A Change of Heart
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
September 21, 2008

Readings

From "On Being Human Religiously" by James Luther Adams
From "Teaching a Stone to Talk" by Annie Dillard

Message: A Change of Heart

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2008.

We begin with this proposition:
life is fragile.
A house of cards as fragile as each and every breath
of a small child sleeping in bed.

Life is fragile.
It is contingent. It depends. It is finite.

And often, well, it feels off.

Sometimes we live in a prison of our own making,
an open cage with shadows for bars, but we think it real.
We get stuck, we get down, we get sad.

We loose the thread.
Sometimes we are lonely,
or we feel adrift.
Something happens: the death of one we love,
a close call, an illness,

just a little stiffness in the bones, maybe,
a birth, or a birthday,
and we feel our own mortality.
And we wonder what our lives are about,
what they are for.
And maybe we're not quite sure.

Sometimes life feels off for other reasons:
because of injustice.
Because some have more power than others,
and some who have more power than others,
use that power illegitimately to keep that power.
They engage in deception, division, violence.
And sometimes the inertia of systems of oppression
continue long after those who put it into place
have left the world and entered the history books.

But regardless of its cause or the source of its continuity,
there is injustice in the world.

So life is fragile.
And our own lives can feel incomplete.
And the world has injustice in it.

Now, we face the first choice.
Option one: head in the sand.
Get it deep in there.
Let the grains of earth stop your ears,
cover your eyes,
be a buffer between you and the world.
This is a real live option.
Many choose it, whether temporarily or permanently.

There are some different types of sand.
One type is materialism and consumption.
If I fill my life with enough stuff,
I'll feel better.
Another type of sand is hate and blame.
Blame someone who is different than you.
Retreat to ethnic, national, religious fortresses.
There is a lot of that going around.
And there is the sand of apocalyptic fantasy:
yes, the world is fragile,
but this world isn't permanent, isn't real,
is coming to a swift and sure end.

That seems to be a popular variety of sand,
has been so for many centuries.

That's option one.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Option two is to come into awareness of reality.
Let us worship, not in bowing down,
not with closed eyes and stopped ears.
Let us worship with the opening of all the windows of our beings,
with the full outstreaching of our spirits.

Option two is hard.
Seek the truth.
Find out about things.
Deal with your own issues.
Honesty, openness, this is hard.
We will have to admit, should we choose this option –
call it the head's up approach,
for our head is out of the sand now –
should we choose this option we will have to admit
that life is fragile and that our lives will someday end.

We will not live forever.
No one we know will.
This is hard.
We will have to admit that our lives are sometimes off.
We will have to admit, also,
that there is injustice in the world.

This is the first choice which confronts us.
Head in the sands?
Or head's up?

But that is only the first choice.
There is a second choice to make:
what we shall do about it.

Here again, we have two general choices.
We'll call them A and B to keep them distinguished from Option one and two.
Option A is to lessen our experience of fragility.
There are a few ways to do this.
We could say,
well, God has a plan.
This is all part of the plan.

A bit better, I submit:
we could give a few hundred dollars a year to a charity.
We've done our part, right?
At least it's something, I'll give it that.

We could take steps to improve our selves.
Not all of these are bad things to do,
in fact, many of them I would recommend:
things like getting counseling when our lives are hard,
getting healthy and eating better,
finding friends, animals, a small patch of earth,
to care for and be connected to.
Things like this:
they are fine, good, really:
but we do them primarily to lessen our experience of fragility.

They do not remove the truth of fragility.
They do not really address injustice.

So we have then option B:
embrace the finitude of life
give your life meaning
help build a more just world.

Option B does not lessen our vulnerability.
It doesn't make life easier –
in fact, it will usually be a great challenge.
But it will be a life you can be proud of.
It is a life that, sometimes, I have chosen,
and I have been so glad to have done so.
It is a life that many of you have chosen,
over and over again,
and you deserve to feel good about that life.
To feel proud of it.

Liberal religion preaches that 2B is the way to go.
Head's up, engaged in the real world,
taking on challenge,
creating justice and beauty and meaning wherever we go.
This is what we preach: 2B.

(I wrote this sermon on Thursday,
and it wasn’t until I rehearsed it Saturday
that I heard the double meaning of 2B and to be.
It really was not on purpose, I promise
but it works, doesn’t it?
2B is to be.).

Case closed, right.
We know how we ought to live,
so go and do.
Not quite.

