When?

When?

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” — Hillel

As I understand it, Rabbi Hillel was a contemporary of Jesus. He was a rebbe, a rabbi who was considered a great teacher, a man of wisdom. Perhaps some of you are familiar with another well-known quote from Hillel. When he was asked if he could sum up all of Jewish teaching in one sentence, he replied, “Don’t do to others what you would not have them do unto you. All the rest is commentary.”

Some suggest that the answers you give to the three questions Hillel poses could shape your life, depending on how you answer. I want to give you some of my reflections on these, my version of answers to Hillel’s provocative credo.

Hillel begins by asking, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Maybe like you, I was baptized by immersion in the ethic of selflessness. The way I heard that, the way I interpreted selflessness as a child all the way into young adulthood, was anything that bordered on (and I use that in the broadest sense) appearing to be selfish: selfishness made me a sinner. You did everything conceivable to draw no attention to yourself, to make it look as though you were not doing anything for yourself — there was no reward for yourself in what you were doing. As you might imagine, when I entered the parish ministry, this became a curse because parish ministry, like a lot of other professions, especially therapists, social workers and teachers, can be endless and draining work. If you enter the ministry purely with a motive of selflessness, you will be run ragged and burned up. So the question, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” became a very important one early in my ministry. It wasn’t long after I came to Annapolis that I realized I had better examine this notion of selflessness and selfishness and find out what they really mean.

I decided to begin a journey. The journey I started wasn’t anything special, it’s a journey that’s been written about in mythology and in stories over millennia. The more I read these stories, it was really striking how there were common themes that kept coming back. So off I went on this journey of mine, climbing the proverbial mountains and slaying the proverbial dragons and crossing the seas and weathering the storms, an incredible journey that produced a lot of experiences and introduced me to a lot of interesting people.

But I never quite found the answer I was looking for, so I came back home, metaphorically. And there, when I was home, I realized what I had been looking for had been right in front of me the whole time. As I said when you read the stories, when you read the mythology, this is a theme that seems to permeate the stories of journey. In doing all these incredible things, all these experiences, you never find what you are looking for until you get back home. Then it’s right there, it’s right in your back yard, in the kitchen, under the sink. Every story is like that. And one of the things that I learned on my journey was that perhaps selfishness is not all that bad: If am not for myself, who will be for me?

There is a story that Harold Kushner recalls that is from the Talmud, which is the Jewish book of law and wisdom, both religious law and civil. The story goes like this: A small village captures the spirit of selfishness, and they lock it up in a closet. They are so proud of what they have done, because they realize that now there will be no more selfishness, no more greed, people won’t be just looking out for themselves all the time. Everybody can be happy. Peace will reign throughout the world. So they go to bed, very self-satisfied with what they have done.

Everybody wakes up the next morning and nobody goes into work. None of the shops are open. People don’t go out to greet each other. They lie around the house. Nothing gets done. And suddenly they realize, maybe we have made a mistake. And so with a certain degree of trepidation, they unlock the door and let the spirit of selfishness back out into the world, because they realize that sometimes even selfish motivations can yield good for other people.

What it really comes down to is balancing selflessness and selfishness. Often times that balance has to be understood in a larger context, in a larger perspective. That’s the only way to understand it. For me, it’s an understanding that I finally began to realize.

Why is any of this of importance? I mean, asking questions like the ones Hillel asks. They are important for human beings because one of our curses and our blessings is that we thrive on purpose and living. We love to have purpose in our lives to motivate us. It’s what keeps us going. It’s not just one purpose, it could be many purposes, we

are meaning makers. We are meaning seekers. Without meaning and purpose, our lives become void and we wonder, why should we live? We have to have meaning and purpose.

When it comes to individualism, which could be understood as selfishness, it has to be balanced out. This moderation is needed due to our cultural history of 19th and 20th century modern individualism which is now bankrupt. We don’t have to look any further than the front pages of the papers for the last three months to see what happened at Enron, to see what happens when individualism goes unchecked.

So, being for yourself has to be understood in a larger context, and balanced. That larger context and balance is provoked by Hillel’s second question: “If I am only for myself, what am I?” One of the reasons I went into the ministry was because I believed in the transforming power of community, in the embodiment of community as a congregation, in a faith community. I have seen over and over again the ability of a community of faith, of a church, of an institution, to transform individual lives and to shape society with a new vision. Howard Zinn who taught at Spellman College—a brilliant professor and social activist—said that sometimes when people fight together for a cause, to walk toward a vision as a community, they don’t always get to that vision in a victorious way. While victory is important, he says, never underestimate the power that comes from community. While community may not be your primary goal, the benefits of that promise and spirit are tremendous. Zinn tells the story of how he was involved in the civil rights struggles in the south. Sometimes they won and sometimes they lost. But what most of those people agreed about was they had formed bonds and transformed their lives in ways that were unparalleled to anything they had ever done. Even in the face of loss, even when they were not victorious, they had formed a community—relationships and institutions that had transformed their lives.

We might look around in this congregation or other groups that are parts of our lives and wonder how could such a small group of people transform lives or transform our communities or the world. Recall Margaret Mead’s wonderful statement: “Never underestimate a small group of thoughtful, committed people to change the world, for it is the only thing that has.” The only thing that has.

