Sermon- Washington Crossing UU Church.

This sermon was composed especially for my home congregation. The three lines that are repeated is the congregations "Chalice Lighting", a sort of centering ritual at the start of the service.
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Opening words by Margaret Gooding, "Why not a star?"
Reading: Matthew 2:1-12
Children's story: "Fish is Fish"-- Leo Lionni, up to Fish's dream.
Sermon "Preacher Teaching- A Seminary Journey"

Let us open our eyes to see what is beautiful;
Let us open our minds to learn what is true;
Let us open our hearts to love one another.

I'm very glad to be back here and to be back in New Jersey. I love how warm and welcoming the community has been to me.

But today's sermon is about seminaries... specifically about Unitarian Universalist Seminaries, and even more specifically about my experiences at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley California.

I want to talk a bit about what's unique in UU ministry, so I started with something Christian. Most Protestant and Catholic churches are using this Sunday to teach about Epiphany... the reading that Bonnie just gave us is being recited in one form or another at thousands of churches across the USA. For those ministers, the struggle is to find something fresh to say about the Gospel.

Unitarian Universalists, on the other hand, have Margaret Gooding's words "Some bright star shines somewhere in the heavens each time a child is born." which takes the story somewhere else...

And I could have, if I wanted to, ignored the Christian calendar, and looked, perhaps, for other days to celebrate. But, except for the Muslim new year on January 10th, there isn't much happening this week.

So I thought we'd think about today, the day the three Magi arrived to visit the baby Jesus and Mary. I thought it might be interesting to do an exercise I'd learned at seminary.

And the reading from Matthew is perfect for this activity! It's called Biblical Exegesis, and it means 'close reading' of a Biblical pericope.

At Starr King we have several Muslim professors... they use an interesting learning technique. When they are teaching a new word or concept, they have the class to repeat the word whenever they say it...

So here are the two new words

Exegesis -- meaning a close reading, and

PERICOPE -- meaning a snippet... a story, aphorism, parable, event or other unit of narrative in the bible.

Pericopes can be long. One very long one is in John: Jesus talking with a Samaritan Woman for a dozen bible verses. Or they can be very short, Mark 10:46 has on that is only four words "They came to Jericho"-- that's it-- very mysterious!

In seminary I took two courses in the bible, and they taught me to exegete pericopes like the one about the Magi...

The story, it seems, is about a group of 'wise men'. The Greek word is Magoi, and while scholars are not certain about this, it seems most likely to mean men of the Magi caste in Zoroastrian Persia. This priestly caste studied the stars, and would have been able to travel.

Note two things-- first, they are not Kings, they are priests or astrologers. Second, the bible doesn't say how many there are! There might have been three, or four, or maybe even just two. So the song "We Three Kings" is technically a distortion of the BIBLE...

If you were a fundamentalist, you'd be angry that we sang that Hymn! [We 3 Kings]

For close reading we start by defining the narrative:

FIRST, the astrology charts say that "a new king of the Jews is born"

SECOND, the astrologers go to the logical place to find a new king-- the PALACE!

They were thinking logically-- go see the current king and congratulate him on having a new son! But here we have a literary twist!

One lens we can use to view the Bible is to look at their literary structure, and this is the big setup-- the king has no new son!

So, in the next part of the story, you and the king, and all Jerusalem are on a quest to find the meaning of the astrological chart.

You might suddenly be aware that the story's narrator knows many things-- he is privy to happenings in Herod's palace.

He even knows Herod's thoughts and motivations!

You might wonder who recorded those thoughts for Matthew?
You might wonder what part is history and what part is storytelling.

When Herod discovers that this new king is the Anointed one-- the Christ or the Messiah, the story takes a new direction-- The Magi are sent out of town to I D the child, and bring the info back to EVIL KING HEROD.

But then comes the TWIST: two magical things happen-- first, the star guides them to Jesus, and second, they are warned against Herod in a dream.

What role does magic play in the narrative?

Seminary also teaches us to look at what is missing in a story-- who has power, who has privilege.

One thing missing in this pericope is Joseph. I'm not sure why, and scholars don't know why either-- he gets no mention at all. Was this story, perhaps, part of a group of myths that existed before Joseph was 'invented' to make Jesus legitimate? We really don't know.

I could go on and on about this exegesis stuff, but that's not the point of the sermon.

Let us open our eyes to see what is beautiful;
Let us open our minds to learn what is true;
Let us open our hearts to love one another.

This is supposed to be a Unitarian Universalist sermon, so I suppose it should have some Unitarian Universalist history in it-- and I wouldn't want to disappoint. Let me tell you a true story!

Consider Thomas Starr King. It's the 1840s, in Boston Massachusetts. The Reverend Starr King-- that's what he called himself-- is a small fish in a big pond. He was raised Universalist, son of a Universalist minister, and, after his father dies, he takes over his father's ministry.

But then he's called to be the minister at an important Boston Unitarian Church-- even though he's Universalist and doesn't have a Harvard degree. He becomes famous speaking forcefully on the two big issues of the day... Slavery and Temperance.

But Starr King is rather sickly. And to earn enough money in expensive Boston he's had to lecture almost every night in addition to preaching three times on Sundays.

He's wearing himself out, and so he takes a job at the First Unitarian Society of San Francisco-- a place where he doesn't have to lecture to make ends meet... and where it's warmer in the winter, and not so hot in the summer.

Starr King moves to California to relax and recover...

UNFORTUNATELY, by now it's 1860, and the Civil War is about to break out.

