Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Into the milieu of a macro world beyond our mental comprehension, and of a micro world in which we root back to the swamp and the quagmire, comes the ancient primitive story of an angel from God up in heaven, appearing to a young Jewish girl in a postage-stamped size country that has consistently been fraught with conflict. And it all happens in a dirty, smelly, little cow shed, in a tiny town on the side of a hill in Bethlehem, five miles outside of Jerusalem.

The story of Jesus, Joseph and Mary flies in the face of all reality, and all known facts. A story that roots in wishes and hopes and dreams. A story without history to support it, science to prove it, or reality to recommend it. Yet there is something in the interchange that has remained constant through almost 2,000 years: “Hail, Mary! You have found favor with God. God is in you. And great things are going to happen because of you.”

But life’s real questions are questions of the heart and soul. Here are some samples:

9. Can we live with failure and still stand in the wind and the rain, before the sun and the moon, and shout to the highest heavens, “Yes, to life.”

Read all the cosmologists, the anthropologists, biologists, and psychologists. Theorize about beginnings and endings, causes and explanations, projections, theories, and hypotheses. And when you are done, you will still be left with those questions.

I submit that those are ultimate questions, religious questions, questions about meaning and purpose. Or to put them in the nomenclature of religion, they are questions about God and faith, questions about life and human existence.

One of the ways in which human beings have sought to deal with the unanswered questions of life is to turn to religion. And when she or he did so, they sometimes found answers for the unanswerable, or they found a way to address the unaddressable, or they may have found a name for that which can not be named. Buddha did it, Lao-Tze did it, Pythagoras did it, Moses did it, Muhammad did it. And at this time of year, we celebrate that Jesus did it. We celebrate the legends and stories and myths that gave poetic richness and power to his life.

Two thousand years ago, in search for answers to life’s questions, representatives of the human family, rather than turn to the cosmos, turned to the earth, to an animal shelter, to the mud and dirt, to cattle and horses, to camels and sheep, to chickens and ducks. And in the center of that, they put a young pregnant girl, and her carpenter husband. The ambiance was poverty, homelessness, and irrelevance.

Not to worry: They painted in angels and choirs and shepherds. Even rich wise men. They wrote it down for their friends and their family. They read it and told it orally when they got together in services. Copies were distributed. Soon it was so beautiful, so right, so rhythmic with reality, that the learned ones said, “Ah, this is so true.” And they became holy words, and priests made those words into ritual, and poets into poems, and composers into hallelujah choruses.

Two thousand years later, it says to life’s unanswered questions, that we know that we know that we know that we know. We know we came from the very stuff of existence. When the Big Bang Banged, we were there. When our solar system positioned, and our planet formed, we were there. When the miracle of life burst forth, we were there. When our prehistoric relative decided there wasn’t enough oxygen in the swamp and leaped out on the shore, we were there. And when that first four-legged creature rose up on two feet and walked, we were there.

But we were also present when females began to bond with males for more than sex. And marvel of marvels, we were present when our species had two of the most significant of all human insights. They were these:

n We are most in sync with life when we become giving persons -- giving of our time, our love and our means.

And when we do, something wonderful happens. Angels sing and church bells ring and the people shout for joy.

Recently, I had a gentleman appear at the church and first talked with Regina. He wanted to know if we could give him $40 to buy his insulin. His diabetes has also affected his vision. After visiting with him, I wrote a $40 check from the Minister’s Discretionary Fund. He promised he would try to pay me back.

I answered that it was a gift and not a loan. Than I added, “In all my years of helping people in this way, no one ever comes back to repay. He left and came back one more time for help with his insulin. He doesn’t drive because of his impaired vision.

Then to my surprise, he showed up at Sunday workshop and services, and at the Meditation sessions on Wednesday. Would you believe, I learned that one of our members found out about his needs and began picking him up, taking him to the pharmacy, to the Emergency Room, and to our services.

Recently, I was blessed with a bonus from the congregation, and I chose to give $250 to this gentleman to buy clothes at J.C. Penney’s. I called Dale to see if he would pick him up and take him to Penney’s, to help him read the labels, and purchase the clothes he needed.

I learned later that our friend asked instead if he could go to Wal-Mart’s, and he brought his wife, and they very carefully chose clothes and food, and held back the rest for needed necessities.

Dale’s not here this morning. He’s over at the Salvation Army helping with the Christmas Dinner. Other times he buys the stock for the Food Pantry at McGregor. I think Dale has learned a beautiful lesson, we can also benefit from:

n We are most in sync with life when we become giving persons -- giving of our time, our love and our means.

Individually, as a people and a nation, we have stories that sustain us, that identify us, that enable us to be more than we might otherwise be. I have one of those in my life. And it happened at this time of year. It’s a story I repeat every year, much like we repeat the Christmas story. In fact, most of our national holidays and special days are remembrances of things from the past, which I now share with you.

