Rev. Anthony David
June 17, 2007
I want to start out this morning with a story that comes from writer and theologian Frederick Buechner, and it has to do with something he experienced during a vacation in Orlando, Florida, at Sea World. “There was a lot of hoopla to it, “ he writes, “crowds of people, loud music, Mickey Mouse T-shirts and so on, but the main attraction—the whale show—made it all worthwhile.”
“The way the show began was that at a given signal they released into the tank five or six killer whales … and no creatures under heaven could have looked less killerlike as they went racing around and around in circles. What with the dazzle of sky and sun, the beautiful [young men and women running the show,] the soft southern air, and the crowds all around us watching the performance with a delight matched only by what seemed the delight of the performing whales, it was as if the whole of creation—men and women and beasts and sun and water and earth and, for all I know, God himself—was caught up in one great, jubilant dance of unimaginable beauty. And then, right in the midst of it, I was astonished to find that my eyes were filled with tears.
“When the show was over and I turned to my wife and daughter beside me to tell them what had happened, their answer was to say that there had been tears in their eyes. [And] I believe there is no mystery about why we shed tears. [You see,] the world is full of darkness, but what I think we caught sight of in that tourist trap in Orlando, of all places, was that at the heart of darkness—whoever would have believed it?—there is joy unimaginable. The world does bad things to us all, and we do bad things to each other and maybe most of all to ourselves, but in that dazzle of bright water as the glittering whales hurled themselves into the sun, I believe what we saw was that joy is what we belong to. Joy is home, and I believe the tears that came to our eyes were more than anything else homesick tears. […] We have joy in our blood.”
And that is Frederick Buechner’s story, a story about how, in the midst of a tourist trap with all its hoopla, it was as if the heavens had opened up. A moment of revelation. A moment of illumination. Tears, longing, honest acknowledgment of how difficult life can be, how we hurt ourselves and hurt eachother, and yet the knowing that there is something deeper we belong to, something always there that we can draw from to give us strength for the journey, something within that is our fundamental compass, directing us towards true north: joy. Joy is what we belong to, joy is home.
And already we are deep into our topic for this morning: the heart of worship. For worship is an experience in which we are brought back to our deepest selves, our truest senses, our highest values and noblest purposes. It does not matter where and when it happens, or how it might look on the surface. It could happen during a killer whale show at Sea World. It could happen at a rock concert, or during a chat over coffee with a friend. But when you are in the heart of worship, you know. You feel restored. You feel recharged. You feel amazed. Worship is whatever cuts through the chatter and the bull to get to that. Worship is whatever breaks through the busy-ness and static of life to get to that.
That’s the heart of worship. And besides this bare essence of the meaning of the word, consider something else. How the impulse to worship is part of our hearts, how it is instinctive and can be triggered spontaneously by unexpected things. Ultimately, it means that what we do together every Sunday morning as a congregation has great integrity, since it only tries to contain and give clearer expression to that which is already natural—but more about that in a moment.
For now, just think of your own Sea World whale show moments. Accidental, unplanned worship moments. What jumps to mind for me are my years growing up in Peace River, in Northern Alberta, just 300 miles south of the Northwest Territories—nights when I would lift up my eyes and see the Northern Lights in all their electric colors, shifting and shimmering, green and orange and purple curtains over the sky. I would lift up my eyes to the night and see this, and there would be tears in my eyes, my very heart would answer back with a sense of wonder and amazement, my very heart would open up and sing. No one taught me how to do this. Somehow there was within me a capacity for reverence, a capacity to be in awe of something larger than myself, and I knew then that I was not the center of the universe and that there are deeper and higher and bigger things—and I wanted to know them, I wanted to be with them more and to be surrounded by them. Home and joy for me were there amid the Northern Lights.
And then I remember moments when I wasn’t looking up at the night sky but around me, at the town in which I lived. Moments when I would be wandering around, and at times I would see Native Indians slumped over, in drunken stupor, outside the bars—and these were the same Native Indians that I had been studying diligently in school, studying the achievements and beauties of their culture as well as how it was broken down by years of governmental wrong and institutionalized racism. This was in back of my mind as I’d see the Native Indians slumped over, outside the bars, and what I saw was a long history of injustice reflected in them, embodied in them, and the tears in my eyes were hot, I felt fierce and angry, and what was happening was that I was being called back to right action and right relationship with the world around me. I was being called back to my senses. I was in the presence of a wrong, and I just couldn’t walk on by without batting an eye. What was wrong needed to be made right. And all this is worship as well. Worship is not just about savoring the world as it is; it is also about wanting to help it become all it might be, healing and restoring it.
That’s the heart of the worship experience. Awe and wonder and reverence, as well as righteous anger and a call to justice. Worship is all this and more. Whatever calls us back to our senses. And our cup spills over with moments like this. It’s the divine spark within, at work. It’s the still small voice within. It’s just who we are.
Which opens up the question: if worship experiences can happen outside of the congregational context, in an accidental, unplanned way, then what is intentional worship for? Why do we invest so much of our congregational time and energy into planning and performing it?
