a personal God, I some how developed the feeling of unconditional acceptance and the transformative power of love which comes from God. And then I spent as much time as I could out in the woods near our house, out in nature where I developed another whole set of words to describe God which of course conflict at times with both my Humanism and my Universalism. All this adds up to some confusion for me when it comes time to choose a religious label, and so I usually just say I am a theist.

A basic Theist is defined as a person who believes in a personal God. There are, however, several variety of Theists beyond that basic definition. In working with the Building Your Own Theology workbook, we in the class discovered quite an assortment of theisms described in the manual. Mystics and Pagans and Liberal Christians are three types of theists that are usually found within Unitarian Universalist circles. Liberal Christianity within Unitarian Universalism looks most like what we usually think of when we talk about theists. Liberal Christians hold traditional perspectives about God in the form of either the first person of the Trinity (the Father) or the third person of the Trinity (the Holy Spirit). Paganism and other Earth Centered spiritualities often take a Polytheistic and Pantheistic view of God, speaking of gods and goddesses, and the embodiment of the holy in the rhythms of the earth. Mystics could be considered theists in that they believe unmediated experience with God is possible. Mystics are less concerned with any definition of God except that it not be too specific and that it includes love as an overwhelming quality. Historically there have been a significant number of Deists counted among our ranks. Deism is the belief the God created the earth along with the natural forces that govern it and then left. Many of the founding fathers are also reported to have been Deists.

But that’s just the first batch of theisms. Another distinction is drawn between a Theistic Monist and a Theist Dualist. These two definitions tease out a definition of God in relation to nature. The Theistic Monist believes that God “alone is real; the world or nature is at best an illusion or mere appearance.” This variation of Theism is the most diametrically opposed to Atheism, which would say the world or nature alone is real; God is at best an illusion or mere appearance. The Theistic Dualist believes that God “is completely transcendent over nature; [God] and nature constitute totally different realms of reality.” Similarly, a Natural Theist believes that “Nature includes the divine; God is but one force or process operating in the natural world.” A final type of Theist along these lines would be a Pantheist. Pantheists believe that God “and nature are in some sense identical; nature itself is divine.” Then there is the Panentheist. Panentheism is like Pantheism plus. Panentheists believe that “The divine is independent of and transcends nature, but also includes nature.” Nature itself is divine, but there is also a transcendent element to God.

Are you confused yet? I promise this sermon will be reprinted and available at the Book table so you can go over these again if you wish. The main point I want to present here is the amazing variety of definitions of God found among those who take up one of the many regular and traditional labels within Theism! For all of these types of Theists the word God means something different. But, wait, I have one more type of theist I want to talk about.

Process Theists believe that God is not a being; rather God is a process. From this point of view, “the world [is] a social organism growing toward fulfillment by means of mutual influence, including the persuasive aims of God.” In this way they it is like Natural Theism. It could be said, however, that for Process theists, God is a verb rather than a noun. My favorite theologians, Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, Henry Nelson Wieman, talk about God not as a noun but as a verb. Weiman, the only one among that short list who is really a Process Theologian, said that God is Creative Interchange. Buber spoke of the primacy of the I-Thou relationship. And Tillich was considered an atheist by some when he said, “God does not exist, God is.” It should be no surprise therefore to learn that the God I believe in is more like the Holy Spirit than any other part of the Christian triune God, for example. There is movement and presence. I believe God is something that happens, or better yet, simply, “God is.”

The concept of Creative Interchange articulated by Henry nelson Wieman is worth further exploration. For Wieman, Creative Interchange is God, or at least the closest thing that fills the role usually appointed to God. Wieman was a Presbyterian minister before returning to academia to become a philosopher and empirical theologian. He was born in 1884 and died in 1975. He spent the last decades of his life as a Unitarian Universalist. He wrote books with titles like, Intellectual Foundations of Faith, Man’s Ultimate Commitment, and The Source of Human Good.

Wieman did not say that God was simple a process, he took great pains to define just what sort of process is considered Creative Interchange. It is about transformative interaction between individuals in community. Wiemen defines the Creative Interchange as a four-step process. It is one event with four stages. Creative Interchange occurs in this way: beginning with “Emerging awareness of qualitative meaning derived from other persons through communication; integrating these new meanings with others previously acquired; expanding the richness of quality in the appreciable world by enlarging its meaning; [and] deepening the community among those who participate in this total creative event of intercommunication.” (The Source of Human Good, p58) In typical Theologian style, that one run-on sentence packs in this man’s whole concept of God. Let me unpack it a little.

First we get the perspective of another person. By sitting and listening or sharing in conversation with another individual we are made aware of another perspective of meaning beyond our own. This could happen in church on Sunday morning, over a meal with a relative of old friend, or nearly anywhere at anytime when we are listening to another person share about meaningful life experiences or beliefs. We take in another person’s understanding, not perfectly, of course, but well enough. That is the first stage.

