Faithfulness

A Sermon by

Rev. Robert M. Hardies

All Souls Church, Unitarian

Washington, D.C.

Sunday, 24 January 2010

Our first reading this morning is a responsive reading which I invite you to join me in. If you’ll turn to number 461 in the back of your hymnal, and why don’t we rise as we are able and join in this together. I’ll read the plain text and invite you to join in the italicized text. This is a reading from the great 20^th Century theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr.

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime;

Therefore, we are saved by hope.

Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;

Therefore, we are saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;

Therefore, we are saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;

Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

Amen.

And just a brief second reading to share as well. This, from the Book of Hebrews, Chapter 12, Verse 1:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

Some of my favorite religious stories come from the Hasidic tradition of Judaism. They tend to be quirky tales, passed down through generations of rabbinic storytelling. One story that I like and that some of you may have heard me tell before, is about a rabbi named Zusya. Now Zusya was a leader in his community, a leader among his people, and much beloved for that matter, yet Zusya never quite felt satisfied by his accomplishments. He always felt as though his leadership was falling short, until one day when Zusya came to his followers and said, “My friends, I have had a revelation.” What is it, Rabbi, what have you seen? “In a dream, I have learned the question that the angels will ask me when I come to die.” What is the question, Rabbi? “I discovered that the angels will not ask me, Zusya, why were you not Moses, leading your people out of slavery? And the angels will not ask me, Zusya, why were you not Joshua, leading your people to the promised land?” What will the angels ask you, Rabbi? “In the coming world, the angels will ask me, ‘ Zusya, why were you not Zusya?’”

Seems to me that this is a story about faithfulness, about being true to ourselves. What it says to me is that as people of faith, we are not to measure ourselves by someone else’s definition of success or failure. Instead we are called to be faithful to who we are and to whom God is calling us to be. Faithfulness. It’s easier said than done because there are a lot of people who are trying to tell us who we should be and what we should do. Our parents have a dream of what we might be. Our children might have some feelings about what they’d rather we not be. Our boss wants to tell us to do something. Our spouse may want us to stop doing some things. You know, and the folks from Madison Avenue, with their ads, want to come in and mold us and shape our desires. We must be really important people because so many people want to get their hands on us and tell us what we should do and who we should be. But what Zusya was saying is that in the end that’s not what matters. What matters is that we be true to our best selves, to our highest selves. What matters is that we be faithful.

Now, faithfulness, let me be clear, is not the same as stubbornness. I know some stubborn people. I know some faithful people too. And it’s not the same. Stubbornness often comes, we know, from a rigid, defensive place, a brittle place where we can’t hear what folks have to tell us. Sometimes what our spouse and our boss and what our children and our parents have to say might make us a better person; they might be right. Stubborn people can’t really hear that, can’t really change. Faithfulness, on the other hand, comes from a more open and generous place. A faithful person can be true to herself while still being in authentic relationship with others and receiving the feedback of others. Stubbornness is a stuck place; faithfulness, on the other hand, is all about growing and changing, about growing into what or who we are called to be in the world. It’s about being true.

Now, faithfulness asks a lot of each of us. The first thing that it asks is that if we’re going to be true to ourselves then we need to know who we are. We need to know the values that are at the center of our very being. Zusya needed to pay a little less attention to Moses and to Joshua and to all those other folks and a little more attention to what it meant to be Zusya. And we need to do the same. Because our values serve as a kind of an internal compass for us, or maybe a better metaphor these days, an internal GPS system. When we lose our way, it tells us where to go again. Our values reorient us and show us the path again, when we’ve lost our way.

You can’t be faithful if you’re always putting your finger up to the wind to see which way it’s blowing. Because when there’s a storm around you, let me tell you something, the wind is always blowing in a different direction. Faithful people have a different kind of wind at their backs. The old Latin word for spirit is spiritus, which also means “breath” and also means “wind.” A faithful person has the spirit to guide him. Spirit of life, come unto me; sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind; rise in the sea. Give our lives the shape of justice. Faithfulness means going where that wind will take us. Not the tempest that roils around us, but the still small voice within.

Then, once we’re in touch with that voice, once we have connected with those values inside of us, then faithfulness asks one more thing of us. And that is perseverance, commitment. Like it says in that reading from the Book of Hebrews this morning, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also set aside every burden and let us run with perseverance, the race that is set before us.” Faithfulness is about having the perseverance to run the race that is our lives.

