A Season of Renewal
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sunday March 3rd, 2002
***
When I was growing up, my parents often tried, as most parents do, to teach me the kind of rudimentary social skills that grown-ups ultimately need to get along in the world. Little things, that most adults take for granted: things like how to eat properly with a knife and fork, and to chew with your mouth closed, and also how to make polite conversation at the dinner table. And one of the things they tried to teach me about making socially polite “small talk” (this was kind of an advanced lesson, that I’m still not sure I’ve mastered) was to avoid controversial topics, like religion and politics, but instead to talk about innocent things like how good the food it, or the weather.
So now here I am, in the one place on earth where I am free to speak about religion, or politics, or whatever other controversial topic I choose, and all I want to talk about is this unbelievably good weather we’ve been having. This is NOT how I remember Winter in New England! They say that April Showers Bring May Flowers (which just about sums up everything I know about gardening), but here it is, only the Third of March, and there are already things coming up out of the ground back there in the yard outside the parsonage. People are telling me that this is really unusual for Nantucket, and that I shouldn’t be fooled by it, but I don’t know...this weather reminds me a lot of summer out in Oregon, where we routinely lie about how much rain we get just to discourage the rest of you from moving out there yourselves.
I’ve also been thinking quite a bit about food this past week (getting around to my other safe topic), since both the Downy Flake and the Brotherhood happen to be closed just now, so I’ve been compelled to do a lot more cooking for myself. It’s a good thing that I am not a particularly fussy eater (like I was when I was a kid), because I am also not a particularly creative cook, and a good portion of my culinary repertoire consists of things that come in either cans or boxes, and require only to be brought to a boil after adding the appropriate amount of water. Not that I can’t, on occasion, prepare something a little more elaborate when the spirit moves me. But it always seems like an awful lot of fuss to go through for just one person, especially when I hear that nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that it probably wouldn’t hurt me to skip a few meals anyway.
Back when I was in the sixth grade, I had a friend, Brian O'Hare, who was also a fussy eater. And the one thing he absolutely hated was macaroni and cheese. He wasn't too fond of fish sticks either; but macaroni and cheese he truly loathed... loathed with a loathing beyond the capacity of his sixth grade vocabulary to express. Fridays were a day of dread for Brian, because, as you might have guessed, Brian’s family was Roman Catholic -- and every Friday of his life, for as long as he could remember, eleven-and-a-half long years, over 600 Fridays all told, his mother had served him macaroni and cheese... with only an occasional fish stick thrown in to break the monotony.
Now as a Unitarian-Universalist youngster, I always had a hard time understanding my friend's passionate loathing. Macaroni and cheese was a rare treat around my house: something I looked forward to with almost as much eagerness as spaghetti. Whenever I smelled macaroni and cheese cooking in the kitchen, that was a good day, because I knew that it meant there wouldn't be a vegetable. So I was always glad to see it -- the more often the better. Broccoli was the thing that I couldn't stand. Broccoli and spinach; and while the former is now one of my favorite vegetables, when it comes right down to it, I'm still not too fond of spinach.
There were other subtle differences as well between my experience growing up Unitarian, and that of my Catholic playmates. I never had to attend a Wednesday afternoon catechism class, or worry about the subtle differences between purgatory and limbo. I never had to wear a uniform to school; never crossed wits with a short-tempered nun over the question of whether or not God could make a rock so big that he himself could not move it. I never had to attend confession; never had to distinguish between a mortal and a venial sin. I didn't really know who Saint Christopher was; I just knew that you had to have a Saint Christopher medallion if you wanted to ask a girl to go steady. With the exception of the one year when I opened all of the little windows on the first night, there was never an Advent calendar in my home; nor were we expected to attend church during the summer. I was never asked to be an altar boy -- I was two years in seminary before I even knew the difference between a votive and a taper. And, of course, I never had to agonize over whether to give up candy or television for Lent -- although I did often wonder why my friends simply didn't choose to give up spinach.
These differences fascinated me as a boy; and I've often felt as though I missed out on some terribly important experience by not having been raised a Roman Catholic. And yet, it is doubtlessly also one of life's little ironies that at exactly that age that my Catholic friends were becoming "confirmed" -- a rite of passage which meant that they had fulfilled all the requirements for becoming fully recognized adult members of their church, and for many of them at least, was accompanied by a welcome freedom from parental compulsion to attend Mass -- I was just beginning to embark on a personal religious search of my own: a search which, with all its various twists and turns, would eventually lead me into the ministry.
