http://www.firstchurchboston.org/eeuploads/sermons/Microsoft_Word_-_The_Ripple_Effect.pdf
It is really hard to believe that this is the last time I’ll be preaching at this pulpit. I hope that I will return to it and to all of you at some point in the future, but for now, there is a feeling of finality about it. My two-year internship here is drawing to a close; my final evaluations have all been submitted; I will graduate from HDS on Thursday, and the ordination service is just one week away. I’m in that awkward time of transition where I find myself experiencing excitement, relief, and sadness - sadness about the fact that I will no longer be your intern. So what should I say in this last sermon? I can’t help but recall my last class at Wellesley College when my French professor triumphantly marched into our classroom, which was filled with mostly seniors, wearing her academic regalia (so she really did look like a preacher) and with tears in her eyes and a strangled voice, she stood at the podium and imparted all of her wisdom to us like rapid fire. When she finished, she walked out of the room, swiftly and without pause. She had moved us all to tears. And, as you probably guessed, in all her imparting of wisdom, she didn’t say one word about French literature, grammar, or pronunciation. It certainly was unlike any other last class I have attended. I promise that I won’t be that dramatic today. But it’s a memory that certainly points to the sacredness of teaching and to the difficulty and uniqueness with which we each process good-byes.
Shortly after graduating from Wellesley, I moved to Los Angeles to begin my first year of teaching 10th grade English at a charter high school in its second year of operation. I had no idea what I was doing in all aspects of my life at that point. I was stunned by the barbed wire encircling the school’s walls. The fact that there wasn’t a cafeteria was mind boggling to me. Instead, students sat on the ground at lunchtime or in the parking lot, or they sweetly asked teachers to open the classrooms so they could eat sitting at a desk. As I got to know my students, I was amazed by their stories – how difficult their lives already were, how some spent the night in juvenile detention centers, some were raising their brothers and sisters, some worked night jobs to help pay for food and utility bills, one was arrested during school – handcuffed right in my classroom in the middle of class. Every night, I went home and wondered what I am doing here? This isn’t teaching. I felt this most acutely when during a particular class - my most unruly class - one student made an animal sound every time I attempted to say something. And it was loud, and I couldn’t tell whose highly skilled ventriloquist throat it was coming from. With every animal sound, the class erupted with laughter, and I turned bright red with embarrassment and frustration. So I threatened them with a pop quiz, with a low participation grade for the day. They didn’t care. I tried to turn the lesson into an activity for students to complete in pairs, so I wouldn’t have to talk much, but I couldn’t even get enough words out to explain the exercise. 45 minutes went by and then the period was over. I accomplished nothing. This isn’t teaching, I thought to myself.
Exasperated, frustrated, and feeling very helpless, I asked another teacher, someone with a year of teaching under her belt, what to do if the behavior continued. She said, “Give it right back to them.” So I did. The next time that particular class entered the classroom, I turned the tables on them. Every time any one of my students began to speak, I let out a long and loud moooooo. They thought this was hilarious…for a little while. I asked a question. Called on a student. And right as they were about to answer, I mooed, I oinked, I quacked. 45 minutes went by without any student able to speak. I thought to myself, I just spent the entire class period making animal sounds at my students. This isn’t teaching! Or maybe it is. And that is when I first felt called to the ministry. I saw that the lessons were not to be found in a curriculum or textbook. They revealed themselves in the life experiences of each of my students and in the time that we shared together trying to make sense of everything we carried into the classroom, and practicing, quite simply, how to be together. I learned far more from my students than they ever learned from me.
While some might view my transition from teaching to ministry as unrelated, I actually perceive communities of faith as being very similar to the classroom - not in the sense that we must spend a lot of time on classroom management, although that might be the case some of the time. Rather, we are teachers and learners, trying to make sense of our lives and we cannot do it alone. Mary Oliver writes, “Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” After one year of teaching, I headed back to New England, landing in seminary and a couple years after that I arrived here as your intern. You probably know that First Church in Boston has a reputation for being an excellent teaching congregation, so I felt very fortunate about the opportunity to complete my internship here. Some very fine ministers spent their formative seminary years here as interns, so I was excited when I first arrived and very anxious about measuring up to the high expectations I had for myself. I didn’t even want to think about your expectations given the list of interns who have gone before me!
This is where your gifts as a teaching congregation are most evident. You know that fine balance between support, critique, and encouragement. You know how to welcome an intern into your midst, and that must be difficult to do when you know that interns are here for a short time. I have marveled at this for the past two years and figured that today was a good time to share that with you. I imagine that knowing you will say good-bye to an intern every other year or so could be a good motivator for you to stay distant and removed - a self-protective way to minimize the sadness that often accompanies farewells. It’s perfectly logical. Why should we take the time to get to know someone and let her know us when we also know that she will be leaving in a year or two? Why risk opening ourselves to vulnerability? Because as Martin Buber said, “all real living is meeting.” And I think that meeting requires an open heart and mind and a beloved community in which the meeting can be practiced.
Parker Palmer, a highly respected writer and traveling teacher who works independently on issues in education, community, spirituality, and social change, turns to modern physics in his exploration of community be it a classroom or church. He uses the following example in his book titled The Courage to Teach:
Modern physics has debunked the notion that knowing requires, or
even allows, a separation of the knower from the known. Physicists
cannot study subatomic particle without altering them in the act of
knowing, so we cannot maintain the objectivist gap between the world
‘out there’ and the observer ‘in here’ as posited by pre-modern science.
Knower and known are joined, and any claim about the nature of the
known reflects the nature of the knower as well.
From physics to theology, all real living is meeting and in the meeting we cannot help but be changed. I think this is what makes you such a special congregation, and a particularly good teaching congregation. There is no objectivist gap to maintain. Instead, I’ve witnessed how you open your hearts to one another and to me because even though there is always that risk that the person might not be around forever, it’s how you practice really living and really loving. All real living is meeting. What a profound and powerful ministry you have at First Church.
So how is teaching a part of this ministry? Palmer claims that, “to teach is to create a space in which the community of truth is practiced.” I rather like his definition of teaching because it does not limit teaching to a classroom. There is a reason why Rabbi literally means Teacher. Worship and teaching are synonymous in the sense that they are about truth-seeking with an open and honest heart and the courage to meet others along the way that we may tell our stories as openly and as honestly as we are able. Palmer elaborates his understanding of the community of truth:
In the community of truth, knowing and teaching and learning look less
like General Motors and more like a town meeting, less like a
bureaucracy and more like bedlam. The community of truth is, in fact,
many communities, far-flung across space and ever-changing
through time.
It’s as if Palmer is describing Unitarian Universalism and what it means to be a teaching congregation.
From you, I have learned the practice of living through meeting, and the courageous art of opening ones heart to a complete stranger. I like to think that we do real life church here. I also love the idea of church being far-flung across space and ever-changing through time. It sounds wonderfully transcendent. Don’t we have to keep opening our hearts to one another with the knowledge that in doing so, we will be changed and we will change the world one small step at a time? From our responsive reading this morning, Dorothy Day explains, “A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that.” I call it the ripple effect because I think we share it with others and pass it along wherever we go. It happens when we dare to go deep, when we dare to let someone in no matter how scary that might feel and when the time comes, we say good-bye knowing that we have lived.
Marianne Williamson, a popular author of spiritual self-help books writes about going deep in our interpersonal connections:
We belong to a larger reality than our own ego-self. We belong to
each other on a very deep plane, where the unity is much deeper than
the differences.
Thank you for the gift of your ministry. May you know how deeply and how far-flung it reaches.
Amen.
