Good morning and before I begin I’d like toinvoke a tradition of my ancestors. In Africa it is consider impolite to speakbefore asking the permission of the elders. So before I speak I am asking permission from the elders in the churchto do so.
Thank You!
Let me personally welcome you to my church,First Unitarian.
I also want to thank the many people thathave come out to support me, especially my sister, Deborah, members of myfamily, as well as my friends and colleagues who have joined us here today. I also want to take just anothermoment to acknowledge Javette Orgain and Pat Merryweather. As many of you know, the three of us areleaving for Umata, South Africa to work with our colleagues at Walter SisuluUniversity on a project focused on HIV and AIDS. Would you please stand andjoin me in welcoming them. And I wouldbe remiss if I did not recognize Vanessa Holmes and her group for theirbeautiful voices the gift of song. Thank you so much!!!!
Ours is not a religion of dogma orcreed. It is a religion based ontradition with a set of shared principles. You can find a brief description of that tradition and a list of ourseven principles on the next to the last page of your order service. My themetoday and the text of my sermon are related to 4 of those principles
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are apart.
My plan is to use three very short storiesto illustrate three points:
The first isabout my Garmin Nuvi
The secondabout my ruminations about the meaning of ‘living on borrowed time’
And the lastis about the movie ‘Forrest Gump’
This past Christmas my sister gave me a GarminNuvi as a present. A Nuvi is a GPSsystem that gives you turn-by-turn directions. This is my Nuvi and there’s a story behind this gift. I also found out that it has a world clock.So I’m going to put it right here so that I can see what time it is and so thatI stay on track and on time.
My story is really about why men are from Marsand women are from Venus. There was atime not very long ago when my sister and I had a tradition of driving toMilwaukee every Thanksgiving to have dinner with my cousin and her son. Being a man and having a fairly good senseof direction. It was easy for me tofind my way from Chicago to Milwaukee. However, once I got to Milwaukee it was a different story. You see, every time we went to Milwaukee, Iwould get off the expressway at a different location, call my cousin, ask fordirections and eventually get to her house. However, on one of our many trips, my sister had had all she couldtake and just like a women she told me that I was lost. Well, I didn’t let this rattle me and justlike a man I turned to her and said, “I’m not lost. I just don’t know where Iam!”
At the time I didn’t give that statement a secondthought. However, as I was preparingfor this sermon for some reason I started to think about this incidentagain. And all of a sudden it occurredto me that you can never really be lost as long as you have a destination.Because as long as you have a destination in mind you can eventually find yourway. However, in the absence of adestination, not only can you get loss, it’s possible that you may never findyour way. The same thing can be said oflife. Having a destination, a goal, asense of purpose is one way to assure that you’ll get to where you want to be.
Now there’s the issue of “living on borrowedtime.” We’ve all heard it used before,but what does it really mean and to whom does it apply.
These are questions for which the Internetis a useful ally. I found severaldifferent meanings for this phrase. Theone that I like the best was “A period of uncertainty during which theinevitable consequences of a current situation are postponed or avoided.” Ithink that I was drawn to this definition because it was so obtuse and causedme to search a little more. I also found out that Borrowed Time is a song byJohn Lennon. Here are some of thelyrics
When I was younger
Full of ideas and broken dreams
When I was younger ah hah
Everything simple but not so clear
Living on borrowed time
Without a thought for tomorrow
Living on borrowed time
Without a thought for tomorrow
Now I am older
The more that I see the less that I know for sure
Now I am older ah hah
The future is brighter and now is the hour
While it was not quite what I was lookingfor, it was in fact closer to what I had in mind. Because I didn’t think the issued of borrowed time had anythingto do with age. You see I reallybelieve that we’re all living on borrowed time.
As Mathew 24:36 reminds us “"No one knows when that day or hourwill come-not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father,” and Job7:1 raises the question, “Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?”
So if in fact if our days are numbered and as such we are truly livingon borrowed time, then the only questions that remain are what do we do withthe time that we have and how do we make the best use of it?
And now on to Forrest Gump! How many people outthere saw or remember the movie Forrest Gump. Well for those of you that don’tknow, Forrest Gump was afictional character from Greenbow, Alabama, who first appeared in the 1986 novel by WinstonGroom, but is best remembered as the main character in the 1994 award winningmovie starring Tom Hanks.
Most of us remember Forrest Gump as a remarkably unremarkablecharacter. He was born with strong legsbut a crooked spine and wore leg braces as a young child. He had an I.Q. of 75and as such was consider by many to be ‘stupid’. He clearly wasn’t the brightest, the strongest or the best, buthe never stopped trying, never said no and was always nice to everyone hemet. Yet during his lifetime this quiteunremarkable man met some very remarkable people and did some very remarkablethings.
A favorite quote from the film is “My momma always said, ‘Life was like a boxof chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.’"
But Forrest was wrong, life is not like abox of chocolates. It’s more like asandwich. What do I mean by this? You see it’s a given that we are all borninto this world and that some point we will all leave this world. What distinguishes us is not our birth norour death, but the lives we live in between. Good or bad; it’s what we do and how we live that people remember usfor. So life is really not like a boxof chocolates, it’s actually like a sandwich.
So in summary here are my three key messagesfor today:
They say thatlife is like a journey, not a destination. But you can’t enjoy the journey if you don’t know where you’re going andhave no destination in mind.
We’reall living on borrowed time. Make the best of the time with which you’ve beenblessed; and
Lifeis a sandwich. It’s what you put inbetween that really matters.
In his book, Letyour Life Speak, Richard J. Palmer recounts a Hasidic tale that bearsrepeating…
Rabbi Zusya, when he was anold main said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me ‘Why were you notMoses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”
The very same thing can be said of all of us here. You don’t need to be Moses. You just need to be the best YOU that you can possibly be.
So while I can’ttell you what your purpose is, I can tell you that you’ll never find it unlessyou look.
As for me mypurpose is best summed up by the words of a 1945 gospel song written by AlmaBazel Androzzo and made famous by Mahalia Jackson
If I can help somebody, as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody, with a word or song,
If I can show somebody, how they're traveling wrong,
Then my living shall not be in vain.
Sermons .jpg)
.jpg)