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Happy Birthday
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Grand Rapids,
Michigan Sunday, May 18, 2003
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sermon
I am either one of the best persons to go to the movies with, or one of the
worst! After the conclusion of a movie I often ask the initial theological
question. I don’t ask the doctrinal question, or the dogmatic question, or the
creedal question, which would be something along the order of, “How is this
movie to be understood as an _expression of the risen Christ?” That question
could be asked regarding many movies, but it is not the initial theological
question in our tradition. I don’t ask the philosophical question, which would
be along the lines of, “How and what does this movie depict as truth?” Paul
Tillich defined theology as correlating an analysis of the existential situation
with the revelations a tradition represents, so the initial theological question
after viewing a movie could be, “Why did this movie maker make this movie at
this time?” So, one would look at a movie like The Matrix, either the
original or the new sequel, and ask what was the artist’s analysis of his times
as depicted in the world the movie creates?
In the world of the movie, The Matrix, existence as we experience it is a
virtual reality pumped into our brains by machines that control us. What we call
daily existence is really a dream from which some, like the hero, have escaped,
to the really real, in order to fight with the machines for survival. It is a
metaphysical movie, suggesting what the structure of existence is, like the
Hindu and Buddhist metaphysical understanding of maya, that what we call reality
really is a dream, which we understand only when we penetrate its illusory
nature. It’s a metaphysic not unfamiliar to certain traditions within
Christianity, which see the everyday as the domain of deception from which we
endeavor to escape to God’s kingdom, a world that is beyond and unlike the
visual one! The Matrix is an analysis of the times we live in. Writes
Baylor English professor Greg Garrett, in his book The Gospel Reloaded,
"A really good myth does more than just create a symbolic world. It articulates
the feelings that a culture already feels or believes." We live in a virtual
reality from which many people seek to escape, as from a bad dream or at least a
not very entertaining one!
One can look at the life of particular individuals, like Ralph Waldo Emerson on
the occasion of his 200th birthday, and ask similar questions.
Looking at his life and writings, what was his analysis of the times in which he
lived? He was the first to try and construct a distinctively American viewpoint,
called by Time magazine, “The Bishop of Our Possibilities.” So he is our
countryman. But because Emerson is to Unitarians what Luther is to Lutherans,
and Calvin to Calvinists, he also represents revelations, concerning what it
means to live, that remain a part of our common religious tradition. He is also
our spiritual companion walking our path with us!
“There is properly no history,” Emerson once wrote, “only biography.”
His biography began as the son of a Unitarian minister in 1803. He grew up to
become a Unitarian minister himself, serving one of the most distinguished
Unitarian churches of the Boston of his day. His family home, the Manse, sits in
Concord, Massachusetts, a stone’s throw from North Bridge; hence, appropriately
enough, the hymn we just sang was written by him for the dedication of that
bridge into the American public memory. Early in his tenure at his Boston church
Emerson left the ministry over the dispensing of the Lord’s Supper, which was a
function of the Unitarian ministry of his day and over which he could no longer
in good conscience officiate.
He quickly became in demand as a lecturer and an author, who in his works
intentionally sought to create a distinctively American voice, rather than an
echoing of the dominant European perspectives of his day. His essay,
“Self-Reliance,” and his address at the Harvard Divinity School are classics
in the articulation of what would become both Unitarian spirituality and a
distinctively American religiosity, one that looks to the individual’s unique
encounter with God as the basis of the spiritual life. His book of essays,
Nature, from which the reading this morning came, offers the unique quality
of the landscape of this country, its wild wilderness, as the chief medium for a
glimpse into and experience of the divine. Daily existence is not something from
which one should seek escape, but is the supreme _expression of the spiritual
qualities of life. Therefore, it is the world itself into which we are to
plunge!
-“Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson
If one watched the Preakness horse race run yesterday on television, then one
really had less an experience of horses and more an experience of seeing the
television. But go out to the horse track and it is an experience of a totally
different sort because it is a direct experience of the horse, of seeing these
creatures with the eyes of the spirit. One begins to understand, more than one
could ever by simply watching them on television, why it was that the ancient
Greeks so venerated the horse. This creature combines symmetry, strength, and an
unfathomable emotional depth that is analogous to our own being. But in the
moment of the race the sensitivity, the neediness, the shyness, the coyness,
even the gentleness of these creatures disappears in the wild, pounding
drivenness of hoof on turf, hoof on turf, hoof on turf! Horses are living
symbols of the mixture of sentiment and strength that is human being. We are
made in their likeness, and they in ours. Nature has given us this living mirror
on our own spiritual nature!
