Interfaith Services of the Lowcountry

SERMON: Thomas Merton: Wisdom and Emptiness
Reflections on his life and work in Zen And The Birds Of Appetite

Most of you are acquainted with Thomas Merton. He was the most well known monk/scholar whose writings opened up a pioneering dialogue between the modern world and the monastery, and he helped to make popular the growing interest in bridging the Western traditions of spirituality to the Eastern insights and teachings. Though he died twenty five years ago, he was a modern prophet, a giant in the move toward synthesis and comparative religion. He was one of the few truly holy men the West has recently produced, and as both contemplative recluse, and as a contemporary prophet, he contributed much to our understanding of the rhythms and truths that flow between religion and life. Through his writings, such as Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, he increased our attention on how religion needs to serve the change of social change, and how spirituality applied to daily life helps to rids us of any hypocrisy between what we believe and how we live. Other books, such as Seven Story
Mountain, and The Waters of Siloe, we are given a window into his life, and we can share the struggles of coming to religious maturity through parallels in our lives.

Lastly, his scholarship, found in writings such as the Wisdom of the Desert, or on St. Bernard of Clairevax speak to us about living a life of heartfelt devotion, and how love is the supreme virtue in Western mysticism. Today, I would like to focus my words on his other great contribution, the formation of East/West dialogue. It is the topic that offers the liberal religious church an incentive for sharing in comparative thought. Because Unitarian-Universalism draws from differing traditions and practices, the unity of all the various paths is especially importance for us, and can reveal the common basis for values and inspiration to hold and understand. This unity in the quest for truth, toward the appreciation of humanity, culture, and the future is what Unitarianism can become. One of my West Coast colleagues, a U-U Buddhist, spoke of this recently from his pulpit in Berkeley. He reported that [ Unitarianism no longer can be seen as a New England tradition or a West Coast phenomenon. Instead of being defined or limited by our roots and routine ways of thinking, worshiping, and behaving, we need to be climbing to the highest most flexible branches. It is from those flexible and adaptable heights we can begin to bend toward recognizing and giving room to other liberal and open minded faiths, and joining in with them to form a progressive religious presence that is worldwide.]”

We have to prune the tangential side shoots, and trim out all the divisiveness, and put the energy into growth among the forest of free religious traditions that enrich our world.] ( isn’t great that I found another U-U minister who loves to use Nature metaphors!)

Unfortunately, theologians from various world religions often decline to speak to one another, for the scandal of learning about other creeds and commentaries, other ways to see humanity and experience God might threaten their orthodoxy and upset their comfortable assumptions…. But mystics East and West, are another breed of religious or spiritual human being. They welcome the exchange of ideas and practices that brings together the depth of their individual tradition with the beauty and insights of another. The results are a new synthesis of spirituality that in some ways is more complete, more versatile, flexible and applicable to the world’s needs and to our journey as U-Us toward self discovery and wholeness.

One such meeting was the dialogue, which became the friendship between Thomas Merton and D.T. Suzuki, the great Zen Buddhist scholar. Over the years of writing and speaking with one another, a bridge of heart and mind developed and a deep appreciation of one another constancy searching within life’s profound mysteries.

This bond of a shared journey built a recognition between these two men that catapulted the awareness of Zen into the Western culture and that brought out the parallels to Eastern mysticism found in Western mystics, principally, Bernard of Clairevaux, known for his approaches to spirituality and love, and Meister Eckhart, known for his approach to the Creation and for his understanding of holy emptiness as the way toward experiencing divine allness.

The interface of comparative teachings and spiritual practices is an intricate and extensive one. I could not begin to summarize all there is without occupying days of listening and years of practicing together so that we could begin to experience the truths they share. As Eckhart put it, “[ When we try to speak of divine matters, we have to stammer... because we are forced to express our rich experiences with the poorness of words]” It is strange- this Mystery, this Void, this essence of Being, for as we experience it, we cease to talk about it, for it has no words, no explanations. We love God when we accept ourselves mindlessly. We humbly accept that we are to live it.]” As a simple synopsis, I will focus on Merton’s dialogue with Suzuki on one main topic, the Eastern ideal of enlightenment compared and aligned with the Western ideal of Paradise.

“[Zen practice encourages the necessity to separate innocence and intuition from knowledge and analysis, using both, but knowing how they differ, and where they are best applied. Using the analogy of the Garden of Eden, Zen matches Christianity as it states that the original status of humankind was the pure Void, the free consciousness, an innocence existence, uncorrupted by ego assertions.]” Innocence is a fresh, unprejudiced state of understanding and receptivity, it is not reducible to a moral issue or a legal outcome. After the ego developed,( what many esoteric teachers call the Fall) we learn to substitute the worldly knowledge of good and evil, that is, sensate knowledge and intellectualism for our intuitive, intimate understanding. The tradgy of the Fall is not found in the sin of disobedience, but in the intellectual belief that we are to base our lives on separation or analysis for all our answers concerning life, God, psyche or soul. Mystics East and West agree that the goal of spiritual practice, prayer, meditation and discipline is the restoration of that holy innocence. They also agreed in the method to this goal: it can be accomplished by the steady process of emptying one’s heart and mind of all unnecessary beliefs about separation and alienation, and replace them with the virtues and truths that embrace the Oneness or the essence of the original blessings- peace, trust, joy, and love.

