Sermons

INTRODUCTION: Dr. Herbert Benson, at the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Harvard Medical School, has attempted to demonstrate scientifically that fear is bad for our health. He suggests some techniques of relaxation to combat fear. They include repeating a phrase, a sound, or a word each day, while trying to shut out the thoughts which rush through our heads.

When I reread that recently, it reminded me of an incident last summer. My son gave me a CD of old time Country and Western musical favorites. I discovered that I couldn’t get them out of my mind. The words and tunes kept going around and around in my mind.

Dr. Benson says to counteract that, choose a word that comes from our faith. Then find a place to relax our muscles one at a time. Create a regular pattern to our breathing; then, engage in repeating the focus word or prayer. He says, “Faith quiets the mind like no other form of belief.”

Today is Peace Sunday at All Faiths. So if we were to seek a similar quietness for our lives and our nation, how would we go about it? One of the first things of course would be to realize that the number one stumbling block we face is fear.

Ours is a fear-based society, especially since “9-11,” which was only a blip compared to the devastation and destruction engulfing the rest of the world. But fear-mongering has eroded our self-confidence and made us susceptible to all kinds of appeals to fear. Worst of all, we now approach our future based upon fear.

Why is that bad? Because when fear is extrapolated into principle it teaches that, “If we sleep on the floor, there’s no danger of falling out of bed.”

As a consequence, we’ve constructed an enormous endeavor in every facet of our lives as a nation in which fear is the overriding notion. But let’s be clear: The greatest losses we’ve suffered since 9-11 are not only the 3,000 lives in the World Trade Center, but because of fear, we’ve also sacrificed nearly 4,000 American soldiers to an unnecessary war, and tens of thousands to a life-time of disability – not to mention the incredible harm done to the Iraqi’s which far outstrips the losses we’ve experienced. We’ve succumbed to fear at airports, at our borders, and at any public building we enter. When in fact, if the existing rules prior to 9-11, not new rules, not the Patriot Act, but rules on the books, if they had been followed on September 11, 2001, none of what happened would have happened.

As you know, top intelligence was informed that such an attack was imminent, and due to the inexperience and incompetence of those in charge, it was ignored. Further, many of the 19 bent on their terrorist act had expired visas, and yet they were allowed to stay in the country. And if airline boarding policies had been followed, 9-11 would not have happened, because they would not have been allowed on board the planes.

Despite knowing that these were fundamental causes of that tragedy, we over-reacted not only to 9-11, but to the future – out of fear. Though most of the attackers were Saudi Arabians, they were trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. We invaded and bombed that war riddled nation and followed that in bombing, invading and occupying Iraq. Then with fear in charge, we set a fear driven agenda from the top to the very bottom. Our government is now a fear-driven nation.

But even more threatening than the fear-mongering we are suffering from, is the belief that the antidote to fear is courage or bravery. It’s not. Let me explain.

I’m sure that when you were a little girl or boy, that you experienced the fear of the dark. I still remember vividly as a six-year-old, when a person who was renting a bedroom in our home told my mother the story of a horrible murder committed in the dark of the night. I was nearby and heard every word of how the murderer had sneaked in the house and hidden under the bed, and then waited for the cover of darkness to do his dastardly deeds.

That night when I went to bed, guess what? I was absolutely petrified, certain there was a murderer under my bed just waiting to kill us all. I was so scared that I turned the light on. My father called from my parents’ bedroom and told me to turn off the light. I did, but a few minutes later, I heard the murderer move. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I turned the light back on.

My father came into the living room where my bed was and asked me why I had turned the light on? I cried and told him the story the woman had told that day. Dad had me get out of bed and get down on the floor with him, and together we looked under the bed. There wasn’t any murderer there. If fact, there was no one.

I got back in bed, and Dad told me the lady was wrong to tell me that story. There were no murderers in our house, and he was there to keep me safe, so go to sleep. He turned the light off and left the room. Despite what he said, I wanted to get up and turn on the light. Fear had consumed me.

Fear can be eviscerating. It can sap one’s strength and fortitude. It can call in to question life long beliefs and affirmations. Fear is a fearful thing. But it not only affects nations at war, it can invade our lives and relationships.

You may not recall, but a lot of money and effort was spent by churches in the past two years, aimed at the election they were hoping to have this next Tuesday. The pastor of the First Baptist Church at the Mall in Lakeland, Florida, introduced a resolution at the Southern Baptist Convention of Florida. It called for the churches to work on an initiative petition precluding marriage for gays and lesbians. Specifically, it defined marriage as:

as well as denying recognition of any other kind of marital arrangement between gay persons.

The Baptist Convention approved the resolution, and the Florida Roman Catholic Church joined in. Those two groups alone had more than 1 million members. They only needed 650,000 signatures to place it on the ballot for what would have been next Tuesday’s election.

