Let us sing the new world in this is how it all begins*

Really, Carrie Newcomer, composer and lyricist of this morning’s anthem, preached the only sermon necessary for a Coming of Age Sunday service with those two phrases:

Let us sing the new world in/this is how it all begins.

Do you remember the Tiger Mom hoopla just over a decade ago? A Yale Law professor, Amy Chua, published a book titled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, contrasting Western parenting styles and Chinese parenting style, and the public response all but broke the internet.

This sermon had several titles on the way to today. Can She Say That Here? Can They Say That Here? And finally Can We Say That Here? These are related but distinct questions.

Back in November, just after All Saints and All Souls Days, I preached another sermon called We’re All in This Together. I spoke of the continuity of love on both sides of the grave, and I reminded us that sooner or later we all belong to a community of everyone who has ever loved someone who has died. A vast and all encompassing circle of mourners.

Once upon a time my daughter learned a catchy little song at Chalice Camp–a Unitarian Universalist day camp. The lyrics, by Laila Ibrahim, come as close to a UU catechism as anything I’ve ever encountered:

It’s blessing each of us was born.

It matters what we do with our lives.

What each of us knows about God is a piece of the truth.

We don’t have to do it alone.

I saw a made for TV movie once that told the story of two women who had catastrophic medical events. A stereotypically ordinary suburban wife and mother had a massive aneurysm.

So I set out to write a sermon about change this week, in keeping with this month’s theme of The Gift of Transformation—and then I changed my mind. I’m going to talk with you about the moment before us today–a moment that comes into all relationships, at least once and usually many times–the moment of commitment to a shared future.

I was spending a few days with my friend Ruth when Ruth’s cousin came by for the afternoon with her kids and one of her daughter’s friends.

I am among what must be the last generation of former kids to have learned to read with Dick and Jane. The editions we studied–I was in first grade in 1970–gave Dick, Jane and younger sister, Sally, black friends.ppeared in 1930. …

In our most recent Starting Point class someone asked me how it was I came to be a Unitarian Universalist minister. I gave my usual answer–that having been raised by a schoolteacher mom and a social worker dad, the chances I would end up a helping professional were great, and that having also been raised in the Unitarian Universalist church by those same parents who brought our family to church more Sundays than not, and who were active volunteers at church in a variety of roles, the chances that that profession would be Unitarian Universalist ministry were also great.

I started this month with its Soul Matters theme of The Gift of Liberating Love, three weeks ago, talking about how that gift, which I understand to be the gift of Universalism, is that it releases us from the fear of what might happen to us after death.

When I read or hear or speak those words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., about the inescapable network of mutuality, I often think about Jesus saying, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ Or sometimes the less eloquent adage “what goes around comes around.”

When I was hospital chaplain many years ago, I received a phone call one day from someone who begged me, sobbing, to go visit her grandmother- in-law. The caller was terrified that that woman would die without having accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior, and thus not go to heaven.

Sophie proclaims her Auntie Claus. And really, that is the word not just for his fabulous sister but for Santa Claus, too. So many mysteries–how does that elevator get from a New York City penthouse to the North Pole? What exactly does Auntie do from Halloween to Valentine’s Day? Santa declares he couldn’t be ready for Christmas without her help but we don’t see her in the mailroom. Is she sequestered in package wrapping, where Sophia never quite makes it?

I was first introduced to the Jewish Festival of Lights in Unitarian Universalist Sunday School. We made tiny menorahs out of modeling clay and birthday cake candles, and took home a mimeographed sheet of readings to accompany lighting of the tiny Hanukkah candles.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned Jan Huss, a Bohemian Catholic martyr who was burned at the stake for, among other critiques, saying the Catholic church of his day got it wrong in restricting the cup of communion wine to priests alone, excluding the laity. I tied Huss’s theology of more broadly inclusive access to the elements of the Eucharist to my understanding of the meaning of our Unitarian Universalist symbol of the flaming chalice.