What Matters?

". . . A person will worship something--have no doubt about that. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week, the Partner Church community was stunned by the news that Lazlo Kiss, the 35-year-old minister of the Unitarian Church of Torda, in Transylvania, had died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving behind a wife and two small children. The Rev. Kiss had recently spent a year in the United States as a Francis Balasz scholar at the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California, and was well known to many North American Unitarian Universalists. His life was filled with a wonderful potential, both for his loved ones and for his faith. His death is a tremendous loss to the struggling Transylvanian Unitarian Church, where his leadership and skill is so badly needed, not to mention to his family and his many colleagues and friends, one of whom is our own Partner Church minister, Zsolt Jakab.

Such events serve to remind us, in heightened awareness, or should, of what really matters in this life. They remind us, or should, about what things are truly worthy of our attentions.

What really matters is life itself. What really matters is love, and friendship, and striving to be those better people we know we can be. What really matters is trying to make the world a better place for all, not just for ourselves. What matters is beauty, and loyalty; honesty, and integrity; justice and compassion. What really matters is making the most of the precious lives we have been given, in the limited time that we exist on this little spinning planet.

What matters, as St. Paul wrote in his letter to the fledgling Christian community in Galatia, is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." He wrote in obvious frustration that "There is no law against such things."

It is the responsibility of religion, and of the church, to remind folks of this truth. Others will tell you that power, or prestige, or money, or what you do, is what really matters, but don’t believe them.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in the morning’s reading, "The acceptable year [of the Lord] can be any year when we decide to do right, when we stop throwing away the precious lives that we have been given, when we keep our theology abreast with our technology, when we keep the ends for which we live abreast with the means by which we live, when we keep our morality abreast with our mentality." Or as the gospel writer put it more succinctly, "The Kingdom of God is at hand"!

I speak to you with some urgency. I speak to you as one who understands, perhaps too well, that we know not what another day shall bring forth. I speak to you as one who shares mortality with you: we are precious, and we are perishable.

What matters? What matters most to you? To what do you pay obeisance, and tribute? Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote,

. . . A person will worship something--have no doubt about that. . . . We may think our tribute paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts--but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

I have told you the old Hasidic story about the man who, because of a dream, went searching for buried treasure, only to discover that it lay buried beneath his own doorstep. His treasure was his home, and his family, the people who loved him and cared about him. He already had his treasure, a treasure beyond measure, but he had failed to see it, and instead had gone seeking after fool’s gold. How many of us, I wonder, are doing likewise?

Lucky for him, he learned the lesson before it was too late. Lucky for him, he was a character in a story whose author was wonderfully wise. What about us? What kind of a story are we the characters in? Will we learn the lesson before it is too late?

We believe in free will, folks! We believe that change is possible. We gave up predestination a long time ago. We are at least in part the authors of our own destinies. How will the story end? It’s up to us.

There is beauty in a life well-lived. There is beauty in a life of honesty and integrity. There is beauty in a life dedicated to high ideals and principles, even if in the world’s judgement they are impractical. There is beauty in caring about others, and in trying, in no matter how humble a way, to make the world a better place,--just a little better, just a little bit better.

Most of us are greedy. We want the good things of life--I know that I do. As Martin Luther King said in another place, "wealth has its place." I don’t deny it. All of us need a decent standard of living in order to have our self-respect, in order to become our truest selves. But when is enough enough? Far better it is to be wealthy in the things of the spirit which money cannot buy. Better by far to be loved, to have our self-esteem, to be respected for what we are and not what we do, to be known as an honest person, a good person, to have integrity. Better by far to stand up for what we believe is true and right, to support the underdog, to help one another along what the French poet/philosopher Amiel calls, with truth, "the dark journey."

Our world and our country are in a dreadful mess, religiously, politically, environmentally, and spiritually. We live amid a culture of violence and exploitation. I don’t think it will shock too many of you to hear me say that. Too often, I believe, our values are, and have been, misplaced. Are we worshipping false idols? Are we, as Emerson suggested, becoming what we are worshipping?

Jesus for one warned us about the threat we face from all the principalities and powers. Indeed, his whole ministry can be read as a rebellion against the culture of dominance and violence which affected his world as much as our own. He is only one of the great religious prophets and teachers who have cautioned us about our misplaced loyalties. Corruption and stupidity are not unique to our time and place. But we need to stand over and against it. We need to go a different way.

That way has been described, over and over again. Maps and compasses galore have been provided. They exist in all the great religious and in many of the great philosophical traditions. As Erich Fromm once wrote,

We do not need new ideals or new spiritual goals. The great teachers of the human race have postulated the norms for sane living. We today, who have easy access to all these ideas, who are still the immediate heirs to the great life-affirming teachings, we are not in need of new knowledge of how to live sanely--but in bitter need of taking seriously what we believe, what we preach and teach. The revolution of our hearts does not require new wisdom--but new seriousness and dedication. . . . What is required is that we really live love and think truth.

We who must keep the church going and keep it alive have certain basic guidelines to follow--to preach good news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted . . . to set at liberty them that are captives. The church is not a social club. The church is not an entertainment center. The church has a purpose. The church is dealing with ultimate concern. Sunday after Sunday, week after week, people come to church with broken hearts. They need a word of hope. . . . The church heals the broken-hearted.

Rather, the church endorses the true and the right, it endorses compassion and loving-kindness. It speaks truth to power, wherever and whenever power is abused, which is just about everywhere and always. (And if you don’t think so, you are probably enthralled.)

The church heals the brokenhearted. It leaves it up to you to go forth and do whatever good you can. We won’t always agree about what that is. That’s life. But that we must all do something is clear, very clear. Protest, speak out, reach out, but do something. And if you are already doing something, as I know many of you are, then bless you!

This week I was one of several Unitarian Universalist ministers who were approached about conducting the memorial service for the young Mission Hill woman who was murdered this week in New York. Thank God I did not have to do it, though I was prepared to, because one of my good colleagues in Boston took up that terrible and sorrowful task. Such a horrible and seemingly meaningless loss makes the question of what matters all the more real, and all the more poignant, and all the more tangible. It had better make us ask the question, and not put it off a moment longer.

The sudden death of Laszlo Kiss in far off Transylvania had better make us ask the question, from out of our shared humanity, for there but for the grace of God goes any one of us. The bell tolls for all of us.

What are we going to do, on this never-to-be-repeated day of our lives, to remind ourselves of the things of most worth to us? What are we going to do, today, to make the world a little better, to balance the misplaced loyalties to which all of us are prone, by which all of us are tempted, to prove that there is justice and compassion in this world, as well as the injustice and hatred and violence and stupidity by which we are so constantly assailed?

The church heals the broken-hearted. That is no small thing, and indeed, if we were to do it, it would be everything. That is what we must be about, and if we are not doing it, then we are not only not the church, we are nothing.

All of us deserve the loving care and concern of this community, and if we stick around long enough, all of us will need it eventually. But there will be other times when we are called upon to care for and about someone else, or to care for and about this troubled and troubling world to which we inseparably belong, to get out of our own skins and our own heads and our own selfish preoccupations, and do our little part.

May you go forth this day reminded of those riches you already possess, both the tangible, and the intangible that physical eyes alone fail to see. Go forth reminded of the lottery you have already won! Go forth with a renewed sense of your own, innate worth, your own precious self-hood. Carry the message of hope to all who are weary and downhearted, for this, in the end, is what really matters. Make this your worship, and your becoming, this day, and always. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock