As part of their training, every Unitarian Universalist minister in the modern age has to do a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE. I’ve done two units of CPE, one in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, and one on the Near West Side of Chicago.
Both of these hospitals are urban hospitals and neither was located in what you might considered a cushy area. In both of them, the Emergency Room was my responsibility.
It is often reported by seminarians that it is working in a medical setting, like a hospital, during CPE, that they first feel like “real” ministers.
I would like to share a story with you. This story takes place in the Emergency Room of that hospital in Chicago.
In the middle of one of my shifts a pair of sisters came into the ER. One of the sisters was quite well, and the other was very sick. The ER Docs called me to “deal with’ the healthy sister, as she was becoming a problem in the ER, and causing anxiety to rise up for the entire ward.
So I went down to talk with this woman.
Because of laws about information sharing and healthcare, I did not record the names of these two sisters, and these 5 years later, I couldn’t recall them if I had to, so I’m just going to assign them two names.
I’m going to reach into the Hebrew texts and call these women Ruth and Naomi, because Ruth is my favorite book in the Bible.
Naomi was sleeping in her room when I arrived to meet Ruth, who was visibly agitated.
I asked Ruth to step into the conference room with me and we began to talk.
Ruth was upset because Naomi was very bad off. Naomi had stage four cancer, and had just told Ruth that she was ready to die.
Ruth, however, was not ready to have her sister die.
And therein lie the conflict.
So Ruth and I had a long conversation about their relationship, and the current state of things. I said to her “Ruth, you’re a healthy woman, with lovely skin, and a strong body. Naomi is not well. And, to be honest with you, Ruth unless you get hit by a bus, chances are very high that you will outlive your sister.”
Ruth looked pained, but nodded to me.
“Now, I can see that you love your sister a great deal, but here’s my question to you; How do you want to spend the rest of your time with your sister? Do you want to fuss and argue with her about her being ready to die, or are you going to spend your precious time by walking with her and telling her how much you love her?”
“I want to show her that I love her.”
“And how do you think you can best do that?” I asked.
“By just being with her, telling her I love her, and caring for her.”
It is probably no surprise to you that Unitarian Universalist Student Ministers have a reputation in hospitals for not being comfortable with prayer. It’s hard to pray for us, number one, and then once you get entangled in questions like “How do I authentically pray with people whose theology depends on Christ?” and the like, it gets very awkward.
I was no different. But still I felt that Ruth might need to pray, so I asked her to pray with me.
So we took hands, and this is where grace enters the story.
I don’t remember all that I said in our prayer, but I remember that it was a prayer of gratitude for Naomi and loved ones we meet along the way. It was a prayer about how people in our lives influence us, and guide us.
I ended the prayer with a phrase something like “for those we have known our whole lives who have touched our hearts, we are grateful.”
I may not really remember the exact words I used, but I will never forget the next words that Ruth spoke to me. She squeezed my hands and said.
“and for kind souls who we’ve just met, who have changed our whole lives by love. Amen.”
I know that Ruth was thanking her God for me being there, by saying those words. But I don’t think Ruth had any idea the gift of grace that she bestowed upon me that evening in the ER on the West Side of Chicago.
I had been walking through the valley of my own doubts about my ability to minister, about my ability to access the holy in ways that would speak to people who didn’t share my theology. I had been scared to death of praying in public.
And Ruth offered me love.
To me, this is what grace is about.
Grace is a gift given to you by the universe, not because you’ve earned,
or sought it out
or spent years praying for it,
but it is something that you deserve.
I don’t mean deserve like asking God for a new truck, because you work hard.
I mean deserve because you are a valuable child of the Universe, of God, if you will.
Here’s the tricky thing about Grace for us Unitarian Universalists.
We don’t know what to do with it, and the idea that a random kindness comes to us because we deserve it makes us uncomfortable.
Because we deserve it is not a rational statement.
You can work hard and earn a paycheck, which allows you to buy that new truck, which by the way, for the sake of your soul, I hope is a hybrid. ;-)
That kind of thinking makes sense to us.
But a kind offering from the universe around us, to us, just because we are?
That’s hard for us to sit with.
And before all you rationalists out there start dismissing what I’m saying as some sort of “woo-woo” theist thinking, I am talking directly to you, as well.
The story I told you at the start of this sermon, the grace that happened there, was rooted fully in the interaction of two human beings. Each of them having spent their lives on the margins of society. Reaching out passed our own belief systems, and the ways in society may have tried to marginalize each of us, to connect deeply with the human sitting across from them.
