|
|
sermon archive
|
|
|
sermon archive
|
|
Commitment (11/7/99) What does it take to get the work of the world done? The Life and Thought of Howard Thurman (1/15/95) The life of Howard Thurman began in Daytona, Florida in the last year of the 19th century. He was one of three children, an older sister and a younger one. His mother lived until he was well into his adult years, but his father died when he was seven and he had two step-fathers. The Inherent Worth and Dignity of Every Person (11/14/99) The setting was Philadelphia, the year 1981, the occasion the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the argument whether the language of Article II in the by-laws was inclusive enough for feminists and for Christians. The proposals for change from each of these two groups were radically at odds. Each was evangelizing every delegate as they arrived to secure their vote for the right side. Temperance (7/18/99) One of the defining characteristics of the human species is our desire to know and to do the good. It is an important part of our make-up that we understand what right behavior is and that we act that way. We feel better about ourselves when we do so. We feel worse about ourselves when we do not. Mutual Irradiation (12/12/99) This sermon was intended to be a report on my experiences at the Third Parliament of the World’s Religions, held in Capetown, South Africa, December 1-8. I had attended the Second Parliament, held in Chicago in 1993, and was very moved by those eight days among leaders of more than 250 religious movements. Circumstances intervened and forced a change in our plans so that we were not able to go to this most recent Parliament. We're here! We are in our new home at 4001 Ann Arbor-Saline Road. The building we all helped design by expressing our needs and desires is built. The Joy of Duty, The Duty of Joy (2/28/99) Two-ness is characteristic of human life. Our lives are full of this and that, of on the one hand and on the other, of right and left, male and female, black and white, good and bad, inner and outer, health and sickness, old and young, big and little, light and dark, and hundreds of other dichotomies. Is There a Moral Equivalent to War? War is the origin of Mother's Day. Fear (10/31/99) A Halloween story: A man is walking home alone one night when he hears a BUMP...BUMP...BUMP...behind him. Walking faster he looks back and makes out the image of an upright coffin banging its way down the middle of the street towards him. BUMP...BUMP...BUMP...Terrified the man begins to run towards his home, the coffin bouncing quickly behind him...faster...faster...BUMP...BUMP...BUMP... Family Values (10/17/99) Family is a good word. Family is about a household of people who share the burdens and joys of existence. It is about parents and children, brothers and sisters, sometimes aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and even more distant relatives bound by blood, adoption, or choice. Family is about home and hearth, the people you go to when everybody else has turned you away. The Things that Divide Us, The Things that Hold Us Together (10/10/99) The Unitarian movement began in the 16th century when religion was still a matter of daily and eternal seriousness. Against the pressure of a society whose several versions of Christianity all thought right doctrine was literally the key to heaven, these fledgling liberals proclaimed certain principles of theological discussion and congregational life that gave room for a multiplicity of doctrinal views. These principles shocked European Christianity, but they have endured as hallmarks of both the Unitarian and the Universalist movements into our own age. One episode in particular reveals very clearly the courage and the wisdom of these people. A brief recounting of the formative stages of the Minor Reformed Church in Poland makes clear the magnificent heritage they have bequeathed to us. Loneliness (10/3/99) Loneliness is one of life’s most painful and pervasive conditions. Loneliness is feeling cut-off, isolated, abandoned, vulnerable. Loneliness is feeling stupid, ashamed, melancholy, empty. It is feeling that we are without friends, without links to the world around us, without place or importance or purpose. Millennium Crossroads (9/26/99) Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar. That sacredness derives from what the day symbolizes, namely the chance to start again. Yom Kippur tells us that if we are truly repentant for what we have done wrong, then we can start fresh in life. It is an annual ritual that reminds us of a daily possibility: we can forgive, we can be forgiven, what is past can be left behind, we can create a better future. We need such ritual observances as reminders of that which under the pressure of daily life we too easily forget. Community (4/11/99) The Unitarian Universalist religious movement began with the assertion by an individual of his right to think differently from the group to which he belonged. Michael Servetus was a good 16th century Christian who read the Bible in a different way from the officially sanctioned interpretations of Catholics or Lutherans or Calvinists. Lutherans denounced him. Catholics burned all his writings and his effigy. Calvinists burned the real man at the stake along with all his books. Ezekiel (4/4/99) What is Easter about? Spirituality At