The chief focus of Emerson’s life and writings was the spirit; that is, the
presence of God, of sacredness and holiness, in a world of material objects and
human moods and motivations. And the chief concern of his life was the barriers
that exist and that we put up, that keep the individual from participating fully
in the spiritual quality of the creation of which we are a part:
The aim of Emerson’s life was to witness as completely as he could to the
spiritual nature of the individual. And part of the manner of that witness was
to locate the barriers to seeing and living in that full nature.
There are barriers to apprehending the spiritual quality of creation, as well as
more effective mediators of it. Tradition is a barrier because there is a
natural inclination in us to award wisdom to past generations and to the
meanings given yesterday to rites and rituals. We tend to honor the past in ways
that elevate it above present possibilities. We bury the spirit in a worship of
the past. “We must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of
time,” because human beings from our creation are tempted to anchor all
truth there! It is, in part, the reason for his departure from ministry over the
ritual of the Lord’s Supper. It had become primarily a rite of rote tradition
and not of the immediate experience of the presence of the spirit.
Our inner need for permanence is a barrier to apprehending the spirit because we
so desire right wisdom and right thinking and living that we will even trap it
in the silliness of consistent thinking over riding on the crest of our own
immediate experience. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds…” Truth unfolds, it is not static or stale, and exists in the
fluctuation of our life’s events and not in some the illusion of some permanent
belief that we have somehow “caught.”
And, finally, and probably the most dangerous of these barriers, we tend to give
undue honor to the thoughts, beliefs, experiences, and conclusions of others
over our own. The self’s unfolding in the midst of this world of the spirit
atrophies because individuals seek to live vicariously through the thoughts and
deeds of others. We say Christ died for our sins and, thus, we live and are
redeemed vicariously through him. We live off of the credit of his life and
deeds and message and death instead of our own. We shine spotlights on preachers
and worship their words over our own original experiences. We read Scriptures we
did not write and recite creeds we did not fashion, and worship their wisdom
over our own. We live off of someone else’s credit instead of making our own
living. “It behooves us,” Emerson wrote, “to be careful what we
worship. For what we are worshipping we are becoming.”
People ask me what the aim of worship is in the Free Church tradition we
represent as Unitarians. It is most decidedly not to give you a spiritual
experience! In our tradition the church or the preacher or the liturgy cannot
give that to you. As Unitarians worship is a practice. Like a lawyer practices
law or a doctor practices medicine, we gather in worship in order to practice.
In the hour of worship we practice removing barriers such that each one of us
can discern the spiritual quality in life for every other hour of the week. The
purpose of worship, in the words of Emerson, is to learn how “to
encounter divinity firsthand,” in order that every other hour of the week
might be opened up to us!
We have a birdfeeder on our deck, which you can see from the chair in our den.
Wrens came first to feed, then an occasional yellow finch, and, with changing
the birdseed, now a mother and father cardinal. But the other day, an
unbelievable, unforeseen surprise, a soothing, visual grace: a striking true
blue bird. A gift, not deserved, nor able to be repaid, not a gift for me or for
any one individual to covet; just to be recognized, honored, respected,
dignified, a blessing like a sunset over the lake, like a friend,, like a baby,
like a beloved, a spiritual substance that takes form and in which we can
delight. A true blue bird! Not a doctrine, nor a creed, nor a theological
proclamation or a scientific certainty, but only and completely a true blue
bird, a gift, that is a direct apprehension of and free encounter with the
spirit. As real as any tragedy endured or sin committed or omitted. A true blue
gift of grace. A spiritual message in the form and color of Nature: the aim of
life is to encounter and abide in the spirit. But the chief barrier to this life
is our inclination not to imagine the spirit to dwell in all the places where it
truly does.
Barriers to discerning the spiritual quality of our lives know no denominational
distinction, nor faith tradition, nor historical time or culture. The Unitarian,
the Catholic, the Independent, the Baptist, or the Calvinist, yesterday or
today, are all susceptible to upholding tradition over original encounter, to
valuing permanence over new insight, to living vicariously through others by
elevating figures of the past as a substitute for our own thoughts and
experiences. Just like the newly formed America was doing with old Europe in
Emerson’s day! There is a risk and a courage in walking with others along this
path of faith!
So, happy Birthday, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once at the podium threw the text
of last night’s lecture aside declaring, “I no longer believe these things,” and
who valued original insight and an individual’s immediate experience over dusty,
outdated pronouncements of the past. Happy Birthday to the man who, to his
friends was known as Waldo, who suffered the tragedy of his young son’s death
but through that grief-stricken time never wavered from the path of engaging the
spirit. Happy Birthday, Ralph Waldo Emerson, truly the “Bishop of our
Possibilities,” who pursued God not in ritual, creed, or doctrine, but as
directly and as immediately as possible, the Kingdom of God here and now, in
order to see and experience the spirit infused in all things. Happy Birthday!
AMEN |
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