Sunday, 9 September 2007

“The Unspeakable Gift”

The Rev. Robert M. Hardies

All Souls Church, Unitarian

Washington, D.C.

It’s good to see all of you here this Sunday. I want to share with you this morning two very short readings, the first a poem, the second a line of scripture. The poem is by Raymond Carver. It’s called “Late Fragment.”

And did you get what you wanted from this life even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved. To feel myself beloved on the earth.

And the second reading is from the apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians:

Thanks be to God for this unspeakable gift.

When I decided to begin the new church year with a sermon about love, I had no idea what contested theological terrain I was treading on. Let me explain. A few years back, researchers asked leaders of American congregations, Unitarians included, what elements are always a part of your worship service. The second highest response, from fifty percent of churches, was a sermon about God’s love. Incidentally, the top response, the most common element in Sunday worship was the presence of piano or organ music which garnered eighty percent of votes and probably explains why music directors usually have better job security at churches than preachers do. [Laughter]

However, while sermons about love are frequent, another survey, this one over at the website “HolyObserver.com” shows that at least some parishioners are not finding their pastors’ love sermons very helpful. One young man from Ontario, Canada, complained that sermons on love were hampering his dating life. [Laughter] He said that if you took his pastor’s advice his pickup line would sound something like: “I’m ready to make a life commitment to you and to father your children, but not get emotionally or physically involved until marriage. You in?” [Laughter] And Stacey Cramer, a teenager from Bend, Oregon, complained that her youth pastor preached about abstinence at least once every three weeks and concluded, “If he weren’t so cute, I’d leave the youth group.” [Laughter] Good for you, Stacey.

Well, this morning, I’m going to do as the spiritual says and wade right into these troubled waters with yet another sermon on love. Not a sermon about dating or a sermon about sex, just a sermon about love, plain and simple, or plain and not so simple as the case may be. And as to whether it’s a sermon about the love of God or human love, and where the distinction between the two lies, I’ll let you be the judge.

I’d like to begin with a story. Not long after I arrived in Washington, I happened to give a sermon over in Anacostia at a rally for Habitat for Humanity. When the rally was over, an older gentleman, wearing a clerical collar, came out of the crowd and introduced himself to me. I’ll call him “Thornton.” Thornton was the very picture of a white, Protestant pastor. He had a kind, approachable face, a shock of neatly trimmed white hair and a warm Tennessee accent. He told me he liked my speech and asked if we could get together for lunch. Which we did. And Thornton and I immediately fell in with each other. Though 40 years separated us in age, we found we had a lot in common: We admired the same preachers; we found inspiration in the same spiritual writers; we even shared the same favorite restaurant in San Francisco.

Thornton graciously shared with me wisdom gleaned from a long career in the parish ministry. After our first lunch we had another and then another, and before long Thornton and I enjoyed a budding friendship. From the very beginning of our relationship, though, there was one thing that gave me pause. Whenever we’d part ways, Thornton and I would give each other a hug and, as we’d end the hug, he would stop me and put his hands on my shoulders and look me directly in the eye and say, in his southern drawl, “Rob, I love you. Do you know how much I love you?” And I must confess to you that the intensity of his gaze and the forthrightness of his expression both startled and confused me. “I love you,” after all, can mean so many things. Each time we met I’d feel a little uneasy, wondering what Thornton meant.

Now I know this might sound like a stretch – in fact it’s not maybe a stretch; it definitely is a stretch – but the whole situation actually reminded me of a little vignette from the Christmas story. I’m thinking of the encounter between Mary and the angel Gabriel. You may recall that right at the beginning of the Christmas tale, Mary is just sitting around minding her own business when out of the blue this strange person, an angel apparently, comes up to her and apropos of nothing says to her, “Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you!” Now I’m guessing that Gabriel, as a messenger of God, was perhaps accustomed to a certain kind of enthusiastic response to his arrivals, maybe a little gratitude for God’s blessings. But Mary, this is what I love about Mary, Mary is a little off put by her unannounced guest and, instead of welcoming him with open arms, the Bible says that Mary was greatly troubled at the angels words and pondered in her heart what sort of greeting this might be.

