The sermon this morning is not really a
sermon. “That is odd,” you may be saying
to yourself. “It says right here in my
bulletin: ‘Sermon’!” And so it
does. Alas, when tasked with considering
the careful crafting of the religious and life experience into communicative
text undertaken by the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, particularly on the topic of
resurrection, it quickly becomes clear that it would be no small feat to
attempt a presentation of his thoughts on the subject approaching anything like
adequacy. There are those in our midst
who could do so; I am not one of them.
It would, of course, be best, if Dr. Thurman were here in his own pulpit
to present his thoughts himself, but even in so hallowed a nave as Marsh
Chapel, we do not pretend to be able to fulfill this ideal, even under such an
auspicious sermon title as “Thurman and Resurrection.” Thus, we are left with a less than ideal
option, namely that of proffering some meager correlations between the themes
of the resurrection Gospel according to John and the thoughts and writings of
Dr. Thurman presented in the voice of one untimely born two years after
Thurman’s death.
Peace
When it was evening on that day, the first day of
the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked
for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with
you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the
disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be
with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ (John 20: 19-21).
“Peace in Our Lives,” a meditation of Howard
Thurman from his book, The Growing Edge.
I make of my life an offering to God.
Fierce indeed is the grip by which we hold on to
our lives as our private possession. The
struggle to achieve some sense of individuality in the midst of other people
and other things is grim. Always we are
surrounded by persons, forces, and objects which lay siege to us and seek to
make us means to their ends or at least to their fulfillment. The demand is ever present to distinguish
between the self and the not-self.
There are moments of enthusiasm when with mounting
excitement we absorb ourselves in something beyond ourselves. When this happens we fight at length to get
back home, to come again into the familiar place, to be secure in our own
boundaries. Again and again the process
repeats itself, wearing down the walls that shut us in.
Of course, a man may by early resolution, by
frustration, by bitter experience withdraw more and more from all
involvements. By this process he seeks
to immunize himself against hurts and from what seems to be certain disaster. Behold such a man. His spirit shrinks, his mind becomes ingrown,
his imagination inward turning. The wall
surrounding him becomes so thick that deep within he is threatened with
isolation. This is the threat of
death. Sometimes his spirit breaks out
in reverse by giving voices to inward impulses, thus establishing by the sheer
will to survival a therapy for the corrosion of his spirit.
For all of this religion has a searching word. “Deep within are the issues of life.” “The rule of God is within.” “If thou hadst known the things which belong
unto thy peace.” There is a surrender of
the life that redeems, purifies, and makes whole. Every surrender to a particular person,
event, circumstance, or activity is but a token surrender, the temporary settling
of the passing and transitory. They end
in tightening the wall of isolation around the spirit. They are too narrow, too limited, finally
unworthy.
The surrender must be to something big enough to
absolve one from the little way, the meager demand. There can be no tranquility for the spirit
unless it has found something about which to be tranquil. The need for a sense of peace beyond all
conflict can only be met by something that gathers up into itself all meaning
and all value. It is the claim of religion
that this is only found in God. The
pathways may vary but the goal is one.
Spirit
When he had said this, he breathed on them and said
to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20: 22).
“God is With Me” and “God is Present,” two
meditations of Howard Thurman from his book, Meditations of the Heart.
God
is with me, in the sense that He is the Creator and the
Sustainer of life. This is a part of my
general thought and experience. There is
something so big and vast about God as Creator and Sustainer of all of life
that it is hard for me to feel that I am included.
God
is with me. All around
me are certain expressions of orderliness, of beauty, of wonder and
delight. The regularity of sunrise and
sunset, the fragile loveliness of a wisp of cloud fringed with silver, the
wonder of day dawning and the delight of companionship – all these are His
handiwork.
God
is with me. Again and
again I am stirred by some experience of tenderness, some simple act of
gratuitous kindness moving from one man to another, some quiet deed of courage,
wisdom or sacrifice or some striking movement of unstudied joy that bursts
forth in the contagion of merry laughter.
