Old Wine in New Bottles:  Reverence
A Sermon by Rev. Kate Rohde
First Unitarian Church of Omaha
September 9, 2007

I’ve been marrying straight people for 28 years, and I first performed a wedding service for a L esbian couple 25 years ago.  For each service, I sit down in my office with a couple, and we talk something about what brought them together, why they are getting married, the meaning of marriage, and so on.  And, since most of them are not UU’s and nor a part of any other congregation, I always ask why they have come to a minister rather than just going down to the justice of the peace to “make it legal” or, in the case of a gay or lesbian couple, why they want a religious ceremony at all.  Most are able to articulate in some way or another that while they may not be formally religious, this is a sacred, spiritual event in their lives and they want to celebrate it as such.  Some regard their relationship with one another as a great, almost cosmic, gift.  Some are humbled by the implications of marriage, and they are searching for a blessing.  Some say that it ties them to generations before and beyond — that what they are doing, the life they are beginning together, and the promises they are making, are a celebration of what it means, most deeply, to be human.  There is quite often, in the room with the three of us, a sense of awe at the step they are taking and the ceremony that will be celebrating it.

Too often, that sense is lost on the wedding day.  It is hard to say exactly what overwhelms it — but it does seem to more easily lost by couples who plan or allow the event to be turned into a Broadway extravaganza, so overwhelmed with photographers, fancy dress, caterers, florists, and the hundreds of friends, relatives, and old frat brothers come to town, that the core meaning of what is going on gets lost.  Someone is in tears about the orchids not being quite right.  Dad is fit to be tied because the bad weather threatens his dream of having his beautiful daughter come in on a horse-drawn carriage.  The photographer is making everyone nervous by snapping away as if this were the wedding of the late Princess Di.  The 4-year-old flower girl has hit the 3-year-old ring-bearer and he is crying and refusing to walk down the aisle.  The groomsmen are making tasteless jokes.  The worst story I heard in this last regard is the story of a best man who somehow thought it was OK to play a practical joke in the midst of the very formal wedding ceremony, and just as a clergy friend of mine was pronouncing the couple husband and wife, the best man brought out a heavy plastic ball and chain and clasped it onto the groom’s ankle.  It could not be removed, and the bride and groom had to exit with this thing clamped to the groom’s ankle.  I doubt he was the best man after that!  Still — as often as not — that moment of awe, that sense of the sacred, is there at least for moments on the wedding day.  Every once in a while, it is so palpably there that even I choke up.

The most touching wedding I ever officiated was the smallest, most informal, I have been a part of.  It was planned quickly, because they wanted to have it in their church, in their community, before her job moved her out of town.  The preparations beyond my talks with them consisted of the bride buying a nicer than everyday dress and a few family members bringing trays of hors d’oeuvres from the Seven Eleven.

The friend that was supposed to provide the musical solo was caught in traffic.  Yet it was the most memorable of hundreds of ceremonies I have performed, precisely because no hoopla got in the way of the palpable feeling and sense of occasion that engulfed these two people, mature people with a sense of what they were getting into, taking this tremendously important step in life.  

A related story:  We teach our children a lot about ourselves and our values and our feelings from what we do — far more than by what we say.  An instance of this in my own life was my father’s interaction with people providing him a service: with taxi drivers, with shoe store salesmen, with apple vendors, and so on.  He treated them as people worth listening to and talking to.  So he ended up hearing about the gardener’s homeland in Iran , the taxi driver’s opinion of the mayor, the shoe salesman’s children.  I remember in particular this fruit stand we used to stop at on the way to a town nearby.  The old man who sold fruit there was the farmer himself, and in his fields as we drove up there was always a very large, right-wing billboard with a saying like “Stop Trade with Communist Nations” or “Get Out of the UN!” or “Joe McCarthy was right!”  My father’s politics couldn’t have been more diametrically opposed, but he always engaged the farmer in friendly political discussions even as he bought apples from him.  He also talked politics with my grandfather, his father-in-law, in a respectful way, but one which challenged his sometimes bigoted opinions.  I often think that my sister, Gale, was unconsciously following his example when, after she was arrested by an FBI agent and was riding in handcuffs in the car with him, she turned and asked — not in a smart-alecky way but because she was really interested — “So, how did you get into this line of work?”  It is no accident that the first person to take my Dad out to lunch after my Mom died and all the relatives and children had gone home was not a colleague from the University, nor even friends from his church, it was his Iranian gardener, Ali.  My Dad was unaware of it, but he was teaching us that first Unitarian principal of the “unique worth and dignity of every human personality” by acting in the knowledge that everyone from the grocery store clerk to the policeman was someone more than their role, or job, or even their distasteful opinions.  They each had a story to be listened to.