The danger, they say, is that knowledge, while necessary, does not dispel illusions of self and society but can contribute to confusion concerning one’s identity, or purpose in the world. Such estrangement from intuitive and inspirational relationship between humanity and divinity, between one’s outer self and one’s inner being reinforces separation and accelerates confusion which develops into desires and attachments that build a hard ego, a false self. Only wisdom, born of prayer and practice, clarifies or completes knowledge for the head and the heart, so that emptiness is arrived at or in Western terms, emptiness is replaced by the allness of God understood and graciously perceived. This emptying out process is difficult work that is done over the years and across the span of oneself. Instead of filling ourselves with so much stimuli and social intensity, the mystics of East and West urge that we learn to let go, to say no, and give time and deference to the deep essentials of life which include finding our inner, quiet voice, and our peaceful, compassionate heart. Suzuki finishes his remarks by observing that only to the degree that we are free, free and empty of the false or competing concepts of self is our innocence restored and our enlightenment realized. Merton concludes his thoughts on Paradise in a similar outlook. He affirms that the Eden’s garden gate is still open, that Paradise is not lost, nor is God’s grace ever removed from us. It is only as inaccessible as we believe and act like people separated or alienated from God, that is our sin, believing that we live apart or removed from sustaining grace. He affirms that Paradise is always present, available and intact within us. It is our complexities, and preoccupations that hide this beauty, this joy, this truth from us. Lastly, as the bridge and the conclusion we have the observation of Eckhart who recalls this primal truth about humanity and divinity, and the intimacy and affection found there. He said, ” The eyes with which I perceive God, are the same eyes with which God perceives me.” If I see God as judgmental, then the God I see will judge me. If I see God as loving, trustworthy and true, then God will see me, and love me in that same way. This is an essential lesson for any of us; it is vital to any worthwhile religious education, and changing perceptions is at the core of so many problems that ask for a spiritual solution to the estrangement and lacks that we feel. If two great teachers can agree, and find a single voice that bridges East and West, so can we learn to cross over any obstacles that confront us. We too, can find God through prayer and practice, through the efforts of holy subtraction and simplicity. May you all learn to see God as God sees you, and may the truth than span our globe, find their home in your hearts. AMEN

On the Times and Tides of Life

Opening Statement: The Temple of Majesty

The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet none of us truly sees it… You will never enjoy the world aright until the sea itself flows through your veins, until you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars…. Until your spirit fills the whole world and that you remember how recently you were made , how wonderful that you came into this world, and that you are to rejoice in each morning as your place for today’s glory….

Reading: from ” Gifts from the Sea”

Is there not a hint of deeper understanding in the acceptance of the eternal ebb and flow of life? … For the life of our emotions and of our relationships are intermittent. When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility …. We seem to have such little faith in the ebb and flow of life, love, of all our relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide, and we resist the ebb. We are afraid that love will be lost and never return. We try to insist on permanency… But only continuity that is truly possible in life, as in love, is found in freedom.
How can one learn to live through the ebb tides of one’s existence? It is easier to understand here, on the beach, where the breathlessly still reveal another life below the level which we mortals can reach; … That each cycle of the tide is valid; whatever recedes will eternally return.”

Alan Watt’s Journal
“[Ever since I could remember, the smell, the sound, and the motion of the sea has been pure magic... Even in those times when I need to 'get away from it all,' and as the Chinese poets puts it, " wash all the wrongs of life from my pores," there was nothing better than to find a rock, or walk, or just sit with the seas and the skies... Although the rhythm of the seas beats out a certain kind of time, it is neither clock time nor is it calendar time. It has none of that kind of urgency. It is timeless time. It in concert with the time of the universe, and that every lapping wave can be synchronized with each in breath and out breath, breathing as we do, the waves into our very being.]”

There are times in our lives where the ebb and flow of our feelings and experiences ungulate like the rhythmic coming and going of the seas, sometimes bringing peace to our souls, and other times being the harbingers of a dramatic, life-altering experience.

Life flows…. And never stops…. Even when death is experienced on one level, it is but a change that the tides in their rhythmic graces supply to us; to teach us, to console, to inspire, to accompany us throughout all the motions and movements of our hearts….
Life flows onward and its capacity for teaching us about love and life never stops… While it might seem to pause or even freeze in our hearts and minds, it is always flowing in us … While we can build dams, barriers, and try to place obstacles in our hearts and minds, there is no place that can sustain, no way to resist the surges and tides of life, and because it is relentlessly gracious, it is those same rhythms that connect us and put us into each others arms, the same waves of emotions and sensitivities that flow through us and outward to every person we see and meet….

We all come from the womb of life, the ocean, and our connections to it are primal, often unconscious, and yet never less than real and there is always a part of our being that will affirm that connection and how being in touch with the ebb and flow of those waves gives us endurance, hope….
We all flow from the same source- the same oceanic feeling, the same fluid soul …. the oceans do not know human differences, nor will the waves accept human vanities and peculiar ways we seek to separate or distance ourselves…. The salt, the sand, the winds, and the feel are universal…. Gracious…. Even holy for us….

As John Muir put it, “[ God does not appear in a random world, or flow through sometimes narrow chinks or is present only to chosen places, races, and situations.... But God flows in a grand, universal and undivided currents and it saturates us all....]”

The times when the ocean has meant a lot in my life are quite diverse, and yet, I feel they are instructive because they give me a map of human experience and emotion that I would have never designed, yet, strangely, have experienced as a deep part of my soul….
They are poignant moments and there are tragic ones…. Times when I knew that my life felt lost, and times when I almost lost my life…. Tides when my emotions were filled and overflowing with optimism, and times and tides when I was more empty than a small tide pool at lowest tide ….
Among the memories that stand out I have chosen two….. For their contrast and for their intensity, to share with you the depth of emotion that the oceans of the heart can contain….

