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Sermon Index

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

by the Reverend Phyllis L. Hubbell
at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
on the 22nd of September 2002

National Public Radio recently closed out its National Story Project, during which it invited submissions from the general public. A compilation of those stories recently has been published. This one is told by Robert North, who was a soldier in the Pacific during World War II. His colonel had called everyone together for a briefing on the next mission. It was an extremely dangerous mission, involving an invasion of mainland Japan. Rumor had it that the Japanese knew they were coming and were waiting for them.

The colonel assured his men that this was a volunteer mission. Anyone who didn’t want to participate simply had to "report to [his] quarters, stand at attention, look [him] in the eye and say `Colonel, I’m yeller, sir’ He promised to ship anyone who did this back to Oahu immediately.’‘

The men were tired. They’d been on many missions. They all wished they had the guts to go in and face the colonel and admit they were afraid. Of course, they were afraid. Many were likely to die. But North says he feared even more looking himself in the mirror if he left now.

Only one man, Symes, reported to the colonel that night. The colonel kept his word and put him on board the Jasper, a supply ship returning to Oahu.

North remembers that he hated Symes.

[They] all did. [They] knew that Symes had fought next to [them] throughout [their] tour, facing fire as well as any of [them] had, no better, no worse. But Symes was the only one who had the guts to say that he was a coward, and now he was going to get out of this hellhole. He was going to be shipped out, to eat at a table, to sleep in a bed with sheets, to smell fresh sea air instead of the constant stink of gunpowder and dead bodies, to hear the soothing rhythm of the ocean instead of the whistling bullets and the gut-thumping blow of heavy artillery.

He might well sit out the rest of the war at a desk, and they might be dead tomorrow.

As they were preparing to board the transports, one of the truck drivers came running toward them with a big grin on his face, waving at them to turn back. "The war is over. We dropped a big bomb. The mission is over. You don’t have to go." The men turned on the radio and heard the news of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

A second message also came as they were standing there: The Jasper had been torpedoed at sea, all aboard lost.

North’s story struck me. It is so neat. The courageous live, the coward dies. This is the kind of story that many people point to when they speak of a master plan, some overarching intentionality at work in our lives. Some purpose to our existence that we can take up or deny. Some ultimate justice in operation in our lives.

Except that, of course, we know that many innocent woman and children died in Hiroshima. Some would argue that true courage in that situation lay in taking the colonel’s challenge. Even if we can say that justice was done in the case of the man who died, what about all the others aboard that supply ship who were doing their jobs at some risk, out of patriotism, perhaps, or just because they were drafted? What about them?

Some time ago, one of our members asked us to preach a sermon about the meaning of life. What could be more timely? We are a nation at war with terrorism. A nation considering war with Iraq. We are living in the shadow of the mass murders of innocent men, women, and children in our own country last year—as well as those lost in Afghanistan who happened to get in the way of our search for those responsible. There are always innocents killed in war. Even the forces wearing white hats make mistakes. But most of the time all of the hats are colored different shades of gray. It is a time in which people are pondering whether there is any meaning to their lives. Is there something we’re supposed to be doing with our precious lives, with those precious minutes we have left?

What is the meaning of life? The very question suggests that something outside of ourselves creates meaning for our lives. Certainly—traditionally—humanity has worshiped creator gods and goddesses who we believed had some larger purpose in mind when a ship sank, when some were saved while others died. Yet as I read of the vastness of the universe, the randomness at the heart of the building blocks of the universe, I find it difficult to discern the presence of a creator directing our lives like some playwright who knows that sex and violence sells. Do we not have some sense of the nature of the source of creation from the nature of what is created? What we discover in creation is vast spaces, gases on fire, frozen planets. Sentient beings are few compared to the whole. So far as we yet know, self-aware beings, beings who appreciate beauty, who compose music, beings who love, beings who hate, are a minute portion of existence. It is difficult for me to conceive of anything akin to a mind that created all of existence and also deliberately created each action that occurs everywhere throughout time.

But without accepting that the impulse behind creation planned each calamity that befalls us, is there some broader way that we can say that there is some divine purpose to which we may—perhaps should—look for meaning in our lives? In the midst of the randomness, scientists advise us there is also order—laws issued by some source we misunderstand when we compare it to our own minds—but nonetheless directives like gravity that send our planet circling around the sun. Something embedded in the laws of physics that allows loons to fly after an ungainly half-mile takeoff—not easily, no, but still held by something that works consistently, dependably. Something that says when an egg and a sperm meet under the right conditions, new life will occur. Something that at least on this one tiny planet has created the ability to appreciate beauty, to create music, to develop the concept of justice, to love.

Without accepting a deity that has body hair, can we not admit that existing along with the randomness of the universe; along with the tendency toward entropy, toward disintegration and death, is something else—some impulse toward life, some source of beauty, some seed of mercy—some foundation for our existence in which we may seek and find a purpose worthy of the word "divine?" Do we not recognize some sense of that fulfillment when we dedicate our lives to beauty and music, love, justice, and compassion? Do we not feel that in some sense we are doing work that is holy? Work that feels in accord with something greater than ourselves, deeper, grander, grounding, even when we fail, even when death and destruction surround us?