Speaking of Dad, when he was visiting a couple years ago, we were watching one of our favorite TV programs, NOW, which was then hosted by Bill Moyers.  That evening there was a Classics professor who specialized in classical philosophy — not something that would ordinarily catch my eye.   His name was Paul Woodruff and Moyers was interviewing him about the ideas in his new little book: Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue.  Now even though people sometimes address me as Reverend, I confess that reverence is not something I had thought much about or considered as a virtue. 

But both my Father and I had the same experience of being captivated as Woodruff spoke, captivated because what he was saying really spoke to us and put something together that we might have tried to put our fingers on, but which he was able to do in a way that made all kinds of things drop into place for us.  It is something that happens to me no more than every five or even ten years — someone offers me an idea that doesn’t just expand my thinking but helps me understand something in a totally new way — shifts a paradigm.  Woodruff said that in his study he found that many of the Greek philosophers lifted up the virtue of reverence as essential, not to religion, but to a good life in general and a positive social order in particular:  Two virtues were the two most essential to the ancient philosophers:  justice and reverence.  Woodruff was surprised when he saw this and the more so when he found that two of the philosophers who were most vocal about the value of reverence were agnostic or possibly atheist.  Reverence without God?  (or in the Greek case gods?)   

You can see why my ears pricked up!  He spoke of a reverence not based on God or gods, a reverence that is thought to be a virtue in all times and cultures whether it is ancient Greece, Confucius China, or Modern America, a reverence that can exist across faiths, including those like Greek Humanism, Confucianism, Buddhism, or even us, Unitarian Universalism.

So what were the Greeks speaking of when they spoke of this virtue?  How did Woodruff describe it?  One very important aspect of reverence as they define it, is an awareness of our fallibility and an awe of the transcendent.  The transcendent might be God, it might be that vastness of nature, the mystery of the Universe, the immenseness of time, but it is some overarching reality that makes us realize we are not god, that we are fallible.  However rich, however powerful, however intelligent, however beautiful, we are not godlike in our power, our wisdom, our compassion, our justice.  We err.  We do crazy things.  We will die.  This sense aspect of reverence is especially important in the mighty — in leaders, kings, presidents, — and in great nations.   

Those of you who have read your Greek poetry and drama will remember the constant theme that hubris or overweaning pride is a tragic and fatal flaw in the mighty.  A reverence or humility prevents the mighty from becoming tyrants rather than leaders.  One aspect of this reverence of the mighty is their ability and willingness to listen to those below them, to those who are not powerful but who nonetheless must, in some fashion, be treated with respect.  Of particular interest and note is how the mighty treat the very weak:  children, foreigners, and commoners.  One interesting point is that often people who are very strong in religion may be lacking in reverence because of the arrogance of their beliefs.  Woodruff gives the example of a local ballot initiative on Gay Rights where there were a great many billboards saying “God voted against proposition #2.”  This claim to speak for God does not show the appropriate modesty that human beings, to be reverent, would show towards God.  To claim to know God’s mind so completely that you can say how he would vote in civic matters is hubris, not reverence.  In fact, according to the Greek view of reverence, dogmatic certainty, especially in matters of religion, is the opposite of reverence. 

An example of the difference between reverence and its lack in a leader can be seen in contrasting the way Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. took us into a war in Iraq and each conducted himself during the war.  Bush Sr. took us into a war after there had been some vigorous public debate and debate in Congress.  He consulted and received support from allies around the world and the UN.  He didn’t appear to do it lightly, but in public we saw a man who knew, from personal experience, the gravity of the step he was taking.  I remember photos of him walking the beach as he was making the decision that would take us to war, and there were accounts of him praying over the always terrible decision to send men to their death.  I was not fond of Bush senior, but even I got the feeling that he appreciated that war is a terrible thing.  He didn’t ignore the advice of the military and limited the scope of the war to what they felt they could accomplish — the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait .  So his leadership had a more reverent tone:  He listened to those less powerful than he, whether at home or abroad, worked with others in broad way.  He had a certain humility and tone of seriousness about war itself — he seemed to have a sense that God, not he, would have the last word but that, as a leader, he had to make a decision in the face of the lack of absolute certainty. 

