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The One Thing
A Sermon Given
by Douglas
Taylor
on December 30, 2001
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
I have the
Christmas lights up outside my house, and I have remembered to turn them on
for the night most evenings. The tree in the house is wonderfully crowded
with favorite ornaments and colorful lights, giving the living room that
pine smell which always reminds me of my favorite place on earth. Pine is
the smell of my back yard when I was growing up, it is the smell of
Christmas morning each year, and it is the smell of the summer camp up in
the Adirondack mountains of New York state where I still go back to as often
as possible. As I sit in the living room late at night with the children
asleep and the sermon waiting to be finished upstairs, and the regular
lights off and the tree over there sweet and twinkling, - I close my eyes,
breathe in the feeling. This is my favorite part of Christmas. For my new
child, Piran who is five and a half weeks old, the best part is the lights
in the tree. He will stare transfixed at the lights for long minutes. He is
not yet at that stage where he likes the wrapping paper and the empty
packaging. But he'll get there. My other two kids, Brin and Keenan, always
enjoy the opening of presents.
My son, Keenan, received a
wonderful computer game this Christmas called Zoo Tycoon. In this game with
its really good graphics, you build a zoo from the ground up, creating the
cages, choosing the size of each exhibit, what trees to put in, and how many
of each animal to adopt. You have to keep an eye on the finances of your
zoo, the happiness of your animals, and of your guests. You need to give
your guests restrooms, trash cans, and hotdog stands. And then one of the
lions gives birth to a few cubs and pretty soon the cage is too small, and
what are you going to do about it. You have to keep your eye on so many
different things. You can't just set it up and let it go. Did you hire
enough zoo keepers to take care of your beasties? And now look, you bought
the wrong kind of fence for the monkeys and they just escaped; they're
running all around the zoo!
It has long been said that
certain computer games teach certain skills to kids, or to their fathers who
also like to stay up late playing their children's games when they should be
writing their sermons. "Asteroids" taught hand-eye coordination.
Pac-man taught quick thinking skills. And Tetris is the best because it
teaches you both. Well, I have determined that Zoo Tycoon teaches the ever
valuable skill of multitasking. You learn, with this game, to deal with
seven different problems all at once. You know that is applicable now a
days.
"Multitasking" is a
term used by people who feel they have too much to do and not enough time in
which to do it. I remember a one-panel comic in the newspaper which showed a
'comments and suggestions' box installed up in heaven and God was reviewing
some of the slips of paper: "'Not enough hours in the day,' 'Not enough
time to get everything done,' 'Needed more time,' 'Not enough hours ...'
Sheesh! I know what I'll do differently next time!" Some people brag
about being able to shave and write their grocery list at the same time.
They are putting on their lipstick while buttering toast, or closing that
business deal over the phone while watching the kids' soccer practice, or
getting dressed while reading the newspaper and feeding the dog - all while
spending a little quality time with the spouse! I do this myself sometimes.
Yesterday I was taking care of Piran while folding laundry and practicing
that call to worship I did earlier. It worked out well for me because the
singing put Piran to sleep. But I was multitasking all the same. So I
critique what I see not from a distance. I too want to take care of several
things at once. And I find myself trying to write my newsletter column while
I am watching the kids at Aikido practice.
What does all this
multitasking do to us? What do we gain? I believe that multitasking only
gives the illusion of creating extra time. This and other behaviors like it
work to divide our attention in too many directions. We are in danger of
becoming fragmented. There was a commercial on television when I was growing
up which showed a woman in a business suit and high heels with a brief case
in one hand and a frying pan in the other. And she sang, "I can bring
home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never, never, never let you forget
you're a man." The product, technically, was perfume (I think). But it
also sold the idea to women in the 1980's that they could hold down a job,
clean the house, and still have time and energy to be sexy for their
husbands. It was an unrealistic image of a have-it-all woman. I don't watch
television too much these days, but I bet the images sold in the commercials
today are just as potentially harmful and fragmenting. Why do we do it? What
are we trying to gain by it? The commercials are selling images of success
and happiness, and the world as our oyster. These seem to be what we are
after. And yet, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the
whole world and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:35).
Paul Tillich, in the reading
from this morning, talked about two forces in our lives, two kinds of
concerns. On the one hand there is the concern exemplified by Martha who is
concerned about many things, many normal, everyday, practical, transitory
things. On the other hand there is the concern exemplified by Mary who is
concerned about one thing, one ultimate, fundamental thing. Our society
works well and rewards us when we behave as Martha. And like Tillich, I want
to say clearly that there is no way to live in this world without being
concerned about the transitory yet important concerns of life. But it seems
to me that many people rarely move beyond those transitory, practical
concerns to ultimate concerns. Few of us spend our time on the one thing
needed.
