“Finding God, Sometimes”
A Sermon by Rev. John Gibbons
Delivered on September 15, 2013
At the First Parish in Bedford
A Thought to Ponder at the Beginning:
You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom: absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this or die like this without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken. —Anaïs Nin
Sermon
Every year at the UUA General Assembly, the Partner Church Council honors someone who has contributed to global partnership. This “living the mission” award is named for Louis Cornish who was the president of the American Unitarian Association in the 1920’s and 30’s. The presidency of Louis Cornish is quite unmemorable and mostly forgotten…except that he renewed historic connections between American Unitarians and Unitarians in the Philippines and, most importantly, in Transylvania. In the 1920’s he led an international investigation into the persecution of Unitarians in Romania. He travelled to remote places, through the snow, by horse-and-buggy and documented post-war conditions and what today we would call the abuse of human rights. He also wrote a book that not many people read.
So in June at a luncheon reception the Cornish Award was given to a wonderful, brilliant, irascible, and always surprising colleague, Rev. David Keyes. Accepting the award, David responded by saying this:
“I’ve been trying to figure out why Louis Cornish spent so much of his life traveling to distant and difficult places…what motivated him to do this largely thankless work? There may be many parts to the answer, but what I have come to suspect is that, in his reaching out to ‘the other’, Louis Cornish found God. So it is that, for those of us deeply engaged in this work of partnership, we, too, may find God. What fills the vast space between us and The Other is an experience of the holy. In global partnership, we find God.”
Badda bing. Badda boom. And then David sat down; we finished lunch; and we were done talking about God for the day. Except that I’ve been thinking about this ever since. Not thinking about God, really, I don’t think much about God.
I do know, however, that everything we do in this church is about discovering and connecting ourselves to larger realities, seeing a bigger picture, enlarging the whole, expanding our capacity to think and feel and act.
That’s what Aron and Zsolt and Abasfalva and Transylvania and the Khasi Hills of India and a whole lot of other people and places have meant in my life: they’ve helped me find that which is more whole, more holy. Sometimes, I’d say they’ve helped me to find God.
But if you think I’m just talking about global partnership or international travel, I’m not. That’s not my point. My point is much more like that made by Anais Nin in the words at the top of your order of service:
“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom: absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this or die like this without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.” Badda bing. Badda boom. Anais Nin knew how to quiet a room.
You know, I’d never heard that quotation until the other day, on Facebook, a 20-something year old kid who grew up in this congregation – Lucy MacRobert – posted it. And I wrote back to Lucy, thanking her and saying that, if she really grasped the meaning of those words, she’d never ever have to go to theological school.
Welcome to another season of shock treatment. Together may we encounter some places, some people, some books, some songs and may we be awakened and saved from death. If you’re open to it, may we find God, sometimes or find whatever it is that that word points to. Badda bing. Badda boom.
Do you remember how, in Transylvania, when they want to express appreciation in a classroom or maybe in church, they don’t clap but they rap the pew in front of them? Let’s try it and please welcome our dear friends, Aron Barabas and Zsolt Deak.