by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given May 20, 2001

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

When I lived in Duluth, Minnesota some years ago, I was not attending any church. I had left the church of my childhood years earlier and my spiritual life consisted of walks along the shore of Lake Superior. This was a magnificent—though oftentimes a very cold—spiritual experience.

But I was also wanting something more, something that connected me with other people. The problem was I just didn’t seem to be able to find a place where I fit in.

One night I was having a conversation with the wife of a friend from work. We talked about our spiritual journeys and where we each found ourselves in life. At the end of the conversation she said, “You know, you sound like a Unitarian.”

I didn’t know what to make of this comment. I didn’t have much of a clue about what a Unitarian was. I lived a couple blocks from the church in Duluth and walked by it all the time, and I was a little skeptical. There was a sign outside the church that had these interesting quotes posted on it. They were thought-provoking and I was intrigued, but it didn’t quite fit into my notion of church.

But the woman who said I sounded like a Unitarian seemed pretty wise (even if she didn’t attend any church herself). So the next Sunday I went to church, figuring I didn’t have much to lose. The church was small; it probably didn’t seat more than 70 or 80 people. I went in, found a seat. The people seemed friendly enough, even though nobody said more than hello to me. The service started and we sang “Morning Has Broken.” For the first time I saw a woman minister and she was wearing a bright red robe. I don’t actually remember exactly what she talked about in the sermon, other than the fact that there were all kinds of things that seemed very new and interesting to me. By the end of the service I was feeling more comfortable and even a bit excited. I had an inkling that I had found a new spiritual home.

And in fact I had. Over time a comfort developed. I started to meet people, took a class on personal theology, and got to know the minister. Before long I was helping with the annual canvass and I started to visit a blind woman in the congregation who was homebound. I quickly started to find my way.

I can look back on that time and know that I was searching for something and found it. It was a place that appealed to my head as well as my heart and seemed to draw an interesting mix of people. I sensed that I would eventually feel at home, a place where I could bring my questions about life.

Now that I’m a minister, I hear all kinds of stories about how people experience coming to the church for the first time. Those stories often take me back to that first time in the church in Duluth. I was nervous and excited and filled with a sense that it was right.

Entering a religious community can be a challenge, especially if you’re an introvert. Thank goodness for the bookstore. It is a good place to go and check things out without having to talk to too many people before you are ready.

But there is something that brings us and something that keeps us, and all of us are part of the connection that happens. We bring our voices to the choir that all of us are a part of on Sunday morning, part of the fabric of the community. We are connected in some common mission in the world, we come together to be supported and to be challenged.

The Latin word “religio” means a “tie” or a “binding.” The religious impulse, at its root, refers to a sense of our being bound together, connected, conjoined in a circle of community, a circle of mutual support and love.

In 1630, when John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, landed on this continent, he delivered a sermon describing the “city on a hill” that he and his fellow Puritans intended to found. He enjoined his people to "delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoyce together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our ... community ... as members of the same body."

We live in this time at the beginning of the 21^st century. That prompts us to ask a lot of questions. What are we doing to the planet? Why is there so much violence in the world? Why don’t our leaders do more about it? What will life be like for the generation to follow us, and the generation to follow them?

Those are hard questions and finding answers for them is not easy. We can even feel despair when we read the news. But they are questions lots of people are asking these days. We may not know what to do other than to reach out to find answers.

This past week His Holiness the Dalai Lama was in town and thousands of people turned out to hear him. His message, as I heard it, was a simple one: if you want peace in the world, start by trying to find peace in your own life. If you want more compassion in the world, look for ways to bring compassion to your life. If you want happiness in the world, then try to find happiness in your life. Whatever it is we are striving for, we have to start with our own life.

Those are important words, ones I try to live by myself. And every time I hear them, I know they are right, and the next thought that goes through my mind is how very difficult they are to live out. As the Dalai Lama said, imagine what the world would be like if we were all able to not lose our tempers for a whole month. That would be quite an accomplishment.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that so many people came out to hear the Dalai Lama. We are looking for something and hope that he might have the answers.