When I was married, I lived along the Atlantic ocean, first near Plymouth, MA., and then later near Glouscester up on the North Shore….
Often, my wife and I would take a break from ministry and art to take a walk on the beach- time to reflect, pray, discuss the mundane and the metaphysical, and just keep company with each other’s spirits….
Those times of respite and relationship are times that I sorely miss,
but as I reflect back on them, I am filled with a little remorse, and much gratitude… So even though I am now alone, I feel that it is important to have those kinds of time together… Too often we can be too busy, or not see that just because there is not a screaming need to response, that we are in need of one another’s company…. And yes, I hope that I will find another partner …. Someone to walk the beaches with me again….
The second was a turning point in my ministry where I realized how important churches and clergy can be to its city or community. I realized from this experience that my mission is to be an open, available resource for people who did not think or feel along the ordinary or status quo lines, but that a liberal church exists to serve the entire community of the unchurched, who, for reasons easy to understand, have not either found us, or know that we exist…. And it is not until there is a need for celebration, or in this case, a time of profound crisis and sadness, that they discover the importance of a community like ours.
About fifteen years ago, I was the minister for a bereaved family. It was a high profile murder case where I had to not only minister to the family but act as a protective screen from the national media that was covering the tragedy. I walking along a dock near my home, when my eyes focused on a poster stapled to dock pillion…. It had the face of a young woman on it and the request that if anyone had seen her to notify the police or the family…. I had an instant flash of recognition that somehow I would be directly involved with this person, yet I did not know how or why…..
When I returned home, I received a call from my church sexton whose voice was quivering…. He said that a family had come to the church looking for a minister and could I come down to talk with them…. I said of course I would…. When I arrived the family members were already inside the church, and I went over to welcome them…. They began telling me the story of their wife/sister/daughter who was missing and that they had suspected was murdered two weeks before… Of course, it was the same women whose picture I saw on the pole earlier in the day….
It seems as if she was last seen accepting a boat ride from a work colleague…. Little did we know that this innocent act of trust would have such gruesome results.
I was asked to provide the family with two memorial services….
The first I more private one for the neighbors and friends of the woman…. The family lived in a little alcove of homes near the water in Salem Ma, and she was a well known person in community affairs from working with the children to environmental protection…. When I arrived, 300 people were there…. all crowding onto a little spit of beach to say good bye to a friend…
The personal irony for me was that just four hours before, I presided over a Sufi wedding in the church- a joyous almost raucous event of celebration, energy and love! What an emotional seesaw it was for me….
The memorial was a touching tribute to the impact of one life on a community… It had contained reflections from family and friends, which I concluded by finishing my remarks with passing a wreath of flowers around the crowd before I took it to the ocean and cast it into the sea…
Two days later, the public memorial was a dramatic gathering….
The church I served had seats for 400, but there was standing room only, and probably 700 in the sanctuary…. I felt compelled to keep the photographers out of the service, and to keep the cameras away from the family during the service…. Again, very poignant thoughts and words, some of which I have read for you this morning….
It was the turning point of the ocean, a turning point for my ministry… That I was called to be the minister to thousands who shared in this experience of loss, the betrayal of trust, and to be involved in trying to reconcile the worse and the best of human natures ….
From that time on,
I realized that my ministry has to be to everybody, and anybody…. And that the call to ministry was like the call of the oceans, to be there and to offer that solace and hope during all the times and tides of our lives….

The Crosses We Bear; The Hope We Carry
The Rev. Peter E. Lanzillotta, Ph.D.
How can a religious liberal understand the difficult parts of the Easter story, namely the awful punishment of crucifixion and the promise of resurrection from the tomb? Are they simply to be dismissed as legend, as a revered but unscientific fable, or can the Mythic metaphor of what the cross represents in our lives provide us with a heartfelt key to understanding the message of Easter? In contrast to traditional Christian theology where the historical sacrifice of Jesus as the Christ ransoms or saves us, liberal theology takes a more personal approach. As the mystical poet Angelius Silesius puts it, “The cross on Golgotha will never save you- the cross in your own heart alone can make you whole.”
When people describe a particularly challenging time in someone’s life where the burdens have been heavy, they often say that “he or she has a cross to bear in this life.” This is not just a sympathetic euphemism. It points to the universal human need to take on, and work through, whatever difficulties our lives contain, as best we can. When taken seriously, the cross stands for our inescapable human process, and our sincere hope for progress, that cannot be attained without perseverance. Each cross we bear deals in some real degree with our losses or suffering. Suffering- and our human capacity to create it, endure it, and overcome it, is an essential part of our humanness and our brokenness. People in our world are carrying a lot of pain with them this Easter… This brokeness extends from countries through communities, from broken homes to broken hearts. Easter can be a time of dealing with profound sense of loss and only through befriending our pain, which releases passion and cultivates compassion, do we find relief, find release, and enact our own resurrection. It is the facing and then overcoming this awful fact that makes the insights we get from the Easter story come alive for us, and offers us a deathless supernal message of healing and hope.
Another way to reframe this is that if it were not for hope, our hearts would surely break… and I believe that the hope that the human heart can contain, when aligned with good or God, is stronger than anything that can happen to us in life. In fact, such spiritual depth defines our life. Psychologist Carl Jung states “that there is only one essential measure of a person, and that is their relationship to the Infinite,” how well they listen to their soul or attend to the needs of the Spirit’s reality that is within them.
It is my conviction born from generous amounts of recent suffering and from hard won wisdom and my life’s soul-centered apprenticeship, that each of us has sufficient resources, adequate will, and enough strength to overcome the graves of fear, pride, addiction, and illness, or at least be given enough courage and hope to sustain us through our afflictions.
You see, to be whole is not to be free of problems. It is to be centered and secure, and when faced with a crisis, to be in touch with those values and virtues that inspire us enough to carry us through our personal Good Fridays.
Crosses appear in our lives in many different ways: chronic illness, addictions, difficult marriages, rebellious children, and career insecurities, just to name a few. They can scourge or hang us as individual tests or trials that seem to endure without let up…
So the question becomes, how does one take up their cross and make it into a source of hope? How can we take our obstacles, tests, and trials and turn them into a deeper sense of gratitude for the refinement of our character, and the sincere empathy we need to respect and care for others?
We hear the answers echoed in the choir’s music this morning: That we are to walk confidently through the valley of loss or loneliness with its tearful sorrows and lurking shadows in our lives, and we are bravely compelled to seek the light even when our hope and faith appear dim, and our lives seem to be at their darkest.

