"What I Meant To Say" - Retirement Sermon of Rev. Barbara Merritt

“What I Meant to Say
Retirement Sermon by Rev. Barbara Merritt
May 23, 2010


COMMON PRAYER


Where I wander – You!
Where I wonder –You!
Only You,
You again,
You always.
You, You, You.
When I am joyful – You!
When I am sad – You!
Only You, everywhere You!
The Sky is You!
The Earth is You!
You above!
You below!
In the beginning,
at every end,
Only You
You again,
You always!
You.

- Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchov
(1740 - 1810)


FIRST READING
Micah 6, 8
What does the Lord require of thee
but to do justly
to love mercy
and to walk humbly
with thy God.

Matthew 22: 36-39

Master , which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.



SECOND READING
from “Imperfect Birds” by Anne Lamott

“Each has to enter the nest made by the other imperfect bird.” -Rumi

“Elizabeth (speaking to Rae, her best friend,) ‘Life on earth is a head-scratcher for anyone who’s paying attention. This place has been a bad match for me since I was four. It has been a life wasted in a ping-pong game of narcissism versus self-loathing, punctuated by sloth and depression. What are we supposed to do?’

Ray replied, ‘You stop pretending life is such fun or makes sense. It’s often messy and cruel and dull, and we do the best we can. It’s unfair, and jerks seem to win. But you fall in love with a few people. Like I love you, Elizabeth. You’re the angel God sent me.’

Elizabeth thought this was ludicrous; there was no one less angelic. She used to protest, ‘But I’m so erratic and depressed.’

Rae answered, ‘Hey, I like that in a girl. Look, if you don’t have a bad attitude and lots of things wrong with you, no serious person is going to be interested. If you feel scared, outraged, confused most of the time, come on over. Have a seat.’

We’re all afraid of the same stuff. Mostly we’re afraid that we’re secretly not okay, that we’re disgusting, or frauds, or about to be diagnosed with cancer. . .

There is wilderness inside you, and a banquet. Both. . .

Most of ‘life’ is just people faking it, trying to stay busy so they feel important and not afraid of their shadows. But my friends and I know that this busyness is like collecting Franklin Mint plates. You have to fight for meaning in you life, for truth and goodness and authenticity.”


from “Commencement Address” by Anne Lamott

“How are you going to spend this one, odd and precious life you have been issued? Are you going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances?

I want to tell you that what you’re looking for is already inside you. You can’t buy it, lease it, rent it, date it or apply for it. The best job in the world can’t give it to you. Neither can success, or fame, or financial security — besides which, there ain’t no such thing. J. D. Rockefeller was asked, ‘How much money is enough?’ and he said, ‘Just little bit more.’

Like Breaker Morant said, ‘You have to live every day as if it’s your last, because one of these days, you’re bound to be right.’ When you think you’ve finally got your ducks lined up, they turn and peck you to death. You imagined how life and time were a conveyor belt moving you along, and the blessing came when you realized it wasn’t your conveyor belt. And that no matter how protected and noble you felt, how much in control, we were all being conveyed, all the time, borne astride the Möbious strip of time.

I know you can feel the spirit and hear it in the music you love, in the bass line, in the harmonies, in the silence between notes; in Chopin and Eminem, Emmylou Harris, Bach, whoever. You can close your eyes and feel the divine spark, concentrated in you, like a little Dr. Seuss firefly. It flickers with aliveness and relief. . . In the Christian tradition, they say that the soul rejoices in hearing what it already knows.

We can see spirit made visible in people being kind to each other, especially when it’s a really busy person, taking care of a needy and annoying person.

We’re all yearning for something, for connection and meaning and peace of mind and a sense that life sort of makes sense and that love is real and powerful and that we are good people. Everyone is on God’s payroll, whether they know it or not. Everyone is part of God’s scheme, having been assigned to either help you, or drive you crazy enough so you give up your own bad plans and surrender to God’s loving ways.

Sermon
“What I Meant to Say” by Rev. Barbara Merritt

The Rev. Mike Scroggins, of blessed memory, a former minister at First Baptist in Worcester, used to say to me: “Every sermon is a different kind of failure.” Why? Because the preacher is trying to capture what is what is ineffable, trying to describe what is undescribable, pointing in the direction of hope and truth and reality, but knowing those more as an ideal, than as a constant experience. And it’s not as if the ground under our feet ever stays the same for more than a minute and a half.

