sermon

INTRODUCTION: In the best-selling booklet, "The Tyranny of the Urgent,”[2] an interesting distinction is drawn between the understanding of the words “urgent” and “important.” Urgent has that sense of hurry…something’s pressing…we have to act now. Whereas, important carries the weight of significance and consequence.

It’s a revealing indicator of our skewed priorities in American Society that we have a constant sense of the urgent, compared to awareness of the important. The sense of the urgent seems constantly to motivate us. We’ve become consumed by the urgent need to answer our cell-phones and go to call-waiting, no matter to whom else we’re talking or in what circumstances. There are people behind the wheels of automobiles, especially S.U.V’s like I drive, who find it urgent to pass the car ahead of them so that they can then wait in front of them at the next signal light. It’s so urgent.

You may have noticed a letter to the editor this past week in the local News-Press newspaper, from a Lehigh Acres mother of a nine-year old daughter, whom she was dropping off to attend a game between Lehigh vs. the Mariners. But the mother was so consumed with a sense of urgency to drop her child off at the specific place that she wanted, that she got into an argument with the volunteer at the gate. She ignored him, did as she wanted, and in an irate huff, sped off.

But when she was preparing to leave the parking lot, the volunteer stopped her and informed her that he had her tag number and that he had called the sheriff. She pulled over into a parking space to wait. As she sat there waiting for the sheriff, she had a commendable insight into the difference between “urgent” and “important.” She had felt it was so urgent to drop her daughter off, where she wanted, when she wanted, which was right then – immediately, if not sooner! But in the scope of things – of what really was important – that sense of urgency had been quite damaging.

She reminded me of the guy who stands next to the microwave while it's cooking his dinner. With the same sense of urgency as the Lehigh mother, he’s tapping his foot and saying, "Come on, come on, I don’t have all minute!"

But as the mother sat waiting for the sheriff, she realized how rude she had been to a volunteer, how embarrassed her daughter was by her mother’s behavior, and how wrong it was for her to be taking the time of law enforcement for such a petty incident. She had a fortuitous insight in to what really was important.

Which brings us to the topic of today…the day before the start at sunset tomorrow of the Jewish New Year, 5766. One of the things that sets apart the Jewish understanding of the New Year with its Middle Eastern roots, from our Western world with its Roman roots, and its Gregorian calendar, is that in Judaism the start of the New Year is a time for reflection, for examination, for looking back at where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. For differentiating between the urgent and the important. Fortunately, unlike the mother from Lehigh, we’re not having to do it in our S.U.V. while we wait for the sheriff; rather, we can do it here, in the quiet of a religious service of observance of this most ancient of biblical holy days, Rosh Hashanah.

As I said, sunset tomorrow initiates Rosh Hashanah. It’s a time for introspection, to look back at the mistakes of the past year and plan the changes we’re going to make in the year before us. But it’s more than that, which is why they are called the High Holy Days or the Days of Awe.

As with most great religious themes, there is a distinct mythological character to them. Judaism is no exception. The myth is this:

During the high holy days, God has "books" that he writes our names in, writing down who will live and who will die, who will have a good life and who will have a bad life during the next year. God writes in these books on Rosh Hashanah.

But there’s a caveat: Our actions during the Days of Awe – the next ten days – can alter God's decision about us. Jews worldwide are given the next 10 days – the High Holy Days – to repent of their sins and ask God for forgiveness.

The actions they can engage in that can quite possibly change what’s written in the book are repentance, prayer, and good deeds (especially, charity). Then on the last day of the high holy days, Yom Kippur, the "books" are sealed.

Sitting here among us this morning are Jews. Sitting next to them are Christians. Sitting next to them may be Buddhists. Next to them are atheists or agnostics.

But labels hardly apply here. In fact, we don’t make much of brand names. If you’re like me, one of the richest parts of the services is when different ones of you have shared your spiritual journeys, as Amanda Evans did this morning. It wasn’t that you each gave testimony to a particular way of seeing faith. But in every instance, we are incredibly different, from one-time Roman Catholic altar boys or nuns in the convent to Southern Baptist alcoholics, and to young women planning to be trailblazing United Methodist ministers.

So given that variety, those substantive differences, what resources do we have for planning the next year? What gifts can we share for being better human beings?

One of the richest assets we have as a species is the capacity to reflect. But not just to reflect, but also to reflect on our past, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and where it’s brought us.

What makes that an even richer resource in living is that we can be intentional about changing the way we will live in the future. We don’t have to be stuck in the rut.

One of my very best friends in Oklahoma is an alcoholic. When he gets on the golf course, he begins to drink and drink so much that as the game wears on, he becomes furious with his slightest mistake. He’s thrown clubs, broken clubs, screamed, hollered, and in general made a fool of himself.

And gradually, all of those who cared about him, and for years were genuinely eager to play golf together, have dropped away. It’s a tragedy because he is one of the finest human beings I’ve ever known.

But one of the things that those of us who care about him realize is that under certain circumstances, he does not holler, scream or throw clubs. The point is his behavior is in his control. If he can control it one day, then he can do so the next.

