First Parish Sermon Archive

Vox Populi, Vox Deum
a sermon delivered at the First Parish in Wayland, Massachusetts
Sunday, March 1, 2009
by the Reverend Dr. Deborah J. Pope-Lance
Let me say first how grateful I am for the opportunity to be with you, to worship with you, this morning. The chance to preach in this fine pulpit, to preach with you comes to me rarely. I say preach with you because, although it is not obvious, the sermon is crafted together by me and by you; without you, I could speak as fine a sermon as I might hope to but no sermon would be delivered, fine or otherwise.

All preaching, perhaps even all communication, happens between people, in the space between us, in the interplay betwixt. You remember to the old saw, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? In preaching, if a sermon is preached to an empty room, not only is the sermon not heard, it never happened. Hearing is so essential to preaching that pulpit ministers often speak of how the sermon that was heard was far better than the sermon they themselves delivered. Merciful so.

But more: a sermon brings together the perspective and experience of speaker and listener. Essentially, a sermon is bipartisan, a word we’ve heard a lot lately, a sermon is bipartisan, in so far as it seeks to bring together and refine the thoughts, feelings, wonderings and wishes of speaker and listener into a shared and purposeful event. Bipartisan? Perhaps multi-partisan, given the variety of persons and perspectives present in this and every congregation. But at the very least bipartisan because both speaker and hearer must meet in the between, find the common ground betwixt them and make of their engagement something useful and meaningful.

The religious societies formed in the earliest days of this country were founded on a democratic theology, theologies that were bipartisan and multi-partisan, relying on the participation of everyone and every view point. Our forebears believed that God spoke through their collective wisdom, that through their shared deliberation, through the distillation of their many and varied perspectives, God’s will would become known, that through the refinement and conflation of their convictions the good and the right, indeed a solution to whatever grave difficulty had befallen or befuddled them, to the problems that now confounded them, would be discerned. This religious belief-Vox Populi, Vox Deum, that the voice of the people is the voice of God—is the foundation of our national democracy.

From this religious foundation comes the radical notion that our leaders in congress and elsewhere might come together, that they might engage in respectful, vigorous conversation, that they might refine and reconcile their differing if partisan views, that they might by this process discover a shared course of action, some direction they could vote for and, with conviction, run at together.

When we observe congress deliberating on the many crises facing us—on the seemingly insurmountable aftermath of recent natural disasters, the convoluted politics and incalculable human costs of two wars, the undecipherable chaos of the financial markets, of the worrisome prospect of widespread unemployment—our theological heritage leads us to believe that solutions we need are those best discerned by Vox Populi, Vox Deum. When we reflect on the fact that the world is full of complex problems, difficult, undecipherable, seemingly unsolvable problems, we hope the congress and others will deliberate, discern and , vote in the spirit of Vox Populi, Vox Deum. By this we pray, these problems will be solved before it is too late.

Solving the unsolvable is what Kevin Kelly hoped to do in his exciting and exhausting book, Out of Control. Oddly, this founding editor of Wired magazine begins by discussing bee swarms. Where swarms come from. How they work. What we can learn from them. How they may help us solve complex problems.

We can only imagine what this scene must have been like for Mark, running across meadow and stream, leaping over fences and bushes, wearing a halo of bees. Even to try to imagine the scene leaves one utterly dumbfounded and mystified: “What is it that governs here, [Who...] issues orders,” [who...] summons the winged bee soul into the wood [who...] commands a [bee] hive to swarm?”

Scientists tell us the answer is not the queen bee. “When a swarm pours itself out through the front slot of the hive, the queen bee can only follow.” The queen’s own daughters are the ones who choose where and when the swarm will settle. Before swarming, “a half dozen anonymous worker [bees] scout ahead to check out possible hive locations in hollow trees or wall cavities. They report back to the resting swarm by dancing on its contracting surface. During the report, the more theatrically a bee dances, the better the site she is championing.” Other bees “check out competing sites [and seeing...] the intensity of the dances” concur by joining in the dancing. Seeing these bees concur “induces others to check out a particular site…” All the bees simply get the message, ‘Go there, it’s a nice place.’ So they go and return to say, ‘It’s real nice, go there…” Gradually…the biggest crowd wins.

