Prayer In America

Sermon by Reverend Barbara Fast
Delivered February 17, 2008

Opening Words

Welcome! Remember this phrase from the  60’s?  I know where you’re coming from!  Here at the Unitarian Church we may not know where each of us comes from theologically. Wherever that is, you are welcome here.

Today’s theme is Prayer. Do you pray? If you pray, what do you imagine?
If you don’t, pray, what do you imagine prayer is?  Whatever way you imagine prayer; let us begin with a prayerful meditation

That Which Holds All by Nancy Schaffer.

Because she wanted everyone to feel included
in her prayer
she said right at the beginning
several names for the Holy:
Spirit, she said  Holy One, Mystery, God.

but then thinking these weren’t enough ways of addressing
that which cannot be fully addressed, she added
particularities, saying, Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love,
Ancient Holy One, Mystery We Will Not Ever Fully Know,
Gracious God, and also Spirit of This Earth,
God of Sarah, Gaia, Thou

and then, tongue loosened, she fell to naming
superlatives as well. Most creative One
Greatest Source, Closest Hope-
even though superlatives for the Sacred seemed to her
probably redundant, but then she couldn’t stop:

One who made the Stars, she said, although she knew
technically a number of those present didn’t believe
the stars had been made by anyone or thing
but just luckily happened.

One Who Is An Entire Ocean of Compassion,
she said, and no one laughed.
That Which Had Been Present Since Before the Beginning
she said, and the room was silent.


Then, although she hadn’t imagined it this way,
others began to offer names:

Peace, said one.
One My Mother Knew, said another.
Ancestor, said a third.
Wind.
Rain.
Breath, said one near the back.
Refuge.
That Which Holds All.
A child said Water.
Someone said, Kuan Yin.
Then; Womb.
Witness.
Great Kindness.
Great Eagle.
Eternal Stillness.

And then there wasn’t any need to say the things she’d thought would be important to say and everyone sat hushed , until someone said

Amen






PRAYER IN AMERICA
The Reverend Barbara G. Fast

The proper title for this sermon is:  Challenge, Crumbs, Compost & Courage.
Maybe you will find a crumb of nurture in this sermon. And if you do not, may you have the courage to tell me directly.

Also there are a few caveats. Just so you know from where I am coming.  

I have no need for anyone here to need to or want to engage in prayer if it offends their conscience.  Often, when I am with interfaith groups I feel left out.  I do not feel like I am held in the words of the prayer.

When I was at a UU congregation in 1999 I was told by a UU clergyperson not to use the word ‘prayer’ in the service.  This I already knew, because the word was never mentioned there by the professional religious leaders. However as I read our Principles and Purposes I read that we affirm the following:

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations. The Free and responsible search for truth and meaning…

I also read this: The living tradition we share draws on many sources:
Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.

Grateful for the religious pluralism, which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding, and expand our vision. As free congregations we enter into this covenant promising one another our mutual trust and support.

It put me in mid of Hosea Ballou’s words, which we lit our chalice to this morning.  

If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good. Let us endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace.

In my Clinical Chaplaincy program, the challenge of interfaith prayer came home to me.  
We were a small group consisting of an experienced minister, two Unitarian Div aspirants, one Presbyterian layperson and one Jewish layperson.

We had issues and hurt feelings about use of language. At the end of 5 months together our supervisor pointed out that we never got past that first hurtle of how to pray together. We never got over it. It never got better.  

What was said became, if not quite insipid, not always inspirational. Refreshment often eluded us, as one or another, sometimes like a border patrol guarding the homeland from offensive alien ideas crossing our personal theological boundary, waited to pounce on the next offense.

Sometimes, I just wanted to say, get over it! People are waiting for our presence, suffering and alone in the hospital rooms, hoping, worrying, and healing.
But saying something like that, failed to honor their hurts and fears and needs to be included at the table. To be held in love.

When I visited people suffering, I invited them to tell me how they pray, invited them to pray in their own way. If they wanted to pray at all. As UUs we know how diverse the world is. But do we embrace it?

I was a facilitator in the PBS outreach for their program now being aired, Prayer in America. The authors of the Community Resource Guide write that there are two ways to approach interfaith prayer.  One is that ‘generic’ way.   

“…The purpose of this is to help members of different faiths overcome the barriers of specific religious systems and grow in communication with one another. However, many people of faith are uncomfortable with this methodology.”   

They quote Speight and write that ‘this formula is often used, but … it [is] difficult for us to recommend it as a way to create interfaith community.” ( 73)

In other words, this approach is equally crummy for everybody.

Speight  “suggests” …“while in prayer, an atmosphere is good will, common concern, and united purpose should be created” so that interfaith prayer becomes a time in which members of various traditions pray alongside each other, rather than praying to any particular “ inter religious mold.”  “…with any luck,” the authors go on, “this might lead to a feeling of common humanity and solidarity.”  They propose this for those who “embrace pluralism”, which is an affirmative posture as opposed to acceptance or a toleration of someone whose beliefs or practice is different.  