I love Anne Lamott’s descriptions of how complicated we are. Inside of us? — a wilderness and a feast. And outside? — our personalities are all over the map. We are erratic,; we get depressed and distracted, and are often too busy collecting Franklin Mint Plates (and other prized possessions.) We can be tender and thoughtful and generous one moment and then soon afterwards, selfish and hard-hearted and judgmental.

Welcome to the First Unitarian Church. Full of people just like you and me: scared, gifted, confused, sometimes angels — sometimes anything but. Negotiating complicated relationships in a complicated world. Having inherited many imperfect nests from those who came before us. And leaving imperfect nests to those who come after us.

Upon the occasion of my retirement sermon (kind of like the terminal dive of a whale) what I’d like to be able to say is: “Job well done! Mission accomplished! My, haven’t we whipped this religious institution into shape!” And we have done a great deal together since I arrived at the tender age of 34 in 1983.
.

* We have gone from being one of the weakest churches in downtown Worcester, to being one of the strongest.

* The talents and gifts of this congregation have been used to bring some grace and healing to a broken world. We have welcomed the homeless and fed the hungry, and visited the sick and cared for those in grief. Not enough, never enough, but we have been of service.

* And together, we have created some beauty. We have been good stewards of this magnificent building. Will and the choir have created moments of exquisite beauty with their music. There is now beauty in the garden outside and in the Sunday School. We took the bricks out of the windows in the Chapel. You knit prayer shawls for the homebound. We marshalled the resources to rebuild after the fire. We have collectively put our shoulders to the wheel and have had the great privilege of bringing some beauty into the world.

We have done a lot of things right.

But me (being me,) I can’t help but also focusing on how often we have gotten lost, how we have missed the mark, how we have failed to reach our goals or to be for one another what we are called to be.

* We have tried and failed to be able to sustain the model of having two ministers.

* We have not grown to be the 600 member congregation that Worcester needs, and that this huge building requires to sustain itself.

* And of even greater concern to me, we haven’t always given our hearts to one another. I’m pretty sure that we haven’t given all the love that we could have given. And I’m very sure we haven’t been receiving all the love that is available. At least I haven’t.

Ted Loder, an eloquent Methodist minister, quotes Henri Nouwen, one of my favorite Catholic writers.

Henri Nouwen said: “The most difficult thing of all is learning to be loved.” Why is it so hard to learn? I suppose love is what we long for most. And yet . . . we proud ones resist. Why?

We resist because love is always a gift. It’s nothing we earn, nothing we deserve, nothing we can force, control, win—all those ways, all those things that pride insists we have to do. Earning, deserving is what we’re conditioned to do. Gifts are hard for us. Rewards, we’re better at. And yet . . . love is always a gift. Some person’s love for us. God’s love for us all. The only way to have it is to accept it. Simple and hard, as that.

Every Sunday, I say it. “This is the day the Lord has made.” But do I believe it? As Loder writes:

It isn’t our day at all, except as a gift. It is really God’s day. Ultimately God is in charge of it and every day, and of what happens in them, or to us, or to anyone.”

In Richard Jones’ hymn we sang this morning, he wrote: “We were born this love to know.” I believe this is why we are here on earth! To learn about love. How to give it — how to receive it.

Over the years, I have been urging you to open your hearts to love — to increase your capacity to love and to be loved. I hope you’ll remember very basic themes which I have returned to, over and over again: courage and trust, humility and gratitude, persistence and self-acceptance, and the endless striving upwards towards God — towards truth — towards joy.

I have urged you to adopt these virtues because of my own continued failure to remember them: I constantly forget the love and the truth and the guidance I have received. So we try. We fail. We get up again. We fall down again. Worship is what we do in the midst of the struggle. Singing our songs of praise in the midst of our confusion and bad attitude and discouragement. As Leonard Cohen put it so poignantly: “Even though it’s all gone wrong. I’ll stand before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my lips but alleluia.”

