First Parish Unitarian UniversalistThe Good News
Rev. Cricket Potter
First Parish Unitarian Universalist – Canton
December 6, 2009
Reading
Our reading is from the book Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup. In this excerpt, Braestrup has just learned the tragic news that her husband Drew, a Maine state trooper, had been killed by a truck that slammed into his cruiser. Some of you may have heard Braestup’s interviews on the radio over the last year or so. Her book was popular not only because of how genuinely she shares her process of grieving and coming to terms with her husband’s death, but also because she talks about the joys and challenges of the amazing ministry she went on to pursue – as a Unitarian Universalist minister - of serving the Maine Warden Service as a chaplain on their search-and-rescue missions.
Here is an excerpt from her book:
Perhaps forty minutes after I had heard the news of Drew’s death, I was sitting in the living room with my friend Monica when the doorbell rang…..Monica sprang up to answer it.
A young man stood on the front steps, clad in a spiffy dark suit, hair neatly combed, exuding a scent of soap and virtue. Holding out a pamphlet, he beamed at Monica. “Have you heard the Good News?” he asked.
For a long second, Monica glared at him, not sure whether to punch him or laugh hysterically. She compromised by slamming the door.
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang again. This time, I answered it. It was my neighbor an elderly woman I had exchanged no more than a dozen words with in the ten years I’d lived in Thomaston. She had pot-holders on her hands, which held a pan of brownies still hot from the oven, and tears were rolling down her cheeks. “I just heard,” she said.
That pan of brownies was, it later turned out, the leading edge of a tsunami of food that came t my children and me, a wave that did not recede for many months after Drew’s death. I didn’t know that my family and I would be fed three meals a day for weeks and weeks. I did not know that neighborhood men would come to drywall the playroom, build bookshelves, mow the lawn, get the oil changed in my car. I did not know that … I would have embraces and listening ears, that I would not be abandoned to do the labor of mourning alone. All I knew was that my neighbor was standing on the front stoop with her brownies and her tears: she was the Good News.
Sermon
This time of year can present a certain challenge to us Unitarian Universalists.
A question I am inevitably asked come December is,
“So, what do you celebrate as a Unitarian Universalist?
You don’t believe in the Christmas story of God coming to us in the birth of Jesus as Savior.
What is the good news for you?”
“Well,” I say taking a deep breath, “as a Unitarian Universalist I have a lot to celebrate at this time of year - and really, any time of year.
I go on, “You see, I experience God - or the sacred - in each one of us, not in Jesus alone.
“And, I believe that we all have the capacity to be saviors in our own way if we could but realize it and live out that potential.”
If I haven’t completely lost the person, I continue.
“Christmas is very special for me, and some of what I celebrate is:
- the absolute miracle that birth and life truly are for all of us;
- the profound pilgrimage of faith and discovery we each embark on in our own lives as symbolized by the pilgrimages of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the magi that we remember in the Christmas story;
- the dream of peace we have for ourselves and all the world as held in that holy night in Bethlehem;
- and, I celebrate the holiness that is to be found in all of creation, not just in a stable on one certain night. “
I can get quite passionate about this topic because I know well the place my brothers and sisters from the more mainline Protestant traditions speak from when they ask quizzically about Christmas.
For as I have shared before with you, I was a very active and devout Presbyterian in my young adult years.
This time of year was absolutely magical for me because I looked with great anticipation toward Christmas Eve and celebrating the birth of Jesus, Son of God, Prince of Peace, Giver of Hope.
For in theological terms, Jesus’ holy birth was the “inbreaking” of God into our human existence.
There was a profound sense that through Jesus’ birth and life, God was truly among us and that, as prophesied in the book of Isaiah (11:6), a new age of peace and justice that he would usher in:
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.”
And, as told in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus who was conceived by the Holy Spirit was to be called Emmanuel which means God with us.
So indeed at Christmas, we Christians celebrated that our Creator had now come among us.
It was a time of great hope and joy.
Have I lost you or does this sound familiar to some of you?
With this deep faith in the power and purpose of God, I went to seminary at the age of 28 feeling especially called to live out and share my faith with others.
Yet, right in my first year of seminary my faith was shattered.
Two things happened to cause this.
First, my biblical studies quickly led me to question all that I had been taught in my church years.
I came to see the Holy Bible as the product of human endeavors and not as “the Word of God” that my church I had taught me it was.
Through my coursework at seminary, I learned that were many, many writers and editors who compiled the stories and letters that together make up the Bible, and each had their own agenda, audience, and prejudices.
No doubt, many of these writers were inspired, perhaps divinely so.
Yet, the humanness in the making of the Bible, from my perspective, changed everything.
I began to question all that I had believed in.
If the Bible is no longer the Word of God, then how do I know that God is all that I have been taught to believe?
For that matter, what was so special about Jesus if he wasn’t the incarnation of God?
In fact, who’s to say that there even was a God?
Yikes!
Amidst all this, something else very traumatic happened.
My marriage of only four years came to an end.
We simply never should have gotten married in the first place.
We were young and naïve.
Dejected, I moved into a dingy one-bedroom apartment on the seminary campus.
It was a very dark time at first.
I felt like a failure with my marriage in a shambles, and I felt lost with my faith in such a shambles.
What probably devastated me the most, though, was realizing that in my pain, I couldn’t even pray any more.
Who could I pray to if, the truth be told, I no longer believed in the all-knowing, all-powerful God I had once turned to for my comfort and guidance?
