Identity
a sermon given by the Rev. Roger Paine
on The Second Sunday in Advent, December 9, 2007
at The First Parish in Lincoln
To listen to this sermon click here.
“The real meditation is the meditation on one’s identity.
You try it. You try finding out why you’re you and not somebody else.”
– Ezra Pound
READINGS:
1. Our first reading, read by Amanda Fasciano and Charlotte Haslett, is a from the books of Isaiah, Luke, and the Psalms:
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them a light has dawned. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.”
“And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.”
“And the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, the lion and the yearling together, and a little child shall lead them.”
“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to give light to those who sit in darkness and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
“May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.”
– Isaiah 9:2, 6-7; Isaiah 11:6, Luke 1:76,79, Psalm 33:22
2. Our second reading is a news story from the Idaho Mountain Express written in August, 2005 by Chris Millspaugh, who is a talk-show host for a Ketchum radio station. The Dalai Lama visited Ketchum that fall to dedicate a meditation garden and to give several talks. Here’s the story, just as it appeared in the paper:
The Dalai Lama arrived in the Wood River Valley and was swamped with things he had to do, from attending rallies, speaking at dinners, blessing events and more. For security purposes, he used the same limo driver every day. One evening, at an important event in Sun Valley, he seized an opportunity to sneak away from the Limelight Room unnoticed. He walked out a side entrance and headed for the Inn’s parking lot where he found his limo and his driver sitting in the back drinking a beer and eating a sandwich with his feet up on the seat.
The driver scrambled, apologizing profusely, but the Dalai Lama told him to relax and stay put. He told his driver that he was tired of everything being done for him and that he never even got a chance to drive a car anymore. So His Holiness took off down the road, sideswiping a few cars, and ending up in a ditch. A Sun Valley sheriff’s car pulled up behind the limo and the deputy carefully approached and knocked on the window. The Dalai Lama lowered the window and looked benignly out. The deputy surveyed the scene, ran back to his squad car and called the mayor.
The deputy said: “Mayor, this is Deputy Sheriff Henderson. It seems that I am just about to arrest the biggest VIP in the world and I don’t know what I should do!”
The mayor said: “Who is it? Is it Bush? I’ll call the Secret Service and straighten the whole thing out.”
The deputy answered: “No, it’s not Bush. I’m talkin’ the biggest honcho alive!”
The mayor said, “Well, who do you have, the Secretary General of the United Nations?”
“Bigger than him,” said the deputy.
“Well, dammit, Henderson,” said the mayor, “who the hell are you about to arrest?”
The deputy said, “I have no idea who he is, but he’s sitting in the back seat drinkin’ a beer and eatin’ a sandwich and the Dalai Lama is his driver!”
That was, of course, a fake news story – it’s too good to be true –
the writer was using an old joke to have some fun with the Dalai Lama’s visit to Ketchum –
and it is fun, isn’t it, to imagine it that way; after all, it could have happened.
The Dalai Lama really did visit Ketchum,
and he must wish now and then that he could sneak away from a meeting,
and you know it would feel good to get behind the wheel if you’re always driven everywhere.
So the writer used the story to have some fun – who was that honcho in the back seat? –
and I’m using the story here mostly for the fun of it,
but also to begin a sermon about our identity – who we are as a church.
What shapes us, what defines us, what makes us who we are?
The answers you and I have for those questions
are shaping our response to the building proposals
that many of us will vote on after this service and over the next two weeks.
The poet, Ezra Pound, once said that “the real meditation is the meditation on one’s identity.
You try it. You try finding out why you’re you and not somebody else.”
We all have an individual identity, and as a congregation we have a group identity.
But do we agree on what it is?
One day Joseph Campbell parked his old Volkswagen near his apartment in Greenwich Village.
But when he got out of the car there was a young boy standing on the curb with his arms outstretched. “You can’t park here!” the boy announced in a loud voice.
“Why not?” Campbell asked.
“Because I am a fire hydrant,” the boy told him, “and it’s illegal to park next to a fire hydrant.”
Joseph Campbell knew a mythic moment when he saw one, and so he moved his car.
Of course we know the boy wasn’t a fire hydrant.
But in his own imagination, in that playful moment, he was.
And who knows – there may have been something deeply validating for that little boy
to have an old man accept his word and move his car.
This Advent season, as a congregation, we are right in the middle of our own mythic moment.
The leaders of our church have presented two proposals for improving our space.
It has taken five years of discussion – volunteer hours way past any counting of them.
The drawings we now have, one for a new building to replace what’s behind us,
the other for a renovation of the existing space, have been revised again and again
in response to feedback from our members and friends and from our neighbors.
So they deserve our serious time and attention.
We are, to put it mildly, not of one mind about what to do.
Which is why it’s useful to step back and remind ourselves who we are.
Because we’re right in the middle of our own mythic moment.
Lincoln Center is a very mythic-looking place – if you airbrush out the library.
I love libraries, and I’m glad we’ve got a good one –
but does that building look like it fits in with what’s all around it?
[Note: several people in the congregation shouted out that they do think it fits.]
Our sanctuary, on the other hand, is the centerpiece of the center of town.
It’s an icon, it has been photographed and sketched hundreds of times.
It appears on calendars.
A few years ago when Kay and I were on vacation in Taos, New Mexico,
I was channel surfing one evening and on about my fifth click, there on the screen, in full color,
was a white church steeple with a deep blue sky in the background.
Kay said, “Roger – that looks like The First Parish.”
I said, “Well, there are a thousand steeples in New England that look just like that.”
Then the camera panned down from the steeple to the whole building – and it was us!
