Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, September 24, 2023
You hear a lot of talk these days about how our world is falling apart. You know there are lots of problems we’re facing, from ongoing threats to our democracy, to the climate crisis, to violence against women, and people of color, and immigrants, and religious minorities. To say nothing of ongoing global problems like hunger, poverty, disease, and violence.
Mark DeWolfe was a young and promising UU minister who wrote the words to the hymn we just sang. He died of AIDS when he was only 35, back in 1988. Diane Miller was his internship minister, and she says he was someone so much promise that he never had the chance to fulfill. That it was particularly hard for Mark when he realized he wasn’t going to live long enough to help fight the problems of his day—racism, sexism, patriarchy, militarism, and homophobia. But she says Mark moved past his despair; he came to understand that though none of us alone can save the world, we are part of something larger, and longer, that will carry on after we’re gone. Can’t you hear it in his words?:
Sing out praises for the journey, pilgrims, we, who carry on,
Searchers in the soul’s deep yearnings, like our forebears in their time.
We seek out the spirit’s wholeness in the endless human quest.
There are struggles in every age. The question is, what are we going to do about them while we are here? And how do we live with the knowledge that most of these won’t be solved in our lifetime? Can we joyfully embrace the endless human quest? The struggle for more freedom, for more peace, for justice and equity, a better life for all.
Isn’t this where faith come in? Imagining what is not-yet, and working toward it, even though you know it’s not going to be fully realized in your lifetime. Don’t we need this kind of faith, for the living of these days? And by faith, I hope you know I’m not talking about a sunny optimism or a certainty that things will magically get better all by themselves. No, I mean faith as putting one foot in front of the other, even and especially when you don’t know where you’re going. Faith as following the mysterious longings of your own heart. Faith, as Sharon Salzberg says, as trusting your own deepest experience.
Today I invite you to join me in reflecting on faith as a journey. Will you will take some time to consider the journey of your own life? If you do, I expect you’ll see some ways and times that you have been faithful. And if you’re someone who does’t have much use for that word, because of how it’s often used, as believing in impossible things, as certainty in an uncertain world, if you struggle with that word, then stay with me, ok?
Almost twenty years ago, I led a memorial service for a friend who died at midlife of pancreatic cancer. This was up in Portsmouth, in the same church where I’d been ordained just a few before.
Her name was Donna, and she was a quiet and unassuming leader there. Her husband Jim was also a friend, and a serious humanist. Theologically, we were pretty far apart. But Jim asked me to help lead the service because there was a brand new interim minister there. Which I was honored to do. In the homily, I said,
“Jim, I don’t know if you have any idea what a gift you and Donna have given to this church community, to those who love you, to your family and friends. You faced Donna’s cancer with eyes and hearts wide open, and in doing so you invited us in, you gave us a gift and taught us a lesson. You might not choose this word, Jim, you but you have been faithful. You and Donna have been faithful members of this church for over twenty years, through thick and thin, when things worked for you and when they didn’t. You have been faithful friends to so many. And you and Donna were so faithful to each other these past few months, so that when it came time for Donna to die, you were ready, as ready as one can be; you were at peace with each other and with her death—and it was beautiful to witness.”
The Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg wrote a little book called Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, and near the start she says: “I want to invite a new use of the word faith, one that is not associated with a dogmatic religious interpretation or divisiveness. I want to encourage delight in the word, to help reclaim faith as fresh, vibrant, intelligent, and liberating. This is a faith that emphasizes a foundation of love and respect for ourselves. It is a faith that uncovers our connection to others, rather than designating anyone as separate and apart.”
Like many of you, I grew up in a different faith tradition. And when I followed my wife to a UU church, this set me on a path that I’d have never dreamed about or desired. It started with the freedom to question that this tradition celebrates. Which led me to take a fresh look at the faith I was formed in, and in time to find myself redeeming and reclaiming some of the language and ideas I thought had been lost to me. This was liberating and exciting, and kind of scary at times too. Where was this leading? One day my wife Tracey said, “What if you are heading somewhere that I can’t go with you?” Over time we realized we just had to trust. We had to have faith.
In those days I read something that has stayed with me, because it rang so true: “How do we know that God is with us? We know, because we will be led to places we did not plan to go.”
I never planned to go to the places or do the things that I’ve been gotten to do these past twenty years. And isn’t this true in your life too? When you enter into a relationship, or become a parent, or take on a new vocation, or check out a new church, you have no idea where that is going to lead. Most of us worry about the ways things can go wrong, and we don’t imagine the gifts and blessings that may be waiting around the corner. And the difficult and painful parts of life, they can contain gifts too. As Maya Angelou titled one of her books, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now.
A few years ago, my mom was at church, the church that I grew up in, at coffee hour a man named Jim, who taught Sunday School back when I was a kid, he asked my mom, “How’s Frank doing these days?”
And my mom told him, “He went off to seminary and now he’s a Unitarian Universalist minister.” And she told me that a look of horror came across Jim’s face, and he asked, “Where did we fail him?”
And my mom, God bless her, she said this: “Jim, if you could see Frank now, you would know that we didn’t fail him at all.” This is my mom, who at midlife became an Episcopal priest, and who had her own doubts about this UU faith when I was first exploring it, but she came to see how this faith journey has been so life-giving and liberating for me and our family.
Isn’t life such a wonderful adventure? Yes, our world is broken is so many ways, there is so much pain and suffering, and it is still a beautiful world, with so much possibility and promise.
Some days I despair for the future of the church, which everyone knows is in decline. But maybe this is also a gift? That as the church gets pushed to the margins, and is no longer seen as central to the society, doesn’t that invite and force the church to be less self-focused and less self-serving, and more open to the needs of people and the world?
I’m so grateful to get to be ministering in these days when the walls between faith traditions are lower, and more permeable. And there’s greater interfaith understanding and cooperation, more people are living in religiously blended families, there’s more healthy curiosity about other traditions. There’s a much more lively spiritual searching going on now than when I was a child, and it seemed everyone went to church but almost no one had a spiritual life!
Isn’t it good that we have prophets and poets and sages these days, so many blessed companions and guides? Like David Whyte, who lifts up the journey of claiming back one’s own way of questioning and seeking. This is the kind of faith journey I’m interested in, and that I expect you are too. Not concerned so much with what one thinks or believes, but how we live these lives while we are here.
It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned,
if you can know despair or see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes,
saying this is where I stand.
And, my spiritual companions, I want to know if you are willing to follow your heart and your longing wherever it leads, trusting that you will find companions on the way.
This is the journey of faith; and our world needs as many faithful people as it can get, joining hands, carrying the work forward, singing as we go.
Amen.