March 13, 2005

Rev. Henry Ticknor
Unitarian Universalist Church of the Shenandoah Valley

Our Common Call

One of the great challenges of being a Unitarian Universalist is explaining what it is we really believe. Now I think that we are a church of shared values more than shared beliefs. We insist on being open-minded and using reason to help us discern what is true in our lives. We come together each week to share ideas, discuss politics, to serve on church committees and to work on projects that benefit the greater community. We respect our theological differences and we agree to learn from one another. We are republicans and we are democrats. We listen to NPR and to WINC. We are Buddhists, and atheists; we are Christians and Jews and above all we are respectful of diversity.

But lately, I’ve been wondering if we don’t also share a common core of belief. A common call that in someway unites us and brings us together at a deeper and more profound level of sharing and understanding. I think that place is our desire to reach out beyond our own interests and to be of service to others and to institutions such as our church.

Of all of the stories contained in the Bible, perhaps none is as memorable as the story of Jonah and the whale. Certainly the telling of it creates a certain mental picture and takes our imagination into places that are hard to forget.

Of course, there has always been a lot of debate about this book…or, rather, lots of questions about whether it is the story of a giant fish that swallows Jonah or just the first in a long line of giant fish stories! Anyway,

Jonah was a relatively minor prophet in the Hebrew Bible. He is mentioned in other places in Scripture. The book of Second Kings refers to him as a historical prophet, a prophet ministering to Israel in the days of Jeroboam. He is also mentioned by the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, who said, "For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth."

This book is a parable. Like the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the Good Samaritan is a picture of neighborliness and caring, Jonah is a picture of bigotry and intolerance with seemingly no capacity for human sympathy. But Jonah was a prophet unlike any other. Jonah was the only prophet in the Bible to reject God’s call.

Let me paint the picture. Jonah lived in an age just after the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Earlier prophets had instilled in the Jewish settlers the necessity of staying pure and keeping away from the godless, unclean Gentiles who surrounded them. Many had the mistaken notion that God was for them only, and that the heathen nations could not benefit from a benevolent God. The writer of Jonah is challenging this view.

So, God says to Jonah: "Arise go to Ninevah, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me."

Ninevah was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Although Israel was not at war with Assyria, the Assyrians represented everything that disgusted Israel. They were godless, wicked and violent. From Jonah’s point of view, they were hopeless, beyond God’s care. Jonah had probably grown up learning to hate the Ninevites. He knew God had good reason to judge Ninevah. He also knew, that if Ninevah didn’t repent, God would destroy it. He wanted God to destroy Ninevah!

So how does Jonah respond to God? He tries to run away, to the furthest point he would have known to exist, Spain.

So Jonah buys passage on a ship to Tarshish in Spain. God won’t let Jonah get away that easily. God sends a storm and the sailors, as a last resort, throw Jonah overboard, where he is swallowed by a fish, and has a few soggy days in the fish’s belly to reconsider his choices. And Jonah prays to God and God listens. Jonah gets another chance.

When God approaches Jonah a second time, Jonah relents and accepts the call. The people of Ninevah not only listen to Jonah, they believe him and they repent and God spares the city and for all intents and purposes that’s the end of the story of Jonah.

Now about the same time, there was another prophet named Isaiah. God also called on Isaiah and Isaiah’s initial response was an understandable, "Woe is me! I am lost…" But God again calls to Isaiah, saying, "Whom shall I send?" and Isaiah’s immediate response is, "Here I am; send me!"

I wonder if we Unitarians Universalists don’t have a little of both Jonah and Isaiah in each of us. Sometimes we want to run away from the problems in our personal lives, the lives of those we know and love as well as the problems of our greater world. At other times, we are like Isaiah and all we need to be told is where to sign up.

The reality of our chosen faith reflects the dual nature of our selves. We are a creedless, non-dogmatic denomination and yet we believe that each of us must determine for ourselves what we believe to be true about God, justice, love, and equality. As we are engaged in our individual search for enlightenment and understanding, we are each guided by our Association’s Principles and Purposes. These are the statements that encourage us to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person; to promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations; and to affirm the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.

We encourage the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and the right of conscience, and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. We embrace the goal of a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. And we affirm our respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Our actions are guided not by fear of damnation, but by free will. We have the right to choose how we will conduct our lives. Will we live out our days respecting ourselves, our neighbors, the people of the planet and the earth itself? Or will we choose to ignore the wider world and focus only on our immediate needs and ourselves? Will we run from social responsibility or will we embrace the call to be in service to others? Will our response to the needs of others be more like Jonah’s or more like Isaiah’s?

James Luther Adams, one of the saints of our movement, wrote, "We live in a world of change and as religious liberals we have the obligation to confront the problems posed by our social economy, the problems of depression and unemployment and insecurity…The prophetic liberal church is the church in which all persons work together to interpret the signs of the times in the light of their faith, to make explicit through discussion the epochal thinking the times demand. The prophetic liberal church is the church in which all members share the common responsibility to attempt to foresee the consequences of human behavior (both individual and institutional), with the intention of making history in place of merely being pushed around by it."

This idea of our shared responsibility to act as a force for good in the world is what I believe to be our common call. Each one of us is called to participate in history with the intention of making our world a better place. To avoid the trap of being pushed around by history, let us work toward being engaged in our common endeavors, our common struggles, and our common ways.

