Worship Service at Church of the Dawntreader Thursday, October 30, 2014 10:00 a.m. SLT
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
    Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ 
    Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
    www.zondervan.com
Invocation:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen
Confession and Absolution
We come before you, our Loving Father, Mother God, confessing most of all our need of you.
We confess that we have not always acknowledged just how much we depend on you.
We confess that we have not always loved you with all our heart, soul and mind.
We have not always loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We ask that you will forgive us and grant us your strength to conform more fully to your loving will for us.
We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Amen.
In obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is my privilege to declare to you and to myself, the entire
forgiveness of all our sins.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen
Prayer of the Day
Let us pray.
O God, generous and supreme, your loving Son lived among us,
instructing us in the ways of humility and justice. Continue to ease our burdens, and lead us to serve alongside of him,
Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen
First Lesson: Malachi 1:14b and 2:8-10 (NIV)
"I am a great king,” says the LORD Almighty, “and my name is to be feared among the nations."
 8 But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble;
you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the LORD Almighty.
9 “So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people,
because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.”
 10 Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us?
Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?
Here ends the First Lesson
Psalm 131 (NIV)  
1 My heart is not proud, LORD,
   my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
   or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted myself,
   I am like a weaned child with its mother;
   like a weaned child I am content.
 3 Israel, put your hope in the LORD
   both now and forevermore.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
Second Lesson: 1 Thessalonians 2:7-9, 13 (NIV)
We were like young children among you.
   Just as a nursing mother cares for her children,
8 so we cared for you.
Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.
9 Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship;
we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you.
 13 And we also thank God continually because,
when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word,
but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.
Here ends the Second Lesson.
Gospel Lesson: Matthew 23:1-12 (NIV)
 1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples:
2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.
3 So you must be careful to do everything they tell you.
But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.
4 They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders,
but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
   5 “Everything they do is done for people to see:
They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long;
6 they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues;
7 they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.
   8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.
9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.
10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah.
11 The greatest among you will be your servant.
12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Here end the Readings from Holy Scripture.

 - Sermon -

Our lessons for this week teach us about the importance of humility
in the life of God's people.
In our First Lesson we hear from God that He alone is the Great King.
The people charged with the care of His people are to be faithful to Him and to their needs,
but all too often, we are not very good stewards of the wealth and power placed in our hands.
Those are meant for the good of others as well as ourselves,
but we to whom they are entrusted
are more interested in taking care of our own needs and desires
than those of the people we are called to care for.
God's answer to this is to remind us all that we have but one Father, Himself,
so we are sisters and brothers to each other,
and God's will is that we care for one another.
Our psalm is one of my personal favorites.
Here we learn just how much God is our Mother as well as our Father.
In His loving care, we can feel as safe as a young child feels in the care of a loving mother.
We need not concern ourselves too much
with the many things we do not understand.
Whether we speak of real life or second life,
there are many things that no one person will ever grasp.
Whether we think of real life or second life,
some things will be incomprehensible to any one person.
I may have a handle on something that you don't understand,
or you may be better able to deal with something than I can.
This is why it is so important for us to help each other.
True humility enables our reaching out to help each other. 
There is a false humility as well as false pride,
and those two feelings enable each other
as well as disabling many good things that we all need in life.
The false humility tells us that we are worthless,
that no one could possibly care about us.
To put oneself down is not a sign of any kind of humility.
Rather it is a sign of letting fear overcome love in our hearts.
We are sometimes afraid of many things in life,
and fear is a survival mechanism.
When we are afraid, the fear tends to take over all our thinking and feeling.
To use the phrase from A Course in Miracles,
Love Means Letting Go of Fear.
I want to go a step further and say
that love enables letting go of fear.
A young child, safe in the presence of a loving, protecting Mother
is a fine example of human life free from fear.
We can do that for each other,
and knowing that we can help each other overcome deep fears
by loving one another
is a sign of true humility and true pride.
There is no greater power in the universe than real love, real caring,
and knowing that we share in that power
is a realistic picture of who we are
and to Whom we belong.
Since Halloween is tomorrow, I want to say just a word about the popular holiday.
I have encountered many Christians who are afraid of the day
and many of its symbols and myths.
Many others just have fun,
and I think that is quite healthy.
I try to keep in mind that it is good to be able to laugh and have fun with the things that scare us.
To use the traditional metaphor for evil,
the devil is a proud spirit,
and he cannot bear to be laughed at.
If you laugh at the evil you fear,
you take away its power over you.
So I hope you have lots of fun and laughter tomorrow!
In addition, tomorrow is based on Samhain, the traditional Celtic New Year.
With the beginning of the colder, darker and more dormant season
comes a "thin time" in which the world of spirit and the material world
seem much closer together than usual.
In this time we may sense our relationship with the natural world more than usual.
Take a moment to stand outdoors (if it isn't raining or snowing!)
and think about the living things around you.
Feel the great unity of all life,
for we share one Creator who cares for us all.
We are in this world to care for each other
in ways that reflect God's loving care.
In our Gospel lesson for today
we learn about the caring that was most important
for the community of believers in Jesus.
He said that the religious leaders of God's people in His time
were busy imposing strict rules and regulations on others
that they were not willing to lift a finger to help with.
That kind of problem is a recurring one
in the spiritual and political realms.
Powerful people tend to want to use their power
for their own benefit
or sometimes for the benefit of the institutions they serve
rather than using their power to help and care for others.
Clinging to power and using it for oneself
is an example of fear at work
far beyond the point that it can do anyone any good.
In our time, bishops of many different churches (not just the Roman Catholic Church)
have protected priests who were harming children under their care.
They were acting out of fear
that the ensuing scandal would do irreparable damage to the church they loved.
Acting inappropriately out of fear so often causes far greater damage
than the damage we have feared at first,
and so it has been in this case.
It's far better to act out of love,
being as concerned for the well being of others
as we are concerned for our own.
And this is the essence of true humility,
and the essence of obedience to the Law of God,
to love others
as we love ourselves.
An example of the use of power for the well being of others
came about in the life of Archbishop Angelo Roncalli
who would be come the recently sainted Pope John XXIII.
During the era just before World War II, he was the Papal Legate to Turkey,
a kind of church diplomat. 
He heard of a boatload of Jewish children who had been smuggled out of the Europe of the Third Reich.
No country in the world was willing to receive them
for a variety of political, diplomatic, bureacratic, or other cowardly reasons.
Then Portugal stepped up and said that the children could land in safety there and reside there
if it could be proven that they were all Catholic.
Archbishop Roncalli's office prepared baptismal certificates for every one of those children,
and the Archbishop signed those certificates himself,
saving the lives of all the children in that situation.
He was a man of true humility and faith.
He used the power in his hands for the well being of others
and gave us all a lesson in love for our neighbors.
Amen.