Second we begin to integrate this new perspective with what we already know or understand or believe. If you just listen to another person’s perspective and do not let that perspective mix in with your own then we’re not at that level of creative interchange. Wieman wrote, “The mere passage through the mind of innumerable meanings in not the creative event.” (Ibid, p59) Also, this does not mean new meanings and understanding supplants what is already meaningful. If, however, what was shared and communicated in that first step is integrated, the third step does follow naturally.

The third step in the process of Creative Interchange is the “expanding and enriching of the appreciable world by a new structure of interrelatedness.” (Ibid, p61) Obviously, if you take in another person’s understanding of meaning and integrate it with what you already know of meaning, you will naturally experience an expansion of your world. This doesn’t need to be huge or really dramatic, but it is transformative all the same.
The fourth step is the commensurate expansion and widening of the community of mutual understanding. This last step in the Creative Interchange event seems the easiest one to argue against perhaps. Why would the communities I belong to expand and deepen simply because I have integrated another person’s perspective and grown in my understanding? We all exist in communities, and these communities exist because of us. And in terms of the Creative Interchange, Wieman is only speaking of the community or Communities involved in the interchange. Your community grows because you grow.

Are you still with me? According to Wieman, Creative Interchange, that particular kind of communication which involves the hearing and integrating of another person’s understanding of meaning with your own, and which therefore leads to transformative personal and communal growth, that is God. That event, that moment of transformation and growth where I take in a little of you and am different and better for it, that is God: that creative interchange between us. That event is God.

Now, this has got to be one of the most unusual definitions of God out there! I mean, if you’re using this word as a verb, the syntax alone is hard enough to grasp. (“Yesterday I was out for a walk when I suddenly God!”) The concept is both sensible and amazing, certainly worth pondering. There are so many ways of defining that one word. I have heard the complaint that the attempt to reclaim traditional religious language is a waste of time especially since we always redefine the old words anyway. It seems to me the word ‘God’ has such a plethora of definitions, it would be one of the easier ones to reclaim! Some look at the word God and see a lot of baggage and stagnant associations. I look at that word and see live possibilities for deepening understanding.

And if we should find we disagree about our definitions of God, then perhaps we can sit down and share them with each other, not for the goal of changing one another’s minds, but for the creative interchange that can take place, that God may take place.

In a world without end,
May it be so.

CLUES
Rev. Douglas Taylor
November 30, 2003
Unitarian Universalist Congregation

One of my favorite models for ministry has always been Miss Marple. Miss Jane Marple is the elderly, crime-solver in Dame Agatha Christie’s mystery novels from the mid-1900’s. Absolutely delightful character. Very intelligent and down-to-earth. I’ve never really liked Hercule Poirot, but I think Miss Marple is great. She solved so many of her crimes simply out of her clear understanding of human nature, which she learned while growing up in a small village, St. Mary Mead. I like her because she has a different way of seeing things. She see connections based on her understanding of human nature. She would hear the details of a murder and say something like, “That reminds me of poor Mr. Johnson…” And somehow, the little problem that Mr. Johnson had, or tried to hide, or had perhaps even caused, would be related to the murdered person’s situation in that the motive was the same but on a smaller scale; or the parlor maid had the same character flaw as the niece of the guy who was murdered; or some such thing as that. Miss Marple paid attention to people. She paid attention to life and saw connections. That is a model I try to emulate in my ministry. I pay attention to life and try to see the connections. The part about having a very solid understanding of human nature is something I still hope to someday claim.

I don’t feel it is too far off base for us to occasionally think of ourselves as detectives. After all, life, at the level we usually speak of here in church, is a mystery. Unitarian Universalists in particular work well with this analogy that being a religious person is like being a detective. One of our prized principles, the one which we perhaps tote out the most when asked to define our denomination to others, is the “Free and responsible search of truth and meaning.” Detective work! We are in the search religiously speaking. We are searching for answers to life’s great mysteries. The meaning of life itself is the greatest mystery and has plagued Philosophers and Theologians through the ages. It was a Methodist Bishop, and I don’t recall now which one, who once said: “The main thing is to find the main thing and to keep the main thing the main thing. That’s the main thing!” That is about as clear a definition of the mystery of the meaning of life as I have ever found from most of the professional theologians and philosophers.

Thankfully we have poets to help clear things up. The German poet, Rainer Rilke, once advised a younger poet to cherish his deepest questions. “Try to love the questions themselves,” he said. “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books that are written in a foreign tongue. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now.”

It may come as no surprise to you that UU ministers love this quote because of what it says about loving questions and living them now. We love that search for truth and meaning! We like questions that lead us deeper into more questions, “like locked rooms,” or mysterious boxes we are not allowed to open. We love the questions, the mystery, and the search. We are tolerant of different paths and understandings. We respect each person’s search for the Holy. The question may then be asked, what do we do if someone finds an answer or two?

