Last preached on August 8th, 2010
Reading Excerpt from “Love and Death” by Rev. Forrest Church
When grandparents, parents, even children died at home, death was an inescapable presence in our lives. Today, shielded from intimacy with death by the cold, mechanically invasive and antiseptic chambers of hospitals, we lose touch with how natural, even sacramental, death can be. If we insulate ourselves from death we lose something precious, a sense of life that knows death, that elevates human to humane, that reconciles human being with human loss.
The word human has a telling etymology: human, humane, humility, humus. Dust to dust, the mortar of mortality binds us fast to one another. All true meaning is shared meaning.
I’ve said I didn’t become a minister until I performed my first funeral. When dying comes calling at the door, like a bracing wind it clears our being of pettiness. It connects us to others. More alert to life’s fragility, we reawaken to life’s preciousness. To be fully human is to care, and attending to death prompts the most eloquent form of caring imaginable.
When those we love die, a part of us dies with them. When those we love are sick, we too feel the pain. Yet all of this is worth it. Especially the pain. Grief and death are sacraments, or can be. A sacrament symbolizes communion, the act of bringing us together. To comfort another is to bring her our strength. To console is to be with him in his aloneness. To commiserate is to share her pain.
The act of releasing a loved one from all further obligations as he lies dying—to tell him it’s all right, that he is safe, that we love him and he can go now—is life’s most perfect gift, the final expression of unconditional love. We let go for dear life.
Sermon “Equality Even in our Endings” Rev. Pyle
Equality Even in our Endings
Throughout this year as a hospital and hospice chaplain,
I have been privileged to walk with patients
and their friends and families
through the valley of the shadow of death.
For some, that walk seemed more like a run,
and one they were ill prepared for.
For others, it seemed as if they were crawling along
on their hands and knees through that valley,
unable to lift their heads enough to see what surrounded them.
For others, they strode among the rocks and the trees of the valley,
their heads held high, their lives being told
and their legacy becoming known.
Some have asked me if there was any particular religious tradition
that does death better than others…
and frankly I have not encountered any such delineation.
People from all different kinds of faiths have seemed
to encounter death differently.
The only generalization I have been able to find
is that how you have lived your life
seems to be how you and your family encounter death…
only moreso.
If your family life had been conflicted,
chances are so will your death.
If you have been surrounded by support and compassion in life,
chances are you will be so in death.
If you have been alone,
then you may encounter your end in a similar way.
Those who invite people, friends, fellow church members, neighbors,
into their lives tend to be more likely
to invite those same individuals into their deaths.
It is a generalization, but as generalizations go
it is a pretty good one, in my experience of this last year.
Through this summer, I have been exploring
a four-part sermon series with you at the Unitarian Church of Evanston
that encounters what may be some
of the commonalities of our liberal faith tradition.
As the Rev. David Bumbaugh once said
“beneath all our diversity, behind all our differences,
there is a unity of the spirit that makes us one,
and binds us forever together in spite of time,
and death, and the space between the stars”.
I believe he is right… that for all the differences we encounter
among us as Unitarian Universalists,
there is a remarkable similarity.
Sometimes it is hard to name what those commonalities may be,
as our eyes are drawn to those surface differences.
The purpose of this sermon series is to explore
what some of those commonalities may be.
So far, we have explored the possibility
that it is not what we believe that unites us,
but how we believe…
or in other words, that Unitarian Universalism is not
a set of things you have to believe,
but rather a methodology for how you uncover
the beliefs and values that lie within you.
We also explored the importance of the experiences of our lives
in how we make meaning of the world…
that we encounter not only our own experiences
but the experiences of others in a way similar
to how many more Christian centered traditions
encounter the scripture of the Bible.
Many of us even frame such biblical scripture
and other ancient texts not as the divine word of God,
but rather as a collection of human experiences
of those seeking to understand their own relationship
to the divine that is within the universe.
While there is theological content in each of these,
they are primarily commonalities of method…
or similarities in how we uncover and develop
what we believe about life, the universe, and everything.
Yet, I believe that I may just have uncovered
a purely theological statement
that is held nearly universally among Unitarian Universalists.