Kelly tells this story to describe how all complex systems work. He suggests that this biological model describes how distributed governance, how democracy works. By choice of the citizens, the swarm takes the queen and thunders off in the direction indicated by the bees’ vote. United in oneness, the hive votes.

Kelly hopes that this biological model can help us rethink some of the complex and seemingly impossible non-biological problems our world faces and ultimately to solve them.

I retell Kelly’s story not to resolve the talk on what is or is not bipartisan legislation but because I wonder if understanding how a swarm works might help us better understand how congregations work and lead us to discover what a congregation needs to know to be the religious community it aspires to be.

Wonder with me: Organizationally, a swarm and a congregation are both a collection of many autonomous members: each member, whether person or bee, acts and reacts individually. Neither bee nor person follows orders from a central authority. Neither reacts automatically in lock step. In a congregation, an individual’s freedom is a fundamental principle. No central authority dictates an individual’s belief. Yet, like a swarm, a congregation will choose to move as one.

Indeed, as in a swarm, “no one is in control…an invisible hand [seemingly] governs, a hand that emerges not from any [single] bee but from [all individual bees together]. Management of all swarm-like system is decentralized. What direction there is is distributed among all individuals. These individuals are connected. And these connections, the relations between all the individuals, these are what make everything happen.

The marvel of a swarm is that out of complexity, out of all the single bees together, something new is generated; something Kelly calls a “hive mind.” The actions of an individual worker bee by themselves cannot reveal what a hive will do, when it will swarm, or to where it will thunder off. Only by waiting and watching as the bees do their recognizance and report in, only by observing their dancing, by waiting and watching as some bees persuade other bees to their view, will what will happen next be seen and known. A swarm is only by emerging.

So too, in a congregation. A congregation moves, opines, emerges, and even exists by living out the complex relations of individuals, by working out and playing out the mix of connecting and conflicting interdependent individuals. Like a swarm, a congregation emerges from the interdependence of all the variety and choosing of folks all together. This means that you, each of you, as one of these individuals in this congregation has to show up, relate with others, choose directions and stay connected. Your congregation is only by your relating with one another.

Our Unitarian Universalist Purposes and Principles speak of an “Inter-dependent web of all existence,” thereby employing a biological model to describe a theological one. In doing so, our purposes and principles remind us that we are all in this together. Interdependently is how the world and our lives and our congregation work. Interdependence is how it is. How everything is. How we live and die, thrive or fail. Everything affects everything else. Even when we are not aware of the interdependence, everything is in relation, everything and everyone is interdependent. Even when we cannot figure out how it actually is, everything and everyone exist only in relation to one another. And this relation is exactly what makes everything and anything possible.

Biological models, Kevin Kelly observes, have some advantages and some drawbacks. And these advantages and disadvantages find ready example in congregations, even in real life congregations we know and love.

On the disadvantage side: without central controls redundancy and inefficiency abound. Guiding a swarm system can only be done as a shepherd might drive a herd—by offering influence at strategic points and by encouraging the natural tendency of the system into new directions. But with all its novelty and adaptability, swarm systems are neither predictable nor understandable. Stuff happens.

On the advantage side, swarm systems are highly adaptable. When change is required, individual parts can adapt individually. A swarm is learning, evolving and resilient. Failures are not disastrous but opportunities for and clues to what changes are needed and what must be learned.

In participatory democracies a congregation sets direction on the basis of whatever is the wisdom of everyone all together. Sometimes amid the process of setting directions, significant differences can surface, seemingly irresolvable and insurmountable differences that can leave hurt feelings and disrupted relationships. But the whole need not be threatened by individual differences. Indeed, in a swarm, differences are desirable because differences—all the many individual choices and variations—create novelty. And novelty avails adaptability. And adaptability guarantees survival.

In a swarm model, difference is understood in a new way. Sure, a swarm has no center but rather thousands of individuals connected to one another. A swarm is the interplay of multitudes, irredeemably social, unabashedly of many minds, a distributed being, in which no individual part is more or less important, more or less valuable, than any other. And so a swarm needs difference. Difference, yes, difference is the swarm’s greatest advantage. Difference breeds resilience and growth, what in a congregation we might call courage and persistence in the face of challenging times. We acknowledge and celebrate, not only our unity but also our diversity, not only our agreements but also and disagreements.

Difference, when understood as essentially valuable to the community, need not be eliminated or, after debate and discussion, need not be allowed to paralyze action. When each understands that individual differences are respected because all difference is valued and necessary, then everyone may stay faithful to the whole, of which those differences and everyone are a part.

In relating is our promise, the promise of all swarm based systems, of all democracies and all congregations. The marvel of a swarm is that out of complexity, out of all the single bees or people or viewpoints all together, something new is generated, some new wisdom is discerned, something greater than any individual could discover.

Some have suggested that this sort of relating, this interdependence is what or who or how God is. Jewish theologian Martin Buber observed in I and Thou, that God is not static. Rather, recasting the scriptural language, Buber insists, “In the beginning was the relation.” The relation is God. And all that is of God or the holy or the most high resides in the relation, in the relation between people and God, in the relation between people and people. Relating is how God is.

Henry Nelson Wieman, twentieth century Unitarian theologian, also understood God, [and] all that is holy and of ultimate value, as immanent, as present and within human relating. God and whatever we come to call holy resides in human relating, most especially in human relating that encourages “individuals [to] express themselves truly and fully…to welcome and [seek] to understand” others, to be influenced and enriched by these understandings. In this kind of human relation an enlarging truth emerges, observed Wieman, an enlarging truth that many have called God, an enlarging that “can [save and] transform us like nothing else can.”

In short, in our relating, in the interchange of our individual perspectives and differences, in our eventual thundering off as one, reside all that is of God and all that might yet bring us closer to tackling our world’s complex seemingly unsolvable problems. Ah, yes: Vox Populi, Vox Deum.

Let me put this more simply: showing up is what matters. Relating with others is what makes everything happen. Connecting and communing and congregating is what gives evidence of the holy and the divine.

So next time your sitting at the breakfast table on Sunday morning, lingering over your coffee and looking out the window at the beautiful world, flawed and fragile as it is, wondering, hmm, am I going to church this morning, remember that your showing up, and, like a bee dancing on the hive’s surface, joining in the web of relations which is this congregation, remember that your showing up and participating in the holiness and wisdom of all that interdependent relating is how the world’s ordinary and extraordinary challenges will be solved. Should I go? “Yeah, go there. It’s a nice place.” And without you? Well, hmmp, if a tree falls in the forest and you are not there…?

Dear colleague Alice Blair Wesley and, in every season and condition, a fervent champion of congregations, their polity and their people, observes that for congregations showing up is the whole point. She tells us (in Myths of Time and History) that “Individual members of a coherent free church may be ever so singular and diverse: young and old; rich or poor; famous or little known; little schooled or many degreed; liking Bach or rock or both; pray-ers or atheists; of any race; of many backgrounds; management or labor; or changing degrees of these at different times. The more singular and diverse the better…[For in diversity is found the largest and most enlarging truth.]…But if the whole has integrity–and a whole is a thing of integrity—the free church coheres, however flexibly, around a center…the heart of the whole thing,” in her words “is a promise of fidelity, a covenant…that we shall together seek truth and support one another as we dare, whatever the cost, to live by the truths we cannot help believing we have found at any particular time, and to support one another in doubt in those times when we can’t find or can’t decide what the relevant truth is.”

