Sermons

June 17, 2007
Journey to Never-Never Land

Journey to Never-Never Land
a sermon by the Rev. Mark Worth

READINGS:
1. from Job 1:1
There was a man in the land of Oz named Job. That man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. [Notice where he lived: it may be translated either “Uz” or “Oz.”]

2. From the Rev. Maren C. Tirabassi (United Church of Christ), “To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before...” The Living Pulpit, April-June 2007:
What are angels but aliens? What is magic, but miracle and the power of belief in that which is unseen? What is Neverland, Wonderland, Fionavar, Camarzotz, Middle Earth or Hogwarts but the wilderness where tempting and testing occur?... What is the long, long journey of the “disciples” of the ring, not to attain or to wield power, but to throw away the ring of ultimate power and become vulnerable, if not atonement?
... Speculative fiction always contains the possibility and the belief that something new will happen – potentially utopia or dystopia. It is written from and around that belief, rather like the forty-third chapter of Isaiah, all the prophecies of the Messiah, and the doctrine of the Incarnation.

THE SERMON
Joseph Campbell was an American scholar that many people became familiar with from the “Power of Myth” mini-series in which Campbell and Bill Moyers collaborated, and which aired on Public Television in the late 1980s. He is best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion.
Campbell was fascinated with what he viewed as basic, universal truths, expressed in different ways through different cultures and different religions. In his four volume series of books, The Masks of God, Campbell tried to summarize the main spiritual threads common throughout the world.
The role of the hero was important to Campbell, because to him they conveyed universal truths about self-discovery and self-transcendence , one’s role in society, and the relationship between the two. One of Campbell’s books was titled The Hero With a Thousand Faces – the hero’s face may be the face of Prometheus, Oedipus, Gilgamesh, Jonah, Job, Mithras, Odysseus, Hercules, Samson, Robin Hood, Cinderella, Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, Bilbo Baggins, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars” – and yet the stories have great similarities, a journey out into an unknown and unexpected land, through trials and tribulations, and finally to come out on the other side of that experience – to find the promised land, or to return home with a new outlook and understanding, or even to be transformed by death.
The hero’s story is the story of all of us. This is why we love myths.
Now, myths are not lies. In the broadest sense, myths are simply traditional stories, whether regarded as true or false. There are many ways to define “myth,” some of them contradictory: A myth is a classic story that tells a truth about human nature. Myths are the stories of our search through the ages for truth, meaning, significance. Myths are the sacred stories that explain how things came to be as they are.
If it is your deeply held belief, something you believe to be true, you tend to not call it a myth. That is why mass market books on mythology sold in the United States will talk about Greek and Roman myths, Egyptian myths, Germanic myths, etc., but won’t talk about Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, Noah’s flood, Jonah and the great fish, Samson with his strength in his hair, angels, the Virgin Birth of Jesus, or Jesus walking on water. For that matter, Muhammad flying to heaven on horseback won’t be in popular books on mythology for the same reason. If it’s your religious belief, it’s not a myth, and you might take offense if someone calls it a myth.
The ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Germanic religions are no longer followed by large numbers of people, so we call their religious systems “myths,” because no one will protest. Yet just go on Wikipedia on the internet and look up “religion and mythology”and you’ll find plenty of debate about what is a myth.
But I repeat my contention that a myth is not a lie. When I say “myth,” I’m talking about the sacred stories (and using the term so broadly that I’ll include even popular fiction like The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and “Star Wars”), stories that take us into unusual, unexpected and unknown places in order to help us discover a truth about the human condition.
We all need to tell our story and understand our story. We need our lives to stand for something, to understand the mysterious, to touch the eternal.

Heroes
An article by the Rev. Maren Tirabassi, a Congregational (United Church of Christ) minister, has introduced me to a tv show, “Heroes.” I’ve only seen a little bit of it so far. The plot? As human evolution continues there are certain people who have special skills or gifts – such as a Japanese businessman who can stop time, a high school cheerleader who learns she is totally indestructible, a politician who can fly, a drug-addicted artist who can paint the future, or a police officer who discovers that he can hear people’s thoughts. As a group of people, the “heroes” are both gifted and outcast. The goal of these different people is to find one another and save the world from destruction.
The full title of the show is “Heroes – Ordinary People Discovering Extraordinary Abilities” And that, of course, is what human beings do – we are ordinary people who discover our extraordinary abilities. We find one another and save the world. We take our unique gifts and we use them to care for our families and the planet, to make a difference where we work and live. And the other thing we human beings want to do is to form a community stronger than intolerance in order to protect us while we are busy saving the earth.
“Heroes,” however, adds a supernatural element – the “super powers,” – and it has an additional story element. There is a maverick character, Peter Peterelli, who has no particular gift – or rather, his gift is to share in and duplicate the paranormal skills of anyone near him. In one episode, Peter willingly seeks and accepts his own death in order to save another character. The character he saves is the self-healing teen, and unexpectedly for him and the audience, he rises from the dead..
Sound familiar?
Both mythology, the older form – and science fiction, the newer form, have long been ways to express faith convictions. People say we are looking for meaning in our lives. Joseph Campbell said that we are looking for the experience of being alive. That’s what it’s finally all about – feeling the rapture of being alive. These stories we tell, the religious stories, and myths and fables, and works of fiction that touch on spiritual themes, are a search for meaning to help us experience meaning in our lives.
The mind has to do with meaning. What is the meaning of a flower? There’s a Zen story about a sermon given by the Buddha. He said nothing. He simply lifted a flower. There was only one person there who gave a sign with the eyes that the sermon was understood.
Now, the Buddha himself is called “the one thus come.” Jesus was called “the son of man.” What do these titles mean? Nothing, really. There’s no meaning. What is the meaning of the universe? It’s just here. It has the meaning we give it. We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive. That experience of being alive, the rapture of being alive, alive in community with one another – that is what our lives are all about. We find one another and save the world.
Mythology teaches us what's behind the literature and the arts, it teaches us about our own life. Mythology has a great deal to do with the stages of life, the initiation ceremonies as we move from childhood to adult responsibilities, from the unmarried state into the married state. All of those rituals are mythological rites. They have to do with your recognition of the new role that we're in, the process of throwing off the old one and coming out in the new, and entering into a responsible profession.

