(Note: To go immediately to the sermon, please click here.)
Opening Words
Holy and beautiful is the custom by which we gather this Sunday morning at the beginning of the Christmas season.
Here we come to give our thanks, to face our ideals, to remember our loved ones, to seek that which is permanent, and to serve goodness, beauty, and the qualities of life that make it rich and whole.
Through this hour breathes the worship of all ages, the cathedral music of all history, and blessed are the ears that hear that eternal sound.Lighting the Chalice
We light this chalice
On this first Sunday of the Christmas season,
For the renewal of faith,
The wonder of hope,
The beauty of love,
And the gift of joy.Introduction to responsive reading
Our responsive reading this Sunday and for the next two Sundays are written by Dr. Duncan E. Littlefair, colleague and mentor, who taught me how to celebrate Christmas in a religiously liberal context.
Responsive Reading
MINISTER: On this first Sunday of the Christmas Season we gather together in our sanctuary to celebrate the wonder, glory, and joy of life.
CONGREGATION: Generation after generation - children and adults - all those with open hearts and minds - have celebrated the qualities of Christmas.
MINISTER: We do not always come to the Christmas season with happy hearts and carefree minds. We are not always ready to sing and rejoice.
CONGREGATION: Sometimes we are burdened with personal sorrow. Sometimes our community is torn with dissension. Sometimes our world is ravished with war.
MINISTER: Sometimes, even at Christmas, the world seems dark and dreary. We are burdened with the memory of too many failures, too many defeats, too much sorrow.
CONGREGATION: Sometimes loneliness, fear, selfishness, discouragement, and resentment turn the bells of Christmas into bitter mockery.
MINISTER: At such times we must remind ourselves that the lights and bells and songs of Christmas are meant to celebrate not only the good we know, but the wonder and glory we have lost and would find again.
CONGREGATION: So we come to our church this morning at the beginning of the Christmas season to open our hearts and minds to all that is good and beautiful and worthy to be treasured.
MINISTER: We come in the strong and confident faith that if we seek we will find, and if we open our hearts we will be filled with the joy and wonder of life.
The Candle of Faith
This is Thanksgiving weekend but already our thoughts begin to turn to the celebration of Christmas. All over Port Townsend I've noticed signs of Christmas appearing.
Christmas is not just a day but a whole season. It's the time of the year when we think about what is most important for the life of the spirit and what makes us most truly human. We think about what we have faith in, what we hope for, what we love, and what brings joy to our lives.
This year, to help us remember and celebrate these values and qualities, several of the older youngsters in our Fellowship, one of whom you see before you this morning, will be our candlelighters who will be lighting the candles of the Christmas candelabra.
As both you children and adults can see there are five candles in this Christmas candelabra. The four lower candles are called the "Advent Candles" and the highest candle is called the "Christmas Candle."
Each week for the next four weeks our candlelighters will light one of these Advent Candles. After all four of these candles are lit then we will know that Christmas is very near. Then on Christmas Eve we will light the final candle, the highest candle, which is the Christmas Candle.
The Advent Candles are named Faith, Hope, Love, and Joy, each candle representing an important quality and value of the life of the spirit. Each of the Advent Candles is a different color and will match the beautiful banners that will appear one by one each of the next four Sundays on the front wall of the sanctuary.
Thus, the first candle, the Candle of Faith, is purple and matches the purple banner of Faith. The second candle, the Candle of Hope, is green. The third candle, the Candle of Love, is blue. And the fourth candle, the Candle of Joy, is red. Now you can anticipate what colors the next three banners will be. The final candle, the Christmas Candle, is white and contains all the colors of the spectrum.
The candle we light on this first Sunday of the Christmas season is the Candle of Faith. Perhaps faith is the first candle we light because faith has to do with our basic trust, confidence, and belief in life. Without faith we are separated and cut off from life itself.
Sometimes it is thought that faith and doubt cannot exist together - not in one's head or heart, and not in one's religion. Sometimes it is thought that if you have faith that means you don't have any doubt; and, on the other hand, if you have some doubt that means you don't have faith.
But, to my mind, faith and doubt go together; they are like traveling companions or partners in a dance. Faith reaches out to Doubt and says, "Come on, Doubt, let's dance."