His son, Bush Jr., on the other hand, seemed completely without reverence as he led the country to war.  He had made up his mind to go to war with Iraq without really listening to the people, the congress, or the world community.  Bush Jr.’s rhetoric was very bellicose.  Far from portraying himself as a reluctant warrior, he used phrases like “Bring ‘em on!” — angering a great many troops who felt these words showed a lack of respect for them and the danger they were in.  He was portrayed as absolutely certain of his course — even as believing he had divine sanction.  He claimed certainty about things that were uncertain and indeed turned out to be wrong.  He took on a task of rebuilding an entire nation and changing its history with very little knowledge of the country or without taking into account extensive research, advice, and planning.  While I didn’t agree with either president’s decision to go to war, I recognize that Bush Sr., at least in public and probably in private, had an attitude and a demeanor appropriate to the leader of an extremely powerful, democratic nation while his son did not.  Bush Sr. was more reverent.  Bush Jr. displayed the arrogant, naked power that cares little for the humble, the innocent, and the foreigner:  hubris not reverence. 

Another aspect of the virtue of reverence beyond a sense of awe at the transcendent and the realization that we are far from being God, is almost the opposite.  It is the sense that humans are not beasts of prey but rather have the connections and meanings of being human.  We are not things.  We are not means to an end.  We have value in ourselves.  Much of this is expressed in rituals and ceremony — not necessarily formal rituals or religious ones although sometimes that is the case.  

When someone dies, we don’t put them in a garbage bag and put them out with the trash.  Death has a profound meaning, and almost every culture has ways of marking that with ceremony.  Home and family are often about rituals:  sitting down to eat together, holiday customs, patterns of interactions.

I felt so sorry for a young friend of mine when I found that his mother and he, although they are both Catholic, had almost no Christmas ritual.  They had no decorations, no celebrations, no special food — they bought each other a gift, but there was no formal gift exchange.  The son usually found and opened the gift his mother bought, and she, in turn, was too impatient to wait, so that there was often nothing to do on Christmas except go to a bad movie.  For me, it seemed like the way a dog might celebrate Christmas — searching for the treat he smells and unceremoniously going after it because he wants it now.  As an adult, I realized that getting gifts was a minor part of Christmas compared to the rituals that brought us together as a family:  picking out the tree together, decorating together, baking together, singing together, performing for one another, eating special foods together.  It not only brought us together then, but it cemented certain bonds that make us family now.

There are rituals of acknowledgement:  greeting people, saying goodbye.  There was a neighbor in West Chester , a mature, African American woman that I was never introduced to, but we always acknowledged each other when we met walking down the street.  When after several years, we finally were introduced there and she said, “Oh yes!  You are the woman that always speaks to me.”  

It made me realize that nowadays such a greeting isn’t universal, and so that acknowledgement made me stand out for her as someone who recognized her as another human being.  I think it was even more important because we were of different ages and different races.  I also notice that children who acknowledge adults in a friendly manner and are acknowledged in return, seem to be much more at home in whatever community they find themselves.

The two stories I told at the beginning seem to me to be about reverence.  The stories I told about weddings suggest that most people have, at base, a feeling of reverence about this aspect of their humanity, the aspect of intentionally creating a new family, — and either implicitly or explicitly they are looking for that sense of reverence to be translated to the ceremonial joining.  There is something sacred to us about the covenantal bonds that make us a family.  It suggests something else, that I haven’t mentioned yet:  it is almost impossible to be reverent in an atmosphere where others are not — whether it is a congregation full of people who are not with you in their hearts and paying attention to what is really going on here but rather are snapping away with their little flash cameras, or a best man who thinks so little of what you are about that he makes a bad joke of it by clapping a ball and chain on your ankle.  In fact, there may even be some situations in which reverence is dangerous — when you are being respectful to those who regard you in a dog-eat-dog manner.  So the weddings had that special feeling that springs from the virtue of reverence only when photographers and guests also treated it as a moment worthy of respect and reverence, and when the couple themselves were able to keep foremost the deep feelings and convictions of reverence they expressed to me in my office.

Parenthetically, I think that the reason that there is a resistance from some to making marriage more inclusive and why so many people are OK with civil unions but not with gay marriage may come down to reverence.  It may come down to a blessing.  It may come down to some straight people being willing to give legal rights but being unwilling to acknowledge that gay and lesbian families are equally bound in sacred covenant.  And, I expect, that is why gay marriage is important.  However many legal rights people have, we won’t be fully equal members of the same community until all our families are revered. 

