Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson , March 6, 2022.

What our choir just sang is true, isn’t it? It is a wonderful world, with plenty of beauty, so much to wonder about, and enjoy, and be grateful for. This is one of the gifts of sabbath, isn’t it? We slow down, we make time to see and hear one another, to touch what lies deep within us; and this helps brings us to a place of gratitude. And it’s good. The mystic Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

It is a wonderful world, and it’s also a broken world. There is so much pain and suffering, much of it self-inflicted. We hurt ourselves and those we love, we act selfishly sometimes, we make a mess of things. 

These past few years have been hard ones. I have to confess that they have shaken my faith in the goodness of people. Maybe I need to lower my expectations, I’ve thought. Maybe I need to be more realistic. And the pressures of the pandemic haven’t helped. They’ve just amplified the reasons for worry and heartache, haven’t they? It’s been lot, and it’s been harder for some folks than others.

But at this moment, almost two years from when we first stopped gathering together, I feel compelled to say out loud that I have not given up on people or on our human goodness, or the goodness of our world! No—I still believe that people are good at heart, that most of us want to be good, and are trying to be good, and that’s where I am going to put my faith, in the goodness in us and around us. Because people are hurting and our planet is in peril and that terrible war against the people of Ukraine is raging, and we need a revolution of goodness in our world, don’t we? Now more than ever, we need to lean into the good wherever and whenever we can.

I’ve loved the conversations that started a month ago as we engaged with the way of vocation. And I trust that our exploration of vocation will continue—our church is meant to be a community were we are always listening for our callings and trying to follow where they lead, helping one another to hear and respond to our callings. I love Jane’s telling this morning of how this church helped her to hear her own calling toward social justice work. 

There comes a moment, in every calling, when it’s time to respond. Once you’ve heard a call, the question arises: what are you going to do about it? Tori and I were talking about this the other day, and I said there’s a progression that happens, from vocation to formation. It’s a moving from hearing to responding, from reflecting to acting. What begins as an inner process needs to become real and find its place in the world. 

Our theme for March is “The Way of Acceptance,” and once you get a glimpse of your vocation, of your calling, the next step is trying to accept it and follow where it leads. As I said last week, this can be scary, and on my journey I have to trust that, as a wise person put it, “God only calls us to be who we are.” 

Some might see acceptance as a passive going along with things, an attitude of “whatever,” or “it’s all good.” Acceptance as a rather bland way of not-choosing, a middle of the road mentality.

But would that way of understanding acceptance be a worthy theme for our worship? No! The way of acceptance I want to explore with you this month is a moving forward with eyes wide open, with hearts wide open, seeing things as they really are. Taking off our rose-colored glasses, if that’s what we tend to wear, or letting go of our negative filter, if that’s how we tend to interpret things, and trying to see more clearly, and deal with things as they are. Dropping our illusions and opening ourselves to the reality that’s in us and around us.

Ellen Bass, in a poem about living with grief, writes

The thing is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands…

This is the kind of acceptance I’m talking about, being present to what it. It’s what the apostle Paul was talking about in his letter to the early Roman church, two thousand years ago:

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are” (Romans 12:15-16).

In other words, get real! The invitation is to engage with life as it is, rather than as we might wish it would be. The way of acceptance begins with seeing yourself as you are, embracing both your light and your shadow, and working with that, trusting you have something to bring to this life and to our world; that what you are bringing is good, and useful, and needed. Because it is!

Lately I’ve been thinking of a prayer that was written by the 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, which has come to be called the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change,
courage to change the
things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference.

This prayer is so popular, I think, because it tells a truth that our society often ignores: there are things we just can’t change. It’s grounding, isn’t it, to acknowledge that there are things beyond our control. And there is peace and even joy in coming down to earth and accepting that. In this light, the way of acceptance is a way to grace. It’s a letting go of our illusions and being grateful for what we have, right here, right now. It’s a realization that we aren’t God—we can’t control the weather, or what other people do or don’t do; we can’t bend the world to our will. But we can change ourselves. And when we realize that, when we accept our limitations, we discover that we have more power and more agency and more capacity than we imagine. 

Sometimes it feels like that these past few years have pushed us down to the ground. The limitations we have been living under have, in some ways, been good for us. Have made us appreciate the simple gifts and little miracles that are close at hand. I hope that the trials we have been through might help to renew a sense of goodness, in me and in you, and in how we apprehend our world. 

The other day Clare shared the poem that was our reading today, and she heard it last year when Dawn shared it with our church Board. Aren’t we blessed by the guides and companions we have all around, who help us to see the goodness and possibility, who invite us, as Danusha Laméris does, to look for the small kindnesses and little blessings in our days:

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

We have had so little of each other over these past two years. And that is starting to change, thank God. As we start to head back into the world, and as we start to come back together, let us move mindfully, and with care, offering grace to one another, and to ourselves. Being patient, being kind, being forgiving. Finding joy in looking into another’s eyes or touching their hands. Finding grace in receiving that cup of coffee, or that smile. 

Bless you, my spiritual companions. Thank you for all the ways you have been such faithful travelers on this journey. Thank you for your resilience and for your courage, for all the ways you continue to say yes to life. 

Amen.