Take a minute to contrast those feelings with how we feel when we are in Target. Selling vacuum cleaners. Smoking, drinking, or—my addiction of choice—overeating. We find satisfaction in creation. We find fulfillment in relationship, in laughter, love, and service. We find meaning in trying to change the world one agonizingly slow inch at a time. Even this answer is not perfect. There are times when we despair of progress. When our faith that what we do matters disappears. What I call godness is sometimes hard to find when we need it. I can only tell you that this is where humanity has found the holy, century after century.

Many have said that we make our own meaning. I do not think the answer is that simple. Is it possible for any of us to create as much meaning in an afternoon spent watching the World Series with strangers as in one spent operating on a child by flashlight in Kandahar? The great Scottish poet Robert Byrne wrote that “the purpose of life is a life of purpose.” We can choose those things that give meaning to our lives over those with empty calories. But I'm not sure we can give meaning to selling pornography.

Still, the actions that give meaning may be quite modest ones. It is acts of creation, acts of love, acts of justice on whatever scale that fill us up. I often notice front yards as I walk by. So many of them show a loving hand, an eye for beauty. The carefully placed stone rabbit, masses of scarlet petunias, a rainbow-colored whirlimajig blowing in the wind. I once had a friend who painted the cardboard toilet paper cores. Cooking dinner can do it. Taking out the garbage when an exhausted spouse usually does it. These homely tasks, done for beauty's sake, done for love's sake, give life its substance.

Or those acts can be on a much larger scale. George Bernard Shaw once said, “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

Who can seriously argue that the lives of Beethoven, Sojourner Truth, and Thurgood Marshall had no purpose, no meaning? We make meaning in our lives by choosing the meaningful. We choose a life of purpose. And by our choices make it so.

What is the meaning of life? Is all this too abstract, too chilly to comfort the wife Symes left behind? To the fathers and mothers, spouses and children of people who died too young or were left to find a whole life with half a body? Is there only empty comfort in the vastness of space created by an uncaring spark billions of years ago? We leave the realm of science here. It can tell us only so much. We dare not disregard its truths, or we find ourselves naked and friendless when our grief leaves us angry against a childhood god who neither saves nor cares. Yet science does not know everything.

Henri Nouwen, a priest and well-traveled professor and author who was experiencing burnout from overload, found himself called to become chaplain at Daybreak, a community of people who have major disabilities. One of his first assignments was to spend a few hours every morning with Adam, a severely handicapped young man, bathing him, shaving him, getting him dressed, walking him to breakfast, feeding him, and getting him to the place where he was to spend his day. Intimate acts. Acts that we as adults are embarrassed to have to depend on others to complete. Nouwen had never done this kind of work before. At first he was uncomfortable, afraid he would make a mistake or that Adam would have an epileptic seizure and Nouwen wouldn't know what to do. Nouwen writes:

[g]radually I relaxed and started to enjoy our daily routine. As the weeks passed by, I discovered how I had come to look forward to my two hours with Adam. . . .Even though he couldn't speak or even give a sign of recognition, there was real love between us. My time with Adam had become the most precious time of the day. When a visiting friend asked me one day: ‘Couldn't you spend your time better than working with this handicapped man? Was it for this type of work that you got all your education?’ I realized that I couldn't explain to him the joy that Adam brought me. He had to discover that for himself.

All of us know sorrow. None is exempt. Many of us feel despair. Yet if we seek out the work of creation, the work of love, the work of justice, we will know peace, we will know joy.

But I cannot end the sermon here. For just this week I have been reminded that a complete answer to this question must include the end of life. What of the times of our lives when energy and body fail us? What then gives meaning to our lives? What gave meaning to the life of Adam? Adam who could not even give a sign of recognition to Nouwen. Yet he gave him joy.

We must dig further—past the doing to the being. A time comes for all of us to let go of doing, first, perhaps to cut back and then more and more. Or perhaps it comes suddenly, as happened to Christopher Reeve. Any of us who have had an accident or a diagnosis that suddenly changes our lives knows this challenge. Our lives may have been full of purpose; suddenly or slowly that sense of meaning may ebb with the ability to work towards that purpose. Yet the great theologians tell us that the meaning of life has often been found more basically in the simple yet infinitely difficult charge simply to be aware. “Awareness, awareness, awareness.” Joy comes in being present to creation—to those we love, to a single blade of grass. To our breath. In religious terms, God glories in a human being, fully alive. It is classic Buddhist practice to meditate by learning to completely focus our selves on our breath, letting go of all distracting sights and sounds. Life pared down to the breath can bring us in touch with the infinite.

Finally, life focused on love remains as possibility—letting go of all the little and big things that in our life have at times seemed so important they have sometimes come between us and what and who we love. Now all we have left of importance is to remember and feel again that love. Now our task is to simply to be filled with love, the most important thing, our legacy to those we have loved so imperfectly.

Author Eda LeShan writes of watching an elderly couple in a nursing home.

The man was in a wheelchair, his wife sitting next to him in the visitors' room. For the half hour that I watched they never exchanged a word, just held hands and looked at each other, and once or twice the man patted his wife's face. The feeling of love was so thick in that room that I felt I was sharing in their communion and was shaken all day by their pain, their love, something sad and also joyful. …

Surely, there is wisdom here that those of us still able to do so might learn from while we might still do for our loves. Would that I could love now so purely.

What is the meaning of life? All our lives, we are running, running. Let us pray that what we're running toward is creation. Let us pray that what we are running toward is Justice. Let us pray that what we are running toward is love.