peace – Page 2 – Dan Harper

Memorializing Iraq and Afghanistan

The sermon below was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, California, at the 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. services. The sermon text below is a reading text; the actual sermon contained improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2012 Daniel Harper.

I’d like to begin this morning by talking with you a little bit about the origins of Memorial Day: where and when it started, and for what purpose. And after we talk about the origins of Memorial Day, then I’d like to talk with you about how the situation we find ourselves in today is quite different from time of the origin of Memorial Day, and given the changed situation I’ll speak about how we might adequately memorialize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Historian David Blight tells us that the first recorded instance of Memorial Day took placed in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. The city of Charleston had been evacuated, and most of the non-combatants remaining in the city were African Americans who could not get out. Also present were the Union troops who had defeated the Confederate Army, and a few white abolitionists.

During the war, the Confederate Army had established a prison camp on the site of a race course in Charleston. 257 Union soldiers had died in that prison camp, and were dumped unceremoniously into a mass grave. In April, 1865, the African American community of Charleston decided to create a proper gravesite for the Union dead buried in that mass grave. They disinterred the bodies from the mass graves, and reinterred them in individual graves; then African American carpenters built a fence around the new grave yard.

To officially open this new grave yard for Civil War dead, the African American community organized a parade of some ten thousand people, including African American schoolchildren and ordinary African American citizens. White Americans were represented by some nearby Union regiments, and some white abolitionists. All these people gathered in the new graveyard. They listened to preachers. They sang songs like “America the Beautiful” and “John Brown’s Body” and old spirituals. And at last they settled down to picnics, and while they ate they could watch the Union regiments march in formation.

That, according to David Blight, was the first recorded celebration of Memorial Day. But times were different then, and that was a very different war from today’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On his Web site, Blight writes: “At the end of the Civil War the dead were everywhere, some in half buried coffins and some visible only as unidentified bones strewn on the killing fields of Virginia or Georgia.” Today, we don’t see the war dead. The most we might see is a photograph or video of a coffin neatly draped with an American flag, accompanied by soldiers in full dress uniform, being taken off an airplane that has just arrived from overseas. Today, we are not confronted with the physical reality of the bodies of war dead.

When it came to memorializing the war dead, the African American community of Charleston had a straightforward task in 1865: after the fighting was over, create an adequate graveyard, and respectfully reinter the Union war dead into that new graveyard. But we have no such well-defined, concrete tasks. Because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are so far away and such a small percentage of the population have actually fought in those wars, memorializing them is not going to be straightforward; and to complicate matters further, the fighting isn’t even over in Afghanistan.

The 2005 poem “Ashbah” by Brian Turner, a talented poet who served in the infantry in Iraq in 2003-2004, captures something of the problem we face.

Click here for the poem “Ashbah” (both the text, and an audio recording of the poet reading the poem).

In the poem, the ghosts of American soldiers are alone and cannot find their way home. Even though they are exhausted, they keep trying to find their way home, unsure which way to go. The Iraqi dead are, of course, already home, and they can watch the American soldiers from a safe perch on the rooftops; but as I imagine the scene, the Iraqi dead would just as soon the American dead would figure out how to get home so that they, the Iraqi dead, could have their streets back.

Now obviously this poem is not literally true. The poet did not see the ghosts of dead Americans literally wandering the streets of Balad, and the Iraqi dead were not literally sitting on the rooftops watching them. But there is symbolic truth in this poem.

For me, part of the symbolic truth in the poem lies in the fact that the war dead of Iraq and Afghanistan remain ghostlike and insubstantial to most Americans. The vast majority of us have not seen the body of someone who died in Iraq or Afghanistan. Indeed, I would be willing to bet that the majority of Americans don’t even know someone who died in Iraq or Afghanistan. Although something on the order of six thousand five hundred soldiers have died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan [link], this number is tiny compared to the three hundred million people who live in the United States today.

Because so few soldiers have died relative to the total population of the United States, it’s easy for us to spend very little time thinking about the war dead. I don’t want to say that we ignore the war dead; certainly we don’t do that; but we concentrate on other things. Those of us who are politically active might concentrate on advocating for policy changes that will keep us out of another long-term military engagement like Iraq and Afghanistan. Or — and I think this is more likely among us here — those of us who are politically active have turned our attention to problems that seem more pressing, like global climate change or election reform or homelessness in Palo Alto or food security or one of the many ethical and political challenges facing us today. This is not a bad thing: Lord knows, we are faced with a great many pressing problems; and we do the best we can to address those problems, but one person can only do so much. If, for example, you’re going to tackle global climate change, a problem that can be morally and psychologically draining, you may not have much energy left over for other ethical challenges.

