First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, June 14, 2009
North Shore Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Story for All Ages: "The Coats That Got Too Small"
Adapted from Toward a Human World Order
by Gerald and Patricia Mische.
…They stood there, in all sizes and shapes, not seeming to take much notice of each other's misery. There seemed to be about 150 of them, but I found it hard to count, even though they barely moved. Their contorted facial expressions and the gasping and groaning sounds they made were very disconcerting to me.
More than anything else, though, the coats were what first caught and held my attention. They were much too small. Buttons and zippers were being strained to the limit and seams threatened to tear at the sides. Their bodies bulged against the overstretched fabric as if the contents had been stuffed in with tremendous effort.
When I approached one particularly pitiful-looking creature and extended my hand to her, she could not lift her arm even as much as 2 inches. Her jacket was so constraining as to render her practically immobile. Her face was quite puffed and rather bluish and she was struggling for breath. She eventually whined an apology. "You see, I can't move my arms," she got our between gasps. I thought I saw tears in her eyes.
"It's your coat," I said.
"What about my coat?" she gasped again, sounding more defensive and anxious than I thought was necessary, since it was only an observation, and one meant to help.
"It's too tight," I replied. "Maybe you should get a new one that fits you better. it looks like this one has served you in the past, but now it is more like a straitjacket than a coat."
"What's a straitjacket?" she gasped out, her bulging eyes looking a little puzzled and still defensive.
"It's a special kind of coat used to constrain people who are losing control," I explained patiently. "It has very long sleeves and when it is put on a person, their arms are crossed against their chest and the long sleeves are tightly tied behind their backs. Then they are powerless to use their hands and arms."
"That sounds terrible!" she exclaimed, as a few tears of pain rolled down her cheeks. (She had taken too deep a breath in her indignation.)
"Could you tell me why everyone is, like you, wearing coats that are too small?" I asked, trying to keep my tone as delicate possible -- although that was difficult, since I found the situation so amazing.
After considerable time (in which she was, no doubt, trying to get enough breath as well as gathering her thoughts) she started, between gasps, to tell me their story. They had had these coats since they were young, she said. It seemed to be the fashion. No one ever questioned it before.
"But surely, you have all grown very much since then," I said incredulously, trying to contain myself. "Have you ever looked in a mirror?"
"But what else is there?" She strained, and when she could get enough breath, went on to say that she liked this coat. After all, it had been hers for a very long time. "I'm used to it now. It makes me feel…" She searched for a long time, looking as much for breath as for the right word. "…Secure," she puffed out at last.
As I left that place, I thought I heard a great tearing sound, but I couldn't be sure, because of all the loud groaning. I wondered what would become of these strange creatures who could not dance or laugh or touch each other.
Special Music Before the Sermon: "What Was I Thinking?"
Words and Music by Christine Lavin
Original version copyright 1993 CL2 ASCAP
It was a last minute invitation. I did not have a thing to wear.
I ran into the store. I said, "I need something black, something formal. Other than that, I don't care."
I made it to the theater as the lights dimmed. The first act was brilliantly fun.
When I caught my reflection during intermission, I thought, "What have I done?"
What was I thinking? What, was I blind?
When I bought this outfit, I must have been temporarily out of my mind.
What was I thinking? Look at this dress!
My endorphins are sinking. My life is a mess.
My hairdresser said, "It's time for a new do. You've had that look for way too long."
So he showed me a perm in a magazine and I thought, "Sure, what could go wrong?"
I should have known by the sounds he was making ("Oh boy!") something was going awry.
After two hours, I put on my glasses. I could not believe my eyes.
What was he thinking? I can't believe what I see.
I look in the mirror. Art Garfunkel's looking back at me.
What was he thinking? Quick, steal me a hat!
I should look on the bright side: Unlike Art, at least mine will grow back.
Ahh Ahh Ah Ach tu libre
Ahh Ahh Ah Ah buat a chiena
Ahh Ahh Ah Oh mui bosza
Ahh Ahh Ah Que la sti la la vie amour ahh
(I put that in so people would think I was doing world music.)
My good friend said, "I know you're gonna love him. I've known him for a long, long time,
And if I were not happily married myself, in a heartbeat I would try to make him mine."
So I figured, I'll take my chances. I mean, really, what harm could it do?
Makes you wonder 'bout your good friends and their motivations when something like this happens to you.
What was she thinking? Who is this guy?
Maybe I will choke on this pork chop and conveniently die.
What was she thinking? Quick, sharpen this knife!
I'm thinking of drinking and I'm thinking of ending my life.
Oh, it was late. I had insomnia. That TV Stair Stepper started to look good.
So I thought to myself, "Should I buy it?" I heard Bruce Jenner's voice say, "Yes, you should!
And that Snackmaster, and that bald headed man spray, and that Victoria Jackson makeup kit!"
Now I can barely get around my apartment, it is so full of this -- stuff.
What was I thinking? Look at this junk!
I can't blame this on drinking. I hardly ever -- I'm not -- right now, I'm not drunk.
What was I thinking? When will this end?
