"Peacemaking and Justice Building in a Time of Anxiety"
by the Rev. Krista Taves
December 10, 2006
Reading - Tich Nhat Hanh
We are aware that all generations of our ancestors and all future generations are present in us.
We are aware of the expectations that our ancestors, our children, and their children have of us.
We are aware that our joy, peace, freedom, and harmony are the joy, peace, freedom, and harmony of our ancestors, our children, and their children.
We are aware that understanding is the very foundation of love.
We are aware that blaming and arguing never help us and only create a wider gap between us, that only understanding, trust, and love can help us change and grow.
Sermon
Each of the holidays we are going to celebrate in the next two weeks – Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, and Christmas – emerged in the context of some harshness or difficulty, whether natural or human. Winter Solstice developed in the ancient pagan tradition as a response to the disappearing sun. Before the dawn of scientific knowledge and the comforting warmth of electricity and natural gas, this was a frightening and dismal time. The Solstice rituals were practiced with a desperate hope that they would make the light return. Hanukkah emerged out of political turmoil. 2300 years ago, the Israelites were overtaken by the Greek Empire and faced religious and cultural extinction. The battle for their freedom was fierce, the odds were against them, and even when victory was won, it was fragile with no guarantee of permanence. When Jesus was born, again, Israel was in political turmoil, this time at the hands of the Roman Empire. Political repression, harsh taxation, and cruel punishment for resistance were everyday facts of life. Many hoped for a Messiah that would save them from this cruel predicament.
I think that every generation believes it is experiencing the tension and turmoil of changing times in keenly new ways. There is something about us, especially in our fast paced globalizing world, that wants to believe that the challenges we face are new and unprecedented. And yet history shows us that there has been no age without pain, without tension, without tyranny, and without those who would create a black and white understanding of the world.
So it is with our times, and in regards to the issue we are focused on today - the issue of stem-cell research. This issue is but one of many lightning rods for the cultural, social and religious tensions of our time. This issue has divided our state, this country, it has pitted church against church, urban against rural, neighbor against neighbor, politician against politician, scientist against scientist.
In the last election, two sides were pitted one against the other. For one, stem cell research is about cloning human life only to kill it. It is about the murder of an unborn human being at the earliest stages of life. For the other, stem cell research is about the pursuit of healing. It is about using the internal workings of the human body to heal diseases like Lou Gerigs Disease, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, and juvenile diabetes. In the mid-term elections, Missouri was the one state with a Constitutional Amendment to protect and fund Stem Cell Research on the ballot, and the eyes of the nation looked to us as a litmus test of what might be possible around the country. Supporters of stem cell research hoped that a victory in conservative Missouri would send a message that stem cell research will not be stymied by pro-life extremists. Those who oppose stem-cell research hoped that a defeat of the Amendment would increase the political pressure to ban stem cell research entirely.
Now as we know, the amendment did pass narrowly. The state of Missouri now protects and can publicly fund stem cell research. You can probably tell from the readings I chose that I am particularly pleased with that. And judging from the signs I saw in many of your front yards and the bumper stickers in the church parking lot, many of you are too. Although I am certain that there is a diversity of opinion in this congregation.
As I prepared this sermon, I have been wondering what my approach to this subject should be. Should this be a factual debunking of the arguments against stem cell research, a sermon meant to please those of who you agree with me and convince those of you who don’t? It would be very easy for me to turn this into a fierce pulpit pounding sermon extolling lofty values and solid arguments for my side and ending with an urgent demand for action to protect our recent victory! And why shouldn’t I do that? This is, after all, a free pulpit, and that means I can speak my mind, and as you know, I often do. But the free pulpit is not a free for all. Anyone who stands here is called to use their freedom in a responsible way, always holding in the forefront those who sit in the free pew before them. We use our free pulpit to serve the free pew. That is our priority. Our fourth principle calls us to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and it is this principle that informs the free pulpit and the free pew.
What do we need to hear and to ponder so that we may grow in our faith and move closer to a state of wholeness? I do not think that the best way to approach that growth edge is to pull apart the arguments for and against stem cell research. There is more than enough factual information available for you to dig around this topic yourself. What I am more concerned about is what lies behind the furor over stem cell research. It has become, as so many other politically charged issues, a wedge issue meant to divide us. This practice of using wedge issues to play us off against each other has damaged all of us, regardless of what side we are on. It has torn neighbor from neighbor, brother from sister, parent from child and I am so tired of that game. This divisive approach has been used by social conservatives to demonize those with more liberal understandings of society, and to motivate a conservative base through fear and anger. When we respond to this kind of divisive politics by becoming rigid and hardened and ourselves motivated by fear and anger, it has worked. But just because the approach worked, doesn’t mean that anyone wins, not even the social conservatives, because in those places of rigidity and anger, we cannot be at peace within ourselves, nor are we in right relationship with one another, and when that is the case, we are all damaged. And we all lose.
