"What Do the Words Mean?"
by Rev. Kimi Riegel
March 7, 2004

Meditation:  Maryell Cleary

Knowing that we do not always live up to our best expectations of ourselves, let us in quietness seek the good within, which some call the inner light, and some "a spark of the divine."

Knowing that we live in a society which falls far short of the ideal, let us in quietness resolve to do one thing this week to aid those suffering from want and injustice.

Knowing that the earth is our home and that we have too often abused and poisoned it, let us in quietness consider how we might be part of making it more healthful for all living things.

Knowing that each of us has some sorrow or anxiety hidden within, let us consider in quietness how we may reach out to one another with our smiles, our handclasps, and our encouraging words.

Sermon: “What Do the Words Mean”
Some of you know the reason most Unitarian Universalists are bad singers: because we are all reading ahead to see if we agree with the words. I don’t think Unitarian Universalists especially in this church are necessarily bad singers but after this morning you won’t need to wonder about hymn #298. You see, after this morning you will know whether you agree with every word. We are going to do an exegesis of the hymn.

Exegesis is an explanation especially a critically one of a passage usually referring to a biblical passage. My colleagues serving more traditional congregations spend each Sunday, Saturday or Friday taking apart a particular text. They talk about its history and its relevance to us today. While we have a few pieces of literature that might fall into the scripture category, for instance material by Thoreau, it is not generally common practice in a Unitarian Universalist Church to hear the minister give an exegetical sermon. Today will be a bit different then. As if we don’t find ourselves doing things a bit different each Sunday! We will look with that critical eye upon one of the most beautiful hymns in our collection. Today we will look at what is being said, and what it means. Its important to note here that critical doesn’t mean negative on the contrary for me it means serious and with great care.

And still it isn’t the exegetical impulse, that impulse to dissect and understand that brought me to this sermon. It is the music itself. This is one hymn that can move me to tears. This is one of those pieces of music that goes in deep and touches me in places that we call heart or soul. Music has a way of doing that, penetrating to the deepest level of our emotions, to that place that is beyond words. So while the words are where I will spend my time this morning that is not where the impulse arises. It comes from that place of which those words speak, that unfathomable, connected, whole place we all long to live but can only visit.

A bit of history on the hymn; It was written by Rev. Thomas Mikelson in 1979. Thomas now serves as the senior minister of our church in Cambridge MA . He is a student of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. having written and spoken extensively on Rev. King’s life and work. The hymn was originally written for the ordination of Thomas’ friend, Charity Rowley, now retired. He told me: “She gave me a few themes, I supplied some of my own, and I supplied the familiar old melody that I still love. I spent days and days writing the verses in the summer of ’79, often sitting out in our sunny back yard near the garden we loved and close to a friendly brook that wandered through at the edge of our yard. The verses came together slowly as they often do for me.” He was living in Iowa City at the time. It is a lovely image to imagine the creation of such an influential work taking place in the beautiful lush summer of a Midwest backyard – just like the kind that you and I have. Creativity is sometimes born in the everyday, in place just like our homes.

With exegesis we start with the words. The most obvious words are those that are repeated in a text. In this case the words “wake now”. These important words begin each verse. They hold a place of prominence and the repetition makes their significance clear. Wake Now! Get up! Hey you! Pay attention! This is an essential part of any religious path. We must first be able to notice, to be present, to be aware before we can move forward. The Buddhists of course speak of awakening, but all religions address the question of coming to be awake to our faith or our path. Thus we start each verse with a call to wake up.

Next and most obvious are the words that follow that call to wake up. Wake our senses, our reason, our compassion, our conscience and finally our vision of ministry. Each of these an essential part of what I think of as being a Unitarian Universalist.

Wake our senses. Hear the earth call. Hear it ask for our help. Hear the imperative in caring for our planet. Make hear the earth the first and most necessary call of all. One of my colleagues called it the “Religious Imperative for Earth Stewardship”.[1] Without our senses, without paying attention to what we hear, what we see, what touches us, what we feel, we will miss out. We will miss the messages the earth and its inhabitants are sending; the beautiful and the dreadful. One bumper sticker says, “If you are not angry you are not paying attention.” Wake now our senses, all of them. There is power in being awake. Feel the deep power present in being aware, feel the power in all that exists. At first it might seem overwhelming, all the sensory information that comes to us, but soon we learn to hear the pieces that are important, soon we can sort it out and know how to respond. The rest of that verse gives us guidance to help us deal with that feeling of being overwhelmed by all there is to hear, see, feel, and know. The hymn says remember that everything is connected and use love as a guiding principle. Once we are awake, once we feel it all, we can use the connectedness of everything and love to help us move forward. Wake now my senses that is first and foremost.

