What Fresh Hell Is This?
or
The Uses of Disappointment
or
Brother Simpson,
Brother Sharpton, and Us

A Sermon by Rev. John E. Gibbons

Halloween. All Soul's Day. Samhain. El dia del muerto; the day of the dead when the veil is lifted so that we may see the other side, commune with spirits, ponder our mortality.

It is true there are times when we come face to face with grinning death, the Grim Reaper, "nature's way of advising us to slow down," but as Max Coots writes it is more frequent that we face and fear the "little deaths":

the blasé shrug that quietly replaces excited curiosity;

the cynic sneer that takes the place of innocence;

the soft-sweet odor of success that overcomes the sense of sympathy;

the self-betrayals that rob us of our will to trust;

the ridicule of vision, the barren blindness to what was once our sense of beauty --

These are the deaths that come so quietly we do not know when it was we died.

This morning I wish to speak of another little death which we all face - which we fear or, at least, of which we are not much fond - and which yet may be one of the deaths that gives birth to greater life. I speak of disappointment, the failure of our hopes or dreams or expectations; the frustrating experience of believing you're getting on the train for one destination and ending up somewhere else altogether.

As entree to this subject let me tell you a little story about the last week of my life. Perhaps you heard that I invited the Reverend Al Sharpton to speak from this pulpit last Sunday. He was eloquent and inspiring. It was a good and significant event, and I don't want anything I say today to diminish the luster of that day. I am proud - we can be proud - that Sharpton spoke here. I believe that just as in the 60's our liberal churches played an important role in countering the demonization of black leadership, there is again an opportunity and call for us to open our pulpits to unfamiliar voices and those who are demonized today.

But in addition to the pride I feel, I also feel disappointed. You probably didn't even notice this but while introducing Sharpton, I worked myself up to a sufficient nervous froth that, rounding the last bend before giving him the pulpit, my tongue slipped. It is hard to believe that anyone could do such a thing, but I almost referred to him as "Brother Simpson." A few parishioners wondered what Homer Simpson had to do with the occasion. Bless them. I quickly recovered from my gaffe, corrected myself even before the entire word Simpson had been pronounced, and I laughed with Sharpton about it afterward. Still I spent the remainder of Sunday wondering how I could have been so stupid. After emergency therapy with various parishioners that afternoon and evening, my self-esteem was bruised but better by Sunday night. I slept well. But upon arising Monday morning I discovered - to my considerable dismay - that my error was duly and prominently reported on page one of the Metro section of the Boston Globe. In the dark of early morning, I slunk into catatonia.

You know, stuff like this takes the shine off public life. I felt like Dan Quayle, ready to check into the Betty Ford image-rehab clinic. I remembered when Jimmy Carter on national TV memorialized the late Hubert Humphrey at the 1980 Democratic Convention, concluding with a rhetorical flourish "Hubert Horatio Hornblower!" Humphrey was not, however, sitting and breathing three feet way. Good-natured friends called to offer me public-relations jobs. My 16-year old son asked therapeutically, "How does it feel, Dad, to have the whole world know you're an idiot?" (This, you see, had been a tightly-guarded family secret.) I expect to die a thousand deaths and I am up to about 712. "I wave goodbye to my reputation/it seems it is leaving by train for a vacation/I'll meet it in the country when I can." All week I have been embarrassed and disappointed in myself.

But enough about me; let's talk about you. As of this minute now, I truly have stopped my flagellation - if you come away from this sermon thinking that I talked about myself, I will truly be disappointed. I use my misfortune as a small and ultimately insignificant example of the universal experience of disappointment - of the failure of our hopes, our dreams, our expectations, of the frustration of believing you're going one place and ending up somewhere else altogether. These disappointments are not laughable; they can be profound.

We all know disappointment. We face disappointment everywhere: we're disappointed by politics; we're disappointed by friends; we're disappointed with our jobs; we're disappointed in love and marriage; truth-to-tell we're sometimes disappointed by our children; and, yes, we can be most acutely disappointed by ourselves.

Even minor disappointments can accumulate and be lethal, and it's possible to live in fear of whatever is around the next bend. There was a poem I read once about a man who committed suicide because he had lost his hat. He had one too many losses and disappointments, and losing his hat was too much.

I have always been fond of the way that Dorothy Parker answered the telephone: "What fresh hell is this?" I've been known to answer the church phone that way. I answered the phone that way most of last week. Fresh hells abound. Trick or treat?

So a few weeks ago I was reading some book about transforming leadership and management, about how to get credibility and shine in public life, and how to build a dazzlingly attractive church community that will change the world. In it was the suggestion that everyone read a few pages on the subject of disappointment in a little book titled Life Together, a discussion of Christian fellowship, a collection of lectures delivered by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1938. Bonhoeffer, you know, was the German pastor who, because of his involvement in a failed plot to kill Hitler, was executed in 1945 by the Nazis, just days before the end of the war. Disappointment, this glossy management book suggested, just might teach us something about leadership, and growth, and what a religious community is all about.

