PeaceBang

A Sermon Series: Soft, Small Animals

I preached a sermon series on the Ten Commandments this year and whew!– we got into some pretty heavy stuff. I mean, unless you’re going to treat it in a namby-pamby way, the Decalogue is going to take you into some serious moralizing, something quite foreign to most Unitarian Universalists.

I joked from the pulpit today that I was going to try not to make eye contact with anyone in the congregation because I had heard that when I did so, that person got all nervous and thought I was maybe focusing on them because they broke the Sabbath, or were an adulterer or someone who took the name of the LORD in vain. I said, “I just like to look at you! Don’t take it personally!”

But anyway, my sermon was on the ninth and tenth commandment and connected the ways that oppressors who covet the land and resources of others will almost always demonize them first — or “bear false witness against them” — in order to convince themselves, and others, that what they’re doing is justified. I referenced African slavery, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Iraq, Darfur, the Holocaust, the witch hunts of the medieval era, and a local conflict in a nearby town. Near the end of the sermon I said,

As citizens of the most powerful nation on the planet, I think we should reflect with particular gravity and intention on the ninth and tenth commandments. All empires – not just the American empire – are built on egregious violations of these commandments. As the human story presses forward on an increasingly stressed and depleted planet, it falls to the most powerful to decide whether this pattern of greed leading to lies and manipulation and domination is sustainable, and to find new alternatives if they conclude it is not. I conclude for myself that it is not. — “Lying and Stuff” 5/20/07

As has happened with this sermon series in the past, what I wrote at home in a fairly calm vein became more serious and impassioned in the delivery of it. I was talking to SisterBang about it and she said, “What did you do to them?” because she’s very protective of my congregation. She loves them a lot and wants to make sure that I’m not, in her words, “mean.” Whenever I tell her that a Sunday service was intense she says, “It’s time to do a kitten and bunnies sermon.” And she’s right. You’ve got to mix up the joy and praise and the confrontation of hard truths.

So SisterBang has a recommendation for a sermon series next year: “Soft, Small Animals.” We figure we can do one on fieldmice, one on baby bunnies, one on newborn chicks and a special one on prairie dogs (my favorites!). I think this is a great idea. I am also considering Adult Religious Education offerings on the theme of “Candy & Toys.”