Religion in society – Page 17 – Dan Harper

All Kinds of Patriots

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The reading, a poem about the horrors of war, is not included here due to copyright restrictions.

SERMON — “All Kinds of Patriots”

Today is the Sunday closest to November 11, Veteran’s Day, the holiday when we honor all those men and women who served in the armed forces of this country; November 11 is also Armistice Day, the day when we commemorate the signing of the 1918 armistice which put an end to “the war to end all wars.” But war is one of those topics we Unitarian Universalists struggle with. Some of us oppose all war; others of us believe war is sometimes necessary. So on this weekend when we honor veterans and commemorate the end to World War I, let’s explore what, if anything, we hold in common about war and warfare. Not that we’ll come up with a final answer this morning, but it’s the beginning of a conversation, the beginning of an exploration.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are firmly within the tradition of Western religion, and while individually we may find inspiration in other, non-Western, religious traditions, we are nonetheless each embedded in a society with deep roots in the Jewish and Christian religions. Thus it is that when a man like Martin Luther King asked us to consider who was our neighbor, we know he meant to refer to the teachings of Jesus, who is reported to have said, treat your neighbor as you yourself would like to be treated. Thus it is that we are all familiar with the teachings of the book of Exodus, which tells the story of how Moses led his people out of slavery and into the freedom of the desert; and the story tells how in the desert God appears to Moses and gives Moses a series of moral precepts, or commandments, including the commandment, “You shall not murder” [NRSV]; or, as this commandment is more familiarly (though perhaps less accurately) translated, “Thou shalt not kill.” [KJV] Therefore, as people of the Western religious tradition, we have gut-level knowledge of these two ethical teachings: treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated, and thou shall not kill.

Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the High Middle Ages and who was one of the greatest philosophers of the Western tradition, realized that these two moral precepts seemed to indicate that all war must be immoral. But in his book the Summa Theologica, he argued that in fact some wars can be considered just wars. And Thomas Aquinas offers three criteria to help us judge whether a given war is actually a just war or not. Let’s look at those three classic criteria for determining if a war is just.

For one of his three criteria, Thomas Aquinas writes that a just war must have a just cause:

“…[A] just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. Wherefore Augustine says: ‘A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.’ ”

In the ongoing discussion about the Iraq war, we have been hearing both pro-war and anti-war people repeatedly referring to this criterion. But this is a criterion we religious liberals are wary of using. As Universalists we are certain that love that will transform the world, not violence or vengeance. Therefore, while we might be able to condone warfare as a short-term necessity, it seems difficult for us to justify it in terms of vengeance or punishment.

Another criterion for just war, according to Thomas Aquinas, goes like this:

“…[I]t is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil…. For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): ‘The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war.’ ”

Again, this criterion for war remains current, and we’ve heard supporters and opponents of the Iraq war using it. We religious liberals like to use this criterion. With our strong emphasis on the dictates of conscience, we spend a lot of time thinking about intentions, and we well know that the best actions can be sullied by wicked intentions. But we are most likely to use this criterion at a personal level, for those who serve or have served in the armed forces: if your overall intention is honorable and good, by the dictates of your conscience, then your own military service is justified and justifiable. But while necessary on a personal level, this criterion does not seem to us to be a sufficient reason for going to war.

Which brings us to Thomas Aquinas’s third criterion for a just war, which requires:

“…the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior…. And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers… so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies….”

As religious liberals, this particular criterion for just war is most problematic for us. Thomas Aquinas assumes here that society is based upon a hierarchy and authority that begins with God, who is the ruler of us all. From God, power flows down to ecclesiastical and governmental authorities, who rule masses of people, and finally trickles down to individuals. We religious liberals have a different vision of society that begins with the connections that bind us each to each; these connections lead us to develop covenants, explicit statements of how we are bound together, and the promises we make to each other; and ends with the possibility that any or all of us can have direct experience of the transcending mystery of the universe, from which experience we might be able to draw new moral and ethical insights to share with all those to whom we are connected, and with whom we are bound together by covenant. Therefore, we find that we religious liberals cannot really use this criterion to determine whether a war is just.

Indeed, we are not entirely comfortable with any of these three classic criteria for what constitutes a just war. As Unitarian Universalists, we have two ultimate authorities: first, our individual consciences; second, the communities to which we are bound by covenant. So our determination of a just war is made not because someone in authority over us says that a given war is just, nor because we wish to punish someone else; and while we require good intentions, good intentions alone are not enough of a reason to go to war. Rather, we look to our individual consciences, and to our abiding understanding of the transforming power of love.

