Beyond Words
Sermon given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
September 10, 2017
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Today we are engaging in something quite remarkable! No, I don’t mean that some of you got up earlier than perhaps you might have liked to be here or make sure your children are here…although I’m glad you did. And no, I don’t mean that I’m about to enact some big change like delivering my sermons while standing on my head…though that might encourage others to get up earlier than they might have liked to be here. No, I’m talking about something truly remarkable. Here’s a hint…“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
(Amendment I, US Constitution).
I’m talking about worship. And now I imagine some of you are thinking, ”Oh, that.” Or, “Really?” And I get it. We tend to take for granted rights we have grown up with or become accustomed to and which are, by and large, upheld by our government and respected by our society. Yet, some 76% of the world’s population, including people who live in countries which purport to guarantee religious freedom, face high or very high restrictions on religious freedom from their government or society. (Pew Research Center)
Now, statistics such as this may not compel people who don’t currently attend church to suddenly become church goers or make it any easier for the rest of us to get up on a rainy or cold Sunday morning to attend worship. But it does remind me that despite the many blunders of religious institutions and misuse by some advocates and adherents, religion and religious expression, including worship, are still seen as potential disrupters of the status quo to the benefit of humankind. Something that makes many governments, social and even other religious groups, institutions, and individuals uncomfortable to say the least.
Indeed, the spiritual teacher Richard Rohr claims, “Whether human beings admit it or not, we are all in love with - even addicted to- the status quo…even when it is killing us.” Adding, “Humans find it easier to gather their energy around death, pain and problems than around joy.” And I think there’s something in people that knows this whether they show up for church week after week or venture through the door every once in a while. Maybe its what people mean when they describe worship as an escape from their routine, the news, or whatever else occupies their hearts and minds every other hour of the week.
More than escape however, in my experience, it seems many are seeking something closer to what author Kathleen Norris describes as “Worship hospitable enough to welcome a confused soul such as myself.” Such worship is the very thing about religion that attracts and frightens us because it nudges us beyond words, that is our usual way of knowing, describing and engaging the world, and toward mystery, which cannot be pinned down, only lived. And it keeps nudging us, whether we’re at church or not.
The other day, as I was finishing breakfast out on my deck, I went to get up from the chair I was sitting in when I noticed a decaying mandevilla blossom near my foot. For some reason I bent down and picked it up and began to study it. As I held the small, red, trumpet shaped blossom between two fingers, slowly turning it, I noticed a tiny yellow-green, almost luminescent, bug crawling frantically across the surface. It was so small (and my eyesight being what it is), I couldn’t tell if it had six, eight, ten, or maybe more legs.
Holding the blossom still, I focused my attention on the little bug and after a few moments it ceased its frantic pace. Perhaps it sensed whatever danger the movement caused by me picking up the blossom signaled to it had passed. From then on it moved slowly and seemingly deliberately over the flower’s surface.
After a few minutes of watching this tiny bug on this small decaying floral blossom I started to wonder…Where did this creature come from? How long will it live? Why is it here…on this blossom, on this planet? I thought about how vulnerable it is…so small…so easily destroyed by almost anything around it…I could have crushed it right then and there with barely any physical effort on my part, but I didn’t…and I wouldn’t.
For in that moment, I realized the same questions that arose about that little bug, arise often about myself, about humanity, and life itself. “Where did we come from? How long will we be here? Why are we here? How is it, why is it, and what does it mean that life is both terrifyingly vulnerable and astonishingly resilient? How shall we live in the midst of such mystery and paradox?
The late English mystic and philosopher Evelyn Underhill defined worship as, “The response of the creature to the Eternal.” And in reflecting back on my moment with the bug on a floral blossom, that seems a pretty good definition to me.
Worship arises out of an awareness…and perhaps initially only hope, that there is more to what we normally observe or experience at the surface level of life.
We heard echoes of worship as response as well in the words of our first reading this morning by the late Unitarian Universalist minister Jacob Trapp, “Worship is to work with dedication and skill…to pause and to listen.” Trapp’s description of worship as response also reveals a questing, questioning character to the response. “Worship is loneliness seeking communion…the mystery within us reaching out to the mystery beyond.” And yet it is not a fact finding mission, but a meaning seeking and making endeavor that calls us into relationship beyond ourselves…to switch off or out of auto-pilot and, as Trapp writes, “Stand in awe…Be silent, receptive…and Sing with…”
Moving beyond our ordinary experience of life as a fixed, rigid social construct rationally insisted and articulated by its most fervent apologists…usually ourselves….we discover a life awash in expansive, paradoxical, ineffable mystery…beyond words… in which we nonetheless begin to discern a harmony of the whole from our experience with life’s scattered parts. This makes worship…and religious freedom… dangerous and a threat to tyrants, totalitarian regimes, religious or secular, and even garden variety control freaks. For it is the path of spiritual liberation…of releasing the myriad ways, often initially necessary, that we have defined ourselves and been defined by others but which no longer serve, but instead oppress us, though we don’t always see it. Something beautifully, and comically, expressed in our second reading, The Most Magnificent Thing.