I remember the first day I met members of the congregation where I did my internship. One person actually said to me during a side conversation that in our denomination we encourage the search for truth, but if you find any truth, you’ll need to leave. It wasn’t until I got to know that person a little better that I realized he was just making a joke, rather than apt social commentary.

Perhaps you cringed a little after I offered the Rilke quote because I left off the last line. That sort of thing really bugs some of us. But I did it on purpose because so many people focus on the part about ‘loving the questions’ that the last part can be forgotten. The last part of that Rilke quote is very important. “The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live your way some distant day into the answers.”
Answers are a big part of being a detective. Miss Marple would not be a very good detective if she never found some solid answers. Being a religious detective means we must be willing to get a few answers to these big questions we ask. Paul Tillich, once wrote, (and I offer this quote to redeem my earlier slight against theologians when I said they are all confusing.) “Being religious means asking passionately the questions of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.” (The Essential Tillich, ed. by Church, p 1)

Now does this mean we have some kind of obsession with questions and it’s high time we fess up and admit to a couple of answers? Are we somehow cheating the whole religious community when we say, “We are non-creedal, we don’t believe in set answers for every person for all time.”? Is that a cop-out? Is that our way of saying “we really have no clue.”?

No. No, our way of faith is the wide path because that is our authentic answer to the question of how to be a searching religious community. I believe that God comes to each person in the way that that person can best understand and receive God. This even means if the word ‘god’ gets in the way for folks, then that is the wrong word. And we might say, every person perceives the Holy as they are able. To demand that we all have the same answer to the intimate and ultimate questions of existence is unrealistic.

There is an essay I remember from my Liberal Theologies course back in seminary. The author, Lindbeck, claims that all the different religions of the world are merely diverse expressions of a common core experience. There is such a diversity of religious belief due to our different cultures and vocabularies. It is all the same root experience, but one person’s experience of the Holy cannot be universalized. Each person’s experience is filtered through his or her socio-linguistic background.

If I am in the midst of a silent meditation, for example, and a word comes to mind unbidden … perhaps even a word which makes a problem that has been plaguing me suddenly make sense and therefore easier to handle. Using my theistic understanding of an immanent and transcendent God, I might say, “that was the voice of God.” But I understand that I could just as easily interpret such an experience as an awakening to the first noble truth of Buddhism, or as a gift of grace from the Holy Spirit, or as simply the timely remembrance of a past knowledge, or (as Ebenezer Scrooge would have it,) “an undigested bit of beef or blot of mustard.”

How I interpret, and therefore define, this experience is determined by the cultural and linguistic stream I am standing in. And, while understanding that, I don’t need to give up my perspective as flawed or in any way untrue. I believe in an active, loving God who can and does transform lives through the power of grace. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve felt it. We do not need to lose our religious identities simply because we understand the mytho-symbolic basis of those religious identities!

All that, to say the answers I have found are not necessarily the answers any of you have found. And that works. That is how it ought to be. My answers are not what this sermon is about. My title is not “Answers,” but “Clues,” because answers are not always easy to find and over time they can shift as we mature in understanding. So what we need are clues to how to get there, signposts and landmarks to guide us on the journey toward the deeper answers of our lives.

So what are some of these clues? Well, there is one that I mentioned in connection with my hero, Miss Marple. Pay attention. Pay attention to life, to other people, to your gut feelings about what is going on around you. Miss Marple was able to discover a great deal just by paying attention. It is amazing what we can miss if we stay focused on the mundane stuff, stuff that we do need to attend to. The daily routines of work and chores and bills all need our attention, but that doesn’t mean we need to keep our focus there all the time. Pay attention to who your children are becoming. Pay attention to the dreams and aspirations in your life, yours and those of the people you love. Pay attention to the deepest hunger of your soul, that longing, yearning, sometimes aching feeling within you. Pay attention to life.

As Religious detectives, paying attention is not only a clue as to how to find answers, it is also the root clue about how to find more clues. Let me share with you another clue I noticed while paying attention: Come to church every Sunday. Really, that is a clue, I’m not just peddling my wares. I have read more than one article in the past year or two about a study that has been done which connects church attendance with longevity. The study found there was no clear connection between how long a person lived and what a person believed, or which kind of congregation they attended. But there was a strong connection between a long life and regular worship attendance. Participation with the community is what matters. This is true for Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Pagans, Unitarian Universalists, and all the other major world religions. I remember the story of a Christian who went and studied with a Zen Buddhist master for a year. I think it was someone relatively well known, (one of you may remember this story and tell me who this is about after the service.) Anyway, at the end of the year the Christian went to his Zen master and asked to become a Buddhist. The master said, “No, you do not need to become a Buddhist. You should go back home and become the best Christian you can be.” And he did. The Master was saying, grow where you are planted. You don’t need to go to the other side of the world to find the Holy within yourself.