I know God is with me.
God
is with me. Always
there is the persistent need for some deep inner assurance, some whisper in my
heart, some stirring of the spirit within me – that renews, re-creates and
steadies. Then whatever betides of light
or shadow, I can look out on life with quiet eyes.
God
is with me.
God
is present with me this day.
God is present with me in the midst of my
anxieties. I affirm in my own heart and
mind the reality of His presence. He
makes immediately available to me the strength of His goodness, the reassurance
of His wisdom and the heartiness of His courage. My axieties are real; they are the result of
a wide variety of experiences, some of which I understand, some of which I do
not understand. One thing I know
concerning my anxieties: they are real to me.
Sometimes they seem more real than the presence of God. When this happens, they dominate my mood and
possess my thoughts. The presence of God
does not always deliver me from anxiety but it always delivers me from
anxieties. Little by little, I am
beginning to understand that deliverance from anxiety means fundamental growth
in spiritual character and awareness. It
becomes a quality of being, emerging from deep within, giving to all the
dimensions of experience a vast immunity against being anxious. A ground of calm underlies experiences
whatever may be the tempestuous character of events. This calm is the manifestation in life of the
active, dynamic Presence of God.
God
is present with me this day.
Forgiveness
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven
them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ (John 20: 23).
A selection from the chapter “Reconciliation,” from
Howard Thurman’s book, Disciplines of the
Spirit.
The concern for reconciliation finds expression in
the simple human desire to understand others and to be understood by
others. These are the building blocks of
the society of man, the precious ingredients without which man’s life is a
nightmare and the future of his life on the planet is doomed. Every man wants to be cared for, to be
sustained by the assurance that he shares in the watchful and thoughtful
attention of others – not merely or necessarily others in general but others in
particular. He wants to know that –
however vast and impersonal all life about him may seem, however hard may be
the stretch of road on which he is journeying – his is not alone, in an
awareness sufficient to hold him against ultimate fear and panic. It is precisely at this point of awareness
that life becomes personal and the individual a person. Through it he gets some intimation of what,
after all, he finally amounts to, and the way is cleared for him to experience
his own spirit.
The need to be cared for is essential to the
furtherance and maintenance of life in health.
This is how life is nourished.
The simpler the form of life, the simpler the terms of caring…
It is in human life that the need to be cared for
can be most clearly observed, however, because here it can be most clearly
felt. There was a lady in my church in
San Francisco who felt very poignantly the need to be needed beyond the limits
of her family. One day she went with a
small group to visit the children’s ward in a hospital. She noticed a baby in a crib against the
wall. Despite the things that were going
on in the ward and the excitement created by a group of English bell-ringers
and their tunes, this little child remained lying on his side with his face to
the wall. But it was discovered that he
was not asleep – his eyes were open in an unseeing stare. The nurse explained that the entire ward was
worried because the child responded to nothing.
Feeding had to be forced. “Even
if he cried all the time, that would be something to work with. But there is nothing. And he is not sick as far as anything
clinical can be determined. He will
surely die unless something is done.”
Then the lady decided to try to do something. Every day for several weeks she visited the
ward, took the little boy in her arms, talked to him, hummed little melodies
and lullabies, and did all the spontaneous things that many years ago she had
one with her own son. For a long time
there was absolutely no response. One
day when she lifted the child into her arms there was a slight movement of the
body, and the eyes appeared to be somewhat in focus. This was the beginning. Finally, on a later day, as her voice was
heard greeting the nurse when she came into the ward, the child turned over,
faced the ward, and tried to raise himself to a sitting position. Things happened rapidly thereafter until he
was restored to health.