One of the consequences of this politics of division is that we liberals, especially in places like the conservative mid-west, have become afraid to be openly liberal. I have spoken to some of you who have told me that you don’t talk to your neighbors about what you really believe, fearing that it will isolate you in your community. I have spoken to many of our parents and you tell me of your concerns for your children in school, surrounded by friends who go to churches who use that win/lose, black and white approach to the world. You want to impart your values to your children, and you also don’t want them to be alienated from their peers. I have spoken to our youth, and you have told me that it’s hard to speak about what you believe in school and with your friends. You may be asking how you can be true to yourself and still fit in and have good friends in that kind of environment. I wonder if that struggle is part of the reason that you asked me to preach about this subject.
I think the stem cell issue, as all wedge issues, calls us not only to examine our position on the issue itself. The bigger question is: how we are to engage the world around us when faced with division and discord that so easily brings out the worst in us. Wedge issues are designed to increase anxiety and to create a distinct sense of there being a clear enemy. They are not designed to help us see people as whole and complex, but rather to identify them and determine their worth only by their position for or against a particular issue, like gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research. What we are called to do as religious people is to discern how we are to act as moral agents, makers of peace, and builders of justice in a time of division. This, I think, is the deeper spiritual issue. (pause)
In our second reading this morning, Tich Nhat Hanh tells us that “We are aware that all generations of our ancestors and all future generations are present in us.” He goes on to say, “We are aware of the expectations that our ancestors, our children, and their children have of us.” Are we aware? I actually think we are because we have times like this holiday season to remind us. Their expectations of us are embedded in the holy days of this time of year. In each lies a gift that helps us to be true healers of the spirit when faced with discord and division.
Winter Solstice offers us the lesson of patience and perspective. The ancient pagans, deep down, knew that life was a cycle, and that the darkness would come every year, and that in time, it would recede. Those Winter Solstice Rituals calling back the sun became not about fear and desperation, but about a calm certainty that the light would return. In this cycle of light and dark, is eternal hope. If we can keep that larger perspective, if we can see what is happening as part of a cycle, then perhaps we can feel some measure of comfort and hope that things will change and that our children may inherit a very different society than the one that we live in now. The cycle of life calls us to be patient and trusting. It calls us to a generosity of spirit and it asks us to cultivate hope. Because life is a cycle, what we see before us need not always be. It can be different, we just can’t see it right now.
Hanukkah offers a different lesson. The Jews were in no position to wait for the pendulum to swing in their direction. Their religion and language was being systematically destroyed, their children forcibly re-educated, their religious leaders silenced, their political leaders brutally repressed. And so they put everything on the line and fought fiercely. There is a time to draw a line in the sand and say this is enough. This is who we are and this is what we believe. We are not standing for this anymore. Something has to change and we are going to do something to make sure that it does. Just because those wedge issues are dividing us, doesn’t mean we simply back away and let the cycle take its course. When people are being damaged, when our rights and our freedoms are being threatened, silence is not the answer.
And then there is the lesson of Christmas. At the time that Jesus was born, the people were desperately waiting for a savior, one person who would rise up against their Roman oppressors and free them. What they got was a baby, born to poor people, who grew up into a humble man and thwarted every attempt to turn him into a militaristic nationalistic hero. He avoided being narrowly defined. He talked more about helping the poor and marginalized than anything else. He sat with the weak and the mighty alike, judged when he felt it appropriate, forgave always, and was a master at taking simple situations and opening them up for their universal truths. What held him solid was unconditional love. Even as he railed against his enemies, he never stopped loving, even forgiving those who would kill him.
These holidays, Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, and Christmas, offer us three lessons: Keeping the larger perspective. Taking a stand. Practicing unconditional love. Put together, they are a powerful way to live, they are a powerful way to respond to the anxieties of our time. When faced with issues that fill you with anxiety, find a way to gain perspective, so that you will not act rashly, and so that you can reconnect to hope. When faced with enemies that seem to represent the opposite of what you consider sacred and true, love them, for they are more than their actions, and they are pursuing what they consider to be right and true. When you can keep that larger perspective, and when you can hold that peace and love in your heart, then you will be strengthened to take a stand, knowing that your actions come not from a base of anger and fear, but rather from a firm conviction to serve the common good.
There is no doubt that the issue of stem cell research is not going away. At least not in the near future. There is no doubt that other issues will arise, issues that will pull us back into that anxiety and fear and into a place where we will feel the need to identify a clear enemy. We will be tempted to value people solely based on a single issue, whether that be right here in this church, in our families, at work and school, or out in society. And when we are in those times, we have choices. There will be times when we will be called upon to be patient, to trust, to allow things to unfold in their own time. At these times, hold onto the lesson of Winter Solstice. There will be times when we will be called upon to stand up and be counted for what we believe, and to act on our beliefs. At these times, hold onto the lesson of Hanukkah. And there will be times when we are called to radically disengage from our preconceived notions of people, and ideas, and issues, to disengage from our need for power, and simply to love. At these times, hold onto the lesson of Christmas. And there will be times when we are called upon to do all three at once, to act passionately, to trust the process, and always, always, to love.
As we move deeper into this powerful holiday season, let us hold onto these truths, testing them in our minds, and finding a home for them in our hearts.
Amen and blessed be.
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Send Questions or Comments to Rev. Taves: Minister@EmersonUUChapel.org
Updated: 12/14/06