Prayer of the People
Please type your spontaneous petitions in chat.
Each prepared petition is intended to remind us of the things we need to pray about,
so a brief pause will be provided for us to pray our own petitions,
either sharing them in the chat window
or praying them in our own hearts.

Loving God, we pray for each other, for those who depend upon us for prayer, and for all people according to their needs.
We ask that your healing power may prevail in our lives.
We pray that those in positions of public trust may be worthy of that trust as they act as stewards of power and wealth
for the benefit of all.
We pray that conflicts may be resolved in the context of relationships,
so that violence of thought word and deed may be diminished all through our world.
We ask your blessing for all who bear witness to the Gospel, so that relationships with you may be deepened for all people.
All these things, and whatever else you see that we need, we ask that you will grant for the sake of your Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whose name we pray.
Amen.
Our Lord's Prayer
Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever and ever,
Amen.
Benediction
May the Lord bless us and keep us.
May the Lord make His face to shine upon us and be gracious to us.
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon us, and give us peace.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
Amen +

Samhain

Over the years, many people have told me that Halloween is their favorite holiday.
Our Halloween is based in part on the ancient Celtic high holy day of Samhain.
It can be a day and time of deep spiritual renewal for everyone.

North Idaho Unitarian Universalists

October 26, 2014


At this time of year we enter a season of holidays.

The one coming up soonest is Halloween,
   and since childhood it has been one of my favorites.

I know a lot of people love it, too,
    and I think there are good reasons to love it beyond childhood.

Many adults love to dress up and wear costumes and go to parties
   celebrating the scary and yet exhilarating feelings of the day.

The changing of the season, the turning of the wheel
  evokes a lot of different feelings for all of us.

By October 31, it is very clear that the warmer seasons are over for this year,
      and we are moving into a time of cooler - and even colder - weather
               and the time of dormancy of Mother Nature.

 - - - at least in the North! - - -

Since we live in the North of our planet and our country,
   this season is especially meaningful to us
      and to others like us.

As Unitarian Universalists,
  the upcoming holy day of Halloween has roots
     that correspond to our own pagan, or earth based,
        roots of spirituality.

As most of you probably know well,
    Halloween has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain.