This is not, as one might infer, saying that what you believe and what groups you associate with are irrelevant. In fact, what you believe and what groups you belong to are very important. Its just that how you live out you beliefs is more important. The Zen master didn’t say, “Go home and be a Christian because we’re full over here.” He said, “Go home and become the best Christian you can be.” The way you practice your religion is what matters most. Every true religion has the potential to lead its adherents to true spiritual depth and understanding. All of them offer answers to the ultimate and intimate questions of existence. At the same time, I am not shy about saying that Unitarian Universalism at its best stands out among the others in that it offers people the commitment to the freedom of conscious that will allow each person to find the path that leads through their questions to the deeper answers.

All those articles linking church attendance and longevity conclude that participation is the key. Participation is the second clue I offer. Participate: Show up here regularly, join the choir or a small group, join the UUW or the UUGLC or the Library committee, teach a class, increase your financial giving, visit some of our shut-ins, serve as an usher or a coffee hour host, come to the cranberry coffeehouse. Wherever your gifts and talents lead you in this diverse and lively congregation, participate! Now, frankly I can’t stand here and promise you a long life if you come to church regularly and tithe and join the choir. I can’t promise you a long life, but I can promise you strong life; a quality, if not a quantity of life. And if I’m wrong, what will you do? Stop coming regularly, right? Well, if you start to suspect that I am wrong about this participation stuff and you’re thinking of pulling away and not coming regularly, call me. Usually that is the time that you can most use a community such as the ours So, pay attention and participate.

Often the hardest part of any mystery novels for the reader is recognizing the difference between clues that matter and clues that don’t. Miss Marple seems to always be able to recognize whether or not a fact or character trait or event is malevolent or benevolent, or just innocuous. This is not easy. As religious detectives, it is vital for us to perceive correctly. There is a line from one of Richard Gilbert’s meditations that says, “May we learn to separate that which matters most from that which matters least of all.” We need to be able to sift through the clues and discern the valuable ones from among the lot. While we are paying attention and participating in our faith community, there is still some much that bombards us: details, events, individuals, thoughts, and feelings. We need some process for reflecting and sorting it all to uncover the connections and meanings. I suggest regular prayer. Set time aside to sit in quiet reflection and offer up your searching in prayer.

I am a little hesitant to put prayer on my list of clues because prayer is a topic that causes raised eyebrows from some of you and secret smiles from others. But that is no reason not to include it. When it comes to true discernment about whether the course I would take is life-affirming or life-denying, whether what I want is of God or of my own ego, I would have to pray. It is the only thing that has worked for me. I’m not suggesting that prayer works somehow to cause God to connect the dots for you, simply that it allows you an opportunity to be open to the possible connections that may arise. Which leads me into a longer sermon on prayer that will need to wait for another day.
Pay attention, participate, and pray. These clues will get you started toward understanding the deeper meaning of existence. If nothing else, these will help you look at life differently and perhaps see more connections. You are religious detectives, but you are not alone, we seek in community. There are clues readily available to us in our search. To demand that we all turn up the same answer to the intimate and ultimate questions of existence is unrealistic. But to think that therefore there are no real answers is a form of profanity. Seek boldly. Don’t shy away from uncovering an answer or two. And maybe you will find that some of your answers lead you to deeper questions. That happens too.

In a world without end,
may it be so.

Fleeing for Tarshish
November 16, 2003
Rev. Douglas Taylor

For years I had no idea what people were talking about when they mentioned GPS. About a year ago I had an opportunity to play with my father-in-law’s GPS, or Global Positioning System. These are fun little gadgets that tell you exactly where you are within 20 or 30 feet using latitude and longitude and then some of the more sophisticated ones will translate that to street names. These things are turning up in cars and in the belt pouches of high-tech hikers. What now fascinates me most is how these things work. I guessing there are several of you out there who could offer a course on how these work, but for those of you who don’t know, let me describe it briefly. There is a system of about two dozen satellites that were put into orbit spanning the whole planet for the purpose of airplane navigation. A Global Positioning System has a receiver in it which calculates your distance from three or four of these satellites. From that information, this little device can tell you where you are geographically.

Well, I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be great if we had metaphysical versions of this device. What if we could create a little electronic toy that could tell you where you are spiritually. A Spiritual GPS: it would have great marketing value, especially around the holiday season, especially among family members! It seems to me a significant number of people find themselves in tight spots because they’ve made poor choices along the way. I think a spiritual GPS, or an SPS, Spiritual Positioning System, could help a lot of people with the art of making choices.

This, in a nutshell is what my sermon is all about: The art of making choices. We are occasionally caught between two or more equally attractive choices, and we are torn as to which course to pursue. Should I stay in my current job or jump for the more exciting though riskier job? Should I work to rebuild a broken relationship or pick up the pieces and move on? Which path shall I follow as my road diverges in this yellow wood? I read somewhere that “good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment.”