The other story, the story about my father’s way of engaging people at every level of society in a respectful and interested manner, is another example of a sort of simple reverence, like that contained in our first UU principle.

In fact, I think that most of our UU principles are born in and describe actions that spring from reverence — for Woodruff describes any virtue such as reverence not as a set of propositions but as deep human feelings that if learned and cultivated lead us to want to do what is good.  While there are lots of practical, self-interested, reasons to be concerned about the environment, the people I have known who were passionate environmentalists were those whose deep connections with the natural world gave them a sense of reverence for it.   

Reverence does not mean to respect that which is not worthy of respect — we can respect a foolish person’s humanity but not his foolishness.  We can take umbrage when a person treats us badly, but still remember that she is worth taking account of.  

We can respect another religion’s reverence and sincere attempts to relate to that which is transcendent, while not respecting particular beliefs that they hold, nor claiming that all religions are equally true or equally good.  That, indeed, is the key to interfaith cooperation.  A respect for one another’s reverent feelings and at least a willingness to admit we cannot know God’s will allows us to respect one another, even though we may really dislike aspects of each other’s faith.  On this basis, Catholics, Quakers, Bahais, Jews, Unitarians, Methodists, and Presbyterians can all meet together every month in an interfaith group.  Other groups, certain they are right and unable to find it in their heart to extend to other faiths a respect for their reverence, stay apart.   

Reverence does not mean solemnity.  Reverence can be joyful.  In fact, humor can contribute to a sense of reverence — as for examples when it pokes fun at human foibles or arrogance and pride.  Self-deprecating humor is a way to celebrate a certain humility and humanity.  It is only when the humor is immensely crude, like clapping a ball and chain on the groom at his wedding, that it is destructive to reverence.  Risque humor can be reverent, gross humor can’t.  It can celebrate our humanity and poke holes in our puffed up vanity, but it can't seem to disrespect our basic humanity.   

Many UU’s are far more reverent at heart and even in practice than their more traditionally religious neighbors.  For one thing, almost none of us has enough hubris to presume to speak for God in the way some of our neighbors might.  For another, whether we call ourselves Christian, Theist, Pagan, Humanist, or whatever, part of being a true UU is a lack of absolute certainty and a respect for the limitations of human knowledge.

Even though I call myself a theist, I have an agnostic attitude in that I recognize no absolute certainty.  Further, many of us operate with a sense of respect for the humanity of those whom others might consider outcasts.  Still, we UU’s sometimes fear our feelings of reverence.  It is a bit too frequent that we cut our feelings of reverence and deep humanity with a joke.  

We too often want to debate each other rather than hear each other.  

We can sometimes be arrogant — especially when it comes to our intelligence.   

We can fail to see the importance of the human customs and rituals that keep us in relation with each other and celebrate our humanity.   

We can lapse into a relativism that is, at base, irreverent in its refusal to acknowledge that there is anything true or anything higher and better than something else.   

Too often in the candle lighting ritual that many of our congregations engage in, someone lacks a sense of reverence for what another has shared:  one woman lights a candle for the death of her father and then another gets up and makes a jokey speech about her cat’s second birthday. 

We sometimes take part in pop culture’s tendency to dehumanize us to make everything into a shopping opportunity or we accept for ourselves and our children the dehumanizing crudeness of much of the media.  

Still, the reverence is there.  We have it.  It is definitely in our hearts and we can cultivate it.  One of the things that thrilled me when I first heard about this virtue of reverence was that it seemed to me to be something on which a community of faith with diverse beliefs about God and eternity could nonetheless combine their hearts in a common spirit — a spirit of reverence in awe of that which is greater than us, a respect for and living out the deepest and best parts of our common humanity, and a practice of the daily rituals of living that create meaning and bind us together.

The Greeks and Wooduff claim that without reverence, society becomes bestial and chaotic.  I think many of us see places where that seems to be happening.  I believe it is important to stop and perhaps reverse our slide away from a cultivation of this ancient virtue, and we, as UU’s who stand on the nexus between secular society and communities of faith, are uniquely positioned to influence both.  First, however, we, as a community must learn to cultivate the virtue of reverence, to embrace it and not to fear it.  

Updated Nov 8, 2007 wfr