Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, June 26, 2022.
Our worship theme for this month of June is “The Way of Transformation,” and this implies that transformation is good, right? That it’s needed, and necessary. You hear this in a variety of faith traditions, where the inference is that we need to be different, that we need to be changed. I carry this impulse within me, and I certainly don’t think we are perfect or done yet, there is always work we can do, but I wonder about this call to transformation: does it imply there is something broken or wrong about us that needs to be fixed?
A few years ago I attended a big gathering of UU ministers out in California, on the coast just north of Monterey. The theme for that week of seminars, worship, and time together was “Come and Be Transformed!” With an exclamation mark! There were numerous emails leading up to this gathering, inviting and encouraging us to “come and be transformed!” But early on, one of our preachers questioned the very theme that had brought us there. She said, “I don’t need for you to be transformed—I like you, my colleagues, just the way you are.”
She lifted up a something that’s central to our openhearted faith tradition: unlike a lot of other faiths, we start with the assumption that people are inherently good and decent. Not broken, or evil, or needing to be fixed. As Anne Frank wrote; in words that seem particularly apt for this day:
“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
It’s clear that we live in a hurting and broken world. We each have our own demons, and challenges, and trials. But I want and need our faith’s assertion that we are good enough already; that we are loved just because we are. That we don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love, or to be worthy of human care and attention. There is certainly a voice in my head that doubts this; that says, “Oh no, you need to be a good boy and work hard to gain approval and favor,” but I’m trying not to listen too much to that voice. Especially in these sweet June days, when the invitation is to find our place in the wamth and beauty and peace of these summer days, and to take some rest there.
When I meet with new parents who want ta blessing or baptism for their child, I tell them that in our tradition we don’t believe that babies come into this world inherently sinful; that we don’t think there’s anything that a baby needs to be cleansed of. And I haven’t met a new parent yet who disagreed. The English poet William Wordsworth put it this way; he wrote:
…trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
But we forget this; life can wear us down. We lose our way sometimes; we forget who we are, and whose we are. And so we need to be reminded, we need glimpses of the light and love that illuminates our days.
So in this way, maybe we do need to be transformed. Maybe we need to unlearn some of the unhelpful lessons we’ve been taught, and try on new, more liberating ways of being. So that we can live more gladly into the fullness of who we were born to be.
Do you need to be transformed? Only you answer that. I will say that most us could benefit from doing our our own work, whatever it is, that helps us to be more awake and open to these lives we have been given.
And whether we seek change or not, life is going to shape us and change us. How could it not? Every now and then I hear someone who’s talking about getting married, or having a child, and they say, “But it’s not going to change me!” If I were more blunt, I would say, “Are o\you kidding? These big things are meant to be life-changing! Maybe that’s what you’re afraid of?”
It is natural to be scared of change, because of what it may cost, or what we might lose. Change can be painful. And it’s good for us.
Rabbi Edwin Friedman was a big proponent of people doing their own work. He said it’s fruitless to try and convince someone else to change. The good news, Friedman said, is that by changing our own behavior we can change the world around us, more than we imagine. He wrote, “If you want your child, spouse, client, or boss to shape up, stay connected (to them) while changing yourself rather than trying to fix them.”
In other worlds, if you want things around you to change, look inside, and start making the changes that are needed within you. That’s a way of transformation that’s worthy of our attention and effort.
One of the things I know for certain is that you have changed me, for the better, over these past 14 years. I am on-my-knees grateful to be your minister. That it’s my job to be in relationship with you. That I get to pick hymns and plan for worship, and work with the great people we have here. That I only work one day a week, and get some time off in the summer too!
A few years ago our daughter Emma gave me a book of poems for my birthday. Knowing I could use inspiration for my preaching, she lightly annotated the contents page to recommend the best poems. One of them she marked as “the most church-useable.”
That poem “Parable,” by Louise Glück, was our reading today. I’ve read it a number of times, and am still not sure I understand it. But I love it, and I love that my daughter recommended it, to me, and to you. And that it’s about the transformation that can come, whether we seek it or not. Let’s hear this “Parable” again:
First divesting ourselves of worldly goods, as St. Francis teaches,
in order that our souls not be distracted
by gain and loss, and in order also
that our bodies be free to move
easily at the mountain passes, we had then to discuss
whither or where we might travel, with the second question being
should we have a purpose, against which
many of us argued fiercely that such purpose
corresponded to worldly goods, meaning a limitation or constriction,
whereas others said it was by this word we were consecrated
pilgrims rather than wanderers: in our minds, the word translated as
a dream, a something-sought, so that by concentrating we might see it
glimmering among the stones, and not
pass blindly by; each
further issue we debated equally fully, the arguments going back and forth,
so that we grew, some said, less flexible and more resigned,
like soldiers in a useless war. And snow fell upon us, and wind blew,
which in time abated — where the snow had been, many flowers appeared,
and where the stars had shone, the sun rose over the tree line
so that we had shadows again; many times this happened.
Also rain, also flooding sometimes, also avalanches, in which
some of us were lost, and periodically we would seem
to have achieved an agreement; our canteens
hoisted upon our shoulders, but always that moment passed, so
(after many years) we were still at that first stage, still
preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;
we could see this in one another; we had changed although
we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling
from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed
in a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purpose
believed this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free
in order to encounter truth, felt it had been revealed.
Life is such a beautiful mystery, isn’t it? This moment, this place, this gathering of souls. This shared way that we are traveling together, for a time. None of it permanent, but all of it present, here, in this moment, and in these connections we share.
In these days, let us take heart that there is an unseen goodness and a hidden wholeness in our midst. That we are part of a great and abiding Love. As John Greenleaf Whittier wrote,
The letter fails, and systems fall,
And every symbol wanes;
The Spirit over-brooding all
Eternal Love remains.
Now and forever,
Amen.