But having from childhood been fed their faith, as it were, from a casserole dish, my Catholic friends as teenagers were officially excused from any further formal religious indoctrination (although many of them tell me that they can still hear the nuns lecturing to their guilty consciences far more clearly and frequently than they would like). But my own religious experience as a teenager was very different; I think I would describe it more as a confrontation with the profound sense of spiritual emptiness which existed within me, and an attempt to fill that void with a faith that was at once intellectually meaningful, ethically consistent, and emotionally satisfying. Looking back, I recognize now that much of my questioning during those years was simply a normal, developmental process: even though I hadn’t been compelled to believe anything at all, I also needed to rebel in order to discover for myself who I was and what I truly believed. And, of course my faith today is far different still from the faith I wrestled with at seventeen. And yet, it was during that time of youthful exploration that I intuitively discovered for myself the inner meaning of Lent, and why it was that my Catholic friends' parents wouldn't allow them simply to give up spinach for the 40 days prior to Easter.
I suppose I should also point out here that my family was basically unchurched during this critical period of my life. Had we maintained an active association with a Unitarian Universalist society, my youthful religious yearnings might have proven far less tumultuous than they actually were. As it turned out, I was pretty much left to my own devices as a teenager, along with whatever spiritual resources I could discover through popular culture: televised Billy Graham crusades; a Gideon Bible stolen out of a night table drawer from the Leopold Hotel in Bellingham, Washington during a weekend High School debate trip; various supermarket paperbacks on Astrology and ESP, angels in flying saucers, the end of the world as foretold in Revelation, and various other esoteric and arcane topics. And I was delighted to hear Jennifer Justice talk about her experiences in that snow-covered field in North Carolina, because I also often liked to spend my Sunday mornings in solitude in the woods near my home, watching birds, listening to the silence, and also experimenting with the efficacy of more traditional spiritual practices like fasting, and prayer.
In the end however, it was Unitarianism after all which provided the glue to hold this fragile theological pastiche together, and it came in the form of a 25 cent Bobbs-Merrill edition of the sermons of William Ellery Channing, gleaned from a rummage table of used books outside the Eastshore Unitarian Church. Channing's notion that the Bible was a book written by human beings for human beings -- or in my irreverent teenage interpretation, "by ignorant fishermen for illiterate shepherds" -- turned out to be the pathway by which I was able to personalize the gospel, and come to see the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, not as a supernatural God to be worshiped, but as a human being not so different from myself, a wise teacher whose example was worthy of emulation. And the passage I read this morning from the Gospel of Luke [Lk 4: 1-24] was particularly meaningful for me in this context; and while most of what I held true during those years has properly slipped away, this belief in the necessity of a period of testing in the wilderness has remained with me. For there is no spiritual growth without such tribulation; and without such spiritual growth, religion itself becomes stagnant, and dies.
Now as a rule, we Unitarian Universalists are not particularly attentive to the various feasts, fasts, and high holy days of the Christian liturgical year. Of course, we still celebrate Christmas, and generally make some sort of observance of Easter; and a few of us have even added special celebrations of our own. I understand, for example, that the UU theological students at the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley hold a weenie roast each year on the anniversary of Michael Servetus's martyrdom at the stake; but this is just a rumor: I haven't seen it with my own eyes. For the most part, though, we remain blissfully ignorant of observances like Pentecost, or Lent -- you might find Unitarians in great numbers at Mardi Gras, but you will never see us lined up around the block to repent for it on Ash Wednesday. And while I would hate to see our churches formally adopt a lectionary of proper readings for the seasons, I also feel that our ignorance in this area is something of a shame. Our program year tends to follow the rhythm of the school year -- it lacks that special richness which comes of the subtle nuance of long tradition. The closest thing we have to Lent in our denomination is Spring Break. And Spring Break is hardly a time of testing and tribulation -- unless, of course, you happen to be a parent traveling long distances by automobile with young children.
Traditionally, the Lenten season is a time of study and purification. In the early church it was the period of the catechism, during which aspiring Christians of all ages were prepared for baptism on Palm Sunday. Its duration of 40 days was derived from Christ's own 40 day temptation in the wilderness, a tradition which in turn appears to have evolved in analogy to the 40 year wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness of Sinai following the Exodus from Egypt. Sometime during the Middle Ages -- I'm not exactly certain when or why -- Lent also became associated with the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat: this is the origin of this notion that one should give up something pleasant during Lent, and likewise the tradition of Carnival: in Medieval Latin, literally Carne Vale "Flesh, farewell!" -- one last big blowout before the long fast.
