http://www.firstchurchboston.org/eeuploads/sermons/Memorial_Day.pdf>Memorial_Day.pdf
Well, happy Memorial Day to all of you.
It is a somber holiday, but yet a holiday. We are here to remember, but also to celebrate. We celebrate freedom, and we remember those who paid so many costs for it. We thank Seline Howe for that beautiful piece, and we do hope she is listening. And Leo that was a beautiful piece. All the pieces you heard today were composed by members of the congregation. We do thank you for being here on a truly beautiful holiday weekend.
On Memorial Day, it’s always interesting to try and come up with a topic that really works and really fits. We have a theme this year, which is “Questions”, and I did six or seven sermons on some of the most pressing existential questions in our lives. One year, I came up with about 300 topics, and I put them in alphabetical order, and gave them to my congregation in West Hartford, and I allowed them to vote. And I was going to preach on whatever they voted for. Under A, I thought agnosticism or atheism would win, but they didn’t. I thought anger or anxiety would pull up in the home stretch, but they didn’t. I thought awareness; aging… no, they didn’t make it.
What was voted on by the congregation was adversity.
That’s a topic for Memorial Day. Because we all know people.--I mean I know one year, Rosemary, you did a ceremony on Memorial Day where you asked folks to rise if they had served in the armed forces, or had known someone who had, or whose parents had. I certainly thought of my mother, who served in the navy in WWII, as well as my father, who is still alive. And that can be a very moving experience. These folks don’t often talk about their experience, as I’m sure young men and women coming home from Iraq will not likely talk about their experience. Few people would ever boast about what they had seen and experienced. They have been truly tested by fire-- the fire of experience that takes you to the very limit of what a human being can endure, and should be asked to see and to feel. None of these young women and men asked for war. They have been cast to it. I talked to Oliver Ames before his death (and it was right at the point where Ken Burns series on World War II was just beginning) and asked him if he’d been watching, and he said “Yes, indeed.” Especially those episodes which alluded to the Pacific naval experience, which is what he experienced. He was on a destroyer that was struck and went down. And when I was preparing his memorial service, I learned a lot more about Oliver’s war experience. And indeed, when the ship was going down, he actually stood at the broken end of the ship handing out life preservers to the men going into the water. And he handed out his own.
I just want to repeat that, he handed out his own life preserver to someone else. And he was afloat in the water for about 45 minutes. He was able to blow up some clothing and sort of hang on for dear life. A kamikaze came down very near him, and skirted across the flaming water. These are things that young men and women for eons have experienced, truly tested by fire.
Probably the most amazing experience I may have ever had as a minister was in the course of doing that service, and in briefly alluding to that moment in Oliver’s life, there was a person sitting in the pew that day, sitting right behind where my wife was. And he turned and said, “I was there. I was one of the men that Oliver gave a life preserver to.” And he’d come across the country to say goodbye.
So adversity comes to those who face war, but you know what. All of us who are here this morning, we understand well, if we’ve lived an adult life at all, that adversity is going to come to us in many ways. The fire is going to come to us in one fashion or another. Adversity simply comes with the experience of being alive. It’s part of the process of being. Now we could all say wouldn’t it be nice if God, in omnipotent power, had created a world where we would never be tested. We would not live in a dangerous world. A paradise. But that’s not the world we have.
And so theologians have twisted themselves into knots over the centuries, trying to reconcile a loving, compassionate, omnipotent, and all powerful and all present God to the fact that we are tested by fire. This is usually the theme that comes back to us, which I have never found fully satisfactory. I don’t think theology should be just a dry and dusty topic. The reality is, every time I do a funeral, every time I do counseling, every time I visit someone in the hospital, the reality is, there are these questions before us. Shared by us. Even in the silence, they’re still there. What is this test about? Why do I live in a world that feels this way?
And usually what theologians have come up with is… well… that it’s good for you. It’s good for your character. We wouldn’t be who we are unless we were tested by fire.
There is truth in this. But it’s not the whole story, as I think you’ll agree with me. There’s a phrase in Ecclesiastes, and in the New Testament. It’s called “the refiner’s fire.” This image was high tech in the era in which our biblical texts were written. If you want to know what was high tech, it was in the Smithy. It was in the fire where you would take the ore. And you would then smelt it. You would refine it over and over again, so that inside the essence of the rocks you would be able to, piece by piece and drop by drop, find a bit of gold or silver. This was the refiner’s art. And they said, this is an image that makes sense. This is what is happening when we are tested by fire. That we are understanding what Ecclesiastes says in 2:5, “Gold is tried in the fire. And acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.” And in James, “Consider it a joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may perfect and complete lacking nothing.”
This is the refiner’s fire. This is how you are going to find the gold within you. When all the dross is burned away, and you are refined by circumstance.
Even great Unitarians have tried to look at adversity in just this way. Longfellow says “It has done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched by the rain of life.” Melville said, “He knows himself and all that’s in him, who knows adversity.”
And yes, yes. It’s all true. Even the great historian Toynbe Arnold, before his death in 1954, said in an interview in the New York Times, “Adversity in the things of this world opens the door for spiritual salvation.” And I don’t doubt that it’s true. But it’s not the whole story. And it’s never been the whole story.
