BOXING DAY

BOXING DAY

a sermon by
James Ishmael Ford

preached on
26 December 1999

at the Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Chandler, Arizona

Today I want to talk about the mystery that is service. I want to suggest it is a secret need of every human heart. We are called to serve and to be served. The wonder of that vast web of relationships within which we find ourselves tangled is a mystery of service and intimacy.

When we serve one another we find the fulfillment of our humanity. When we understand the nature of service as the secret heart of existence, then we move beyond our delusions, and take on a great and wondrous way.

One of my guides on the great way is Bernie Glassman. In his wonderful little book Bearing Witness, he tells how “the Jewish Kabbalists believed that in the beginning there was only the divine light, and that in creating the world God shattered it into an infinite number of sparks. That tradition emphasizes Tikkun Olam, the healing of the universe, restoring the fragments into the Whole.” Service is about this Tikkun Olam, this healing of the universe.

Bernie goes on to explain how this vision is not limited to us in the west, Jews and Christians and Unitarian Universalists. “A similar African folktale tells about Hilolombi, the Creator, who held a lamp in his hand that brought light into the world. But after his firstborn, Kwan, committed incest with his mother, Hilolombi dropped the lamp and it shattered into a thousand pieces. To bring the light back to the earth, human beings began to pick up these fragments, and today each person is in possession of one fragment, believing that he (or she) has the whole lamp. (However,) unless we join together, the fullness of light will never return to the earth.”

Service is about this bringing light back to the earth. Service is the call from the primordial sea that is our blood. Service is the whispering of every breeze. Service is the wild and ecstatic call of our human condition leading ever deeper. Service is the way of healing. But, to understand it, we need to be open to surprise, to finding that healing wherever it may present itself.

For instance: Early last week Kellie Walker, our Director of Music Ministries called me up to ask about what the sermon topic was going to be on the twenty-sixth. She wanted to start picking hymns and noted that the title, “Boxing Day,” didn’t mean a lot to her. I said, “It’s the day following Christmas, and is some sort of English holiday.”

I then admitted how actually I didn’t know what it means, or where this sermon was supposed to go. It was just that I was facing a newsletter deadline and I had to come up with a title. I noticed the term in my calendar, “’Boxing Day,’ England” and that’s what I chose. I figured there had to be something interesting there.

I could feel Kellie’s disapproval even over the phone.

She said, “James, for all you know it’ll turn out that Boxing Day is the English celebrating putting down the Boxer rebellion and making the Chinese buy opium. Then what’ll you do for a sermon?”

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. And, in fact, I’ve found myself following a rather interesting spiritual journey, from something very much involved in our consumer culture, back back to something deep and mysterious and powerful and true. Pretty lucky, I admit. But, they do say that God looks after drunks and fools, and I daresay ministers with pressing newsletter deadlines. Here, in fact, we begin to find the shards of light gathering.

Today Boxing Day is a holiday following Christmas and observed in England, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Its major significance at this time seems to be a setting for the post-Christmas sale. Here our English speaking cultures seem to meet, in the drunken ecstasy of consumerism, buying things with all the fury of past Dionysian Bacchanals.

But, before that, in England and those former colonies that most closely followed the mother ways, folk working in service; mail carriers, milk deliverers, paper carriers, would be given a gift of cash.

And before that, many think Boxing Day came out of Medieval England. There the gentry would give their servants who, of course, had to work on Christmas Day, on the next day after Christmas a box filled with goods, coins, cloth, tools, fruit.

But, before that, it would seem on this day the churches would open their poor boxes and distribute whatever was in them to the needy of the community. This, I think is important. Here, I believe, we begin a turning into something compelling. Now we are moving into the ancient and dark and mysterious where the light can be discerned and collected. Here we are at a point of serving the vast web of relationships. Here something holy is going on. Here that light dreamt by so many begins to gather.

And, in fact, before even that strange event of the poor box, we have the complex, difficult, rich and dream-like feast of Saint Stephen. The twenty-sixth of December has been celebrated as the Feast of St. Stephen just about forever. And Boxing Day and the Feast of St. Stephen are interchangeable terms.

St. Stephen is the proto-martyr of the Christian church, the first recorded to die for his or her Christian faith. (Reminding me of that old question, if it were illegal to be a Unitarian Universalist, would there be enough evidence to convict? It’s been a long time since Unitarians or Universalists in English speaking countries have been oppressed or persecuted. In living memory only our Hungarian speaking cousins and the Phillippino churches have suffered for their faith. But, that is another sermon.)

Stephen has to do with more than dying for one’s faith. And it is in that more I believe we find the central mystery of this day that joins everything that followed. It is this more that I find speaks to us and to those who will occupy our churches in future ages. Here we come on something worth thinking about.

I believe this particularly true if we add in all that has happened since, the poor box, the gentry’s box, the small and discrete envelope, and the madness of post-Christmas shopping. Each, I think, may be a strand in some truth worth reflecting on in the exhausting moment between Christmas and the New Year. Each a spark of that light.

Stephen is also a deacon, by tradition the first. Although that term diakonos is not used as a title in the Book of Acts, the sole source for what we know of Stephen, it is clear in the Acts he and the others called the Seven, were confirmed to a ministry of service. Diakonos means to serve. And today I want to talk about service as ministry. Here the ancient gathering of light to light begins.

