WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

As my partner Milton can tell you, I am a big fan of single panel cartoons like the ones you find in the New Yorker magazine. A few Christmases ago I gave Milton a huge coffee table book containing the best cartoons from every decade of that magazine’s history. He and I both knew at the time that part of my reason for giving him that present was so that I could have the pleasure of leafing through it. I especially love the way that certain themes and certain situations come up again and again in those cartoons year after year and decade after decade. There are the domestic cartoons that show a husband and wife exchanging words in their living room. There are the cartoons that depict a startled motorist suddenly confronted with an unexpected detour or incongruous highway sign. There is the classic desert island cartoon with a shipwreck survivor or two sitting under a palm tree on a tiny circle of land in the middle of the sea. Among my great favorites are the cartoons that show a fellow who has climbed a high mountain to pose a question to some wise and holy man who is sitting at the top. I particularly like those cartoons, not because I ever feel like the holy man sitting at the top, but because I so often feel like the guy climbing the hill to ask, “What’s it all about.”

Cartoonists come back to these settings over and over because beneath the humor, these cartoons depict basic elements of living and some very elemental human concerns. We laugh at the quips those cartoon spouses exchange because we know about the complexities and conflicts that can come in close relationships. We chuckle at the bewildered cartoon motorist because we know about the sudden detours that real life can take. We smile at the castaway’s predicament because we all confront the fear that we will end up stranded somewhere, isolated and alone. And most of us can identify with that fellow who climbs the hill in the cartoon. He goes up the hill because he is looking for something. He climbs the mountain to ask questions like, “Why are we here? What are we meant to be doing with our lives? What’s the meaning of it all?” The humor in those cartoons comes because there is always a disconnect between the question the climber asks and the answer the wise and holy man gives. (We’ll leave aside for now the question why it always seems to be a holy man sitting at the top of the hill!)

You might say that in life as in cartoons, what makes wise and holy men and women wise and holy is that they so seldom say or do what we would expect them to. Part of what wise and holy people do is to invite us to look at our lives from different angles than we’re accustomed to. And as often as not, when we look to a wise and holy person for an answer to some important question, they answer us with another question. As every law student knows, this was old Socrates’ method: get at truth by answering a question with a question. Socrates’ basic question was always, ”Why do you think what you believe is true is true?” With that question the great philosopher sharpened the intellects of his students. Or think of the novice Buddhist monk who goes to the Zen master seeking wisdom and is given, not an answer, but a question, like, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” By such a question the wise and holy Zen master means to shift the thinking and to deepen the insight of his young student. Or consider the wise and holy rabbi that we spend a lot of time thinking about at my church. Many people came to him seeking help and looking for answers. He was particularly good at answering a question with a question. His questions were always meant to lay bare the intention of those who came to him: “What is it you really want?” “What is it you truly need?” “What are you looking for?”

To think clearly, to understand deeply, and to live intentionally—these are what wise and holy men and women in every age and from every spiritual tradition have called us to strive for. That, I believe, is what we come together in religious communities like yours and mine to learn to do. What is it we’re looking for when we come together as people of faith? We come together for many reasons, of course—We come looking for fellowship and friendship and sense of community. We come together to celebrate our joys and share our sorrows. We come together to be to be lifted by the beauty and inspiration of worship. And that is all good. But beyond that, I believe we come together in religious communities because, like the fellow in the cartoon who climbs to the mountaintop, we’re looking for those things that give shape and direction to our living. Isn’t that really why we come together on Sunday —to get clearer about who we are and what it is we are meant to be about, to get a better understanding of what it is we are to do in the world? Come to think of it, just like the fellow in the cartoons, you all literally have to climb up that hill every week to find what you’re looking for!