Now notice, it doesn’t say, now let us win the race that is set before us. Just let us run the race. And that’s actually a kind of a counter-cultural move right there. We live in a culture that’s really kind of consumed with success and with winning. We live in a city that’s all about winning, don’t we? You know, every two years, the whole country goes to the polls and they vote for people and the winners come to Washington, D.C. and the losers stay home. Of course, increasingly the losers are coming as well and going to K Street, but that’s another sermon. That’s another sermon.

So, we often get wrapped up in success and in achievement. We’re thinking about meeting our sales targets; we’re thinking about meeting our fund-raising goals. We’re worried if our students are going to get that score on that standardized test that we’ve got to give them next week. One of the things that we learn in trying to be faithful is that we don’t always have control over how things are going to turn out, especially with some of the most important things in life, we are simply not in charge. Faithfulness simply means being true to who we are and running with perseverance the race that is set before us. Mother Theresa was once asked if she ever prayed for the success of her ministry. She said, “I do not pray for success; I ask for faithfulness.” And that’s what we must ask for as well.

Now, this sermon has been percolating inside of me for a long time. But I wasn’t initially going to preach it this Sunday; I was going to talk about something else. But then on Wednesday morning, I stuck my head out the door and I heard a loud sucking sound. And that sucking sound was the leadership vacuum that was taking place across this city in the wake of Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts, a leadership vacuum about one of the most important moral issues that stands before our country today, which is the issue of universal health care. [Applause] I think we stand at a really precarious point in our life as a nation right now, and I fear that we have lost two of the important ingredients of faithfulness – both our moral clarity and our sense of perseverance and commitment.

So let’s just go back to the basics here so that we can be clear about the priorities. According to the 2007 census, remember, as many as 46 million Americans do not have health insurance, whether because they can’t afford it or because they’re sick and someone dropped them. And, lest we think that this is someone else’s problem, let me say it very clearly, that some of those 46 million people without health care are sitting next to you in the pews this morning. This is not someone else’s problem. There are people in our nation who are sick, and maybe they’ve lost a job, and now they have been hung out to dry by the insurance companies and by us as a people. There are others who are sick and who are forced to choose between getting better, getting well, and paying the mortgage or the rent, or feeding their family or sending their kids to school.

Our faith teaches us that the preservation of life and the flourishing of life is of the utmost value. That which sustains life and allows it to flourish is called blessing. That which denigrates life and makes it vulnerable and threatens it is called evil. That’s why I believe that this health care reform really is one of the most important moral challenges facing our country in this generation. And I think that the time is now for our leaders and for we as a people to stand up and say we do have the courage to run the race that is set before us because I fear that we’ve lost that courage this week. So, I don’t know about you but on Wednesday – I think it’s Wednesday – I’m looking for the President of the United States to stand up in his State of the Union and to give the people a map again to where we are going, to raise up again the moral imperative of this issue. To get us out of these petty debates over Cadillac plans and which way Olympia Snowe is going to vote and all these issues that have distracted us from our moral clarity. I think it’s the responsibility of our leaders and I think it’s our responsibility as well to have the courage during this important time.

I once read something by an organizational consultant that has always stuck with me. She said that everything looks like failure when you’re halfway through. Well, it looks pretty bad right now is what I’ve got to say. But that’s exactly the reason that we need to persevere. We need to finish this job, as imperfect as it is, and move forward to embracing all of our fellow citizens in health care for all. The great religious reformer, Martin Luther, is remembered as a paragon of faithfulness. When he was being excommunicated from the church he loved, Martin Luther said, “Here I stand; I can do no more.”

But there’s a story about Martin Luther that perhaps you’ve never heard before, and it’s a story that I was reminded of this week and that has given me some hope and some courage this week. Martin Luther was once asked, if you knew that the world were to end tomorrow, what would you do? Martin Luther said, “I would plant a tree.” I would plant a tree. And that’s what I’m talking about, about faithfulness. When the future looks bleak, when the chips are down, we stand true to who we are and what is precious to us. So therefore, since we are indeed surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, let us all lay aside every burden and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

Amen. [Applause]