Sermon
It’s time for the annual Thanksgiving quiz. Here are three questions about Thanksgiving you should all know the answers to.
First of all, if April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?
Pilgrims!
If the Pilgrims were alive today, what would they be most famous for?
Their AGE.
Why can't you take a turkey to church?
Because they use such FOWL language.Now that we have the silliness out of the way, let me ask you a more serious question: what is your favorite food at Thanksgiving time?
Most people would probably say turkey or dressing or pie – and I do love all of these -- but my favorite food is bread. Fresh homemade bread is not only absolutely scrumptious, but it’s probably the most appreciated food in the world.
Most people in the world do not know what turkey and dressing and pie even tastes like. But they do know what bread tastes like, and they are very thankful if they have any at all.
When the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving, they had plenty of food thanks to their Indian friends. They were celebrating a time of plenty, but they were also remembering the terrible times when they had very little to eat.
Bread has been not only an essential food but a sacred one for millennium. Different religions, including Christianity, have used bread as a symbol for our spiritual survival. As Unitarian Universalists we also use bread as a symbol for what we need in our lives to overcome adversity and to become better people. So this morning we are going to make a loaf of what I call Unitarian Universalist bread for our bread communion, and I’ll explain the ingredients as we add them.
We begin by adding a little yeast to water.
Yeast is the magic in bread. Yeast is what allows the bread to rise.
How does it do that? I’m not sure, but to me the yeast is like our hopes and dreams. If we don’t have hopes for a better life and dreams of a better world, then how can we ever hope to achieve them?
If Jesus had not told us of his hopes for a better life for the poor and downtrodden, would they have reached out for the Kingdom of God? If Martin Luther King had not told us of his dream for a Beloved Community where everyone is equal and free, would we have tried to reach for it?
Our hopes and dreams raise up the expectations of what we can achieve so that we may achieve the possible.
So let us add to our UU bread the ingredients of our hopes and dreams.
Water is another ingredient for our UU bread. Water is used in many religions to give blessings, as we used water to bless our babies this morning. In our UU Bread, water represents the blessings we give to each other through our love and generosity.
Another word for these blessings is grace, as in the song “Amazing Grace” that we heard the choir sing. “…’tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home…” We experience grace when we realize that we don’t really deserve the many blessings in our lives, and yet they are ours anyway.
Have you ever lay back in the ocean and let the sea hold you buoyant? It’s a wonderful feeling. And that’s how it feels when you experience grace, when you are cared for and loved by your family and friends and those in our church. You feel buoyant, even when you are in pain, even when you are scared, even when you are lonely.
So let’s bless our bread with some amazing grace in the form of water.
After the yeast and water have sat for a while you mix in flour and salt. Where does flour come from? It is wheat or some other grain that has been grown, cultivated and harvested. Then it has been ground into flour so we can use it in bread.
The flour that goes into our bread is the creation of the sun, rain, earth and wind. And it reminds us that we human beings are not only a part of nature; we are ingrained in nature as intimately as any tree, mountain, birds or wheat itself.
We forget this reality too often. We somehow think that humans are superior to nature and that we can control it and even deplete it for our selfish purposes. We forget that this beautiful planet Earth is a living, breathing, loving reality that cares for us as we care for it. In the words attributed to Chief Noah Sealth, “This we know. The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth.”
So let us add the beauty and inspiration of nature to our UU bread.
And now let’s add a little bit of salt. Salt has long been a symbol of tears because our tears are salty. So by adding salt to our bread we not only make it taste better, but we also add our tears of sorrow for the pain in our lives and in the lives of others.
Terry and I have a six year old foster child in India by the name of Yuvarani through the Christian Children’s Fund. We enjoyed that relationship so much that we now have another foster child in Uganda called Zitta Olivia who is also six. Both girls have little in their lives. Zitta lives with her family in a one room mud and wattle hut. Her family makes the equivalent of about $100 a year.
We hope to help these girls in a small way by exchanging letters and gifts, but they help us as well by putting a human face to the suffering of so many in the world.
