Sermon

INTRODUCTION: This past summer during my Study Leave spent at Oxford University not too far from London, I sat in the dining hall where the Harry Potter dinners were filmed. Friday evenings were formal dining with name cards and assigned seating. My dinner companion on the left was also from America. As we conversed, I learned that she held a Doctorate in Sacred Music, taught music in a small Catholic college, as well as played organ on the weekends at both Presbyterian and Roman Catholic churches.

As we visited, naturally, the music at All Faiths came up, and I explained that due to the diversity of our congregation, we had no organ, and seldom ever sang hymns. We did, however, sing a lot of music from Broadway. Her immediate response was, “Oh, you must read Ian Bradley’s You’ve Got to Have a Dream: the message of the musical. I promptly went to the Internet and ordered it, and found it waiting when I came home.

As I read this Scottish Presbyterian theologian’s work from St. Andrews University, I realized for the first time, how much the music of Broadway has seeped in to the culture of America, and evidently, also England: Climb Every Mountain, You’ll Never Walk Alone, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Memories, Sunrise, Sunset have crossed the artificial chasm some have constructed between the sacred and secular so as to become staples of hope and inspiration. And ranking high on the list would also be the theme of our service this morning, To Dream the Impossible Dream.

I still remember many years ago when I first saw, Man of La Mancha, the play from which The Impossible Dream came. A few days later, I shared with a colleague in London, how I had been absolutely enchanted from the opening to the closing by the play and the music. In a condescension, which I refused to accept, he said, “How typically American.”

But is it? Or does it reveal something at the very heart of what it means to be human, regardless of your nationality, ethnicity, or even your faith of choice?

To answer that, go with me just an hour’s or so drive from Oxford to Stratford-on-Avon to where the Royal Shakespearean Theater Company resides. (For some unknown reason, Amanda always insisted on driving.) At Avon, we were fortunate in seeing Patrick Stewart starring in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (although I expected the Starship Enterprise to beam him up at any moment). We also visited Shakespeare’s home and walked on the banks of the River Avon.

And I learned again one of the things underscored when reading about Shakespeare and his many, many plays was that they were to his day, like movies are to ours. They were the common and ordinary entertainment medium of the time. But as we know from this vantage point, they also possessed a message for future ages.

And in one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, which comes from his play, As You Like It, he writes these immortal words, which provide a theme for our series this month on “The Theology of Broadway”:

Now let’s keep that metaphor in the front of your mind. Better yet, let’s take it literally:

Shakespeare declares that life is like a great Broadway musical or Shakespearean production. And we all have roles to play. We’re all members of the cast on the stage of life.

And the name of the production is: your name. It’s Elizabeth Johnson, starring Elizabeth Johnson. It’s Tom Hahn, starring Tom Hahn. It’s Debbie Marino, starring Debbie Marino. It’s all about you and your life. You are on stage. This is your big moment in evolutionary time.

You’re going to be here for 1, 5, 10, 20, 30, 50, 75, maybe even a 100 years. You will have different roles, but you will always be the star of your own life.

In the play of your life, there will be sad parts, happy parts, confusing parts, roles which you don’t fit, roles in which you do poorly, and some roles in which you are absolutely fantastic. The critics may love or hate some of your performances.

As you can imagine in any performance that extends as long as yours does, there will be that occasional slip, where you forget your lines. You say the wrong thing. You are misunderstood.

Not too worry: You don’t lose your job as you. You get to keep the part of “you.”

And occasionally, in the midst of the play of life, while everyone is watching, you may even stumble and fall…in front of God and everybody! How embarrassing! It’s awful!

But think for just a moment: If you were in a stage play right now, here at Crestwell in front of this congregation. What if, as you were acting your part, you fell – as I said, right here in front of us all? Would you just lie there? Of course, not! You would pop right up, try to make a funny comment about your new shoes or your big feet, and keep right on going. You might even be able to act as though it were a part of the script. But for sure, if it were in front of a for-real audience and people watching, you would have gotten up as quickly as possible.

But use that same reasoning for a moment. If “All the world’s a stage…” and each of us players performing on that stage – the stage of life – then how much more important that we never ever harbor the possibility that we won’t get up when life gets difficult, when we fail or fall, or others cause us to feel badly about ourselves, and that fuels our wanting to quit, not to try, to give up.

Let me promise you: That possibility is not anywhere in the script of life. We may fall, but not to get up is not an option. In fact, falling down and getting up are all one step: fall-down-get-up. You don’t fall and then separately, decide to get up. Nope: fall-down-get-up – altogether.

Why? Because embedded in our DNA, our very genetic makeup, is the innate expectation that human beings never give up. There is that self-confidence which every species possesses that Life, the Universe, what faith calls God, is supportive of our struggle to survive and to reproduce. And if we fall – and we will fall – we also have the innate capacity to get up and start again.

The eternal gift which we have been given is the ability to start over after it all seems over…when all that we’ve worked for won’t work any more…when we not only failed others but worse, we failed ourselves…and if it weren’t for bad luck, we wouldn’t have any luck at all.