Thankfully, my friends at seminary embraced me, sending me thoughtful cards that made me both laugh and cry, popping in with wine for late-night chats and hugs after studying, taking class notes for me on days when I had a court date for my divorce, taking me out to dinner or the movies when I felt down, and offering their sofa for me to sleep on if I found it difficult to be alone on a rough night.
People I hardly knew started knocking at my door.
One person brought me fresh-made soup and bread.
Another person brought a plant to cheer up my apartment.
Another person offered their set of tools if I needed them to fix anything in my apartment. Another asked if I wanted to come over for dinner to meet some of the other folks in the building.
And yet another stopped by to say that she noticed I walked every morning and that she would love to join me sometime if I wanted the company.
In the months ahead, I came to find my faith in something new.
I found it in community, relationship, and the people all around me that saved me.
It was in the care I felt from them, how people reached out to me refusing to let me feel alone, and the many simple yet profound acts of kindness that offered me moments of grace I will never forget.
I found peace and strength in the silence, in time alone or in nature, in listening to the stirrings of my own heart, even in learning to be with the questions.
For me, God – or, as I became more comfortable saying, the sacred – became so much more than a distant figure I had once prayed to or a savior who came to this world some 2000 years ago.
For me, the sacred became life itself in all its mystery and power along with the many people who companioned me and often sustained me with their love and kindness.
And, I’d like to add, that with time I came to see Jesus in a new way after initially rejecting his importance completely –
the old throwing the baby out with the bathwater syndrome.
His birth and his life are of profound importance to me now as a Unitarian Universalist.
I see Jesus as a truly spirit-filled human being who showed us the power and calling we all have as human beings to build the community we all ultimately long for.
He embodied the good news of how something as basic as our love and compassion can break down walls and offer healing where there has been suffering.
We are all one another’s neighbors, he preached and practiced.
The community of hope and peace is for us to build here and now,
I hear in his life’s message.
That message is what has kept me in ministry.
Back to the good news
So, when I read Kate Braestrup’s story about the two people coming to her door in a moment of crisis, that so resonated with my own learning about what the good news is for me.
There was a man looking all spiffy – we’ve all probably had that man at our door - offering pamphlets and mini sermons about how God loves us, how we can be saved, and on and on.
Then, there was a neighbor in tears, offering brownies and the sheer power of her caring.
It’s a no-brainer here about who was truly offering the good news.
I am reminded of an exercise we did in my recent class here on “Speaking of Our Faith.”
After we had talked a lot about what is of utmost importance to us and what gives us hope based on our own lived experience, I asked folks to complete the phrase, “I trust in or I trust that….”
Here are a few of their responses:
“I trust in the power of love.”
“I trust that I can find support if I am in need.”
“I trust that I will never know all of the answers and maybe only some of the questions.”
“I trust in myself and my relationship to all living things. I trust that my task is to find the mystery of being a human being.”
“I trust in the human capacity to respond constructively and equitably to life’s challenges.”
The human capacity to respond.
The power of love.
The support that will be found when it is needed.
We have the makings here of our own gospel – the word gospel in Greek being “euangelion” which simply means good news.
We have a gospel of hope found right among us as we seek to live out what is true and lasting and good.
That brings me to those acts of kindness that we passed out earlier in the service.*
I want to acknowledge my dear friend and colleague Rev. Leaf Seligman from the Fitchburg Unitarian Universalist Church for first sharing this idea with me.
My hope is that during this holiday season, we will all try to carry out the act of kindness we picked from the basket.
Many of these acts are seemingly simple or small.
If you don’t feel able to carry out the specific act of kindness you picked, I encourage you to join in the spirit of this and think of something else you could do to reach out to others in kindness.
I have printed out the full list of Acts of Kindness, and you can find it posted in the Parish Hall.
If you are feeling really ambitious, you might try doing more than one of them.
I hope that you can see this not as a have-to but as an exploration into really living out the power of our good news and the human kindness we have to share.
The spiritual life, Buddha says, is impossible without a generous heart.
Novelist Henry James put it this way:
“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”
And this year, as so many of us face uncertainties and challenges, what better time to engage in what is most important.
The best part, as Angela shared earlier with the children, is that we can all offer kindness freely.
It doesn’t have to cost us anything, and often we receive back in abundance.
So, I invite you to carry out your act of kindness mindfully and often during this season.
Notice how you feel about it.
Does it feel awkward?
Does it get easier as you do it?
Do you experience any resistances or surprises in it?
After the holidays, for those who want to, we will share our experiences of giving and receiving and see what we have learned.
I believe that, particularly as a Unitarian Universalist, there is much to celebrate during the holiday season.
I relish sharing the Christmas story in the weeks ahead.
It is a story full of all our own very human hopes, dreams, and struggles.
It is a story filled with the deepest truth of what is and what can be, all held in the birth of a child.
And just as the power of love and life were profoundly at work in that child named Jesus who grew up to teach and show us great things, that same power, I believe, moves in and through us.
The good news abounds in blessings we can both give and receive if we but open our hearts.
This giving, this blessing the world with the gifts we have to share is like a “moving forward into the world” Rebecca Ann Parker, president of Starr King School for the Ministry, writes.
“It is an act of recognition,
a confession of surprise,
a grateful acknowledgment
that in the midst of a broken world
unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide.”
May we all experience this beauty and grace as we reach out to one another in the weeks ahead.
Amen.
*Note: Earlier in the service, we passed out pieces of paper with acts of kindness on them. Everyone was asked to take one and try to fulfill that act of kindness or some other act of kindness over the holidays. We plan to share our experiences when we gather for our first service of the new year on Sunday, January 3rd.