We need to cry tears of sorrow for all those who have so little. And then we need to use our compassion to help heal the pain.
Let us add compassion in the form of salt to our UU Bread.
One thing I love about making bread is that you can add almost anything else you want: nuts, grains, fruit, vegetables, even chocolate. This is our opportunity to be an individual, a unique UU, affirming our common principles but also heading in our own spiritual direction, whether it be towards Buddhism, humanism, Christianity or Paganism.
So let’s be sure to add some individuality to our bread, and I’ll do that by dropping in a chocolate kiss.
We mix all these ingredients together, and then we knead the dough, which means that we use our hands to press and squeeze and massage it so all the ingredients will blend together. This represents the hard work that must be done of waging peace and making justice, of learning to love and forgive, of building the Beloved Community. We must use our hands and muscles to transform our hopes and dreams into a reality. As someone said, “Work is where our deep gladness meets the world's deep hunger.”
Let us add the ingredient of hard work to our UU bread.
Time is another essential ingredient. It takes a long time to make bread the correct way – without a bread machine -- and it also takes time to grow a soul, to learn to love, and to make justice. We need to do the work, but we also need to be patient with ourselves and each other, letting time be our friend rather than our enemy.
Let us add time and patience to our UU bread.
Once the dough has been kneaded, and it has risen, we must punch it down. We’ve all had that happen to us, haven’t we? Our hopes and dreams, our hard work has given us something to believe in, to grasp hold of, and then suddenly it’s gone and we are back where we started.
It may be a relationship, a job, a social justice project, our church. But the important thing to remember is that punching down the dough allows it to rise even higher. We learn from our failures, we grow from our defeats, we find promise in our pain so that we may become even more creative, imaginative and loving human beings. As someone (Elbert Hubbard)
said, “A failure is a person who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience.”
Let us add to our UU bread the ingredients of failure and persistence.
And now it’s time to bake the bread. That’s where our chalice comes in. You may not think that tiny flame could bake a loaf of bread, but that flame is blazing hot from centuries of sacrifice and commitment by many people who struggled long and hard for freedom, tolerance and reason.
Our flame represents the beliefs and values that fuel our Unitarian Universalist faith. Those beliefs and values are expressed well in our principles and purposes, but let me sum them up in this way:
· We believe in the dignity and divinity of every human being.
· And we believe that within every one of us is a spark of spirit that seeks to love and be loved, that yearns to know truth and live meaning, that reaches out to heal and give hope to the world.
· Our task is to keep that flame burning brightly within ourselves and within all people.
What better flame to bake our UU bread!
But we are not quite finished. There is one more ingredient we must have, and that is each other. Bread can only be appreciated when we break it and share it with others.
When we share bread in a religious community we call it a communion because we are using bread to build our community -- not just this church community but the community of the world: the Earth and all its people.
To enter into communion means that we are willing to share our bread and our lives with those we love here in this church and with all those who have no bread to eat or home to live in or school to attend or hope for the future. We share our bread by giving money to good causes, like Guest At Your Table and by working side by side with others for social justice. The best way to give thanks is to give our thanks away, to share our blessings with others.
So here we have our UU bread. We made it by mixing the inspiration of nature with the blessings of grace, the compassion of our hearts, and our hopes and dreams for the future. Then we used our muscles and commitment to shape the loaf into a living reality. Our aspirations are periodically punched down, but if we persist they will rise even higher each time until finally all that is needed is the light and warmth of our beliefs and ideals to give us and the world the sustenance we need.
Finally when the bread is baked we break it. We break it so that we may smell its wonderful aroma, see its beautiful color and texture, taste it delicious flavor, but most of all we break bread so that we may share it with others, so that we may put it in each other’s mouths for a communion of souls, a celebration of thanksgiving.
Usually people say, “Don’t try this at home!” but I urge you to try this recipe for UU Bread at home and work and play and wherever you go. I’m sure you will find it delicious, nutritious and transforming!
Amen.