Well, this suggestion was so out of the mold of the usual "salted with fire" evangelism that I checked Life Together out of the library. Bonhoeffer, it turns out, considered disappointment an absolutely essential pathway to spiritual growth, one's growth as a person as well as the growth of one's religious community. It is vital, life-giving, for us to be disappointed in one another and ourselves. Only by heeding what we learn in disappointment will we come to what is truly important. Never having been too fond of disappointments myself, I read on and said, Hmmm.

Bonhoeffer drops three succinct sermon points into my lap. If you're a humanist or a pagan or a whatever, you'll have to translate but you can do it, it's worth it:

First he says, "By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world.... God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.... Every human wish dream that is injected into the...community is a hindrance to genuine community. ...Those who love their dream of a community more than the...community itself become a destroyer of the latter, even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial."

This means no la-la fantasy imaginary virtual churches - or jobs, or marriages, or relationships, or kids. This is really the same question which Sharpton asked of us last week: What do our lives stand for - really - so that, when we die, some poor minister doesn't have to "hallucinate a life."

We go into so many ventures hoping and imagining what this program or person or community could, should, would be like. Bonhoeffer says no coulda, shoulda, woulda. And yet, how often I go into things thinking how affirming it will be to be a fine husband or the best father, and the next thing I know I'm trying to figure out what therapist is covered by HMO Blue. I imagine that ours is a warm, caring and growing community; and the next thing I know somebody feels slighted and angry and the Sunday Times looks like a warm and welcoming alternative to going to church (for some parishioners and for me too). I imagine that Sharpton will show the world how progressive and open and smart First Parish is, especially their minister. Time after time, we open our treasure and find ashes. Hah, says God, get real.

But, you know, getting real is precisely what we say we stand for. Take a look at our Mission/Covenant statement back there on the wall. Somewhere in its flowery verbiage, it says "We gather together to shape meaning, to know reality, and to nourish hope." Fine. We'll shape some meaning but meaning will shape us too; and we'll nourish hope; but the road to hope and meaning will first pass us through a place called reality. We gather together to know reality, to get real.

Bonhoeffer was no Unitarian Universalist, and we have no lock on this; but Unitarian Universalists, especially, should be in the business of knowing, facing, and dealing with reality. There may be religions that deal in fantasy but we're not one of them; we're in the reality business. Who cares what you say you believe? What do you do? Who are you? Inevitably, thank God, that means that we must be intimate with disappointment. That's a good thing and, anyway, there's no alternative.

What Bonhoeffer says next is, "God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious." (Keep up your translating.) "The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself.... He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds (people) together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then a accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself."

Isn't this is a wonderfully inspiring leadership text? It should be required reading for ministers or anybody who comes looking for a church community, or for that matter parents or partners or all who seek a depth experience of religion, a depth experience of life. "God hates visionary dreaming." The vision thing, all that. God hates the progress of mankind onward and upward forever. Maybe God hates mission/covenant statements; I don't know.

Now if anybody has some visionary wish dreams for myself and this community, I do. I'll walk outside with you today and I'll show you exactly where the big stove will be in the new addition. I look out at you and I know there are lots more people whose lives will be enriched by being a part of this community. Together - I firmly believe - there is no limit to what we can accomplish.

But - hah! - Bonhoeffer says that visionary wish dreams must come to smash - if we are to build a truly worthy community. I'll come around to saying what is of worth - what won't come to smash - but I must first acknowledge that many of the most growthful experiences of my life - as a husband, a father, a minister, a person - have been experiences of disappointment, of disillusionment, of loss. Stuff that came to smash. We may never grow fond of such experiences, but they are not to be dismissed, denied, or even avoided - for they are growthful.

The third, final, crucial and yet most difficult to translate point is this: "Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body...we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.... Thus the very hour of disillusionment...becomes incomparably salutary... When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day...."

There's something appropriate about Halloween leading on to Thanksgiving. We cannot demand that death be avoided; but we can always be thankful for life. Always, come what may.

Disappointment and disillusionment expose what is truly real and truly important. Again and again we are reminded that we are not judged by our press clippings, or our imaginings, not by the size of our banks accounts nor by our buildings, not by our children's report cards nor by our happy, perfect and uncomplicated marriages, not by what we wish things were like in our private lives or in our families or in our communities, including this one right here.

What are we judged by? Well, what do you think? As ever we are judged by whether we clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned, welcome the stranger. What matters is that we love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly. That we love our neighbor as ourselves. That we keep faith with the fallen, and when we fall that we pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and keep on. And that we never never stop praising and loving. Say no more.

And who knows? If we have enough humbling experiences, some day we might even become humble!

© Rev. John E. Gibbons, October 29, 1995
First Parish in Bedford
On the Common
75 The Great Road
Bedford, MA 01730
(781) 275-7994