Chalice Lighting
Robert Buckman, Worship Associate
We begin by honoring the Light.
We light the Chalice for our families, our
beloved, our friends, for all our relations;
For those who are near and for those from
whom we feel an unwanted distance;
For the newborn, for the elderly, and for all
the orphaned and wounded children;
For those who have suffered the loss of
loved ones.
May the light from this Chalice inspire us to
heal, not to harm; to help, not to hinder;
to bless, not to condemn.
May its radiance spread light into the darkened corners of our world and soften the hearts of all war planners and all war makers.
May its radiance pour out upon our hearts and bring peace to all souls.
Call to Worship
We gather, agreeing to seek together the most radical implications of what it means to be religious.
In its ancient meanings, the word, “religion,” speaks of binding together, suggesting that by taking the fragments of experience, by applying to them the reason of the mind
and the aspirations of the heart, we can bring out of those fragments a unity of meaning and a focus of personal commitment.
We gather to share the human adventure;
To bind together that which is asunder in our lives;
To heal ourselves and offer comfort to others;
To lift our sorrow;
To reaffirm the hopes of the heart;
And renew promises of our most worthy commitments.
--Todd J. Taylor, adapted
We join now in worship.
Meditation and Prayer
Patricia Cornwell, author of an Op-Ed page piece in a recent New York Times, reflected on how the sniper shootings are poisoning our everyday lives.
We don’t want to buy gas. We don’t want our children going to school. We don’t want to shop. We don’t want to drive to work. We may deliberate for hours whether to go to the grocery car or pharmacy. …etc., etc. … Our reaction to the Washington sniper is normal and understandable, and I have yielded to it myself from time to time. … But I have come to a conclusion about our fear and what we must do about it, and in part, this revelation entered my life just the other day.
In July, Ms. Cornwell goes on, there was a serial killer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She spoke to the mother of a woman who was murdered by the serial killer:
I asked her what she could tell the rest of us. We live in a world of terrorist cells, of serial killers, of spree snipers, and as hard as we try, we can’t seem to catch them. What can we do?
“Get involved,” she answered. “People should notice a strange car or a truck or a person in their neighborhood. People need to be neighbors again and care for each other. You can’t hole up in a house and not get dressed and not go out.”
And if she lived in the Washington area right now?
“The way my adrenaline’s pumping, [she replied] I’d go out in my car [now] looking for him.”
Some dark days, tremors sweep across our lives. Troubling events accost us. We have grown accustomed to reading about such things, and often we have fenced off our natural sympathies with this thought: this belongs to someone else.
But, since September 11 last year, we’re not at all confident that bad things happen to someone else anymore. The world of conflict and violence is at our doorstep.
Crisis brushes close to us, touches us, and touches us again, and yet again. We are frustrated by knowing too much, and not knowing what’s really going on. We are smothered by incessant reporting. Our bodies fill up with knots of anxiety. Our throats are dry. We would weep, but our eyes have no tears. We could cry out, but fear holds us still. Who has done this to us?
In reflecting upon the dispiriting time in which we live, I have come to believe that the basic religious response is to refuse to be dispirited for too long.
May we seek and find grounding wherever it may be found: in beauty, in charity, in love.
May we trust in the spirit that will not be quelled forever, that rises up in people from some mysterious source; energy that comes again to affirm that we are a part of something truly wonderful and worthwhile.
May we join hands in healing. May we have the courage to act, and the faith that life is good.
Let us enter the extended silence together…
[silence]
Amen.
Reading
The revolutionary epoch known as the Amarna Age happened between 1353 and 1336BCE. At the peak of Egypt’s imperial glory, the pharaoh Akhenaten assumed the throne of Egypt. For a brief but extraordinary period, the art, the religion, and the politics of ancient Egypt were all transformed by the vision of this one man who worshiped the light of the sun, the god Aten.
The following poem is from Ancient Egypt. In it, we hear a Genesis story that ascribes divinity to the sun. The ancient Egyptians believed that the Pharoah was the earthly counterpart of the sun god.
IN THE BEGINNING
“In the beginning, Egyptian legends attested,
floodwaters engulfed the world.
Nothing stirred amid the dark and dismal expanse,
Then, miraculously, a lotus blossom surfaced
And opened its petals to give birth to sun.
Rising from the blossom like a golden bird,
The sun subdued the waters and
Coaxed life from the emerging land.
Even after, when the Nile receded and the growing season began,
People gave thanks to the sun god…
And to his earthly counterpart, the Pharaoh,
Who claimed divine powers and kept the country fruitful.”
Sermon –
“Akhenaten, Radical Pharoah:
News From the Tomb?”This sermon is, in some sense a corollary to the sermon series on “The Challenge of Religious Pluralism: The Big Answers.”