Because we recognize the authority of individual conscience, we are going to find Unitarian Universalists with a wide range of understandings about what constitutes a just war. Among our ranks, we have many veterans who have served in the armed forces and who are proud of what they have accomplished through their service. We also have conscientious objectors who have refused to serve in the military on moral and religious grounds, and who are proud of their adherence to principle. I have talked with both veterans and conscientious objectors who say that their Unitarian Universalist faith gave them strength as they lived out their very different choices.

Therefore, as a religious lbieral I don’t think it’s possible to describe a war as just, any more than I can describe a war as purple, or fuzzy. If I describe a war as just, what do I say to the conscientious objector who feels all wars are unjust? If I describe a war as unjust, what do I say to the veteran who served honorably in that war? As a religious liberal, I find that I am not inclined to make some straightforward, abstract judgment about whether a given war is just or unjust. There is no easy determination; which is so often the case for us religious liberals — there’s no one easy answer.

Wars are big, messy. A soldier has a very different experience of war than does a child. As we heard in today’s reading, a child in Belfast in 1940 could be fascinated by the pieces of shrapnel she found; she must have had a very different experience from the pilot of the plane that dropped the bombs on Belfast. It’s impossible to reduce war’s bigness and messiness to the point where we can all them unequivocally just or unequivocally unjust. There are moral consequences of going to war; or of not going to war; and whatever action we take, we are bound to face up to those moral consequences. Any action we take is going to have good consequences and bad consequences. We make the best choices we can, but we can never make perfect choices, and so we often have to deal with the unintended consequences of our choices; and we have to deal with the consequences of the choices made by people we are in relationship to.

Nor can we pass off blame for unintended consequences onto someone else, but because of our understanding of relationships and of covenant we should not do that. I have opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning, and it would be easy for me to say that, because of my opposition, I am not responsible for what happened in Abu Ghraib prison; but I have to accept responsibility for what happened there, because of my deep connections to this country. It’s easier to say, “Don’t blame me, I voted for John Kerry,” or to say, “People who oppose the war are destroying this country.” It’s easier to point your finger at someone else and say, “I didn’t do it — it’s them.” But if we’re going to get serious about the transforming power of love, we cannot divide the world up into “us” and “them.”

In our Western religious tradition, Jesus of Nazareth remains one of our most influential teachers and prophets. Jesus offered some cogent advice for healing human relationships. He said, treat your neighbor as you yourself would like to be treated. Herein lies the true core of our Western tradition. Treat your neighbor as yourself; and remember that every other person is, in some sense, your neighbor. When war happens, it gets in the way of us treating others as neighbors; and therefore we do all we can to bring war to a close and to achieve a just and lasting peace.

In the love for all human beings, therein lies healing for us all. In that direction lies the path to a just and lasting peace. We come to this place of sanctuary each week in order draw strength in these troubled times. May we use our strength to go out and heal the world, one human relationship at a time.

Remembering

Reading

The first readings was a poem titled “11th of September, 2001” by Maggi Pierce, and it was read by the poet.

Excerpt from “With a Wrench of the Gut,” an article from the New York Times of Wednesday, September 7, 2005

“Mark Scherzer, like perhaps thousands of New Yorkers, finds himself looking up with mild panic when he hears a plane flying low, or a sudden noise, even though, he says, the attack “has significantly receded in my consciousness.”

“Steven DeGennaro, 34, stops by the wall of victims near ground zero once a week on the way to the Staten Island ferry terminal, to look at the name of his cousin. Then he boards the boat, hoists a Heineken, and thinks.

“Four years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, many New Yorkers seem trapped between a daily life free of the terrible memories of that day, and an inability to fully forget. Many go for weeks or even months without thinking about it at all, but then feel eerily transported back to that morning by a sudden sound, or the sight of a police officer searching bags in the subway, or a certain hue of the sky….

“Sunil Chugh, 25, who lives and works in Jackson Heights, Queens, has a daily reminder of of a neighbor who died. ‘They never moved his car,’ Mr. Chugh said. ‘It is still parked outside his house, and his picture is in the car window with a sign that says “September 11, 2001″. Every day, I pass by that and I look and I think….”