He did have some answers, I think. And certainly being in his presence is something to remember. He is in the moment, he has something to say, but he is also able to say it without much judgment and able to let go of the outcomes once he has spoken. If he had an itch under his arm, he scratched it. When he wanted to chuckle, he did it. He was simply there where he was. A young girl sang a song after he spoke, he was right there with her, encouraging and listening and enjoying.

He had some things to say about our culture. He said we are not happy and attributed it to the fact the we are so focused on material things, that they take us away from what is most important in life. He noted that in the 20^th Century, as we increased our consumption of materials and our spending, the level of bloodshed in the world also increased. As technology has increased, it seems that more and more people have suffered. He said we are less and less in touch with suffering. Today with the weapons we have, it is now possible to push a button and to destroy people. We don’t even see how they suffered. We simply push a button and that is all we see.

What we need, he said, is to move away from a sense of we/they to a sense of us. That we need to see part of our lives more and more as including responsibility for others. When we use a lot of energy and natural resources, what does that mean for the earth? What does that mean for the people who are not able to get the minimum they need?

He told a Buddhist tale that says it is a foolish person who tries to cut off the branch of the tree they are sitting on.

When we ask why the world is so broken, why there is so much violence, it is right there we have to stop and look at where we are in our lives. If we can come to embrace our own brokenness, we can start to heal the brokenness in the world.  We start with where we are hurting. It is in joining that struggle with the struggle of others that we start to find meaning. When we see injustice we can feel that injustice and move from that place. When we must take a stand we find the courage to take that stand. We are connected to others and we move out of that place of connection and compassion.

A story.

There was a man who, as boy and a young man, was a devout Jew. He worshipped God with the others in his village with great joy and kept God’s commandments and laws.

But when he entered his 20s, he turned away from God, and rebelled against his law-laden religion. He went to live in a far-away city. And once he was in the city he chose a secular life, which was a clear act of defiance against his tradition. He had bold, colorful tattoos inscribed over the surfaces of his arms and his chest. Every time he would look at the tattoos in the mirror he felt liberated from his restrictive past.

But then a day came when he found that his life was not happy. He yearned to be back in relationship with God and with his community. To do this he knew he would need to undergo a mikva, or ritual bath, in order to purify himself before God prior to entering the temple. He returned to his village and headed straight for the mikva.

He disrobed and was about to step into the bath when a community leader blocked his way and angrily admonished him that, according to strict Jewish law, no one who had demeaned and mutilated himself through the act of being tattooed was permitted to enter the mikva for fear that it would defile the water.

The tattooed man sat on the edge of the bath and began to softly weep. He felt lost and dejected. He wondered when, if ever, he would be reconciled again to his God or to his community? He wondered if his tattoos would forever keep him from redemption?

An old man came along and found him crying and bent down beside him to ask what was wrong. The tattooed man explained his plight. The second man held out his arm, and displayed a crude row of blue numbers that been tattooed there, against his will, by the Nazis at Auschwitz. The old man took the tattooed man's hand and gently said, "Come and let us step into the bath together."

Words of Adrienne Rich:

 But there come times—perhaps this is one of them—

when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die;

when we have to pull back from the incantations,

rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly, and disenthrall ourselves, bestow

ourselves to silence, or a severer listening, cleansed

of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static

crowding the wires. We cut the wires,

find ourselves in free-fall, as if

our true home were the undimensional

solitudes, the rift

in the Great Nebula.

Our congregation is a unique place in its history. The last decade has been a time of remarkable growth and change for this place. Our presence in the city and state has grown, our presence in the Unitarian Universalist movement has grown. Next fall we will welcome 300-400 leaders from large UU churches here to Portland, and part of the time will be for them to see what is happening at this church.

