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  • BUUC Home
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  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
  • Stewardship and Gift Policy
    • Saints We've Known
    • Charitable Giving and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
  • Sermons 2022-23
    • A Waste of time
    • The Seventh Principle
    • Make Light of It
    • A Turn of the Screw
    • America: Part II
    • What Do You Expect?
    • Good Mourning
    • Beyone Repair?
    • No Signal
    • Absolutely, Maybe, Definitely Not
    • Do Guardian Angels Exist?
    • Right Here
  • Our Covenant
  • Minister's Welcome
  • Religious Exploration
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  • Unitarian Universalism
  • Driving Directions
  • Photos of Us
  • Making the BUUC Accessible
  • LOVEUU
  • Community Resources
    • Mental Health Providers, Worcester MA
    • Southern Worcester County Parent Guide
  • Contact Us
    • Sermons 2021-22
  • Sermon Archives
    • Finding Joy in Uncertain Times
    • The Arithmetic of Joy
    • Of Muck and Martyrs
    • Doing Dishes
    • Idle Worship
    • The Fear of the Refugee
    • It's Not Just You
    • If We Choose
    • Lazy Busy
    • A Most Human Season
    • Running on Empty
    • Alone Together
    • Come Home
    • Winter Warmth
    • How Big Is Your Circle?
    • Thanksgiving Life
    • Kurt Vonnegut: Humanist Hero
    • In Costume
    • Again
    • Borderland
    • The Geometry of Life
    • Transformation and Growth
    • Come Build a Land
    • Our Brains, Our Minds and Our Hearts
    • Gifts
    • Repairers of the Breach
    • The Times They Are A-Changin'
    • Mission Possible
    • It Matters
    • Thanksgiving Reflection
    • Shoes That Fit
    • Winter
    • Ignorance, Answers, and Bliss
    • Questions, Questions
    • Living to the Point of Tears
    • Lost in the Shuffle: UU's Less Popular Principle
    • On the Turning Away
    • A Matter of Degree
    • A Collection of Near Death Experiences
    • I Know Her So Well, I Think. I Thought.
    • Faith-based Resilience
    • To Abet Creation
    • Who Cares?
    • A Matter of Life and Depth
    • Pass/Fail
    • Enough
    • O Holy Light
    • With New Eyes
    • Coming Alive
    • Beyond Words
    • Becoming
    • A Miracle Even Thomas Jefferson Could Embrace
    • Fear Not!
    • The Miracle of Change
    • Meeting Grace
    • R-E-S-P-E-C-T
    • Serving with Grace
    • The Pursuit of Happiness
    • When Heresy Met Sally
    • The Souls of All Living Creatures
    • What Are You Looking For?
    • Beloved
    • Let Me Count The Ways
    • Happiness
    • Chosen
    • Faith and Belief
    • Room To Grow
    • Blessed Fools
    • Don't Be a Superhero
    • Getting There from Here
    • Unfinished Business
    • Universalism's Origen
    • Yearn to Learn
    • Beauty Saves
    • Commentary on Freedom
    • Being Human: Religious Community in a Plastic Age
    • Questionable Certainties and Faithful Doubts
    • Commentaries on Murphy's Law
    • Children of a Lesser God
    • Fragile Nets of Meaning
    • Life Incarnate
    • So You Want to Be Happy
    • A Year's End Resolution
    • Where Stars Are Born
    • Thanking Eve
    • Anger, Our Teacher
    • Everlasting Punishment
    • Comprehending Moral Imperatives in a Me-centered World
    • Promises Kept
    • Dancing With The Stars: Science and Religion
    • Two Steps and Missteps: Church Membership for Human Beings
    • Light of the World
    • Dear God