But Doubt says to Faith, "Oh, I'd love to dance with you but please watch where you're going for you've just stepped on my toes."
Sometimes you hear it said, "You've just gotta' believe; you've just gotta' have faith." And I think, "Oh, really? Do you mean to say that in order to travel where you are going I have to extinguish my own light; I have to push aside my own thoughts, feelings, fears, and questions?"
I hope there's a larger reality to faith in our minds and hearts and in our religion - a faith so rooted in the center of Being that it is willing to welcome any question, any inquiry, any nuance of uncertainty. In other words, a faith so rock-solid that it believes in doubt as its ally and partner in this dance of life.
Sebastian Lyons (1st service), Mikaela Euro (2nd service), will you please light the first candle of the Christmas season, the Candle of Faith.
Introduction to reading
In my sermon this morning I will be speaking about faith. When I think about faith I also think about mustard seeds. Those of you acquainted with the New Testament scriptures will know why faith and mustard seeds are connected in my mind. It's because in the Gospels Jesus says that if you have faith the size of even a tiny grain of mustard seed you will be able to move whole mountains.
As a child growing up about 70 miles north of Port Townsend I lived within the shadow of Mt. Baker, that gleaming 10,000 foot, snow-covered, volcanic peak that you can see across the water from the north of Port Townsend. As a child I wondered sometimes how it would be possible for faith to dislodge and move a huge mountain like Mt. Baker. This led me to think that Jesus may have been talking metaphorically, not literally, speaking, in other words, about the landscape of the soul not the physical geography of the earth.
Still, I found the passage disquieting because it seemed that my faith was nowhere near to being able to move mountains of any kind, and if faith just the size of a small mustard seed could move whole mountains, how infinitely small must be my faith.
The passage I will read which connects faith and mustard seeds is found in the Gospel of Luke, the seventeenth chapter, verses 14-21:
When they [Jesus and his disciples] returned to the crowd, a man came up to Jesus, fell on his knees before him, and said, "Have pity, sir, on my son: he is an epileptic and has bad fits, and he keeps falling about, often into the fire, often into water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him." Jesus answered, "What an unbelieving and perverse generation! How long shall I be with you? How much longer must I endure you? Bring him here to me." Jesus then spoke sternly to the boy; the devil left him, and from that moment he was cured.
Afterwards the disciples came to Jesus and asked him privately, "Why could not we cast it out?" He answered, "Your faith is too weak. I tell you this: if you have faith no bigger even than a mustard-seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there!', and it will move; nothing will prove impossible for you.
(New English Bible)
"FAITH LIKE A NEW MOON"Introduction
Several years ago I had the opportunity to hear Welsh poet David Whyte give a poetry reading at a business college in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
It's a bit unusual for a poet to be working with businesses as a poet; but it's David Whyte's contention that businesses, like individuals, need "soul" if they are to survive and thrive. And since the "business" of poetry has to do with the enlargement of the soul, why shouldn't businesses have their souls enlarged through the vehicle of poetry.
David Whyte, who lives in Langley, Washington on Whidbey Island, has been convincing enough to sell some businesses on his idea. He has worked for a number of years with various businesses, including the Boeing Company in Seattle, bringing his knowledge and love of poetry into the airline industry.
One of his poems that struck me at the reading is the little poem printed at the top of your Order of Service today titled, "Faith."
I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,
faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
slither of light before the final darkness.
But I have no faith myself,
I refuse it the smallest entry.
Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.Scanning the poem
The poet begins the poem with this very simple, straight-forward line expressing a wish. He says, "I want to write about faith."
Why would the poet want to write about faith? Because, as we discover a few lines further in the poem, he feels he is lacking in faith. He says: "But I have no faith myself,/ I refuse it the smallest entry."
And what is the nature of the faith that he lacks? He lacks the kind of faith that the waning moon exhibits.
And what kind of faith does the waning moon exhibit? The waning moon exhibits faith in the midst of decrease and loss. Each night the waning moon rises faithfully, yet each night it has lost a little of its light, until finally it has no light at all. But, apparently, the moon isn't embarrassed by its loss of light; it rises faithfully during the entire process, "faithful," says the poet, "even as it fades from fullness."