I wondered: why are we on television in Taos, New Mexico?
Is God sending me a message? Am I supposed to phone home?
The reason we were on television in Taos is that our sanctuary is a classic beauty.
So it’s no wonder that even if we just whisper about doing something about our space,
even though our sanctuary itself won’t be touched,
we’re going to get feelings, informed and otherwise, coming at us from all sides.
People who will never darken the doors of this church have a stake in how it looks.
And we are not of one mind about what to do.
When you look back at the history of our church,
there are moments defined by division and moments defined by the search for common ground.
In 1842, this sanctuary was built by people who left the church up the hill –
the theology up there had gotten a little too narrow for their taste.
But a hundred years later, in 1942, the two churches voted to get back together again.
They had spent six years talking with each other,
trying to figure out if they believed enough of the same stuff to reunite,
and in the end they decided “yes – let’s do this.”
They adopted a covenant with plenty of spiritual elbow room – a covenant we still say every Sunday.
And what we inherited from them is much more than two buildings –
they gave us a robust spiritual hospitality, they gave us religion in the making,
and a commitment to generosity – a generosity of both spirit and outreach.
We have built on it ever since.
There are now over 25 different religions of origin represented among us.
On any given Sunday, sitting in this sanctuary, there are progressive Christians and Jews,
cheerful humanists, Buddhists, agnostics and pagans, seekers, and pantheists –
the pantheists are the ones staring out the windows because they know God likes it best outside.
There’s a national church consultant who loves to ask the members of the churches she visits:
“What would you call your church if it didn’t already have a name?”
At one church, a woman answered,
“We’d be called ‘The Church for All the People Who Got Kicked Out of Other Churches.’”
Another woman said, “But that wouldn’t fit on the sign!”
Someone else said, “We could make it ‘The Church for the Rest of Us’ – that would fit.”
We aren’t the only church that is a real mixed bag,
but the Lilly Foundation has studied vital churches all over the country,
including churches something like us, and from what I can see,
we may be putting it all together better than any other church in the country.
Because as Dwight Gertz pointed out in his sermon last spring,
we don’t take the easy way out – we don’t settle for the lowest common denominator:
in the next two weeks, our children will put on a Christmas pageant,
we’ll celebrate the winter solstice with pagan flags flying.
And then we’ll gather on Christmas Eve to tell the story of Jesus’ birth in carols, anthems, and readings.
And we don’t water any of it down.
Does it surprise you to hear that we get letters from members and friends
who have moved to other parts of the country and who write back to say,
“We can’t find anything like you here.”
Our spiritual hospitality reaches far beyond these walls.
By the end of this church year we will have given away close to $1 million as a church
to a wide variety of worthy causes in just the twelve years since I came here.
Who are we?
The service projects we’ve sponsored, the money we’ve given away,
and the unheralded contributions of time and talent by so many of you here in this sanctuary
have helped thousands of people in ways we know and in ways we’ll never know.
None of it happens by accident.
So we’re good at reaching beyond ourselves, and we are experts at finding common spiritual ground.
Why, then, does that expertise fail us when we ask the question: to build or not to build?
Some of us believe that if we build this new building, we might lose our identity.
We might forget who we are.
For these folks among us, the options are too inner-directed – too much money spent on ourselves.
We don’t really need more space or better space: “‘tis a gift to be simple.”
So let’s raise the money to repair and refresh our buildings and make do with what we already have.
Some of us believe that if we build this new building, it will enhance our identity.
It will give us space that is more inviting, more open, more conducive to dialogue,
a space that, like our sanctuary, is more connected to the outdoors,
and that people will look forward to being in.
These folks among us believe that since we need to do some costly repairs anyway,
why not go the extra mile and end up with a building that will give us and generations to come
a great place for the kind of programs and activities that deepen our spiritual lives?
So is there any common ground – something solid that all of us can stand on together?
We all care about this church.
We all want it to be vibrant and healthy, now and farther into the future than any of us can see.
We all have a sense that there is something special about this place and who we are when we’re in it.
So we treasure what we have here, and we all want to take good care of it.
That’s our common ground.
My purpose here this morning is not to sway you one way or the other on what we should do.
A sermon should not be a sales pitch.
A good sermon should try to remind us of who we are at our best,
what we have it in us to be and do – it should open us to thoughts beyond ourselves,
and help us keep on doing what we can to make the world a better place.
So my prayer, going forward, is that your vote and mine will come out of our own best self.
In the love of truth, vote your truth, whatever it is.
That’s the only way this vote is going to mean anything.
I also pray that we will find ways to have some fun together as we go through this.
It should be more fun than it has been so far to think about the future of our church.
I hope we can lighten up and laugh more –
because what happens when you don’t laugh enough
is you get all wound up in what you think is right – and you lose your perspective.
It is, of course, no fun when people are berating us in letters to the local paper,
but this is our life together we’re trying to hold onto
and it’s our future we’re looking at.
Ballots will be handed out at the meeting after this service and they’ll be printed in the Parish News.
The voting will be open, easy and private – and it will stay open for the next two weeks.
Each ballot will be signed but secret.
The only person who will know how you voted is our Parish Administrator.
We need to learn where we are on this whole thing.
It could be too close to call – or there may be a surprising majority one way or the other.
Whatever the outcome, I hope we’ll remember that we have a gem of a church here, no matter what.
And we’re not going to lose sight of who we are.
You’ll see to that, and so will Claire and I.
So in the words that Amanda and Charlotte read to us this morning,
may the child whose birth we sing and celebrate this season
“give us light ... and guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Amen.
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