Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, March 23, 2025.
Dear spiritual companions, how are you doing? How are you holding up? How is it with your soul?
We’re living in difficult times, to say the least. The leaders of our government are blowing up and tearing apart the institutions and practices that have made us a good nation and a good neighbor, and at this moment we don’t know where it will lead and how and when this nightmare will come to an end. It’s clear, isn’t it, that we need to prepare for a long haul. To make alliances and build community so we can help and heal and try to protect those who are at risk. So we can resist the forces that betray our values and our Constitution. So we can stay grounded and alert and awake in these days.
I hope you experience this place and this community as a sanctuary; where you feel safe and supported, a place where you can rest and be restored. Because we all need sabbath time and sabbath places if we are going to be openhearted and present to the ways life is calling us on in these days.
Our worship theme this month is “generosity,” and I tend to think of this as an invitation to look at ourselves and ask, “Am I as generous as I would like be? Am I living my life with a spirit of generosity?” These are good and important questions, especially now, when we are asking you to pledge your financial support to your faith community, which needs you. So if you haven’t already, please make your pledge, and please be as generous as you can.
Today I’m thinking of generosity in a different way—as something we receive. As a gift we can trust and lean into. I want to offer you this idea and this promise, that we we live in a generous world. This is my experience and my faith: that we live in a generous world.
I know there is plenty of trouble and pain and in life. There always has been, and to be human means you have an acquaintance with grief and suffering. A faith in generosity doesn’t deny that. It just says the pain and the shadow are not the whole story, or even the major theme. This is one of the reasons for religion; to help us deal with and make sense of the pain and brokenness, and to assure us that we’re not alone in it.
When you start looking around for signs of this generosity and goodness, you can find them everywhere. The coffee and tea that Frank and Chip have prepared for us to enjoy in a few minutes. The green shoots pushing up through the ground that was just recently frozen and covered with snow: snowdrops and crocuses quietly announcing that spring is here. And through the ages, people who have encouraged and inspired us to keep moving forward, reaching out and reaching up, singing our thanks and praise.
It is still a generous world. Can you trust that? And if not, then stay with me, ok?
I’m not professing this faith with a sunny optimism—that’s not where I usually live. Optimism is the belief that things are going to work out well. I’m not sure I believe that. But I do have hope, which is different than optimism. Hope is a way of keeping your heart open in spite of all the evidence to the contrary; it’s saying, “things are bad, but I’m going to keep on doing what I can, because I can’t see the whole picture and I’m not willing to be resigned or give up and be defeated.”
It is from a place of being grounded in the real world, in touch with the pain and disappointment as well as the satisfaction and joy; being right here, where we are, that we can look up and look around and see, with our hearts if not with our eyes, that it is a good and generous world.
And the best way I know to do this is by listing to your longing. By letting what can first come to you as sadness and separation, what can appear to be a dark emotion, by letting that longing speak to you and be your guide. Because it comes from somewhere deep and good. Because it is trustworthy; your longing will always tell you the truth. That you are hungry for something, that you are missing someone or something, that you are, in this very human way, “in suspense and incomplete,” as Teilhard de Chardin put it.
We sang about this just now, the hymn about being longing, thirsty souls, which comes from the prophet Isaiah. I was thinking about Isaiah’s words this week, and discovered that this passage is one of the appointed readings for this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary, which means this is being read in a bunch of churches today:
“Come, all you who are thirsty, (this is God speaking through Isaiah)
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.” (Isaiah 55:1-3)
Aren’t we are all hungry people, with longing, thirsty souls? The question is, what will you do with your longing? Will you try to satisfy it with junk food and voices that only make you anxious or afraid? You know, there is some wisdom to be found in that old book called the Bible, which can still speak to our time!
“Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?”
Right? We each have these longings, but we’re taught to push them down, ignore them, which we do at our own peril. Because they hold gifts for us, if only we will pay attention to them.
Listen again to a few lines of John O’Donohue’s invitation to enter these depths:
Blessed be the longing that brought you here
and quickens your soul with wonder.
May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.
May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take…
May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.
May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.
Isn’t this the voice of someone who knows the world as generous and good? Isn’t this a perspective and posture from which you could live your life? And wouldn’t that be a welcome antidote to the fear and discouragement of these days?
In this season of Lent, which invites practices that deepen and strengthen the soul, which is a good time of preparing for the days of light and gladness that lie ahead, how about making a practice of listening for your longings, of marking and pondering them, and following where they lead?
There are spiritual riches to be found, and companions to travel the way with. Getting in touch with your longing, that is a good place to start. On that openhearted journey, you will find pain and struggle, of course. But you will also be visited by grace and joy. You will be able to see that ours is a good and generous world. You will be able to trust that our God, if you’re ok with using that name for the fathomless mystery, is a generous God.
I know of two of you who have lost beloved canine companions this week. Which brings to mind this poem about longing by the Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi:
One night a man was crying,
“Allah, Allah!”
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express
is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.
Dear companions, your longing is the connection. There are love dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.
In this world without end,
Amen.