We’re doing the best we can to make this world a better place. But most of us have turned out attention away from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And as a result, those ghosts of American soldiers that Brian Turner writes about in his poem still wander the streets of Balad by night, still unsure of their way home, still exhausted.

I’m not trying to make you feel guilty about the war dead. I’m not asking you — many of whom work 70 hours a week at your job, take care of your family, volunteer in the community, and work on social justice projects besides — I’m not asking you to do one more thing to make the world a better place. You do enough as it is. But because this is Memorial Day, I would like to remind you of three things we already do that can help memorialize the war dead, and thus help those ghosts of American soldiers find their way home, find rest.

First, as religious people we are not afraid to talk about death and about those who have died. In this, we are quite different from mainstream American society, which prefers to ignore the fact of death. At the beginning of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration carefully enforced a long-standing Pentagon ban on media coverage of the arrival of coffins containing dead soldiers from overseas. This Pentagon ban had been in effect since the First Gulf War, and while some critics accused the Bush administration of using the ban for propaganda purposes, it always seemed to me that the Pentagon and the government were also motivated by a typical American squeamishness when it comes to death, a typical American denial of the reality of death.

But as religious people, we are less likely to deny the reality of death. A central part of what we do as religious people is we celebrate rites of passage, including memorial services for those who have died. Many of us here this morning have been in this room for a memorial service; and when we come here on Sunday mornings, we will always be aware of the dual use of this room. The very nature of our religious community helps us be free of the unhealthy American denial of death. Because we don’t deny the reality of death, we are better able to understand that our actions as a nation have resulted in very real deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By confronting the reality of the deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are taking a step towards allowing the ghosts in the poem to find their way home, metaphorically speaking. And when those ghosts of American soldiers leave the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan, then the Iraqi war dead, and the Afghani war dead, can come down from their roof tops.

Second, as religious people we engage in critical patriotism. Let me explain what I mean by “critical patriotism.”

As religious people, we have a strong allegiance to certain moral and ethical principles, and our allegiance to those moral and ethical principles can be stronger than our allegiance to our nation. For example, as Unitarian Universalists we say that one of our ethical principles is that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. We adopted that particular principle in 1985, but it has roots going back much further than that. That particular ethical principle can trace its roots back to the Golden Rule, a far older ethical principle that states that we shall do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Unitarians and Universalists got the Golden Rule from the ethical teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who was reported to have told his followers a form of the Golden Rule some two thousand years ago.

But Jesus did not make up the Golden Rule; he was restating an even older ethical precept that he got from his Jewish upbringing. In the Torah, those Jewish books traditionally supposed to have been written by Moses, in the book of Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18, it states: “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The book of Leviticus is at least two thousand five hundred years old, in its present form, though it is made up of even older material; and surely the Golden Rule is among the older material in the book. Suffice it to say that we are the inheritors of a religious tradition that has affirmed the ideal of this ethical precept for thousands of years.

Obviously, then, our ethical tradition can trace its roots back to well before the founding of the United States. In fact, some of us would say that our ethical principles transcend any one people or nation or moment in history. The Golden Rule has been worded differently at different times, and we further know that there are examples of ethical principles in other cultures that sound a good deal like our Golden Rule. All these are specific manifestations of a general transcendent principle; as a religious people, we owe our allegiance to this transcendent, eternally true ethical principle; and as a religious people, we owe a greater allegiance to this transcendent ethical principle than we do to the relatively short-lived American nation.

Our adherence to such transcendent ethical principles leads us to what I’m calling “critical patriotism.” We do owe patriotic feelings towards the United States; but our patriotic feelings will never overpower our allegiance to our higher ethical precepts. Indeed, the opposite is the case: we must critically examine our country’s actions and policies in light of our higher ethical precepts.

Such critical patriotism allows us to look with open eyes on the reasons and motivations behind our military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we as Americans are not honest about our motivations for going into Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s going to be difficult for those ghosts of American soldiers in the streets of Balad to be able to come home. Critical patriotism allows us to see that some of the reasons for starting these wars could be ethically justified, and other reasons could not be ethically justified; critical patriotism allows us to decide which reasons for war pass muster with our own transcendent ethical principles, and which reasons for war do not pass muster.