I know, I know… as my father used to say… “Them’s Fightin Words!”
It is dangerous for anyone to try and lay out
what may be commonalities among the values and beliefs
of a faith tradition that is non-creedal,
committed to the idea of continuous revelation,
and maintains that each member has the “right of conscience”
to agree or disagree.
It is dangerous because in exploring such commonalities,
I might unintentionally draw a boundary that excludes someone.
As I have said each week of this exploratory summer sermon series,
if you feel excluded, I ask and challenge you to come and tell me.
In seeking the commonalities among us,
I have to know where such exclusions may be.
That being said, I’ve been trying this one out for years,
both obviously and subtly…
and I feel confident enough to share
what I think is a theological commonality
held by a vast majority of those of liberal faith.
I do feel further out on a limb with this thesis…
and if you are going to saw off the limb,
please give me some warning
so I can climb down a bit first…
Ok. Here it goes.
Whatever happens to us after we die, it happens equally.
Whatever happens to us after we die,
be it go to heaven, or become pure energy
and combine with the universe, or be it reincarnation,
or be it that we simply cease to be…
whatever happens to us after we die, it happens to us all equally.
I framed this idea once to one of my colleagues
in the Army Chaplaincy, who had a very firm belief
that some people went to heaven and some people went to hell,
I framed this theological idea for him this way.
We Unitarian Universalists do not believe in divine sifting.
We do not believe that some divine being has a great sifting screen,
and is sifting the good people from the bad,
so that the good go to heaven and the bad go to hell.
Wherever we go, we all go there together.
Now, like every profound aspect of Unitarian Universalism,
the truth of it can be found in a Unitarian Universalist joke.
So here goes one:
What is the difference between Unitarians and Universalists?
Universalists believe that a loving God would not damn anyone…
Unitarians believe that they are too good to be damned.
I guess, because I believe that both are true,
that makes me a Unitarian Universalist…
Whatever happens to us after we die, it happens equally.
It seems pretty simple, right?
It seems like a natural outgrowth
of believing in the inherent worth and dignity of every person,
and of accepting that we live in an interdependent web of all existence
of which we are apart.
So often we spend so much thought energy and heart energy
thinking, theorizing, and mythologizing about
what exactly is going to happen after we die
that we miss this elegant piece that I have found so common
among those of our liberal faith.
Whatever happens to us after we die, it happens equally.
What I think we miss is how profound it is…
and how this simple, clear theological idea,
which grew naturally in both the Unitarian
and the Universalist sides of our tradition,
how utterly different it is from much of the rest of human religion…
and how that difference is reflected
in how we live in human society today…
Remember, how we live in this world
is the best indicator I have found to how we will die in this world.
We live in a death defying culture.
For many versions of Christianity and for many versions of Islam,
the primary “selling point” is the idea of eternal life.
Our society celebrates youth,
and has come up with millions of products and services
that can help you hold onto the image of youth,
if not its reality.
We frame the need to create children in this world
as a way to seek a version of immortality,
for our ideas and images if not for our beliefs.
I know that a part of my desire to write,
be it books, sermons, articles, or just about anything else
comes from a desire to have something that will last longer than I will.
There have been three reactions that I have encountered in people
when I tell them that I am a hospice chaplain.
The first, and most wonderful, is when they sigh,
and then tell me how wonderful hospice was for they and their family
with the death of a loved one.
Often these are amazing, touching stories.
When that hospice was the one I serve,
I sometimes get to take those stories back
to the nurses, aides, and social workers.
The second reaction is when someone says
“Oh, that must be so hard.
You must be an angel for being able to do that.”
Now, I’ll be deeply disappointed
in whatever holy, celestial beings there may be
if I am an example of an angel…
but I have learned this reaction comes
out of this myth of fearing death
that we have created in our society.
Many of these individuals seem perplexed and shocked
when I say that I love the ministry,
that it is beautiful and amazing,
that death can be one of the most important moments of someone’s life.
They seem convinced that, to believe these things,
they have to believe I must be an angelic being…
because to realize that death can be beautiful
is frightening to them.
The third reaction to any mention I make about hospice
is the most common… “How ‘bout them Cubs?”
