Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Sometime back I purchased a new and expanded edition of The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank’s incredible recounting of her two years in hiding from the Nazi’s in her homeland in Amsterdam, Holland. It is an inspiring read.

As you know, Anne was a young Jewish girl caught in the horror of the Nazi obsession to eradicate Jews from the face of the earth. Her diary began shortly after learning one summer day, in 1942, that her only sister, Margot, age 16, had received a notice from the German invaders of Holland that she was to report to the German SS – synonymous with a death sentence to the concentration camps.

Rather than allow Margot to go, her entire family activated a plan they had designed for such an emergency: They would all move in to a secret annex in the warehouse of the business in which Mr. Frank was a partner. So at age 13, Anne, her sister Margot, her mother and father, and another Jewish family of four, moved in.

Anne lived there, hidden, seeing no one but her family and the other family with them, from the summer of 1942, until the summer of 1944. Then, some unknown person disclosed their hideaway to the Nazi’s. Anne and her family were arrested and taken to the concentration camps – Anne to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen.

Though the exact date of her death is not known, it was most probably in the winter of 1945. It’s known that a typhus infection swept through Bergen-Belsen at that time. And due to the horrendous hygienic conditions there, thousands were left dead.

But the legacy that Anne left us in her diary has been an incredible gift. It revealed a miraculous insight to life for someone of her years. Though she was not aware that she and her family’s arrest was imminent, here are some of the last words she wrote only 2½ weeks before her arrest and which provide our Easter and Passover scripture:

It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart….

…when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I’ll be able to realize them (Anne Frank, July 15, 1944).

Anne Frank’s statements revealed such a maturity of expression that many still have questioned how someone so young could have made statements of such phenomenal depth. These were not Pollyanna statements, for the Diary clearly reveals awareness of the horror of Hitler and his henchmen. Anne’s family, though hidden, did have a radio and were privy to news of the war. Yet with that knowledge she wrote:

I still believe in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart….When I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better.

So, we know post-Holocaust that the question is not so much whether people are “truly good at heart” or evil by nature. Rather, it’s a matter of whether we recognize that everyone has the potential for goodness, and that the Universe is tilted towards our survival. The key is not necessarily to believe that everything will change for the better, but to determine how we can respond in difficult situations. Will we say “Yes,” or “No” to life?

Let’s examine those issues further by looking at one of many Jews who changed the way in which we understand the universe.

I think most of us imagine that Albert Einstein’s accomplishments created a firestorm when he first proposed his special theory of relativity to the scientific community in 1905. The reality was quite different. It happened like this.

Einstein, in economic desperation, even though a Ph.D. in physics, had taken a low ranking job in the Swiss Patent Office in Bern, in June, 1902. Not too far away in Prussia, the Patent Office had already closed in the belief that there were no more inventions to be discovered.

Einstein loved his job at the patent office…of examining how things work and explaining them. And on the side, he did scientific writing. In June, 1905, Einstein mailed his paper on special relativity to the prestigious scientific journal, Annalen der Physic. He sat back waiting for the world’s reaction.

For three months, nothing happened: nada. Then the article appeared in that publication on September 26, 1905. Again, he waited for any response from the scientific community. No one seemed even mildly curious about his extraordinary new view of the universe. Only months later, did the great Max Planck write a letter asking for some clarification of an obscure point, but that was it. That seemed to be the end of anyone’s interest in what would become the most revolutionary understanding of the dynamics of our Universe, an understanding that would challenge forever Newton’s classical explanation of the way the world worked. But initially, there was no response to Einstein’s cataclysmically different theory of the way the Universe works: nothing, no response…totally ignored.

His sister Maja recalled that Einstein had imagined his publication would draw immediate attention. He relished the prospect of sharp opposition and the severest of criticism. Nothing.

He was deeply disappointed. He had proposed a whole new way of understanding the world. And the scientists who were supposedly interested in that issue had ignored everything he’d said.

Desperate for some way to connect with the scientific community, he applied for an open position of Privatdozent at the local Bern University – Privatdozent meant an unsalaried lecturer. Can you believe? He was turned down flat and the chair of the physics department labeled his relativity paper, “incomprehensible.”

Two years later, he applied again and this time was finally accepted. But still, it was an unsalaried lecturing position. At his first lecture, three persons showed up – they were all his friends.

Finally, he decided to apply for a position in the physics department at the University of Zurich. But there was a major obstacle of another kind: He was Jewish. Though we may like to believe that Hitler was an aberration of the depression and post-World War I politics, 30 years before he came to power in Germany, virulent anti-Semitism was an established practice in the academic circles of the Western World. However, a good friend of his wrote a recommendation on his behalf that basically said that even though Einstein was Jewish, he didn’t act like a Jew. With that caveat, he was accepted.

He resigned from the Patent Office on July 6, 1909, four years after writing the paper that would revolutionize the world’s understanding of the universe. It was not until 1921 – deferred until 1922 – that he won the Nobel Prize. And then, it was not for his theory of relativity, but his 17 page paper on the generation and conversion of light, one minor application of which allows us to open and close garage doors by remote control.

