Universalist National Memorial Church

From the Heart

This week I am in the Sonoran Desert. When I hike through the trails in the nearby hills, I pay attention to the plants and scurrying ground creatures and, of course, the side of the path which could or could not be a precipice down which I might fall if I do not pay enough attention.

"Oh, my God," you might say, "Pastor Lillie has trouble negotiating the UNMC Chancel steps sometimes!" Which is true, but I give the credit to my robes--and then I wonder why I don't have them shortened.
Getting back to the Sonoran.

It is a landscape that demands one transitions from the burdens of the mundane and moves to an openness to the sacred and serene. For if anything is sacred, it is the unadulterated beauty of a place that nourishes the spirit and soul.

Exiting the car and placing my feet on the path which leads to a rocky, seemingly barren hill transforms the trip into a spiritual journey. It is no matter what your God's Self looks like--or does not look like--in any desert, the Creator becomes real.

The God in Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being

Opening Words
Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything -- in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It’s impossible. The only thing is that we don’t see it.
-- Thomas Merton

The God in Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being
A Sermon By Dave Skidmore
Universalist National Memorial Church
Washington, D.C.
January 31, 2010

Opening Exercise
I’d like to begin this sermon somewhat unconventionally. I hope you will humor me by participating in a brief exercise. Please -- as Pastor Lillie sometimes says -- center yourselves, and be still for a moment. (Pause)
Breathe in, slowly and deeply. (Pause)
Now exhale. Notice the feeling of refreshment that spread through your body when you drew air into your lungs. (Pause)
Now, as you sit, move a bit: shrug your shoulders, or lean forward or back a bit, or move your legs slightly. (Pause)
Now, in stillness, become aware of the beating of your heart -- the heart on which your life depends. (Pause)
Thanks. I’ll come back to that exercise later.

Introduction: What Is Panentheism?
The idea for this morning’s sermon came from a phrase that has long stirred my imagination, the God “in whom we live and move and have our being.” I first encountered those words in our second reading this morning, from Paul’s address to the Athenians, as recounted in Chapter 17 of the Acts of the Apostles. But the words are more ancient than Paul. My New Oxford Annotated Bible notes that Paul was quoting -- without attribution -- Epimenides, a semi-mythical Greek seer and philosopher-poet said to have lived in Crete some six centuries before Paul. (Epimenides wrote those words about Zeus, by the way.)

Long after I first encountered that phrase, it was brought to my attention that it expressed a concept of God called “panentheism” -- or “God in all.” That sounds a lot like “pantheism” -- but they are not quite the same. Pantheism -- “God is all” -- is the idea that the whole of the world, the universe, its totality is God. But panentheism holds that God is more than the totality of all things. As theologian Marcus J. Borg writes in his book, The God We Never Knew, “God is both more than the universe, yet everywhere present in the universe. … God is ‘right here,’ even as God is also more than ‘right here.’”
Before I go on I should note that, although the germ of this sermon owes to my encounter some years back with the in-whom-we-live-and-move-and-have-our-being phrase, much of its content is drawn from Borg’s book. Thanks to Pastor Lillie for recommending it to me.

Panentheism as a term has been around since only the early nineteenth century. German philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause may have been the first to use the term. And it’s an important concept in the thinking of such twentieth century theologians as Paul Tillich -- who gave us the phrase “ground of being” to describe God. But, as demonstrated by Epimenides, thinking of God as an all-encompassing spirit rather than a supernatural being who is “out there” has ancient roots -- and can be found in many religions -- eastern and western, including, by the way, the transcendental strain of Unitarianism. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who -- as Unitarians never tire of pointing out -- began his career as a Unitarian minister, asserts in the essay Nature that “the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”

February 2010 Anchor newsletter

February 2010 Anchor newsletter

February's Special Event - Hunger Benefit
Stay Spiritually Connected Throughout Your Week
Psalms - 6 weeks
Delighting in the Feminine Divine
Sharing Our Plate
Interweave
Young Adults
Leland Place
Social Action Committee
Women's Group - Women Supporting Women
UNMC Response to Haiti
Choir
UNMC Artists' Series
From the Heart

"Chanting a Curse"

Sermon by Deacon Sue Mosher on January 24, 2010

It must be the best known verse in the Bible, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want," the first verse of the 23rd Psalm. It's comforting. It's reassuring. It's easy. Most of you probably can recite it from memory. Flip over a few pages to Psalm 51, and you'll hear phrases that echo through the versicles that we sing here before the pastoral prayer: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy Spirit from me." Familiar. Inspiring. You can speak these words with ease - and with perhaps even with yearning for God's company. However, if you keep flipping pages and you're still reading aloud by the time you get to Psalm 58, these words may stick in your throat: "Break their teeth in their mouth, O God! . . . . Let them be like a snail which melts away as it goes, like a stillborn child . . . that they may not see the sun." And then there's Psalm 109, which agitated the blogosphere last year when T-shirts appropriated a reference to verse 8 as a barely veiled political slogan aimed against President Obama. Verse 8 says: "Let his days be few, may another man take his post." But the psalm continues: "May his children become orphans and his wife a widow."

The Hebrew name for the book of Psalms is Tehillim, which translates literally into English as "Praises." Did the compilers of the Psalms make a cosmic mistake? How can these curses, these calls for dreadful divine vengeance be cast as praises? Countless churches, synagogues, monasteries, and individuals include these psalm in their regular weekly or monthly rotation. How can they stomach to recite them? The contrast is just too great between the "green pastures" of the 23rd Psalm and the outrageous conclusion of Psalm 137: "Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!" I wouldn't be surprised if you closed the Bible right then and there and never opened it again.

Twitter

Rev. Henley is twittering at "pastorlil." She also has a blog at wordpress.com: "Lillie's in the Valley" universalistnational.wordpress.com

from the heart...

Friend is a word that evokes many levels of emotional response within us.

A friend we no longer have, s/he betrayed me
Friend we no longer see because s/he lives on the other side of the world
Friend who was our best in elementary, but in junior high s/he had other friends
Our high school and college friends, most we’ve lost, a few we’ve found, and one or two have always been there for us
A friend who died in the seventh grade from leukemia
Our best friend in high school who was murdered after graduation by her husband, a troubled veteran
Our best friend in college who was killed on the way home from spring fling
The friend who comes to your mind often, but have no idea where s/he lives Someone who turned out to be very unhealthy and it was awful breaking off
A colleague from our first job who moved away and we can’t remember her/his last name
Our mother’s best friend’s son/daughter who always calls mother on holidays and her birthday, even though his/her mother has been dead fifteen years

"Life Transitions"

A Sermon by Reverend Lillie Mae Henley, Sunday, December 27, 2009

Jesus’ story takes him to the Temple in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. The author of the Gospel of Luke tells us specifically, he was twelve years old. Why, when there is very little mention of Jesus as a little boy.

It was true in the first century, just as it is now, Jewish historians tell us, Hebrew boys become morally and religiously accountable at the age of thirteen. Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah actually means that the boy or girl has reached an age where she or he is responsible for his or her moral and religious decisions. Until then, their parents are responsible. With or without a Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah celebration, the young person is considered responsible for following the laws of their tradition. [“Ask Rabbi Simmons” Rabbi Shraga Simmons, about.com]