For me, one answer comes straight on the heels of another memory. My wife Laura and I are at the Grand Canyon. This is just a few years ago. We’ve just finished breakfast, during which a squirrel did a pretty good job of manhandling me for some of my yogurt and granola, and Laura took a bunch of pictures and laughed and laughed…. But after this, we went on a hike, and it took us to the rim of the Canyon, and … how to describe the immensity of what I saw? Once again, I felt the tears, I felt the awe and wonder stirring in me, but then also this: a desire to expand on these religious feelings, a desire to give them fuller voice and form. I wanted to pray out loud. I wanted to sing. I wanted to do something with what I was feeling inside, contain it, strengthen it, extend it, externalize it, share it. That’s what I wanted to do. For since my childhood experience many years ago with the Northern Lights, or with the Native Indians I saw slumped over by the bars, I had learned something. I head learned that feelings of awe and wonder or feelings of righteous anger can come upon a person powerfully and suddenly, but then your attention can shift and things distract you, and all of a sudden, you move right back into ordinary life. What happens to all that awe and wonder and righteous anger? It vanishes like a dream. It all just fades away. The emotions are so powerful, but only for a moment, and then it’s so easy to slip back into sleepwalking, so easy to slip back into the daily grind, so easy to forget that the world is to be savored, so easy to forget that the world is to be saved—so easy to live as if nothing extraordinary had ever happened.
What I’m saying is that I wanted my experience of the Grand Canyon to be different. I wanted it not to just trigger a momentary feeling. I wanted it to shape my life and my character in an enduring way. It felt that important. That’s why I wanted to make my accidental worship experience intentional. I wanted something to make it harder for me to slip back into sleepwalking and to end up acting as if nothing extraordinary had ever happened.
Perhaps this was on Norbert Capek’s mind as well. Perhaps one day long ago he found himself gazing upon flowers, and a spontaneous worship experience happened, tears came to his eyes, and he knew in that moment exactly what Frederick Buechner knew: that life can be so difficult, that too often we hurt ourselves and hurt each other, and yet life is nevertheless sacred, there is something deeper we belong to, a deeper joy which the beautiful unique flowers point to, a joy which inspires us to be free, a joy which moves us to bless each other and bless the world with works of justice and mercy. That’s the joy that moved Norbert Capek, that’s the joy that brought tears to his eyes, and above all, because the experience was so powerful and moving, he wanted to be careful and proactive about how to contain it so that it might be shared with others and therefore expanded, increased, never forgotten, never left behind. Thus the flower communion ritual. Thus the experience we are all sharing in today—and knowing his full story, knowing how this man died because of the spiritual vision he proclaimed which is our spiritual vision—we can’t possibly act like nothing extraordinary has happened. The flowers remind us. The flowers focus us on this. There is a deeper joy to this world. We are brought back to our senses.
That’s the heart of worship. That’s why we do what we do every Sunday, or any time we engage in congregational worship together. Doing what we do to set into motion a flow of emotion and energy. Doing whatever it takes to ease our bodies and hearts and minds so that we are happy to be here, ready to receive, ready to be illuminated, inspired, challenged, healed, clarified—ready to hear the call that is ours and only ours to hear. In this place, each person having an experience of the Spirit of Life in a way that makes sense to them. Perhaps not everything to your taste, perhaps not everything equally important to you or everything equally WOW for you, but with the diversity in this room that has to be OK. And then finally you leave this place, you carry your Unitarian Universalism home with you, you take it into your home life, you take it with you into your work life, and people sense it, they feel the pull and tug of it, they see how Unitarian Universalist religion is magnetic and vital and makes a difference.
Which leads me to say two final things. So far, we’ve talked about the heart of worship in terms of what it essentially is—how it brings us back to our senses. We have talked about the heart of worship in terms of how it is close to our hearts, a natural impulse. And we’ve also talked about the heart of worship in terms of the need to be intentional about it—putting our hearts into it, crafting it carefully—because so much is at stake. My next-to-final word expands on this last thought.
By now you have probably seen the insert in your worship bulletin, entitled “Strategic Model.” You’ve seen the rectangle with four quadrants and a big circle in the center—and I hope the impression you are getting is one of careful planning and forethought. It represents the current work of this congregation in planning for its future growth, but it’s also a larger symbol of the careful planning that’s gone on from the beginning. Careful planning has led to why we worship the way we do.
How many of you have wondered why we do this and not that? You are coming in from a non-Unitarian Universalist context, and you wonder why we do things differently. Or perhaps you are coming in from a Unitarian Universalist context, and … you wonder why we do things differently. Ever wondered why we do what we do?
With my remaining time here, I want to encourage every one who might be wondering about this to connect with me. Let’s talk. One of my proudest accomplishments here has been the creation, with the many gifted and skilled people of the Pathways Worship Network, of our worship service. How careful we have been to craft a service that is diversity-friendly without losing coherency and power; how careful we have been to make this service friendly to different kinds of learning styles, aural, visual, and kinesthetic; how careful we have been to create an experience that respects the needs of guests and treats them respectfully, refuses to put them on the spot, refuses any “insider speak” that makes them feel unwelcome. For all these things and more—I am so proud. We have worked so hard. It is quality worship that will serve you well into the future.
And that leads to my final word. My hope. That in the days and weeks and months ahead, as this congregation journeys towards a new future, everyone will make regular time to be in worship. It’s just so easy to be distracted by the busyness of our days. And therefore the urgent need for times to pause and reflect—to check our spiritual compass—to be among a people who serve high values and worthy purposes, and to be encouraged in this. This is what we need. To go back again and again to what Frederic Buechner realized, that even though the world might do bad things to us, and we might do bad things to each other and maybe most of all to ourselves, nevertheless: joy is what we belong to. Joy is home. We have joy in our blood. We do. Amen.