Choir: “Broken Hallelujah”

Alleluia (broken though it may be) is to be sung now and always — in the best of times and in the worst of times. With our songs of praise we acknowledge the fact that we have been given gifts — real gifts — sustaining gifts — gifts beyond our imagining. As one family taught me, “We have been given everything that we need, and more than we know.”

I have adopted a new custom with the couples that I am marrying. I have them turn around in the middle of their wedding ceremony and actually look at the smiling faces of those who have gathered — who share in their happiness — who have come to bless their union.

Today, I ask you to participate in that same exercise. Look around you. (Now!) Look at the ones God has given to you to share this spiritual journey! Open your hearts! Try to take in the enormity of the talents and the capacities, and the bad attitudes, and brilliance, and the dumb mistakes, and the hilarious and life-giving humor that is assembled in the sanctuary right now. What a blessing! What a gift! You are a wealthy, wealthy congregation, and I’m not talking about what’s in your bank accounts. You have everything you need to go forward. You have been given more than you know — from generations past. And the stranger who will come through the door next Sunday, will be bringing gifts that are essential to your spiritual progress. (As Anne Lamott puts it, some of the people will be so annoying that they will drive you straight into God’s arms.)

As wonderful as you are as a congregation, and as much as you have allowed me to share, and as much as you have opened your hearts to me and to Tom and to one another — I haven’t been as clear as I have wanted to be. Sometimes, I haven’t said what I believed out of sheer cowardice; afraid of being misunderstood or simply fear of disapproval. Sometimes I have not wanted you to know just how much I struggle. Mostly, vulnerability doesn’t come easily to me. So this is my last chance, and I’m going for broke.

There are a few things I want to say now. They are personal. I hold them dearly. (This being a Unitarian Church, feel free to disagree.)

The first is that I personally believe that if you want to make real, interior, spiritual progress (so that you don’t have faith in God, but you experience the kingdom of God within you) then you will need a spiritual teacher. Not a minister, not a therapist, but a spiritual master who is enlightened himself or herself.

I have always had a spiritual teacher in India, and he gets credit for virtually everything I know about the life of the spirit. His light, his wisdom, his strength have accompanied me on every step of my ministry.

When Thomas Merton, the Trappist Monk, was asked what had impressed him most in his travels, he said: “Oh, it was India. What struck me (and what I think we have to learn from India) is the importance of the guru, the master, the spiritual master.” He added, “This is something we have lost in our Catholic tradition, and we have to return to it.” I doubt very much that having a spiritual teacher will ever be a part of Unitarian Universalism, but it is my personal belief that if you spend your whole life searching for a spiritual leader, (who can show you how to experience God within yourself) it is a life well spent.

When St. Augustine said, “My heart will be restless until it rests in Thee” I believe he was speaking on behalf of all spiritual seekers. There is a journey we are invited to take, and we do not take it alone.

Which brings me to the second thing I never told explicitly. And that was how often I have wanted to run away. Especially in May, every May, when I was exhausted and had no more sermons left in me, I would patiently explain to my husband, Jeffrey, that I was quitting the ministry — 34 speeches, in various months, that Jeffrey listened to patiently and sympathetically, and then he quietly talked me off the ledge. Jeffrey also listened to three (count them, three) letters of resignation I wrote to this congregation at moments of great frustration, supreme annoyance and sheer orneriness. Again, he listened, he sympathized and he helped me to see that while they were good letters to write, they were not good letters to send.

When I get mad, or sad, or discouraged my first impulse is to run away. I first ran away from home when I was four years old. I quit school in the second grade. My psychoanalyst calls me an “emotional fundamentalist.” Translation: “If I’m feeling it, it must be true!”

I have never really shared with you how much my ministry has rested on Jeffrey’s strength. He has been my rock. He is a lot more stable than I could ever be. I have not sung his praises from the pulpit, because I have observed that ministers who go “on and on” about what a wonderful marriage they have with their spouse, usually get divorced. But you need to know now that the person most responsible for my being able to spend a whole lifetime in this ministry is Jeffrey. Please thank him after the service if you’re glad I stayed for 26+ years. (Conversely, if you wish I’d left earlier, you can say with a sneer, “Thanks a lot!”

I haven’t done this ministry alone. I have been assisted at every turn with the love and grace and encouragement of friends and family, colleagues and parishioners, and sometimes by miraculous divine intervention.