There are two things that you can do as part of this institution that can begin to transform lives, the lives of this congregation, perhaps your life and the young ones in this church. Beginning today, as you leave the church, you can participate in the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s Guest At Your Table program. It’s an opportunity for you to recall your bonds and your solidarity not only with the wider Service Committee movement, but with people throughout the world who don’t have the material abundance that we have. They can’t make the assumptions that we make. We collect money to support the Service Committee and their causes. We call it Guest at Your Table because they are the unseen guests that are at our table. We ask you to put this box on your breakfast or dinner table and every day put a little bit of money into it. If you have children, talk about what you are doing. Your bulletin this morning talks about the program and the Service Committee. It’s a good way to heighten awareness in your family. I encourage you to participate in this program.

Here’s another way that I would urge you to participate. This church has a long history of being involved in the larger community, either through ways that the congregation has been transformed and then makes a statement to the larger community, or when we have gone out into the community around us and have been a transformative, visioning agent for justice. For the last ten years we have had an incredible number of programs that have involved many of you: Habitat for Humanity, Haven and Our House programs, a whole host of programs that many of you have been involved in. We really haven’t looked at these programs in a long time, not necessarily to say that we don’t want to do them anymore, but to ask could we be doing more. Are there other ways we can involve members and friends in transforming this community and sharing our vision in the larger community?

Toward this end, on March 22 and 23, Susan Karlson and I will facilitate a workshop here at the church. On Friday we will talk about where this church has been, what our history is when it comes to sharing a vision of social justice. Then on Saturday, we hope to arrive at an additional agenda (I don’t want to say a new agenda because

many of the things we are doing are very effective and we should keep those). Are there additional things we could be doing? Where could we be involved? As Howard Zinn says, sometimes it’s about getting together and participating in this process and seeing each other, just showing up, that can be transforming and make a statement to the community at large. I urge you to sign up to participate in this event on the 22nd and 23rd.

“If not now, when?” Hillel asks. “If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” I recall a conversation that I read between a teacher and his student, where the student says to the teacher, “I am almost ready to begin working for the demarginalized, the disenfranchised, to go out and do my outreach.” And the teacher says, “What is holding you up?” The student answers, “I am just waiting for the right opportunity.” And the teacher replies, “Opportunity never arrives. It’s now.”

This makes me think of was another insight, “Living is a lifelong series of imperfect moments. What we need is not to wait for the perfect opportunity. We have to seize the imperfect ones.” The beauty of being together is we don’t have to do this alone. We can do it as a community. If not now, when?

And why? Something Hillel doesn’t ask, Why? There is a modern parable of a woman who is very frustrated because she believes in peace on earth, she believes in cleaning up the environment, she wants to have a drug-free America. All these, and more, really good causes and she is very frustrated because none of them are coming about. So frustrated is she one morning that she decides to go off to the mall to shop. (A truly contemporary story!) She goes to the mall and at random picks a store and walks in. No sooner is she there than she recognizes the person behind the counter. It’s Jesus! She is really taken aback. How does she know it’s Jesus? Well, he looks just as Jesus does on all the devotional cards that she saw when going to the Catholic church. He looks just like all the portraits she has ever seen. Finally she gets up enough nerve to go up and say, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to embarrass you, but are you Jesus?” He says, “Yes, I am.” She says, “Well, what are you doing here? Do you work here at the store?” “Work at the store? I own the store,” he replies. She goes on, “Well, what do you sell here?” He asks, “What would you like?” “Well, I really don’t know.” Jesus says, “We have everything here. Why don’t you walk up and down the aisles and see what’s there, and make a list. When you are done, bring the list back to me.” So, she begins to walk up and down the aisles, and pretty soon she catches on, because here is peace on earth, here is a clean environment, there is a drug-free America, here is a happy family. Here is everything she has always believed in and wanted, so she is writing furiously, page after page, all these things she wants. She finally gets done and brings the list up to Jesus and says, “Here is what I would like.” He goes through all the sheets with a big smile on his face, nodding, and saying, “Yes, we can deal with these. No problem.” She asks, “You can?” He goes on, “Oh yeah.” So he bends down under the counter and comes up with all these packets of seeds that he puts on the counter. She asks, “What are these?” And he says, “These are packets of seeds. This is a catalog store.” “Well what do I do with the seeds?” Jesus responds, “You go home, you plant them, nurture them, water them, and while you may not see the end results, probably in another generation, or another generation after that, they might see some results.” She asks, “You mean I don’t get the finished product right now?” He says, “Oh, no. This is a store of hope and vision and dreams.” And with that, she walks out.

We are a church of faith, that is undergirded by hope. Unitarianism Universalism is supported by hope. Hope is living and working for something in which you don’t know what the outcome will be, but your faith leaves you no choice but to work for that vision. Jim Wallis, who heads the Sojourners Community of America, has remarked that hope is working toward something in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change. That’s what we must do. If not now, when.

Mary Oliver says in a poem that she wants to be a bride married to amazement. She wants to be the bridegroom embracing the world. She does not want to come to the end and die, realizing she has only visited the world. To which Isaiah would say, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”

If not now, when?

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