Sermons

"Mullah Nasruddin Feeds His Congregation," A sermon written and shared by Michelle Mueller during Religious Education Sunday Spring 2012. The sermon builds on the children's Story, "Mullah Nasruddin Feeds His Coat," (from Tapestry of Faith curriculum Moral Tales), which we used in Workshop Rotation Model that year. Title of the worship service was "RE Sunday: Hospitality for the World."

[Referring to the Story for All Ages RE children's skit] The children and I worked on that production last week. This is a story we have just begun as one of our units in our Workshop Rotation Model. We learn one story through different workshops, which are aligned with UU principles.
 

Viewing each story from the many angles of the workshops has led the children, the volunteers and me to realize multiple messages and lessons of each story.

For example, when we looked at the story of Icarus—the Greek story where a father tells his son not to fly close to the sun-Harry Mersemann suggested that the story points out how often Western culture encourages us not to “fly higher” and question authority.

All in all, this exercise has taught me all the complexities involved in interpreting and sitting with or experiencing a story.

Through our Workshop Rotation Religious Education program, we do experience the stories. Unit after unit, children have come to identify with the characters of the religious and cultural stories. They picture themselves in the shoes of the character. The imagine and discuss how they would respond if faced with the character.

We even included, in our Kuan Yin unit, a conversation around “What would Kuan Yin do?”

One of the most amusing moments for me this year in Religious Education was the repeated “Minotaur was here” graffiti on the canvas labyrinth we created and decorated during our Icarus unit.  

There is a challenge in interpreting cultural stories around the world, as cultures have different values and different senses of aesthetics.

I.e. Cultural translation is not easy. Education is a balance of preserving the original material with awareness of the age and readiness of students.

What do we do with Grimm’s fairy tales such as Cinderella where sisters cut off their toes to fit glass slippers that would entice the prince? …..This is not a story we did this year.

 

Instead, we shared the story of Kuan Yin and teachers shared that they were pleased to see a tale that portrayed a young woman who chose NOT to get married, in contrast from popular fairy tales that establish finding a prince as the only way to complete the story and live happily ever after. Kuan Yin’s choice is one more image of another choice. UU children learn that there are many choices in life, and even if we pass up an opportunity once, we might find it again or something we would enjoy even more.

  

This story is also important for us because we learn a lesson and values from another culture in the world. Nasruddin tales are traditional Islamic stories. Nasruddin is often a trickster character, whose actions reveal the common follies of humanity. The traditional storytellers have used Nasruddin to point out the inconsistencies and hypocrisies common to humanity.

Through comparative mythology, we find that there ARE common morals that appear throughout the folklore of many cultures. We also find uniqueness and specificities to cultures around the world.

Comparative mythology, when done well, finds contrasts in addition to comparisons.

In our Religious Education program, we are preparing our children to be bearers of the Unitarian Universalist flame. We teach them Unitarian Universalist values and principles so that they have a firm moral grounding and sense of justice.

We also remind children of the first principle – the inherent worth and dignity of every individual – and that this applies to them.

We teach our children to be kind and compassionate forces in the world, and we teach them to stand up for their own needs in life.

In order to practice hospitality for the world, we must also strive to understand different parts of the world or cultures in the world.