First Reading: Mark Ch. 1-16

"The reign of God is like the case of the owner of an estate who went out at dawn to hire workmen for his vineyard. After reaching an agreement with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them out to his vineyard. He came out about midmorning and saw other men standing around the marketplace without work, so he said to them, 'You too go along to my vineyard and I will pay you whatever is fair.' At that they went away. He came out again around noon and mid-afternoon and did the same. Finally, going out in late afternoon he found still others standing around. To these he said, 'Why have you been standing here idle all day?' 'No one has hired us,' they told him. He said, 'You go to the vineyard too.' When evening came the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workmen and give them their pay, but begin with the last group and end with the first.' When those hired late in the afternoon came up they received a full day's pay, and when the first group appeared they supposed they would get more; yet they received the same daily wage. Thereupon they complained to the owner, 'This last group did only an hour's work, but you have put them on the same basis as us who have worked a full day in the scorching heat.' 'My friend,' he said to one in reply, 'I do you no injustice. You agreed on the usual wage, did you not? Take your pay and go home. I intend to give this man who was hired last the same pay as you. I am free to do as I please with my money, am I not? Or are you envious because I am generous?' Thus the last shall be first and the first shall be last."

Second Reading: From "Sabbath" by Wayne Muller

"During the time of Jesus, Palestine was a place of wonder and anticipation, filled with miracle workers and prophesies of a Messianic Age. It was commonly believed in first century Palestine that the end of history must be near, and that the Messiah would herald the coming of the eschaton, a Greek term meaning "the end time..." Many, including the apostle Paul, were convinced they would still be alive when Jesus returned.

Clearly this did not happen; neither did many other predictions by early church leaders of the imminence of the final Kingdom of God. They were not alone; history is riddled with people, groups, and religions who have predicted how history would end - usually in their favor, often when they were alive, and universally accompanied by the gleeful destruction of whomever they deemed their enemies. But this is a very parochial view of time, to believe that for as long as life has endured, time itself would choose to come to its apocalyptic culmination simply because we have now arrived.

However, the failure of the messianic prophecies does not dissuade us from seeking the promised land, the perfect future, or the fountain of youth. In western civilization we continue to be obsessed with eschatology. We still believe we are the harbingers of a golden age; aided and abetted by the breathtaking miracle of technology, we call our particular messianic eschatology progress.

Progress is the road to the new and improved promised land. At the end of progress, we will all have peak efficiency, superior productivity, and an elevated standard of living. We will have thoroughly mastered nature and all its inherent problems, we will all live in a place and time in which all will be well, all diseases cured, and all wars ended. We are on the glory road, we are hurtling toward the eschaton. There is no time to rest, because we are on a very important mission, to boldly go where no species has gone before. We never rest on our laurels, we never rest at all. Every moment is a necessary investment in the divinely ordained and completely unquestioned goal of progress.

What we are building for the future is infinitely more important than whatever we have right now. The eschatology of progress is an inflated pyramid scheme, where our riches exist always to be mined and harvested in the future, through endlessly expanding markets, not here, not now, but there, and later, we will see the promised land…

If the promised land is the good and perfect place, then where we are right now must be an imperfect place, a defective place. If the future is sacred, then the present is profane. Every day we are not yet in paradise is a problem – our daily life is an obstacle in our way, it is another day short of the end time. Today – because it is not yet perfect – is always a bad day.

This means that we have to work hard and long and never, ever rest…(or experience the quiet of here and now)...A doctor confessed that for him, and for many of his friends and colleagues in medicine, part of their rush and hurry is fear of the terrible things they will feel if they rest, if they are quiet. They are so close to so much suffering and loss, they are afraid that if they stop, even for a moment, the sheer enormity of sorrow will suffocate and overwhelm them. The busyness of the medical model is in part a defense mechanism, a way to skate over the rampart, tender uncertainties of the practice of human healing…

One of our fears of quiet, if we stop and listen, is we will hear emptiness. If we worry we are not good, or whole inside, we will be reluctant to stop and rest, afraid we will find a terrible, aching void with nothing to fill it…

While our speed may keep us safe, it also keeps us malnourished. It prevents us from tasting those things that would truly make us safe. Prayer, touch, kindness: In a theology of progress. Only when we get to the end can we lie down in green pastures, be led beside still waters, and allow our soul to be restored. This is the psalm we sing when people have died. This is the psalm we save for death, because in the world of progress, you do not rest in green pastures, you do not lie beside still waters, there is no time. Never in this life. Only when we get to the promised land."

Sermon

Martin Luther believed it was possible to rest — to take refuge in this very life — In a fortress not made of our own hands.