From this vantage point, it’s hard to believe, but the very community whose work Einstein most impacted, initially ignored him. It took 25 years for his famous E=mc2 to be verified.

When our umbilical cord was cut at birth from our mother, did that end our connection to our mother? Or was that cord only a physical symbol that we all are connected not only to one other human, but also to every human on Planet Earth? Further, are we connected not only to other humans, but to all that is, both here and beyond? And if so, what does that mean? Again, are we connected?

Or is it absent any such universal care and concern? Is there that in this world of ours which pulls and tugs at the deepest and richest parts of our existence? Is there that in this Universe which echoes what is truest and most real, and in so doing calls us to that which is our finest and brightest?

When we are at our best – most loving, most caring, most compassionate – is that a reflection of what is best in the Universe? Or is it merely a random happening, a chaotic accident, an unknown effect from a chance cause? Again, the question: Is our world animated by a loving presence?

3. Thirdly, are our lives somehow witnessed? So that nothing we do goes unnoticed? So that no good deed is not known? So that no vital effort for right and truth is ignored? As Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, are all of our actions and deeds stored in the mind of God never to be forgotten?

I submit that the problems we may have with those questions are not with the questions themselves. For in one sense, they are really at the heart of much scientific research and discovery. For example:

-- Darwin’s Origin of Species was a scientific way of positing our connectedness.

-- As to a loving presence in our universe, I believe Santayana was right when he wrote that every species lives out of an innate self-confidence in the created order.

-- As to whether our lives are witnessed, the search for life on other planets is in part a search to know the answer to that question.

No, the challenges we face in responding to these questions is not the answers we give, but in how we respond. I would suggest that the key is:

Can we transcend the limitations of our past? Unitarians are afflicted with so many fundamentalist atheists. Can we free our minds to think forward? Can we overcome the mentality of “been there and done that,” or are we like the patent office in Prussia: refuse to admit any new developments in understanding. The newest and most exciting lessons of life do not necessarily yield to the way things have always been done.

Nietzsche said, “Sail your ship into unknown harbors. Build your mansion in the shadow of Vesuvius.” Melville said, “Write with the condor’s quill.”

In his book, Fearless Creating, psychotherapist Eric Maisel, discloses a technique he calls, “hushing.” According to Maisel, hushing is what we do when we meditate. When I take my blood pressure, if it’s up, I can sit for less than a minute and concentrate on my breathing. When I retake my blood pressure, it’s always much, much lower. “Hushing” occurs when we go into a museum and sit before a painting for 15 minutes or in view an ancient visitor from the past. I remember a two or three years ago, at the British Museum, sitting for an extended period and looking at a mummified body more than 4,500 years old. It was a stunning experience. “Hushing” happens when we watch the waves hit the beach, and follow their ebb and flow. Our heart beat can almost synchronize with the flow…in and out…in and out. It’s a quieting, an opening…a way to stop the mind. Maisal says, “Hush your thoughts just as if you were comforting a baby.”

And when we do, the task is to hear the call of the universe about our possibilities as a part of this universe. Like the astrophysicists who are listening for the echo of the Big Bang, so can we listen for the echo of our yes to life.

When I step out on the porch to retrieve the morning paper, so many times the view is just magnificent: the rising sun, the trees, the clouds and the sky. But it’s not just the morning view.

Periodically, I’ve gone walking on the beach. There before me, the moon is shining brightly overhead, the water gently lapping up on the beach, and a very gentle breeze blowing. And every time it happens, I think to myself, how easy it is to take for granted such beauty, such wonder.

A gorgeous heron will fly by and if I’m not careful, I will think nothing of it. It’s possible to see the rich vegetation all around us, and the flowing rivers, with hardly a notice. We can forget that the sun is shining…that the birds are singing…that the green grass is growing…that the trees are alive. Hush. Listen. Creation is calling.

The great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore has so poetically expressed it, “The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean cradle of birth and death, in ebb and in flow….It is the life-throb of the ages dancing in my blood this moment.”

This has been a week of Easter and Passover. With both there are stories of a distant past that have had profound implication for our world. As to believing them, I like what Einstein said, “I’m a deeply religious unbeliever.” We should be careful to remember that the emphasis for him was on “deeply religious,” not unbelief.

His discoveries of the way things worked led him to a deep and abiding respect for the way things are. He was constantly challenged by the mystery at the heart of existence.

That respect is what faith is all about. It’s not to get us to close our eyes and confess our faith in something that happened two thousand or three thousand years ago. But rather to say yes to the obvious that is all around us. It is to believe that those who know most are also those who recognize how much more we have to know about ourselves and our world. And those limitless possibilities invite a sense of reverence and respect for people, for creation, and for ourselves. They invite us to say “yes” from the very deepest levels of living within.

And since we know that all our religious language is the poetry of faith, we join in saying:

[1] A sermon given at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation of Ft. Myers, FL, meeting at the Crestwell School, April 12, 2009 by the Rev. Dr. Wayne A. Robinson, minister.