This kind of careful ethical examination of the war, and an attendant acceptance of responsibility as American citizens, is one of the things that we as a religious people do as a matter of course. We take the time to reflect upon, and to sort through the enormously complex ethical arguments surrounding the war. And this kind of ethical reflection, this kind of critical patriotism, is another step we take towards allowing the ghosts in the poem to find rest, to find their way home.

Third — and this is a corollary to the last point — we can affirm that religion is an important moral and ethical counterweight to politics. Political decisions are often made from expediency, and made in a hurry, without time for adequate ethical reflection. At its best, organized religion can serve as a metaphorical place where we can take the time to reflect seriously on the ethical implications of political decisions.

One of the reasons that the ghosts of the American soldiers roam the streets of Balad in the poem is that they have not been memorialized by American society, except in the most superficial way. Of course they have been memorialized by their Army buddies, and of course they have been mourned by their families. But wider American society has done little more than assert “We support our troops.” That last statement does not constitute adequate ethical reflection on the death of American soldiers. But by carefully reflecting on the death of American soldiers — and on the death of Iraqi and Afghani civilians, and on the death of other soldiers, for that matter — by such careful reflection, we can lay the metaphorical ghosts to rest.

We can engage in this ethical reflection through our ongoing participation in the democratic process. Most obviously, you and I can engage in ethical reflection through carefully exercising our right to vote. We have a primary election coming up very soon here in California, and the national election is only a few months away. It is our duty as religious people to carefully study the issues in the election, and then to reflect on the moral and ethical implications of those issues, to consider how our vote can be a moral and ethical response to American policy. Of course any vote is going to be something of a compromise — reality never seems to match our transcendent ethical ideals — but with careful reflection, our participation in the democratic process can have a worthwhile moral and ethical outcome.

Back in May of 1865, the African American community of Charleston, South Carolina, had a fairly straightforward task: to memorialize the Civil War dead by disinterring their bodies from a mass grave into a graveyard that was more in keeping with the respect that was due to them. Our task today, memorializing the dead from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not quite so physical and concrete.

But there are some straightforward things we can do to memorialize our war dead. We can be honest about death, and not try to deny the reality of the war dead. We can affirm our transcendent moral and ethical ideals, and in so doing we can engage in a kind of critical patriotism. And finally we can understand our religious ideals as a moral counterweight to politics, so that when we participate in democracy we will have a moral impact on the country.

These are the things we can do to memorialize the war dead. And so, at last, may the ghosts of American soldiers wandering the streets of Balad at night find their way home once again.

Peace Experiments

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Ever since Easter in the Sunday school, we have been doing a program called “Peace Experiments.” The notion behind “Peace Experiments” is quite simple: Rather than tell each other about the horrors of war and violence, maybe we could make more progress towards establishing a peaceful world if we experimented with peace.

I can explain this better with a story that we heard during the Peace Experiments program. The story comes from 101 Zen Stories, a small book compiled by Nyogen Senzaki in 1919, and reprinted in 1957 in the book Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. (I hope those of you who are fluent in Japanese will forgive my poor pronunciation of Japanese names.) The story is called “The Gates of Paradise,” and the main character is a Zen master named Hakuin Ekaku, an influential teacher in the Rinzai tradition.

A soldier named Nobu-Shige came to Haku-In and asked, “Is there really a paradise and a hell?”

“Who are you?” inquired Haku-In.

“I am a Samurai,” the warrior replied.

“You, a soldier!” Haku-In replied. “What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar.”

Nobu-Shige became so angry that he began draw his sword when Haku-In continued, “So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head.”

As Nobu-Shige drew his sword Haku-In remarked, “Here open the gates of hell!”

At these words the Samurai perceiving the master’s discipline sheathed his sword and bowed.

“Here open the gates of paradise,” said Haku-In. (pp. 79-80.)

The story tells us about two different ways of being in the world. The first way of being in the world, which Hakuin calls “The Gates of Hell,” makes you feel angry, makes you want to do battle, makes you want to get your own way no matter what. That’s the way people feel when they go to war. That’s the way many Americans feel these days about politics. Sometimes, that’s the way people feel who are working for good causes and social justice, as when we say something like, “People who won’t install compact fluorescent lights are stupid!” or something like, “I just hate people who are racists!” Sometimes, that’s the way we feel about our own families, as when we say something like, “What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you pick up your clothes?” or something like “I hate you, mom!” (And by the way, adults say that to their moms, too!)