The cross we bear need not be a curse. As the poet and theologian Dorothy Soelle teaches, that God (or Spirit), is closest to us during our cross bearing times; That grace is most disclosed or revealed within our struggles, we are never closer to God than during our times of crisis and questioning. Just as it appears to be darkest before the dawn, Easter’s first light reminds us that within each human heart there lives a deathless hope, an eternal faith, an invincible love.
In that way, Soelle teaches that when we feel injured by life, wounded or slighted by certain life circumstances and situations, that passion and distress brings us closer to a spiritual approach that transforms pain, attachment, and suffering into wisdom, freedom, acceptance and release. However, this transformation is not for the faint-hearted or the timid- as Jungian analyst Edward Ettinger puts it, Living true to one’s soul will take all we have got- and all we have got is what it will truly take to be authentic, and loving. You see, just as we mirrored back our parents behavior, so too, do we live with the fact that our spouses and our children will mirror back to us all that is unresolved, fearful, or egotistical in us! And this is as it should be! For until we accept that we will be let down by those we love, let down by those we thought we could trust, does such disappointment lead us to finding our own truth. As we learn to stop carrying the crosses of false expectations, let go of our negative perceptions, our ego justifications, we can we become a healing, tranformative model for the people in our lives.
Easter is our yearly metaphor for this lifelong struggle for significance. It can become for us a gracious intersecting time when we discover the meaning behind William Butler Yeats words, “Birth and death hour meet, or as the great sages say, “men dance on deathless feet.”
The cross we bear need not be an outer physical one or even an interpersonal one: we can easily learn how to crucify ourselves. Whenever we accept indignities, practice personal cruelties, act with selfish desires, or hold on to our fears, we are just a short step from taking our place on Calvary’s hill. In the same way, we can easily crucify others whenever we become unfeeling and unsympathetic, whenever we turn our hearts from one another, we crucify them, and we can bury the best in ourselves whenever we choose against love, when we lose faith, or abandon hope.
Our first steps out of the grave come from admitting that we have hurt others and take responsibility for its effects, just as we have to eventually learn to forgive those who have slighted or trespassed against us. As the choir reading so forcefully reminded us, we cannot hide behind the lilies, or expect that Spring has enough warmth to thaw out hate or stop our pain and sorrow. In our world, in our hearts, peace is hard won, and healing often comes to us only after a personal sacrifice- and it comes gradually, for it takes courage, persistence, and the genuine support of others who will honestly care for us, so that we can rise from our emotional graves, and claim a new life of freedom, dignity, service and compassion.
The Unitarian Christian, Helen Keller, knew and endured suffering, and she gives us this piece of compassionate counsel concerning our crosses, and warns us not to define ourselves by our wounds. She said:
“Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them, but do not let them make decisions or let them master you. Let them teach you about what you most need to learn. … Let them teach you patience, and insight… Whenever we conscientiously do the best we can, we never know what miracle can be wrought, either in our lives, or in the lives of others.”

Because we share the earth and belong to the community of Earth, we have to find a sustaining sense of hope for our lives, and promote such hope among all humankind. We come together as churches and communities to lend each other support, strength and friendship for our individual battles.
It is in our communities and in our families that we learn to turn our extremities into opportunities, and our opportunities into victories that overcome the cross and rise up from the grave of doubt, fear, egotism and separateness. Our hope is found in community, in mutual trust and respect, in our commitment and our caring.
Hope, as I see it, might be the most powerful emotion we have or can hold… Hope sustains us when the light of our love for one another goes out… Hope makes our faith in the spirit of life possible, and our hope will not disappoint us, because within hope we find ourselves connected to the community of earth and the web of life itself.
May this day of days symbolize for you, a renewal of hope and the promise of healing that you can carry confidently in your heart, and be able to share it courageously with others. As our closing hymn puts it, “I am the life that will never die, and I’ll live in you, if you live in me…” May this Easter find you sharing in and living inspired by Jesus… That “All things are possible for those who believe; they are less difficult for those who have hope; They are easy for those who love, and a joy for those who understand that faith, hope and love overcome the crosses in your heart, and the cares of the world.” Amen

[” Jesus was a man, and not a god, and therein lies the wonder and our surprise.” These words of Kahlil Gibran express what most religious liberals believe: that if we make Jesus into a God, he has less significance for us as human beings. It is his humanity that causes us wonder and surprise. That this is what human life could be all about- loving, compassionate, just, unselfish, strong.
…Perhaps we cannot be exactly like he was… But as all the great spiritual traditions, East and West teach, we are “as holy and as good, as we have the will to be.” The importance of Jesus’ message is that if we are willing, then we are capable. The kingdom of God is at hand; it lives within and among each and everyone of us. It just takes you and me, discovering who we really are, and then believing in what we know as God, in ourselves, and in one another.”

