Sermon 081228

Sermon 12/28/08

On Spiritual Responsibility
by Tom Lawson
Dedicated to my daughter Cathy on her birthday, December 30, 2008

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower. The Word was the true light that enlightens all men; and he was coming into the world. He was in the world that had its being through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him, but to all who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to all who believe in the name of him who was born not out of human stock or urge of the flesh of will of man but of God himself. The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1-5, 9-14 (Jerusalem Bible)

The scripture reading you heard actually falls in the lectionary for the Second Sunday after Christmas, but I am giving it to you now. How could I not give it to you now for, you see, it is the epitome of the Good News. My familiarity with it goes back many years, and I still labor to appreciate its true significance. In December of 1964 the youth group of Bayshore Community Congregational Church spent an afternoon going door to door passing out pocket-sized copies of the Gospel of John. Who made the decision for us to engage in this exercise of evangelism is unclear to me now. I do know that we were not primarily there to attract new members, or even to get people to attend a worship service (though we would have liked them to do both). We only wished give out these gospels without condition, to expose people to the Good News of the Christmas season, to read it for themselves and let the eloquence of its message do the rest. For this is not at its heart an historical gospel—it is far more than that. It does for us what history alone cannot do: it is the spiritual truth which lies behind history.

What is it we have just heard? What is this Word, this Logos? It is the key to the incarnation, the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, it is the key to creation. It enables us to see all history, and our own lives, in the light of the divine. Let us start with the beginning. Can you imagine a still point, an origin, an “uncreated” state behind all that is, before anything existed? Then, can you imagine that in this potentiality lay the divine root of all created life, undistinguished from the Divine Person we perceive and name as God? And then, can you imagine this fullness of potentiality, this Word breaking forth into existence? What we now know is that this occurred at an actual point in history. Scientists have named it the Big Bang, and the creation of the universe echoed with this primordial sound. And the sound is something that we, and people in many religious cultures have said and heard for millennia. In Hinduism, the Word is the sacred syllable Aum (Om), which appears in Judeo-Christian form as Amen, in Tibetan as Hum and in Islam as Amin. Here is the fascinating scientific account. In 2000 a team of researchers led by Andrew Lange of the California Institute of Technology published the most detailed analysis yet of “the cosmos’s primordial song: a low hum, deep in the throat, that preceded both atoms and stars. It is a simple sound, like the mantra ‘Om.’ But hidden within its harmonics are details of the universe’s shape, composition, and birth.” ¹ The scientists reconstructed through computer analysis a graphic depiction of this sound, where nothing existed but pure light (remember “Let there be light” from the Genesis account) with subatomic particles sloshing around in and out of gravity wells. As it was compressed it set up sound waves that Cosmologist Charles Lineweaver calls “the oldest music in the universe.” The process continued and the particles joined each other to form atoms, stars, plants, animals and people.

So there is our creation story, but the process does not stop here. The writer of the Gospel of John, and I, believe that the natural progression of the Word could not stop short of its full awakening in human consciousness, as “The Word was made flesh.” Otherwise it would remain only an abstract concept. And so, the culmination of the story of creation is about spiritual agency, not just philosophy. And this, like the creation of the universe, is a universal, observable phenomenon. We rely upon Christ as the full expression of this truth, but spiritual traditions in all times and places have stressed the importance of the guru, the avatar, the bodhisattva. It all comes down to grace poured out in human form on our behalf, and in our identification with the Truth incarnate in that human vessel, that form. No intellectualizing, no philosophizing, no amassing of knowledge, however wonderful that may be, can do this for us. It is, purely and simply, a gift that must simply be received.

This grace physically lived among us in the person of Jesus. It is the reason we gather here. Furthermore, it does not depend on us or anything we must do, otherwise it would not be grace. Still, there are ways in which we may prepare ourselves to receive it. I would like to devote the second part of this message to a consideration of our spiritual responsibility—how we respond to this great gift.

First is the development of the habit of times of spiritual devotion. Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism are full of accounts of those who seek a silent hermitage in the great monastic tradition. For Judaism the Sabbath is revered, and for those of us who are not able to get ourselves to the monastery, so should we. While this could be (and in orthodox communities is) an actual day, the heart of the idea is to allow time—any time we can—for pure reflection and renewal. It is more than relaxation—it is the chance to once again refill ourselves with that divine energy, realization and purpose. There is so much of our modern culture we can frankly do without. Meditation involves the conscious withdrawal of attention from the external and the focusing on breath. It is as simple as that, and all of us can do it. It is a conscious choice. But meditation alone can be a selfish pursuit. Is my incense the right fragrance? Am I relaxed enough? Am I eating the right macrobiotic diet? Is the picture of my guru hanging straight? How’s my lotus position on the mat? Is my robe caught in my butt?