Because, you see, I, like you, don’t know what I should be doing. Only in taking refuge, taking shelter with a love powerful enough to carry us, can we hope to make it through this day, let alone the uncertain times ahead.

Choir: Prayer of Unknowing

“Give me the strength and the wisdom
to be glad for what you have given me,
and for where you keep me.”

Which brings me to the final thing I have never really told you before. What you have meant to me, as a congregation. Some of you have told me, with enormous graciousness of spirit, that I have meant something to you — for which I am grateful, humbled and, of course, somewhat surprised. ( I am always surprised by compliments. . . and weirdly obsessed and fascinated and oddly comforted by criticism — go figure.)

But I haven’t told you what the First Unitarian Church means to me.

Everything:

You are the first real home I’ve ever had.

And you have been like family to me.

You have inspired me.

You have provided a caring community in which to raise our wonderful children, Robert and David.

You gave me a job that was endlessly challenging, never boring.

And you paid me to read Dante, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis and Frederick Buchner; Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Dostoevsky, Emerson and Emily Dickinson and Annie Dillard and Anne Lamott. I’ve been so lucky!

You were my window into what loving families looked like. You showed me what it meant to not run away. To build together. To stay open and engaged and curious.

I have experienced your forgiveness, your forbearance and your unbelievable kindness.

You have valued my gifts, learned to live with my limitations and encouraged my risk-taking and enthusiasms. You have found ways to accommodate my impatience, my insecurity and my being an introvert.

Here, in this parish, I have gotten to know and to be blessed by an enormous range of people. People from every generation and of every “stripe”; people who, outside of an inclusive Unitarian community, I never would have gotten to have a meaningful conversation with.

And here is the secret. You offer these gifts not just to your ministers. Everyone who walks through these doors has a place at this table, and is invited to the feast.

We made it to this day together. We have held hands through death and illness, and fire and flood. We’ve cried together (a lot) — but laughed together even more.

Shakespeare said that, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” But right now I can’t figure out what is so sweet about it. This saying “good-by” is much more difficult than I imagined it would be. It is overwhelming. It is breaking my heart. It is beyond my own strength.

Which is why I need help through the storm of change — through the darkness of my own incapacity to see the way forward. We all need to be reminded that we are held, we are accompanied and we will find our way home

Choir: “Precious Lord”

I want to leave you with a Hassidic story called “Without a Doubt.” (from Hassidic Tales: translated by Rabbi Rami Shapiro.

His congregation asked their Rabbi if he were certain that he was assured a place in the World to Come.

“Absolutely,” the Rebbe replied without hesitation.

“And how, Rebbe, can you be so certain?”

“When we die in the world, we go before the heavenly court in the World Above. Standing before the divine court, we are asked certain questions. Answer these properly and you will go to the World to Come.”

“And you know these questions, Rebbe?” the students asked.

“Yes.”

“And you know the answers?”

“Yes.”

“And will you share them with us?”

“The questions are the same for all of us. Your answers must be your own. Yet, I will tell you just what I’ll tell them. They will ask: Rebbe, did you study Torah to the best of your ability; did you do your spiritual practice?’ And I will answer honestly: ‘No.’ They will then ask: ‘Rebbe, did you fully surrender to God in worship?’ And I will answer honestly: ‘No.’ They will then ask me: ‘Rebbe, did you do the mitzvos and good deeds you could do while alive?’ And I will answer honestly: ‘No.’ And then they will say: ‘If so, then you are telling us the truth, and for that alone are you welcome into the World to Come.’”

Our covenant (in this church) is all about truth. A truth that walks with us now and always. Not an easy journey (which is a shame, because I like easy) but a journey worth every bit of our heart, mind and soul.

A Unitarian woman, Julia Ward Howe, wrote a hymn about the Civil War. For me the song is about the battle of human existence — the one that the Bhagavad Gita describes, the battle between what is best in the human spirit (that moves us in the direction of love) and what is worst (our fear, our selfishness and our conviction that we are separate and alone.) It is a battle between hope and despair, between running away and staying engaged. Between what is eternal and what is transitory Through it all, even when it all seems right, even when it all seems wrong, ttruth is with us, holds us up and promises the ultimate victory — the victory of joy.

Congregation: “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”