"Higher Power: A Theology of Rights"
(Memorial Day)

Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 29^th of May, 2003

Mark Belletini, Minister, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio

Opening words [Next] [back to top]

We are here
under this golden pyramid touched by cloud-filtered silver sun light,
to worship, to celebrate together
our minds and hearts and the glory of life.
We come as we are, not as we might be.
We come in freedom, to welcome the day.

And thus we say together:

And at celebration's end, may our reason and our passion keep us true to ourselves,
true to each other, and true to those shared visions of what we can together become.

World Memorial Prayer [Next] [back to top]

In the city of Yerevan, Mikael Alegezian, age 30, names aloud the names of his great grandparents, who died in the bloody war that distorted the land of Armenia at the beginning of the last century.

In Liege, Belgium, Jean Saint-Jerome, age 45, gazes at the portrait of his great grandparents, who perished over near Maastricht during the First World War.

In Piotrkow, Poland, Julia Czeskowic, age 90, visits the grave of her parents in the village cemetery.

They were civilians, killed during the Second World War when they refused to tell where their neighbors, the Ginzbergs were hiding out.

In Kyoto, Japan, Tetsuji Yamamoto, age 88, looks at the faded black and white photo of his first young wife, Sumiko, who had been visiting her aunt in Nagasaki on that fateful day in August.

In Mt. Sterling, OH, Pete Henderson, age 53, remembers the singular laughter of his red-headed younger brother, which was silenced near Saigon so many decades ago.

A time for memorial, it is, a time for remembering the human loss in human wars, the silence of voices, the bending of hearts forever.

We remember, we do not deny all these things happened, we remember, and join our silence to the silence of those who perished in wars, in skirmishes, in revolutions, in revolts, in assaults, in riots, be they civilians, be they soldiers, be they human beings of any sort who were caught up in the tangle of the years. For all losses are real losses to those whose love has not grown thin and sour. And may all those who live be deepened by their remembering.

(silence)

Having remembered the wars and rumors of wars, may we call to mind now all those especially whom our hearts embrace in love, those who may have been part of our strength and sturdiness through the years.

May we cradle their names in our hearts, or whisper them in the quiet air of this sanctuary.

(naming)

And now we praise you, nameless Source of all life and love, we bless you, laudamus te, benedicimus te. For we are alive to remember, to name, and to love.

First Reading [Next] [back to top] is the poem SKY (1993) by Wislawa Szymborska, the wondrous Nobel Laureate from Crakow, Poland.

I should have begun with this: the sky.

A window minus sill, frame, and panes.

An aperture, nothing more,
but wide open.

But really, I don't have to wait for a starry night,
I don't have to crane my neck
to get a look at it.

I've got the sky behind my back, at hand.

I've got the sky on my eyelids.

The sky binds me tight
and sweeps me off my feet.

Even the highest mountainsare no closer to the sky
than the deepest valleys.

There's no more of it in one place
than another.

A mole is no less in seventh heaven
than the owl spreading her wings.

The object that falls in an abyss
falls from sky to sky.

Grainy, gritty, liquid,
inflamed, or volatile
patches of sky, specks of sky,
gusts and heaps of sky.

The sky is everywhere,
even in the dark beneath your skin.

I eat the sky, I excrete the sky.

I'm a trap within a trap,
an inhabited inhabitant,
an embrace embraced,
a question answering a question.

Division into sky and earth-
it's not the proper way
to contemplate this wholeness.

It simply lets me go on living
at a more exact address
where I can be reached promptly
if I'm sought.

My identifying features
are rapture and despair.

Second Reading [Next] [back to top] is a famous but very simple tale from the scroll which the Jews call Bereshith and the Christians Genesis. It is a folk tale of great cleverness in many ways. It was put down in writing some 2600 years ago.

Everyone on earth spoke the same language and used the same vocabulary. And as they migrated from the East, they came upon a valley in a place called Shinar, and they settled down there.

They said to each other, "We can bake bricks hard as stone with the clay we find in this place." And they did so. They discovered that bitumen worked well to hold the bricks together.

And so they said "Now we can build a whole city here, with a tower in its center that will reach the sky. We will make a name for ourselves here…if we don't do that, we shall end up scattered around the earth.

The God Yahweh came and saw the city which the people had built, and he saw the tower. Then Yahweh muttered, "If they act this way as one people, with one language, then soon nothing they propose will be out of their reach. So it's time for us to go down and make their speech into mere babbling, so that they no longer understand each other. And so the God Yahweh thus scattered them across the face of the earth… and they did not finish building their city. And to this day the city is called Babylon, for the God Yahweh turned the speech of the people into mere babbling there.

Sermon: "Higher Power: A Theology of Rights" [Next][back to top]

Some of you, like me, have been lucky enough to travel to the Middle East. While the modern cultures there are undeniably fascinating, I have to admit that I have always been much more an archeologist than a sociologist. I just go wild in the presence of old stones, ancient ruins, chipped mosaics, broken arches, and fallen columns. The bold building feats of antiquity amaze me, no matter what condition they are in.