As many here may know, I have an M.Div., a Master of Divinity degree, the professional credential that allowed me to be considered for this and my past pulpit. But, in addition to this degree I have an academic M.A. in the Philosophy of Religion. To get that the original plan was for me to do my thesis on Zen practices in non-Buddhist settings. I’d already completed the course work, and I planned on finishing up this project during my first couple of years in parish ministry.

But, just as I was ready to leave seminary and take up that first post in Wisconsin, my lead professor told me he would be retiring at the end of the upcoming year. There was no way I could do the work for my thesis as I had planned it. Just not enough time. He then suggested that if I really wanted that M.A., I would probably be wise to abandon a project that would require several years’ research, and instead expand upon a paper I’d done the year before.

He said, that paper “isn’t bad, James. In fact it contains sufficient original research that you could carry it toward a doctorate. But, if you can limit yourself to seventy or eighty pages, you have an M.A. thesis.” I guess even then, I tended to run on. Anyway, I did want that M.A., and so I followed his advice.

The thesis was on Christian ministry, specifically the Episcopacy, bishops, the leadership of the Christian church for the vast majority of its history. But, truth to say, by the time I’d finished that project, over the summer before going to Milwaukee, I more than had my fill with bishops. And, I wasn’t that fond of priests, either. But, there is in fact, in the historic Christian ministry three forms, and in that third I found a deep respect and abiding admiration.

Deacons. And, Saint Stephen is, as I said, the first of the deacons. Now in my childhood Baptist religion and I’ve since learned, in our Congregational way as well, Deacons long had a central place. For the free churches they are essentially lay ministers, who assist the ordained minister during Sunday worship, but have more practical positions in the ongoing weekly life of the community. Actually something like that has been the place of deacons from pretty much the beginning.

Now in the churches that follow the three-fold ministry of deacon, priest and bishop, the deacon has until fairly recently pretty much been reduced to an initiation on the way to becoming a priest. And deacons haven’t fared much better in our Congregational way, where they’ve all but disappeared. In the free churches only the Baptists have kept a clear diaconal ministry.

I think this loss is a tragedy. And, in fact, I hope we will join our Catholic and Orthodox and Baptist sisters and brothers in their contemporary attempt to reclaim this powerful form of ministry. After our own manner, of course. For me the focus within our protestant Congregational style is for the deacon to be a lay ministry. That means it does not call for extensive theological training. You don’t need a master’s degree to be a deacon. The practice of the diaconate does not call for preaching or marrying folk, being a cheap substitute for a parish minister. Although, of course, a deacon may preach and could marry people.

But that is not the point of deacon ministry. Service is. The diaconate is about service. I think of my childhood hero Robert Louis Stevenson, who observed “So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no (one) is useless while (she or) he has a friend.” Service is about friendship; service is about manifestations of all our interconnectedness. It is the gathering of the light. It is the great healing of the universe.

And, therefore, to me, it is about the most important visible aspect of our communal life. Of course this is not the only thing that is important. We wouldn’t have a church without administration or a public gathering. And, I think there is great significance to our spiritual quest, to our inner lives.

Indeed, in some ways, if we don’t cultivate that interiority, we don’t have the compass to direct our actions. And all that we do might come to naught. But, if we are conscious about maintaining the institution, about proclaiming our good news, and about cultivating our inner lives, then I believe at some point there is a necessary manifestation.

And that manifestation is the deacon’s life. Now, of course, it is a ministry to which we are all called. But, to just assert that it is something to which we’re all called is not enough. I also feel this calling needs greater cultivation. And, I think we need to re-create a way to support those for whom it is a special calling. In the next months and years I hope we’ll examine and dive into and find expression for the diaconate as a ministry here in our shared lives at Valley UU.

We need to attend to those needs in and around our community that are traditionally served by deacons. These include visiting the prisoner, the sick and dying, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. This means time. And it does mean some training. To serve requires some preparation. But this preparation is worth undertaking. To serve is a holy work and the very manifestation of everything we are about in this place.

I believe the urge to serve is some fundamental expression of what we are as human beings. Indeed, that proto-unitarian sage Abigail Adams once wrote “If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of (humanity) whom should we serve?” Here we find the implicit need to serve, as well as some of its proper direction.

And so I find myself thinking of today, of Boxing Day, with its long history and its many complexities. I think particularly of that box, and the gifts it might contain. It is a Christmas gift, no doubt. But, a gift marked by need and want and desire. We all cling tightly to things. In some secret part of our hearts I suspect we all feel that if we get enough things we’ll be insulated from want and need.

Of course that’s a hopeless dream. In this world of flux we are all caught in a stream that flows onward well beyond our control. Instead we need to look to others for our sustenance. We need others to make our way down that stream with any grace and dignity. We need others to fill the box for us. And we, each of us, need to do the same for them.

And, if our hearts are ready, if we have engaged in the practices of attention and care that are the faithfulness of our liberal way, we will know the mystery of our connectedness. And, we will know that filling that box is filling the needs of those who matter most to us. That box is filled for our family. We are, without a doubt, all related. In the light we are all related.

I’m certain this is true. And, I’m certain this is what we are about when we think of service. It is a strange and mysterious thing, a manifestation of our deepest understanding: that we are all connected. And so, as we engage this life as a spiritual practice, I think we, each of us, will find ourselves beginning to walk a deacon’s way.

It is the original ministry, this deacon’s way. It is the gathering point for the various sparks in our existence. Service is the way toward the great understanding, and the fierce light brighter than ten thousand suns. It is the way to the great healing of the universe.
May we find it, each of us, as our very own truth.

Amen.