Plant Sequoias
The Rev. Matthew Johnson Doyle
August 17, 2008
Reading: From The Tao Ti Ching

Reading: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry

Message: Plant Sequoias

The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the actual spoken words. © MCJD

How many of you have ever removed wallpaper?

OK, then. Why didn't you warn me?

Shout from the rooftops – stop!
Don't do it yourself!
For the sake of your sanity, pay someone!

Although little good it would have done.

I removed the wallpaper in our daughter's new room,
and while I was doing it,
I thought,
we are paying someone for the living room.

But a few days went by,
and I thought,
that wasn't so bad.

I've learned a lot.
I would be easier this time.
It would save a lot of money.

And there I was,
steaming off the paper in the living room too.

If you've removed wallpaper,
then you know that working with boiling water,
sticky glue,
sharp blades –
this is not fun.

But it got done.
Morgan painted all the edging –
I'm not allowed – I'm too sloppy –
but I could paint the big sections.
And it looks great.
I'm very proud of our work.
Oh, it's not perfect.

I know where I damaged the wall so badly
and didn't fix it well enough
that it shows a bit –
if you know to look for it.

Part of the reason that the wall got damaged
is that I got impatient.
You're standing there
with the wall paper steamer in one hand
and the scrapper in the other.
The instructions say that after 10 seconds,
the paper should just come off.
And if it doesn't,
then give it more time.
Well, 10 seconds wasn't usually enough.
Sometimes I would count to twenty,
and the paper would usually come off.
But sometimes I would forget.
Or only count to 10.
And then I had to scrape more,
and sometimes the wall got damaged.

I should know better.
Everyone's advice was "let the water do the work."
This is how you do this,
let the water do the work.
And I should know that this is true.
After all, I am a Taoist.

The Tao Te Ching uses water as a metaphor
for the sacred way.
The Tao is like water.
Nothing is softer.
Nothing is more powerful

Over a thousand years,
water can create canyons and move mountains.
In an instant, it can change a life.
It is life and death,
hope and danger.
Yet it trickles through your fingers
and rolls off the back of your hand.

Religion speaks in metaphor,
it has no other tongue,
and some metaphors are more helpful than others.
At the time,
to say that "God is Lord"
was a counter-cultural act – it was a way of saying
that the emperor is not Lord.
But for me, today, Lord is not that useful a metaphor.

My suburban upbringing
doesn't incline me to shepherd metaphors either.

But I like water.
Water isn't a personal being.
It is a force, a basic element of life.
It has direction but not will.
It heals but doesn't make choices
about who is worthy or not.

Let the water do the work.
I believe it.
But we don't always practice what we preach, do we?
We try,
but this is one of those immutable facts:
we are not perfect.

We are not perfect.
This is non-negotiable.

There is a good reason that my first sermon to you all
is about patience.
I know you've got high hopes.
I've got them too.
But wow.
In my first week as your minister
I've heard a lot of desire, a lot of expectations,
a lot of longing
that I might help you create a religious community
which makes a genuine and profound difference
in your lives
and in this city.
I want that too.
But these things don't happen overnight.
They don't happen in a fortnight.
They might take years.

Wendell Berry says
invest in the millennium.
Plant sequoias.
Say your crop is the forest
which you did not plant
which you will not live to harvest.

What would it mean to live like this?
What would it mean to be joyful
though you have considered all the facts?

Our lives are so very short.
In the grand scheme,
we seem so small.
NASA estimated that there were at least 125 billion galaxies in our universe.
These galaxies each have millions or billions or more stars.
Just to think about the scope of human history –
More than six thousand generations have lived
since the dawn of humanity as we know it.
I enjoy science fiction,
but it always makes me a bit melancholy.
When I read a story set a thousand years from now,
or some story about humans who survive
on some other planet
after the sun goes nova and this earth is gone,
I can't help but wonder what my life is about.
What is it for?

This, of course, is why we have religion.
To give answers to these kinds of questions.

And that is what most religions do:
they tell you why your life matters,
even against this enormous backdrop.
Why a single drop of water in the great ocean
still counts.

Our religious path is different.
There is an old joke about us Unitarians,
that instead of answers for your questions
we provide questions for your answers.
"Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?"
Will this way of living leave a window in my head?
Will they tell me what to buy and when?
Or shall I practice resurrection,
shall I leave many tracks,
shall I be joyful whatever the facts
shall I help make the lives of others be more joyful?

These are the kinds of questions we ask.

Plant sequoias.
The tallest redwood is almost 400 feet high.
The widest giant sequoia is 104 feet in diameter.
Can you imagine?
These trees can live two, even three thousand years.
Their seeds are about the size of a grain of wheat.
Can you imagine?

When a squirrel plants a sequoia –
for it is squirrels who eat the shell and leave the seed –
they, of course, have no idea the wonder they work.
We humans can imagine a bit better,
but, really,
let us not pretend that the gap between squirrel and we
is so large.
We work wonders of which we are unaware.
We create legacies we shall never see.

When a handful of families created this church in 1841,
could they have imagined this day, this building?