Entering In: Towards a more inclusive understanding
Of Palm Sunday and its meaning for us
The Rev. Peter Edward Lanzillotta, Ph.D.

Invocation/ Opening Words:

What is required of us is to take courage, to enter in.
There are frontiers to cross, doorways to open, thresholds to step over, heroic pathways to life, love, truth and forgiveness.
The gate of Palms opens, and you can cross over…
Take heart, be courageous, enter in…

Responsive Reading: # 35 Life of the Spirit

Selected Reading: The Gospel of St. John 12:11-17a NEB (adapted)

The next day, after hearing about Jesus, and his intent to walk into Jerusalem, a great crowd of pilgrims took palm branches and went out to meet him. When they saw him, they shouted, “Hosanna! Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord!…
Then Jesus found a donkey and mounted it and rode into the city and the people placed palm branches in the road before him. This was done in accordance with the Scriptures, that read, “Fear no more, Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, mounted on an asses’ colt.” At the time, the disciples did not understand this, but after Jesus was glorified, they remembered that this had been written, and that this had happened to him.

Benediction/Closing words:
What is required of us is to recognize deeper meanings, to explore and risk, to take heart and enter in… What awaits us can also bless us… Find God, take heart, enter in… AMEN

Pastoral Reflection: “Blessed is He, and blessed are we”
Each Palm Sunday either a reference or a reading is made to the phrase, “Hosanna in the Highest, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Hosanna is a cry or a statement of love and adoration- it refers to Jesus as God’s healer and teacher; as someone who provides a salvific example, an inspired presence.
Yet, even this words are inadequate when they are sentimentally or just historically remembered. It is neither sufficient justice nor glorious enough to keep them in the past tense. As Jesus refuted the necessity of blood ties as the definition of family, he also rejected the idea that he alone would move forward into a holy city without bringing others along with him-especially those who were his spiritual brothers and sisters. Jesus defined sisters and brothers as anyone who desires to do the will of God in their lives. Likewise, all those who act to live their lives more spiritually, that is, with more depth and authenticity, live and act in the name of God and can be considered blessed by that aspiration.

Now this might sound blasphemous, but I believe in the more inclusive and multidimensional sense of palms and blessings.
The creation of attitudes of love and service recalled in the life of Jesus makes us one extended family.
Each of us can receive Hosannas as we courageous claim our spiritual identities as the children of God, and the sisters and brothers of Jesus. As we learn, and as we grow more fully in our understanding of God’s mysteries and our own depths and abilities, we, too, enter into the Kingdom, and arrive at the gates of a Holy City. Then we can say and reaffirm on every Palm Sunday, that we are leading our lives in the name, and in the loving servant reality of Jesus. Hosannas to you all. AMEN

Reflection/Reading: The many Meanings of Palms
The Palm has always been regarded as a life-giving plant.
It retains its timeless value for us today, not just as a historical symbol, but as a gift of caring we can give to one another.
The image of the Palm was found everywhere in the ancient world. It adorned the walls of the glorious Temple of Solomon, and its practical uses for food, for rope, and for shelter are numerous. (I Kings 6:29 and other places)
The word palm comes to us from the early Greek word Phoenicia, which meant “land of the Palms,” the stretched all along the Mediterranean Sea. Many of the region’s coins had one side, decorated with a palm leaf for tails, and the heads side was the image of the current ruler or emperor.
In religion and ritual, the early Jews used palms as a welcoming or housewarming gift. Hanging palms outside one’s door was a sign of hospitality, much like seasonal wreaths and Colonial pineapple carvings of more recent years. When hung by one’s door, palms would signal that this was a place where a person could come, be cared for, welcomed and respected.
Among the early Christians, hanging palms shaped into simple crosses was a sign of sanctuary- comfort for anyone weary or anyone who was in need of solace and inspiration. It was also considered to be a sign of protection from damaging rains, wind lightning, fires or flooding. (Hmm… I wonder if it could protect religious liberals from pollution and loud politicians?)

I have a special remembrance of palms as it relates to comfort and caring… I remember fondly my paternal grandfather Paul, sitting me down at our kitchen table, and asking me to help him to make little crosses out of palm leaves that he just received at church.
Intently, I watched his patient process of stripping the individual leaves, then pairing them and placing them carefully in rows. Then he would take each pair, and begin to fold them and interlace them to make these gentle, graceful, bowed crosses. After he had made one for me, he began to make them for all his grandchildren, approximately three dozen, filling a large wicker basket with them. (Here I start to make one for the congregation…)
He then went around giving one to each grandchild, instructing them to place or hang them by their bedside, or somewhere in their room. Later, he taught his children how to make them for their homes and offices. He always hung them in the greenhouse as a sign of encouragement and for protection for all the little tomato seedlings that he had planted.
Making crosses for each of his grandchildren was his traditional way of showing his caring. It was for him, an extension of his devotion and caring. Often, he would tell me the Palm Sunday story in his own words, and said that the palms were a sign “that God could always come to us, and could enter into our hearts whenever we would ask or let him in.”
Today, grandparents might elect to do a similar thing, such as give their grandchildren an inspirational card, bookmark, or some other token of the spiritual message of the Easter season that would be more personal and meaningful than chocolate bunnies or sugary eggs. While eggs and flowers retain their symbolic value, especially on Easter Sunday, a gift that expresses a parent’s faith has, at least to me, a more lasting, deeper importance.