Hakuin calls this state of being “The Gates of Hell.” If you pass through those gates, your soul will be in torment: you will be angry, you will want others to do your bidding regardless of their humanity, you may want to hurt someone else. This is not a pleasant place to be.

And after fearless Hakuin shows “The Gates of Hell” to the samurai, he then shows what he calls “The Gates of Paradise.” If you pass through “The Gates of Paradise,” your soul will be at peace. And as the story shows us, if your soul is at peace, like the samurai you are not going to cut Hakuin’s head off with your sword — if your soul is at peace, you too will be at peace in all your dealings with others.

It is no accident that Hakuin called these two states of being “paradise” or “heaven,” and “hell.” There are some people who try to tell us that heaven and hell are where you go after you die, but that is not true. Heaven and hell happen while we are alive, right now, right here. When we, like the Samurai, are ready to draw our swords in anger, we are headed into hell. But when we, like the Samurai, find internal peace, then we are headed into paradise.

This is what we were trying to do with Peace Experiments: we offered activities to children and middle schoolers that we felt would open Hakuin’s “Gates of Paradise.” Those of us who were planning this program — Heather Chen, Carmela Abraham, Beth Nord, Edie Keating, and Shannon Casey — sat around and brainstormed a list of fun activities that we thought would help children experience peace. Here are some of the activities we chose:

We decided we would play non-competitive games. What could be more fun than playing games? And the best non-competitive games can transcend simple fun and take us into higher realms of deeper connection with other human beings. In his book The Ultimate Athlete, George Leonard describes the phenomenon like this: “Spirit in flesh, flesh in spirit. Abstractions in the muscles, visions in the bones…. The body opens us to wonders in this and other worlds. Its movements through space and time launch us on a timeless voyage to a place beyond place.” We can call this: “playing for peace.”

We decided to bake cookies with the kids. Part of the reason we wanted to bake cookies is because — they’re cookies! — you can’t go wrong with cookies. At a deeper level, the process of baking cookies brings your soul to Hakuin’s “Gates of Paradise”: it is difficult to be angry or hateful when you are baking cookies. And at a still deeper level, we know we cannot have a peaceful family if people are hungry; we cannot have a peaceful nation if people are hungry; we cannot have a peaceful world if people are hungry. Obviously, we can’t bake cookies for the whole world — the children distributed the cookies they made at social hour — nevertheless, the act of baking reminds us of the importance of alleviating hunger.

We decided we would sing peace songs, songs like “May I Be an Instrument of Peace,” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “Peace Like a River.” When you sing peace songs, at the most literal level, you’re singing about peace. Beyond the subject of the songs, singing also has physiological effects on your body: your blood gets more fully oxygenated and the vibrations in your body created when you sing seem to have beneficial effects; the end result is that you feel better, more at peace with the world. At the metaphorical level, singing is about creating harmony with other people; and being in harmony is one of our primary ways of understanding peace.

And we decided to make a quilt made up of peace symbols. Partly this would be a way to introduce everyone to a variety symbols for peace. But at a deeper level, quilting is a process in which the individual efforts — the making of the individual quilt squares — combine into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. And an amazing thing happened as the children worked on the quilt: some of them began to spontaneously work together on the same quilt square, and they found they had even more fun working together than working side by side.

By now, I suspect you will have noticed something. All these peace activities had a physical element to them. One of my grounding assumptions is that we are not going to learn how to be peaceful simply by talking in abstractions. This is not to say that we shouldn’t talk abstractly — I’m a preacher, I fully support the value of abstract talk. But think about the story of Hakuin and the samurai. When the samurai asked Hakuin whether there really is a paradise and a hell, Hakuin could have engaged the samurai in an abstract philosophical discussion, which may or may not have proved satisfying to the Samurai. Instead, Hakuin brilliantly demonstrated paradise and hell to the samurai, in a very physical manner, and through this embodied demonstration, the samurai comes to a clear understanding of heaven and hell.

I believe this is the best way to teach peace: not abstractly; but in the real, embodied world in which we live. One of the greatest teachers of peace was Jesus of Nazareth — I say this in spite of the fact that after his death, not all his followers were able to continue to teach peace. Jesus taught peace partly by talking, but more by doing: he walked through the countryside; he fed the hungry; he helped heal those who were ill; he assisted those who were poor. Confucius was another great teacher of peace, and he did this by visiting kings to help them understand how to make their kingdoms “tranquil and happy.” “From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people,” Confucius taught, “all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything….” [Great Learning, ch. 6]

Earlier, during the congregational prayer for peace, we heard a poem by Denise Levertov, which said in part: “Peace, like a poem, … can’t be imagined before it is made.” If we are going to teach peace, it is not enough to imagine it abstractly: we must experience peace physically, we must experiment with peace, we must make peace in our own selves so that there can be peace in the world. May we all find peace within, and spread peace through our lives.