A few years ago, "A Mighty Fortress" was voted one of the two favorite hymns of the parish (the other being "Morning has Broken.") And since you claim you like the strong melody of "A Mighty Fortress" (and I saw most of you singing along with the words of Martin Luther), you must have noticed what you said. "Did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing" Loosely translated: "We would all admit that we were total losers, if our confidence was based on our own strength, excellence, and hard work." Welcome to the First Unitarian Church – where we often sing better than we live. Where the legacies of

Our historical tradition are often in stark contrast to the working principals of our daily existence. Truth be told, many of us, if not most of us, if not all of us, have a great deal of confidence in our own strength. We are striving like crazy to win, to progress into a golden future.

Now the holy obligation of this church, and every religious community, is to discourage idolatry, the worship of false gods. The pursuit of the illusory, secondary good: that which appears powerful and attractive and capable of saving our lives; but which in the end proves false, untrustworthy and impotent. There’s a certain sport in going after the false gods of others, especially from the vantage point of our own liberal tradition. We can be fairly caustic in our dismissal of rituals, doctrines, and creeds as impediments on the path to the holy. We can clearly see the error in Biblical literalism, or in easy formulas for salvation, or in obedience to laws that oppress the human spirit and harden the heart.

But this morning I’m going after my own false gods, my own idols: Excellence and Hard Work. This was the faith of my family of origin. My mother, a musician and a pianist, who studied at Julliard School of Music in New York, taught us that being a virtuoso was the best a human being could be.

My father, an officer in the United States Coast Guard, believed that shoes should have a spit and polish shine, and that everything about human life had to be orderly and in ship shape. As children, we didn’t just have to clean our rooms, we had to "pass inspection."

One of my favorite songs from my childhood was from the H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan:

When I was a lad, I served a term
As office boy to an attorney’s firm
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floors
And I polished up the handle of the big front door
I polished up the handle so carefully
That now I am the ruler of the Queen’s Navy.

And I believed it! If you polished long enough and with enough skill, perseverance, and effort, you could become the Ruler of the World. You could be whatever you wanted to be.

This naïve and optimistic world view crashed dramatically when I reached the age of eighteen, and was required to read Dag Hammerskold’s autobiography, Markings. Here was a man who was more powerful than the ruler of the queen’s navy. He was the Secretary General of the United Nations, a brilliant peacemaker, a good and hard working servant of the world, as successful as a human being could be: and truthful. And what I discovered in his journals was that he was a man well-acquainted with grief; insecure, unhappy, and full of self-doubt. He wrote, "Never let success hide its emptiness from you, achievement it’s nothingness, toil it’s desolation." He had learned that excellence and hard work were false gods. He found out in the course of his lifetime that excellence and hard effort could not save him. And I do not believe that it can save you or me either. That does not mean they are not useful, important human virtues. I do not believe that anyone of us would want to live in a world where excellence and hard work were not encouraged, were not valued, were not rewarded. Excellence and hard work have been responsible for a great deal of human advancement and happiness.

Mother Theresa’s dedication made a difference. I, like most of you, want and appreciate excellent doctors and healers, excellent music, excellent food, and excellent airplane maintenance. I want my children to do well in school. I want attendance to be high in church. I am often awed by excellent hard work wherever it shows up. I appreciate it when the bag loading person at the grocery store does his or her job well (putting the frozen food together, keeping the fragile fruit and the fresh loaf of bread on the top). Excellent, hard work can bless our lives.

But this morning I want to look at the shadow side of our striving; at what excellence and hard work cannot give us; at how they can confuse us, delude us and waste our energies. Sometimes excellence and hard work can lead you far away from what is true and life giving and holy. Plenty of people have polished up the handle of the big front door — very carefully, and not become ruler of the queen’s navy. Some have worked so hard and well that they have gained the whole world and become rulers of all they have surveyed, but in the process they have lost their own souls.

Sometimes it is simply a case of direction: Excellence and hard work can take you in the wrong direction. A classic teaching story of religion describes a man who loses a diamond in his own house. This jewel represents his whole wealth. He is desperate to find it. But his search (which is methodical, exhausting, and penetrating) is conducted entirely outside in the street. When asked why he is looking outside (in the world), where he lost his treasure inside, he explains that it is dark in his house and that the light is much better out in the street. It's not just how hard we look, or how sincere we are in our efforts, or how long we are willing to labor. It also matters where we look. This is especially true in our search for God. The mystics say that you can look for God out in the world for a thousand lifetimes and never find a shred of evidence of that reality. But if you look for the kingdom of God within the temple of your own body, you will find the treasure and the peace that you seek.

Where we put our energies is critical on our spiritual journey. But it is also critical in how we understand our secular lives. Where is our focus?