It has been a time that has not always been easy. It has meant getting used to a different worship space on most Sundays. It has meant getting to know a lot more people and maybe not seeing the neighbors we used to see most Sundays.

And we’ve come to learn that there are many steps to living out our vision. That it will take a little longer than we had hoped or expected. That before we move full steam ahead with an RE building that we first need to build a stronger financial base that will ensure that we have the money to operate that building when it is built.

It all takes time and sometimes it takes a lot longer than we would like. But through it all we are called to hold fast to the vision. It is a little daunting to know that there aren’t a lot of models for this work out there for churches like us. That means that we have to be open, to be forgiving when we make mistakes, and to keep sight of the vision. It would be too easy to let fear get in the way, and if we let that happen we might get into trouble.

Last Sunday a man came to our church for the first time wanting to hear the special musical work commissioned for our choir and orchestra. He is a member of a fundamentalist church and was not here for the theology, but the music. When the service was over he said that he had never been in a church were he was so aware of the spirit being present and so alive.

I was proud when I heard that story. Not so much because of the compliment, but simply as a witness to the spirit is here among us. It is something I hear often when I stand in line after the services and visitors from other Unitarian Universalist congregations come up to introduce themselves. They speak of a wow experience.

The congregation is something that happens when we all come together. It can’t be predicted, but it is something we all share responsibility for, it is something that we all play some part in. But what is happening here in Portland in this time and place is not the usual but something exceptional. It is a time when we can witness to the world in ways that many other liberal religious congregations are not able to do.

The city and the world need this church and its message. There is too much happening in the world for us not to be at the table. Too much is at stake.

Last week a retired member of the congregation came to talk with me about things at the church. He said he knew this is a very important time in the life of the congregation. He is a person of limited means but he pulled out his checkbook and wrote a check for $1,000. “I want to do all I can,” he told me. “The church is very important to me.”

These words about the church of a new century:

The church that is to lead this century will not be a church creeping on all fours, mewling and whining, its face turned down, its eyes turned back. It must be full of the brave, daring spirit of the day, keeping also the good from times past.

There is a terrific energy in this age, for humans were never so much developed before. Great truths, moral and political, have come to light. It demands as never before, freedom for itself, usefulness in its institutions, truth in its teachings, and beauty in its deeds.

“Let a church have that freedom, that usefulness, truth and beauty, and the energy of this age will be on its side. But the church which did for the fifth century, or the fifteenth, will not do for this. It must have our ideas, the smell of our ground, and have grown out of the religion of our soul.”

Those were spoken by Theodore Parker, the great Unitarian minister who was part of the Transcendentalist movement who lived in the first half of the 19^th Century. He was a prophet of our faith, but was seen as too radical in many circles.

We live in times that call us to take ourselves and our message very seriously. They call for us to be present. They call us to be engaged. They call us to make a difference. We don’t come into it with all the answers, but with a ground of goodwill and hope. We come knowing that our lives have meaning and make a difference.

The last few months have been busy with Marilyn Sewell on sabbatical. Since the middle of January, I’ve officiated at seven memorial services for people ranging in age from 38 to 101 years old. I have to say that I find memorials some of the most important and meaningful things we do in the church but I also have to say that I would just as soon not have so many in so short a period of time.

I don’t know that I’ve figured out what all the meaning is from all the memorials yet, but I have come to see a few things. That each one of our lives makes a difference. That we touch the lives of others in ways we may or may not know. We give life meaning by what we do with this life we have been given. All of this is part of what we give to those who follow us for generations to come. All this is part of knowing and living out the religion of our soul.

 PRAYER

Spirit of life, hold us this day. Hold our church at this important time in history. May we live in the world with courage. May we open ourselves to where the spirit might lead us. May we let out light shine all around the world. For this we pray this day. Amen.

BENEDICTION

Have courage friends. Be in the world and live life fully and joyfully. Go in love and in peace.

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Copyright 2001, Rev. Thomas Disrud.  All rights reserved.