When people in the Subcontinent of India meet one another, they tend to put their hands together, like this. Fingers up, palms together and say “Namaste.” There are various meanings to this act, but each of them is a sign of respect. In the west, we have been taught that to perform this greeting is respectful and sends the message “The Divine Spark within me greets the Divine Spark within you.”
Ruth and I shared just such a moment.
This is the larger, and frankly saving message of our faith. Our Good News. Our Gospel.
We need not believe the same things to reach out to each other in caring ways. If nothing else, we share a common humanity, and that is reason enough to love one another.
Whether it be as Jesus said “love thy neighbor as thyself,” or
In 2002, a group of eight ambassadors from the North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) carried a collection of Golden Rules from thirteen religions to the United Nations.
Joel Beversluis wrote: We'd been invited to visit with the Assistant Secretary-General, Mrs. Gillian Sorensen, to present a framed Golden Rules poster to her for the UN.
Included are 13 messages from world religions that restate the Golden Rule in their own contexts. Aboriginal Spirituality, Baha'i Faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, Unitarianism and Zoroastrianism.
Yes, we made the list of 13 world religions, even though we are less than a quarter million people in the United State, and 5,000 in Canada.
The poster lists our First Principle, that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every individual, as a variation on the Golden Rule.
In January, 400 gathered UU ministers were told by an excellent preacher of the Southern Baptist tradition that it was time for Unitarian Universalism to step out of ourselves and be noticed.
The Rev. Dr. James Forbes, Minister Emeritus of the Riverside Church NY, NY talked about the first and second great awakenings in American history. He quoted 1 Kings: 19:11-13 to us.
11 “Go out and stand on the mountain,” the Lord replied. “I want you to see me when I pass by.” All at once, a strong wind shook the mountain and shattered the rocks. But the Lord was not in the wind. Next, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 Then there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. Finally, there was a gentle breeze, 13 and when Elijah heard it, he covered his face with his coat. He went out and stood at the entrance to the cave. The Lord asked, “Elijah, why are you here?”
Dr. Forbes then said to us; and I am paraphrasing here, the first great awakening happened in the 1730’s and 40’s. It was about God earthquake. The preachers stood up and shouted about salvation and God’s anger.
But that isn’t you.
The Second Great Awakening took place between 1790 and 1830. It was a fire, spread by the search for purity in churches.
But that wasn’t you either.
But now we’ve come to the time where there will be a Third Great Awakening, the awakening of the Still Small Voice.
And that is you.
Your faith has stood on the leading edge of social justice and equality for hundreds of years, yet few know who you are.
Because you are still small voice.
But I’m here to tell you that the we need you. The world needs you.
In a world where we are ever more thrust into gatherings of people, at work, in schools, in our very families, we need the leadership of the people who aren’t just now learning how to do things like this, we need the leadership of the experts.
And you my friends, are the experts.
So stop hiding your light under a bushel, step out of Elijah’s cave and shout “We are here, and we can help!”
Dr. Forbes lay bare for us ministers the challenge of our faith.
We need to stop being shy about the faith that we have found, and it’s many gifts, and difficulties, and to witness to the world
what the grace of humanism can look like.
I have quoted Rev. Bill Sinkford before saying “we are all humanists in that we know that we can rely only on human hands to fix this broken world.”
In that vein of humanism, whether you’re a Christian, a Buddhist, a Pagan, and “I’m not sure at the moment,” we can all participate together.
As Robert Latham said last week, we need to change our message from Unity in Diversity to Diversity in Unity.
It is our inherent Diversity that, when used for a common purpose, makes us just the very people who can go forth into the world and be vehicles of grace.
Because we won’t stumble when faced with co-workers of differing faiths, because we, religiously have room for different belief systems.
Because our faith calls us to speak up for the powerless and the voiceless, no matter what their gender expression, or who they love, where they were born, or how impoverished they are, we can be vehicles for grace.
The challenge for us, I think though, will be for us to be recipients of grace. That may require a humility that we, as a people, struggle with.
And so I encourage you, friends, to open yourself to the possibility of grace.
Learn, truly learn deep inside of you, that you are a person who deserves to receive grace, perhaps seemingly randomly from the universe, just as much as you feel the responsibility to save the world, and all her people, but demonstrating our own loving humanism.
© Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and Delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
March 3, 2013.
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