I’ve got to tell you that whenever Thornton looked me in the eye and told me he loved me, I felt a little bit like Mary did with Gabriel: “What exactly do you mean?” The expression felt almost too intimate for such a new friendship and I wondered if there wasn’t some particular connection that Thornton felt toward me that I didn’t feel in return. Now we know how Mary’s story turns out. Gabriel, sensing her misgivings, reassures her, saying “Don’t be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God.” And Mary, after she pondered for awhile and perhaps possessing an intuitive sense that she was indeed in the presence of an angel, decides to receive his good news and the rest, as they say, is history.

I’m afraid my judgment wasn’t as keen as Mary’s. Because of my uncertainty and discomfort with Thornton’s expression of love and without ever discussing those concerns with him, I gradually withdrew from our friendship. We drifted apart, seeing each other only occasionally and, after awhile, hardly at all. When Thornton would call and ask why we weren’t getting together, I blamed my schedule which was partly true, but not the whole truth.

This winter, while I was away on sabbatical, I received a letter from another friend, who also happened to know Thornton. The letter included a newspaper clipping; it was Thornton’s obituary. With a heavy and guilty heart, I read the article which eloquently captured the essence of my old companion, his warmth, his friendliness, his generous spirit and theology. Toward the end of the article, I came to a paragraph that broke my heart. It was a quote from the associate pastor who had served with Thornton for many years in their parish in Washington. He said, “Thornton possessed a deep sense of God’s love and an uncanny ability to share it with others. None of us will ever forget,” he said, “how he would piercingly look into our eyes and say to us, directly and simply, ‘I love you. Do you know how much I love you?’”

I had misunderstood the nature of Thornton’s love. Unlike Mary who finally came to her senses, when I stood face to face with the love of God, when it had literally grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye, I turned away. I offer you this story, a confession really, as a cautionary tale – a little bit like the recovered addict or repentant criminal who goes to high school assemblies and pleads with others not to make the same mistakes he did! And I offer it because I know that I’m not the only one among us who has succumbed to what the nineteenth century Unitarian, James Freeman Clark, called “the fatal ingratitude.” He writes, “Real ingratitude, the fatal ingratitude, comes from those unable or unwilling to recognize love in a giver.” Those are strong words – fatal ingratitude – but I think they’re spot on. Because I’m thinking back to that poem by Raymond Carver that I shared as our reading at the beginning. Let’s listen to that one more time:

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved. To feel myself beloved on the earth.

If to be beloved is indeed our deepest longing, then it is probably not too strong to say that to deny the gift of love can indeed be fatal, hazardous to our soul’s health. If we go through our lives unable to receive and give love, spiritual death will ensue.

And so my message today, friends, is very simple: It is that we give ourselves to love. That we open our hearts and our eyes and our ears so that we may recognize and receive the many ways, large and small, that a gracious love is offered to us. The woman who shares a slice of ripe tomato with us at the farmers’ market at 14^th and U. The person who smiles and makes room for us on the 42 Mount Pleasant when it’s packed like a sardine can, the driver’s miserable and the air conditioning’s broke. The allies who lend their voice to our struggle for justice. The steadfast patience of our spouse, our partner, our friend. Oftentimes, when we’re not suspecting, even when we don’t deserve it, the world offers to us its love. We can either be the kind of people who look for it, notice it and receive it gratefully, or we can be the practitioners of a fatal ingratitude.

And so, friends, my prayer is that we might be a people who, like Mary, have the good sense to recognize an angel in our presence, a people who can bear the bright light of love’s direct gaze, a people who have stripped away all that stands between us and love, all our baggage, all our insecurity, all our arrogance and, having made ourselves channels of love, can share that love freely with the world. Amen.