It is hard to speak truth in love when we talk about difficult things. But that is the spirit that is required of us. “Love”, we say, “is the spirit of this church.  It is hard to embrace pluralism. It is hard to be polite much less to go beyond what is easily tolerated. It takes courage. And resiliency. And forgiveness for flaws. But merely being tolerated is like being fed a diet of crumbs. It starts to feel crummy.


Here is a story of crumbs, a story from the Bible, the Christian Bible. The story of Jesus and the Syrophonecian Woman.  Mark 8. 24- 30

The story says that Jesus went 100 miles into a new territory (for his ministry). Into Tyre and Sidon. There were gentiles there. He had understood his ministry was to serve exclusively among Jews and he is trying to hide in someone’s house when a woman, a gentile woman shows up.

And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid. For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.

But Jesus said unto her, let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him,

Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs. 29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. 30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.

Liberal religionists like me like this story. Jesus is caught with his compassion down.  

Ministers like it because Jesus has his limitations. He is not perfect. Which is a relief for ministers who worry they can never measure up to the infinite human need.  Even Jesus got cranky according to scripture.   Please note that he is hiding.

Women like it, because a woman challenges him and succeeds in changing his understanding of his mission. Through their relationship he comes to a new place in his ministry.

Congregants do that. Good congregations & good ministers create one another. Jack Mendelsohn.

And what does Jesus feel?  I think it must have been gratitude. For gift she gave him. For pointing out something to him, that he needed to hear.

She was not rude. She was respectful even in her audacity.  It was audacious to show up being a foreign non-Jewish female.  It was audacious to touch a man, not your husband. Women did not. To speak up:  Women did not. To talk back and to challenge:  Women did not. But as a result of that scandalous behavior she got what she needed. “even dogs get crumbs”.
 
That is what I sometimes do out there. While facilitating at the Prayer in America program, at the prayer & social justice circle, I made a request of the circle based upon my experience in UU congregations.

I requested when one is praying for all who have gathered in a public setting, such as social justice endeavor, I asked clergy to remember that they have allies who are marching, hammering, cleaning, building, and helping, who do not use terms like God, Jesus, or Christ.  Who use other terms or none at all. I asked if they could, to leave a moment of silence, or in some small way, acknowledge the diversity. To leave some crumbs of silence, a space for wonder, for the conscience of atheists, agnostics and other allies who do the work too.  

I requested that because I am acutely aware of the plurality of theological places from where my people come from.  I often feel as if I am insisting on the crumbs, subsisting on a diet of crumbs outside but I am happy that we are at the table.  I do not feel crummy about that.

One of you told me a story.  

One of you recently told me that years ago she asked a Christian minister if Atheists could be moral. He replied, “No.” End of discussion.  She had longed, for years, to be able to tell him that atheists were moral, that she was honest, loyal, loving!  She got to tell me!

I imagined that she was grabbing that minister by the ankles like a Syroponecian woman and telling him her deepest truth.

I am so happy to be in East Greenwich, grateful for gracious colleagues here in EG who do acknowledge the worth and dignity and morality of those of differing traditions.  

Prayer can unite or it can divide.

There was a time I prayed while engaged in social action as an escort at a women’s health clinic. Two days a week they performed abortions. Usually we worked in teams to help women get inside safely. There were always protestors.

That morning I was standing at the door, alone. Someone of the protestors called me the ‘devil’. I was alone and vulnerable there.   

So I started to pray the 23rd psalm out loud.  The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.
I prayed for comfort and courage. To not feel so alone.  And I figured it would irritate them.

And the Lord walked over to me. She was a college student from Wesleyan University and she came over to stand with me. She was my rod and staff. She comforted me by being there with me.

We can make life like a heaven or a hell by the way we treat each other. It helps to have a sense of humor, otherwise we could lose faith.    

Hell.  Most Americans believe in Hell. I have been waiting for the right time to tell you this story I read on the Internet. I was smiling the whole time I was typing.  Imagining you hearing it. This was a bonus question on an Engineering Exam. Made rounds on Internet.

Do you imagine hell as Exothermic – a place that gives off heat or Endothermic (a place that absorbs heat?)? One student, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. (If we weren’t laughing we should be crying)

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell,
then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa B.  during my freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I [sleep] with you and if we take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded… then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze."  This student received the only A.

The trends in American communities of faith are revealing.  From 1990- 2001 the number of people self-identifying as secular, atheist, agnostic has doubled to 15% of the population or more than 42 million people.

Those self identifying as Christian has dropped from 86% to 76%.