How do we find what we’re looking for? How can we get clearer in our thinking? How can we deepen our insight? How can we strengthen that sense of spiritual purpose and direction that will allow us to live more intentionally? There are many paths to that. We could this morning look to Socrates, or the Buddha, or even, dare I say it, to Jesus. But on this particular morning, I invite you to consider with me the life of another wise and holy man who stood atop mountain peaks of his own, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As you might tell from my accent, I grew up in Deep South. When I was a boy Jim Crow laws and racial segregation were still facts of life. I was born in Dr. King’s hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Martin Luther King was a name I heard often on the lips of some of my relatives and other adults around me as a boy. Most of them did not speak that name, as people do now, with admiration. Many of them spoke it with scorn and contempt. For them, Dr. King was not a hero; he was a troublemaker. But the very fierceness with which people around me vilified Dr. King I think reflected their unwilling recognition that Dr. King possessed an undeniable moral courage, spiritual strength, and sense of mission and purpose. There is so much we can draw from the life of Dr. King. There is much that we could say about his great contributions to justice and human rights, and over the course of this weekend celebration of his life, many people will call those things to mind for us. But this morning, I invite you to look with me at some things we can take from Dr. King’s journey that may help us to find what we are looking for in our own individual and shared spiritual journeys.

First, Dr. King’s example teaches us is never to underestimate the power of religious community. So much of Dr. King’s strength and clarity of purpose sprang from his deep immersion in the faith tradition, which had shaped his family and his community for generations. You may remember that Dr. King’s father, Martin Luther King, Sr., was for many years the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. His father had been a minister, as had his father before him. Now that was a lot of preaching to grow up under and a lot of family history to live up to! But it was in that church, and within those men and women who showed up there every week to sing and pray, and who stood with each other in good times and hard times, that young Martin Luther King, Jr. found his vision and his voice. He grew up surrounded by a congregation of men and women who had lived their lives under the burden of racism and injustice and were still able to be people of faith and hope. Throughout his life, whether he spoke from the pulpit of an Atlanta church or from a union hall in Memphis, or from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King carried those people and the mark of that religious community with him in his heart. His voice rang with the faith and values his religious community had instilled in him: the call of the Hebrew prophet Amos to “let justice roll down like waters” and the moral imperative of Jesus, who said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who despitefully use you.” Had Martin not been so deeply rooted in his spiritual tradition and so strongly influenced by his religious community, he might never have found that powerful sense of purpose which characterized his life. Had it not been for those men and women who taught him by word and example, Martin Luther King might not have become a man who changed this nation’s history.

Dr. King’s example encourages us to invest ourselves more deeply in our own spiritual communities, whatever they may be. I stress this because we live in the most secular region of the United States. Fewer people in the Bay Area attend services at any house of worship than in any other place in the country. So many people here practice what I call “Lone Ranger” spirituality. They seem convinced that organized religion and congregations like yours and mine have little or nothing to offer them. But it is precisely in religious communities like yours and mine that people discover values that energize and empower them. In community we come to a sense of common purpose and shared vision. That is why your commitment to your religious tradition and to this congregation matters so much. It was so good to see the children here this morning. I know how committed you are to them and to their religious education. Who knows how this congregation’s values and ministry will shape their lives? Who knows what they will take away from this place that will make them agents for change in the world.

Even as we invest more deeply in our own spiritual traditions and communities, Dr. King’s example also reminds us to look over the fence, too. There is a certain silo mentality that all churches are prone to: We know who we are, we like who we are, why look any further? As deeply rooted in his own tradition as Dr. King was, he also found inspiration from beyond his own heritage. Dr. King listened to many voices. He found his passion for justice in the moral vision of the Hebrew prophets and his respect for the dignity of every human being in the example of Jesus. But when Martin Luther King looked for a way to translate that moral and spiritual vision into action for social change, he found his inspiration and model of the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi championed non-violent resistance and protest, and his philosophy of non-violence led to the liberation of India. Gandhi’s way of non-violence became the model for the movement for racial equality and civil rights in the United States which King led. Dr. King knew that wisdom springs from many sources. In this, I think, he shares a lot with Unitarian Universalism. You UU’s are particularly good at lowering your buckets down many wells, if I may put it that way, and drawing up inspiration from many sources. By listening to many spiritual voices, even the ones we think are far different from our own, we gain strength clarity and about our own spiritual paths.