SERMON — “Remembering”

I don’t know about you, but I thought I had pretty much gotten over nine-eleven. I did my grieving. I even got my HMO to pay for therapy because I had been helping people in the congregation I was then serving and hadn’t had time to deal with my own grieving. All that’s four years ago now. I know children who are six or seven who really have no memory of the terrorist attacks. My own memories are fading — what with the war in Iraq, and violence on our streets, and ongoing news of drugs and poverty and hunger, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that happened back in 2001 had receded into the dusty back corners of my memory. So I thought.

But as I followed the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and the desparate relief efforts, and the political fingerpointing, I find myself remembering once again. And I have been finding that other people are finding the same thing — this new disaster is bringing up memories of nine-eleven.

You heard a reading from a New York Times article that said, in part: “Four years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, many New Yorkers seem trapped between a daily life free of the terrible memories of that day, and an inability to fully forget. Many go for weeks or even months without thinking about it at all, but then feel eerily transported back to that morning by a sudden sound, or the sight of a police officer searching bags in the subway, or a certain hue of the sky….” Even if you’re not a New Yorker, even if you were basically unaffected by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, even if you’re six years old and have no direct memory of those events, you are still affected — because what happened on September 11, 2001, affected our society at large. The attacks have become a part of the memory, the mythos, of this country. I had gotten sick of people saying, “The United States has been forever changed by nine-eleven” — I’m still sick of hearing that platitude, but it’s true, too. We cannot forget — we are unable to forget. As a society, we find that we cannot forget.

Which brings me to Frog and Toad. Frog and Toad are reading a book together, a book about brave people who fight dragons and giants, people who are never afraid. “I wonder if we would be afraid,” asks Frog. “We look brave.”

To which Toad responds, “Yes, but are we [brave]?” As it turns out, Frog and Toad are not particularly brave. At the end of the story, they wind up hiding in a closet — but if you are confronted with a snake who’s much bigger than you and who greets you by saying, “Hello lunch!” I think you have every right to run away as fast as you can. Indeed, in all the situations they faced — hungry snakes, avalanches, and so on — Frog and Toad did the right thing by running away. Bravery can take many forms. But I’m not sure Frog and Toad did the right thing by continuing to insist that they are not afraid.

So I’m going to come right out and say it: After nine-eleven, I am afraid. I was afraid of many things before nine-eleven, I was afraid of crime and violence and poverty, and I still am afraid of all those things. But now I’m also afraid of terrorism in a way that I wasn’t before. Now I’m afraid of this new postmodern world of ours where there are people who really really hate us here in the United States, who hate us because of our culture and our lifestyles and our deep love of our democracy. Sometimes I like to say to myself, but if they only knew me personally, they would like me! — but I know in my heart that some of the hatred that is directed at the United States is so strong, that there is no real possibility of them ever knowing me personally. After nine-eleven, I am afraid. I suspect many of you here this morning have also been a little more afraid since nine-eleven.

There’s the fear, and then there’s the anger. I know we’re all good religious liberals, and religious liberals never get angry, do we? We’re too nice to get angry. We have polite discussions, and study issues to deepen our understanding of other cultures and of oppressed peoples, and we vote on resolutions of concern, but we don’t get angry. But I am angry about nine-eleven. I am angry at the twisted minds that could kill themselves and innocent people by flying a jetliner into the World Trade Center or teh Pentagon, or into the ground out in Pennsylvania. I am angry at death toll. I am angry that children were killed. I remember the faces of the people I knew who had friends and co-workers who died on the planes, and I am angry. I read the news stories about the surviving husbands and wives and children of those who were killed on nine-eleven, and it breaks my heart, and I find that I am indeed angry. I suspect that many of you are just as angry as I am — if not angrier.

And here’s where I really struggle. As a Universalist, I believe that every human beings is worthy of dignity and respect. The old Universalists said that God is love, and because God is love all persons will be saved. Like those old Universalists, I reject any religion that tries to tell me that some people are going to be punished for all eternity for their sins. I cannot accept a universe that is based on punishment, on vidictiveness, on hatred — I cannot accept a universe that is run by some angry God who threatens us into good behavior by dangling us over the fires of hell. I am a Universalist, and I tell you that there is no hell — I tell you that the most powerful force in the universe is love.

So the most powerful force in the universe is love — yet when we are full of fear, when we feel abiding anger, it’s hard to remember that the most powerful force in the universe is love.

