A sermon by F. Jay Deacon
Preached at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
September 28, 2003 | Tishri 2 5764
The physicist Leo Smolin has computed the probability that this world of "giant red stars and lovers' tears, supernovae and Bach choral masses,"1 animals and spiritual ecstasies — should have arisen on a blue-green planet — this planet that somehow managed to put itself together out of elements hurled from that original fireball — he computed the probability that it would all turn out this way to be: One chance in ten to the two hundred twenty-ninth power.2
It was far more likely that, at the critical moment, all of creation would have collapsed. In the journey of life there have been many narrow escapes. How could all this have come out of the womb of the universe?
How is it that we are all here — here, on this rare, bio-friendly patch of the universe? How easily we could have not been; how easily we might not have made it through another year; how easily we can cease to be.
How is it? All this, and us. The poet Rilke asked this:
Why, when this span of life might be fleeted away,
Why have to be human, and, shunning Destiny,
long for Destiny? . . .
Not out of curiosity, not just to practise the heart,
but because being here amounts to so much, because all
this Here and Now, so fleeting, seems to require us
And strangely
concerns us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
This is what haunted the ancient Hebrews. And so RoshHashana, the "head of the year," literally, the day of the world's birth. They were amazed at just being here. Awed.
They wondered: what have I done with this year? will I be given another? They wondered: what matters in these days we are given? There were "books," they thought, where it is written who will live and who will die, who will have a good life and who will not, for the next year. It would all be written there on Rosh Hashanah, but our actions during the Days of Awe can change what it is that will be written.
How jaded we can be. The routine; the reliability of another day, however tedious; the all-consuming obligations and obsessions. It is possible, very possible, to become hypnotized by all this, to imagine that what we do doesn't matter beyond the bottom line, to lose sight of anything beyond the surface of things.
Is there anything beneath, beyond the surface?
If there is a human capacity to forget, to lose sight, to see only the daily grind —
— then there is also a human capacity to feel something else, some universe beyond this surface, a sense of belonging to a bigger drama, a realm beyond the surfaces and appearances of things.
Shelley gave words to this sense:
The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves . . .
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, . . .
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around . . .
. . . all seems eternal now. [Mont Blanc]
Maybe there's something going on; something our senses cannot detect or measure. When the noise stops — in the silence — we may sense an Immensity beyond silence.
Could it be some Intelligence that progressively manifests itself through us and through the world's evolving life and our evolving consciousness? We are challenged by the capacities that lie unfulfilled within us. Are we expressions of the Divine Life hidden in nature?
Let that idea settle in for a moment. One of India's most ancient scriptures, struggling for words to express it, said of this Mystery,
That moves, and That moves not. That is far, and the same is near. That is within all things, and That is outside all things.
Or another sanskrit line from India: "I am That, You are That, and all this is That."
Awe. These are the Days of Awe; they began Friday night and continue through sunset next Sunday.
This ancient Jewish wisdom, and so much more from Hindu, Buddhist, Platonist, Pagan, Christian, and Islamic, all express an enduring realization of something
ordinarily hidden in nature
but recognized immediately as our true identity,
our original face, our immortal soul,
our ultimate home, our oneness with "all the Gods." There is something that calls us home. There is something that accuses us when we betray our truest identity. There is a yearning that knows, simultaneously, an accusing guilt about its shortcomings, and a pervasive sense of its divinity and potential magnitude.
The Days of Awe are a season given to this yearning and the realization of what it is in us — that it calls to.
Days of Awe. That awe, I think, is where it begins. That, I think, is the beginning of spiritual life, life that is lived in the spirit. Thomas Carlyle put it so well:
The [person] who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole [of all knowledge] in his single head, — is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye.3
On Yom Kippur morning, the scroll of the Torah is taken from the ark, and these words are read:
"You stand this day, all of you, before [Yahweh Elohim] — before, well, there's where the name, ha shem — Hebrew for "the name" — comes, the name too holy to speak — As I read it in my old Hebrew Bible, sure enough, no vowels, no way to pronounce it, but they usually fill in the blank with "The Lord your God." But you see, the point is, you don't need to fill in the missing word. I don't especially like religious language; you don't hear the "G-word" that much from me. It's way too limiting. Remarkable that they understood that millenia ago.
You stand this day, all of you . . . to enter into a sworn covenant . . .It is not with you alone that I make this sworn covenant: I make it with those who are standing here with us . . . and equally with all who are not here with us today . . .
For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, nor too remote. It is not in heaven, that you should say: "Who will go up for us to heaven and bring it down to us, that we may do it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say: "Who will cross the sea for us and bring it over to us, that we may do it?" No, it is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, and you can do it.
