Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words by David Usher (adapted)
We come together today, seeking a reality beyond our narrow selves; that binds us in compassion, love, and understanding to other human beings, and to the interdependent web of all living things.
May our hearts and minds be opened this hour, to the power and the insight that weaves together the scattered threads of our experience, and help us remember the wholeness of which we are part.
We come together to renew our faith in the holiness, the goodness, the beauty of life.
To reaffirm the way of the open mind and the full heart;
To rekindle the flame of memory and hope;
And to reclaim the vision of an earth more fair, with all her people one.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). Words by Andy Pakula
We have come together here today
Each with our own joys and strengths
Each wrestling with our own struggles and woes.
We come together in one of the world’s wealthiest and safest countries – a
place where diversity is usually tolerated and often celebrated.
A place where tragic violence is notable by its scarcity.
Many in the world dream of living as we do –
They dream of being able to live in peace and raise their children with
opportunity and in safety,
These members of our own human family cry out to us.
May the fire of compassion burn bright in all our hearts,
May our minds engage positively and productively with the needs of our
sisters and brothers everywhere,
And may our hands reach out to them, ready to make a difference.
Opening Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love,
Be with us as we gather for worship,
Each in our own place.
Help us to feel a sense of community,
Even though we are physically apart.
Help us to care for each other,
In this world in which the clouds
of war, poverty, and climate change hover.
May we keep in touch however we can,
And help each other, however we may.
Help us to be grateful for the freedoms we have
and to respect the wishes of others.
May we hold in our hearts all those
Who are grieving, lost, alone,
Suffering in any way,
Amen
Story When has the night ended? by Bill Darlison
A rabbi gathered his students together very early one morning, before the sun had risen. ‘How do you know when the night has ended and the day has come?’ he asked them.
One student answered: ‘When you can see an animal in the distance and you can tell whether it is a sheep or a goat.’
‘That’s not the answer,’ said the rabbi.
‘When you can tell whether a distant tree is a fig tree or an apple tree,’ said another.
‘No,’ replied the rabbi. ‘That is wrong, too.’
A few more students had a try, but each time the rabbi shook his head. ‘Tell us, then,’ said one student, ‘when do we know that the night has ended and day has come?’
‘When you can look at the face of any man or woman and see them as your brother or your sister. If you cannot do this, it is still night, no matter what the time of day,’ said the rabbi.
Alternative Lord’s Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love, here and everywhere,
May we be aware of your presence in our lives.
May our world be blessed.
May our daily needs be met,
And may our shortcomings be forgiven,
As we forgive those of others.
Give us the strength to resist wrong-doing,
The inspiration and guidance to do right,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
We are your hands in the world; help us to grow.
May we have compassion for all living beings,
And receive whatever life brings,
With courage and trust. Amen
Reading from The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25: 31-46
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’
Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Prayer by Margaret Kirk (adapted)
Eternal God, we seek through prayer to uplift our minds and hearts,
and refresh our spirits,
Spirit of Love, be with us.
We are grateful to share fellowship with each other but
we come with haunting images in our minds:
images of people in distress,
people looking for sanctuary – children, mothers,
fathers, grandparents.
people from across the world, from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Libya, Gaza,
desperate people for whom it feels safer
to place a family on a flimsy raft on the sea
than to remain on dry land.
Spirit of Love, be with us in our concern and compassion.
Let us recall the words spoken by Jesus that take us
to the heart of our religious truth:
‘For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me …. Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of those who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
Spirit of Love, we give thanks for the wider fellowship
which springs from our common humanity,
that transcends all boundaries of race, culture and creed.
For this common humanity, revealed in acts of loving kindness,
wherever it may be – the offer of food, an arm across a shoulder,
a hand to hold, a smile, a listening ear,
we give thanks.
For we know there will be those who offer these things,
despite the coldness and indifference of others.
And we pray that we may live our lives
in the ever-deepening faith that all men and women are kin.
Be with us in the service of love; in all our efforts; in our successes and our failures,
and may something of your peace bless us and those who struggle to seek sanctuary.
