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The shaking of the foundations 

Homily given by: 

The Reverend Dr. David Thompson President, Interfaith Service Bureau / Former Senior Pastor Westminster Presbyterian Church

Presented at: Tribute Dinner for David and Louise Thompson 

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral  

  I want first of all to thank everyone here for coming. The kindness I have received from literally hundreds of people has been incredibly humbling to me. I want to especially thank all those who worked so hard from Westminster to get this celebration from idea to reality. And also to thank the clergy and Interfaith community and political communities of Sacramento for your unwavering support of my ministry since 9/11 and the eight years that have followed.

 One person recently said “When a door closes, God opens a window. Hell is in the corridor between them. We will walk with you through the corridor.” That is what you have done and there are not words to express how much that has meant to Louise and me. Through your love and deep kindness you have convinced me that God is in the corridor as well…

Strange as it may seem, it was the organizing committee’s idea that I give a homily at this event! What were they thinking? But on the serious side, many of you have said “we miss your voice. We always knew where to find you before…”

Well as Mark Twain once said “the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” I am still here and am an active President of the Interfaith Service Bureau. Next week I speak in that capacity at the Spiritual life center and the week after at Northminster Presbyterian. I have no plans to leave Sacramento!

So here goes:

In the name of the one God who loves us all; Grace, Mercy, peace; shalom, salam alaikum, namaste!

I have chosen texts from ‘the peoples of the book’.

From Judaism’s book of Nehemiah “Why is your face so sad…this must be a sadness of the heart.”

 And from the Holy Qur’an : “Whoever is able to cry let him cry. Whoever is not able to cry, then let his heart feel sadness and let him try to cry. Surely the hard heart is far from Allah.”

From Christianity “What is it you are debating as you walk?” They halted, their faces full of sadness and one answered, “Are you the only person staying in Jerusalem not to know what has happened in the last few days?”

And from the Epistle to the Hebrews: “The shaking of these created things means their removal. And what is not shaken will remain. The Kingdom we are given is unshakeable.”

No one in their right mind who has experienced the world since 9/11 can deny that the foundations of society and of the planet  are shaking. The financial meltdown has shaken  major institutions to the core. 

One stock broker  was asked to define the terms ‘recession’, ‘depression’ and ‘panic’.

He paused and said ‘recession’ is when my neighbor loses his job, ‘depression’ is when I lose my job and ‘panic’ is when my wife loses her job!”

In the 90’s ‘stress’ and ‘time’ were our buzzwords; get up, grab a coffee, off to day care, elder care, 40 minute commute. The job you took pride in became a burden. The office was physically hostile, faceless, and soulless. Overwork,  no time to cook. You paid the bills. You did the laundry. Stress accounted for 90% of doctor visits. And you were employed and if invested, making money. That was the bottom line.

Then came 9/11 and the opening 9 years of the new millennium. It began with the framing used by media and politicians alike: the war on terror.

 A new fear started to run through America and the whole world- followed by a loss of faith in our political, educational, medical, legal, religious and after the recent meltdown, our financial institutions. Many found their personal situations worsening, job loss, or furloughs,  losing homes to foreclosure, and here in California a state  that is willfully bankrupt by insisting in maintaining a 2/3rds majority on budgets, paying bills on the backs of the poorest of the poor and the mentally ill and our children in schools. To top it all off everyone knows, except members of the flat earth society, that Global warming is real and alarming and accelerating. Did you catch this week’s BBC report on Greenland’s ever accelerating glacier melt? To those who know, it is terrifying and makes them strangely sad at what is being lost.

Since May 4th of this year, I have had the deep privilege to worship in many churches. Let me tell what I found. There is a hunger out there for meaning. The foundations are shaking and people know it. People are looking for something. There is a palpable sadness that is present even when people are putting their best faces on. And they take this sadness with them to church hoping…

Are you sad today? Have you recently lost a loved one? Have you been furloughed and are in financial difficulty? Has your marriage unraveled? Are you losing a care giver and thus your independence? Do you have a son or daughter in jail? Have you lost a family member in Iraq or Afghanistan? Has your workplace become unrecognizable due to cutbacks and layoffs? Do you feel perhaps that your lifework has been in vain? Were your hopes dashed by prop 8?

I once met a man who had lost the love of his life to cancer. After that there was about him an infinite sadness that he could not shake. I saw two photographs of this man. It was the one before the tragedy that captured my imagination. His eyes were so full of fire and life, determination and commitment. Then, out of the blue tragedy came- unasked for, unsought, undeserved. The result was the sadness found in the more recent second photo a sadness he carried with him everywhere.

Is that you today? Are you heart-sad about something?

If so there is good news!

Daniel Goleman, a Ph.d from Harvard writes: “ A main function of sadness is to help adjust to a significant loss…Sadness brings a drop in energy and enthusiasm for life’s activities, particularly diversions and pleasures and, as it deepens and approaches depression, slows the body’s metabolism. Then introspective withdrawal creates the opportunity to mourn a loss or frustrated hope, grasp its consequences for ones life, and as energy returns, plan new beginnings.”

Goleman sees sadness as a survival mechanism, intended to keep early humans close to home, where they were safer at a period of high vulnerability. The actual word sadness as a response to a profound loss, is used only once in this way in the New Testament. It occurs in the story of the walk to Emmaus, when two disciples with shattered dreams were discussing the loss of Jesus to tragic death.

In order to help these men, Jesus at first plays dumb, pretending to be ignorant about his own death. So these two ‘spill it all out’ about how their hopes have all been dashed. Then Jesus gets them to question all their assumptions which have produced their sadness. Because they are people of the book, he so expounds the sacred text that they get inspired and their hearts become engaged. They said “Did we not feel our hearts on fire as he walked and talked with us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?”

Then Jesus, always the master of surprise, takes off his mask and breaks bread with them and in this act they suddenly knew him. Sadness? profoundly gone!

In the Book of Nehemiah we find Nehemiah far away from home. As the cup bearer to the King he comes in one day with a sad look on his face. This is not the usual thing that Nehemiah does. He is the sort of guy who generally puts a happy face on as he works, but this day he cannot hide it any longer. So the king asks him “Why is your face so sad? This must be a sadness of the heart.” Do you know that kind of sadness?

Jerusalem was in ruins and Nehemiah just couldn’t take it any more, so he was sad. But note he didn’t stop there. Summoning up all his courage he asked for what he wanted- to return and rebuild the city and give it a new beginning..

The Holy Qur’an in a commentary on the passage we quoted, talks about the importance of experiencing sadness and tears in the healing process and the psychological benefits of tears.

In other words it is okay to be sad. There are times when we need to be sad, but all the traditions also talk about joy as well so sadness is not supposed to be  a steady state theory of life. Rather joy is in every faith tradition and can be our daily experience when we are guided and protected by God.

Lets go back to Goleman “ as energy returns, plan new beginnings.” Goleman in these three words has given us a road map out of sadness.

But don’t think for a minute that what I am teaching  is an easy way to deal with sadness. It is not. New beginnings are hard.

One bereaved woman I know, who adored her former husband, and was paralyzed by his death, decided on her own that the only way out was to reinvent herself. So she did. Today her kids say to her. “Mom we didn’t know you were so much fun when you were married to dad!”

The mother of Mary Morrissey, at age 60, found that she had such severe osteoporosis that it was literally disintegrating her pelvic bone. Treatment for her was to be in a wheelchair for life. But her mother decided to begin again. She read books and did visualizations and then got rid of everything and everyone that looked like a reward for being sick. She told her daughter not to help her everyday. Secondary gains, she said, actually inhibit real healing. “I’ve had enough of this! I want to heal.” So she put all of her energy into getting well.

Within 6 months her doctors were amazed. Her pelvic bone had regenerated itself. At age 75 she wanted to sky dive. She trained and one day Mary got a phone call from her mom. “I did it! I did it! I did it!” “Well what did you learn mom?” “I learned that I can do anything I decide to do. I have a whole life in front of me now and I am going to live it!.

I was talking to Lisa Culp from Women’s Empowerment the other day. She was talking about our depressed economy and the difficulty that her graduates from her wonderful program were experiencing getting jobs. Then Lisa said  We are going to start something that will create jobs. Her sadness about what was happening made her plan new beginnings.

“In a world where the foundations are shaking our institutions, the shaking means their removal. Only what is not shaken will remain…”

The foundations shake because something new has to be born.

