jimrigby.org

The church the world needs will be a strange place, if it ever comes to be. The church the world needs will hold the holy torch of reason above the occluding smoke of dogma. Religious education will no longer produce minds closed in sectarian belief, but ones open to universal truths. The sacred will be praised not with pacified curiosity, but with scientific wonder. The highest praise will be given not to those who memorize traditional answers, but to those who ask honest questions. The church will be less afraid of heretics and more afraid of its own prejudices.
The church the world needs will value spontaneous creativity over established worship. The polished lyrics of the dead will no longer drown out the heartfelt music of the living. The paintings of the masters will take second place to the drawings of the children. People will leave worship with eyes hungry for seeing and fingers thirsty for living.
The church the world needs will place principled compassion over merciless rules. Centuries of abusive discipline will be replaced with a burning passion for universal human happiness. The tragic supplication each nation makes in support of its own warriors will be replaced by a universal prayer for the peacemakers who call us to live as one human family. The church the world needs will be a strange place, if it ever comes to be.

My sermon tomorrow will look at civil disobedience as understood by MLK. The sermon series is focusing on those parts of his message, that are left out on MLK Day celebrations. When in jail, Dr. King read Thoreau and Gandhi and realized that there is a sense in which we all co-operate with the oppression in our culture. He would begin to train people in a new kind of freedom, where people would refuse to co-operate with that which humiliated them, or oppressed another human being, thus unleasing what he called “Soulforce”. The title of the sermon is “Civil Disobedience: The importance of crossing the line.”

“First, it must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight … while the nonviolent resister is passive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent, his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade his opponent that he is wrong. The method is passive physically, but strongly active spiritually. It is not passive nonresistance to evil, it is active nonviolent resistance to evil.

“A second basic fact that characterizes nonviolence is that it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that these are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent … The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.

“A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil … We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.

“A fourth point that characterizes nonviolent resistance is a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without striking back. ‘Rivers of blood may have to flow before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood,’ Gandhi said to his countrymen. The nonviolent resister … does not seek to dodge jail. If going to jail is necessary, he enters it ‘as a bridegroom enters the bride’s chamber…’

“A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love …

“A sixth basic fact about nonviolent resistance is that it is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation. For he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship

There is an old preacher’s story about two frogs who fell into a vat of milk at a dairy. The first frog was very smart and instantly concluded the situation was hopeless. “The walls of the vat are too tall. The dairy workers are off for the weekend, and we can only swim for a few hours.” Resigning to his fate, the smart frog relaxed and drowned. The other frog kept pumping her legs. That Monday morning when the dairy workers found her, she was floating on a pad of butter.

When we look at the current situation in the world, it would be easy to play the role of the first frog. Our economy still appears to squeak like an old balloon about to pop. The rich nations block any real progress on climate change, and there is no reason to believe that developing nations will show any more foresight than did we. It is hard to argue with a pessimist these days.

At the same time, out of the margins of the world, a revolution has arisen. Workers with almost no political power, organized to take over their factories. Unschooled farmers have co-operated to build new economies that experts could not imagine in their old models.

I am inspired by the story of the band that continued to play as the Titanic sunk. Those were people who knew what it means to be a human being. We all die. Species die. Planets die. The only question is whether we will be at our post when that day comes. But the irony is that politics are not always logical. We have no idea what will happen as a result of such activism.

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. As we head into what logic tells us will be our apocalyptic demise, who knows what results might come from individuals living by universal principles and collective action? Like frogs in a vat of milk, we introduce new possibilities when we keep churning.

Capitalism may be adequate as an economic system, but is, as a political system, horrific, and is, as a religion, murderous.  Any who surrender responsibility for how the people are treated to the “invisible hand” of the market, might as well be worshipping a stone image.  America has made the poor our sacrifice to the golden calf of capital.

Most of us begin life with the religion of our parents.  Just as we are born into the love of our family, so we are born into their understanding as well.  It is inevitable that we should be born into some such preexisting nest and that we should begin to see with a borrowed light.

As we get older, we face an inevitable crossroads.  As our eyes begin to see for themselves, the torch given us in youth begins to flicker and dim.  At some point we realize that the religion our parents gave us now produces more smoke than light.  The growing darkness we feel is not a problem with our parent’s teaching, but a result of the fact that we cannot see through borrowed eyes or feel with another’s skin.