    • Imago Hominis
    • CESA: Reflections on Drug Addiction
    • Falling in Love Again
    • How Does Your Garden Grow
    • Repent! No Guilt Trip Required
    • Go Out into the World
    • Thanks-living
    • Life and Not Life
    • Guilty As Charged
    • Dare To Hope
    • Don't Forget To Chew
    • Break the Silence - Stop the Violence
    • Living Among Strangers
    • What Is Religion Anyway?
    • East of Eden
    • Praying Attention
    • Wholly Human
    • The Healing Power of Forgiveness
    • All I Want for Christmas
    • Let It Be...Let It Go
    • Why Not?
    • People Like You
    • Vulnerable Trust
    • Thin Places
    • Now What?
    • Courageously Humble
    • The Last Butterfly
    • The Good, The Bad, and The Whole
    • Sacred Souvenirs
    • Made Whole
    • This Wild and Precious Life
    • Fragile Nets of Meaning
    • Where Our Future Can Begin
    • Taking Stock: Managing Our Spiritual Inventory
    • To Convert Life into Truth
    • Are We There Yet?
    • Family Matters
    • Ordinary Saints
    • All I Wanted Was Everything
    • Giving Thanks
    • To Be or Not To Be
    • Entering the Christmas Story
    • A Great Light
    • What's Real?
    • Troubling the Water
    • The Amazing Mr. Wedgewood
    • Lend Me Your Ears
    • Work That Is Real
    • Happy Melba Toast Day
    • The Great Pacific Garbage Dump
    • Plastics, Benjamin!
    • Surprise Beginnings
    • A Place at the Table
    • Norbert Capek’s Flower Communion: A Call To Honor Life
    • Voices of God
    • Hold On To What Is Good
    • The Little Stone Church That Rocks
    • What Would Jean-Luc Do?: A Tribute to Humanist Hero Gene Roddenberry
    • From Who am I? to Whose are We?
    • Turning
    • Spirituality
    • R & R
    • Spritual F-Words
    • Does Anyone Really Like Herding Cats?
    • Prepare to Be Amazed
    • The Greatest Gift
    • The Impossible Will Take A Little While
    • Taking Sides: Journey to the Center of the Universe
    • Help Wanted, Apply Within
    • Two Truths & Plastics and Water Don't Mix
    • The Third Conversation
    • Good People >
      • UU You >
        • Twitter and Covid and Wall Street, Oh, my!
        • I Do Believe in Spooks >
          • Holy Homophones >
            • What's in a Name?
            • So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!
            • Open-Mindedness, As Assigned
            • Going on a Journey
            • Cheap Love
            • Nonproductive Delight
            • The Persistence of Memory
            • Thoughts about the Historical Jesus
            • Lindens and Tiarella and Bearberry, Oh My!
            • Season's Greetings
            • I Still Have A Dream
            • Peace Corps - A Lesson in Caring
            • Spiritual Engineering
            • Thanks for the Memories
            • Our Stories, Ourselves
            • Anxious Gardeners
            • The Best Sermon Ever!
            • UUnited
            • We Are Courageous
            • A Right Way to Be Wrong
            • Sacred Ideals
            • This Wild and Precious Life Revisited
            • 20/20
            • Home
            • What About Now?
        • Fragile
        • Time Ravel
        • Now Is Not the Time for Hope
        • The G Word (It's Probably Not what You Think)
    • No Thanks, I'll Walk
    • Be the Change
    • I Don't Know
    • What Lies Within
    • Guest Perspective
    • Growing Panes
    • De Colores
    • Roots and Wings
BROOKFIELD UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH

Holy Homophones
 
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
September 8, 2019
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
 

For what shall it profit a person, if they shall gain a smart phone, and lose their connection to life? 
 
These are the kind of questions ministers, some of us anyway, spend time thinking about.
 
And not without good reason.
 
I recently talked with a young man who, in sharing his frustration with the dating scene, lamented the fact that in his experience, no one under 30 will commit to meet in person. “They’re all too afraid to come out from behind their screens”, he said.
 
I have to admit, when I see someone walking toward me with their face in their phone, I’m sometimes torn between moving aside or letting them run into me just to see how they react to being awakened to the world around them. Another person, a friend of mine, is convinced smart phone usage is making people less patient and more angry. And some of us, perhaps most of us, have heard or read about studies linking smartphone usage and excessive screen time to loneliness, anxiety and depression.
 
Now, I’m not anti-smart phone.  I have one myself.  It is a remarkable piece of technology.  And there’s no doubt it offers conveniences that, until very recently, only existed in science fiction.
 
Of course, convenience is not an absolute good.
 
Prepared foods are convenient, but they’re not always good for us.
 
Superstores where you can buy a lawnmower, birthday cake, liquor, 60 rolls of toilet paper and get a flu shot under one roof may be convenient, but their social, economic and cultural impact on a community is not always positive.
 
And for all the ways smart phones offer us convenient means of communication, they also provide a convenient way to avoid connection….to ourselves, others and the world in which we live.
You see, being “plugged in” or “wired” is not really the same as being connected.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
 
And most of us know this intuitively.
 
The young man frustrated by people his age, “Afraid to come out from behind their screen.” knows it.  My friend who is concerned about what he observes growing impatience and anger in society knows it. And I know it when I’m deciding whether or not to let someone bump into me who walks looking no further ahead than to the LED or LCD screen glowing a few inches from the end of their nose. 
 
So should we toss our phones into the recycling bin after church? We could, but that wouldn’t really help the situation. For we’re not really talking about cell phones per se. It’s not simply cell phones or other technologies or any of the other dozens of things we fill our homes, minds and calendars with that promote and keep us disconnected from ourselves, others and the world in which we live.  In fact, it’s mostly us. A point made in this morning’s reading, the story of Cain and Abel.
 
If you’re trying to remember the story and you don’t see how it could possibly have anything to do with what I’m talking about, I invite you to remember that the deeper revelations, truths and meaning of stories in the Bible never come from a literal interpretation. If there were nothing below the surface of the story of Cain and Abel, it would have long been forgotten.
 
Now, if you were at the last regular service of the church year back in June you may recall we explored the story of Cain and Abel then to reflect on our responsibility to others. Today, going a little deeper, we find a story which invites us to consider our responsibility to ourselves and the life we’ve been given which ultimately impacts others and the world in which we live.
 
And so let’s begin with you. How many of you know what your name means? 
 
If you don’t know, you can look it up online or a book of names.  The point is names, generally speaking, are not just names.  They mean or point to something.  Your parents, or whomever named you, may or may not have known the meaning of your name when they chose it for you, but the writer of the story of Cain and Abel knew well what those names meant. 
 
The name Cain in Hebrew (Kayan) means “possessing or acquiring” and also “creating.” This, when coupled with the knowledge that Cain was “a tiller of the ground” indicates Cain represents our connection to the material world, the world of things.  In the story Cain also represents our attempt to find purpose, happiness, truth and meaning in and through manipulation of the material world.
 
The name Abel, on the other hand, comes from a Hebrew word (hevel) which means “vapor or breath” which represents that which is ethereal, hard to grasp, vulnerable, but also life giving and sustaining. Abel represents our connection to the spiritual, or, if you prefer, the mystery of “being.”  A “keeper of sheep”, the story tells us, Abel doesn’t till the land… manipulate the material world… in an attempt to find purpose, happiness, truth and meaning.  He is concerned with “being”, or as Rabbi Howard Copper describes it, “What is going on moment by moment in us, to us and between us.”
 
The moment of truth arrives when Cain and Abel make their offerings to God, who may be better understood as Life with a capital L. Life that contains and transcends our individual lives.  An offering is both an acknowledgement and expression of gratitude to God, or Life, if you prefer.
 
Cain offers, “the fruit of the ground.”  While Abel offers,“the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions”, the best part. 
 
If this story were to be rewritten for our more literally minded time, Cain might have handed over an iphone as his offering, knowing he was about to turn it in anyway… for an upgrade, of course.  Whereas Abel might have offered a promise. A promise to devote time and attention to his spiritual life, to the mystery of being, “to what is going on moment by moment in us, to us and between us.” (Cooper).
 