A third word of wisdom I take from Dr. King’s example is this: Don’t be afraid of heights. I’ve been reading and re-reading some of Dr. King’s sermons and speeches this week. I’ve been struck by the sheer power of his language, by the cadences and rhythms of his speech, by the powerful images he drew from scripture and poetry and the history of his own people. One image appears over and over. Time and again Dr. King used the metaphor of the mountaintop. There are mountains and mountaintops in the sacred stories of all the great religions. In the landscape of the spirit, mountaintops are places of inspiration, places where people catch great visions. Mountaintops are where people climb to see the wide world beyond themselves and their narrow concerns. Mountaintops are places where, as Dr. King so eloquently said, you can catch sight of the Promised Land.

Dr. King was not afraid to climb high and call people to come up with him to see not only what was but also what could be. Against all the injustice and brutality which African Americans endured in the struggle for civil rights, Dr. King never tired of holding up before them and before white America the shining vision of the America that could be. You and I need to get up high, too. (I didn’t say we need to get high!) It is all too easy to get mired in the frustrations and problems of our own lives. It is all too easy to get bogged down in the frustrations and problems of our religious communities. Dr. King's example reminds us that we need to get up where we can look over the walls of our own lives and see the larger landscape. We need to get up high. We’re living in an age of lowered expectations and diminished hope. Years of war, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the persistent problems of prejudice have caused many people to lower their eyes and settle for just getting by. Dr. King’s call was to for us to look up, to lift our eyes, to see beyond problems to possibilities. In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King said, “I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.” As you and I seek a stronger sense of purpose and a clearer spiritual vision for ourselves and for our churches, let us not be afraid to climb high and look far. Get to the mountaintop once in awhile by whatever particular road takes you there.

One of the joys of coming to your church is the view you get from the top of this hill. Dr. King reminds us that the view from the top of the mountain is glorious, but the work we need to do as people of faith and vision, is down below. In 1963, Dr. King found himself, along with many of his comrades, in a jail in Birmingham, Alabama. They had been arrested for their efforts to stage peaceful protests in that city. From that Birmingham jail King wrote a letter in response to a public statement by several prominent white religious leaders, so-called moderates, who had criticized King’s methods and questioned his presence in Birmingham. They said that Dr. King’s activities were “unwise and untimely.” In his reply to those critics, Dr. King wrote: “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.” That’s it, isn’t it? That’s where our spiritual principles and our faith are supposed to carry us. The spiritual mountaintop gave Dr. King his vision. But the valley gave him the place to put his vision into action. We come together Sunday by Sunday to celebrate our faith, to enjoy the fellowship of our congregations, and to be reminded of our principles and values. But we do all of that so that we can go out the doors to put those principles to work wherever there are people in need and wherever injustice still prevails: where we live and where we work; in our neighborhoods and cities; in the halls of government. The work for compassion and justice is the work of a lifetime, and more. You will remember that on the eve of his assassination, from the pulpit of a church in Memphis where he had gone to march for just working conditions for the city’s sanitation workers, Dr. King closed his sermon with these prophetic words: “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter to me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” Throughout his life Dr. King held onto a dream he knew from the start he might not live to see fully realized. Idealism is always an unfinished dream. The work for justice and peace is always ongoing. Our personal spiritual journeys and the journeys of our faith communities are always works in progress. None of that makes them less worthwhile.

It has been a joy to speak to you this morning and I thank you for your attention. You and I are fortunate to be members of religious communities that lift people up and do good in the world. This congregation has been a force for good in this community and will continue to be. I wish for you what I pray for for my own congregation: that as you climb this hill week by week you will draw strength from one another and inspiration from the lives of men and women like Dr. King, and will continue to find that clearer sense of vision and purpose that you’ve come here looking for.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR? by the Rev. Thomas Traylor January 20, 2008

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
by the Rev. Thomas Traylor
January 20, 2008