"Midway on our life's journey, I found myself / In dark woods, the right road lost" - Dante, Paradise Lost
So here are two of our UU favorites.
At a Catholic School picnic, the Mother Superior stacked a pile of apples on one end of a table with a sign saying, "Take only one apple please - God is watching." On the other end of the table was a pile of cookies, on which a second grade student had placed a sign saying, "Take all the cookies you want - God is watching the apples."
And the other.
Sister Agnes, head nun at St Mary's Catholic school asked her class, "Can anyone here tell me what we mean by sins of omission? Complete silenced followed. The class was obviously stumped. Finally one girl enthusiastically raised her hand and proudly answered: "Oh, aren't those are the sins we should have committed, but didn't?"
So there you have it: Our entire Unitarian Universalist view of sin in a nutshell: We consider it a joke.
And I say that this morning without judgment - I'm not trying to get some kind of zinger in. Rather, I want us to note it, so we can wrestle with "why?" Why has sin become something we religious liberals have stopped taking seriously. Why when it comes to sin, are jokes are as good as it gets?
The most common answer of course is hurt. Many of us have been beat up by sin. It's been used in our past, and even our present, to ostracize, guilt and shame us. It's why a number of us left our previous faith home and we've done a lot of work to get over the baggage it dumped in our lap. So without a doubt, some of the laughing has to do with having been beat up by sin. Or maybe more precisely, it has to do with having got over it. We treat it as a mark of liberation you could say - a declaration by some of us that sin no longer has the destructive hold on us it used to. Freed from it, we can now laugh at it.
But the key word there is "some of us." Truth is most of us are what folks call the "unchruched." We weren't wounded by church; rather we didn't have any. We weren't made to feel guilty by church because we weren't even made to go. We never had the chance to be beat up by sin.
So it's got to be something more. Having been hurt by sin just doesn't explain all the laughing.
And actually, Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow, agrees. He's got an entirely different theory about the jokes. But fair warning - it's not humorous in the slightest. You see, he is a statistician and after surveying thousands and thousands of congregations, he says you can easily predict which churches talk about sin by simply driving around and seeing what cars are parked outside. The nicer the cars, the less talk of sin. Wuthnow doesn't mince words; he says simply, "We've become too comfortable with ourselves to talk about sin." We laugh at it, he says, because we don't want to look at ourselves. If sin is a joke - the logic goes - nobody will use it against us. The laughing, according to Wuthnow and many others like him, is not because we no longer feel guilty, it's because we no longer WANT to feel guilty.
Which, of course, is true. Yes, we can be bums. Yes, we often resist disrupting our comfort with thoughts of our responsibilities to a hurting world. Yes, we regularly fall victim to the limits of our empathy and compassion. Yes, we all feel guilty about not doing enough. None of us deny that.
And there I think is the catch: None of us deny it. This is what I think the experts like Withnow sometimes miss: We don't really deny the darkness within. We are not really shy about looking honestly at ourselves. I know this better than most, because I'm there, sitting right beside you as you existentially expose yourselves and say "See! Look at that!!"
And, listen now. Here's another important thing. When you say "See! Look at that!!," it's not guilt, corruption or evil you point to; more often than not, it's emptiness.
Listen closely to what one mother recently said to me about The Greater Good project.
"This project," she said, "woke me and my family up. It reminded us who we are - or at least who we want to be. It's just so easy," she said, "to get lost in the midst of all the messages about buying and getting stuff. It's just so easy to get lost in the speed and dizzy rhythm of daily life. The Greater Good helped us remember. It guided us back to the values we love."
Again, I hope you can hear that. This is not the language of guilt and denial at all. It's the language of forgetfulness and feeling lost. That's what this mother is getting at. That's what she is saying is her deepest struggle. And so is it any wonder that she would laugh at talk of sin! Is there any wonder that she wouldn't take it seriously when it so clearly doesn't take her seriously - when it so clearly misses the mark.
Again, Howard Thurman writes, "Despite the dullness and barrenness of the days that pass... I was sure that I would never forget. But little by little, there crept into my life the dust and grit of the journey. Nothing momentous, nothing overwhelming, nothing flagrant - just wear and tear."
Now friends, you tell me if I'm wrong, but I think that hits the mark. There's no doubt that our joking about and making fun of sin is complicated and differs from person to person. But, in most cases, I just don't think it's because we are arrogant or in denial, or not wanting to look at our shortcomings, failures and flaws. I think it's because today we are struggling with and hurting from something so entirely different than what the traditional and common talk of sin deals with. Sin frames the human struggle as a battle against evil forces and deadly temptation. But if my friend and Howard Thurman are right, what we really need help dealing with - and understanding - is not the destructive powers of darkness, but the alienating powers of forgetfulness.
Another way to put this is to say the danger of talk of sin is much different and much more than we've imagined. Liberals have historically resisted talk of sin because we've felt it prevents people from feeling good about themselves, but what worries me most is the way, today, sin prevents us from understanding ourselves! If the devil is out there putting everyone to sleep with a smile and a song, then it does no good telling people to be on watch for an angry guy with a pitchfork!