The poet, however, finds he doesn't have the faithfulness that the waning moon has. When things aren't going well, when he doesn't feel full of light, he just folds his tent, collapses, and loses all faith, confidence, and belief in life. He finds he is not faithful when times are difficult, or when energy is low and light is diminishing. At such times he refuses faith even the smallest entry. The poet has, you might say, a "fair-weather faith," a faith that functions only when he judges things are going well in his life.
When I heard David Whyte read this poem he said the thing that struck him after he had written the poem, looking at what he had written, was this thought:
"What if I could have equal faith in times of decrease as in times of increase, in times of failure and loss as in times of success and gain? What would it mean to have equal faith in the part of me that is waning and fading as it would to have faith in the part of me that is waxing and increasing?"
"Imagine," he said by way of example, "that a person has tickets to a concert or a movie or a play or a ballgame, and he stops by, knocks on the door of a friend and invites the friend to go out for the evening. But the friend says, 'Oh, I'd love to go with you, but I'm sorry I can't go out tonight because, as you see, the moon is past full and on the decrease, and I only go out at those times when the moon is waxing and on the increase; I don't go out when the moon's light is decreasing, and especially not when there is no moon at all.'"
"You might think," says the poet, "that such a person were a few slices short of a full loaf. Yet," he says, "we are like this when we believe in life and have faith and trust in life only when it is on the increase and we judge that things are going well for us."
The waning moon and the theme of loss
Half our life, like the waning moon, is decrease and loss. Loss is the other side of every move forward - necessary losses.
I remember a time a number of years ago when I found my youngest daughter, Libby, in tears at the point of graduating from kindergarten or the first grade. "What's the matter, honey?" I asked.
"I'll miss my teacher," she replied.
My daughter was happy to have passed and succeeded, but in tears because of the loss of leaving her teacher and the experiences of that early elementary school year. This was in kindergarten!
Think of all the good-byes in life, the endings and separations, the departures and leavings. Airports haunt me sometimes. I can wander in them for hours watching arriving and departing planes while the slender note of sadness slips in.
In any life there will be times when much is dark, when there is little light at all. If you live for any length of time, you're going to see some pretty hard things come down.
And we know that there is at least one day a month when there is no moon in the night sky at all. Think about that: you may anticipate that at periodic times in your life everything will be dark. These are times when we hardly know who we are, or why the world is as it is. It's so dark we have to feel our way, holding on to whatever support we can to keep from falling.
Not only is there the loss of particular attachments as we go through life - the loss of parents, of a life-partner, of friends, of children as they depart home and build their own lives; or the loss of pets, of places we love, of possessions we own, even of ideas we once believed in - in addition to the loss of these particular attachments, there is also the loss of all attachments, the final good-bye, the loss of individual life itself.
One can compare the various phases of one's life to the phases of the moon, as poet William Butler Yeats, for example, has done; and the waning of one's life, then, to the waning of the moon; the waning moon being like the second-half of one's life when one crosses the midpoint of the full moon and gradually moves toward death and darkness.
Each year on the first day of summer I always feel a little sad. It's usually a lovely time of the year, and the light is at its fullest; but because the first day of summer is also the longest day of the year, I can't help but reflect that from this point on the light will diminish a little each day. (Such is my constitutional make-up.)
Half our life is decrease and loss... in a variety of different ways.
The meaning of a loss of faith
But, says the poet, what if we could have faith and be faithful in loss as well as in gain? What if we could know that the creative power of eternal Being is present and working in both gain and loss, and to know that our soul, our deepest, truest, and most essential self, is involved and present in each of these - to know that what is most real about us is not dependent on outward or material success and achievement, or on social approval, or even on personal health and intact relationships?
The poet wishes he could have such faith but finds that he doesn't. This says to me that at this point he has lost connection to his soul or his most essential and real self, as we all do.
It means that he is attached to the ego - the ego, which feeds on success and increase - rather than being attached to the soul, the deeper center, which can handle both increase and decrease. He is attached to a deity of his own making, a deity that is his servant, rather than being attached to the creative power of all Being, the God of the waxing and the waning moon, and himself being the servant of that entire process.