Maggi Peirce tells me that she wrote her poem, the one she just read for us, after she heard about a man who jumped from the burning, collapsing World Trade Center — and he stretched our his arms as if he were flying. Maggi says news stories about this man interviewed his sister, who said this was typical of him — he always embraced life. Maggi writes in her poem:

“But one flew. We have all dreamed of flying. Salute this one small mortal who, taking his life into his own hands, winged his way earthwards with such aplomb.”

We have all dreamed of flying.

It is easy to succumb to fear and anger. It is equally easy to insist that we are not angry and not afraid, to insist like Frog and Toad that we are brave — all while hiding in the closet or while hiding in bed under the covers. And it is easy to blame politicians for our woes, to blame the president, or more recently to blame the head of FEMA, or to blame anyone at all. But by hiding in the closet, or letting fear and anger rule over us, or blaming the politicians — none of those actions affirms that love is the most powerful force in the universe.

And each of those actions ultimately makes us smaller and less human.

Maybe you are perfectly happy hiding in the closet, or blaming the politicians, or remaining afraid and angry. That is understandable, and perfectly OK. But let me suggest an alternative. I suggest that we begin with forgiveness — we forgive the politicians (who, after all, are limited human beings just like us), we forgive ourselves for feeling afriad and angry, and maybe we even find it in ourselves to forgive the twisted minds who could fly those jetliners into buildings. We forgive, and we still hold people accountable for their actions. We must hold others and ourselves accountable for our actions. But remember that forgiveness is something takes place in our own hearts. It is not a gift that we bestow on other people; it is not even a gift that we give to ourselves. We forgive in the hope that we can heal the universe. We forgive trusting that forgiveness will take the weight off our shoulders, will allow us to open our arms, and embrace life.

I try to imagine what it would be like to stand near the top of a burning World Trade Center, knowing that there was no hope of escape. Would I have the courage to leap out into the unknown, arms spread wide, embracing the universe? I don’t know if I could do that or not, but I salute that one small mortal who could, and did — who took his life into his own hands.

We have a choice. The memories will be there, and they may come back at odd moments. But let us choose to embrace life, to embrace love. In forgiveness, we can find a fresh start, we can turn to the work that awaits us — the new work of Gulf Coast relief, the ongoing work of ending hunger and poverty and violence. Let us choose to embrace life, to embrace love. It will take courage, but in doing so, we will bring new hope to a world that desparately needs it.

Working

Reading

The reading this morning is by Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton University, from her book The Origin of Satan. In this passage, she discusses an ancient Christian document called Testimony of Truth, part of the Nag Hammadi library which was rediscovered in upper Egypt in 1945. Pagels writes:

“The author of Testimony of Truth… raises radical questions:

“‘What is the light? And what is the darkness? And who is the one who created the world? And who is God? And who are the angels?… And why are some lame, and some blind, and some rich, and some poor?’

“Approaching the Genesis story with questions like these, this teacher ‘discovers’ that it reveals truth only when one reads it in reverse, recognizing that God is actually the villain, and the serpent the holy one! This teacher points out, for example, that in Genesis 2:17, God commands Adam not to eat from the fruit of the tree in the midst of Paradise, warning that ‘on the day that you shall eat of it, you shall die.’ But the serpent tells Eve the opposite: ‘You will not die, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’ (3:4-5). Who, asks [the author of] the Testimony, told the truth? When Adam and Eve obeyed the serpent, ‘then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked’ (3:7). They did not ‘die on that day,’ as God had warned; instead, their eyes were opened to knowledge, as the serpent had promised. But when God realized what had happened, ‘he cursed the serpent, and called him “devil” ‘ (3:14-15)….

” ‘What kind of god is this god? … Surely he has shown himslef to be a malicious envier,’ says the author of the Testimony.” (pp. 159 ff.)

SERMON — “Working”

Bible-bashing is not something I do. If this morning’s reading got you thinking that I’m going to rip into the Bible and expose it as a worthless sham, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. I like the collection of books that we call the Bible, and I read the Bible regularly for pleasure and for profit. At the same time, being a Unitarian Universalist, I think hard about what I’m reading, and I’m not afraid to be critical; nor am I afraid to ask hard questions.