Another kind of good neighbor

The sermon below was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, California, at the 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. services. The sermon text below is a reading text; the actual sermon contained improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2010 Daniel Harper.

The following brief story was allegedly told by the wandering rabbi and political radical, Jesus of Nazareth:

“There was a man going from Jerusalem down to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and went off, leaving him for dead. Now by coincidence a priest was going down that road; when he caught sight of him, he went out of his way to avoid him. In the same way, when a Levite came to the place, he took one look at him and crossed the road to avoid him. But this Samaritan who was traveling that was came to where he was and was moved by pity at the sight of him. He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring olive oil and wine on them. He hoisted him up onto his own animal, brought him to an inn, and looked after him. The next day he took out two silver coins, which he gave to the innkeeper, and said, “Look after him, and on my way back I’ll reimburse you for any extra expense you have had. Which of these three, in your opinion, acted like a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” [Luke 10.30-36, Scholars Version translation.]

I read you that story by way of introducing you to Dana Greeley, who in May, 1961 — fifty years ago this coming May — became the first president of the newly formed Unitarian Universalist Association. I knew Dana Greeley — not well, but I knew him — because in 1970, he became the minister in my home congregation in Concord, Massachusetts. And Dana Greeley was, to my way of thinking, an example of a good neighbor, a Good Samaritan. I mean this not in the popular sense, in which a Good Samaritan is a smarmy conventional do-gooder who makes the rest of us look bad. Dana Greeley was not smarmy, and he was a Unitarian Universalist, which means he was not conventional. So I had better explain to you what I mean when I say that Dana Greeley was an unconventional, but not smarmy, Good Samaritan.

To begin with, Dana Greeley was an internationalist. He understood that everyone in the world was his neighbor. And he worked hard to make connections around the world.

And when I say around the world, I mean it; I grew up thinking it was normal for ministers to travel all around the world. He was in New Delhi, India, in 1982 for the New Delhi Peace March. He was in Hiroshima for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb. In 1962, he visited Albert Schweitzer at his hospital in Gabon in Africa. He was an invited observer at the Second Vatican Council, and sat within thirty feet of Pope John when the council was convened. He met with President John F. Kennedy at the White House, and with United Nations secretary U Thant at U.N. headquarters. Nor did he only travel overseas: he was one of the ministers who walked arm in arm with Martin Luther King on the streets of Selma, Alabama, in 1965 during the struggle for civil rights in America. William Schulz, who later became president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and then the president of Amnesty International, said, “What Dana did for Unitarian Universalism was to convince us that we were worthy of being taken seriously as a world-class faith.” [The Premise and the Promise, Warren Ross (Boston: Skinner House), 2001, p. 31.]

Why did he do all this traveling? In a sermon delivered in October, 1972, Greeley said, “World brotherhood and world government are the realities that must more and more be recognized.” [Forward through the Ages, Concord, Mass: First Parish, 1986.] “Brotherhood” is a word we don’t use much any more; today we might say all human beings are relatives, but the truth behind the phrase remains the same. Greeley was an internationalist because he really believed that all human beings are siblings, in the best possible sense. He not only believed this, he lived it out in his life. He was a naturally gregarious person who could talk with anyone, and so it was the most natural thing for him to know people all around the world and to build friendships and relationships that over time would naturally lead towards closer ties between human beings. Dana Greeley was the kind of Good Samaritan who understood the whole world to be his neighbor.

While he understood the whole world to be his neighborhood, Dana Greeley also made the effort to create good neighborhoods in his immediate vicinity. Another way to say this is to say that he was a good institutionalist.

That word “institutionalist” is not widely used in our contemporary society, so let me define it for you. A good institutionalist is someone who is adept at building up and maintaining strong human institutions. A good institutionalist may be the kind of person who is good at serving on committees and boards, and who is good at filling elected offices. A good institutionalist may also be someone who works behind the scenes in informal ways to strengthen our various institutions.