I would like to propose a second and more inclusive approach, a way in which there is the potential to transform ourselves both in times of tranquility and action. It comes down to this: we must lessen the footprint of our ego upon life, just as governments, companies and individuals are trying to lessen the carbon footprint upon the environment. We must get ourselves out of the way. It is the unchecked play of this ego which accounts for much of our international distress and is wreaking havoc with our lives, our health, our relationships and our fortunes. In the October 11-17 edition of The Economist was a telling letter, and I would like to read it to you, because it talks about what is affecting us all:

“Many of the mathematical models used in banking were created by scientifically skilled young people who were lured into the banking industry because they could not get those kinds of salaries (and prestige) in research laboratories. Banks have taken much of the cream of the scientific talent in America and Europe, and to what end? The rush to increase profits has come to naught and in many cases led to financial disaster. Imagine what those young people could have done if they had chosen careers in science and medicine. What innovations might have resulted? What breakthroughs might have been achieved? Instead they were used to create a false financial system that is ruinous for our countries.”²

Another letter in the same issue argued in favor of salary caps for chief executives, even though it might cause some to look elsewhere for a position. It stated that chasing the “talent” (if that’s what you call it) away from the financial sector might actually yield a net benefit.

So what is this scripture telling us to do? The reading for today, along with numerous other Bible references refer to Children of God, and Jesus told us as much: the childlike state is truly the key to the Kingdom. Deep down inside we all know what that is: a recovery of innocence, openness, wonder, honesty in our actions and reactions, trust, humility, playfulness, a soft and free-flowing life presence.

The best analysis of the problem that faces us may come from Buddhist philosophy, which dealt with the condition of the ego centuries before Freud. It is worth describing here, and actually offers us a much more effective solution, as most of what you get from Freudianism as it is practiced only amounts to blaming mommy. Buddhism describes the ego as a five-step process. Imagine it as if we were peeling back the layers of an onion. The first is the birth of the ego, called the basic ignorance. There is an abstract paranoia, “Suppose I find that there is no solid me.” It scares us, it upsets us, it threatens us. The second step, as a response to the first, is to try to busy ourselves, to project our sense of self. This is feeling. Third, this arouses our impulses, which are guided by our perception. They are indifference, passion and aggression, depending on what is happening at the moment. Indifference builds a wall to numb sensitive areas we wish to avoid. Passion comes from a feeling of poverty, of lack, where we reach out our tentacles and attempt to hold onto something, to accumulate more and more. This causes us to run faster and faster, bumping into people and things, which is aggression. Now we have amassed a great collection of these impulses, and we categorize them, filing them away so we can use them when needed. This is the fourth step, called “intellect” or “concept.” Fifth and final is our consciousness, full of all of this, haunted by emotions and thought patterns, where the ego’s army is constantly in motion, constantly busy.³
There is an immense wall which lies within all of us, and for our spiritual survival we must tear it down. It is the only way to be at one with our true selves, our Lord and the source of creation. But the wall we have built is huge and we can only do it brick by brick. How do we begin? By humbling ourselves, by lessening our demands, by giving to others more needy than ourselves, by immersing ourselves in great causes, by living completely surrounded by life with ethical content, living in the ethical mysticism of Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life as we seek to honor and exist cooperatively and helpfully with all beings, as he said: “I am the life which wills to live in the midst of life, which wills to live.”⁴
We must also tear down the walls that exist between us. I recently found this on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup, proving that you actually can achieve enlightenment at Starbucks. It was written by Tibetan Losang Rabgey: “My cousin in Tibet is an illiterate subsistence farmer. By accident of birth, I was raised in the West and have a Ph.D. The task of our generation is to cut through the illusion that we inhabit separate worlds. Only then will we find the heart to rise to the daunting but urgent challenges of global disparity.”

We are told by St. Paul to present our bodies (and by extension, our consciousness) as a living sacrifice.⁵ Sacrificial living is the only answer. We must give in order to get. This, then is spiritual responsibility, a method by which the Logos, the Word, Aum, the great Amen may live continually with us and in us, and we may be at one with the source from which we all have come, and to which Jesus bids us return. It requires no less than an emptying of ourselves, and what greater gift could the Christ child deserve or want?

¹ K.C. Cole. Mind over Matter: Conversations with the Cosmos. New York: Harcourt, 2003

² James Mitchell, Professor of physics, University of Rennes, letter to The Economist, October 11-17, 2008

³ Described by Chogyam Trungpa in The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation. Boston and London: Shambhala, 1988, Pp. 19-23

⁴ Albert Schweitzer. The Philosophy of Civilization. New York: MacMillan and Company, p. 309

⁵Romans 12:1-2

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