What was I thinking? This song has no end.
What was I thinking? This song has no end.
Sermon
OK – let me be clear. Even though I’ve begun this sermon on moments in UU history with a very funny song by Christine Lavin, not every decision that is second-guessed is wrong. Maybe she really did look great in that dress or with that haircut, and it was just such a startling change that at first she couldn’t see what a good thing it actually was. Big changes are often decried and assessed as wrong in the earliest stages.
Many people outside of Unitarian Universalism sincerely believe that religious faith consists entirely of learning about and then conforming to certain unchanging, eternal truths. For many people, the idea that truth – whether religious, scientific, or historical – might be evolving, growing, and changing, influenced by and influencing the human context and culture in which it is always embedded, is a very threatening prospect.
Although we Unitarian Universalists sometimes have the hubris, or sinful pride, to think that UUism is not like “those other religions,” we too dislike and fear change. We're human, after all, and even a cursory study of the tendencies of humanity shows that we human beings are creatures of habit. We cling to the familiar long after we should have seen that we have outgrown it, or that it’s actually harmful to us. Most of us prefer to stick with what we know – even when it doesn’t fit any more.
Take smoking for just one example: every educated person now knows that tobacco is addictive, causes both minor and major short- and long-term physical damage to the smoker, costs a fortune not only in tobacco costs but also in health complications, and, at the very least, is irritating and obnoxious to most non-smokers, if not also harmful to them as well. And yet, so many intelligent, well-informed people keep right on smoking. It can be argued that smoking is more of an addiction than a choice, so perhaps we might say that clinging to the familiar in the face of evidence to the contrary is a kind of addiction too.
Throughout history, it has always taken the courageous actions of a few visionaries to step ahead of the crowd, to shout that the Emperor has no clothes. And in almost every case, the reaction of the rest of the good folks is something like, “What were they thinking?? Everything is just fine – why rock the boat? They’ll just make things worse.” Sometimes I get a kick out of picturing the very first apes to try walking upright, or the first fish to try breathing air. Can’t you just see the other apes and fish screaming, “What were they thinking??”
Many Unitarian Universalists like to view the history of our own faith tradition as the unstoppable march of inevitable religious progress, but, like most comfortable perspectives on the past, it is false. The early proponents of evolution once saw nature as moving inexorably along a straight arrow of perfectibility, but many contemporary biologists now hold to a theory of “punctuated equilibrium.” In this view of the evolutionary process, major changes happen rather suddenly, are adjusted to over time, and become the norm – until the next explosive change breaks through, and the whole cycle starts all over again. That’s exactly how major religious change has come about in Unitarian Universalist history as well.
We could begin our look at UU history by going all the way back to Jesus, since what he taught was essentially a radical change in the Judaism of his day – but we won’t. We don’t have time this morning to cover all of the changes that have come about in Christianity over the past 2,000 years – although it sure would be fun! (That’s another sermon!) Let’s just concentrate on those explosions of change that have made up our own Unitarian Universalist movement:
In the 1740s, evangelical fervor swept through the American colonies in the so-called Great Awakening as the missionary Jonathan Edwards traveled from town to town in tent revivals, preaching the frightful message of “sinners in the hands of an angry God.” Sermons about damnation and hellfire brought thousands of people to convert to a conservative form of Christianity, convinced their immortal souls depended on it. But at the same time, in reaction to that fearful message, another group of evangelists traveled the same route, preaching a more hopeful message of universal salvation – of God’s unchanging and everlasting love and forgiveness for all. Universalist Christianity gained an unprecedented number of converts and Universalist churches reached a peak of membership and attendance. The conservatives, convinced that the Universalist theological message would lead to anarchy, cried out, “What were they thinking?? Without hell, people will act any way they want – it’ll be chaos.”
In 1819 a liberal minister from Boston was asked to give the ordination sermon for a young friend in Baltimore. William Ellery Channing’s sermon on Unitarian Christianity, explaining how the “Unitarians” (as opposed to “Trinitarians”) saw Jesus as a great teacher and moral exemplar but not of the same substance as God, exploded the comfortable Protestant consensus that had held together contentious congregational churches since colonial times. While some rejoiced in the idea of a completely human Jesus, others were horrified, exclaiming, “What were they thinking?? How can you believe Jesus is not God? We’ll lose fellowship with other Christians.”
A generation later, in the 1830s, Unitarian Transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott ( father of Louisa May Alcott), and Margaret Fuller, declared that emotion, intuition, and individual conscience were just as necessary to revelation as pure rationality and the intellect. Their stance pleased some, but older Unitarians (apparently forgetting their own days of youthful rebellion) protested, “What were they thinking?? We’ll lose sensible members with all this soft-headed stuff.”
In the 1860s, another generation brought forth the first women to be ordained by American denominations: Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Olympia Brown, Lydia Jenkins, Phebe Hanaford, Augusta Chapin. Many women were inspired to enter the liberal ministry. Instead of applauding, most of the male ministers and male lay leadership of both the Universalists and the Unitarians expressed their concern by asking plaintively, “What were they thinking?? Men won’t join a church if a woman is minister – we’ll lose all our men-folk.”