Over the past year, I have been asking hard questions of the book of Genesis. You know the book of Genesis: it contains classic Bible stories like Noah and the flood, Joseph and his Technicolor dream coat, God creating the universe in seven days — and perhaps most famous of all, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

I find it difficult to wrap my head around the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In brief, the story goes something like this: God puts Adam and Eve, the first two human beings, into a place called the Garden of Eden. It’s a wonderful place, says God, you’ll like it here, the garden is filled with good things to eat — except, says God, don’t eat anything from those two trees in the center of the Garden. God goes away, and along comes the Serpent. Serpent says to Eve, Don’t believe what God tells you, go ahead and eat the fruit from the trees in the center of the Garden; try it, you’ll like it. So Adam and Eve eat some fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and they suddenly know they are naked. Well. To make a long sordid story short, God finds out what they have done and punishes them. But they didn’t die from eating the fruit. God lied to them.

What a strange story this is! A strange story, and God does not come across as a particularly nice being. I find myself nodding in agreement when the anonymous author of the Testimony of Truth writes, “What kind of god is this god? … Surely he has shown himself to be a malicious envier.” What with God lying and all, I cannot think this story provides a good example for us as a way to live our lives. Yet this story has served as one of the foundation stories for our Western culture.

One part of the Garden of Eden story has particular relevance for this weekend, Labor Day weekend. When God throws Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, he curses them. God says to Adam, no more easy life for you, now you have to earn your living by the sweat of your brow. And as for Eve, now she is supposed to toil away at home, and kowtow to Adam, and have great pain when she gives birth, and kick snakes whenever she sees them, and generally lead a miserable life. Both Adam and Eve are now going to have to work for a living, and God makes it sound as if there is nothing good about work, God implies that working means suffering and hardship. I’m not sure, however, that God is telling the whole truth about working.

I have had a number of jobs over the years, and more than once I have felt that working is bad news. Just counting full time jobs, I worked in a warehouse, was apprenticed to a sculptor, worked in sales, worked for a carpenter, was a clerk in a health food store, and now I’m a minister. Some jobs can be pretty bad, bad enough that you begin praying for quitting time about five minutes after you start. Some jobs can be unspeakably boring, so boring that you’ll look for something, anything, to keep from going out of your mind from boredom. Some jobs are good one week and unbearable the next. Working can mean suffering and hardship, work can be a curse upon humankind, so God is telling at least part of the truth.

Part of the truth, but I cannot accept that work is always, always a curse. Most of the jobs I’ve had have at least been partly good. Even the worst jobs I’ve worked have had bits and pieces that weren’t so bad, or were at least bearable: maybe you could salvage five minutes out of a week. And work can be better than that — I’ve had jobs that were as much as 75% good.

Our Jewish and Christian heritages seem to keep telling us that work is a curse. The Christian tradition often seems to be telling us: wait for the next life, and you might as well write this life off. Beginning with the Garden of Eden, it’s hard to find a passage in either the Jewish or the Christian scriptures that extols the virtue of work. I can find stories of wars, stories of adultery and passion, stories of prophets proclaiming, stories of suffering, stories of kings and queens, a story of someone swallowed by a huge fish. But there aren’t too many stories in the Bible of ordinary people living ordinary lives, working at ordinary work — and enjoying their work.

You would think that the Christian scriptures would do a little better in acknowledging that work can be a good thing. The hero of the Christian scriptures is Jesus, a workingman, a carpenter, and many of his followers are ordinary workers. Except that Jesus tells people to abandon their work, even abandon their families, in order to follow his teachings. Jesus seems to imply that you can be spiritual, or you can work at an ordinary job; but you cannot do both. In the Bible, Jesus seems to draw a fairly sharp dividing line between spiritual enlightenment or the Kingdom of God (which is good), and daily work (which is not so good). As much as I respect the teachings of Jesus, I’m not sure I agree with him here.

Like Jesus, Unitarian Universalists for the most part don’t mix the world of work and the world of spiritual matters. Sometimes I feel that Unitarian Universalists remain all too silent about the world of work. My father grew up in the Evangelical United Brethren, a German-language Methodist group who actively supported unionization of coal miners in the early twentieth century. You will find no equivalent broad-based support for labor within Unitarianism or Universalism, even in the presence of obvious abuses of workers. This might be explained by the fact that historically Unitarians, and to a lesser extent Universalists, were more likely to be mine owners than to be mine workers. Sometimes I fear that we see the world of work as something we consider impolite to discuss, something we come to church to escape from.