 Global warming is an opportunity that needs to be seized for something new needs to be born or we will lose the earth as we know it. The financial meltdown will create an opportunity if we do it right to create businesses, jobs and financial institutions that serve the common good of the earth and all its peoples and creatures. Money is not the bottom line, The earth and the celebration of LIFE itself is the bottom line. What were we thinking?

The ever rising disillusionment with institutions is affecting religions as well and the ones that survive the shaking will have the following values:

• Unconditional love
• Respect for each religion and faith tradition and an abandonment of tribal exclusivity
• cooperative action for the common good
• an active seeking of peace and healing between religions
• Respect for all life on earth
• Freedom of religion and the separation of church and state
• The creation of safe space for conflict resolution
• Human rights for all
• Inclusivity of all people
• Freedom for all to marry
• Nonviolence
• Shared values of compassion in politics, the media and economics
• Freedom to worship  God as we understand God
• Hearts committed to demonstrate divine Love among all creatures of the earth.

These values make up the unshakeable kingdom we have been given for they are the values of unconditional love, they are the values of the God of love

In Sacramento according to Time magazine we are the most diverse and most inclusive city in the nation.

In our faith communities we have a great opportunity when the foundations are shaking to begin again.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to go into any religious institution in this city and find true inclusiveness and the love of everyone, no exceptions?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to enter any religious institution of worship as a stranger and be prayed for, for healing as Solomon dreamed for the first temple of Judaism?

Wouldn’t it be great to find religious institutions that cared about global warming and really doing something about it?

Wouldn’t it be great if our clergy and congregations were fearless in standing up for the right, caring for the less fortunate and the homeless, caring for gays and lesbians and Tran gendered people, caring enough to eliminate the death penalty, caring for Israelis and Palestinians and Darfur, caring for Muslims and Sikhs who were so wounded by 9/11, caring enough to end racial profiling and discrimination, caring indeed for all the peoples of the world rich or poor or in-between?

Last week I was at Glide Memorial in San Francisco and after a church service that celebrated these values I noticed two things:

People lined up to get in! Never in my whole life have I ever experienced people lining up to get into a regular church service. Why not I wondered?

 The other thing I noticed was that after church there was a long line of homeless people lining up for over a block for lunch at the church following the service.

AMAZING!!

Glide’s explanation for the 2 lines? “We are just doing what a church is supposed to do!”

 I believe that as long as Glide follows these values of unconditional loving it will survive any shaking. They sang, at the end of their service, holding hands across the aisles in that packed church, “we shall not be moved.” Yes!!

So, we don’t need to feel sad too long. We can begin again!

We can walk through the corridor with our friends and discover to our surprise-

That God is walking beside us.

“ The kingdom we have been given is unshakeable.”

Alan Cohen writes;

Whether we journey to Oz, mount Shasta or the farthest star, we will find the same lesson waiting for us. The power that gives us life lies not in the hand of another, but our own … God is the force that created us, the Home to which we return, and the Strength that we carry with us. We walk the world like beggars, while we are all children of a King. Let us claim our [unshakeable] kingdom, and wield the power of Love- TOGETHER!

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Here's a copy of the letter to the editor printed in Tuesday's Bee that praises the Sacramento JCRC for its sponsorship of legislation to support Iranian Baha'is in their battle against government oppression.  It was submitted by Mary Snyder, one of the two Baha'i representatives who spoke with the JCRC last month that sparked out efforts on their behalf.

Baha'is in Iran need our support

Re "Baha'is speak out to save faith's top council in Iran" (Our Region, July 31): As Americans, we are fortunate to have many rights, including the right to follow or not follow the religion of our choosing. It is easy to forget that many people in the world do not have that right.

Your article regarding the Baha'is imprisoned in Iran for no reason other than practicing their faith reminded us all of that. We have a responsibility to encourage by peaceful means other nations to allow their people this fundamental human right.

The Jewish Community Relations Council graciously has taken action in support of the imprisoned Baha'is by introducing two bills (Assembly Joint Resolution 22 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 52). They condemn the government of Iran for its persecution of the Baha'is and request the immediate release of the Baha'i leaders and all others held solely because of their religion.

We all can take action by letting our state legislators know that we support this legislation. Persecution will only stop when we stop ignoring it.

– Mary Snyder, Sacramento

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