In the city known to Arabic speakers as Al-Quds, to Hebrew speakers as Yerushalayim, and to English speakers as Jerusalem, you will find a shaped rectangular stone weighing over 400 tons. It is lying on top of other huge stones in a retaining wall built some 2020 years ago by Roman engineers. This means it was placed there by human effort. 400 tons! My jaw dropped to the floor when I first saw it. An astounding feat!

All over the Middle East you can find the remains of such engineering grandeur. Great buildings, lifted off the apparent flatness of the earth, reaching for the sky, reaching for heaven. At Gizeh in Egypt there are the famed pyramids. Up in Alexandria you can still find pieces of the foundation for the famed lighthouse on the sea-floor of the old harbor. And in Babylon, in the land we now call Iraq, you'll find the ruins of a famous temple of the god Marduk. This temple was a ziggurat or stepped tower. It is this magnificent temple which Genesis simply calls "the tower of Babel," or Babylon.

The ancient nomads who told this tower tale around their campfires were used to their wide, low, and quite portable, black tents. To them, the soaring unmovable tower on the skyline of Babylon was a dizzying marvel. Somewhat terrifying, in fact. It was an illustration to them of how terribly clever human beings can get…too clever for their own good, they suggested. And it was a reminder of how people, a lot more fiscally and militarily powerful than they were, might be able find a way to actually climb up and see the gods face-to-face.

Now the folks who wrote this folktale found in the Western Scriptures were doing three things. One. Obviously, they were simply offering an explanation as to why people from one country cannot understand people from another country. The diversity of human language was a puzzle to folks back then. Surely at one time, they reasoned, everyone must have understood everyone else. Something weird must have happened. The Tower story is their speculation.

Two. They were pointing an accusing finger at human pride as represented by city life. The nomads were always scolding the city people for abandoning the old country ways, and for being so bold and permanent in their urban accomplishments. The same country/city conflict still exists, I think, in some quarters.

And three. They were knocking the whole idea that you can relate to God by climbing to the sky and knocking at heaven's door. They were saying quite clearly that such goals are beyond human capacity. The sky is not reachable. The business of human beings is to live out God's ethical will here below, they said, not to climb up a ladder and hobnob with The Ineffable.

Unfortunately, these three reasons for writing the satiric story of the tower don't impress me very much. First, personally, I am a city boy, 100%. I would survive in a tent about ten minutes before I started with some pretty potent power whining. So I have never been impressed with the anti-city polemic you can often find in the scriptures.

And second, as I said earlier, great feats of architecture totally amaze me, so I can't be too critical of the soaring towers of architects and engineers and builders, ancient or modern.

And third, the metaphor of climbing high is perfectly fine for me. We still talk of "taking the high ground," don't we, implying that we understand that "high" is a metaphor for what is ethical or just? We still talk of taking the "high road." We still say we have "high expectations," when we mean we are expecting the best. People in many twelve step groups, and even outside them, often speak of a "higher power," that is, a source of strength stronger than their "lower" impulses to indulge in self-destructive behavior. As far as I can tell, the most "high" meaning of the word "high" is that which is elevated, good, true, right, and just.

Best. Just. Ethical. Good. Great words. Great ideas.

But the story of the tower of Babylon implies a theology about those words which I simply can't accept. It implies that all of those divine ideas…the Good, the Just, the Godly… are upstairs somewhere, not here on earth. In the story, the builders choose to leave the earth, build a tower to the sky, intending, presumably to come into the presence of the Good and Godly. And of course, then as now, only the very, very powerful could afford to build such lofty buildings. Ordinary folks didn't have a chance of getting close to the divine. They didn't have enough money in the bank to build towers.

Now this theology clearly dates from a time when folks thought of the universe as two-tiered. In those days, they thought of the earth as a circle of land floating on an infinite sea. The sky, or heaven, was as solid as the earth. They called it a firmament, that is, a celestial firmness or solid dome, which arched over the flat circle of the earth. "Up" and "down" connected these two equally solid places. The high place was divine and perfect, the low place was human and imperfect.

In our own era, we know this is not true at all. We know that the sky is not a solid dome. We know that the earth is not a disc floating on infinite waves of water. We know instead that Wislawa Szymborska is entirely correct. The sky is not really above us, but all around us. It permeates us. The air of heaven anoints our eyelids, the smooth blue arch of the sky is just an optical illusion, and the earth and space are one single reality. " As the poem says so clearly

"Division into sky and earth - it's not the proper way to contemplate this wholeness."

Thus, for us there can be no literal up and down, anymore. We don't have to leave earth to find heaven. Heaven, the sky, the singular reality of the universe if you will, quite simply embraces us right where we sit.

But what then of justice and the good and the right? If there is no heaven above us, just reality all around us, if we can no longer climb to the sky on clever towers, and steal fire from the hearth of heaven, has the idea of good and evil, justice and injustice, right and wrong, perished?

How can we speak of our rights if there is no righteous heaven to secure them for us? Does it all just come down to might makes right? How can we speak of justice, if we can no longer soar to touch the hem of heaven and take that just power from there down to the lowly earth? How can we speak of divine goodness "on high" if the very idea of "on high" itself has completely disappeared?