And this is what made me think of Jonah. Because often our choices are not made in a vacuum. We have clues as to which way to turn. In the yellow wood, Robert Frost looked down each road and noticed one “was grassy and wanted wear.” and so based his decision on that information. But how do we judge the information that we may then come to our decision? Jonah had a very clear indication as to which way to travel, and he picked the opposite direction. According to countless study guides, Tarshish was the farthest seaport to the west, all the way on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea in Spain. Nineveh was over to the east. The story of Jonah the way many people read it, is really a satire because he sets out to refuse God by failing to prophesy. He tries to run away and, if you read on or if you recall the story, he turns out instead to be wildly successful. The town of Nineveh repents because of his preaching, something that almost never happens in Hebrew Scripture. Prophets are always being scorned and ridiculed and ignored. But for Jonah the whole city, all its inhabitants right down to the cattle, repent from wickedness by putting on sack-cloths and sitting in ashes. That’s right: even the cattle – in sack-cloths, sitting in ashes. Here is a prophet who really did not want to even show up, and at his mere word, the whole town repents and is saved. It’s quite a clever story really.

But what caught me, was how Jonah is given a very clear signal as to what to do with his life and he takes off in the opposite direction. Now we don’t get much God speaking to individuals these days and the conservative Christians have varying answers to that point. The way I see it, the voice of God can come through the mouth of any number of people who at one time or another offer a word of good counsel or a thoughtful nudge of encouragement. How often do we have a problem, though, to which the solution is so clear and yet we somehow end up doing decidedly unhelpful things instead! I remember a quote: “Advice is what you seek when you already know the answer but wish you didn’t.” (Erica Jong) I suspect the reason why the story of Jonah is so powerful is because it is a story so many of us can relate to when you really think about it. Have you ever felt like you are stuck in the gut of a big fish?

Sometimes you’re there because you made a poor choice and the consequences are hard to bear. Sometimes you find yourself stuck there even though you knew what to do (or not do), but you did the opposite and now you have that sinking feeling in your stomach that could have done that better. Until you go about and set things right, you’re stuck down in the belly of the whale. Wouldn’t it be easier if we knew how to avoid getting stuck in this position?
What gets in the way of making good choices? It could be that it is just easier to follow a knee-jerk pattern that we learned when we were young. It could be we are hopelessly (or seemingly thus) drawn to unhealthy situations. It could be we are in the habit of suppressing our deepest longings in favor of what we think we are supposed to want out of life. It could be we just aren’t thinking things through. It could be a values conflict. Whatever the reasons, we sometimes find ourselves longing for better decision-making skills; or at least a better understanding of how we do it when we find we have done it well.

Sometimes that is the only clue we can be certain of as to whether or not we have chosen well. When we can look back and say, things have worked out for the best and that was a good choice on my part. The phrase from Christian scripture “By their fruits ye shall know them,” was originally intended to be about good people and the good deeds they do. In our case this morning it can also be applied to our good choices and the good outcomes resulting. Which is great, but again, what do you do before you see the fruits of your decision to get some assurance that you are choosing well.

Well, a book I was reading recently picks up that very questions. In Pierre Wolff”s book, Discernment: The Art of Choosing Well he writes.

Can we avoid waiting until harvest, because by then it may be too late? Is it possible to have a systematic method of choosing what will guarantee good fruit? It is impossible beforehand to assure with absolute accuracy that what we are going to plant today will result in our own well-being and the well-being of others. If we retain the image of fruit, we cannot forecast perfectly what tomorrow’s weather will bring or the effect it will have on our seedlings. Will there be tornadoes or a gentle rain, drought or perfect sunshine? Who can predict? However, if a farmer methodically takes good care of the soil, prunes the fruit at the right time, uses the proper fertilizers and insecticides, and takes precautions against frost, good fruit may usually be anticipated. So also, a method of decision making reduces the hazards of being mistaken and puts the odds in our favor. … [And then a little further down the same page it says this,] All ripe fruit, when it is finally harvested and delivered, has undergone a maturation often accomplished by methodical labor. (Pp 13-4)

Wolff’s contention is that, when done well, the decision making method he outlines in his book will lead to a sense of harmony within oneself in relation to whatever the decision is about. Of course, as he indicates in the above passage, you can make the right choice and still be hit by drought or tornadoes over which cannot control. But there again, how you respond to the outside events in your life is still your choice, as Robbie Walsh said in our meditation. I think one of the key pieces to this is owning your part in the process. You need to know what you can control and be responsible for that.

This amazing decision making method articulated in this book by Wolff is called “Discernment.” Discernment is like a spiritual GPS. Discernment is the word used when there is a spiritual element to the decision making process. And it does not take too big a stretch to see a spiritual element to every major decision, especially when you define spiritual the way we do around here. What are the necessary elements to discernment? What are the key components for our Spiritual Positioning System? Really there are just a few critical components.