And yes, that is the correct pronunciation of the title of today's sermon.

It's an ancient Celtic word,
   and many of those words appear very peculiar to speakers of modern English.

At the same time,
    ancient Celtic spirituality and culture
       comprise the real and original "Old Time Religion"
           in which we have deep roots - - -

       and not only as Unitarian Universalists.

Our entire culture shares in this heritage,
      and the Christians among us are influenced by it
            whether some of them like it or not.

Halloween is not always popular among fundamentalist Christians.

In my own ministry,
   I have encountered mixed feelings related to it.

There were those who feared that Halloween involved dangerous kinds of play
   with witches, demons, and other representatives of the dark side.

I have always tried to emphasis the positive side of things.

In the context of ministry with people who were afraid of Halloween,
    I would talk about how healthy it is to laugh at the things that frighten us.

Fear holds no power at all in the face of laughter.

It isn't always possible to laugh when we are faced with real danger,
     but meeting danger effectively
       is the one true and right purpose of fear.

When we are not in immediate danger,
   fear is not appropriate,
     and it can be disabling.

Sometimes we are taught to fear -
    often unnecessarily -

out of superstition that emphasizes the dark side of things -

    - or as a result of religious or political leaders
           who exploit fear
              as a way of controlling gullible people.

If any of this sounds familiar,
     we are seeing a lot of it in our time.

As the election approaches,
  there are pundits and commentators who are nearing hysterical levels

    in the provocation of fear
      in order to persuade a few more people to vote the way they want them to vote.

As a truly horrendous example,
      an aide to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas (the place from which I escaped)
               made the comment, "Before Obamacare there was not a single confirmed case of Ebola in the U.S."

Needless to say,
  I am strongly opposed to the misuse of fear in this way,
     and over time it has been misused by both sides,

        left and right,
   in this country and all around the world.

My own priority leans heavily toward spirituality
     and the use of our traditions to help us grow
           emotionally and intellectually.

Living in fear,
   whether the fear is appropriate to the circumstances or not,
       tends to stifle growth.

So people who are frightened by the symbols of Halloween
     will do well to learn to laugh at their fears.

In case you have friends or family who need to hear this message,
    you can speak their language a little bit
       and remind them that the devil is a proud spirit
         who cannot bear to be mocked.

If you laugh at him,
    you take away his power.

After all,
   the devil is a Christian myth and metaphor,
     and whether we have any shared beliefs about him,
       we can use him as a tool of communication

        just as we use many myths and metaphors from other religious traditions.

As Unitarian Universalists,
      we are particularly adept at this kind of wide ranging understanding and use of myth and metaphor.

One of the things I appreciate most in my experience with Unitarian Universalist communities
     is that these places and people
           are the unique opportunity in my life
              to practice the full range of my own spirituality.

And that brings us right back to Halloween and Samhain.

Both have been an important part of my own spiritual practice
        for many years.

Our cultural practices of Halloween have been meaningful to me since childhood,
       and in more ways than just the collection of sweets from my neighbors...

              ... although that is lots of fun ...

Halloween provides even deeper fun
     for those of us who have long outgrown "Trick - or - Treating" ourselves!

To recall the saying of Jesus,
     "It is more blessed to give than to receive,"

           It can be even more fun to watch and welcome
        the children who dress up and go from door to door

               than it was to go for ourselves.

In many of our neighborhoods,
     there are very few children going around trick - or - treating any more,

         and when it happens that there are fuew trick - or - treaters,
           it can help to remember that there are other ways to enjoy Halloween.

First and foremost,
    we can remember the holy day of Samhain
      that stands behind the holiday of Halloween.

You may remember my saying, "Beware the holidays, and enjoy the holy days."

The holidays will often disappoint us,
      but the holy days do not disappoint us
            if we remember their meaning.

Holy days become a time to practice our spirituality.

First and foremost,
    Samhain is a holy day
         because it is a thin time.

It is a time in which the separation of our material and spiritual selves
           begins to disintegrate.

The song by the Police, "We are spirits in the material world,"
   would be a perfect hymn for Samhain. :-)

Most of the time,
   our spiritual life is far from our material life,
          and we tend to forget the one while we are immersed in the other.

One way to make use of this time of year is personal, spiritual introspection during the thin time of Samhain.

That works especially well because the divide between spirit and matter is especially thin at this time of year.

We become aware of the spiritual realities in which we are immersed
     more easily than at other times.

A Native American proverb speacks to this:

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

Listen to the wind,
   it talks.

