C3/CCC Sermon Transcript for April 27, 2008 There is a joke in theological seminaries about the ceremony where you assume leadership of your first church. It is said that the function of laying on of hands is not so much to consecrate you, but to remove your spine. My experience in the church has been that there are very few leaders who have not had their spines removed by their respective denominations or bishops. After years in the church, so many ministers are left battered and weary. There are, however, some notable exceptions. Bishop Spong is an exception. He gained a huge audience in spite of enormous opposition and hostility to his open and intelligent message. Another notable exception is the focus of the service today, Duncan Littlefair. Duncan was the seventh child of seven in his Canadian family. After a brief foray in the business of insurance, Duncan went to college and received his PHD from the University of Chicago where he came into contact with the naturalistic theology of Henry Wieman. He described Wieman as his “savior”. Duncan began developing a philosophy that didn’t depend on any supernatural beliefs. He arrived at Fountain Street church in 1944 and was given the task of reviving a dying church. Before beginning, he said to his wife, “I have 90 days to turn this church around or else they will throw me out.” From the outset, people flocked to hear Duncan speak each Sunday morning, to be challenged and inspired by his passionate style and message of self responsibility and awareness. He retired in 1979, but remained active up to his death in 2004. I had the great privilege of meeting Duncan twice, and also the great disappointment that he died just 3 months before I arrived in Spring Lake. Duncan’s passion could easily be mistaken for crankiness. He was impatient with superstitious religion and religion that ignored human questions. If some of you think that I can be harsh on organized religion, let me play you a short clip from an interview with Duncan that makes me look like Mary Poppins…..(click here for video) Stealing God Take that! I wonder if some of you feel that some sense of the traditional supernatural God has been stolen from you; something that felt comforting or necessary. That’s a very real response, and one that I want to work through this morning. There is a story about two young boys, one 8 years old and one 10 years old. They were known to be responsible for any mischief in the local village. The parents didn’t know what to do with them, and took them to the local minister. The 10-year old went into the minister’s office while his 8-year old brother waited in the corridor. In the office the priest slammed his fist on the table and said to the 10-year old “where is God?” The young boy was completely thrown by the question and didn’t know what to say. He just stood silent. After another few moments the priest called out again, “Where is God?” and a third time “Where is God?” at which point the boy, terrified, ran from the room and grabbed his young brother. As they ran from the building the 10 year old said, “we’ve got to get out of here, God is missing and they think we’ve got something to do with it.” It’s a charge that Bishop Spong and Duncan Littlefair have had to answer many times. “Someone has stolen God, and we think you have something to do with it.” But that’s not what they were interested in doing. They both kept God language in their theologies, just not the literal, supernatural God of mainstream Christianity. Rather they encourage a rigorous sense of self responsibility, where God becomes a poetic way to describe consciousness, community and connectedness. “Think”, Duncan would say- “think!” “There’s nothing out there waiting to help you. You have all that you need; within your own brain, in nature and in the religious community.” The Earth is Full of God’s Glory One of Duncan’s favorite Bible verses comes from Isaiah 6- “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, sitting upon a throne, and his train filled the whole temple.” A little later in the same chapter, “The whole Earth is full of His glory.” These are verses that need a little unpacking. When understood literally, they are absurd. More importantly, they are ostentatious and elitist. Did you know that the train on Princess Diana’s wedding dress was 25 feet long? That’s impressive, but wouldn’t fill a temple. The longest train ever worn was 4468 feet in Cyprus last year. That’s almost obscene, but still wouldn’t fill a temple. Understood literally, the words lose all meaning. Understood poetically, the train of the Lord becomes a beautiful metaphor for the bricolage of seamless entities that we call Life force or cosmic consciousness. The train of a gown or robe has no function, other than the hint of mystery. Look around you! The whole earth is filled with the train of God, the whisper of mystery. Look around you. Look around you. Cosmic Clusters of God’s Glory Gaze upon one of the incredible Hubble telescope images. These cosmic clusters capture thousands of galaxies in a single photograph, each galaxy containing hundreds of millions of stars. The eye of God. The train of God fills the whole cosmos. To attempt to describe the beauty and profound meaning of the universe is to fall silent in awe. It is to stumble over words like a blabbering fool. The wonder of the natural world drives scientists to poetry, and theologians to gods and heavens. To speak of love shared, to account for your own fiery spirit and intellect, to put words on this very moment is to fall silent in awe. The hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention at the magnificence of this very moment, full to the brim with possibility. Your throat seizes at the cosmic connectedness of all things, past and future. Victoria Safford asks the question – if you stopped and noticed the wonders of the moment- “ What song would come out of your mouth, what prayer, what praises, what sacred offering, what whirling dance, what religion, and what reverential gesture would you make to greet that world, every single day that you were in it? “ Look around you. The whole earth is filled with the glory of God. Stories Speak of God’s Glory Stories speak of God so much more powerfully than any theology. Consider this story- An elephant was enjoying a leisurely dip in a jungle pool when a rat came up to the pool and insisted that the elephant get out. Art Speaks of God’s Glory Art, like story, conjures the mystery of God so much more effectively than theology. Late in life, the artist Matisse was designing stain glass windows for a Dominican chapel. Picasso confronted him angrily, wondering how they could spend their whole lives championing the new, the modern, the progressive, the liberated, and then Matisse could support such a backward cause as the church? Matisse always the calmer of the two, replied that they had both been trying their whole lives to regain, through art, the inner atmosphere of their first communion, a state of grace, the mystery of God that surpasses any particular concept or image. Art comes closer than words ever could, to describing holy mystery, ineffably sublime. Living with Self Responsibility Speaks of God’s Glory Duncan went to great pains to emphasize that there is no evidence for a supernatural, interventionist being called God. I agree with him, although just as clearly you can’t prove that there is no supernatural God. It’s a pointless debate. More importantly, there is no need for a supernatural, interventionist God. You no longer need the supernatural God. Your mind craves liberation from such limiting concepts. Your spirit craves freedom from the self limiting concepts that can so easily grow out of a belief in a supernatural God. Live with absolute self responsibility, as well as absolute awe and wonder, and you manifest God more powerfully than any theology ever could. Garment as a Metaphor for Life Let me end, by returning to the image of the train of a robe. Consider the train as the free flowing, loosely defined end of a garment. Susan Jeffers wrote a powerful book called “End the Struggle and Dance with Life”. In the story, an old woman is asked why she is always calm and cheerful. Her answer is beautiful. "Well, I wear this world just as a loose garment." To wear the world as a loose garment means to embrace Wearing the world as a loose garment is a metaphor for holding the balance between embrace and detachment, intimacy and autonomy, the present moment and impermanence. In striving for this balance, you discover within all the help you ever wanted and all the comfort you ever desired. If you want to name an experience God, then you are free to do so, but know that it is only a name and putting a name on God is as restricting as putting an elephant in a rat’s bathing suit. In the immortal words of Duncan Littlefair- “You don’t find God. You realize God.” You don’t find God. You can’t fully name God. You can’t adequately speak of God. You don’t find God. You realize God in art, metaphor, story, music and experience.
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