So you see, it is only on the surface that Lent a time of atonement and self-denial. In its more fundamental sense, it is a Season of Renewal: a time of preparation for the new life that comes in Spring. It is both a challenge and an opportunity: the challenge to journey into the wilderness of the soul, to seek out there in solitude those temptations which dissuade us from practicing our religious convictions, to confront and overcome them; and the opportunity to feel the Spirit of God upon us: to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, open the eyes of those who are blind, set at liberty those who are oppressed: in a word, to proclaim a new year acceptable to the Lord.
It sounds like a tall order, doesn't it? Well, this is why Lent comes
every year -- to give us an ongoing chance to catch up with our religious faith. It's not easy to live one's life intentionally: to know what your highest, even ultimate, priorities are, and to keep yourself focused on the attainment of those aspirations. Most of us, I think, just tend to muddle through about 80% of the time; I know this is true for me, and I suspect it is true for many of you as well. The time management experts tell us that the the real secret of gaining control of our time and our lives is daily attention to our lifetime goals, along with a comprehensive list of things to do. The human potential folks tell us that through mindfulness and conscientious attentiveness to the innocent voice of our inner child, we can achieve self-fulfillment and self-actualization; and if that seems like too tall an order, you can always attend one of those real estate seminars where they promise to show you how to achieve positive cash flow with no money down simply by faithfully reading the classified ads. But if a little intentionality is all one really needs to achieve success in these sorts of endeavors, just think what it can do for the quality of one's spiritual life. And Lent is the period set aside to cultivate this intentionality: to grow in one's faith through a period of self-discipline, to gain greater knowledge of the truth within ourselves.
I don't know whether or not my sixth grade friend Brian ever got over his hatred of macaroni and cheese. I kinda like to think that once he was out on his own, and started eating whatever he liked on Friday nights, that he eventually became nostaligic for the wholesome, nourishing food of his childhood. But I do know that the lessons I learned as a teenager in solitude and self-discipline, in sacrifice and self-denial, have made me into a better person as an adult, and as a grown-up parish minister. And I am especially reminded of them during this season of renewal, when all of nature seems poised on the threshold of something new and remarkable, and we wait, in awestruck silence, for its arrival.
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sunday March 3rd, 2002
***
When I was growing up, my parents often tried, as most parents do, to teach me the kind of rudimentary social skills that grown-ups ultimately need to get along in the world. Little things, that most adults take for granted: things like how to eat properly with a knife and fork, and to chew with your mouth closed, and also how to make polite conversation at the dinner table. And one of the things they tried to teach me about making socially polite “small talk” (this was kind of an advanced lesson, that I’m still not sure I’ve mastered) was to avoid controversial topics, like religion and politics, but instead to talk about innocent things like how good the food it, or the weather.
So now here I am, in the one place on earth where I am free to speak about religion, or politics, or whatever other controversial topic I choose, and all I want to talk about is this unbelievably good weather we’ve been having. This is NOT how I remember Winter in New England! They say that April Showers Bring May Flowers (which just about sums up everything I know about gardening), but here it is, only the Third of March, and there are already things coming up out of the ground back there in the yard outside the parsonage. People are telling me that this is really unusual for Nantucket, and that I shouldn’t be fooled by it, but I don’t know...this weather reminds me a lot of summer out in Oregon, where we routinely lie about how much rain we get just to discourage the rest of you from moving out there yourselves.
I’ve also been thinking quite a bit about food this past week (getting around to my other safe topic), since both the Downy Flake and the Brotherhood happen to be closed just now, so I’ve been compelled to do a lot more cooking for myself. It’s a good thing that I am not a particularly fussy eater (like I was when I was a kid), because I am also not a particularly creative cook, and a good portion of my culinary repertoire consists of things that come in either cans or boxes, and require only to be brought to a boil after adding the appropriate amount of water. Not that I can’t, on occasion, prepare something a little more elaborate when the spirit moves me. But it always seems like an awful lot of fuss to go through for just one person, especially when I hear that nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that it probably wouldn’t hurt me to skip a few meals anyway.
Back when I was in the sixth grade, I had a friend, Brian O'Hare, who was also a fussy eater. And the one thing he absolutely hated was macaroni and cheese. He wasn't too fond of fish sticks either; but macaroni and cheese he truly loathed... loathed with a loathing beyond the capacity of his sixth grade vocabulary to express. Fridays were a day of dread for Brian, because, as you might have guessed, Brian’s family was Roman Catholic -- and every Friday of his life, for as long as he could remember, eleven-and-a-half long years, over 600 Fridays all told, his mother had served him macaroni and cheese... with only an occasional fish stick thrown in to break the monotony.