Amen
Reading from The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend our Broken Hearts and World, by Sharon Brous
Relationships of mutual concern are rooted in both love and trust. These are people we know will hold our hearts with care. We’re prone to forgive them when they make mistakes, and we hope they’ll do the same for us. We feel accountable to one another. We want to share with them our important moments, both the hardships and the joys. We thrive when we’re together. Relationships of shared purpose are rooted not only in a commitment to one another, but also to a shared dream…
If the sweet spot … is the intersection of mutual concern and shared purpose, I want to root in a community that stands at that same intersection. Such a community sees every ritual, every service, and every gathering as an opportunity for a deepening of connectivity. It invests in people as complicated, multi-faceted, wounded, beautiful individuals, each one essential to the greater whole. This kind of community is fueled by questions like “Who are you, and what brings you here?” rather than “Where do you work?”… This kind of community establishes spiritual anchors—regular opportunities for people to pray, sing, grieve, learn, and reflect together. It recognizes the collective power of people of good will working to help heal the broader society and prioritizes creating pathways for the holy work to be done. It invests in the creation of sacred space that fosters not inclusion, but belonging, intimacy and authenticity, love and accountability.
Time of Stillness and Reflection words by Alex Bradley
O God, whom we call love, we come to you in our need.
Our needs are so different from each other.
Our hopes and fears depend on our upbringings,
our education, our social backgrounds.
All too often, pure self-interest takes the place of real need.
We forget that in neglecting our neighbours’ needs,
we also neglect our own.
Help us to pray not for our desires, but for our true needs.
Help us to understand, at the deepest point of our being,
what it feels like to suffer in mind, body and spirit.
Give us that sympathy, that sense of oneness,
that feeling of communion with the lonely and the lost,
the dying and the bereaved, or those who are sick,
and ill and frightened.
[silence]
Help us to meet our deepest fears, and face up to them,
that we may help others to do likewise.
Help us to live up to the words of our faith
and expressions of our religious values,
that we may become the people we truly are:
made in your divine likeness.
May we strive to be ever more fully human,
that we may come ever closer to your divine spirit of love.
Amen
Musical Interlude I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Deeds, not Creeds
I am just back from attending FUSE, the Festival of Unitarians in the South East. The theme speaker was the Humanist and activist, James Croft, Chaplain and Lead Faith Advisor at the University of Sussex. He was truly inspirational. He explained that without justice, there can be no real peace. And that we should be aiming for what Martin Luther King Jr called, “positive peace, which is the presence of justice and the Kingdom of God.” Rather than the deceptive peace which is merely an absence of tension.
He told us that when the need for social action is pointed out, some of us can be disturbed by the interruption of our “cosy consensus”. He said that we need to be talking less and doing more, hence the title of this service. It is necessary for Unitarian communities to embody our values in our actions, by undertaking the hard and sometimes dangerous work of challenging injustice, wherever we find it. He sees congregations as powerhouses of ethical energy, who could be making a great positive difference; “contributing verses to the powerful play of history.”
And at the end of the conference on Sunday morning, he led a plenary session in which we all shared what we had learned, then split into small groups to commit to *one* plan for action in our communities, which we should implement on our return home. It was a fabulous, nourishing, and inspirational weekend.
It is about showing compassion. Our General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches is a partner organisation of the Charter for Compassion, and Unitarians are generally quite good at responding generously to disaster appeals.
Ten years ago, I attended a conference run by the Charter for Compassion, which featured Karen Armstrong, founder of the Charter, as a guest speaker. I have never forgotten it, and attending that conference inspired me to try to make compassion the centre of my life, both by refusing to inflict pain on others, and by behaving to others as I would wish them to behave towards me.
As you all know, the Golden Rule lies at the heart of all religions. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone followed it! If every person genuinely tried to behave to the rest of humankind with a concern and care for how they would feel. As it says in the Charter for Compassion “Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creature, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.”
Some of the things Karen Armstrong said at that conference really struck home. She spoke of the urgent need to implement the Golden Rule globally, because conflicts the world over are not just “their” problems; they are “our” problems too. The plight of the Gazan refugees is not “their” problem; it is “our” problem. The whole of humankind is inter-connected in a very real way, and we need somehow to make a difference in the world.