So far in the series, we have considered Big Answers provided by two religions, Judaism and Islam. Judaism bases itself in a Covenant made with their ONE God, Yahweh, and it was in that relationship that all meaning and purpose for adherents’ lives took shape. Adherents to Islam found an answer and purpose to their lives in submission; submission to their one God, Allah. And, we considered how those two ideas – Living in Covenant, and Submission to a Higher Power – could translate themselves into wisdom for our own Unitarian Universalist spiritual and religious journeys.
John Bohman, a long-time member of our church, sent an e-mail to Michael and me, suggesting that we not leave Confucianism out of our sermon series, as we did.
John let us know that, in terms of numbers, Confucianism is probably #2 after Christianity and is basic to the East Asian cultures of China, Japan, and Korea. He wrote, “Confucius supplied an answer in China to extremely turbulent times by creating a whole way of social cohesion, a collective orientation, a grounding in tradition, and a sense of loyalty.” Although socially conservative, John thinks that we have much to learn from East Asia, beyond Buddhism, Taoism, and Shintoism. He ends his note by saying this: “In short, I am suggesting a sermon topic for one of you some time before summer.” Who knows, one of us might indeed take him up on that challenge! You’ll have to stay tuned to find out!
I’m so delighted to get lots of feedback from the congregation about how this particular series on religious pluralism is stimulating your thinking. I’m sure that our participation will take us along a variety of marvelous paths that will not only deepen our understanding of other faiths, but enrich our own in countless, unpredictable ways.
Well, I’ve been down a marvelous path, myself.
It’s one that leads back in time to Ancient Egypt.
Now, why should that be? Is there any real news from the Tomb? My guess is that, “Yes,” there certainly is. The more we put the archaeological pieces together from discoveries into our distant past, the better we will understand the fantastic web of the human story. We hear, as best we can through the density of days between us, the stories of our Ancestors.
Ancestors, in many religions, are honored for the links they establish between the generations.
We are not created out of whole cloth in the middle of Now. The threads have been spinning for quite a long, long time, and the incredible tapestry of humanity is far from being finished.
May we avoid being too self-important in assessing our uniqueness, or self-indulgent in dramatizing our solitude in space and time.
What we can learn of long-gone cultures is fascinating. As a child I remember loving the great articles and photos and maps in the National Geographic Magazines; particularly those about Ancient Egypt. Archaeological digs and discoveries, illustrations of pyramids and tombs, hieroglyphics, stelae’s and statuary. I’ve always found the art and design of ancient Egypt to be quite beautiful. Beliefs surrounding death and the art and artifacts in the tomb pull at my imagination and wonder; to say nothing of the concept and building of the amazing pyramids.
Successions of Pharoahs and their Queens, over thousands of years and Dynasties, and through Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, looked much alike in their depictions. Then, recently, I became aware of one Pharoah who seemed quite different from those before him and those who came after.
He was called the “Heretic Pharoah,” and caused a short-lived, but significant cultural and religious revolution. And, the whole story isn’t known. What is known has inspired different interpretations. The puzzle—the mystery—remains.
He was born, Amenhotep IV, the second son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiy, who was a descendant of a Hebrew tribe. Because his older brother died prematurely, he became the tenth king of the 18th Dynasty. He also became, perhaps, the most controversial king because of his break with traditional religion. Some say he was the most remarkable to sit on Egypt’s throne. He reigned about 3,500 years ago and became the cause of one of the greatest religious and social revolutions that ever convulsed Egypt. He was far more of a thinker and philosopher than his forebears.
Amenhotep IV, the child, never appeared in any portraits and wasn’t taken to public events. He received no honors. He was ignored or rejected by others, but the reason for that is unknown. He was, however, favored by his mother, a powerful woman in her own right.
In 1352 BCE, he ascended to the throne, succeeding his father who had died. He was just a teenager, but it was the desire of Queen Tiy that he rule.
The beginning of this Pharoah’s reign marked no great discontinuity with that of his predecessors. He was crowned at Karnak, the temple of the god Amun, and, like his father, he married a woman of non-royal blood, the beautiful Nefertiti.
There was another God, besides Amun, that Amenhotep IV revered, and it was the Aten, who was worshipped in earlier times. He introduced a new monotheistic cult of the Aten, believing that this God was literally embodied within the sun; in the solar disc.
Early in his reign, he changed his name to Akhenaten, meaning, “He Who is of Service to Aten, and, one day he had a vision wherein he saw a sun disc between two mountains. He felt that God was guiding him to make a change; to build a city between two mountains.
In the sixth year of his reign, Akhenaten rejected the Gods of Thebes. They were never part of his childhood anyway since he had been shunned as a child. To make a complete break, the king and his queen left Thebes behind and moved to a new capital in Middle Egypt, half way between Memphis and Thebes. It was a virgin site, not previously dedicated to any other god or goddess, and he named the site of his new city, Akhetaten – The Horizon of Aten.
It was 1342 BC. The city grew to about 20,000 people and is on a site that is known now as Tell el-amarna.