See, I have set before you this day life and good, or death and evil. For I command you this day to love —4
and there the Name comes again, the Unspeakable, the Immensity beyond all the silence beyond all the words, but this is the point of it — I command you this day to love —
That greater whole of which we are part and parcel, for which we have no adequate words — what of it? Do we face this Immensity with indifference, or with fear, or with bitter resentment, or with soul-deep, passionate love?
And that is the only question that really matters.
If you are in any meaningful way alive, you cannot face this Immensity with indifference. There is an inner necessity to love. And the consequence is a covenant. And a community that shares this experience of awe and is bound together by this love is a community of covenant.
It's not so easy to frame that covenant in words. We're trying to do that now — we'll work with language for a congregational covenant in the next Council meeting. But is that covenant not a fact even prior to our trying to figure out how to put it into a resolution a congregational meeting can pass, or that you can say as part of the Sunday worship? Is it less real because you have not figured out how to say it?
What does it mean to be a part of this community?
It has to do with the fact of this crucible of creation, about being part and parcel of it. It has to do with our inmost identity. It has to do with destiny, being and becoming. It has to do with power, the awesome power we hold in our hands for good and evil, as determiners and shapers of what is to be. Every minute we shape the atmosphere in which we and others must live.
And so this season, the Days of Awe, High Holy Days — in the Jewish tradition, and I hope in ours —
a time for making things right
a time for forgiving and asking forgiveness
a time for asking
At what did we aim?
How did we stumble?
What did we take? What did we give?
To what were we blind?
A time to tremble.
And so I ask, are we here to tolerate one another, or to believe in one another, challenge one another to fulfill our separate destinies?
When our chief watchword is "tolerance," we come to this place, and to each other, and especially to ourselves, with low-quality expectations. And Roy Phillips cites Robert Frost to this point: "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." And Roy goes on to say,
Sometimes, lacking a clear sense of their reason for being, liberal congregations have allowed themselves to become places where, when they won't even take you in at home, they have to take you in. And some people are willing to use the tolerance, acceptance, and inclusiveness of liberal congregations as an entitlement. They feel entitled to have a say, to stop things from happening, to criticize without accountability, and to prevent change because it would unsettle and upset them. They feel entitled to do their own thing whether or not it fits with a shared sense of mission.5
Because implicit in our being here is a high calling, and a vision of life that has forever negated the idea that human failure and depravity is the final word. Locked up within us are great powers;
and this must be one place where we feel some sense of reverence for the magnitude of what we are, and honor, and seek to unfold, our divine-human capacities, and a light that must come to shine as the noonday sun.
And this Covenant — it isn't just an interpersonal covenant, binding together people in a community. It is a Covenant with all Being, and surely with all this world of Life.
This Awe, this Covenant — this is the fountain from which flows all of our yearning for justice and peace. To look at another nation or people with the reverence and the awe that recognizes the Divine in them and the Covenant that binds us into one human family — to do that is not to seek to establish superiority and domination by means of shocking and awful weapons of war. To look at this earth, to hear the rain on the roof, to look in autumn at a Vermont mountain blazing red and orange — to look at this beautiful, beloved earth with awe and to recognize the Covenant that binds us to it — is never again to think you might need a Hummer in your driveway, or that life would be better if we could just find another place to drill for more oil to burn and so befoul and desecrate the earth.
In these moments, let these words from the Reform Jewish litany for the High Holy Days, the Gates of Repentance, settle in and wash over you —
Do not look back on what has been,
forget the things of old:
it is a new thing I am doing—
see it springing forth.
I will bring streams to the wilderness,
and rivers to the desert
I, I am the One
who blots out your transgressions;
your sins will I remember no more.
I will pour water on the thirsty land,
and streams on the dry ground.
I will make a covenant with you for ever;
And it shall be said:
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light.
This is a day of judgment; today we remember our deeds.
This is a day of questioning, and we ask: What have we done with the gift of life?
We were made to be the crown of creation. Endowed with a portion of the divine spirit, we were called to hallow this world and bless it:
A still small voice calls us to a covenant of truth and peace, a law of justice and love.
2 Leo Smolin. The Life of the Cosmos. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 45.
3 Thomas Carlyle. Sartor Resartus. Odyssey Edition, p. 85f.
4 Deuteronomy 29:10-12; 30:11-29
5 Roy D. Phillips. Transforming Liberal Congregations for the New Millennium. St. Paul: Unity Church Unitarian, 1996, p. 23.
And now, at the beginning of a new year, we pray for blessing:
The spirit of wisdom and understanding. Amen.
The spirit of insight and courage. Amen.
The spirit of knowledge and reverence. Amen.
May we overcome trouble, pain, and sorrow. Amen.
May our days and years increase. Amen.
Life of life, soul and heart of all living, renew us for a good year.
Amen and amen.
L'shanah tovah!