"Service is the work of the soul," writes Rachel Naomi Remen. "Service is not the attribute of any one religion any more than holiness is…. We might view moments of genuine service as a movement toward the soul, a return to what is most genuine and real in each of us. In the trajectory of a lifetime, this turning toward our goodness happens not once but many times. Some of these turnings are small and some are large. All are important. Much in life distracts us from our true nature, captures the self in true bonds of greed, desire, numbness, and unconsciousness. But every act of service is an evidence that the soul is stronger than all that and can draw us toward it despite all."

Just like Jonah and Isaiah, each of us is called to make a difference, to be an agent for the common good, to work for love and justice, peace and equality. Some, like Jonah, may have to be directed, kicking and screaming to realize our better selves. While others, like Isaiah, will raise our hands, waive them a round, jump up and down all the while shouting, "Here I am. Here I am! Pick me, Pick me!"

The process of living a life of service requires discernment. What activities, causes, committees and projects are worthy of our time and talents? To what good causes are we willing to dedicate our lives. This is perhaps the most difficult step for once we know where we are going we will surely find the way to realize our dreams.

In his first book All I Really Need to Know I learned In Kindergarten the former U minister Robert Fulghum tells the story of Larry Walters. This is a true story and some here may remember the actual event he describes.

"Larry Waters is a truck driver, thirty-three years old. He is sitting in his lawn chair in his backyard, wishing he could fly. For as long as he could remember, he wanted to go up. To be able to rise right up in the air and see for a long way. The time, money, education, and opportunity to be a pilot were not his. Hang gliding was too dangerous, and any good place for gliding was too far away. So he spent a lot of summer afternoons sitting in his backyard in his ordinary old aluminum lawn chair—the kind with the webbing and the rivets. Just like the one you have in your backyard.

The next chapter of this story is carried by the newspapers and television. There’s old Larry Walters up in the air over Los Angeles. Flying at last. Really getting UP there. Sitting in his aluminum lawn chair, but it’s hooked on to forty-five helium-filled surplus weather balloons. Larry has a parachute on, a CB radio, a six-pack of beer, some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a BB gun to pop some of the balloons to come down. And instead of being just a couple of hundred feet over his neighborhood, he shot up eleven thousand feet, right through the approach corridor to the Los Angeles International Airport.

Walters is a taciturn man. When asked by the press why he did it, he said: "You can’t just sit there." When asked if he was scared, he answered: "Wonderfully so." When asked if he would do it again, he said: "Nope." And asked if he was glad that he did it, he grinned from ear to ear and said: "Oh, yes."

"The human race," Fulghum concludes, "sits in its chair. On the one hand is the message that says there is nothing left to do…. On the other hand is the message that the human situation is hopeless. And the Larry Walterses of the earth are busy tying balloons to their chairs, directed by dreams and imagination to do their thing…It’s the spirit that counts. The time may be long, the vehicle strange or unexpected. But if the dream is held close to the heart, and imagination is applied to what is close at hand, everything is still possible."

Now, most of us will have more down to earth hopes and dreams, but I think Larry’s story illustrates this process of discernment and action. He certainly had a passion at the very core of his being and once he knew what it was he wanted to do, his imagination took him the rest of the way.

But where do we start? What skills do we need to be in service to others? We can start right here at UUCSV by participating in the life of this church—by working with other like-minded folks on committees, by bringing food stuffs to support our assistance for C-CAP, by joining with other members of our congregation in support of the Immigrant Resource Center, or volunteering to help with the yard sale, or by helping out on our occasional workdays. We can be open to the possibilities in our own communities and we can reach out to those in need just as this congregation reached out to the family who recently lost all their possessions in a terrible fire. It doesn’t take special skills or talents; it just takes a willingness to ask questions and to find answers. There is no special knowledge required; only a deep sense of gratitude for the gifts we have received from others in our own lives.

When I began my work as a hospital chaplain I had no idea of what was expected. One of the first nights I was on-call, I was asked to visit an elderly woman who was facing major surgery the next morning. When I introduced myself and asked how I might be helpful she simply said that she was afraid of dying and hoped that I could help her calm her fears. My first impulse was to take her hand in mine and before I could say very much she began to tell me her life story; where she grew up, when she married, she told me about her children and the loss of her husband. At one point she grew quiet and I said a few words of prayer and said I would check on her later the next day.

The surgery went very well and when I returned to her room the next evening she was sitting up in bed. When she saw me enter the room she beamed and began to thank me for all the helpful and encouraging things I had said to her the previous night. What words, I thought? I was hoping to remember what I had done and said so that I could do the same thing again if I had to. And then I realized that it wasn’t really anything I had said or done. It was simply my being present with her at a time when she needed the reassurance of a human touch. I didn’t need any special skills. I just needed to be human.

Jonah and Isaiah were both very human as was Larry the lawn-chair guy, yet each heard and responded to a very special calling. Each was able to open their hearts and imaginations and to be open to the possibilities of life. And each was able to be of service in their own way.

What is our calling? What is your calling and mine? Not all of us will be visionaries or seers; but each of us can be open to the possibilities that a life of service offers. In the trajectory of a lifetime, this turning toward our goodness happens not once but many times. Some of these turnings are small and some are large. All are important.

We come to this time and place from many different paths and yet for a few moments every week we are brought together by our common call, our common strivings, to make the world a slightly better place than when we found it. We may not agree on politics and economics, on gun control, the death penalty, or even where to add some much needed parking spaces; but what we can agree upon and what binds us together is our commitment to the common good and our insistence upon justice, liberty and equality for all. If our dreams for a better world are held close to our hearts, and imagination is applied to what is close at hand, everything is possible.

Amen