The hero’s journey
Our journey through life is the hero’s journey – it’s a gift, a gift of the unexpected. In theological terms we call it grace, the unexpected gift. There were so many different paths I might have taken, with different results, and yet now I’m here. Surprise! And I’ll bet your life has been full of surprises, too. They’re not all pleasant surprises, either. That’s why in mythology and in speculative fiction the hero’s journey is a difficult one – think of Odysseus, wandering and lost in the great sea; Jonah in the belly of the great fish; Moses wandering for forty years in the wilderness; Job being tested and tormented because of a bet God made with Satan; Frodo Baggins and his band of friends seeking to destroy the one ring of power, and redeem the world; Dorothy wandering with her companions in the land of Oz, looking for the wonderful Wizard.
And what are Dorothy and her friends looking for? Wisdom. Courage. A heart. And the way home again.
I could while away the hours
Conferrin’ with the flowers
Consultin’ with the rain.
And my head, I’d be scratchin’
While my thoughts were busy hatchin’
If I only had a brain.

When a man’s an empty kettle,
He should be on his mettle
And yet I’m torn apart.
Just because I’m presumin’
that I could be kind-a human
If I only had a heart.

This is what we want in life – a heart, wisdom, courage to face the unknown and unexpected things that lie ahead, and to find our way home again. Dorothy, the tin woodsman, the scarecrow, and the cowardly lion are some of our best mythic figures.

The man who would not be king
And one more story. When the Buddha was born, a holy man predicted that the boy would either be a great prince or a great religious teacher, one who would save the world. The Buddha’s given name was Siddhartha, and his father was Suddhodana. Suddhodana was a great prince, and he wanted his son to be a prince as he was, and so he devised a plan to keep his son from thinking about religious questions. He shielded the boy from sickness, old age, and death, so that the boy would never seek the answers to life’s problems.
But as Siddhartha grew into a young man, he became curious about the world outside the palace. He wanted to see the world. And so he went forth from the palace with his chariot driver. But on his journeys he saw poor beggars, sick people, old people, and a funeral procession. He learned that there is suffering in the world, and that suffering comes to all lives. Illness and death come to all people.
Siddhartha was very upset that he could not protect his family – he could provide his wife and children with many luxuries, but he could not protect them from illness and eventual death. Whether one is rich or poor, high caste or low caste, death will come to all. Siddhartha tried to discuss his questions about the meaning of life with his father. But now Siddhartha’s father, Suddhodana, was worried. He was worried that his son, who was asking all these bothersome religious questions, would wander off and become a Hindu ascetic. And so he gave an order that Siddhartha was not to leave the palace compound.
In many ways we are like Suddhodana. In our everyday lives we have the impulse to shield ourselves from difficult truths. When anything is displeasing, we divert our attention. We want to be able to order things around in our lives, like Suddhodana ordered his son not to leave. But change is inevitable, everything is impermanent, and children are destined to make their own way in the world.
So it was that one night everyone in the palace mysteriously fell asleep. Siddhartha’s wife, his father Suddhodana, the dancing girls, the waiters, the cooks, the guards, everyone fell fast asleep – except Siddhartha, who walked out of the palace to find the meaning of life.
And he eventually discovered the ideas and ideals of Buddhism. He accepted that change is inevitable and that death is part of the natural cycle. He realized that there is no almighty power that can reverse the path to death; and that if there was no blind hope, there was finally no disappointment. If one knows and accepts that everything is impermanent, one does not grasp or cling to the things of the world; and if one does not grasp, one can live life fully in the present.
If we can be like Suddhodana, we can also be like Siddhartha, the Buddha. It is another version of the hero’s journey. It is our journey, to understand the meaning of life, to discover who we are, to learn to have a heart, to gain wisdom, and face life with courage. That is how we find the promised land, that is how we find our way back to Kansas.

Yeah, it’s sad, believe me missy
When you’re born to be a sissy
Without the vim and verve.
But I could show my prowess,
Be a lion not a mowess
If I only had the nerve.

Have a heart. Find the nerve. Show your wisdom. We can find each other and stick together and save the world. That’s what the hero’s journey is about.
Amen.