Listen to the silence,
   it speaks.

Listen to your heart,
   it knows.

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This kind of listening may seem spooky
  only because we are not accustomed to it.

Our culture does not always value spiritual introspection.

We all need it,
  but we are not always encouraged to do it.

When we are suddenly made aware that we are spirits in the material world,
   it can be startling!

When that happens at this time of year, as it often does,
   we can begin to associate it with Halloween and the chills and thrills that go with it.

There are some very simple, logical reasons
   why unexpected spiritual experiences and insights may come upon us at this time of year.

As the days get shorter and the nights get colder and longer,

As the cloud cover makes the already shorter days seem even darker,

And as the world of nature moves toward its dormant time,

          we are naturally more introspective.

We naturally begin to thing about life and death in more immediate and personal ways.

Our ancient ancestors were facing the long time of winter solitude,
   and as the days pointed more and more toward the quiet time of the year,
         it is natural that they would become quieter and more introspective as well.

Long nights around the family hearth
   would become the time for telling tales and remembering loved ones long gone.

It is no surprise, then, that Samhain became a time to remember and feel close to
       the spirits of those who have gone before us.

The Mexican customs surrounding the Day of the Dead
   are a fascinating expression of this time of introspection.

Families will go out and picnic in cemeteries,
   feeling that the loved ones who have died
      are still part of the family circle.

Sometimes they will eat and drink the favorite foods and beverages of the deceased,
      just to feel closer to them.

The Christian Feast of All Saints is the way the western Christians adopted this ancient holy day as their own.

The great hymn, "For All the Saints," which we sang this morning in its lovely Unitarian Universalist form,
        has long been one of my favorite hymns.

A special thank-you to Jeanie for choosing it for today's service.

As we work together, our spirituality shines more brightly than it does when we try to find our life's meaning by ourselves.

Our spiritual community is far deeper and wider than we see most of the time,
   and this time of year is a wonderful time to remember that encouraging reality.

I'm surely speaking of the wider community of Unitarian Universalists in this world
      as well as the wider community of people of good will of all kinds of religious traditions.

Those of us who seek to find common ground are everywhere, all over the world.

It just happens too often that we speak less loudly

        - most of the time -
    
     than those who point fingers and make accusations against people
              whose beliefs may be diferent from their own.

Tolerance is a religious virtue,
    and without it,

we will all have a difficult time creating a positive future together.

The wider spiritual community of which we are a part
   also includes those who have gone ahead of us into the world to come.

This is true for us
   whether or not we believe in a life beyond this life.

As most of you know, I do believe in it.

I also know that it is not possible to know much about it in the objective sense.

The reality I want to look at for a moment
   is that we all have memories of those who have gone before us,

         we rightly treasure many of those memories.

From those memories we construct our own personal, inner vision of the people we have loved in this life.

By doing so,
  we establish an enduring connection with them.

That connection is real for us as long as we live.

Memory is a very elastic thing,
   as careful study is showing more and more.

Therefore, as we remember our loved ones,
   we do well to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative as well and as often as we can.

Then we can make our own inner loved ones
   into even more positive and helpful influences in our daily lives
       than they may have been able to be in the past.

We can choose carefully what to focus on in our remembering.

We can choose to understand the events of the past in new ways,
     giving the kindest interpretation to the things that happened.

In this way,
     remembering our loved ones can be an experience of joy and healing.

Finally, as we approach the high holy day of Samhain,
   I personally feel a deep need to talk about our relationship with the world of nature.

All life that has breath is spiritual:
   The term Spirit in Greek and Hebrew is the same as the term for breath or wind.

The winds of Autumn can be for us a reminder of our relationship to the whole natural world.

The sound of wind in a pine tree or other evergreen
   can be a call to worship,

      the sound of a quiet reminder to look within.

My personal recommendation is that we all take a moment next Friday, on the Holy Day itself,
     to stand or sit in a comfortable place outdoors.

Be in touch with the feeling of Mother Earth upon who we stand
     and from whom we draw life energy.

Listen to the sounds of nature.

They are there, and not always drowned out by the human noises of a city or a town.

Feel the presence of life around you.

Trees are living creatures whose breath is slower than ours,

    and yet our own breath depends deeply upon theirs.

Think about those realities for a moment,
   and feel our connection to the wider reality of life.

As we do this,
  we will find that Halloween - Samhain -

    is a beautiful opportunity for personal, spiritual renewal

           whether we dress up in costumes or eat extra sweet things or not.

Blessed be, my friends.

Amen.

So Mote it Be.