People who are good institutionalists are essential to a healthy democracy. Of course democracies need committed citizens who participate directly in government. But democracies also depend upon citizens who participate in voluntary associations, that is, those associations outside of government and business in which we are free to mingle with other citizens. The democratic right to free association is crucial for democracies because it is in voluntary associations — groups like the League of Women Voters and citizen’s groups and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto — where democracy really takes hold. It is in voluntary associations that most of us learn and practice the skills of democracy: public speaking; public listening; leadership and followership; learning to lose gracefully and learning to win gracefully; setting and reaching goals (goals, not profits); discussing big issues with other people and learning to trust in the democratic process to get us ever closer to an ideal world.

Dana Greeley once wrote, “I have always like people and have put a sizable measure of confidence in people” [25 Beacon Street, Boston: Skinner House, 1973, p. 69]. I watched Dana Greeley act as a good institutionalist in my home congregation when he was minister there. He strengthened the democratic structures in that congregation by engaging as many people as possible in the decision-making process. When I was a member of the high school youth group of that congregation, I remember that he made sure to invite youth members to planning retreats; to his way of thinking, people should learn the skills of democracy at a young age. He went further than that: he engaged both his opponents and his supporters in the decision-making process. He always had confidence in the people around him, and they tended to live up to the confidence he placed in them.

Having confidence in people happens to be a fine way to build democratic institutions. When you understand everyone to be your neighbor, and when you treat your neighbor the way you’d like to be treated, not only do your neighbors tend to treat you the way you’d like to be treated, and not only is everyone happier, but you also tend to get things done. In the sixteen years Dana Greeley was minister at my home congregation, the Sunday morning attendance more than quadrupled.

More narrowly, Greeley also knew his neighbors to be the people who come together each Sunday morning in Unitarian Universalist congregations. He once said, “My mother jollied me always, and challenged me, by reminding me that I was born on a Sunday morning at eleven o’clock…. I admit that eleven o’clock on Sunday is the time of the week I like best.” [25 Beacon Street, p. 22] He said this, I believe, not for selfish reasons, not because he happened to like that time of week, but because he knew how many other people value that time of the week.

Consider for a moment all the reasons we have for coming to Unitarian Universalist services on a Sunday morning. I remember John (not his real name) who was a meat-cutter at a supermarket, and who liked to go to his Unitarian Universalist church because the sermon gave him something to think about all week long while he was working; and, he said, that made him a better person. Mariana told me that if she missed the worship service on Sunday morning, she felt off balance all the rest of the week; Unitarian Universalist just made her feel good. Steve, who grew up Jewish, said he decided to join a Unitarian Universalist congregation because Sunday morning services helped him map out a moral course in his job as the owner of a large construction company. Then there was Irene, who often missed the service on Sunday morning because she was out in the social hall chatting with her cronies; but Sunday mornings was the center of her community, and she wouldn’t miss it for the world.

And without going into specifics, there are the people who come here carrying a burden of grief, or illness, or despair, or many other burdens; you can come here, and have a measure of peace for just a moment while you are held in the love of this religious community. That kind of thing happens all the time in this very room, at this very time on Sunday morning; I have seen it, and I have talked to people who have experienced it. Someone who really needs it can come in here and receive a measure of comfort, maybe even a measure of healing from the love that is in this room.

We come here on Sunday mornings, and each one of us, simply by showing up, is acting as a good neighbor. Just by showing up, we are part of a human community that provides comfort and peace and maybe healing to others. Just by showing up, your presence here supports those of us who come here to map out a moral course for the week; your presence supports those who come here to find some balance in their lives; your presence makes you a part of an intellectual community. And of course your presence here is of great importance to all those who are your friends, and who maybe come here to talk with you.

Dana Greeley was on to something when he considered Sunday mornings spent in with a congregation to be the best time of the week. This is a community of good neighbors, a community that offers peace, maybe healing, intellectual stimulation, time to map out a moral course for oneself.

I began this sermon with the well-known story of the Good Samaritan. At the end of that story, the wandering rabbi and political radical Jesus of Nazareth asks his audience a question designed to get them thinking about what it means to be a good neighbor. There are many answers to that question, which is why we still tell this story some two thousand years after it was allegedly first told. A good neighbor might be someone who sees the whole world as their neighborhood. A good neighbor might be someone who builds strong democratic institutions. A good neighbor might be someone who shows up here, week after week, just to be a part of this human community.

This coming May we will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Unitarian Universalist Association. As we look ahead to that celebration, I would submit to you that Dana Greeley represents, in these ways, some of the best aspects of who we are as Unitarian Universalists. We are good neighbors: good world citizens, good neighbors in this congregation, good neighbors who have confidence in humanity.