Here we have a girl who sets out to build what she calls, “the most magnificent thing” which to me seems a metaphor for life or self. Like most of us as we grow older and we develop ideas or are told what our lives should look like and how life works, the girl in the story has definite ideas about what her most magnificent thing will look like and how it will work. And like most of us, she “tinkers, hammers and measures”, working hard to get it just right, even as her assistant “pounces, growls and chews” perhaps to caution or attract her attention now and then. But onward she goes until it is finished only to discover despite all her effort, its not at all what she envisioned or expected and definitely not, “magnificent.”
How many of us can relate to that?
Bewildered and disillusioned, the girl makes some superficial adjustments, which are lauded by well-meaning but perhaps conflict avoidant sympathizers. More than a few of us are probably familiar with making insufficient adjustments and have one or two such well-meaning friends.
We almost know what will happen to the most magnificent thing before were told the girl smashes it out of frustration and calls it quits. It’s a trajectory most lives will necessarily follow in one way or another.
Smashing it is actually important. You see, many never smash their initial -not so magnificent- creation, they just take (or mistake it) as who they are or how life is. So the problem isn’t smashing it. The problem is either not smashing it, or as the girl in story was tempted, quitting afterward. And here’s where the significance of the assistant in the story becomes clearer. It may not have been apparent initially, but the assistant is a dog, which interestingly is God spelled backward.
I read the dog to represent or include the church or religious community rather than God or God alone. The dog suggests a walk, itself a metaphor for perspective and something inherent in, “worship hospitable enough to welcome a confused soul.”
It’s a struggle at first and even long after. Old habits…ways of seeing and relating to the world, to others and ourselves, die hard. But die they must if we are to see and live anew. The heart it seems, must be broken open again and again.
Together the girl and her assistant rebuild…or, as some would say, rebirth…a new life that transcends the expectations and limitations of the old. To her amazement, it is not perfect, but somehow it is truly, even unimaginably, by conventional standards, magnificent.
And that it what I hope for you and for me…and anyone who walks through our doors…a life transformed. Encouraged, awakened and supported in community…. this community… in this house…a house of worship “hospitable enough to welcome a confused soul.” (Norris) Brave enough to pray “love, once again break our hearts open wide.”(Shelton) And faithful enough to venture, hand in hand, beyond words into that “inarticulate silence yearning to speak” (Trapp) in which perfection is laid to waste that that which is most magnificent in us may emerge and serve unencumbered in the world.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
September 10, 2017
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Today we are engaging in something quite remarkable! No, I don’t mean that some of you got up earlier than perhaps you might have liked to be here or make sure your children are here…although I’m glad you did. And no, I don’t mean that I’m about to enact some big change like delivering my sermons while standing on my head…though that might encourage others to get up earlier than they might have liked to be here. No, I’m talking about something truly remarkable. Here’s a hint…“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
(Amendment I, US Constitution).
I’m talking about worship. And now I imagine some of you are thinking, ”Oh, that.” Or, “Really?” And I get it. We tend to take for granted rights we have grown up with or become accustomed to and which are, by and large, upheld by our government and respected by our society. Yet, some 76% of the world’s population, including people who live in countries which purport to guarantee religious freedom, face high or very high restrictions on religious freedom from their government or society. (Pew Research Center)
Now, statistics such as this may not compel people who don’t currently attend church to suddenly become church goers or make it any easier for the rest of us to get up on a rainy or cold Sunday morning to attend worship. But it does remind me that despite the many blunders of religious institutions and misuse by some advocates and adherents, religion and religious expression, including worship, are still seen as potential disrupters of the status quo to the benefit of humankind. Something that makes many governments, social and even other religious groups, institutions, and individuals uncomfortable to say the least.
Indeed, the spiritual teacher Richard Rohr claims, “Whether human beings admit it or not, we are all in love with - even addicted to- the status quo…even when it is killing us.” Adding, “Humans find it easier to gather their energy around death, pain and problems than around joy.” And I think there’s something in people that knows this whether they show up for church week after week or venture through the door every once in a while. Maybe its what people mean when they describe worship as an escape from their routine, the news, or whatever else occupies their hearts and minds every other hour of the week.
More than escape however, in my experience, it seems many are seeking something closer to what author Kathleen Norris describes as “Worship hospitable enough to welcome a confused soul such as myself.” Such worship is the very thing about religion that attracts and frightens us because it nudges us beyond words, that is our usual way of knowing, describing and engaging the world, and toward mystery, which cannot be pinned down, only lived. And it keeps nudging us, whether we’re at church or not.
The other day, as I was finishing breakfast out on my deck, I went to get up from the chair I was sitting in when I noticed a decaying mandevilla blossom near my foot. For some reason I bent down and picked it up and began to study it. As I held the small, red, trumpet shaped blossom between two fingers, slowly turning it, I noticed a tiny yellow-green, almost luminescent, bug crawling frantically across the surface. It was so small (and my eyesight being what it is), I couldn’t tell if it had six, eight, ten, or maybe more legs.