Next we are to awaken our reason: reason being that time honored value of our religious tradition.[2] It is the balance to the senses. It is that which allows us to move ahead thoughtfully. Our religion has its roots in humanity’s ability to look at the Bible and see the inconsistencies of what was written and what was being preached. For the Unitarians it was a reasonable conclusion that there was no trinity and Jesus was clearly a human being. For the Universalists it was a reasonable conclusion that all human beings must surely be saved. The Humanist strand of our faith held reason up to us with these words from the Humanist Manifesto: “Reason and intelligence are the most effective instruments that humankind possesses. There is no substitute: neither faith nor passion suffices in itself. But the hymn doesn’t leave us there. It is not just about reason and striving for the new but honoring the past as well. And again from the Humanist Manifesto, “Reason must be tempered by humility, since no group has a monopoly of wisdom or virtue. Nor is there any guarantee that all problems can be solved or all questions answered. … Reason should be balanced with compassion and empathy and the whole person fulfilled.”

And Mikelson doesn’t leave us there either. We must remember that there are limits but not letting those defeat us as we remember still to praise the sublime, the lofty, the beautiful, the noble, the grand. So with the second verse we wake our reason as it has served us well but remember to balance the new with the time tested and the limits as well as the summit.

And next we awaken our compassion. Awaken that part of us that feels the suffering of others and at the same time feels the pull to lessen it. The world is full of suffering, our own and others. Our task as Unitarian Universalists is to hear that suffering and do all that we can to end it.

We sing “take as your neighbor both stranger and friend.” To take some one as your neighbor means to receive them as someone who lives close to you. Understand them as a person within your immediate concern. Thus in this passage we are called to awaken that part of us that feels the suffering of the world closely and does what we can to eliminate it. It means we hear of someone who has no food or shelter and we behave as if they were living next door to us. It means we hear of the hardships of the world and we behave as if those people were sitting next to us in this church.

Knowing Rev. Mikelson, I would suspect that these verses are intentionally in the order we sing them. First our sense are awake, then and only then can we put the power of reason to its best use and next comes the compassion. Not willy-nilly compassion born of being overwhelmed and cynical about the state of the world, but a compassion that hears the suffering, understands the connectedness of life and the power of love; a compassion that reasonably faces the limits of all our lives and then strives to end hardships.

In the fourth verse we are to awaken our conscience. Conscience being that part of us that understands moral goodness; that part that feels the obligation to do good. Using justice as our ruling principle and with an awareness that we are all to some extent privileged, this verse calls us strongly to work together with all people. Mikelson uses the word God here to talk about the universality of human experience. God’s love, however you interpret that, embraces us all. We are all blessed with a conscience; we are all called to do good, all of us. To recognize that is to realize, in a radical way, that we are in this together. There is no difference between the gay and the straight when we speak of justice and moral goodness. There is no difference between the young and the old, the person of color, the woman, the lonely, the criminal, we are all part of what makes “all people”. In order to achieve the goals outlined in the hymn, that of the reduction of suffering, we must join together. We must find what we have in common, build on it, and create the world described in the last verse; that world transformed by our care.

And finally we come to the awakening of the vision of ministry. Here the hymn lays out a challenge to us all. It is not the minister’s ministry. Each of us sings the song about our own ministry. Ministry is a person or thing through which something is accomplished. Wake now my vision of what can be accomplished through me. Wake now my vision of the collective effort as all those who share this goal come together; our shared ministry, our shared vision, our shared accomplishments.

This is of course the most powerful verse of them all. It calls everyone in the room to a world that will be transformed by those gathered. It is often sung at ordinations and instillations for which it was intended. It is a rousing reminder at the beginning of a new ministry of what we can accomplish together. But it is also an everyday reminder that together we can transform the world. Perhaps the most powerful phrase in the entire hymn for me is “a planet transformed by our care.” Transformed by what is done through each of us. Transformed by our vision and our ministry. Transformed by people, together, who are awake, feeling, reasoning, compassionate, and conscientious.

What is your vision? What is your ministry? What will be accomplished through you? What will be transformed by our care? Not easy questions to answer but ones to which we are lead at the conclusion of the hymn.

So you see this hymn is the stuff of Unitarian Universalism. It is one of those hymns you can sing when times get rough. At those times when we feel most defeated we can recall this congregation signing the words together. At those times when it feels impossible to go on think of these words: Wake now my senses. Let me see hear and feel. Wake now my reason. Let me understand. Wake now my compassion. Let me feel the suffering and lessen it. Wake now my conscience. Let me do that which is good. Wake now my ministry. Let the world be transformed through me.

Namaste.