Receiving palms, hanging them in my home, making gentle bowed crosses, and then giving them to others, will always remind me of my grandpa Paul, and his gift of faith and caring.

Homily: Gateways to God and Palm Sunday:
A “Gnostic” look at its meaning for us today

The climatic event in the Palm Sunday story is when Jesus, astride a young colt, rides down the royal road, over a bed of palm leaves into Jerusalem accompanied by a joyous crowd. It was the pinnacle of his popularity, his “claim to fame.” It was the triumph before the tragedy, all foretold, and all to be revealed in the week’s events.
Jerusalem then was a thriving city, a contemporary metropolis. It was a world center, a place where people brought their families for important celebrations and their products for vital trade or commerce. It was also a place where ideas and beliefs were expressed and contrasted, a place where Greek philosophy mingled with Eastern mysticism, where Babylonian gods were being absorbed into Jewish theology, and rituals. Simply, when anyone or anything entered into Jerusalem, it became known to the entire world. Thus, Jerusalem became a spiritual center: a place where wisdom, prophecy, logic, and mystery all found internal admission within the culture and in each person’s life.
Entering in… through the door or past the gate… And what about Jesus and the symbolic act of entering into the Holy City?
Other than coming in from the outside, or as a separation– picket fences, garden gates, iron barriers, etc., gates also stand for what permits and protects us. There are material gates of security, and emotional boundaries of protection. Also, there are physical doorways to enter into a new place, and spiritual thresholds to cross over to enter into new awareness.
In Gnostic thought, there are always many levels or depths and dimensions to any possible interpretation for Biblical and personal events. Gnostic approaches to life parallel ordinary events but takes us into our hearts and souls for definitions.
Gnosis is involved in the search for wisdom and meaning, and how that quest has purpose and value for our deeper selves or for our spiritual identities.
When Jesus entered into the main gate, accompanied by a teeming, celebrating crowd, he stirred up both advocacy and animosity. On one level, it was a crowd expectant, they felt overdue for deliverance-they yearned for a Messiah and welcomed anyone who had a new message and gave evidence of a new reality.
Jesus’s arrival also stirred up jealousy, and animosity for anyone who might challenge the status quo way of religion and society. Few people in power ever want to relinquish it.
Yet, this entry was not like so many others. It was not like the mayor in the motorcade, or the beauty queen riding in on a pageant float. Who Jesus was, and what his entry into Jerusalem represented, acted as a sign. It was a meeting point for a welcoming readiness, and symbol of an arrival at a new religious paradigm. Additionally, it was a spiritually-based visitation by a man who represented a new doorway, a new path towards God. For his followers then and now, Jesus’s life, his ethical principles and his spiritual understanding, show how God can enter into our lives and fill us with a new awareness. Our reverent response is to spread palms; to open our hands, our heads, and our hearts and to give permission for whatever is holy to come in, to be recognized, and be understood. For a follower of Jesus, that means looking, listening, watching, praying and acting on that comprehension and empowering new model for being oneself and in relationship to others.
This gateway to God swings inward. It moves us from our outer concerns and fears, and into our core selves. When we enter in, we find our wounds and our wonders, our pain and our gifts. The door from God to our hearts is not an easy one, but its necessity compels our search for knowledge, and completes our sense of wholeness and holiness.
When we open that door, we look into our past. We take a long look at our problems. Then with courage and persistence, we move through them looking to find what truly comforts and uplifts us.
We enter through the gate of a Holy City whenever we cross over that threshold of what was for what might be. We enter in every time we are willing to search attentively and reverently, whenever we are willing to risk love and acceptance, forgiveness and peace as answers to life’s questions.
By looking within, we become Gnostic and contemplative. We examine our motives and incentives, we see what our lives have been about, and what ways they need to be changed or affirmed.
This doorway from God to each of us is also the gateway that teaches us how to replenish and restore ourselves from the stresses and strains of living. Just as we cannot continue to work without rest, we cannot offer any cooling comfort to anyone else from our empty well- nor can we offer hope and love from an empty or broken heart. The Gnostic Christian recalls the words of Jesus when he said, “[I am the door, I am the gate that leads you toward God.]” In proclaiming this, he did not say that his physical person or even his life or death is the entry point for us. He stated that his reality, and the effects of learning his ethics and spiritual understandings would replenish and inspire a Christ consciousness could be seen in each of us.
Gnostic teachings would state that whosoever enters into Jesus’s reality can be made whole, free, and find the rest, nurture, self-acceptance and peace so many of us lack or need. They would remind us of Jesus’s promise:” [I, as the Christ consciousness that is in me, has come into this world, so that you might have a greater sense of life and purpose and then have it abundantly.]” John

There is a second door. It the door or the gateway that leads out of our hearts. It swings outward to welcome in the stranger and the friend. As we learn to live more in God, we nourish ourselves and strengthen our families and community so that we can turn our care, concern and compassion out into the world.
This door of our hearts swings outward to be inclusive and responsive to human need. From the inner rooms of our souls, and from the support we receive from our spiritual communities, we ready and open ourselves to others in ways of service, encouragement, and justice-making. As the Psalmist put it, it is “out of the abundance of our hearts” we give to make the world more equalized and fair. From our solace and comfort, we act with compassion and empathy. The door from our hearts opened first by God, and kept ajar by a sustaining grace; it is a pathway that becomes a wide open welcoming entrance, a redeeming way that blesses the world by our caring.