Let us keep clearly in mind the issue here. The need to be cared for is fundamental to
human life and to psychic and spiritual health and well-being. When this need is not met, the individual is
thrown into conflict, an inner conflict that can only be resolved when the need
is honored. The conflict expresses
itself in many ways, from profound mental disturbance to the complete projection
upon others of the hate and violence the person himself is feeling. The individual experiences the fulfillment of
his need in a diffused way, by living in an atmosphere of acceptance and
belonging. It is here that simple
techniques of co-operation and adjustment are developed, which in time become
the channels through which the intent to honor this deep need in others is
implemented. Unwillingness to accept ill
will, hatred, or violence directed toward oneself from another as the
fundamental intent is the role of the reconciler, the function of
reconciliation. “Father, forgive them,
for the know not what they do,” says Jesus as he is dying on the cross.
Doubt
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the
twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We
have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails
in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his
side, I will not believe.’
A week later his disciples were again in the house,
and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood
among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your
finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not
doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to
him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not
seen and yet have come to believe.’ (John 20: 24-29).
An excerpt from the Baccalaureate Address delivered
by Dr. Thurman at Spelman College in May of 1980.
There is in every person something that waits and
listens for the sound of the genuine in herself... There is in you something
that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. Nobody like
you has ever been born and no one like you will ever be born again—you are the
only one.
If you can not hear the sound of the genuine within
you, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching and if you
hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born.
You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its
kind in all the existences, and if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in
you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that
somebody else pulls.
So the burden of what I have to say to you is,
"What is your name—who are you—and can you find a way to hear the sound of
the genuine in yourself?" There are so many noises going on inside of you,
so many echoes of all sorts, so many internalizing of the rumble and the
traffic going on in your minds, the confusions, the disorders by which your
environment is peopled that I wonder if you can get still enough—not quiet
enough—still enough to hear rumbling up from your unique and essential idiom
the sound of the genuine in you. I don't know if you can. But this is your
assignment
The sound of the genuine is flowing through you.
Don't be deceived and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your
dreams, your ambitions that you don't hear the sound of the genuine in you.
Because that is the only true guide that you will ever have and if you don't
have that you don't have a thing. Cultivate the discipline of listening to the
sound of the genuine in yourself.
Life
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of
his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so
that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and
that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20: 30-31).
Selections from Howard Thurman’s The Search for Common Ground.
When I was a small boy I went across the meadow to
visit with one of my chums. I was
running around the house when I heard a voice, which came from a knock on the
windowpane. I looked up to see my
friend’s father standing in the room. As
soon as he caught my attention, he motioned for me to turn around and come into
the house through the front door. When I
entered the room he pointed through an open window. There I saw his baby girl, less than a year
old, sitting in the sand playing with a rattlesnake. It was an amazing and deeply frightening
experience to watch. The child would
turn the snake over on its side and do various things with him; the snake would
crawl around her, then crawl back. It
was apparent that they were playing together.
I was sent back into the yard to stand guard to
keep anyone from coming around the house to frighten them. For if their harmony were broken by sudden
disharmony created by noise or sudden movement, there would have been violence
on earth. After a while the baby grew
tired of playing, turned away, and started crawling toward the back steps; the
snake crawled towards the woods on the edge of the yard. It was then that the father drew a bead on
the snake’s head with his shotgun, killing him instantly. It was as if two different expressions of
life, normally antagonistic to each, had dropped back into some common ground
and there reestablished a sense of harmony through which they were relating to
each other at a conscious level…
The paradox of conscious life is the ultimate issue
here. On the one hand is the absolute
necessity for the declaration that states unequivocally the uniqueness of the
private life, the awful sense of being an isolate, independent and alone, the
great urgency to savor one’s personal flavor – to stand over against all the
rest of life in contained affirmation.
While on the other hand is the necessity to feel oneself as a primary
part of all of life, sharing at every level of awareness a dependence upon the
same elements in nature, caught up in the ceaseless rhythm of living and dying,
with no final immunity against a common fate that finds and holds all living
things.
Men, all men belong to each other, and he who shuts
himself away diminishes himself, and he who shuts another away from him
destroys himself. And all the people
said Amen.