And who else is here?  AFRO CARRIBEAN    HUMANISM    BAHAI    BUDDHISM  HINDUISM  INTERFAITH   ISLAM  JAINISM        JUDAISM    NATIVE PEOPLES  PAGANISM  SHINTO  SIKHISM  TAOISM   ZOROASTIASM    &  OTHER

We need one another to live in peace.  The need for interfaith understanding is clear.   We are too practiced at giving each other hell hot hope.

Interfaith understanding helps us better tackle social problems, to better understand each other and can lead to a better understanding of ourselves.
Let me quote them quoting the Dalai Lama:  

I believe it is extremely important that we extend our understanding of each other’s spiritual practices and traditions. This is not necessarily done in order to adopt them ourselves, but to increase our opportunities for mutual respect. Sometimes, too, we encounter something in another tradition that helps us better appreciate something in our own. (p.44)

What about the Christians, theists, deists in our midst?  It seems to me as a UU that we here we have not been so embracing of the Christians in our midst. We should not dismiss Christianity because of those who are narrow-minded.  We can be narrow minded our selves.  

 
The Universalist Rev. John Murray is part of our history.  He and others changed face of judging Christianity in this nation. He took the crumbs of an unforgiving Calvinism and imagined a new way, a way of love.   We still take heart and quote him.
Give them not hell, but hope and courage.

This is where the compost comes. I am trying to compost something that happened last week.

Last week, in worship I referenced the rock song, What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on a bus, trying to make his way home?” and preached about honoring the divine light in each of us, like Namaste!

I came back to my mailbox later in the week to find a copy of that Order of Service. It had the lyric, “ What if God was one of us…?” printed on the cover. The word God was circled and next to it, drawn in impeccable artistic penmanship was the word YUCKO with an exclamation mark!

So after I was told the story by my dear atheist congregant, who I love, I decided to show her the cover and I asked her. What should I do with this?

She said. “It’s anonymous. Throw it in the garbage!”

She is right. When something comes to me anonymously, I don’t know where you are coming from.  It is no help to me. Because I do not know where that Yucko is coming from!
 
The problem is, I hate making garbage. I love to compost. I am trying now to compost Yucko!  The anonymity gives me freedom to try talk about here. To transform it into something useful. Which is what compost does. It turns garbage into something that nourishes new life.

Friends- I call you friends- Of all the choices of conscience, choosing that one?  

There is an orthodoxy in liberal UU circles. It comes out of a wounded ness. I understand.  But this is not way to let the light in?  When we don’t let the light in, we won’t let our lights out!

I appreciate directness. I love to engage. Come to me, if you are feeling crummy about something.   Come to me- preferably on a day other than a Sunday- so we can give some spaciousness to the discussion. About where you are.

The Syrophonecian woman came face to face…and asked for what she needed.  
Here we are all at the table. None of us are under it. And we are sitting at the table. It may take time to get served some seasons, but we are all at the table. No one eats crumbs.  


Anonymous does not encourage mutuality or spiritual growth in either you or me.
Inside you Order of Service is a Statement of Principles and Purposes. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.   Spend some time with them. We say that Religious pluralism enriches and ennobles our faith. Let it be so.
Reread the Vision you are voting on next week.

I could not preach this if I wasn’t so grateful to be a UU and to be here with you UU’s.

A postscript from Molly.  When I told her about Yucko…she said well. if hearing that someone thinks the word God is Yucko, and they write it to the minister that sounds like a religion I want to join.  Seriously. You can quote me.

It is now officially compost!

PRAYER UNITES AND DIVIDES:  Maybe it always will.
That is why we disestablished religion in America. The brilliance of our Constitution is that it took authority from God and from government by separating Church & State.

Jon and I saw Shakespeare’s play Richard 3rd.  There is a lot of God language being used when the King is crowned.

The Founders knew this, experienced this, but they did not abandon idea of God. They changed its place in the public governmental square. They took divinity out of governance & governance out of divinity.

Sure lots of evil has been done in name of religion…Human beings are capable of evil, and more often than not place fault outside of themselves, but it in us. Evil has been done in name of science, education. Democracy.

We have so much to give the world and each other. We are part of American history.  We are the early church in America.  We were a Christian movement. Some of us still are christian.

The challenge of interfaith dialogue is to have the courage to honor the divine in one with whom you disagree. Where better to practice than RI, home of religious freedom and here at Westminster.
 
When we went to see Richard the 3rd I took Jonathan to see the first Westminster Unitarian Church in Providence.  It is a storage building. Only a few stones are left visible by its walls. Its doors are closed.

Ours are open. The most important door to be open is our heart and mind as we move into our future together.  If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us injury.  Let us endeavor to grow the unity of our spirits in the bonds of peace.

Let us have courage to love, then… There really isn’t  any need to say the things we thought were important to say, and everyone will live in peace.

END   Copyright Barbara Fast February 2008
 


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