Visualization Exercise: Entering In/Crossing Over
Now, I ask you to participate in a short visualization that focuses on the doorways and gates of your lives… please close your eyes, sit comfortably and breath slowly and deeply.. .
Picture yourself before a doorway or at an entrance that can open up a new dimension for your life. Picture this doorway in some detail…
What does it look like? Is it high or heavy, low or light? Would it be easy to open? Where, if you go inside, will it lead? Do you know? How do you feel about entering into a new or unknown place?
If you cross over that threshold, do you have an idea what might be in store for you? Does it matter? Can you trust going in?
Is there anyone else there with you? Is there anyone there to greet or guide you? If so, Who is it?
Now go inside…cross over …What do you see and what do you discover?

Ask yourself how will going through this door might change your life? Change who you are, and what your next steps might be?
Lastly, ask how might it contribute to others and to our world?
Come back to this time and place… with what you have discovered or learned…
Some people might still see the events of Palm Sunday in a literal or more orthodox way-as only one man’s triumph or as a prelude to a sacred tragedy. I feel that the timelessness of the story can be also seen on this deeper level of contemplation and consideration. The Palm Sunday story reminds each of us about entering into the realm of God, into a more holy consciousness or awareness that teaches, heals, consoles, forgives and that frees. It is a new level of gnosis or spiritual wisdom that can affect us deeply.
Jerusalem is everybody’s inner city. It is the place in our lives where we can meet or greet God. Without escaping from the fact of working beyond our egos and present difficulties, Palm Sunday holds within its promise, the gateway to the heart’s triumph and to the soul’s victory. It is a spiritual victory, a personal triumph that public scorn, betrayal, and even crucifixion cannot stop or prevent. Finding our sense of God within, and then opening up the door of our hearts to others is to know life and to have it abundantly. For it is from one opened doorway to the other, that the steps toward God and toward one another can be found. It is from that new place that our way might be paved with palms, and that we learn how to be more spiritually attuned and become servants to our planet and caregivers to one another. AMEN

Benediction/Closing words: What is required of us is to recognize spiritual frontiers, to explore and risk, to take heart and enter in… What awaits us is what can also bless us… Find God, take heart, enter in… AMEN

Becoming Passover People:
Exodus Lessons in Freedom and Faith
The Reverend Peter Edward Lanzillotta,PhD.

The book of Exodus is among the most important books of the whole Bible. The Exodus story that covers four chapters, is among the most familiar, most enduring, and possibly, the most crucial story for our understanding of freedom- and how the value of freedom has influenced the development of society and how the dynamics of faith and freedom served to shape our civilization.
So today, I will offer a little refresher course, and begin to explore how the Exodus story speaks to us still….
The Exodus, or in the literal Hebrew, ” the coming out” speaks to how we as spiritual and ethical people earnestly can seek to end bondage and slavery wherever we find it in our lives or in our world. It speaks about the qualities of leadership, faith, and devotion that are necessary for freedom to be won, for any chains of oppression to be broken, for personal dignity and worth to be proclaimed.
And as a historical community of an inclusive faith, it is my assertion that such rituals and devotional sharing working together can show us the price paid in endurance and suffering, telling truth to power, and the struggle before human freedom or any genuine purpose is won and then preserved.
At the Exodus, the leaders were two brothers; the prophet Moses and the priest Aaron, who together possessed the moral courage, the ethical conviction, and the willing disobedience to follow through on their vision and mission to confront, and eventually defeat the gross injustices that were imposed on their people.
You see, in an earlier time, the Hebrew people enjoyed relative prosperity, and general level of acceptance and integration within the Egyptian kingdom. Under the important influence of the last Hebrew patriarch, Joseph, who was the prophetic dreamer and chief counsel to the Pharaoh, the Hebrews gained a foothold in the culture, and grew in population to become a separate nation within a nation…
But as time and circumstance have their way of influencing history and creating the need to make different decisions, the critical concern for the greater good of all the people in the nation of Israel was at stake. This change occured when Joseph’s importance was no longer known or honored. This forgetting or the absence of connection changed the status of the Hebrews who found themselves increasingly ostracized and oppressed. As they became more marginalized and disenfranchised within the Egyptian culture, they became the convenient scapegoats as a race and as a people, so that they became the indentured slaves and servants of the new reigning Pharaoh and his court’s empire building.
These new, harsh and disillusioning experiences weighed heavily on the Hebrew people. In the face of such continued and unmerited oppression, they prayed to their God for deliverance- to send them a leader who would break their bonds and release their shackles… A leader and a vision that would lift them out of despair, and carry them forward to a new home, described as the land of milk and honey, or a land where they would be free to live in dignity and community.
As all of you remember, it was at this time that Moses returned from his self-protective exile. Previously, he had left Egypt in a dramatic hurry, having already spurned his royal heritage to live among his own people.

