FIRST READING

I bring you greetings today from the more than one thousand congregations all across this continent with which the First Parish in Wayland is joined in religious fellowship through the Unitarian Universalist Association. It’s been an enormous, if sometimes exhausting, privilege to serve our family of faith these past eight years as President. I’m enormously grateful to Ken for the opportunity to visit with you before my term of office is over – seven weeks, one day, and about six hours from now. But who’s counting?

People have asked me if I am going to issuing any last minute pardons before my term is over. My consistent reply is, “No, just asking for them.” So I sincerely ask your pardon for coming to visit the great congregation that you are, one so close to where I live, only after I’ve now spent most of my weekends visiting over 630 others. I look forward to talking to some of you after the service. Let me also apologize for reversing the readings for the morning. The first reading, the ancient reading, is one that I used the other day when I spoke at a rally in Harvard Yard in support of the students protesting on behalf of a living wage for university employees. From the prophet Amos [8:4-6, 11]:

 “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying when will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat. . . .  The time is surely coming, says the Spirit of God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the Spirit.”

And from Paul’s letter to the Galatians [5:22,25] “The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. . . . If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”
 

SECOND READING  from Spirit Matters, by Michael Lerner

We have a higher level of material consumption than ever in human history. People have more things than ever before. Life has increasingly become focused on the acquisition of these things. Selfishness and materialism are presented as the central [‘rationality’] of Western society. Anyone who acts by other standards is seen as incredibly naïve.

[Yet] Even the most cynical people you know – the ones who claim not to understand what the hunger for meaning and higher purpose is all about – know that something very important is missing from the world we live in:

an experience of love and connection to the world and to others
a recognition of the ultimate unity of all being, and, through that, of the preciousness of the Earth and the sanctity of every human being on the planet;
a conviction that the universe is not negative or neutral, but tilts toward goodness, love and justice;
awe, wonder, and radical amazement in response to the universe, and a consequent unwillingness to view the world in merely instrumental terms;
a joyous and compassionate attitude toward oneself and others
a deep trust that there is enough for all and that every human being deserves to share equally in the planet’s abundance and is equally responsible for shaping our future;
a sense that the world is filled with a spiritual energy that transcends the categories and concepts that measure material realities, and that tilts toward freedom, creativity, goodness, connectedness, love and generosity;
a deep inner knowing that our lives have meaning as manifestations of the ultimate goodness of the universe.

SERMON

“The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness
 and self-control. . . . If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” Gal. 5:22,24

So whenever a real rabbi, like my Rabbi Ken here, whom I greatly admire, gives me the chance, I’ve gone out to run and play with real congregations. It’s been one of the best aspects of a complex role. Anna Quindlen recently began a Newsweek column by saying, “To lead a national advocacy organization requires a robust constitution and a thick skin.” And I won’t argue with her. Yet when I think back over the past eight years the overwhelming emotion I feel is gratitude – for ministers like Ken who serve on UUA committees and commissions, for teaching congregations like this one. And for how the job has made me grow in service and spirit myself.

Early on, I’d seen the job as just a pastoral, rabbinic ministry on a somewhat larger scale. But over the last eight years I’ve also been stretched as a fundraiser, administrator, organizational strategist, social activist, interfaith diplomatist, public intellectual, and more. To serve our growing movement and its many-faceted work, I’ve had to learn more about things like mortgage banking for churches and the publishing industry as it affects our Beacon Press, than I could have ever learned in seminary or parish.

It has been tempting to measure success in quantitative terms.  If I feel proud of what we have done on my watch, it’s that high school participation in our congregations is five times greater than it was eight years ago. It’s that we have six times as many college campuses where our young adults can find a UU campus group. It’s that we are a more generous people: on a per capita basis, in constant dollars, we have more than doubled our giving, locally and for common mission.  Yet I have come to see these things, not as signs of collective material progress, but as symbols of our deeper, clearer spiritual commitment.

I’ve had the high privilege of representing Unitarian Universalism at the White House and at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, at the Vatican and at the Pentagon, in religious gatherings from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, from Japan to Chartres, from Beacon Hill to Capitol Hill, and from the mountains of Transylvania to the Khasi Hills of India. But along the way, the most profound changes in me have been spiritual. If I had to sum up all that I’ve learned in one phrase, it would be the one I’ve chosen for today: Spirit Matters.

Most of our society doesn’t believe that. But being stretched as I have been teaches the wisdom of deeper reflection, of meditation and prayer. I’ve found myself valuing all of those things more often, and more profoundly. So that things, acheivements, the illusion of my own isolated ego, have all waned in importance.

I know that some Unitarian Universalists still resist or even despise the whole idea of “spirituality.” I myself have no use for many of the various supernatural, otherworldly, overly prescriptive, or specious distractions masquerading under the name. But I agree with Lerner: spirit matters, in practice.  Not just in lending balance and resilience to our inner and relational lives. It matters to our very hope of creating a more sustainable, just, and democratic way of being in this world.

Let’s face it: the logic of so-called “rational” economics in our present world takes interest in each of us only as a producers or consumers, getting and spending. Increasingly, it actually encourages cynicism and disconnection from any higher or wider sense of accountability or even connection. As a recent issue of REASON magazine put it rather baldly, “Who needs altruism when we’ve got greed? In fact, greed can be much more efficient than altruism.”

