Should We Tell More Stories
About How We Live Our Faith?
A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, Virginia), June 18, 2006,
by Stanley Mathes, a member of the Congregation.
Reading
He
had described himself as a “poor people’s doctor,”
but he didn’t quite fit my preconception of such a person. He
clearly liked the fancy restaurant, the heavy cloth napkins, the good
bottle of wine. What struck me that evening was how happy he seemed
with his life. Obviously, a young man with his advantages could have
been doing good works as a doctor while commuting between Boston and
a pleasant suburb—not between a room in what I imagined must be
a grubby church rectory and the wasteland of central Haiti. The way
he talked, it seemed as if he actually enjoyed living among Haitian
peasant farmers. At one point, speaking about medicine, he said, “I
don’t know why everyone isn’t excited about it.”
He smiled at me, and his face turned bright, not red so much as
glowing, a luminescent smile. It affected me strongly, like a
welcome gladly given, one you didn’t have to earn.
From Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder about Dr. Paul Farmer
http://www.brighamandwomens.org/socialmedicine/aboutfarmer.aspx
http://www.pih.org/index.html
Sermon
I am one of those
people who come to the Unitarian faith from the Christian religion.
We have always considered our Reformed Church of America to be
liberal and open-minded but in recent years, things like the
Apostle’s Creed, prayers of confession, and the words we have
to say during various sacraments like baptism and communion have made
me very uncomfortable. In fact I often left our Christian services
feeling angry because of one thing or another that was said during
the service.
Thus, it has been a
very refreshing and positive experience to participate in our
Unitarian services here. We first joined a spiritual reading
covenant group and then a year later a couple’s covenant group.
We also have participated in a number of congregational meetings
about the budget and the canvass which led to me becoming treasurer.
We soon came to know many people and found that we were part of a
community which shared values similar to ours. We didn’t
always agree with everyone but felt very comfortable with the liberal
Unitarian theology and the liberal social and political values that
are reflected on the many bumper stickers you see as you walk through
the parking lot.
We were new to
Blacksburg and within a year or so we had many new friends and felt
warmly welcomed in the community. But I also started to feel that
there was something missing from our services. A long time member
asked me, “What is it that is missing? I feel that way too.”
I said that I didn’t know but I would have to think about it
more to figure it out. This sermon is my attempt to put into words
what I have felt was missing, to create a discussion and possibly
find new ideas.
In the Christian
church, we have some basic authorities that the religion is based on.
First and foremost is the Bible and secondly is the dogma that has
been made up by theologians over the years for many purposes. Often
the dogma is only loosely related to the Bible but has been developed
to exert power and control over the followers. Then there are the
practices that often seem to be ordained by God through the Bible
like the prohibition of abortion or same sex relationships. Often
when examined closely these prohibitions are mixed in the Bible with
other prohibitions, like going into debt or eating certain foods,
that seem silly today. Churches have cherry picked the prohibitions
they wanted in order to exert control over their followers.
There is a positive
side to having basic teachings like the Bible upon which to base
discussions about many important issues we face in our daily lives.
For example, Jesus often taught how we need to help those who are
outcasts from society, those who are ill or those suffering from
poverty. Sermons, which are often written about how we need to care
for those who are less fortunate than we, are usually based on some
story about Jesus. We Unitarians don’t seem to have many
authoritative writings or teachings upon which to base our good
actions towards the afflicted. This is one thing that I feel is
missing from our services. We say that we need to act against
poverty, social injustice, unjust war, and political hypocrisy. Why?
Because they are wrong! Why are they wrong? Well….., just
because they are. Maybe we need more stories.
I remember a number of
services where I felt that the missing thing was present. You may
remember back a year and a half ago when two guest speakers told us
stories about their experience with their own mental illness. These
stories were moving on their own but what made the service a truly
spiritual experience was when congregation members stood up and told
their own stories of themselves and of their families. At the
beginning of the service, we often thought of mental illness as
belonging to these speakers and others diagnosed as mentally ill.
However, by the time the service was over we realized this was a
story that belonged to all of us. We all experience mental illness
in one way or another and these people are not out there somewhere
but they are part of us.
Recently at the
Religious Education Teacher Recognition Program it became clear that
the main thrust of that program is to teach our children values and
to explore with them how to live those values. Jane Mahone said it
very well when she expressed regret that her children had not grown
up being exposed to this kind of teaching and thinking. I feel the
same way. Her story is like my story.
We love to discuss our
beliefs and our ideas. We are often asked to support various causes
like the opposition to the Virginia Marriage Amendment or the War in
Iraq, or to support intervention to prevent genocide in Darfur. We
are able to respond by writing to our representatives, sending money
to organizations or even marching in demonstrations supporting our
views. This is sometimes satisfying and occasionally has an effect
that causes a positive outcome.
A few months ago there
was a heated email exchange among several of our members about
evolutionary evangelism and its meaning. Another member reading this
exchange wrote “Personally, I am just overjoyed to be a part of
a congregation where a lively debate can take place, and differing
opinions are respected.” Many think this exchange of ideas is
what defines us but I still find something missing.
We often have speakers
or sermons that give us a lot of good information about important
issues. We have heard about the immigration debate recently, we have
learned about Buddhism and Hinduism, we have heard the stories of
Joseph Priestly and Charles Darwin.
Then every once in a
while we hear a sermon like one Chris Brownlie gave as a kickoff to
the Stewardship Campaign called “What Does Money Say about
your Life?” For me the most important part of this sermon was
the following quote:
Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for. Our
life energy is our allotment of time here on earth, the hours of
precious life available to us. When we go to our jobs, we are trading
our life energy for money.