Mostly, then, Unitarian Universalists don’t talk about the spiritual realities of their work. We do not discuss whether work is a curse, as God in the book of Genesis says, or if it is a blessing. My own experience has been that work is one of the central spiritual realities in our lives; and that work can be a blessing.

First of all, work can be a blessing if it is possible to find meaning in your work, if you can understand that in some way your work makes the world a better place. Some jobs are so pointless that that is not possible. But sometimes you can make even a pointless job contribute something to making the world a better place. A few years ago I worked with a man who, in spite of having a college degree, wound up working in menial jobs (he was black, and his college degree may have meant less to potential employers than the color of his skin — I don’t know). Once he had had a job doing building maintenance, and part of his job was to sweep off the sidewalk in front of the building every morning. A menial task — yet he made something more out of it. He made a point of giving passers-by a cheerful “Good morning” as they passed by, and gradually some of them came to greet him in return. He saw this act as a deep expression of his faith. Such a simple thing to do, it was a way to take the most menial of tasks and make it into something that makes the world a better place.

As an expression of my own Unitarian Universalist faith, I try to treat each and every person as someone worthy of dignity and respect. I often fail, but I do try, and sometimes I succeed beyond what I thought possible. When I was in sales, I sold building materials, primarily to residential building contractors. This was in the 1980’s here in Massachusetts when nearly all contractors were men. With my Unitarian Unviersalist belief that women are just as good as men, I treated women contractors the same way I treated men contractors. That became a deep expression of my own religious faith, and that was probably the best thing I did in that job. In a small way, I think what I did made the world a better place.

I hear similar stories from Unitarian Universalists who go into their working lvies trying to treat each and every person as someone worthy of dignity and respect. I think about the Unitarian Unviersalist high school students I have known who have stood up for gay rights in schools that were homophobic. I think of Unitarian Universalist office workers I have known who quietly and gently challenge racist remarks. I think of Unitarian Universalist small business owners who treat their employees with respect. Our working lives can be expressions of our religious faith, and in this way we can find something of a blessing in even the most pointless jobs.

And we have to question why there are jobs so pointless that we have to find ways to make them spiritually satisfying. Our culture begins by assuming that work is a curse not a blessing, which means it’s easy to say: Well, work is supposed to be bad anyway, so if my job is pointless and if I don’t get fair pay, that’s just the way it’s going to be; or, If I give my employees pointless jobs, that’s just the way it’s going to be. If we as a society expect work to be a curse, then we will tolerate the fact that what’s most important about a business is not whether the business makes the world a better place, but rather that that business makes more money. (As if profit can only be measured in dollars and cents!)

Our Unitarian Universalist faith holds us to a different standard: work should be satisfying to the worker. Work should be one of the ways we build connections with other people. If I manufacture something you need, and if you grow food that I eat, and if you provide a service that everyone depends on — then we know that we are doing something that’s more than a way to provide a paycheck, we are doing something for the good of other people, something for the good of the community, something that helps weave the interdependent web of all exitence.

My friends, we are called upon as religious people to proclaim that work should be a blessing and not a curse. We are called upon to proclaim that work should affirm each person’s dignity and worth. We are called upon to proclaim that a society that lacks meaningful work is a society that lacks meaning. And we are called upon to proclaim that we can only have true community in communties where people are given chances to contribute meaningfully to the community.

Maybe it all goes back to that old Garden of Eden story. But we can tell the Garden of Eden story our way, something like this:

Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, which was a wonderful place, but they didn’t even know it was wonderful because God wouldn’t let them have any knowledge of what was good and what was evil. The serpent told Eve that she could eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Eve was a smart woman, and she chose to eat that fruit, and she got Adam to eat some, too. Suddenly they knew good and evil! This made God angry, and God confronted them. There were recriminations and harsh words all around. In the end, God said because they disobeyed, they would have to suffer for the rest of their lives.

We would say today that God put his own spin on the events. But the truth of the story was this: nothing changed for Adam and Eve, except that after eating the fruit they knew some things were good and some things were evil. It was only after they ate the fruit that Adam and Eve knew how hard they were working! They made the choice to know.

Once you tell the story that way — once you tell the story so that work is not God’s curse upon humankind — we understand that we can know the truth of working. We can choose to know why so many jobs feel pointless, why some workers get paid so little, why work has become a curse instead of the blessing it is meant to be. We can choose to understand, and then we can begin to work making a world that is truly a blessing for all working men and women.