"Kingdom Come"
Unitarian Universalist Church of Muncie
December 6, 2009
©2009 Rev. Thomas Perchlik
I am always pleased when the newspaper decides to illustrate my sermon. Today I am speaking of Superman's power, and today in Candorville the character Lemont specifically mentions the movie Superman Returns; and in Pickles they talked about superpowers. The little boy asked his Grandma, "If you could have one super power what would it be?" Grandpa said that "she already has a superpower; the power to stop time." The grandchild said "That is so cool," and so Grandma says that Grandpa is crazy. Grandpa replies that it is true: "Whenever she drags me to the fabric store time stands still. I spent a week there one afternoon."
What kind of superpower do you have? What kind of superpowers would you want? I know you have thought about it, because we all want power. We love to feel powerful, excited, and full of vital energy. I remember a conversation I had with a young man years ago. I was talking to him about religion. He did not believe in the Bible was created by God, he did not believe in the bodily resurrection or virgin birth of Jesus. He was not even sure about God. So I invited him to come to my church. But he wanted to go to his very emotional and evangelical church. It was largely African American and the point of his going to that service each Sunday was not to hear things he agreed with but to get energized. "The week drags me down," he said. "Worship on Sunday revs me up and gives me the energy to get through another week." Those services, full of a message about sharing in the power of a powerful and invincible god, gave him a sense of personal power and even invincibility.
This is what we all want, to feel we are as powerful as Superman. But we are painfully aware of our limits and in many comic books lately it turns out our superheroes are struggling with their limits too. Superman has been around for seventy years and he is beginning to feel his age. Of course he can still fly about, catch the falling gondola in one hand and the falling baby in the other. But he knows that somewhere, across town or over the ocean, someone else has fallen to their death. He can't do everything that could be done.
We need some sort of power to just face the difficulties of our lives. Some of us are facing depression as big as the boulder of Sisyphus, some are struggling with broken relationships, or people at work who make each day a burden, or financial troubles that seem as big as those of the U.S. government. One of the great frustrations in my life has been the realization that I cannot make my wife be happy. When we first fell in love it was so easy, it seemed that all Amy and I had to do was be in the same room, or just be on the same planet, and we were happy. Over time I began to think this was my role as lover and husband, to make my wife happy. But, the problem is that no person can ever make someone else feel anything. I might tell a joke at that sparks her to laughter, but she has to be in the mood to laugh. I can keep promises and do things for her, but I cannot force her to feel grateful, or happy, or at ease if troubles or pain or grief is more powerful than my little efforts. We all have limits to what we can do. We cannot make people have the feelings or even own the thoughts we want for them.
The story for children this morning was of a very weak person who was able to kill "seven in one blow" and cause the death of two terrible giants. We like these stories because we know the limits of our power and wish we could do more. But even God does not seem to do all that is needed and the God of Christian Fundamentalism seems to value human freedom over justice, or protection of the innocent. This past week I came across a comic book in which Jesus gets angry with God for doing nothing about Hitler and the misery he is causing, so Jesus goes back to earth and assassinates the leader of the Third Reich. It seems so simple to fix at least some of the problems of the world. But who is going to do it? I am not Superman, you are not Superman and no one is, certainly not President Obama. There is no one invincible and all powerful. So we imagine these people of power: superheroes. Recently there has been a show on TV called Heroes. Each individual hero on that show has some unique power, but they find that alone they are too vulnerable. They need to join together, especially since some are trying to use their superpowers to harm or control others, to become more powerful by hurting or stealing, or generally causing ruin and disaster. So they band together to save the world.
We want not only to get through the week, and stop bad things from happening, but also to make the world beautiful. We want to create the Promised Land, the perfect kingdom, the place of the Beloved Community. Thus we join with others. Our congregational mission is to create a heritage for all human beings of ever greater freedom, justice, love and mercy. That is a super big order. It is an old Christian theology, born in part out of the Jewish ideal of Israel and "tikkun olam" the call of God for his people to repair the world, that we in religious community are to affirm connection or relatedness to others and the world. In other words we are to build the "kin"-dom of God or of goodness. Thus a congregation is a training group for building the perfect community of love and justice here on earth.