The innate confidence of which we are the inheritors is that we can always start over…we can begin again…again…and again. We will just do it differently next time hopefully.

Mary Anne Radmacher says, “Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, ‘I'll try again.’” That’s the human gift…the eternal gift, which we as human beings have been gifted with.

But to dream the impossible dream is not only a commitment to start over regardless:

Marilyn Monroe once was quoted in an interview as saying, she could consciously turn her inner light on. She could walk down the street with her inner light turned off, and no one would even notice her. Then, she would consciously turn on her light, and she could be seen like a bright, flashing neon sign. To put it another way, she projected herself.

We are invited each day we step out on the stage of life to turn our inner light on…to let others see us fully engaged and seeking to be ever more informed and involved – to project ourselves.

We are here to be heard, to play our role, to fulfill our part. As Jean Paul Sartre so skillfully articulated, we define, invent, and create ourselves by selecting our own life-goals. We project ourselves on to the stage of life.

We are, as it were, the meaning makers of life. We give purpose to life through our decisions and actions and choices, by how and into what we project ourselves before the world.

Our world is in a critical state. Values by which our nation has been defined from its birth have been tossed aside in the current drive for re-election to this ignoble Congress. The Geneva Convention, the norm for civilized behavior, for more than 50 years, has been eviscerated just this past week by Congress.

And like sheep to the slaughter, our nation is dutifully marching forward as if that’s okay. But any historical analysis fifty years hence, will not point to one single event that led to our decline; rather, it will cite a series of events, which little by little ate away at the core of what it meant to be a nation committed to human and moral values. It will describe how our Congress and President yielded to the exigency of the moment, whether that was a failed and futile war, or the torture of the enemy captured on the battlefield. In the meantime, skilled rhetoric and masterful propaganda are paving the road to hell for America.

And the only defense is not a savior, not a hero, to take over Washington, but for you and me to project our voices wherever we are on the stage of life, here in Ft. Myers, America.

But Wayne, you say, what possibly can we do? How can we make a difference given the odds, the hurdles, the insurmountable obstacles? Here’s one answer.

Here’s why we can’t quit. Because it’s not just about Washington. It’s about Lee County, America. This past week, I met twice with the staff and then with the priest during two visits to Jesus the Worker Mission off Ortiz just east of the city of Ft. Myers. I learned that on Sept. 16, they held an event to improve communication between law enforcement and the Hispanic community living in that neighborhood. The problem they were hoping to address is that many of the members of this community have expired visas or inappropriate documents, or they may even be here illegally. That doesn’t mean they are violent, or criminals.

They are here to work, and work they do. They mow our lawns, clean our houses, build our homes, pick our fruit and vegetables, and work at the 101 jobs that the rest of us don’t want to do. But because of their document problems, they are prime prey for criminals who attack them and even break into their homes to take their money, because they know the victims are afraid to call the police. When they’re sick or injured, they’re afraid to go to the emergency room for fear the police will be called and they will be deported. They told me of one man who had been shot in his bottom and his arm, but he hadn’t gone to the hospital for fear of deportation. Finally, he came to the church and the priest took him to the Emergency Room.

So two weeks ago at Jesus the Worker Mission, they promoted a meeting with law enforcement and the members of the mostly Hispanic community. The sheriff and the police all said, “If you are attacked, call 911. We will defend you. Trust us.”

That was Sept. 16. Then one week later, a combined Gestapo unit of Homeland Security, Collier and Lee County sheriff’s department, swooped down in the dark of night at 4 and 5 a.m. in the morning in black vans with no symbols or insignias of identification, and went door to door under the pretext of arresting criminals. Women and children screamed and cried. They called friends and even the priest. But law enforcement went house-to-house, arresting this one and that one. In fact, they were able to claim they arrested 27 criminals. But listen to this: they also arrested 137 on visa violations.

The excuse of the federales, the sheriffs of Lee and Collier Country, was that arresting criminals was their main purpose – the 15% arrested. The 137 others – the 85% arrested – that was not their real purpose. And then in utter brazen misrepresentation, they said, besides, the 137 had broken the law by not having a visa.

But let me ask, how many of you have broken the speed limit in the past year? You broke the law. Why weren’t you arrested? Because breaking the law of the speed limit is a civil crime, not a criminal one. And so is having an outdated visa.

Now, there is a very tragic possibility that distinction will be changed by this gone-mad Congress, but until it does, and even after it does, our voices must be projected into the vortex of insanity, and our commitments as fellow human beings realized. Why? It’s The Impossible Dream. That we must continue to live lives of hope regardless of how hopeless it may seem. We must not succumb to cynicism and bitterness. No, we must with our last ounce of courage, reach for the unreachable star. Amen and blessed be.

[1] Given October 01, 2006 at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting for the first time in the Foulds Theater at the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister (first in a series on “The Theology of Broadway”).