When I was folding laundry and
singing to Piran, I was being more Martha than Mary. I could have spent my
time just singing to Piran, but I was also practicing a particular song and
folding the laundry while sitting at the feet of by little bundle of
holiness. The kid fell asleep, so I felt like super-Dad. But I was not
giving my whole attention to him. In fact, the pride of that moment was not
just that he fell asleep to my song, but that I was able to do housework and
church work while he fell asleep to my song.
Tillich, later on in the essay
I started with writes ,"In our story, Martha was seriously concerned.
Let us try to remember what gives us concern in the course of an average
day, from the moment of awakening to the last moment before falling asleep,
and even beyond that, when our anxieties appear in our dreams." (The
Essential Tillich, ed. by Church, p. 33) That is an interesting, and
I think fruitful, line of thought. What are my concerns during the normal
course of my day? What gets my attention? Work and paying the bills, the
health of my children, and the happiness of my children and all my family.
Happiness is certainly a big concern for many in the world.
In my Psychology 101 class
back in college, I learned about Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory. Basic
needs, or for our consideration today, basic concerns are things like food,
shelter, and being free from pain. Little Piran is concerned about things
like eating and getting his diaper changed. His concerns are so much
simpler, more basic, than mine. I suspect he gets much closer to an ultimate
concern than I ever do. After he is fed and his diaper is changed, he may
simply worry about getting closer to that one whose heartbeat is so
familiar. I, on the other hand, like many of you I would wager, have a
multitude of other concerns, secondary to those basic, primary concerns of
food and shelter; secondary, but demanding concerns. And Paul Tillich is
advocating for a movement beyond all these different types of concerns, to
our Ultimate Concern. He writes that the one thing needed. He says the one
thing needed is to be ultimately concerned. OK, concerned about what?
And here, he gets slippery. In
a another recent sermon I quoted a Methodist Bishop who said, "The main
thing is to find the main thing, and to keep the main thing the main thing.
That's the main thing." This is another one of those "What is the
meaning of life?" questions where the answer is: "To give life
meaning." What is the one thing needed? To be ultimately concerned.
Concerned about what? The Ultimate. (Sigh) Sometimes reading theology feels
like an Abbot and Castello routine, or maybe a Tillich and Castello routine:
What is the one thing needed? To be Ultimately Concerned. Concerned about
what? The Ultimate. What is the Ultimate? No. What is on Second Base? Are we
talking about God? Oh, he's the catcher. What is he catching? I don't know.
Third Base!
Tillich has sometimes defined
God as "Our Ultimate Concern." Or I should perhaps say, he has
defined our Ultimate Concern as God. Find that thing which a man is
ultimately concerned about and you will have found God for that man. Ralph
Waldo Emerson also said something similar to this when he wrote, "A
person will worship something - have no doubt about that. ... That which
dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and
character." (Taken from the Hymnal Singing the Living Tradition,
#563)
You can't get away from
worshiping something, so worship something of worth. Worship that with which
you are ultimately concerned. But that still doesn't really answer the
question, 'what does it look like to be Ultimately concerned?' Does Tillich
ever give a concrete example? Yes, surprisingly, he does. Fairly near the
front of his essay, in fact, he writes this: "The hour of a church
service and every hour of meditative reading is dedicated to listening the
way Mary listened. Something is being said to us, to the speaker as well as
to the listeners, something about which we may become infinitely concerned.
This is the meaning of every sermon. It shall awaken infinite concern."
(The Essential Tillich, ed.
by Church, p.33)
It is said that the narrow
path leads home. I believe that when you look deeply into your life for
moments of intimacy, you will begin to see what Paul Tillich is talking
about because issues of intimacy and those of ultimacy are so closely
linked. That moment I have each year sitting in front of the decorated
Christmas tree remembering special places, special times in my life, and the
people from those times and places. This is more than mere nostalgia.
Because when I sit there remembering the past, I am enjoying the present as
well. I am thinking about why this holiday is so special, why it matters. I
find myself less in the shallow dimensions of the holiday time and the
events of my life, and more in touch with the deeper dimensions of life and
faith. I find I am listening to my life and the story it has to offer. In
those moments I feel briefly like that lone, wild bird, soaring up high in
the stratosphere. And for a time, I rest in the quiet curve of the universe.
And sometimes, sometimes, I feel released into that which is greater than
myself. Grasped, as Tillich would say. Grasped by that which is ultimate and
infinite. "And I am thine, I rest in thee. Great Spirit come, and rest
in me."
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