James Luther Adams
taught at the University of Chicago
and Meadville Lombard Theological School,
the Unitarian Universalist School in Chicago,
and at Harvard.
He also served a number of our churches,
earlier in his career.
He helped to found the Independent Voters of Illinois,
and was instrumental in many struggles for justice.
He was the most important and influential theologian
for us Unitarians in the last century.

He writes, in a number of places,
Liberalism is dead. Long live liberalism!
He is trying to reinvigorate religious liberalism,
to lay out its essentials.
And one of the essentials is that it produce in us a change of heart.

Listen closely to what he wrote from our reading:
"the desire to diagnose injustice as an intellectual problem
[that's the choice between option one and two,
between head in the sand and head's up]
as well as the power of action to achieve a new form of justice
[that's the choice between A and B,
between easing our pain and easing the world's]
requires, [he says], 'raised affections'
a vitality that can break through old forms of behavior
and create new patters of community."

This University of Chicago and Harvard professor makes it clear:
we liberals who think so often that we can think our way
to a better world
are wrong.

You've got to think it and feel it.
If you don't feel it,
if you don't experience a change of heart,
a decision,
a commitment,
then your work for a better world,
then your own life will be,
he says,
"enfeebled."

A mile wide and an inch deep,
that's often what we religious liberals seem to get.
We're so interested in everything.
We grab a bit here and a bit there.
But our lives don't change very much.

You hear from folks –
I think I was always a Unitarian Universalist,
I'm so glad I found a place I could be me.

It's a nice thing to hear in some ways,
but it always depresses me a bit, too.

One, because I wonder why we took so long to find you!
And two,
because I don't want
like James Luther Adams didn't want,
this to be a place where you can be who you've always been.
I want it to be a place where you become someone new.

I want it to be a place where you can become
more fully your true and authentic self,
but that means change.
That means commitment.
That means a change of heart.

A lot of churches, of a lot of different denominations,
well, they are not really into this change of heart.
Maybe they talk about.
But they are children playing on the floor
with their chemistry sets,
mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.

We should be wearing crash helmets,
says Annie Dillard,
and issued life preservers.
Lashed to our seats.

This chapter of "Teaching a Stone to Talk"
is an extended metaphor
between the religious enterprise
and polar explorers.
The early polar explorers were not sensible of conditions.
In one story she recounts,
the explorers get trapped in an ice floe,
so they set out to walk.
Their skeletons are found later,
they carried with them "some chocolate,
some guns, some tea, and a great deal of table silver."

When you search for the pole,
when you set out to find the center,
the absolute in life,
how much table silver are you taking with you?

How many extra pounds?
How realistic are you about what is required for this journey of the heart?

In another passage in that chapter,
Dillard discusses what is required for a life of meaning.
Dillard, like Adams, uses theistic language,
which works for some of us and not others,
but don't' let that get in the way –
change the word God to Universe if you need to.
The meaning doesn't depend on one's theism.
She writes this:

"God does not demand that we give up our personal dignity,
[our table silver],
that we throw in our lot with random people,
that we lose ourselves and turn from all that is not God.
God needs nothing, asks nothing, and demands nothing,
like the stars.
It is a life with God that demands these things.

You do not have to do these things;
not at all.
God does not, I regret to report, give a hoot.
You do not have to do these things –
unless you want to know God.
They work on you, not on God.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark.
If, however, you want to look at the stars,
you will find that darkness is necessary.
But the stars neither require nor demand it."

You are not required to make a commitment –
a real, sustainable commitment –
to a life of spirituality and meaning.
No one will require it.
No one will require you
to be part of a community.

No one will require that you give of your soul,
your time,
your money,
your heart,
to be part of a church.
No one requires that you keep an open mind,
that you engage your heart.
No one requires you to hear the still small voice
which sings though the years.
No one requires that you gather in the mystery,
that you stand as one strong body,
that you invite the spirit to draw near,
and be willing to be changed by the encounter –
no one requires any of these things.
But if you want to choose 2B,
if you want to live honestly and justly,
if you want a life of meaning,
a life of connection to the ultimate however you name it,
then these things,
like darkness for stargazing,
will be necessary.

A commitment, a change of heart,
that is what is required for a noble life,
a life of integrity and meaning.
Without commitment,
it just isn't going to happen.
Without commitment, when push comes to shove,
you'll get knocked down.

No junior high school student
can say, "that's not funny"
without commitment.
No one goes to Selma to register voters in 1965,
no one stands up for a living wage
and end to violence,
equality,
without commitment.
No marriage lasts long without real, deep,
commitment.
No religious journey will go far
without commitment.