Now as a Unitarian-Universalist youngster, I always had a hard time understanding my friend's passionate loathing. Macaroni and cheese was a rare treat around my house: something I looked forward to with almost as much eagerness as spaghetti. Whenever I smelled macaroni and cheese cooking in the kitchen, that was a good day, because I knew that it meant there wouldn't be a vegetable. So I was always glad to see it -- the more often the better. Broccoli was the thing that I couldn't stand. Broccoli and spinach; and while the former is now one of my favorite vegetables, when it comes right down to it, I'm still not too fond of spinach.
There were other subtle differences as well between my experience growing up Unitarian, and that of my Catholic playmates. I never had to attend a Wednesday afternoon catechism class, or worry about the subtle differences between purgatory and limbo. I never had to wear a uniform to school; never crossed wits with a short-tempered nun over the question of whether or not God could make a rock so big that he himself could not move it. I never had to attend confession; never had to distinguish between a mortal and a venial sin. I didn't really know who Saint Christopher was; I just knew that you had to have a Saint Christopher medallion if you wanted to ask a girl to go steady. With the exception of the one year when I opened all of the little windows on the first night, there was never an Advent calendar in my home; nor were we expected to attend church during the summer. I was never asked to be an altar boy -- I was two years in seminary before I even knew the difference between a votive and a taper. And, of course, I never had to agonize over whether to give up candy or television for Lent -- although I did often wonder why my friends simply didn't choose to give up spinach.
These differences fascinated me as a boy; and I've often felt as though I missed out on some terribly important experience by not having been raised a Roman Catholic. And yet, it is doubtlessly also one of life's little ironies that at exactly that age that my Catholic friends were becoming "confirmed" -- a rite of passage which meant that they had fulfilled all the requirements for becoming fully recognized adult members of their church, and for many of them at least, was accompanied by a welcome freedom from parental compulsion to attend Mass -- I was just beginning to embark on a personal religious search of my own: a search which, with all its various twists and turns, would eventually lead me into the ministry.
But having from childhood been fed their faith, as it were, from a casserole dish, my Catholic friends as teenagers were officially excused from any further formal religious indoctrination (although many of them tell me that they can still hear the nuns lecturing to their guilty consciences far more clearly and frequently than they would like). But my own religious experience as a teenager was very different; I think I would describe it more as a confrontation with the profound sense of spiritual emptiness which existed within me, and an attempt to fill that void with a faith that was at once intellectually meaningful, ethically consistent, and emotionally satisfying. Looking back, I recognize now that much of my questioning during those years was simply a normal, developmental process: even though I hadn’t been compelled to believe anything at all, I also needed to rebel in order to discover for myself who I was and what I truly believed. And, of course my faith today is far different still from the faith I wrestled with at seventeen. And yet, it was during that time of youthful exploration that I intuitively discovered for myself the inner meaning of Lent, and why it was that my Catholic friends' parents wouldn't allow them simply to give up spinach for the 40 days prior to Easter.
I suppose I should also point out here that my family was basically unchurched during this critical period of my life. Had we maintained an active association with a Unitarian Universalist society, my youthful religious yearnings might have proven far less tumultuous than they actually were. As it turned out, I was pretty much left to my own devices as a teenager, along with whatever spiritual resources I could discover through popular culture: televised Billy Graham crusades; a Gideon Bible stolen out of a night table drawer from the Leopold Hotel in Bellingham, Washington during a weekend High School debate trip; various supermarket paperbacks on Astrology and ESP, angels in flying saucers, the end of the world as foretold in Revelation, and various other esoteric and arcane topics. And I was delighted to hear Jennifer Justice talk about her experiences in that snow-covered field in North Carolina, because I also often liked to spend my Sunday mornings in solitude in the woods near my home, watching birds, listening to the silence, and also experimenting with the efficacy of more traditional spiritual practices like fasting, and prayer.