The Edge: Unitarian Universalism In The 20th And 21st Centuries (4/17/99) We live in an age of the most remarkable and rapid transition in the history of our species. We stand on the brink of the year 2000 with the possibility, on the one hand, of creating a world of beauty and happiness and comfort that far surpasses the wildest dreams of earlier generations and, on the other hand, with the possibility of ending the human saga in a nightmare of destruction and suffering. The direction in which we move will not be determined by the vast pile of goods we have produced nor by anything that is material or physical. What happens to us will be determined by how we choose to live our lives: the wisdom we discover and follow in using the tools we have invented so that good and not evil is done, the morality that informs our lives as we decide on allocations of natural and human wealth, the degree to which we are able to accept our place in nature and live accordingly with and not against other manifestations of Life. To Question Is The Answer (7/11/99)
Unitarian Universalism is a religion more of questions than of
answers. The Unitarian Universalist Principle of Unity (11/1/98)
Unity is one of the fundamental descriptive terms we can
use to point to the nature of reality. God. GOD! (10/11/98) This is the human condition. We awaken one day to the astonishing fact of our existence. We do not know where we came from. We do not know why we are here. We do not know what happens to us when we die. But here we are very much alive, and wondering, as human beings have wondered for a hundred thousand years or more, what it is all about. The Golden Rules (10/18/98) One of the most intense debates raging in the pages of magazines and journals these days is the debate over how children become who they are. Forgiveness (9/27/98) Should we forgive those who harm us? Always? Never? Only sometimes under certain conditions? These are important questions because forgiveness is important. If Peter Ustinov is right to say that “love is an act of endless forgiveness,” then forgiveness is very important indeed.
Letting
Go II
(10/4/98)
This congregation voted on January 26,1992 by an 84% majority to
let go of this building and to relocate to what was then an
unknown site. Since that time we have devoted a major part of our
energy to finding a site, raising the money to pay for a building
on that site, communally designing that building, and selling
this building.
The Future Waits (10/20/98) This is my first sermon since July 19. At that time, I said that since I would be away for a while instead of making only three points, I was going to make three times three or nine points so people could store up for the weeks I was gone. Today, in case those nine points were not enough to cover that whole period, I am going to make three times two or six points. Call it making up for lost time! Humanism (6/21/98) Humanism is one of three major traditions on which the Unitarian Universalist religious movement is based. I have spoken previously on the two older traditions of Judaism and Christianity, and today want to speak of our youngest, and arguably our most influential, forebear. Surveys of Unitarian Universalists for more than thirty years have all shown that a majority of us identify ourselves as humanists. The most recent of these showed some 75% of the Unitarian Universalists in this country and Canada calling themselves humanists. Parenthood (6/7/98)
What is the meaning of parenthood?
Is virtue possible? Does it matter? I wish that I could reach the hope of Easter without having to go through the despair of Good Friday. Letting
Go
(4/5/98)
Letting go is part of the experience of every human
being.
We have lost the sabbath. The UUA Journey Toward Wholeness began in 1992, when the General Assembly passed a Ten Year Initiative for Racial and Cultural Diversity in our movement. Today I will present the first of four sermons proposed for delivery over the next year to eighteen months on, respectively, Judaism, Christianity, Humanism, and Earth- centered traditions. Most of what I have to say will focus on the specifics of these older traditions, with a brief time devoted to pointing out what we have taken over into our religious understanding and customs from these older religions. I begin with Judaism, the oldest continuing religion in the western world, the only surviving form of what was once a common phenomenon, a national religion.
The Bible is arguably the most powerful text ever produced ... I am a deeply fortunate human being. For the past twenty five years I have been able to follow the call of my heart and mind in doing work that is of tremendous importance to me. I fell in love with the work of the ministry in my high school years, but theological barriers kept me from it for nearly twenty years. Once I found the place, the Unitarian Universalist place, I have been able to do the things that I want to do, that I feel matter deeply, and that use my particular gifts and abilities to the fullest extent. What more could any person ask for in life? To that gloomy person who said to the younger me, "maybe the ministry is a poor place to be these days," I can say with the assurance of twenty five years of experience, "you're wrong." The ministry is a wonderful place to be, and I am grateful to have spent these years doing this work.