Time is a basic component, perhaps the basic component because when we don’t take our time with our choices, we usually end up reacting rather than responding. Responding means you choose to behave in a particular way to the events around you; where as reacting is more like a learned reflex that may or may not be helpful or even what you really want to do. You need to allow time for the discernment to work. Now, like anything you practice at, you can develop your discernment skills to the point that choosing well is like a reflex or a positive reaction in those situations when you don’t have much time to respond. But what you really want, if at all possible is to take time to fully consider the two roads that diverge before you.

But time is not all you need. What you do with that time is critical. The next component will seem obvious, I think for two reasons. Your head needs to be a part of the discernment process. The two reasons I think this sounds obvious to all of you is first, because we are Unitarian Universalists and the idea that the brain should be engaged in nearly every activity is just a given. And second, because when most of us take time to consider a decision, we do just that: we consider it, we think it through. This is the point in discernment where you would write out a list of pros and cons. This is the point at which you would uncover the possible outcomes. The word “discern” has a Latin origin; Dis: apart, and Cernere, to sift. And so: to separate by sifting. We consider the various options and sift through them. Now, a perfectly objective analysis of any given situation or dilemma is not humanly possible, so don’t try. We are not machines able to be completely objective and emotionless. Just because a person can reach a sensible decision based solely on intellectual analysis does not mean that said sensible decision is the best decision for all people in all situation; or even if it were, that any person would actually want to follow that choice!

It may sound odd to talk about not wanting to pick the choice that seems to be the obvious answer after we’ve thought it through, but consider this example: Think about the process of selecting a mate. If you find a person who is roughly your age and is in good health; who shares similar interests, values, and even cultural heritage with you; yet you do not love this person! Your brain weighs things and turns up yes, yes, yes to this choice of life partner. Yet the heart says no, and that is the end of that. Pascal said, “The heart has reasons that reason knows not.”

Discernment is not simply a process of figuring out what is sensible. It also includes the element of what you want. I mentioned early that when Robert Frost looked down each road in his yellow wood and noticed that one road was worn by many travelers and the other was not so; and thus based his decision on this information. But how did he weigh the information he got by looking down each road? Was he stirred by a sense of longing or adventure? Maybe he doesn’t really like being around other people and the thought of all those other travelers on the more common road just ‘turned him off,’ you might say. Does one solution seem to resonate while another seems to stifle? Emotions come a various levels. Listening to your heart is certainly done at a level of depth.

So far I have told you that what you need for Discernment, what pieces go into our SPS, Spiritual Positioning System, are a balance of mind and heart, and of course time. Is that enough? Is it enough that your decision makes sense and feels good? Maybe if your trying to decide which shirt to buy or which movie you should rent. Certainly the little decisions in your life don’t need so much attention. But is what I have outlined so far enough for the big stuff? There is still one element missing. I now speak of values, for it is the inclusion of values that sets this decision making process apart as distinctly spiritual. It is our values that lead us to make hard choices that may not seem the most sensible or feel good.

Values are the key element to a sound decision making process. I have a bookmark with a pithy quote I like: “Set your course by the light of the stars,” it says, “not by the lights of every passing ship.” This image of navigating a ship is a fine analogy for choosing well. Our values are like the stars which guide our course. We often feel like we are in uncharted waters and those old maps that have places marked “here there be dragons” seem to fit with what it’s like to try to work through significant dilemmas. Shall I invest more of my free time helping out at the nearby soup kitchen or at my church, or shall I spend it with my family? Shall I carry this child to term and give it up for adoption or shall I terminate this pregnancy now? If I get into the university I really want, which course of study shall I pursue? I’m worried that my teenage son might be skipping school and doing drugs, how shall I respond? When is it time for me to stop driving because of my age? Indeed here there be dragons for here we touch on deep things. What we think is best and what we want or desire may hit up against our strongest values. Our values can serve as the stars by which we navigate. “Set your course by the light of the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

When Jonah is down in the belly of that great fish he does some serious discerning and lets out this long prayer about how awful life can be but he gives thanks all the same to God who is about to command the fish to release him. And he pulls out his Spiritual Positioning System, and discovers that the whale must have traveled a bit in those three days and three nights, because he is no longer anywhere near self-righteousness and presumptuousness and he is now moving pretty close to humility and compassion. One of the lines in the prayer is: “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” (Jonah 2:8) Those things which you value, Those things which you cling to, those things that deep down define you because those are the things you hold as your guiding stars; those things should be worthy of such honor. One of the lessons Jonah’s story can offer us is to be careful what values we use to guide our choices. But also that it is never too late to change course.

You could find yourself in unfamiliar territory and pull out you SPS, Spiritual Positioning System, and based on your distance from the values of honesty, personal integrity, and financial security you should probably steer clear of that job offer from the corporate auditing firm and stick with your job as bookkeeper for a non-profit organization. What are the nearest satellites to you, what are the values you use when plotting your course? Perhaps three of them are enough to triangulate yourself in a faithful discernment process. Hold fast to the clearest thoughts of your mind, the deepest longings of your heart and the guiding twinkle of your highest values. And take your time.