No doubt. The workplace, even academia, is now full of cynical thinking like this. Yet even if you find yourself winning the hurried rat race of contemporary existence, who is to say that you aren’t becoming just another fast rat? I say that your altruism, your inner life and your relational life all matter deeply. This is spirituality – which is connecting and re-connecting with what really, enduringly, matters in life. .

In writer Mitch Ablom’s profoundly humanistic bestseller about what he learned from a dying mentor, Tuesdays with Morrie, he asks why so many people have unhappy lives. Morrie replies, “Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We’re teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it. Create your own.”

Too often, however, we think that means withdrawing into a world shaped just by our own needs or consumer preferences, rather than helping to shape a world with a great sense of mutual accountability, of democracy. Including an accountability to those whose lives are exploited and whose spirits are battered, who live marginalized and dis-empowered. Yet when I think about it, the most transforming experiences I have had in the last eight years, have been not in the halls of power and privilege. They have been with communities of the poor and the marginalized.

This year I made another trip to India, just after the Gujarat earthquake. My first stop, however, was on the other side of the country, above Bangla Desh, to the Khasi Hills, where there are 10,000 tribal people who are Unitarians. Whose history goes back over a hundred years.

“What!?” you may say, “10,000 tribal people who are Unitarians? In India? How did that happen?”

Well, they were never Hindus. Their tribal faith believed in one divine spirit pervading everything. They called it with a single syllable, “Blei,” just as the most ancient Hebrews had expressed their awe with the syllable, “Yah.”

When the British came, they brought soldiers, traders, and missionaries. The latter staunch Calvinists from Wales who set up mission schools. Where a young convert named Hajom Kissor Singh began to raise some questions.

“We Khasis,” I imagine him saying to the missionaries, “should probably thank you British for introducing us to these profound spiritual and moral teachings of Jesus. After all, if nothing else, they tell us how you British tell yourselves you should behave!”

“Just a few questions: why believe things about him not found in his teachings? Why not just do what he said to do: treat everyone as sister and brother, all children of God, the same Spirit he called Father, that our tribal religion called Mother, that the Hindus have so many names for and the Muslims call Allah? Why isn’t that enough?”

And the missionaries, of course, called him “heretic.” The worst kind of heretic, the kind they’d known back in England and Wales as a “Unitarian.” To which he replied, “Well then, thank you for that also! Unitarian? So there are others with spiritual ideas like mine? You have an address maybe for these Unitarians?”

In 1886 he made contact with a Unitarian minister then teaching in Calcutta, translated Unitarian worship materials into Khasi, and dedicated the first church and school. There are now 38 Unitarian churches in Northeast India, each with a free, non-sectarian school.

They are generous, gentle people, though poor. They greet you saying, “Khublei” – the Spirit be with you. They say ‘thanks’ the same way: “Khublei.” And farewell. “Khublei.”

Before they would let me go they took up a collection – to take to Gujarat, where the devastating earthquake of January 28 affected millions of the poor people we work with through our Unitarian Universalist Holdeen India Program. The Khasis are poor farmers. They raised a bag of money three feet in diameter. The equivalent of a doctor’s or professor’s annual salary. Because they knew others were in greater need than their own.

You’ll be able to read all about these people in the next issue of the UU WORLD, but in Gujarat I found relief being organized less by the Indian government, or by international agencies, than by our UU partners.

Groups like SEWA, the Self-Employed Women’s Association. Out of their 200,000 members, some 48,000 had their homes damaged or destroyed. Yet they were the ones out helping others. Setting up tents. Contacting UNICEF. Telling the government which villages needed what.

When I arrived in Bombay, I was met by another partner, Vivek, who is the leader of some 15,000 tribal people in that area who have been freed from bonded labor. Last year he was given the World Anti-Slavery Award. Another of our partners won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.

India, as you may know, is now governed by a political party with close ties to the  Hindu equivalent of the Christian Coalition. For political gain, they direct suspicion against all religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians. So when we arrived, several policemen and others asked Vivek whether the Americans he was meeting were “missionaries.”

Vivek just glared at them. Then he shouted so everyone could hear: “Yes! Yes! They are missionaries! And so am I! But what you have not asked is what is our mission? Our mission is human rights; our mission is human dignity, spiritual freedom and justice!”

Vivek also begins his day with a prayer he composed. It says, in part,

“I wish to see my life’s dream come true before my eyes,
 I wish to see human beings live as human beings. . .
 Let those who have neither food nor dignity be my inspiration,
 May every step I take today be in the service of this spirit.”

“Even the most cynical people you know [John,]– the ones who claim not to understand what the hunger for meaning and higher purpose is all about – know that something very important is missing from the world we live in:

an experience of love and connection to the world and to others . . .
a deep trust that there is enough for all and that every human being deserves to share . . .
a deep inner knowing that our lives have meaning as manifestations of the . . .  spirit of the whole universe, and its tilt toward freedom, creativity, goodness, justice.

So may it be. Amen.
 
 
 
 

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