When forty-eight Baptists went with their minister,
the Rev. Dr. Thomas Kerr,
to join sixty-five Unitarians,
who were without a minister,
and they formed the Church of the Christian Union
one hundred and thirty eight years ago this month,
did they know what seeds they planted that day?
What lives would be touched by that deed?

“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime
therefore,
we are saved by hope.”

We plant a sequoia.
We know it will be tall and broad,
should it live.
But we know not the birds who will rest in its branches,
the children who shall stand,
mouths agape,
at its base.

I hope my ministry with you will be long.
I hope it will be helpful to you and to this town.
But I began,
on day one a week ago,
by thinking about my successor.
Would what I do make their ministry successful,
or more difficult than it should be?

Likewise,
Morgan and I are resolved:
we shall never put up wallpaper.
Never ever.
It is our act of kindness to those who will follow us.
Some of the paper in our house is fine.
Some of it is even nice.
But what possessed them to think that that floral pattern –
so 1992 –
would be a good idea?
Let alone the rose border –
the border which meant I had to removed two layers of paper, each with their sticky vinyl backing.

It was Howell's job with you to remove wallpaper.
He did well, so far as I can tell,
though as I know too well,
with boiling water, sharp blades, and sticky glue,
people can get hurt.
Walls get damaged.
“No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint
of our friend or foe
as from our own
therefore,
we are saved by the final form of love
which is forgiveness.”

I am working to forgive
the previous owners of our home,
the ones who put up that rose border.

I hope, if you need to,
and for your own sake,
any who carry wounds will work to forgive
Howell, Dave, Colleen, and any others here or not here.
Not for their sake, nor for mine.
For your own sake.

Some of that metaphorical wallpaper is still up around here.
Some we'll leave.
It's fine, nice even.
Some we'll get to eventually.
I've been taking off little stray bits
as I wander around already.

We've got to choose some paint colors to put up.
The good news about paint
is that it is easier to change your mind.

“Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense
in any immediate context of history,
therefore,
we are saved by faith.”

Faith to me doesn't mean unswerving belief in a supernatural being –
it means what the dictionary says it means:
trust and confidence.

Confidence in the universe itself.
Trust in the ultimate goodness of others.
Wonder in the face of majesty.

Bring your spirit to the trees that loom against the sky
Touch each wandering careless breeze
Ask questions if you like.
But then feel the inner flame,
rise from bended knee to meeting the asking years.

A child stands before a sequoia in wonder.
It is so huge!
And holds in her hand a seed, the size of a grain of wheat.
It is so small!
She plants that seed and let us say it grows.
Rain falls and sun shines.
Fire clears away the competition and nourishes the soil.
The girl grows,
has children,
they grow,
have children.
One hundred times a generation shall be born,
and that tree may still live.

One could consider these facts
and despair.
You could if you wanted to.
Or you could consider these facts
and be joyful.
You could, if you wanted to.
Either option is there for you.

Religious liberals believe that the meaning of our lives
is in the making.
It is in the journey.
No book, no prophet, no creed
shall tell you what your life is for.
Your life is for what you use your life for.

If you use your life to do the bidding
of the consumer society
then that is what your life is for.
If you use your life to practice resurrection
then that is what your life is for.
That's your choice.

That's your choice,
but not one you have to make yourself.


“Nothing we do, however virtuous,
can be accomplished alone;
therefore,
we are saved by love.”

It was our new neighbor who lent us the steamer.
The guys at Nicholson’s hardware who told me what to do.

With all your excitement about the future,
with all your expectations and hopes for this ministry,
I was pleased to see –
In Armida’s sermon last week,
in Bob’s column in the newsletter,
reminders that this is a shared project.
I shall not do it all.
That would not be healthy,
not for me, not for you,
and not for those who will come later
and wonder why we put up so much wallpaper.

Ministry will be a success when we do it together.
The largest sequoias are found in groves.

Here lives the good news of liberal religion –
yes, the universe is huge.
The scope of history is overwhelming.
We seem so small.
But we are not alone.
We are not separate and apart.
We are connected to all that lives.
To sequoias and squirrels,
foxes leaving false trails,
to wonders unknown in the depths of the jungle
the deep of sea
in galaxies beyond the reach of our eyes.
We all come from a single moment,
a single event –
we are all made of the same cosmic dust.

And we are connected to each other.
We have made a choice to be together.
It won’t always be easy,
for we are not perfect,
and our finitude, our imperfection,
is a non-negotiable, immutable fact.
But it is our finitude
which makes the joy of community so great.
The energy of the vibrant living church
is so much more than any one of us,
alone,
could bring into existence.

When a community is characterized by love,
then the future can be faced with joy.
So, friends, everyday do something that won’t compute.
Love the world.
Laugh.

The more we let love into our hearts,
the more likely we will be patient.
Give time for the water to do the work.
The more love we plant and water and tend,
the more likely we will all be able to offer
and accept
forgiveness.
The more love we carry with us into this hall
the more love we will carry out into the world.

For the other good news of liberal religion is this:
we are not for our own sake.
The meaning of our lives is what we do with our lives,
and so we are called to do something worthy with our lives.
To be, in the words of the Hebrew prophets,
like oaks of righteousness,
building a land where justice rolls down like waters.