We humans desperately want to be infinite.
I’m convinced that this drive towards infinity
has been one of the primary reasons why we developed as we did.
We seem to have a drive to explore and push through boundaries,
to conquer frontiers, to learn and discover the new.
We seem to want to challenge boundaries,
to climb to the top of mountains,
and then to build new mountains to climb.
This drive toward the infinite, it is, I believe,
one of the primary sources of all technological innovation,
of all cultural development,
of all efforts to find spiritual enlightenment.
And, it is why we chafe so strongly at reminders that we are,
at least on this earth and in this form of existence, finite creatures.
It is why so many on this earth find their model for perfection
in an infinite and unending image of God…
the Great I AM, the Alpha and Omega,
the infinite Goddess, the power of Reason,
the infinite thread of human history and experience,
the sacred depths of nature…
The Interdependent Web of All Existence of Which We Are a Part…
I am highlighting this drive towards the infinite
that I see within humanity
not because I believe that it is something
all Unitarian Universalists believe… I don’t know,
I’ve never tested this thought among us before.
I am highlighting it because the theological commonality
I am bringing before you today
very interestingly does not take a position
on whether we humans can find some form of immortality,
one way or the other.
It simply states that whatever immortality, whatever eternity,
whatever infinity may be available to us,
it is available to us equally.
It is interesting to me that while this may be true
when it comes to whatever existence we may have
once we “shed this mortal coil”,
it is not true in the types of immortality
that we seek here on this earth.
It is not true that all of us have the same opportunity
to seek immortality through children.
It is not true that all of us have the same opportunity
to seek eternality through writings or legacies we may leave behind.
It is not true that all of us have the same opportunity to seek infinity in the memories of others.
Money gives some of us the ability
to have buildings dedicated to our memory
in a way others could never hope to.
Popularity and native ability give some of us an ability
to be remembered in the public consciousness
in a way that others are not.
The biological or sociological capacity to have children
is something that is not universally shared among humanity…
and something I have learned this year walking
with some of my hospice patients in nursing homes
is that just because you have children
does not mean they will remember or care for you.
So, this commonality that I have found among us,
that we believe that whatever immortality
we have after we die happens equally,
it does not apply to the forms of immortality that we seek
within this earthly existence.
This sermon was written in the ministerial study
of my new UU congregation in Midland, Michigan.
I wanted the opportunity to “break in” the feel of writing in the office,
then getting up at a place where I was “stuck”
and wandering around the sanctuary, the hallways, the classrooms…
just as I used to do here at UCE.
As I wandered around the fellowship building and grounds,
I was struck by how many memorials,
how many “shrines” there were on the grounds
and on the walls of the fellowship to those who had been members,
and had died.
In one case, there is a picture of a long-time member,
and below that picture is a plaque of all the activist and protest buttons
that she would wear on her clothing each Sunday…
ones that read “Choice!” “Equality Now”
and “The Moral Majority is Neither!”.
In another case, there is a picture and a poem by a member,
dedicated to a man who came early every Sunday
to make the coffee for the members.
It hangs above the coffee urns.
In the sanctuary is a wooden tree plaque,
where each of the leaves is inscribed
with the name of a member who had died.
The rooms are named after those who were gone,
and so is the road leading back to the fellowship.
Even in our religious communities
we are seeking a form of the infinity…
a form of immortality.
We are seeking to be remembered.
And yet, even in this wonderful Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
I will be serving in the next year,
not everyone is memorialized equally…
some have pictures and some don’t…
though all are leaves on the tree,
which is a good start, and better than some other places I’ve been.
Funny… I remember someone else once created a ritual
in their religious community so that they could be remembered…
“Do this, in remembrance of me…”
We do remember each other.
It is part of our task as a religious community.
We do care for one another, even when we are gone from this earth.
As I sat recently at the bedside of a Unitarian Universalist
who was in her final hours of life on earth,
I was able to assure her, with a sense of authenticity and peace,
that she would be remembered.
That it was okay for her to go.
That whatever awaited her, we would be with her soon.
And… most importantly… that she was loved,
and had changed the lives of those around her.
May that be true for all of us.
So may it be, blessed be, and amen.