Palaces and buildings were quickly made of mud brick, and he built a temple to Aten filled with religious art. It also contained many altars for placing offerings of fruits, flowers, garden produce, and burning incense, but there were no blood sacrifices of any kind. Hymns sung to Aten were accompanied by musical instruments. The worship was joyous in character and the surrounding were bright and cheerful. This was not the traditional worship in Egyptian temples.
In the new religion that Akhenaten developed, the god, Aten, was regarded as the giver of life, and the source of all life on this earth. His symbols were the heat and light of the sun that vivified and nourished all creation. The creed of Aten ascribed a monotheistic character or oneness, and denied the existence of any other god.
The views held by the King and his followers were that Aten had existed forever; he had created the sun and its path, and heaven and earth and every living being. Everything came from Aten and everything depended on him; he was everlasting.
In ancient Egypt, the Pharoahs were thought to be able to speak to the Gods and convey the Gods’ wishes to their subjects. Akhenaten took this a step further, believing himself to be a part of Aten; himself imbued with divinity, with some essence of Aten, rather than a royal go-between. As such, he was bold in his creativity.
Akhenaten encouraged a whole new style in art to celebrate Aten, and it is during his reign that the Egyptian artists first included shading in their work.
Mural decorations were different from those of the other Egyptian temples; they were less severe, less conventional, and they were painted in lively colors.
The visible emblem of the one god was depicted everywhere -- as the solar disc, with rays emanating from it. Each ray had a small hand at its end, holding ankhs, the hieroglyph for life. The Royal family was always represented with the sun-disc above them, and the rays of the sun reaching down to them.
There were no other gods depicted anywhere, and the usual images of the Pharoah were changed by Akhenaten as well. The Pharoahs always had idealized, strong muscular bodies. Akhenaten did not want to be identified as a warrior king.
The style for physical characteristics that Akhenaten developed was quite a departure; heads, faces, fingers and toes were elongated. Lips were full and hips were wide.
The artists were encouraged to show scenes of the real life of the Pharoah – many with his daughters and Nefertiti, showing affection to each other – something that was never done before.
In the twelfth year of Akhenaten’s reign, Nefertiti, who had shared power with her husband as a priest and leader, was gone. It is assumed she died, perhaps in childbirth, but nothing is known for sure.
In another 4 years, Akhenaten died of unknown causes. There is evidence that a burial chamber had been prepared for the king, but all that was found were heavily smashed fragments of his sarcophagus and other items.
His death initiated a return to orthodoxy and a backlash of destruction. Those that thought of him as a heretic, rushed in to destroy everything Akhenaten had created.
Heads of Akhenaten and Nefertiti were broken off statues, their faces scraped off pictures and monuments, their names scratched out of anything the destroyers could find. The buildings were sacked, and blocks from the Aten temples were used as rubble infill for later construction.
What was left of Amarna was lost in antiquity until the end of the 19th century.
Over 3,000 years ago, the rebel Pharoah, Akhenaten, preached monotheism and enraged the Nile Valley. Less than 100 years after Akhenaten’s death, Moses would be preaching monotheism, on the banks of the Nile River, to the Hebrews. Some Egyptologists believe it is possible that there is a connection between the monotheism of Akhenaten and Moses.
The idea of a single god, once the radical belief of an isolated heretic, is now embraced by Jews, Christians, and Muslims throughout the world.
It is extremely difficult to look back at really old civilizations and be able to truly understand their thoughts and ideas, their world-view. What we know now, what we’ve experienced as a collective unconscious, and the discoveries and science and art and technologies that are by now in our blood and bones, render it impossible to ever know fully our ancestor’s minds. We know the human things we have in common, and we can understand the threads of their legacy woven into the dynamism of change. But, we cannot know the nuances of their daily ideas, thoughts, and relationships, no matter how advanced their society, because so much has been lost through the great stretches of time.
That said, and I feel the loss as great sadness, --what instructs me from the shadows of that ancient empty and desecrated tomb of a man who became the servant of the Sun, part visionary, part divine, is to cherish every ounce of innovation, creativity, and risk inside me. It is dangerous and it is glorious. It is best applied with profound love for life than with raw and stubborn power, but it is precious nevertheless.
We cannot leave much behind us. But if we’ve had the courage to create something new, something revolutionary, something unheard of, then we should be comforted that at some future time, an explorer will brush the sand off our crumbled painted temples, and gently collect the shards of containers we held dear, and be able to touch our memory with great care and communion.
Do you think you can’t possibly create something new, revolutionary, and unheard of? Well, think again! Akhenaten lives!
Benediction
We have walked through many lives,
Some of them our own,
And we are not who we were,
Though some principle of being
Abides…
We are not done with our changes.
--Stanley Kunitz (adapted)
Let us walk softly, friends
For strange paths lie before us
All untrod.
--Lillian Gray
Amen, Shalom, and Blessed Be!