It was predicted to be a slam-dunk. Guess what? It garnered less than 500,000 names. Unfortunately, the names are valid for four years, which means they need to gather just 150,000 more names to put it on the ballot in an upcoming election cycle.

Why is it that anyone would seek to keep a couple in love from having their relationship legally validated, which is what marriage is – a legal recognition that two people have a relationship that entitles them to the rights and responsibilities that attend to marriage. Why fight to forbid it? There’s only one answer: Ignorance rooted in fear.

We liberals regularly beat up on Baptists for their fundamentalism. But can you imagine any institution that has less credibility when it comes to sexuality than the Roman Catholic Church? It’s been beset by sexual abuse of children by clergy in virtually every diocese. It requires its clergy to live their whole lives as sexually celibate. It forbids contraceptives to enable family planning. It’s in danger of being more recognized for its anti-abortion stance than for its message of Christian love. And it denies women any rights to the priesthood simply because they are women not men.

And yet its bishops and pope presume to have the moral authority to speak against women marrying women and men marrying men. What gives them the right to diminish the lives of others? What moral platform could they possibly preach from to the rest of the nation about sexuality? They don’t have the right except as we allow them. Truth is the antidote to ignorance which is the mother of fear.

In the same way that turning on the light clearly demonstrates no one hiding under my bed as a child, so the light of truth is that persons of same-sex orientation only want to be allowed the freedoms that other Americans enjoy. American sacred scriptures – including the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail – each of those masterful documents proclaims that citizenship in America is not based upon the color of one’s skin. It’s not based upon one’s physical ability or disability. It’s not based upon our ethnicity or lack thereof. It’s not based upon our religion or lack of religion. It’s not based upon whether English is our first language. And for certain, it’s not based upon our sexual orientation. Rather, every person born within the borders of these United States is entitled to the full panoply of rights and freedoms that inure to citizenship. In the same way that we abhor slavery, prohibit gender based inequity, and have laws prohibiting inequality, so one day, pray God, we will by law and statute decree that when we say “all people” have equal rights and liberties, it will mean just that. That will include the right and freedom to marry the person of one’s choice, whatever her or his gender may be.

So don’t ever hesitate to reject the notion and the nonsense that there is any justification whatsoever to mistreating any segment of Americans. That includes persons of same-sex orientation.

But it’s not just the efforts of a minority to penalize people who love differently than the majority. We’ve also let fear-mongers create within our nation a fear of Islam. And let me say right from the get-go, I guarantee you that for every reactionary scripture you can find in the 1,300 year old Islamic scripture – the Qu’ran – I can find two in the 2,000 to 3,000 year old Christian and Jewish scriptures.

We forget how acculturated we’ve become to some of the stipulations of Judeo-Christian scripture. We don’t pay any attention to Jesus’ words that if our right hand offends us, cut it off. And yet we rightfully take umbrage when fundamentalist Muslims cut off the hand of a thief and quote scripture to support it. We ignore that Hebrew scripture condones men having more than one wife, but we blanch at the practice among Muslims of up to four wives. And well we should, but not because of any religious superiority.

Islam is not the problem in the countries of the Middle East. It is poverty, and the corruption it has bred. It is politics and the dictatorial governments that American money and support have engendered. It’s a lack of education, it’s poor health practices, and it’s lack of opportunity.

In fact, if we want to engage in anthropomorphizing God, then I’m quite sure that God is Black, Muslim, homosexual, and female; Spanish is her first language, and her passport is from Iran or Cuba.

The key to healing the people is compassionate understanding. Mortimer Adler said, “Before we can say we agree or disagree, we must be able to say we understand.”

Amanda and I drove up to Orlando Thursday afternoon to see my daughter, Carol, who is a Choctaw Indian artist. She was one of five Native American artists chosen to represent Oklahoma at its Centennial celebration at Epcot in Disney World.

Carol does this amazing artistry with teeny tiny beads, so small that I need a microscope to see them. She puts them on leather she shapes and fashions. That includes moccasins, which are an Indian shoe.

At the Oklahoma exhibition there was a statement on the wall that “Before you can say you understand a person, you must have walked at least a mile in their moccasins.”

That’s what compassion is in contrast to sympathy. Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone. However, compassion is understanding. It’s seeking to help based upon that understanding.

There’s a story from Buddhism of “Jeevaka’s Test.” A physician sends his students out into the wooded hills near the school to bring back to him anything that does not have any medicinal value. Only Jeevaka doesn’t bring anything back. When asked to explain, he says, “Everything I found in the woods was filled with medicinal power. Not only the plants and animals and minerals, but also the wind and sunlight, the song of the birds, the smell of the flowers, as well as the river’s sounds and the shadow of the clouds.” There is an “omnipresence of healing,” he said. Of course, he easily passed the test.

May we recognize the healing power of everything present in our lives…power enough to heal our land and our peoples.

[1] A sermon on November 04, 2007, first in a three-sermon series on the “High Holy Days of America,” at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.