This fidelity, this promise to show up, to be in relation and together to seek understanding, at the very least, guarantees the survival of any congregation. This fidelity, viewed through Kelly’s swarm model, is the unseen hand that ensures the survival of all the individual parts and the whole. This fidelity, this unseen hand, creates and secures what every congregation aspires to be at its best—a “beloved community,” a place where caring respect is accorded to all, where everyone has a voice, where everyone’s participation is needed to direct or elect, and where even the most seemingly insurmountable challenges, whether they be our own or our world’s, may be understood as opportunities that together will be seized and solved.

A congregation is no deeming mass of bees but still a congregation might at its best see itself as a swarm of folks, a Beloved Community, relating together with integrity and faith, extending to one another respect and love, seeking truth and supporting one another amid whatever may come. A swarm of folks, a beloved community, in their relating with one another and all together, solving the seemingly unsolvable and making whatever they imagine possible and real whatever may come.

READING from Out of Control by Kevin Kelly
“For many years Mark Thompson, a beekeeper [Kelly knows] had a bizarre urge to build a live in hive-an active bee home [he] could visit by inserting [his] head into it. [Of course, he never did. [But one day] he was working…when a beehive spewed a swarm of bees ‘like a flow of black lava, dissolving, then taking wing.’ The black cloud coalesced into a 20-foot-round black halo of 30,000 bees that hovered, UFO-like, six feet off the ground, exactly at eye level. The flickering insect halo began to drift slowly away, keeping a constant six feet above the earth. It was a Live-In Hive [his] dream come true.”

“A hive about to swarm is hive possessed,” observes Kelly. “It becomes visibly agitated around the mouth of its entrance. The colony whines in a centerless loud drone that vibrates the neighborhood. It begins to spit out masses of bees, as if it were emptying not only its guts but its soul…These grow to be a small dark cloud of purpose…boosted by a tremendous buzzing racket…ghost [like] slowly [rising] into the sky…The German theosophist Rudolf Steiner writes lucidly in his otherwise kooky Nine Lectures on Bees: ‘just as the human soul takes leave of the body…one can truly see in the flying swarm an image of the departing human soul.” Truly astounding.

Awed but not deterred, “Mark didn’t waiver. Dropping his tools he slipped into the swarm, his bare head now in the eye of a bee hurricane. He trotted in sync across the yard as the swarm eased away. Wearing a bee halo, Mark hopped over one fence, then another. He was running to keep up with the thundering animal in whose belly his head floated. They crossed the road together and hurried down an open field, and [Mark] jumped another fence. He was tiring. [But] the bees weren’t; they picked up speed. The swarm-bearing man glided down a hill into a marsh. The two of them resembled a superstitious swamp devil, humming, hovering, and plowing through the miasma. Mark churned wildly through the muck trying to keep up. Then, on some signal, the bees accelerated…unhaloed Mark and left him standing there wet, ‘in panting joyful amazement’ [as they] floated across the landscape until the swarm vanished, a spirit unleashed, into a somber pine woods across the highway.”

MEDITATION Prayer for Those Gathered in Worship by Barbara J. Pescan
(edited and format adapted for printing)

whole of the world. In this familiar place, listen: to the sounds of breathing, creaking chairs,
shuffling feet, clearing throats, and sighing all around…Know that each breath, movement, the glance meant for you or intercepted holds a life within it. These are signs that we choose to be in this company have things to say to each other, things not yet said but in each other’s presence still trembling behind our hearts’ doors…these doors closed but unlocked each silent thing waiting on the threshold between unknowing and knowing, between being hidden and being known. Find the silence among these people and listen to it all-breathing, sighs, movement, holding back- hear the tears that have not yet reached their eyes perhaps they are your own hear also the laughter building deep where joy abides despite everything. Listen: rejoice. And say Amen.

OPENING WORDS (source misplaced)

We come together to celebrate the seasons of life, to study wisdom and practice compassion, and to encourage the spiritual work of each person—for the sake of the