One of my favorite preacher’s stories is about the Navy ship, which in the middle of the night in a thick fog receives a radio message. It says, "To avoid collision, bear starboard ten degrees."

The ship, convinced that it was exactly where it was supposed to be, radios back, "Must insist that you bear to port ten degrees."

"Negative," the ship retorts, "You're in the wrong place. You change course. State your rank."

The radio transmission came back, "Most respectfully, sir, please avert. This is a lighthouse."

We can change our bad behavior. We can reflect on where we’ve been and vow not to go back there. We can identify those habits that are destructive and determine not to continue them. That’s one of the gifts of Rosh Hashanah.

But equally important we can also reinforce our good behavior. One of the unspoken presuppositions of this congregation is the affirmation of our goodness as human beings.

William Ellery Channing, one of the founders of the American Unitarian Society in 1825, said: "I do and I must reverence human nature. I know how it is despised, how it has been oppressed, how civil and religious establishments have for ages conspired to crush it. I know its history. I shut my eyes on none of its weaknesses and crimes. But injured, trampled on, and scorned as our nature is, I still turn to it with intense sympathy and strong hope."

I wish there were a way to compel us to take a “Goodness audit” occasionally. Were we to do so, we would discover that day in and day out, our species spends most of our day doing “10,000 acts of kindness,” to use Stephen Jay Gould’s wording. We smile at someone we don’t know, we let someone ahead of us in a lane at the grocery store or in the car, we listen to someone else’s problems, and on the list goes. We are so much more good than bad.

This not just a theological distinction. As Margaret Wheatley has written, “Courageous acts are not done by people who believe in human badness.” She says that what we think of each other will determine what we are willing to do on their behalf. So realizing our goodness is crucial to improving the world.

The Buddhist Trungpa Rinpoche has defined our time as a “dark age” for one reason: we are poisoned by self-doubt and thus have become moral cowards. It’s not that we fear our badness, or some latent evil streak. Rather, we have been so assaulted with the garbage of self-hate, and sinfulness that we fear our goodness…the possibilities that we possess to rise to moral heights and outstanding ethical achievement.

It’s a matter of courage to realize the innate possibilities we have to be people of faith and hope and love. How different we can make the world we live in, where we live in it. It takes courage to admit that we are good people…not sinners…not bad people.

“If we were by nature bad, then when we did bad, we would feel good, because we are bad by nature. Further, if we were by nature bad, then when we did good, we would feel bad, because we are bad by nature. But the truth is that when we do badly, we feel bad, and when we do good we feel good. Why? because by nature we are good people.”

Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book, To Life, states that the corporate nature of confessional prayer is a reminder that we can be held responsible for other people's failings, as well as our own. When we ignore our community responsibility we create a climate in which other people are apt to slip. When we fail to act in a socially responsible way, we too are held accountable. As one of the quotes in the readings in our hymnbook by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., states, "We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."

In the most recent report of Fordham University’s Institute for Innovation in Social Policy, the “good” news is that, in the period covered, the average size of a new home has expanded from 1,500 to 2,190 square feet; the number of cars has risen from one for every two Americans age 16 or older to one for each driving-age individual; the number of Americans taking cruises each year has risen from 500,000 to 6.5 million; the production of recreational vehicles has soared from 3,000 to more than a quarter of a million; and the number of amusement parks has leaped from 363 to 1,164.

Now for the bad news: suicide among America's young people has increased 36% since 1970, and triple the rate in 1950; the gap between rich and poor in America is approaching its worst point in fifty years and is the largest such gap among the leading eighteen industrialized nations; average weekly wages, in real dollars, have declined 19% since 1973; the United States still leads the industrial world in youth homicide; America has more children living in poverty than any other industrial nation; 43 million Americans are without health insurance (the worst performance since records have been kept) and that number has increased by more than one third since 1970; and violent crime remains almost double what it was in 1970, even with substantial improvements during the 1990s.

And yet our nation and our representatives – Democrat and Republican – have taken us to war for bogus causes and still continue to insist on fighting for an ever-growing number of even more counterfeit reasons. Every now and then I imagine a scene where those who led us into this war have to stand before a representative audience of Americans and repeat over and over the changing reasons they’ve given for our being at war in Iraq. I want them to have to repeat the predictions they’ve made about when and where and what will happen.

But, you know what? There’s little benefit to blaming them. It’s our war, our tax dollars, and our soldiers who are killing and being killed. So in Rosh Hashanah, we need also to ask forgiveness for the wrongs we’re committing as a society, as Americans. May God help us, since we seem to be unable to help ourselves.

I read to you the letter of Mary Schettino from Lehigh Acres at the start of the service. I had a wonderful visit with her over the phone. She closes her letter by saying, “I am so embarrassed about my behavior and want the volunteer at the gate and the teens with him to know I was very foolish. I also want him to know that the valuable time he volunteered did not go unnoticed.”

We can change. Langston Hughes said, "When you have turned all the corners and at last run into yourself, then you'll know that you have turned all the corners there are." Amen and Blessed be.

[1] Presented on October 02, 2005 at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting in the Foulds Theater of the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

[2] By Charles Hummel. The title was passed on to me by my son from a sermon of his minister, Dr. James Denison, Dallas.