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All That Is Our Lives
A Sermon Given
by The Reverend Betty Jo Middleton
on June 2, 2002
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
I brought my baby Buddha to show you this morning; I've had him a long time, and he has been a joy to look at through the years. If you are close enough to see, he is just about the "smilingest" baby there is anywhere.
It makes me think of the real baby who would grow up to be the Buddha; his parents so wanted him to be happy they tried to protect him from all sorrow, suffering, illness, pain, and disappointment in the world. How much luck do you think they had with that?
We had a baby at our house this weekend. He's a pretty happy baby, and we will do just about anything to keep him that way. But sometimes he will have a tummy ache, or his mommy or daddy will leave the room, or his big brother will take back the toy the baby took from him-and there he is, unhappy again! He keeps learning, and we do too, that no one can be happy all the time. When he smiles again, though, it's like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.
The baby who would grow up to be the Buddha, one of the great teachers of the world, did learn about unhappiness, despite all the efforts to keep him protected from it. This is a story told of the Buddha:
Once there was a woman who had a child who died. She could not believe that he was dead and went from person to person trying to find the right medicine to make him well.
The Buddha told her that if she could bring him a mustard seed from a house where no one in the family had ever died, they could make a mustard seed medicine that would cure her child. How simple it seemed: a tiny mustard seed! And so she began to go from house to house, asking "Has anyone in your family ever died?" And, what do you think everyone said? "Of course. My grandfather died, my grandmother, our aunts, our uncles." Everywhere she went, it was the same. And soon she began to understand that all families have deaths, as well as births, and that death, like birth, is part of life. And though she remained sad, she began to accept that she, too, had lost someone she loved very much.
Life is full of hellos and goodbyes, of beginnings and endings. One thing we can do in our religious community is to help one another understand how much these beginnings and endings are a part of all our lives.
I know that I will be saying goodbye to you at the end of this month, and that can make me feel sad. But I know, too, that I will be able to say hello to some new experiences and some new people that I would not be able to if I were here.
In August Susan Archer will be coming to join you as your new minister of religious education, and today, up in the Metro New York District, she is saying goodbye to one part of her life, and to people she has grown to love in these past eight years. But soon she will be here with you!
We all love the dear and familiar, even if we like new adventures and challenges. That is one of the paradoxes of all that is our lives.
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We have recognized today significant life events in our community. We celebrate today our larger religious community with the observance of Flower Communion. All have gifts to bring to this life, and all have need of the gifts of others.
"We need one another," George Odell says, "when we mourn and would be comforted...when we are in trouble and afraid...when we are despair, in temptation, and need to be recalled to our best selves again.
"We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone...in the hour of our success, when we look for someone to share our triumphs [and] in the hour of our defeat when with encouragement we might endure and stand again.
"We need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey. All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us."
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May we be open to all that is our lives, that we may live it richly and fully and have much to share with others. May all who are sick, in heart, mind, or body, be made well, and all who are broken be made whole again.
Office@CedarLane.org
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