Such times of passage can feel like the death of everything we have known and trusted.  When a chick breaks through its shell, it is both setting out on its life journey and, also, destroying everything it has known.  At this point it must choose between the urge to fly and the urge to return to its nest of origin.

Religion gives us symbols of the exquisite pain of leaving our nests.  It tells us stories about the inevitable death and rebirth that true living requires of us.  The dying God symbolizes the painful letting go of the mimicked song we learned as children, and embracing the song of nature pulsing within our own heart.  The dying savior asks of us whether we will spend our days trying to restore the shattered shell of our past, or find our home in the trackless sky.

Thanks to Art Rutherford for this quote:

“There are two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws…THE RICH AND THE POOR.”    Benjamin Disraeli  1845

“I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.” -Eugene V. Debbs

I once dreamt I had died. Actually, I have died many times in dreams, but this was different. In my dreams I have fallen from cliffs, been eaten by animals and succumbed to all the monsters available to a child’s imagination. I have woken from such dreams with a start, but this dream was beautiful, peaceful and even blissful.
In my dream, I saw my breath returning to the air and becoming a breeze. I watched as it swept across a field of wheat caressing each stalk. My minerals returned to the soil and gave life to plants. I could imagine my carbon contributing to a future diamond. I saw my water frozen on the top of a mountain, then melting into a stream and being sipped by a deer.
I woke with no wish to hurry back to that moment of dissolution. Instead, I wanted to live my full span with the peaceful knowledge that I come from and return to an intimate union with all other beings. I wanted to remember that we are different aspects of one life and that we are more like folds in a blanket than separated beings.
In times of sorrow I want to remember that my “self” is something borrowed. When my life is unfair, I want to remember to go deep into my common life with you. When I try to make sense of my one single life I become lost in an impossible labyrinth. When I stop thinking of my problems as “mine”, they fall away like the beads of a necklace when the string is removed. I discover my “self” to be one brief note in an eternal hymn. We have nothing to fear in life or death as long as we remember to sing that song.

Many believe religion to be a relic from the infancy of human history and that they themselves have moved beyond such silliness. I have many nonreligious friends who assume that, because I call myself religious, I must believe in invisible beings, and pray for magical powers. It is rare that such friends can listen long enough to get past that image of religion. The reason I call myself religious is a bit hard to talk about but might be put in a kind of parable we might call the “Hair of the Dog”.  Imagine a hair growing out of a dog became conscious and trying to understand its situation. It would face three paradoxes that would make the task difficult, if not impossible.

First, the hair could not detach itself from the dog to get a picture of the whole of which it was a part. It would have an imaginary picture of the whole but, of necessity, that picture would be extremely partial and always from its own point of view.

Then, the hair would see other hairs, but it could not hold them at arm’s length to realize they were other versions of itself. They would appear to be isolated and separate objects. More importantly, the hair would have no way of realizing that it was not seeing others objectively. It could only perceive other beings as their image reverberated within itself.

Perhaps the strangest situation of all would be that the hair was was actually growing out of what it was trying to understand. It would not be merely “on” the dog it would also “be” the dog. But this relationship would be invisible to the hair, because it would literally be unable to get out of its own light.

Religion, or metaphysics, is not an arrogant attempt to pierce the veil of reality to find a supernatural core. For me, metaphysics is working with our perceptions of the human condition. Religious concern is not with reality as it is in itself, but only in reality as we live it subjectively. The insights of religion are put in stories so we not only think them, but feel them as well.  The symbols of religion (so long as we do not take them literally) can be humble reminders of the warped nature of human perception. They can be a kind of corrective lens so we can remember not take our perceptions at face value. The symbol “God” can be a reminder of everything too large, too deep and to immediate to grasp.

The symbols of religion can remind us that there is always an infinity beyond our biggest idea of things. It recognizes the “whole” will always be a mystery to us. The symbols also remind us that we do not perceive other beings objectively, nor are they here for our purposes. They, too, are a mystery. And, finally, religion is remembering that we ourselves are not orphans of the universe, we are its children. Religion is remembering that our deepest essence cannot become an object of our perception either. Strange as it is to say, we are an inscrutable mystery even to ourselves.