In the end however, it was Unitarianism after all which provided the glue to hold this fragile theological pastiche together, and it came in the form of a 25 cent Bobbs-Merrill edition of the sermons of William Ellery Channing, gleaned from a rummage table of used books outside the Eastshore Unitarian Church. Channing's notion that the Bible was a book written by human beings for human beings -- or in my irreverent teenage interpretation, "by ignorant fishermen for illiterate shepherds" -- turned out to be the pathway by which I was able to personalize the gospel, and come to see the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, not as a supernatural God to be worshiped, but as a human being not so different from myself, a wise teacher whose example was worthy of emulation. And the passage I read this morning from the Gospel of Luke [Lk 4: 1-24] was particularly meaningful for me in this context; and while most of what I held true during those years has properly slipped away, this belief in the necessity of a period of testing in the wilderness has remained with me. For there is no spiritual growth without such tribulation; and without such spiritual growth, religion itself becomes stagnant, and dies.
Now as a rule, we Unitarian Universalists are not particularly attentive to the various feasts, fasts, and high holy days of the Christian liturgical year. Of course, we still celebrate Christmas, and generally make some sort of observance of Easter; and a few of us have even added special celebrations of our own. I understand, for example, that the UU theological students at the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley hold a weenie roast each year on the anniversary of Michael Servetus's martyrdom at the stake; but this is just a rumor: I haven't seen it with my own eyes. For the most part, though, we remain blissfully ignorant of observances like Pentecost, or Lent -- you might find Unitarians in great numbers at Mardi Gras, but you will never see us lined up around the block to repent for it on Ash Wednesday. And while I would hate to see our churches formally adopt a lectionary of proper readings for the seasons, I also feel that our ignorance in this area is something of a shame. Our program year tends to follow the rhythm of the school year -- it lacks that special richness which comes of the subtle nuance of long tradition. The closest thing we have to Lent in our denomination is Spring Break. And Spring Break is hardly a time of testing and tribulation -- unless, of course, you happen to be a parent traveling long distances by automobile with young children.
Traditionally, the Lenten season is a time of study and purification. In the early church it was the period of the catechism, during which aspiring Christians of all ages were prepared for baptism on Palm Sunday. Its duration of 40 days was derived from Christ's own 40 day temptation in the wilderness, a tradition which in turn appears to have evolved in analogy to the 40 year wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness of Sinai following the Exodus from Egypt. Sometime during the Middle Ages -- I'm not exactly certain when or why -- Lent also became associated with the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat: this is the origin of this notion that one should give up something pleasant during Lent, and likewise the tradition of Carnival: in Medieval Latin, literally Carne Vale "Flesh, farewell!" -- one last big blowout before the long fast.
So you see, it is only on the surface that Lent a time of atonement and self-denial. In its more fundamental sense, it is a Season of Renewal: a time of preparation for the new life that comes in Spring. It is both a challenge and an opportunity: the challenge to journey into the wilderness of the soul, to seek out there in solitude those temptations which dissuade us from practicing our religious convictions, to confront and overcome them; and the opportunity to feel the Spirit of God upon us: to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, open the eyes of those who are blind, set at liberty those who are oppressed: in a word, to proclaim a new year acceptable to the Lord.
It sounds like a tall order, doesn't it? Well, this is why Lent comes
every year -- to give us an ongoing chance to catch up with our religious faith. It's not easy to live one's life intentionally: to know what your highest, even ultimate, priorities are, and to keep yourself focused on the attainment of those aspirations. Most of us, I think, just tend to muddle through about 80% of the time; I know this is true for me, and I suspect it is true for many of you as well. The time management experts tell us that the the real secret of gaining control of our time and our lives is daily attention to our lifetime goals, along with a comprehensive list of things to do. The human potential folks tell us that through mindfulness and conscientious attentiveness to the innocent voice of our inner child, we can achieve self-fulfillment and self-actualization; and if that seems like too tall an order, you can always attend one of those real estate seminars where they promise to show you how to achieve positive cash flow with no money down simply by faithfully reading the classified ads. But if a little intentionality is all one really needs to achieve success in these sorts of endeavors, just think what it can do for the quality of one's spiritual life. And Lent is the period set aside to cultivate this intentionality: to grow in one's faith through a period of self-discipline, to gain greater knowledge of the truth within ourselves.
I don't know whether or not my sixth grade friend Brian ever got over his hatred of macaroni and cheese. I kinda like to think that once he was out on his own, and started eating whatever he liked on Friday nights, that he eventually became nostaligic for the wholesome, nourishing food of his childhood. But I do know that the lessons I learned as a teenager in solitude and self-discipline, in sacrifice and self-denial, have made me into a better person as an adult, and as a grown-up parish minister. And I am especially reminded of them during this season of renewal, when all of nature seems poised on the threshold of something new and remarkable, and we wait, in awestruck silence, for its arrival.
posted by The Eclectic Cleric at 2:33 PM
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