I say these are theological questions which affect our contemplation of social justice on earth. Harry Scholefield, my late mentor, used to say that, throughout his ministry, he encountered both ministers and lay people in every congregation, who had bursts of energy which they applied to social justice projects for a short time, and who then very quickly burned out. Why did this happen? The problem, he said, was a lack of a devotional life, of a rooting spiritual practice, of a theological source to which one could return when one's strength flagged. Without such a devotional life to fill your sails, said Harry, you are left only with empty sails, raw anger, and a sense of rightness that deteriorates to self-righteousness very quickly. Anger, he used to say, can only burn you out. Oh, it can get you going briefly, but it has no staying power. Only tapping your deepest wellsprings will do that.

I am suggesting that one Unitarian Univeralist way of beginning a devotional life is to admit that the tower of Babylon story is just what I said it is, a folktale, not a source of theological wisdom. Climbing ladders to find certainty, building towers of metaphysical speculation to find final answers…this is empty, ultimately unsatisfying work.

Instead, says Harry Scholefield, says Wislawa Szymborska, says this minister, never cease to adore the "high heaven" which is all around us. The sky is on your eyelids right now. Valleys and mountains are both equally near the sky, as Szymborska reminds us. Even the earth itself is a piece of heaven, a small speck within the universe, not some pebble floating outside it. The sky, the heavens, touch everyone, all the time. And no more one person than another. No more one kind of heart than another.

And such a theology forms a basis for the kind of devotion that supports a social justice philosophy that makes sense. We no longer have to "do lots of good deeds," to earn our right to breathe guilt-free. We need to just be faithful, daily, to the sheer glory around us, and our justice work will proceed from our faithfulness to the high heaven which embraces us all. We no longer have to say, "this is our social justice work, and this is spirituality." They are both now flowers growing from the same stem.

If the sky, or heaven, touches everyone equally, if what is "the most high" is no longer what is above me but what is all around me, then the just, the good, the true, the right are also all around me. They are no longer found up in a tower piercing the clouds, but right here on earth. Thus, the insight of this theological imagery declares that no one has a right to any privilege that others cannot enjoy. No one race or nation or gender or sexuality or age or mental capacity or ability or color or culture is by nature lower or higher than any other race or nation or gender or sexuality or age or mental capacity or ability or color or culture.

And this theology also insists that there are no especially chosen people, no particular nations blessed by heaven, no proofs that God takes sides. The only way an arrogant human being (or an arrogant turtle, as in Dr. Suess's story of Yertle which we heard this morning) can climb high above peers is by forcing them, by violence, to hold him up. In the theology I am presenting, no one has a right to do any such thing. Such a right is entirely wrong.

Furthermore, it follows from this universalist theology that a storm that flattens a city is not a punishment of heaven. Nice sunsets on the beach are not a reward for good behavior. An illness is not a sign of disfavor. Health is not a proof of divine grace. The sky, after all, touches all people equally. Heaven is all around us, calling everyone only to higher living, higher standards, and higher empowerment, not to higher floors and loftier stories. There is no actual expectation in the universe that we need to mount higher literally, that is, find ways to earn our right to exist.

In living out these devotions in our meditations, prayers, poems or readings, or even our silent sitting, we will use a variety of languages and vocabularies. In this, the story of the tower of Babylon is observing correctly. And people do indeed claim that these different languages make communication difficult. Some will actually use the word Heaven, as Jesus did, using a common Semitic metaphor, or as many Chinese Taoists or Confucianists still do. Or some may embrace the phrase "Nature's God," as the Unitarian deist, Thomas Jefferson, did. Others will say Goddess, as Margot Adler does, or Spirit of Life as some Unitarian Univeralists do. Or "higher power" as some other Unitarian Univeralists do. Some will remain agnostic about such images, as many Unitarian Universalists do, and just say "sky," like Szymborska does. No matter. I think it's OK not to fret about words so much, or hope that everyone will speak the same spiritual language one day. Despite the argument presented in the Tower of Babel story, I really think that speaking different languages is not necessarily a condemnation to eternal miscommunication. Just keep on leaving the shallows and wade into the deep waters. Just be faithful to that mystery which touches you and the farthest star at the precise same time. Call it what you will, or call it nothing at all, no matter, it touches us all equally. And it follows from such a theology of a one-tier universe that all of us have completely equal rights, in Jefferson's magnificent words, rights "to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And these rights, he added, are "inalienable." That is, there is no power higher than the one which endows us each equally with perfect dignity. There is no power that can take away these rights unless we let them be taken.

Oh, I'm still a city boy, and I love steps and I love high buildings and I love towers. Ancient or modern, makes no difference. I can't imagine ever living in a city without them. But higher than all the towers I love, rises the notion of the heavenly high ground of a good life. And on that ground is the great city where I want to choose to live every day until it moves toward completion.

Litany [back to top]

We wake, and say we are part, not all. (clapping)
We wake, and say we are kin to all. (clapping)
We wake, and say we but live to love. (clapping)
We love, and say yes, we are not alone. (clapping)

Amen, Amen, Shanti, Amen

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Last update: 07/15/2003