You don't have to take spirituality seriously,
but if you do,
boy oh boy,
if you do,
then pass out the crash helmets and life preserves.
For it is likely to be a wild ride.
What is holy and wondrous can catch you by surprise.
You will be required to change your life,
and it won't be easy.

Now, let me be clear here too.
There are two parts to this change of heart,
the yeast and the flour,
the seed and the water.

Part of the change of heart just happens.
It catches you.
This is common.

Nature will do it, often.
The sunset or sunrise.
A tree in the breeze.

I mentioned before those times when
Something happens: the death of one we love,
a close call, an illness,
a little stiffness in the bones, ,
a birth, or a birthday.
Sometimes in these times we feel the presence
of that still small voice.

Sometimes it is a song.

Often, it happens in relationship.
A touch on the arm.
A meal shared with friends.

But something happens.
on a summer night in a dusky room
Come[s] a little piece of the Lord's undying light
Crying like he swallowed the fiery moon
In his mother's arms it was all the beauty I could take
Like the missing words to some prayer that I could never make
In a world so hard and dirty so fouled and confused
Searching for a little bit of God's mercy
I found living proof.

Searching for a bit of mercy,
I found living proof.

I liked this song –
it's Bruce Springsteen, of course I liked it –
but after our daughter was born,
and I really heard the lyrics,
I thought,
ah yes.

I don't know a lot of nursery rhymes.
So I sing hymns.
Gathered here is a favorite.
Late at night,
gathered here in the mystery of the hour,
living proof of the wonder and love
which lives ever and always.

That's not the only place –
but if I told you all the times I've felt it,
well, what would I use for examples in future sermons?

I bet you've felt it too.
Sometimes it is a gush, a waterfall.
Sometimes it is a little trickle of experience,
a gentle wind blowing life into our souls.

But I bet you've felt something sometime.
Maybe you didn't have the words for it –
that's a sure sign that you're getting close.
Maybe – probably – someone else's words,
someone else's theology,
for what you felt left you cold, distant, or doubtful.
But I bet you've felt it.
Living proof.
The preciousness of love in a world of fragility.
Mercy.
Awe.
Wonder.
Something that sings.
I bet you've felt it,
and if you haven't, keep living, I bet you will.

But, like I said,
a change of heart has two parts.
The experience, the living proof, that's part of it.
The other is the commitment,
in particular, the commitment to community.

You see, those mystical and magical experiences,
they fade into memory.
Life returns to how it was.
It’s not that we forget,
we just forget what it meant.
We resolve to live head’s up,
to make a real difference in the world,
but then we get back to the needs in front of us,
and things return to how they are.

This is why you need commitment,
and you need community to help you keep that commitment.
This is the basis for our existence.

Our religious ancestors,
those who came to the shores of Massachusetts in the 1620’s,
they shared Anne Dillard’s sense that God does not care a wit
how we live our life.
But if we want to feel connected to the holy,
they how we live matters.
They saw the purpose of the religious community as
not to honor a deity,
but, in the words of their 1648 religious constitution,
to walk together in love.

Our theology has changed lot in the last 25 years,
let alone the last four hundred.
But the purpose of the church is the same:
that we might walk together in love.

Stand by this faith.
Work for it and sacrifice for it.
Do not demand immediate results
but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message.

I hope ya’ll will come next week,
because I’ll be saying more about this aspect of community.
For now, the point is this:
our ability to experience a change of heart
is dramatically improved by being part of community;
our ability to sustain that change of heart
depends on community;
and when we experience that change of heart,
it should make us more committed
to that vision of the beloved community,
and to its actuality.

This world is precious and fragile.
Sometimes it is wondrous and beautiful.
And sometimes it hard and tragic.
We would like to summon the courage
to live with purpose.
To live lives we can be proud of.
Honest to reality,
engaged in justice and mercy.
To make ourselves living proof of the love which
lives and breaths in the still small voice.

Not to lessen our feeling of fragility,
but to accept it and make our lives worthy.

This is what we are for.
Covenanted community is how that happens.

You’ve got to be with others.
Folks who challenge and comfort.
Folks whose hands reach across the aisle,
listening and speaking to stories,
stories of hope and trouble,
trial and redemption,
hands of love.

We walk together in love.
In love – the deep love which is a product of that change of heart,
the love which comes in wonder and stays because of practice,
that love will guide us,
that love will change the world.
Let us let that love into our hearts,
a little more each day,

let us water that love as a precious seed,
tend to it,
and make it grow
large enough
to shelter all the souls in this fragile world,
this world we share,
together.

Amen.