This is how it has been for people as long as we can remember. Buddhists sometimes long for the Pure Land, Shambala, or Shangri-La: a permanently happy land where illness or the struggle to compete, or a fight with angry in-laws, will no longer get in the way of meditation and the road to enlightenment. In the time of Jesus of Nazareth the Jews longed for a time when they would live in a just nation, and many gentiles wanted freedom from occupation by Rome. Jesus spoke of a perfect Kingdom, not of the Kingdom of Judea or of Israel, but of God. God was very real and personal to him. Jesus knew if that God, our father in heaven, was ruling a nation it would be wonderful. In the most common Christian prayer, shared by Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants alike, the hope is for God's kingdom to come and his will to be done, on earth just as in the most perfect Heaven. We want someone to have power, not just to face our troubles, but to save the world and make it wonderful again. In this church we join together with those who share a faith in our ability to form the Beloved Community.
But then we find the limits of our community. Sometimes we just don't get along well with certain people. Sometimes we say the wrong thing, make mistakes, and misunderstand others. We offer community and usually when people find this place they feel they have come home. Finally they can say what they think and not be criticized for being different, or for questioning the conventional line. Often people come to church on Sunday because this gathering really does make them feel more powerful and less alone. Yet, there are limits. I remember one person telling me, years ago, that she loved the community of her church but her husband, siblings and parents had died, her children had all moved away, and late at night she still felt all alone. The church cannot always create a commune that will put people in your house at 2:00am, and even if it did you might still feel lonely.
In the graphic novel Kingdom Come, published over a decade ago (DC Comics, 1996) Superman is filled with regret because he could not stop a nuclear explosion that decimated Kansas including the home where he had been raised. As the novel progresses there arises a conflict between two different ideas of how superheroes can truly help humanity. On one hand there are those like Batman who use technology and power to control people, to stop people from doing bad things, ruling with fear and force. On the other hand are those like Superman who want to lead by example, not coercion. He wants to trust human beings and simply try to do all that can be done. Both groups of superheroes know the limits of the others approach, and so they begin to fight one another, causing further ruin and destruction. It is not enough to have power; you must accept the limits of power and learn to work with them.
Elliot Maggin, writing in the 2008 edition introduction to the Kingdom Come wonders, "Must There Be a Superman? … The idea was that maybe, in his zeal to preserve life and ease the path of the human race, Superman was keeping ordinary everyday good humans from growing on their own." Talking about the story of Kingdom Come he says we ordinary humans must face the troubles of progress:
"Not with a faith in a power greater than ours to descend from the sky and set things right despite our best efforts to screw up … [This story] is about the time in the lives of Superman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Batman and the others, when they learn that they are not gods. And it is about the time in their lives when finally they learn that despite their limitations they must be potent and responsible anyway. Now is the time in the life of the human race when all of us need to learn these same things. That is why this story, despite its garish primary colored clothing, is an important one."
After World War Two many people in America thought we were invincible. We called ourselves not "superman," but the world's greatest "superpower." Now we know the limits of our power. Before 2002, American military strategists viewed counterinsurgency warfare as obsolete, for Vietnam had taught us to steer clear of trying to resolve other nation's internal rebellions with our armed forces. The National Security Strategy that the United States published in 1999 made no mention of counterinsurgency. Today the tragic outbreaks of rebellion and street level violence in Afghanistan and Iraq have caused us to rewrite our counterinsurgency manuals and pursue new ideas about how we can save troubled nations from internal and violent divisions. We are beginning to wonder what we can do in places like Afghanistan when we cannot save them, that is, we cannot do all that needs to be done.
There are two primary approaches to fighting insurgencies. On one hand is the "hearts and minds" theory. People backing this approach believe that success in defeating insurgents lies in understanding the nature of the insurgency and following sound methods, both military and nonmilitary, to deprive the insurgents of the support of the people, whose opinions are the primary determinant of the war's outcome. This population-centered theory considers the people's social, political, and economic grievances to be the foremost cause of the conflict. However, we, a foreign power and by no means perfect, can never force people to trust one another, or practice democratic methods or believe they must engage in peacemaking work.
The other major approach is an "enemy-centric" school of thought. Promoters of this view contend that the best way to defeat insurgents is to destroy their will and ability to fight by using coercion and overwhelming armed force. But similar limits apply. Once you have defeated the ‘bad actors' what is left but the same population that nurtured them in the first place?
So we are arguing just like Superman and Batman in the novel (and remember this work was published in 1997.) We want to control the population using drones and armed fighters, just as Batman does, or we try to control the people by example and doing good things. We lead by trying to build schools and bridges, by trying to promote democracy and diplomacy and a healthy economy, and at the same time we fight and kill. The deepest problem is leadership. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbia, or any country that wants to end internal violence, the people must find leaders that inspire the trust and the vision of everyone. Tragically, the insurgent leaders can appear to be more capable than those in the government. In the movie Superman He is flying with Lois. When she says it is silent up there he says: "I can hear everything. You say the world doesn't need a savior, but every day I can hear people crying out for one."