I have been haunted by a story of a member of this parish. Her father was a physician. At the age of seven, she was out driving with her mother, when her Mom said, "That's the hospital where your father works." She replied, "Do I have a father?" Her parents were not divorced. It's just that her Dad was working so hard to be an excellent doctor that he had completely abdicated his responsibilities as a father.

It's far too easy to condemn the blindness of others, in their pursuit of excellence than it is to see where we go wrong. Our response to the great sin that is done in the name of excellence is too often to say, "Not excellent enough!" This contains the hidden presumption that human beings have the capacity to be excellent and strong and hard working in each and every aspect of their lives.

But I have become convinced that sometimes it is our very pursuit of excellence (and our Puritan work ethic) that takes us further away from what is important.

It happens that, when something we are doing isn't working, our response is, "Well, I'll just do it more, harder, with greater concentration." But all the hard work and excellence in the world can simply be building the wall higher between you and what is true and real and trustworthy.

There are some things that hard work and excellence cannot affect. And I don't just mean death and taxes.
Illness and injury can teach you a great deal about the limitations of hard work and excellence. We all do what we can to stay healthy: but when you get an illness for which there is no cure, you are in trouble. When you undergo surgery, when your back goes out, when your bones break — healing takes time. And no matter how excellent your doctors, or how hard you work at physical therapy, recovery is a long and slow process (with great emphasis on the slow).

Grief is not helped much by hard work and excellence. If your heart is broken, if you have lost people who are unforgettable or irreplaceable, you will enter into the valley of the shadow and you will cry, and you will hurt and you will mourn. And no amount of hard work on your part will make the pain go away.

Which brings us to an even greater mystery. Excellence and hard work will not help you to understand generosity, grace, love, and mercy. Because those things are not earned. They are not won by our strength. Generosity, grace, love, and mercy are not available to those who are by nature, accountants.

At least that seems to be what Jesus is trying to teach in the parable of the generous employer. You see many people really believe that God is an accountant, that in the end what will matter is how many hours we put in, how hot the sun was, how many grapes were picked, how much sweat was on our brow, how early we got up to get in line to labor, and especially, how much harder we worked than that lazy, unmotivated, ignorant fellow migrant working in the next field (who has not even filled one basket, by our count). To spiritual accountants, Jesus' mathematics make no sense whatsoever. In fact we share the outrage of those who have been working since dawn. Why should the man who has worked fourteen hours get the same pay as the man who has only worked one?

Ask that question to a new mother, holding a six-week old baby. "How can you love a small person, who doesn't contribute any work to your family, who only takes time and energy and most of your sleep?"

Ask that question to a man taking care of his partner who is dying of AIDS. "How is it that you can love so selflessly someone who suffers, who needs so much attention and care, and who can accomplish nothing at this time?"

Ask a close friend: The one who knows you so well, that she or he sees not only your brilliance and wit and excellence, but also sees your selfishness and fearfulness and blindness, and who still loves you. He loves you when you have no strength. She is there for you when you succeed and when you fail. He invites you out to lunch, when you haven't done any good work at all.

Human generosity is miraculous. As is God's generosity. It is not dependent upon our strength or our time clocks, or our performance. It is a gift.

And if we are too busy, or working too hard, or so focused on our own strength or excellence, it is a gift we can completely miss. Sadly, our love of excellence and hard work can sometimes not only distract us from what is essential. It can also serve as a socially acceptable mask for our flaws and our brokenness; that is, our love of being in control, our pride, our distrust that there is any strength or help available, other than that which we, ourselves, can generate.

Part of our religious journey is to discover our strength, our unique talents and gifts, our worth and dignity — our wholeness.

But this morning, I would ask you to consider a generosity that has no limits and is not dependent upon the numbers of hours you have worked, or the quality of the product that you have produced within your life.

Ask yourself: If it turns out, in the end, that I have accomplished very little (I am one of those who gets to work late, only an hour before quitting time)…

If it turns out what I did do, in that limited amount of time, wasn't as excellent as I had hoped; that I never was able to be especially holy, or strong, or faithful, or helpful…

If in my life, I never reach the promised land…

Can I still count on generosity? From life? From the people I love? From the power that created all of this? Can I depend on grace? Can I, today, take a rest? Can I lie down in green pastures? Can I be led beside still waters? Even as I am today, can my soul be restored?

I hope for all of you (as well as for myself), that there will be days ahead of strength, and excellence, and the use of every fiber of our being, pressing towards what will help and heal and restore this world and our own souls.

But I also hope for something more dependable than our own strength. I hope that we all might experience a grace that carries us where our effort never could; a miraculous generosity that no one earns, and a love that forgives (our worst arrogance and our most stubborn refusals).

"Amazing Grace!"
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now I'm found,
was blind but now I see.