In a world without end, may it be so.

Peace vs. Justice
November 9, 2003
Rev. Douglas Taylor

Eight years ago I co-lead a course on ethics at a little UU fellowship in Ohio. Ethics: An Exploration in Personal Morality, was the title of the course, and of the workbook we used. The workbook is a part of the Building Your Own Theology series by the Rev. Richard Gilbert, who was here participating in the installation service we had last week. As with the other Building Your Own Theology courses, we don’t “build” a personal ethic from scratch, rather the course is designed to help participants explore and articulate the ethics that guide their lives. The course covered various elements which would go into the refining of a personal moral compass such as: motivation, intention, values and character. I was in charge of the session on values. “Values Ranking” was our first exercise. We were given a list of 30 values such as Freedom, Honesty, Justice, Peace, Equality, Love, Prosperity, Happiness, Quality of Life, Law, Honor, Individuality and Community. We had to select our top ten from these 30 and them rank them in order of personal importance. Choosing only ten was hard enough for most of us, ranking them was excruciating. Some rebelled and had two or more values “tied” for first. I remember I was the only person who put Law on my list of ten. This caused some earnest discussion in the group. Not only did I have Law in my top ten, I had ranked it just above Freedom! Everyone had Freedom on their list, a few had ranked it number one, or tied for first. I had ranked Law as more important than Freedom and argued that without laws there could be no freedoms. And had therefore decided that Law was more important than Freedom.

This was a wonderful exercise worth repeating occasionally. I think today I would choose to rank Law below Freedom rather than as I had ranked them before. I have come to the conclusion that Law is in the service of Freedom, not the other way around. I agree with Martin Luther King that a law that does not serve freedom holds the danger of becoming an unjust law. Generally, there should be no conflict between Law and Freedom, but when there is, my gut reaction is to side with freedom. I still believe that without Law there can be no Freedom, yet Freedom is the higher good, and Law is established to provide Freedom.

Values Conflict was the second exercise in that evening’s class. After we had ranked our values, discussed them and had an opportunity to adjust them, we addressed the possibility of a conflict of values. Hypothetical situations were presented from the workbook in which we wrestled with choosing between honesty and freedom or honesty and prosperity. The situations in the workbook were intentionally hypothetical. They were realistic, but not real.
In the second reading this morning, Chief Joseph was forced into just such a real life values conflict. What is in the best interest of the tribe? What they and likely every native tribe wanted was to live in peace and maintain the prosperous lives they had had before the Europeans came among them in great number and in great force. Seeing that the Europeans were not leaving, and seeing as they still wanted to live in peace, some tribes chose to fight, and others, such as the Nez Perces, tried to leave. Seeing that the Europeans were not going to let them leave without a fight, they decided to fight as they left to Canada that they might find peace. And seeing the toll it was taking on the tribe to fight, Chief Joseph found himself faced with this choice: To fight because it is was a just fight and the right thing to do, or to give up all hope of freedom and peace, because the fight for that freedom is one they might not survive. That is a severe conflict of values.

Few if any of us will find ourselves faced with this extreme and severe a situation. We need not look only at extremes for examples that are just as painful. In an essay from the Ethics workbook, Richard Gilbert writes this:
An example that effects everyone is the issue of allocating scarce health-care resources. On the one hand we value the inherent worth and dignity of every human life, without regard to age. On the other hand, we value the concept of fairness and defend the proposition that all people ought to be given a more or less equal chance in life. The freedom of a person to get affordable health care bumps up against one’s concept of common good.

Most people would say, (Gilbert continues,) that someone with a damaged kidney should be helped by an artificial kidney machine or a kidney transplant, but either procedure is terribly expensive. With the same investment of health dollars, we could provide a simple sugar solution to the world’s children that would save tens of thousands of them from death by dehydration. Both are worthy goals, expressive of the value of reverence for human life. How do we choose between them? Must we choose between them?

All right, that sugar solution example is a bit extreme because it is computed in health dollars only rather than accounting for infrastructure and administrative costs. All the same, our health care system does seem to attract a disproportionate amount of the value conflicts bounding around in our culture. Recently in Florida Governor Jeb Bush used legislation with questionable constitutionality to restore a feeding tube in a young woman who has been in a vegetative state for over 13 years. It would be quite simple for us to all to look at the situation and for us to each decide to write up or review what we already have written up for an advanced directive before the end of this year. What is really needed is not legislation but for each individual to articulate their choice. Perhaps Governor Bush’s politicizing of the situation will help to further the public dialogue, which would be good.

What all this brings out: Chief Joseph’s surrender, Reverend Gilbert’s kidney question, and Jeb Bush’s high-handed fussing over feeding tubes, is that our values conflict regularly. As members of a liberal religious community we are in a particularly good position to recognize how this happens and how to respond. We find ourselves conflicting over important stuff like beliefs and the priorities of values a lot because we encourage it here. We don’t hand people a top ten list of values when they come through our doors. We are well practiced in the art of navigating shared values even when we all don’t agree.