She explained that compassion isn’t a feeling – because feelings come and go. Compassion demands a “principled effort, all day, every day” to dethrone the ego from the centre of our worlds, and to see things from another’s perspective. I have led engagement groups about Armstrong’s book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, and we all learned a lot. But being compassionate isn’t about book-learning; it’s about putting what we have learned into action, and being compassionate in our daily lives; in our interactions with our families, our neighbours, our work colleagues, and with the chance-met stranger. With the refugee.
Armstrong also said that we need a sense of disquiet. There is currently a huge imbalance of wealth and power in our world, which leads to alienation and poverty. Compassion means taking responsibility for the pain of the world and trying to do something about it. In the West, we live in a world of privilege and safety and power. We are in denial about suffering around the world. I’m sure you’ve all heard the term “compassion fatigue” – when we turn away from the distressing charity advert or news item on the television, because we cannot bear to see any more suffering. Instead of turning away, we should be asking “what can we do to alleviate this?” “how can we help?”
She spoke of the need for empathy – about the importance of learning about others’ cultures, fears and traditions. She said that it requires “deep, anguished thought” if we are to avoid harming others, through lack of empathy. She emphasised the need for constant self-examination of our motives and behaviour, and that we should always be trying to go deeper. Compassion is not about being safe; it is about putting ourselves at risk, about letting down the guards around ourselves.
If we want to make our religion more compassionate, it is we that have to do it – we who have to be the change we want to see in the world. We have to take responsibility for our own traditions. It is no good waiting for “them” to do something – even if “them” is the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, which, as I said earlier, is a partner organisation of the Charter for Compassion. It is us, the individual congregations, the individual people in those congregations, who need to take responsibility ourselves – to become activists *where we are*. We need to work hard, to think outside the box, to grapple with difficulties. There are no simple blanket solutions.
As Unitarians, our beliefs and values chime in closely with this. Let me share an extract from the old GA leaflet, A Faith Worth Thinking About:
“Unitarians find their bond of unity in shared values, such as … mutual respect and good will in personal relations; constructive tolerance and openness towards the sincerely-held beliefs of others; peace, compassion, justice and democracy in human affairs.”
We are all members of Unitarian communities. If we are to embrace the Golden Rule, we need to start here, where we are. Let us ask ourselves the questions
- Have I shown mutual respect and goodwill to my friends and neighbours?
- Have I practiced constructive tolerance and openness towards the sincerely-held beliefs of others?
- Am I doing as I would be done by?
- Am I avoiding giving pain to others by my actions?
And we need to be asking those questions not only as individuals, but also as a congregation.
- What can our congregations do to show mutual respect and goodwill to our friends and neighbours?
- How can we engage constructively with the beliefs and faith-traditions of other people in our town?
- What are we doing to show compassion to others?
- How are we avoiding giving pain to others?
Really, I guess I’m just saying that it doesn’t matter how few of us there are, what matters is that we choose to do “the something we can do”, to quote my favourite Edward Everett Hale. At present, there is great need for aid for the people of Gaza, for example. Why not google “refugee crisis”, check out where your nearest donation point is, sort out some un-needed clothes, and take them along? Or donate some money to some of the charities involved with the relief effort? Or sign a petition? Every little helps.
There is a lovely quotation by the Taoist master Lao Tse, which sums this business of starting where we are:
“If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbours.
If there is to be peace between neighbours, there must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.”
I commend to you all Karen Armstrong’s book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. It is probably one of the most important books I have ever read, right up there with Alfred Hall’s Beliefs of a Unitarian. In it, she describes how each of us can become a more compassionate person, following the Golden Rule in our own lives. She argues that if enough of us do this, the world could be transformed.
I would like to finish with a prayer, written by Celia Cartwright, Unitarian minister and dear friend:
O God of All Creation, God of Love,
We pray that the walls that divide us shall be taken down,
And with the bricks and stones let us build bridges between us,
That we may learn from each other not to fear each other,
And so may more easily come to keep faith
With the Greatest Commandment,
That is: To love our God, with all our heart and mind and strength,
And each other as ourselves.
AMEN
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
May we go out into the world,
and choose to work against injustice,
with compassion, wherever it is needed.
May we return to our everyday world refreshed,
may we share the love we feel,
may we look out for each other,
and may we keep up our hearts,
now and in the days to come, Amen
Postlude Stella del Mattino by Ludovico Einaudi