Nobody helps us understand this better than a man named Neil Postman. His books are out of the limelight now, but they shouldn't be, especially his Amusing Ourselves to Death. It made a splash back in the 1980's, but it has been largely forgotten now - which ironically proves Postman's thesis. You see Postman purposely published the book in 1985 in order to take advantage of America having just made it through the year 1984 without any of the nightmarish predictions of George Orwell's book, 1984, ever having come true.
Most of us will remember Orwell's story: a dark tale about Big Brother - an oppressive governmental system controlling us with surveillance cameras, prisons, the elimination of books and voices of dissent, and a secret agency dedicated to the almost daily rewriting of history. When it was written in 1948, a good many feared that Orwell's story would come true. But the year 1984 came and went, and low and behold democracy and free society stood firm. Even the most cynical had to admit that we prevailed. The worries were unfounded. Our freedom and our souls had survived.
Well sort of, said Neil Postman. In his book, he reminded the country that Orwell's was not the only dark prediction made in the early 20th century. Right beside Orwell's 1984, sat the equally powerful but very different prediction of Aldous Huxley, captured in his classic novel, Brave New World - a subtler tale with a much more complex enemy.
In Huxley's story, humanity of the future has become carefree, healthy and technologically advanced. Warfare and poverty have been eliminated and everyone is permanently happy due to government-provided stimulation. The irony is that, as ease and comfort have increased, many things humanity once held dear start to fade away - institutions such as family, culture, art, literature, science, religion, and philosophy all shrivel up do to lack of attention. No one removes them, people just stop being interested in them. Citizens are not oppressed, they simply become swept up in what Huxley calls "a glorious sea of amusements."
I want to read a bit from the first pages of Postman's book.
"In Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. People come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book , for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity. ...Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. ...In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."
Uugghhh! Every time I read that, it puts a whole new spin on those nights I say to Kaaren, "You know, let's just curl up on the couch and watch stupid TV." I mean, it's jarring, right?! Really jarring when you let it sink in. Postman is asking us to see the devil as having an entirely different face than the one we are used to looking out for. And of course, this all can seem a bit silly. After all, calling TV, shopping, an overload of information and a singular focus on job promotion the devil? Come on! What kind of ridiculous overstatement is that?! But this is Postman's point. We see these things as too harmless to treat them as a real threat, and that is precisely what gives them their power.
And of course it's all about moderation. This is not a throw-away-your-TV, give-up-shopping or quit-your-job sermon. Moderation is a given. But moderation requires us being deadly clear about that which needs moderating. And frankly our culture is not a great help in this regard. Indeed, when it comes to shopping, material success and stupid TV, too much is never enough - so the great unspoken American motto goes! Again, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us." Or to put that in terms of our theme today, Huxley is telling us if we do have a greatest sin, it is the sin of so easily forgetting the right things to love.
Which is, friends, exactly why I think we come back to church Sunday after Sunday. Forget what we've been told about church being a place of salvation and purification, or even a place of forgiveness and maybe even forget the common focus on it being a place of community. First and foremost, it seems to me that church is a place of memory, or better yet, a place of remembering. Everything, friends, everything good about church flows directly from that!
Our worship matters to us because it helps us remember who we are and who we want to be.
Our small groups save us because they remind us about the better part of ourselves.
Our music is precious because it helps us feel again that mysterious spirit that moves deep in our breast.
And our acts of social justice transform us because they help us remember that the hard task of changing the world - not the comfortable task of charity - is the true sign of loving your neighbor.
I've heard people say that nothing important happens in church pews anymore. Hogwash! When someone tells you that, you tell them that memory happens - and that memory changes the world.
You tell them that it was in church pews that 58-year-old Tom remembered his college dream of one day going into the Peace Corps and then walked out of worship, gave up the retired life of golf courses and house projects and ended up in Ecuador.
You tell them that it was in church pews that 1000 Unitarians remembered that $150,000 worth of Barbie dolls, iPods and golf clubs aren't nearly as important as dozens of Honduran latrines and water tanks and piles of inner city carrots and cucumbers.
You tell them that it was in church pews that Cynthia remembered she once called herself a pacifist and so went home, picked up a dusty book off her shelf, and is now planning to start a war-tax resisters support group right here.
You tell them that it was in church pews that Jack watched our kids do a Christmas Eve play about workers rights which reminded him how riled up he once got about the income divide and thus, just last week, he found himself down with Kaaren handing out pamphlets at the Crown Plaza Hotel calling them to allow in a union.
Kathy remembered that "assuming good intentions" and "kindness" are not simply quaint little virtues.
Steve remembered that a promotion and extra work hours are not nearly as important as the soul matters group he misses.
Tom and Jenny remembered why they moved their family into the Rochester city school district in the first place and now have decided to stay.
And Robert remembered that men don't have to "grin and bear it" and allowed himself to weep all afternoon because he's scared to death of facing the diagnosis of Alzheimer's.
The dust, dullness and barrenness of our days. It doesn't really sound all that dangerous or daunting, but it is. Traditional talk of sin and salvation is dangerously distracting. Remembering who we are is the much more important task.
And so today, during this month of wrestling with the role of sin in our lives, I ask you not "What have you done wrong?" but "What is it you need to remember?" "What is it you never again want to forget?"
May we continue to help each other with that all important task.
Amen.
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