Starr King sees that the Californian state Government is pro-Confederacy, and is likely that California is going to declare independence from the Union once the war starts.

So he ignores his health needs, and 'expends all his strength' on the lecture circuit to keep California a part of the United States.

Once the war has begun, and that issue is resolved, he founds a chapter of what would become the Red Cross, raising a million dollars for the US Sanitary Commission.

But all of this, it was said, "Condemned [him] to the slow suicide of overwork" and he was dead before the war was over.

So Thomas Starr King didn't found a seminary in Berkeley California. That was done forty years later by another guy, Earl Morris Wilbur, and for the first few years he was the only professor.

And that school, Starr King School for the Ministry, is still a small school, with only about 60 students.

It is part of a consortium of religious schools-- from Catholic to Buddhist-- called the Graduate Theological Union, and the schools try to offer complimentary courses. For example, I took my Bible classes at the Pacific School of Religion, and my classmates in Introduction to Preaching included Jesuits and Pagans in addition to UUs. I'm taking a course at the Buddhist school this spring.

Each school offers its own degrees. It takes four years at Starr King to get a Masters of Divinity degree-- that's what I'm working for... but there is only one required course.

It's a jumbo sized one called "Educating to Counter Oppressions and Create Just and Sustainable Communities"-- and if you like, you can imagine that it is a sort of survey course covering all four of our Candles of Fellowship. Coming from Washington Crossing, I was pretty much in tune with this course.

Beyond that, we are on our own. I've had courses in Preaching, in Sex-- well, in Comprehensive Sexuality Education-- in Listening and in Death.

I've red Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior... Les Feinberg and Dorothy Day. I've worked on worship services and gone on a pilgrimage to the Japanese American concentration camp in the California Desert.

But I have come to realize that most of these courses are just eye-openers. They make me a better student because I know the material, and can remember the facts and events.

But they don't make students into ministers.

Let us open our eyes to see what is beautiful;
Let us open our minds to learn what is true;

The next part of the seminary experience is harder to nail down. It is the process of learning what is true.

This is done through what is called "PRAXIS" The practical application of learning.

For example, I wanted to understand teenagers.

So I took a course on Comprehensive Sexuality Education for teens.

But, at the end of that, I still knew nothing about teenagers-- other than perhaps some statistics about pregnancy rates in students who were given Abstinence Based Sex Ed...

So this year I'm teaching Our Whole Lives-- the UUA's Sexuality Education program-- to teens in the Bay Area.

I'm putting my course work knowledge into action... and trust me, through PRAXIS I'm discovering LOTS of THINGS about teens.

For many students, PRAXIS comes during chaplaincy training. This is either a summer, or a year long "Unit" where students go away and are chaplains in Hospitals, Prisons, Hospice Programs or Mental Institutions. Some have arranged to work in Homeless Shelters.

My course in Death, Dying and Bereavement taught me lots of facts and techniques, for dealing with people in need... but it will be during my chaplaincy training-- called CPE-- that I will have to develop an understanding of what is TRUE to me.

Let us open our hearts to love one another.

There is one more step in becoming a minister. And, after all the education on oppression and violence and death and exploitation... students have a good idea how bad the world is.

This step, taken in either the third or fourth year of Starr King's program, is working as an intern minister at a Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

It's here that students change speed, and begin to understand LOVE. Many of my schoolmates have gone off on internship either this year or last year. What I hear is that the congregations show them what it means to be a minister.

The Praxis of working as a ministerial intern changes them. Students don't forget the horror stories that we hear in school, but they realize the sheer quantity of good, of possibility, in the Unitarian Universalist movement-- in the everyday members of our congregations.

That's because the congregants are the professors, are the advisors, and the coaches for these new ministers.

At the same time, the congregation receives from the intern another point of view and new ideas from the broader association of congregations.

I'm talking all romantically about this, but it's something I haven't done yet. The school doesn't assign students... it's a job they have to apply for themselves. The students have to determine when they are ready-- and then get hired.

So either next year--- or the year after, I will be going away for a year, joining another community and learning to LOVE the job.


In Unitarian Universalism, the rules of ordination acknowledge the simple fact that communities, not schools develop leaders.
When the time comes, the only body that can ordain a minister is a congregation.


So Now, a good minister will tie in the reading and end the sermon... But I think the story of the Magi is overdone, so INSTEAD

I'm going to tell you how "Fish Is Fish" ends. We sang the children out at the point where fish was imagining what the world above the water was really like. Of course perception and reality were very different.

On the next page he determines to jump out of the water and see for himself.

As he lies on the shore gasping for oxygen, Frog finds him, and pushes him back into the water. LIONNI continues:

"Still stunned, the fish floated about for an instant. Then he breathed deeply, letting the clean cool water run through his gills. Now he felt weightless again and with an ever-so-slight motion of the tail he could move to and fro, up and down, as before.

"The sunrays reached down within the weeds and gently shifted patches of luminous color. This world was surely the most beautiful of all worlds. He smiled at his friend the frog, who sat watching him from a lily leaf. "You were right," he said. "Fish is fish."


It's a sad version of "happily ever after", isn't it?

Fish fails... if that's the way you want to measure things.
Fish learns... if knowing one's limits is a form of learning.
Fish has a friend in frog... who is now from another world, with stories of fantastic things.

Let us open our eyes to see what is beautiful;
Let us open our minds to learn what is true;
Let us open our hearts to love one another.
amen.

CLOSING HYMN #402 From You I Receive, To You I Give.