Five thousand years ago an anonymous Sumerian prayed,
"May the god whom I know or do not know be quieted toward me. This is a cry of despair. A Religion for Today and Tomorrow
The religion of the Unitarian Universalists is a religion for today and for
tomorrow. The Transylvanian Unitarian Experience The longest continuous Unitarian experience in the world is that of Transylvania. Beginning in the middle years of the 16th century, Unitarian ideas have had an unbroken history across 432 years in this turbulent land. To the people of Transylvanian Unitarianism today, that history is very much alive. As Professor John Erdo expressed it: "Those who remember the past find in it directions for the present and the future ... It is the duty of each generation to study history ... so that in the light of the past it may see clearly what is its own special task." In that history are to be found many examples of courage and insight that can provide guidance for the challenges of this day. Editorial in response to AYS report This past Wednesday evening, CBS aired a program part of which dealt with the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) high school and junior high school curriculum "About Your Sexuality", specifically about the way this curriculum was used in one of our congregations. The next morning, the Director of Religious Education, Laura Spencer, the Assistant Director, Renée Pesheck, and the Chair of the Religious Education Committee, Margie Teall, and I watched a video of this program and discussed what we had seen. Although I only speak for myself, my views are not at all dissimilar to what the others felt about this program. This past summer Jane and I spent four days at Stratford, Ontario. In four of the five plays we saw, family was a major theme, as it was in a show we saw earlier in Detroit, "Show Boat". The four Stratford plays were "Oedipus Rex", "Romeo and Juliet", "Death of a Salesman", and "Filumena". You are undoubtedly acquainted with all of these plays except possibly "Filumena", which Jane and I did not know. It too focuses on the family, and closes with these words, "Our children are our children, and they are a blessing." Is Nothing Sacred? Is Everything? Is nothing sacred? Mothers kill their children. Fathers rape them. Children murder their parents. Young men beat up old women. Synagogues are defaced. Churches are burned. Photographers stick cameras in the faces of the dying. High resolution cameras and recorders assault privacy. Computers undermine it. Rain forests are destroyed. Ecologies are wiped out. Concrete replaces arable land. A mindless technology punches holes in the ozone layer. Lakes and rivers and parks are littered with our junk. Elected and appointed officials sacrifice principles and the public good for money. Bribes, loopholes, and sensationalism pervert the law. A disgruntled employee and a disappointed suitor choose murder to redress their grievances. Trivial Pursuits and Worthwhile Ones
How shall we live? The religion of the Unitarian Universalists, liberal religion, is not the most popular religion in America today. One individual described us as "religion lite." We have been assailed by another opponent as a people who don’t believe a damn thing on Sunday mornings, and then go out and practice that all week long. Others describe us as nothing but a social club, or as a religious group without any theological backbone. Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics at Duke University, is among our most acerbic critics. Unitarian Universalists, he wrote, are "an extraordinarily uninteresting group. They have firm moral convictions that people shouldn’t have firm moral convictions, and that’s why they’re just stupid."
The journey of this congregation began 132 years ago this past May 14 when thirty-
seven men and women signed Articles of Association that contained these words:
We, the undersigned, desirous of securing to ourselves and our families the advantages of religious instruction and fellowship do hereby associate ourselves together under the name and title of the First Congregational Unitarian Society of Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the purpose of maintaining religious worship and conducting the temporal interests of a religious society ... Baseball is just a game. Baseball is just a game that I and millions of other people in North America and around the world love to play and to watch and to talk about. In the United States it is the national pastime still drawing more people to its fields as players and spectators than any other sport. What a difficult religion Unitarian Universalism is! Ours is a religion without creeds or dogmas that tell us what we should believe. Because of this, we are sometimes confused about what to believe and often accused of believing the wrong things or of believing no things. Once upon a time a little boy came home from Sunday School and his mother asked him, as mothers often do, “What did you learn in Sunday School today?” The boy replied that the teacher told them a story of a great war from long ago. In that war, the boy told her, there were two generals, General Moses and General Pharaoh. General Pharaoh had the superior forces. Using his greater numbers of tanks and artillery, General Pharaoh drove the armies of General Moses to the edge of the Red Sea. With the forces of General Pharaoh blasting away in front of him, General Moses needed to make a bold move. So he called in the Air Force to provide cover for the sappers while they built a bridge across the Red Sea. When the bridge was completed, the army of General Moses retreated across the bridge. Then their engineers blew up the bridge before the army of General Pharaoh could cross, and they were saved from defeat. A Bear of Very Little Brain: A Unitarian Universalist Commentary on the Pooh Saga When I was a student in college, there was a very important list of books which circulated through the school. This list, last revised during the Presidency of Ulysses Grant, consisted of certain classics of literature which one simply must have read