Several years ago, on Christmas Eve morning, I was eating breakfast when I broke off a part of one of my teeth, a very painful experience. I had only recently moved to Norman, Oklahoma, so as to be close to my kids, and did not yet have a dentist. I finally decided to call a longtime dentist friend in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, some 60 to 70 miles northeast. He answered the phone at home and when I told him what had happened, he said he would open up his clinic and put on a partial cap to get me through the holidays.

So I immediately got in the car and drove to his offices. He fixed my tooth, and I prepared to return home. But it was Christmas Eve, and I decided rather than return directly back to Norman, I would go to Guthrie to see my mother in the Golden Age Nursing Home. I had told her I would be there the nest day for Christmas, but I knew it would make her happy if I surprised her and showed up on Christmas Eve as well.

So I turned South and headed towards Guthrie, and pulled up in front of the Nursing Home. Mother had experienced a severe stroke four years earlier that had paralyzed the right side of her body, affecting her ability to walk, to talk, to eat, to read, and even to watch television. The result was she was confined to a half bed in a nursing home.

I anticipated one of her big smiles as I walked in. Instead, I found the sides of her bed up. Incredibly, her hands and arms were tied to the bed racks.

I immediately untied her, put the sides down, and put my arms around her as she cried. I later learned that she had a rash, and the treatment of choice by the staff – to keep her from scratching – was to tie her up.

After awhile she recovered from the trauma, and even though it was hard most times to understand her, I realized that she wanted me to play the little Cassio keyboard we kids had bought her after her stroke. Mother had at one time played the guitar, the accordion and piano, and in fact, started playing a pump organ in the little Methodist church her family attended in Wagoner, Oklahoma, when she was only 12 years old.

But now she only had one hand with which to play and when any of us children came, she insisted we play and sing. So I pulled down the Cassio. Because it was Christmas Eve, she wanted me to sing Christmas carols, much like we have done here this morning.

So I began to play and Mother and I began to sing. Mother could no longer make a musical sound, nor say the right words, but as the snow fell outside her window, we created one of the most beautiful duets of Christmas music heard anywhere in the world.

We had just finished a rendition of “Joy to the World,” when Mother spoke as clearly as could be, and said, “Oh, Son. God’s so good to us!”

I almost dropped the Cassio. I looked at her for a moment. I wanted to say, “Mother, how can you say that. You can’t walk, you can’t talk, you can’t even go to the bathroom by yourself. Dad’s gone and you’re living alone in this warehouse of humanity, where only minutes before they had tied you like a dog to the bed. How can you possibly say, ‘Oh, Son. God’s so good to us.’”

Instead, I put my arms around her, and hugged her. And I told her how much I loved her, and how lucky I was to have a mother like she was.

In a little while, I left and started back to Norman. As the snow fell on my windshield, I had to slow down my speed. It gave me time to think about what Mother had said, and to think about my own situation.

For the first time ever, I was going to be alone on Christmas Eve. No Christmas Eve Service with the family. No kids excited about presents to be opened. No one, period. I was alone. And in recognition of that, I had been planning to have a pity party for poor pitiful Wayne.

Now though I reflected upon my mother and what she had said. And I thought to myself, I went to cheer her up, and left marveling at her cheer; I went to sing for her and came away having heard the songs of an angel; I went to give, and I was incredibly given to.

I submit that is what Christmas is about. In the midst of reaching out to others, we are given to. In the midst of helping others through the valley of the shadow, the light shines on us. And in the bleakness of our own situation, we hear the songs of faith and the story of hope.

I know very well this morning, that there are some of you here for whom the joy of the season is tempered by the pain and loss of the past. In no way, would I want to diminish what you are experiencing.

All of our difficulties are real, sometimes incredibly heavy. But we still have to find a way through the difficulty, a way through the darkness…a way through.

The theology by which we do it is not the issue. I find the theology of the great religions as metaphors, as ways of talking about reality, rather than being reality. There are times that it is people like Dale – the atheists, the secular humanists, the agnostics, among us who are most on target; at other times, it may be those among us who are Jews, or it may be the Muslims, or the Hindu’s, or the Christians with whom we celebrate today.

Or it may be those of us who simply want to be known as Unitarian Universalists – who find that life is more a living of the questions than it is having the answers, because life’s questions keep changing, and so must the answers.

I find all of these as pathways on the journey to wholeness and self-understanding. I can repeat their prayers, use their logic, or appropriate their language, without any compunction, whatsoever. It is the poetry of life. It’s the language of the spirit. It’s the heartbeat of the soul.

[1] Presented on Christmas, December 25, 2011 at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation (UUA, located at 2756 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.