Tides, They Are A-Changing | Rev. T. J. FitzGerald | 04.28.24

Sermon Transcript

There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you for a while, Texas. The week I left you, roughly Labor Day Weekend, 1992, Ann Richards was in the Governor’s Mansion, George W. Bush was owning the Rangers, where Nolan Ryan was the ace, and topping the charts on the radio was Achy Breaky Heart. Just to give you a sense. So I guess there’s only one thing to say. Enough already. I get it. I’m sorry I left. Geez. Your decades long, desperate attempt to get my attention, Texas, your cry from across continents and oceans, your acting up and your regression are on full display. I hear you. I get it. Clearly, you took my leaving very hard. It’s fine. Let’s just pull ourselves together now, shall we? I’m back so we can all behave. Bless your hearts, your achy breaky hearts.

The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational

Now, before I got to come back home here, as many of you know, I was serving in Hawaii, where I was the minister of our UU Church in Honolulu for five years. And one of my favorite places to go on Oahu where Honolulu is, was Waimea Bay. It’s a coved area that is the gateway to the north shore of Oahu, and it’s the site where the immortal Eddie Aikau revolutionized surfing. He revolutionized surfing by handling waves larger than any human had ever, ever done before. Sadly, Eddie disappeared in 1978 after a boat he was paddling, the Hokule’a, sprung a leak. But the year before he disappeared, he won one of the most prestigious surfing competitions in the world. And after his disappearance in his death, his family started a tournament in his name actually, to this day, just simply known as The Eddie, is only held when the waves at Waimea Bay reach above a certain height. More than 30 feet, they must be.

Last year, this last year in February, the waves during the tournament were as high as 50 feet. Yeah. And only his family, the surviving Aikau family, relatives can decide if the tournament takes place at all. Sometimes we go years without The Eddy because it just doesn’t feel right. It’s very Hawaiian, this thing. Has anyone here ever seen a wave higher than 30 feet? Okay. Don’s raising his hand. Thanks Don. Up there in the … Okay. To feel something like that crash before you is otherworldly, I assure you. It shakes your core literally, not metaphorically. The impact is like a bomb going off nearby and it shakes the very air in your lungs. But the same bay, the same place when the tides are low, when the surf’s not up, looks like a placid lake. And it was a day like that at Waimea Bay when the surf was steady, still even and broke gently at the shore that I heard the announcement from the lifeguard chair piped over loudspeakers to the whole beach. “Stay calm, we’re on our way.”

Then bolting across the sand from the lifeguard chair, surfboard in hand was a lifeguard who knifed the surf with the board and churned his arms like engines to reach the swimmer who was out there in distress that we could see flopping around. The entire beach was captivated by the rescue and the voice of the lifeguard stayed still, “It’s going to be okay. He’s almost there to help you.” And the paddling lifeguard finally reached him and hauled the exhausted swimmer out of the water and onto the front of the board, and he was safe. Then the guard started paddling back, both of the people to shore, and I went back talking to my friend Doug and asking if he’d ever seen anything like this before. Then we were interrupted. “Hey, victim. Yeah, you. No free rides. Start paddling.” Was this some kind of sick joke? I laughed just like you did, you weirdos. And the whole beach was stunned to hear this and the voice persisted. “Yeah, you victim, get paddling.”

And in sort of a stunned pantomime, he began to paddle from the front of the board, but the sermon from the lifeguard did not stop. “You know, Waimea is not for beginning swimmers, you know. The tides are strong. Keep paddling. When people come here and they think, ‘I can swim’ then we all just have to haul you out again.” It just went on and on from this disembodied voice out a little longer, all about the dangers of the tides of the north shore of Oahu that can swirl in ways that the strongest swimmer can’t fight against. And then finally the sermon ended. You know how that goes. And the two on the board made it to shore and we cheered. And I don’t know if it was because they were safe so much as we were happy that the sermon on the bay was finally over. But all of us were a little wiser after that and maybe a little more uncertain about that bay out there.

So when people ask me why I’d ever leave a place like Hawaii to come to a place like Texas, these are the kinds of experiences that I had there that they don’t tell you so much when you go into paradise. But that, and also you were always on my heart, my Achy Breaky Heart.

The opening of the Truth Pregnancy Resource Center

Today we are wrapping up our theme year, our theme year that helped us to shape our church lives together. It was called Waves of Purpose, Tides of Change. I hope that got out there in the messaging. And I had this idea that I would just kind of comb through all the things we did this year and give you some of the highlights and wouldn’t that be fun and be easy to do? And it’d be easier to do if there weren’t multiple news stories about this church in the news just this weekend. I sometimes wonder if this congregation ever really sleeps, but Friday we witnessed the fulfillment of one of Daniel’s visions for our wider community when the official opening of the Truth Pregnancy Resource Center took place. That’s right. Some of the board members are here and they would like to meet you about some donations afterwards. That’s another story.

But the very existence of this place where one is simply told the truth about pregnancy and all of your options, it’s like it was news, it was like it was some kind of revelation in this state that someone was going to do this. I was quoted actually a little in an article, and I think the reporter got my best side. My friend told me it was my sassy side. Last I checked, I got a little … Anyway, but what was interesting, what doesn’t really make it into the interview was sort of the fear that even the reporter had that she expressed to me in this interview that came out some in the article about just speaking the truth, about sharing fundamental biological truths and that being under attack in this state. The money that crisis pregnancy centers get from our tax dollars as long as they agree not to mention abortion is just another way that education, that speech, that expression, and that freedom to practice the faith are under attack in this state for real.