This sermon talked
about how we choose to live our lives--how we can express our values.
I was quite inspired by this sermon even though I usually want to
stay home when the minister has to talk about money. But Chris
didn’t do that in this sermon—she talked about how we
choose to live our lives. This made me think about my life and how I
try to live out my values and realize that I fall short in so many
ways. She challenged me to live a better life and to integrate that
with what I believe. Maybe this sermon is part of why our
stewardship campaign was so successful this year.
It is easy to write a
letter to a congressman or send a small amount of money to Doctors
without Borders or to protest while marching with a sign. But am I
willing to risk my savings or my home or my income to really stand up
for what I believe? Am I willing to go to jail? I have never done
that but I know people who have. I think we need to hear stores of
people who are really living their values and risking their lives for
important things. These stories call me and ask me to re-evaluate
the way I live. This morning, a large number of our congregation
have set out on a journey to help the people of Mississippi try to
rebuild in the wake of hurricane Katrina. We will be hearing their
story at the end of July. I am inspired by the work these people are
undertaking and the support of our congregation. I am sure we will
be inspired by their stories.
I’d like to spend
a little time telling the story of Dr. Paul Farmer who Tracy Kidder
wrote about in the book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. In the
meditation, the following words about Dr. Farmer struck me:
‘…it
seemed he actually enjoyed living among Haitian peasant farmers.
….He said, “I don’t know why everybody isn’t
excited by it.” He smiled at me, and his face turned bright,
not red so much as glowing, a luminescent smile.’
Dr. Farmer grew up in a
trailer park living in a bus in Alabama and Florida among immigrant
Haitians with whom he picked fruit. Somehow he managed to go to Duke
on full scholarship and was taken at first by the great wealth he saw
around him. But soon he quit his fraternity because he could not
bear to be part of an all white organization. He was truly surprised
by the frosty response he received from his former “brothers.”
He became inspired by the work of a late 19th century
German named Rudolf Virschow who spent most of his twenties working
with peasants in impoverished Upper Silesia where they suffered from
endemic dysentery, malaria and something called famine fever.
Virschow’s prescription for curing these problems was “full
and unlimited democracy.” So the German government fired him,
but this prescription was very convincing to young Paul Farmer and he
ended up applying to and getting accepted at Harvard Medical School.
Also during this time he started studying about Haiti, the home of
the people he worked with during his teens. He wrote an essay about
Haitians and won a thousand dollar prize which he used to visit Haiti
before he went to medical school. He traveled all around the poor
rural areas, getting sick, volunteering in clinics and adopting the
principles of the then popular liberation theology with its emphasis
on poverty and redressing wrongs right now. He said, “I’m
an action kind of guy.”
This was the beginning
of a schizophrenic kind of life where Paul studied at Harvard part of
the time and set up clinics and health programs in Haiti in the other
part of his time. Eventually he became a professor at Harvard. Still
he continued his work in Haiti curing incurable diseases like
resistant forms of TB which then led to his work with retroviral
drugs on AIDS patients. In a short time the area covered by his
clinics showed dramatically less incidence of disease and poverty as
well. There was also a greater input of the people into running
their own communities. Paul was noticed both by the Haitian
government and world health organizations. As governments changed in
Haiti he went from being hero to fugitive but then started working on
programs against resistant TB in Peru and prisons in Siberia. He had
great successes there as he continued to support his clinics and
hospitals in Haiti. I just heard his name mentioned by ex-president
Clinton, a few weeks ago, as a leader of successful program that is
providing help to third world countries. Dr. Farmer has been
constantly on the go and sometimes ill because of lack of attention
to his own health in the context of twenty hour work days covering
four continents. But he loves his work. He believes the way to cure
the medical problems of the world is to start with the poorest and
the sickest people and make them well. His work in the slums of Lima
Peru, the prisons of Siberia and in the genocide ravaged country of
Rwanda are outgrowths of his work in Haiti and his organization
Partners in Health, founded in 1987 while he was still in medical
school.
The example of Dr. Paul
Farmer, who helps the most disadvantaged people with a spirit of joy
and love, inspires me. I worked as a teacher for over thirty years
and many would ask me why I did it. I loved it and enjoyed the
bright faces which all of a sudden would show understanding. I loved
working with individual kids after school to help them overcome their
learning problems. I enjoyed hearing from students who would come
back and tell me how much my class had meant to them and how it
changed their lives. They also told me my class was fun and would
let me in on all the things they used to get away with. I stopped
being a teacher when the conditions changed, helicopter parents
became the norm and I was too old to try to change things. Since I
retired I have undertaken “good works” out of a sense of
duty and sometimes even guilt. I soon have become frustrated or
tired of this work because my heart wasn’t in it and I was not
doing it from joy or love. I love helping to raise my grandchildren
and will continue to spend a lot of time with them until they start
going to school and hopefully, like the quiltmaker in the story I read the children, I can find
something else that I love that will contribute to the World.
Meanwhile, I love to
listen to the stories of people who have great joy and satisfaction
in living their faith and values. I look for examples in the movies,
in books and on TV and most of all here at the UUC. I hope to hear
more stories about our members who are living their faith with joy
and love. I hope to hear more sermons which challenge all of us to
live our faith and tell the stories of those who do. I hope to hear
more about how people of our faith are already living their values
and making the world a better place. I hope that I can find new ways
to contribute in some meaningful way as well.
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