So what can we do when the world needs a savior but no one has the power? Nancy Gibbs in TIME magazine had an opinion piece printed January 8, 2009 [link to article]. She began talking about the recent increase in robbery, and about the power of financial cheaters and swindlers who had nearly destroyed the economy with greed. She ended her piece with these words: "Maybe as times get worse, we get better. Our pain makes us feel other people's too; our fear lets us practice valor; we are tense, and tender as well. And among the things we can no longer afford are things we never really wanted anyway, like the solitude of snobbery, and the luxury of denial.
There is an old saying: "To the world you are but one person, but to a person you can be the world." Anyone can be a channel for the world's power for intelligence, healing, reconciliation and hope. I recently heard a funny little story about a woman who visited her father in a nursing home. There was an old woman there who had suffered serious mental decline so that she was stuck. All she said all day was "help me." She was not crying out in despair, it was just a repeated sound, meaningless and yet full of meaning. She was driving the nurses crazy. No one wanted to try and talk to her because all she would say, perhaps in a monotone, was "help me, helpme, helpme." The friend who told me this story got her dog certified to be a visiting therapy dog and she brought the dog to visit her father and the other people in the center. The two passed by the old woman. She looked down from her wheel chair at the dog and then said, "Well… look at that, look at that, look at that." Even through something small you can make a significant difference, change the world.
The Unitarian minister Edward Everett Hale, who lived from 1822-1909, served in Worchester and Boston, and finally as the chaplain of the US Senate. (He was also a science fiction writer, writing of the first human made satellite, "The Brick Moon.") His entire ministry, from national to congregational service was to encourage people to be agents for goodness and justice and truth. His most immortal quote is this: "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do." His motto was: "To look up and not down, to look forward and not back, to look out and not in, and to lend a hand" (from Ten Times One is Ten, 1870.)
Superman was not a Unitarian Universalist, though he might seem so. He was raised Methodist, but developed Universalist leanings, especially after he traveled the universe and learned of religions on other planets and yet never choose one. However, Christopher Reeve, the actor who did so much to revive the Superman image, was a UU. When he died he was memorialized in a UU church in which he was a member. When he was paralyzed he found comfort and common ground with Unitarians. In an interview with Reader's Digest, October 2004 he said, - "I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do. The Unitarian believes that God is good, and believes that God believes that [people are] good; inherently. The Unitarian God is not a God of vengeance. And that is something I can appreciate." Christopher Reeve inspired people not with superhuman power, but with a very human power to be positive, be hopeful against all resistance and thus make a better community than we have known before.
As a final example I turn toward Fred Kaan. He was not a Unitarian Universalist, but he was of our larger liberal-religious community. Born in North Holland he was a teenager when the Nazis occupied his nation. His father was a member of the Dutch Resistance, and for two years the Kaan family sheltered a Jewish woman in their home, and later gave refuge to an escaped political prisoner. They had not all power, but used what they had to do what they could. Fred Kaan was ordained a Congregationalist in 1955.
As a minister he began writing new hymns born out of the frustration of not finding what he wanted in the established hymnbook for each Sunday's worship, and out of a desire to put into words all that was close to his heart and conscience. So we end the service today with the version of his song in our Hymnal. "Break Not the Circle" By Fred Kaan. The circle is another image of the "Kingdom" or "Kin-dom" or "Beloved Community" that we all want to come on Earth. Note that, to be more inclusive of non-Christians, our Hymnal editors have changed the spelling of some words from British to American English and have left out the original third verse: "Come, wonder at the Man who came and comes / to teach the world the craft of hopeful craving / for peace and wholeness that will fill the earth: / He calls his people to creative living."
Break Not the Circle – As included in Singing the Living Tradition #323
Break not the circle of enabling love,
where people grow, forgiven and forgiving;
break not that circle, make it wider still,
till it includes, embraces all the living.
Come, wonder at the love that comes to life,
where words of humor are with freedom spoken;
and people keep no score of wrong and guilt,
but will that human bonds remain unbroken.
Join then the movement of the love that frees,
till people of whatever race or nation
will truly be themselves, stand on their feet,
see eye to eye with laughter and elation.