in order to be considered an educated person. It included such outstanding works of the literary imagination as The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeniad, Don Quixote, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and even the Bible. Dutifully I read these books and immediately thought of myself as an educated person. Little did I realize that an enormous gap still existed in my education, a gap which could be filled only by a thorough acquaintance with the stories, sayings, and songs of Edward Bear, popularly know as Winnie-the-Pooh. Why I am a Unitarian Universalist Minister Ministry in a Unitarian Universalist context as I understand it is a calling. Ministry is a calling from the Highest and the Best to something deep inside of us that must respond to that summons. Some describe this as the Voice of God. Others talk of the Voice of Conscience. Still others use more naturalistic language. Always, always something sings There are many reasons why people crowd into churches for Easter Services. We come for the clothes and the parade. We like the music. We want to touch base with our religious home, even if mostly during the year we are elsewhere on Sunday mornings. Far more importantly, though, we come on Easter out of a deep human need. The Most Dangerous Person in America It is not often that I find myself agreeing with the former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, but when he and his Bureau called Martin Luther King, Jr. “the most dangerous Negro in this nation” I could quarrel with that statement only in thinking it not broad enough. Dr. King was not only the “most dangerous Negro in this nation”, he was, and I think he remains, the most dangerous man or woman in this nation. Of course, I do not mean quite the same thing as J. Edgar Hoover meant. Or at least if I do, I rejoice in the description where Hoover surely was disturbed by it. What is poverty? Poverty is the condition of close to four billion of the six billion human beings who live on this earth. Poverty is being homeless or living in housing so wretched that it is literally life-threatening. Five hundred million people live this way. Ten million die each year from diseases and accidents caused by inadequate housing and bad sanitation. Spirituality is a confusing word. It is a kind of code word for what is right or wrong with us usually, the elusive something that we want or need and do not have. It is, as Ann Tyndall has remarked in her series on spirituality, "the ideal, inchoate, something more" in our lives that we yearn for, sometimes desperately, but cannot define. To sacrifice is to make holy. To sacrifice is to consecrate a person, an object, an event, a system, an idea. We sacrifice and sacrifice for only that which we value, that in which we catch a glimpse of the sacred. The Latin word for sacrifice is sacrificium, from sacer, holy, and facere, to make. My introduction to the politics of meaning was a phone call from an energetic young woman named Heather M, who asked me if I would be interested in helping to plan a regional conference on Ethics and Meaning for late spring or early summer. After that conversation and my reading some materials Heather sent me, I agreed to help, and also to attend the National Summit on Ethics and Meaning in Washington, D.C. in mid-April. Along with Katie P-D, our Board Liaison for Social Action, I went to Washington. Since mid-January Katie and I have been involved with some 12-15 other people in planning the conference for June 6 at Washtenaw Community College. Does religion matter? Yes, it does. That is not an agreed upon sentiment in the modern world. Many Enlightenment rationalists and their successors have been convinced that Newton and other scientists made religion unnecessary. When I was a child, indeed well into my adolescence, I disliked my name very much, all three parts of it: Kenneth (UGH!), Wood (Nyeh), Phifer, (Oh Pooh). I thought it was a funny sounding name. I hated to hear my name spoken out loud. Twenty Five Years Ago: A Personal Statement It was twenty five years ago this Tuesday, October 15, 1971, that I first attended a Unitarian Universalist Celebration of Life. The church was Third Unitarian on the west side of Chicago, just a few blocks from our home. As we did not have a car, a church within walking distance was important. I have told the story of that first Sunday in the first chapter of my first book, and will not repeat it here. What I will say is that that moment was transformative for me. It was like the experience Moses had talking to the Burning Bush. It was like Paul's dramatic encounter with the figure he was persecuting on the road to Damascus. Not in content but in meaning, for my life changed profoundly on that day. Several months ago (September 22, 1996) I preached a sermon about the events of June 22, 1996, the day the Ku Klux Klan came to Ann Arbor. In that sermon I pointed out that the heart of the Klan’s philosophy is antisemitism. Racism is the fundamental category of the Klan’s thinking, but the grounding of their ideas is found in a wider religious notion of the Jews as devils with immense power to control and use various people of color and homosexuals for their own purposes. There is death: the death of those we love dearly, the death of public figures whose lives enrich ours, and ultimately our own death. There is loss: the loss of a job, the loss of a mate, the loss of a home, the loss of special possessions, the loss of our powers. There is failure: the failure to achieve a desired goal, the failure to obtain employment we seek, the failure to raise our children as we would like, the failure to communicate well with our parents. Religion is a human creation. It is not handed down from the gods or God. Often--as in the religion of the Tao, that of Confucius, and the Buddhist religion--it is not about God at all. Religion is our response to the fact of life and the certainty of death. Religion deals with the insistent questions we have about the puzzling and painful parts of human existence. Courage is fundamental to hu |