Our Jewish friends, express and live this promise in The Shema, a prayer that is the centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services, which begins, “Sh'ma Yisrael.” “Hear O Israel.”  As Rabbi Howard Cooper points out in his book “The Alphabet of Paradise, the english word “hear” does not fully capture the meaning of the Hebrew word shema. Shema, he notes, ‘essentially means ‘pay attention.’  The prayer then is calling Israel, which by the way means, “the one who wrestles/struggles with God”…or Life.…to pay or give attention to Life…to being.
 
And is this not why we also gather here, in this place… to hear Life?
 
Indeed, Here H-E-R-E and Hear H-E-A-R, as the sermon title suggests, are holy homophones (each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings) that describe what Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church, “The little stone church that rocks” is all about.
 
Here: We unite in an atmosphere of care and support to foster spiritual health and growth.
 
Here: We focus on sharing our ideas and histories, with warmth, hope, loving friendship and an open mind.
 
Here: We nurture stability for our daily lives and seek motivation to reach out to the larger community.
 
And why do we do this? To hear. To give our attention. To wrestle with this life and the mystery of being, and connect with what is going on moment by moment in us, to us, between us.
 
And yet we experience tension, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, between our material and spiritual inclinations.  Tension not unlike a sibling rivalry.
 
While in the story Cain and Abel are siblings, two separate characters, the author of the story knew Cain and Abel co-exist within each of us as individuals.
 
And so we have a story which describes the universal human experience of competing interests, needs and inclinations. A story that offers us both a warning and hope.
 
The warning is not, as some might be quick to claim, that our material inclinations are bad and our spiritual ones are good. So you better make the “right” choice.  No. The warning is not that dictatorial.  Instead it is something we’re invited to discover by struggling/wrestling with the story. 
 
What, for example, is this story’s take on the human condition? What is it saying to us about our emotions, our vulnerabilities and needs and where or to what or to whom we turn as they arise? What potential advantages or pitfalls does it point out in our own response to the competing demands of life, including whether or not, or how often, to give attention to our spiritual lives? Ponder these and the warning will emerge from your heart, rather than from words on a page.
 
The hope lies in the way the story ends. Recall that after Cain kills Abel, God asks Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain responds, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” A question that really concerns the interdependence of our material and spiritual inclinations or nature.
 
Many, thinking the answer obvious, are quick to conclude, “Yes, of course you are.” But that quick conclusion may have more to do with being told how “good” people should answer than with any real experience living the question.
 
God, on the other hand, doesn’t answer. What’s that about? 
 
Well, God…or Life…as you’ve probably experienced, isn’t all that keen on simple yes or no answers.
 
Maybe God doesn’t answer because we must discover the answer for ourselves?
 
And indeed, at the very end of the story, which I did not include as part of today’s reading- as a surprise- God sends Cain into exile, to live as “a restless wanderer on the earth.” And so Cain goes off to live in the land of Nod, east of Eden. The Hebrew root of the word Nod, means shaking like a reed, fleeing danger, staggering or wandering about aimlessly. In essence it means confusion.
 
I can’t help but think of our own time, now.  Humanity, so often, seems to be living in the land of Nod. We’re all occasional visitors to Nod, of course.  Our Cain nature, if you will, is strong, willful, and  modern culture encourages and caters to it everywhere we turn. Yet, we are increasingly and profoundly unhappy, stressed, angry… dis-spirited.  In our confusion we look to creating,  acquiring and possessing even more things…everything from phones to extra extra-curricular activities, to social one-upmanship and political victories, as a way out.
The problem is these aren’t equipped to handle the concerns that trouble our consciences.”  They’re not necessarily wrong in and of themselves, but they don’t help us hear, that is, pay attention, to “being.” 
 
The hope in the story is we will get sick of wandering in confusion, discover the interdependence of our material and spiritual nature and find our way back, to recalibrate our lives.
 
And so we gather here, in this house.  To get out of Nod, at least for a while. To unplug and reconnect to ourselves, others and the world in which we live.  Connection that is made and sustained when we deliberately, regularly bid welcome…give our attention to… Life, to “being”, to what is going on moment by moment in us, to us, between us.  May it be so.
 
Amen and Blessed Be  
 
 
 
 
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