Here’s what I think. I do not believe for a moment that God somehow creates suffering and the tests and the trials and the fires of experience to ennoble us or to improve us. These three things I do believe:
Adversity, when it comes to you—and it’s going to come to you; there’s not a single person in the pews today who will not be tested and tried by fire—but when it comes, it isn’t coming to make you better or to make you worse. Because I have observed through my life, and I daresay you have through yours, that you’ve seen people experience both. You have seen people ennobled by their troubles, and you have seen others ground down. You have seen people, people lifted up, and you have seen people who have not been ennobled at all. But what it does is reveal who we are. It uncovers who we truly are. In that sense, it is a way of revealing and exposing our essence, so that biblical image of being tested and refined by fire is true , I think. But it isn’t always gold.
The second thing I wanted to say is adversity comes to us, not to improve us, but to enlarge our vision. What do I mean by that? Well, when trials come, we can gain instantly a much wider and a much more expansive view of life than simply good fortune can give you, or mere happiness could have.
We’re taking a “Building Your Own Theology” course. Today, some of you were there in the class, and we’ve been talking about this since the class has gone on. One thing we’re all pretty clear on, is that whenever we have grown, whenever we have experienced something that made us lift ourselves up, it generally wasn’t our good fortune.
Good fortune comes to all of us, and let us praise it and be happy and enjoy every day that we have been given. In great happiness. But when the test comes, let us resolve that it didn’t come as a character test, exactly, but we may respond. And indeed we have to respond. We may grow. We may be revealed as something larger than we perhaps even knew or understood about ourselves.
And how is that to be? Well the third thing I want to say is that part of the wider horizon that our trials and our troubles can give us is the ability to understand the ways in which we actually are one with every person we meet. There is not a single soul on this earth who walks without pain. And that’s just the truth of it. There is in hardship, an opportunity, maybe not to become ennobled, but to become a person who can sympathize. Good fortune, when it comes to us, can fool us. It’s truly the refiner’s fire that gives us fools gold. We can be fooled into thinking that somehow we are singular, we are chosen, we are blessed, we are above it all. The old Calvinistic theology used to say, you know before you were born, God, who is omniscient and all-powerful, already knew whether you were saved or damned. And so they looked around their local villages and they said “By golly, people that are wealthy, people who are on top of their game, people who seem to be in control, I bet they’re the ones God has already chosen!” What a co-inky-dink. What a powerful experience that is. And those people who suffered? Why, God had already judged them.
It’s a terrible theology, because it’s self-serving. And most of all, it’s a bad theology because it’s isolating. It draws you into a narrow little community that allows you to think to yourself that you have been blessed above all others. And that’s why people often come in for counseling, because when the trial comes, people say, Why me? Things have been going great! I thought I was in good with God. I thought that I had earned my good fortune. But no one earns it. Not for a minute.
What is good theology? When you are able to grow a sympathetic heart. When you become empathetic in ways you didn’t know you could be. Because you realize, I’m really no different than the person right next to me, I never have been. And when you are drawn into that net and web of sympathy, you become more understanding, more tender. Any trouble that comes to us is worth it if that is what is refined out of us. If that’s the gold that is found and revealed by the fire, then so be it!
The test is never just what we can endure. The test is how much of a heart may be revealed inside us. One of the great clichés, which I have preached against from this pulpit many times, which you’ve heard, you can probably quote it back to me, probably well intentioned people have said it to you in the past, it’s a classic… “God never sends us troubles that our shoulders can’t bear.”
Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, the great Stoic said, “Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted to bear.” And if only that were true. But it’s not true. It’s a terrible theology. But there is something inside it that is powerfully alluring. It’s true enough, if not given as almost a club to hit someone over the head with, instead of sympathy. Adversity is something that we cannot avoid. It comes to us all. But it comes to us in various states, at different times in our lives. Sometimes when we’re strongest and sometimes when we’re weakest. Sometimes when we think that we are in control, and sometimes when we think that we are living the book of Job. But when it does come, the one thing that it can give us is a deep wisdom to know that, because we may grow a sympathetic heart, we may also become someone, not only to be leaned on. But someone who can also ask for help.
And this is the most controversial thing that a minister can say in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, because one of the deep, primal roots of our faith is, by golly, we can do it ourselves, we can pull up by our own bootstraps, “I don’t need any help, thank you very much.” For 28 years I’ve been a minister, and this I assure you is by far the hardest message that I have to share from this pulpit… that as we become more sympathetic, we also become people for whom other people’s empathy may in fact touch us and lift us up. There is more help than we know, because the fires of adversity may refine us into being people who can say “Yes. Thank you. I am so glad you’re here. I am so glad you called. Thank you. I needed you.”
Adversity, in the end, introduces ourselves to ourselves. You can search the whole wide world, but in the end, looking deep into the well, let it be a well of sympathy, let it be a moment of recognition, to say “that’s me, that’s my reflection, that’s who I am, this is the truth of me.” It is said in the Bible that the truth shall set you free. It didn’t say it would always make you happy. It didn’t say it would make you always in control. It just said free. Free to become the person that you were meant to be.
I don’t believe God sends us tests. I don’t believe that for a minute. But when they come, we have wonderful opportunities by which to respond. Hold on to the truth of who you are. Let that be the refining quality, the essence of what is produced when all else, all the dross, all the inessentials, all the things we don’t need, have been burned away.
Adversity, in the end, gives us an opportunity to tap into a life of sympathy, and understanding, empathy, and hope. And I’d like to end today with words from Nelson Mandela.
He said this, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be, brilliant, talented fabulous, and actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel unsure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It is in everyone. Let us own our light. Let it shine. We consciously give other people permission to do the same. And as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Let the refiner’s fire test you. Not to become someone you aren’t, but to become that light, that golden place you were meant to go.
Amen.