What if we could know about our soul, our deeper and truer being, which is larger than our ego, and which embraces failure as well as success, and which encompasses decrease as well as increase?
The nuclear center of our being
We may say that our faith in life comes from connecting to a center of being that is larger than our ego. The word "soul" is one way to speak of that larger center or deeper self. If that term doesn't work for you, try another that does work.
But the "soul," to use a characterization of David Whyte, is the nuclear center of our being. Just as our earth is warmed by the nuclear reactor, the sun, which is at the center of the solar system and around which our earth orbits, so our ego-personality is like a planet orbiting the nuclear soul-center of our being and is warmed by it.
And this being so, the soul is not as interested as our ego-personality is in what we regard as our personal successes or failures. The "soul," that interior center of eternal creativity, is interested in that which is alive, vital, and real, regardless of how we judge it from another point of view. So all the ups and downs of our personal lives are simply the soul's food - "soul food."
The "soul" can digest our failures as well as our successes - perhaps even more easily digest failure, because in times of failure we tend to be more real.
Again, as David Whyte has put it, "The soul would rather fail at it's own life than be successful at someone else's life." This perhaps is why you sometimes see people throw away things that seem to others to be great opportunities. Or, you see people disregarding the rational and sound advice of their friends. But the soul has and wants its own reality and will do what it must to head in that direction.
So I'm proposing that our faith in life comes from locating the center of our being with that which is larger than our ego-desire and ego-judgment.
And this being so, faith doesn't mean that the dark is now changed to light, or that sorrow is now changed to joy, or that failure is now changed to success, or that horror is now changed to bliss. This is exactly what this poem is not saying.
Rather: true faith is that which is able to embrace the whole and see the dark as well as the light as being meaningful, valuable, and worthy of being lived.
If, therefore, we are connected to the deeper center of our being, we can ride life's currents, and, as the poet Robinson Jeffers says, then "...success will not make us proud, nor failure cast us down." Or, as Job in the Hebrew scriptures says, "The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job 1:21b)
The individual soul and the universal soul
True faith is rooted in the discovery that our "soul," our interior creative center, is always present with us and is working out its own purposes, often beyond what we can see.
Sometimes, like the poet, we can't see at all what value life has, or what value particular experiences can have, and we experience a loss of faith; we feel cut-off from the vital creative center of our own being.
It is not, however, that we have lost our soul, only that we have lost our felt connection to our soul. . . because our soul, that deeper center or larger self, is always there. It is precisely that dimension of ourselves which is always faithful, not bound by time, place, or circumstance, by success or failure, by health or illness. It is, as the poet Walt Whitman says: "both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it." (from "Song of Myself")
Do you know, and have you experienced, that dimension of your being, that observing self, that core inner reality, that can absorb tremendous loss, heartbreak, and failure and still go on?
Further, our individual soul is connected to, what can be called, the "universal soul." If our individual soul can be described as the nuclear center of our individual being, then the universal soul, by whatever name you call it or however you conceive it, can be spoken of as the nuclear center of all being.
And the two, the individual soul and the universal soul, are related, connected, and, if you have ears to hear, even identical at one level. For in our deepest being we, too, are a part of the nuclear energy of the on-going creation.
This is what the Hindu sages discovered several thousand years ago when they exclaimed, "Tat t'vam asi" - "You are that!" In your deepest being, you are that unoriginated, infinite, ongoing, and eternally creative power of Being. The creation is happening here and now and in you.
In our daily life, in our everyday ego-personality, we may not always be aware of being connected with this nuclear energy of eternal Being. We may feel, and often do feel, that our faith is weak or that we have no faith at all.
So faith, you might say, is a measure of our awareness of being connected to the center and source of creativity. And when the poet says, "I have no faith at all," he is commenting on his lack of awareness of being connected to the eternal, creative power of Being. Nevertheless, he is connected. He is being held and carried by that which is eternally faithful. He just doesn't know or feel it.
Faith re-born
If you have lost your faith, if you have lost the felt-connection to the vital center of your being and all being, what does it take to restore that felt-connection?
Not much. Not much at all. It's not so big a step as you might expect. Perhaps you'll be surprised.
It's enough simply to express the doubt. It's enough simply to confess your lack of faith, as the poet does when he says, "But I have no faith at all,/ I refuse it the smallest entry."