In the 1880s, it was the “Issue in the West,” when the more liberal western Unitarian churches, influenced by immigration and ecumenical contact, began to open up to the ideas of non-Christian religions. The resulting controversy was eventually finessed by the statement “Things Commonly Believed Among Us,” written by William Gannett in 1887, making Unitarianism a much more inclusive faith, with ethics and goodness the core of our religion, not faith in Christ. The old Unitarian declaration of “love of God” was changed to “love of the good” thus making a major theological compromise out of the addition of one letter. Unitarianism was thus effectively saved for another generation, but around the United States, the more orthodox cried out in genuine pain, “What were they thinking?? If we’re not exclusively Christian, we’ll lose our identity – and we’ll lose members.”
During World War I, John Haynes Holmes, a Unitarian minister in New York City and a co-founder of the NAACP, preached sermons on pacificism, socialism and civil rights for black people. His stance encouraged other courageous liberal ministers to preach prophetically about social ills in our country. From patriotic folk of every denomination came the cry, “What were they thinking?? You can't criticize your country in war-time – it's treason.” (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?)
Just before World War II, in 1933, Unitarian ministers Curtis Reese, John Dietrich, and Charles Potter were among those who signed the Humanist Manifesto, which confidently stated that there was no supernatural, no Creator, and no revelation. Humanism was embraced by many, seen as the logical next step in human development, but for the theists, the result was pain and anguish. In fact, the heated debate put off the long-discussed merger between the Unitarians and the Universalists for another generation. Traditionalist Unitarians and nearly all the Universalists were questioning “What were they thinking?? How can religion be meaningful without God?”
In the mid-20th century, again it was social and political issues that would once again be painfully divisive: civil rights, the Viet Nam War, feminism, the gay rights movement. Concerned UUs asked sincerely, “What were they thinking?? The time is not right – we'll only offend people, and lose members.”
When it isn’t politics that’s upsetting us, it’s theology. In the mid-1990s, our movement once again heard the call of those made fearful and unhappy by what they saw as radical, unnecessary change. After years of thoughtful and sometime rancorous discussion, a 6th source was added by the 1995 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association to our Living Tradition: “Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” For those who supported and worked for this change, it was long overdue -- 7 years of networking, lobbying, educating, organizing. For those who opposed it, it was the death-knell of Unitarian Universalism as they had always known it – sure to make us lose face and lose members. It’s nearly 14 years later, and I think most UUs would now agree that officially including neo-pagans, or those whose spirituality is nature-based, within the circle of Unitarian Universalism has not harmed us.
At this year’s GA, delegates will be getting their first vote on a new set of UUA By-Laws that include the Principles and Purposes – would you be surprised to learn that some folks are already squawking, “What were they thinking?? The Principles and Purposes shouldn’t be changed – any anyway, this new wording is all wrong.”
What’s the next great change looming on the horizon for our liberal religious movement? That’s very hard to say. But there’s one thing we can know for absolute sure: when this next change, whatever it is, sweeps through our denomination, we will once again hear the age-old cry of the good folks who feel dispossessed and uncomfortable: “What were they thinking??” And then, as has happened in the past and will reoccur in the future, a new generation will arise that will sincerely wonder what all the fuss was about, and will feel heart-felt gratitude that the change came about. And then the whole thing will happen again, over issues we cannot even imagine today.
It’s not just in our movement as a whole that this cycle happens, but in individual congregations as well. Changes in the style of worship, the number of worship services, the addition or loss of a staff member, increases in budget, changes to existing buildings or construction of a new building – even something as seemingly trivial as décor – can trigger minor or even major congregational conflict, with some folks advocating the change, and others demanding, “What were they thinking??”
Well, that’s us. That’s who we always have been and who we’ll always be as Unitarian Universalists – contradictory folk who both love to stir up trouble and who fear discomfort and the new. We have helped bring about major alterations in our nation's religious and political life and in our own churches – and we have fought those very same changes with energy and passion. We are both deeply contented and deeply dissatisfied with the way things are.
Whatever we are, however aggravating we might be on occasion, we are all of us seekers, questioners, doubters, sometimes complainers, but always brothers and sisters on a journey. We are fellow wanderers on a never-ending path, and we invite all seekers to join us. As Walt Whitman, himself a religious liberal, declared,
I will be honest with you:
I do not offer the old smooth prizes,
but rough new prizes…
Come, I give you myself before preaching or law.
Will you give me yourself? Will you travel with me?…
It may be a rough new message to your ears, but it is the essence of Unitarian Universalism: we offer to all people a supportive, truly diverse community in the shared search for meaning; a living, breathing human spirituality based in deeds, not creeds; an always growing, changing, evolving faith, one not trapped in the outmoded traditions of a by-gone day, but one that has always honored and kept that which is good and useful from the past. Will you give us yourself? Will you travel with us on this road? We hope you will. So might this be! AMEN – ASHÉ– SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTÉ – BLESSED BE!