As a young man of 40, his zeal to defend his family and to reverse the abuses he witnessed. In their defense, he murdered a guard, and then he had to flee to the distant land of Midian, to escape the Pharaoh’s wrath!
While in Midian for 40 years, he lived under the guidance and tutelage of his priestly father in-law Jethro, and had married Zipporah, his daughter… After receiving his spiritual call and commission to serve God in the miracle of the burning bush, ( Ex. 3) Moses then feels compelled to end his simple and safe life, and to valiantly return to Egypt and to confront the Pharaoh, and demand release for the Hebrews. Joining him there in that confrontation was Aaron his older brother, and his sister, Miriam.
Now, most of you know the story from here… The challenge to the Pharaoh, the 10 plagues, and then the Passover story…
And in some basic ways, it doesn’t matter that much if you prefer the glossy, glorified account of Cecil B de Mille and Charlton Heston, or the animated Prince of Egypt, or whether you would prefer to learn the more academic and accurate story from me in an inductive and inclusive Bible
study. What is importance for today’s time together is that you begin to fully appreciate that this story, for the Exodus or the coming out, is a universal human or archetypal story that retains its timeless value for our individual lives and for many of our contemporary cultural challenges today.
The hymns today chosen for this service begin to attest to this crucial importance of the Exodus theme, for it addresses the human need to be free of slavery and bondage as best exemplified through Afro-American or Black history in this country.

Many scholars steeped in this history and aware of cultural values of the African-American experience could attest that the shared and rehearsed religious importance of the Exodus story in African-American culture and worship equals any values and virtues taught or accepted within the larger Bible and the Christian Scriptures.
Setting aside the inadequacy of our hymnals, for today’s service, I chose tunes from the great emotionally resonating melodies that can found among these spirituals that gave hope and heart to the struggle against the political and cultural realities of the ante-bellium South.
However, let’s be clear, a strong and a similar case for the importance of inspirational songs that celebrate freedom can be made in Latin America or Africa today, or wherever a class of people, a race, a nation, feels compelled to rise up, to challenge or to change the injustices that can be found among us worldwide. In a particularly symbolic and moving way, the music of liberation helps the Exodus story to retain its power; a power found in an enduring faith amidst despair, and through songs that declare that the justice that is promised will arrive, and the human need for equality, compassion and dignity will overcome.

A second point, one more personal and pressing for each of us, is to let the Exodus story guide us in this country, in this church, in our lives.
Using its lessons as the framework for our investigation and actions, we are urged to look at whatever oppresses, restricts, and holds us in its bondage. The Exodus encourages us to look at any place in our lives where we have accepted an unholy, unjust imprisonment- whether that slavery is to our addictions or to our fears. We learn from the bravery and conviction of the Exodus that by working, praying, and banding together, we can effectively address any issues and every concern that hold us down, that limits us, or that might keep any of us from a wider sense of mission and purpose and a greater sense of our self worth. The Exodus story, you see, is everybody’s story of freedom, and it holds the keys to our release, our healing, to restitution, and to the promise of bright tomorrow.
For today, however, let us focus on our comprehension of time, and the urgency felt among the Hebrews… and the urgency to do and to dare that exists among all those who seek to make a significant change in their lives. The Hebrews had to pack up and move quickly- they had to seize the opportunity to leave Egypt before the Pharaoh had a chance to change his mind! As we read in our Passover selections in the Hymnal, contemporary poet Alla Bozarth puts it this way:
“Pack nothing. Bring only your determination to serve and your willingness to be free. Don’t wait for the bread to rise- be ready to move…” ” Do not hesitate to leave your old ways behind- begin quickly before you have the time to return to old slavery…. I will give you dreams to guide you safely to your new home- to a place yet unseen, but surely a place that awaits you…”
Another connection … I remember when Christy returned from a trip to Colorado with much enthusiasm. She reported to the Board about the sermon she heard by the Rev. Peter Morales at the Jefferson church. She said that he spoke about changes and the transitions needed to move from a limited past to a new more expansive future. He spoke of the critical need to carry only the essentials of the past with us- those values and ideals, those friendships and warm memories, and then be willing to leave the rest. In this excerpt from his sermon, he revisited the Exodus story and its freedom imperatives in these words:
‘You only got 2 minutes. You can only take with you the equivalent of one small carryon bag…” Then he asked, “What do you grab for as you run for your life?” … Unless you and I are willing to let go, and leave anything that is not essential behind, we will remain prisoners of our past, shackled to our possessions, imprisoned by our memories, and held in bondage to our habits. [Whether we are fighting illness or injustice, addiction or relocation, employment crisis or relational grief,] each of us gets to carry only a little bit of the past with us. …” Instead, we are encouraged by the story resonating through us, that to achieve our goals we need to change the focus of our energies and our priorities, and ask ourselves these two questions: “We have to ask ourselves what will nourish us for this journey? And What will sustain us in creating a new future?”
As I see it, when a person or a family, a church or a nation moves towards its future, and moves away from its past shadowy limitations, it moves from bondage to freedom,” and it learns to have “faith above fear,” and to trust “its dawning future more” than its dimly lit past.
As believers in religious and personal freedom, and as people who understand the price of liberation is uncertainty and risk, and its rewards are hard won, precious, and enduring, I ask you to spend a little reflective time to delve into your personal Exodus story, and see if its insights and courage will help you with the challenges and changes you or someone in your family is facing. Then as we expand our circle of caring amd attention outward, I ask you to apply the liberating ideals of the Exodus story to the various groups in your life, and to see if somehow the lessons of non-attachment the and wisdom to learn from one’s past found in those Biblical pages applies to the changes and decisions this community, this state, and this country has to face….
As I conclude this quick look at the Exodus, it is my hope and my desire that as a result of our faith, and our willingness to work together towards release and freedom, we will find within ourselves, a new set of possibilities- that we will be on the way to the Promised land, and that we may we create together a new Jerusalem of love, justice, education, and healing for ourselves, our larger neighborhoods, and our world. So Be It!