But Sojourner Truth tells us, “Truth is powerful and it prevails.” And when the ribbon on the center was cut, painted right there on the wall were Truth’s words, and on Friday, truth prevailed. It’s beautiful.

Our church’s history

And if that wasn’t enough for one weekend friends, you can also read a feature about the oldest church in University Park. This church in case you didn’t know. And the story goes on to talk about how this church welcomed the Muslim community to pray when no one else in Dallas would, that welcomed gay men during the AIDS crisis to receive communion in this sanctuary when nobody else would, that welcomed people of all racial identities into its pews when no one else in Dallas would. In our founding sermon, Reverend Limbaugh called this, “A church for those at sea without a chart or compass.” And through all the waves of more than a century, the tides have finally shifted so that we are not at sea anymore.

We are a church that knows where it stands and helps those two grow and to further more than just faiths who need a home, more than just movements or even opening the doors of centers. We try to grow the very lives of the people of you who come here. And it warms my heart, my Achy Breaky Heart. At least I’m laughing. That’s good. He is like, “You’re enjoying it. I don’t know about them.” This church was built by those who accepted the task, to create a place for those at sea without a chart or compass. This church was built by those who outgrew dogmas, outgrew creeds, and the easy answers of their faiths. It was built by those who jumped in and did it. Marge Piercy’s masterwork of a poem says, “A pitcher cries for water to carry, and to person for work that is real.” Real work. Work worth doing well is work with, she says “A shape that satisfies clean and evident.”

Of course, these are the words of a poet. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have that clarity just sitting at a keyboard, to see our way so clearly to the tasks that we hope to start and finish but it takes more than that. It is not always easy. It is not always clean. We get mud on our hands. But this year we tried to guide you through some of the ways that we can do that together. We wrestled together with what it meant to lead a purposeful life this fall. And then we explored the rituals that ground us leading up to the winter holidays. Then we huddled together through those times, through Advent, and then we kicked off the new year by activating our spiritual lives together. Then we mapped out our spiritual geography. And for the last few weeks we tried to answer that all-important question, what are we for? Not just what do we hold up, what do we ascribe to? But what are people for?

Each of these series, we hope were like a wave that crested and held the ways that we find our purpose and carried us to shores of meaning and helped to answer what we are meant to be to one another, what we are meant as a church to be in the world. Because these are questions at the core of our theological understandings. It’s not just doing stuff. It’s who we are and what we believe. Because one of the theological truths of our Unitarian faith is that revelation is not sealed. It is not only held in a book or some set of books. It is not held in our genes alone. It’s not held even in family systems or in history. It is certainly not held in some zip code. Revelation is ongoing and we are participants in history as much as we are participants in our lives. They are one and the same.

Shifting tides

Our faith tells us that there is always time, there is always a way to notice what is happening in our lives, to our lives, to notice what is happening in the lives that we share with others, to the lives of others that we share on this earth, and to fit our purpose to what is happening. Revelation is not sealed. There is always a way to hope. Maybe it looks like building a center dedicated to the wellness of our neighbors. Maybe it looks like swinging wide our doors again and again and again. Maybe it looks like linking arms through the night at cross campus like many of us saw at Yale and singing, “We shall not, shall not be moved.” But what I know is that whatever it looks like, it better look like truth because truth is powerful and it prevails.

We know as a community as well as any community how the tides have shifted so much from when many of us were growing up here. We are seeing some waves, I know, waves of undemocratic rule, waves of dehumanization and destruction, waves of protest and of state violence against those protests and waves of Christian nationalism and what looks like theocratic rule seeming to swirl around us. And these waves seem at times to be shifting the tide, I know. But these are tides that our faith, that this church has waded into before, over and over again. It is the work that is real, friends. There’s a saying in Hawaii, “Eddie would go.” It came from the legend of Eddie Aikau and the waves he could brave, but it didn’t come from his prowess as a competitive athlete. “Eddie would go” comes from how Eddie got to be a great surfer, the greatest surfer. It was not because he wanted to show off. It was not because he even saw it as a sport. Eddie Aikau was the first, the very first lifeguard at Waimea Bay.

He got that job submerged in the task because when nobody else would go into the churning waters to haul people out who were in trouble, Eddie would go. When people could barely see the person struggling over these massive waves, Eddie would go over and over into the surf and back to shore together like the seal’s head bobbing on the water, Eddie would go. And it was fitting and shaping himself into this high purpose over years and years of passion and of discipline that built one of the greatest athletes of all time. The sport, the strength was only a product of his real job, of his real work in the world. Those lifeguards, calling out to the pair on that board knew, they knew what that entire beach had known for generations and what this church knows to be true, no one can save anyone else, but we can work together to help each other survive. And in that work we can thrive.

When the waves are raging, when the sound over the waters is loud enough to drown out all sound from us. We work together to get back to shore. When the waves seem over our heads and the way to a shared future is dimmed by hate, dimmed by violence, and voices tell us we couldn’t or we shouldn’t go, we jump in head first, submerged in the task. And when the waves explode and shake us to the core, we know we can remember, “Eddie would go.” We will not stop launching into the waves of real work of this church, the waves of our purpose, to meet those at sea with love and compassion, to build stronger and healthier systems, to counter the sick systems that are all around us. And to speak truth to power for truth is powerful and it prevails.

And in this way, with wave after wave, we can shift these tides. May we be together and be brave in the storm. May we take all the courage we need to start and the faith that we need to keep going and all of the heart we need to see it through with our achy breaky hearts. May it ever be so blessed be and amen.