Why is that confession enough?
Because that doubt is real, and that confession is real, and when that doubt or confession is expressed, then, paradoxically, it calls to faith.
The pouring forth of your need is the opening for which the soul has been looking. Here is the breach in the ego's wall of defense through which the faith-connection can break through.
So when the poet pens the simple words, "I want to write about faith," he is already halfway there.
Before, the paper was blank and he sat in front of it not having even the courage or strength to put pen on paper. The ego was in despair.
Finally, something comes to him from some inner reservoir. A voice whispers to him and he lifts pen to paper and expresses a need. He says: "I want to write about faith. That's what I want to do. That's what I need to do."
Where do you start when you can't seem to get started? Where do you turn when there seems no place to turn? How can you have faith when you have no faith?
Sometime ago I spoke with someone who had experienced a death in the family, the death of a family member with whom there had been estrangement, unresolved conflict, unfinished business; and now he was stuck and couldn't move. No resolution in life and no resolution in death. How to get unstuck?
I suggested: "How about writing your thoughts down, maybe in the form of a letter to this deceased person? Sometimes when you start to write you get unstuck and, like a flood, the thoughts, feelings, and ideas break loose and begin to pour forth."
"Yes," he said, "I could write. I like to write. I think that's what I'll do; I'll write a letter. But where will I send it?"
"Yeah," I said, "where will you send it?"
"What's that in-between place?" he asked. "Oh, yes, purgatory. I'll send it to purgatory."
"Good," I said, "the place of purification and re-formation. Why don't you send it to purgatory."
Perhaps he didn't even have to write. Perhaps it was enough just to make a gesture, enough simply to talk to someone. Just the expression of the need will do. That expression of need is already faith the size of a tiny grain of mustard seed that will move whole mountains.
That's the opening, and the power of Being will carry you forward from that point on.
And, actually, as I've said, this eternal Creativity has been present all the time, it's just we haven't remembered or felt it. For this eternal Creativity is the ground out of which our faith arises, the eternal Faithfulness from which our individual faith is born and to which our individual faith responds.
Thus, the power of Being is present even in our darkness, present in the darkness and chaos and stubbornness of our faithless days and faithless nights, carrying us when we are refusing faith even the smallest entry.
The Christmas story
That, my friends, brings us to the beginning of the Christmas season, where, like the distracted poet, we are called to try to open ourselves to faith, to ponder those things that are most real in life, to ponder the life of our soul, our deeper center, our more essential self.
And we begin, again like the poet, by confessing our faithlessness: "But I have no faith myself/ I refuse it the smallest entry."
Out of such confession there comes a little opening. We begin to prepare room in our hearts for the arrival of the soul, which can be represented for us in the symbol of the Eternal Child that is born each year at Christmas.
For the story tells us that the Eternal Child of Christmas is born at the least expected and most neglected place of our lives, that is, in the dark of the moon. Not at the place of our strength and success. Not in our capital city. Not where we broker power and wield influence. But, rather, at a place we hadn't even bothered to notice. At a place off the map. At a humble place - "And you, O Bethlehem...are by no means least..." (Matthew 2:6)
At this place in our lives where there's a little crack in our armor, there is where the soul can find an entry point. And, there, like a new moon, slender and barely open, the divine life of the Eternal Child slips into our world.
The divinity represented by this Child was there all the time, but hidden in the darkness. But now the Child is born... in us... again... re-incarnated into our worn and weary world! A tender connection is re-established with the soul.
New life.
New trust.
New belief.
New faith.
Faith like a new moon.
Benediction
May the peace of the Eternal which passes all human understanding,
The strength of the Eternal which sustains us,
And the love of the Eternal which binds us together,
Be with us, now and forever. Amen.Extinguishing the Chalice
We extinguish this chalice
But not the light of truth,
The warmth of community,
Or the fire of commitment.
These we carry in our hearts
Until we are together again.(NOTE: This is a manuscript version of the sermon preached by The Reverend Bruce A. Bode at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on the First Sunday of the Christmas Season, November 28, 2004. The spoken sermon, available on audio cassette and CD at the Fellowship, may differ slightly in phrasing and detail from this manuscript version.)