Holding the blossom still, I focused my attention on the little bug and after a few moments it ceased its frantic pace. Perhaps it sensed whatever danger the movement caused by me picking up the blossom signaled to it had passed. From then on it moved slowly and seemingly deliberately over the flower’s surface.
After a few minutes of watching this tiny bug on this small decaying floral blossom I started to wonder…Where did this creature come from? How long will it live? Why is it here…on this blossom, on this planet? I thought about how vulnerable it is…so small…so easily destroyed by almost anything around it…I could have crushed it right then and there with barely any physical effort on my part, but I didn’t…and I wouldn’t.
For in that moment, I realized the same questions that arose about that little bug, arise often about myself, about humanity, and life itself. “Where did we come from? How long will we be here? Why are we here? How is it, why is it, and what does it mean that life is both terrifyingly vulnerable and astonishingly resilient? How shall we live in the midst of such mystery and paradox?
The late English mystic and philosopher Evelyn Underhill defined worship as, “The response of the creature to the Eternal.” And in reflecting back on my moment with the bug on a floral blossom, that seems a pretty good definition to me.
Worship arises out of an awareness…and perhaps initially only hope, that there is more to what we normally observe or experience at the surface level of life.
We heard echoes of worship as response as well in the words of our first reading this morning by the late Unitarian Universalist minister Jacob Trapp, “Worship is to work with dedication and skill…to pause and to listen.” Trapp’s description of worship as response also reveals a questing, questioning character to the response. “Worship is loneliness seeking communion…the mystery within us reaching out to the mystery beyond.” And yet it is not a fact finding mission, but a meaning seeking and making endeavor that calls us into relationship beyond ourselves…to switch off or out of auto-pilot and, as Trapp writes, “Stand in awe…Be silent, receptive…and Sing with…”
Moving beyond our ordinary experience of life as a fixed, rigid social construct rationally insisted and articulated by its most fervent apologists…usually ourselves….we discover a life awash in expansive, paradoxical, ineffable mystery…beyond words… in which we nonetheless begin to discern a harmony of the whole from our experience with life’s scattered parts. This makes worship…and religious freedom… dangerous and a threat to tyrants, totalitarian regimes, religious or secular, and even garden variety control freaks. For it is the path of spiritual liberation…of releasing the myriad ways, often initially necessary, that we have defined ourselves and been defined by others but which no longer serve, but instead oppress us, though we don’t always see it. Something beautifully, and comically, expressed in our second reading, The Most Magnificent Thing.
Here we have a girl who sets out to build what she calls, “the most magnificent thing” which to me seems a metaphor for life or self. Like most of us as we grow older and we develop ideas or are told what our lives should look like and how life works, the girl in the story has definite ideas about what her most magnificent thing will look like and how it will work. And like most of us, she “tinkers, hammers and measures”, working hard to get it just right, even as her assistant “pounces, growls and chews” perhaps to caution or attract her attention now and then. But onward she goes until it is finished only to discover despite all her effort, its not at all what she envisioned or expected and definitely not, “magnificent.”
How many of us can relate to that?
Bewildered and disillusioned, the girl makes some superficial adjustments, which are lauded by well-meaning but perhaps conflict avoidant sympathizers. More than a few of us are probably familiar with making insufficient adjustments and have one or two such well-meaning friends.
We almost know what will happen to the most magnificent thing before were told the girl smashes it out of frustration and calls it quits. It’s a trajectory most lives will necessarily follow in one way or another.
Smashing it is actually important. You see, many never smash their initial -not so magnificent- creation, they just take (or mistake it) as who they are or how life is. So the problem isn’t smashing it. The problem is either not smashing it, or as the girl in story was tempted, quitting afterward. And here’s where the significance of the assistant in the story becomes clearer. It may not have been apparent initially, but the assistant is a dog, which interestingly is God spelled backward.
I read the dog to represent or include the church or religious community rather than God or God alone. The dog suggests a walk, itself a metaphor for perspective and something inherent in, “worship hospitable enough to welcome a confused soul.”
It’s a struggle at first and even long after. Old habits…ways of seeing and relating to the world, to others and ourselves, die hard. But die they must if we are to see and live anew. The heart it seems, must be broken open again and again.
Together the girl and her assistant rebuild…or, as some would say, rebirth…a new life that transcends the expectations and limitations of the old. To her amazement, it is not perfect, but somehow it is truly, even unimaginably, by conventional standards, magnificent.
And that it what I hope for you and for me…and anyone who walks through our doors…a life transformed. Encouraged, awakened and supported in community…. this community… in this house…a house of worship “hospitable enough to welcome a confused soul.” (Norris) Brave enough to pray “love, once again break our hearts open wide.”(Shelton) And faithful enough to venture, hand in hand, beyond words into that “inarticulate silence yearning to speak” (Trapp) in which perfection is laid to waste that that which is most magnificent in us may emerge and serve unencumbered in the world.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
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