Peace and Justice are two values that usually make it in the personal top ten list of most Unitarian Universalists, indeed, most Americans I would wager. Peace and Justice are two values that religion has often coalesced around. Peace and Justice are two values that are imminently pertinent in today’s global political milieu. In some ways, our political climate is demanding of us to choose between Peace and Justice.

With the same “either you’re for us or you’re against us” attitude cast out to our friends and allies around the globe, here at home we have been asked time and again to side with Justice and support the war or side with Peace and stay out of the way. As one who tried to reconcile our nation’s chosen course and hold both Peace and Justice dear, I have found it troubling to say the least. Peace and Justice usually go hand in hand.

In the history of this congregation there lies the echo of this conflict. Reverend Harry Thor spoke a powerful message of anti-war during the Vietnam Conflict. It was a hard and divisive time in many Unitarian Universalist congregations, and Binghamton did not prove the exception. That division has since healed and we as a congregation are well equipped now to hold a diversity of opinion as a group. But, neither is it any accident or random chance that members of this congregation are predominantly pacifists. I expect we will not again experience a similar division as we explore issues of war, power, peace and justice again. We do well, all the same, to remember that Peace and Justice issues have been and can become again “live-wire” issues among us.

Peace and Justice usually go hand in hand. I see the same relationship between Peace and Justice as I described earlier between Law and Freedom. In the same way that there can be no Freedom without Law, I believe there can be no Peace without Justice. In the same way that Freedom is a higher good than Law and Law is established to provide Freedom, I believe Peace is a higher good than Justice and Justice is established to provide Peace. There should not be a conflict between Peace and Justice.

Of course, my opinion is not the only sensible one out there. While I contend that Justice is an important step on the path to Peace, I have heard others say, “there is no path to peace, peace is the path.” And I have also heard others put forward the alternative perspective that Justice is an end unto itself rather than a means to Peace as have described it. It is these perspectives that polarize Peace and Justice.

Talk of Justice often carries the implication and imagery of violence. Back around 1970, Jane Fonda said, “Revolution is an act of love; we are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood.” She had a strong point there. The United States was born of a revolution. We have glorified the violent element of our path to independence in our national anthem that speaks of “rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air.” We are children of revolution. This perspective of liberation from oppression takes a religious tone from within Liberation Theology. Liberation Theology does not shy away from the use of violence as a means toward justice. “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” While the author of this quote, Martin Luther King, did not mean that this demand would be accompanied by violence on the part of the oppressed, many other people do.

In the 1980s, Vusi Mahlasela was a voice of the revolution in South Africa. His music gave expression to the political ideals of the anti-apartheid movement. Now he’s beginning to tell South Africa’s story on a global stage. The song playing the background as I learned about this man on NPR was a song he wrote which says, “Need I remind anyone that armed struggle is an act of love.”

This is a perspective that rejects the idea that Peace and Justice go hand in hand. This perspective ranks Justice as more important than Peace. I do not subscribe to this perspective. But neither do I subscribe to its popular alternative, because the popular alternative also rejects the idea that Peace and Justice belong to each other. This alternative is exemplified when someone cries out “Can’t we all just get along?” My complaint here is not against that statement in its original use. That quote came originally a little over ten years ago when Rodney King went on TV right after the L.A. race riots and said, “Can’t we all just get along?” Do you remember it? There was a videotape of four white police officers beating a young black motorist they had pulled over. The case was all over the news and when the fur cops were acquitted it touched off a nasty race riot. That young motorist, Rodney King, in an appeal against the mob violence, was calling for peace. Then it made sense. The situation and Mr. King’s appeal are not the basis of my complaint. My complaint is when today people pick up the quote and use it to say, “Can’t we all forget the bad stuff that happened yesterday and play nice?” My complaint is when people want to brush away injustices and just talk of peace.

In our first reading, King makes a distinction between a positive peace and a negative peace. A peace without tension he calls a negative peace. A peace without justice is still peace, but it is a negative peace. If peace simply means no tension, no struggle, than I’ll have none of it. If peace means no disagreements, no turmoil, than that is not a peace I wish to have.

Justice need not be seen as a simple excuse for violence. Likewise, Peace need not be a coating of silence over a troubling situation. Peace and Justice need not be at odds. When I sit down with all my values before me and begin to select my ten; I find room for both Justice and Peace on my list, as I am confident most of you would as well. I believe Peace is a higher good than Justice and Justice is established to provide Peace. However, I am not sure that I would put Peace above Justice when it comes time to rank them. Perhaps I will say Justice is more important, not sufficient, just more important. Perhaps I will rebel and place them as “tied” thereby avoiding the choice, but I doubt it.

How about yourself? Where are they on you list?
In a world without end,
May it be so.