"All The King's Horses"

by

The Rev. Dr. Mark Ehman

“Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground?” Alice went on, not with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her good-natured anxiety for the queer creature.  “That wall is so very narrow!”

            “What tremendously easy riddles you ask!” Humpty Dumpty growled out.  “Of course I don’t think so!  Why, if ever I did fall off—which there’s no chance of—but if I did—“ Here he pursed up his lips, and looked so solemn and grand that Alice could hardly help laughing.  “If I did fall,” he went on, “the King has promised me—ah, you may turn pale, if you like!  You didn’t think I was going to say that, did you?  The King has promised me—with his very own mouth—to—to—“

            “To send all his horses and all his men,” Alice interrupted, rather unwisely.

            “Now I declare that’s too bad!” Humpty Dumpty cried, breaking into a sudden passion.  “You’ve been listening at doors—and behind trees—and down chimneys—or you couldn’t have known it.”1

            “I haven’t, indeed!” Alice said very gently.  “It’s in a book.”

            “Ah, well!  They may write such things in a book,” Humpty Dumpty said in a calmer tone.  “That’s what you call a History of England, that is . . .”

            Humpty Dumpty—the pompous, inveterate optimist, the one who believes that nothing bad can ever happen—especially to him.  And even if something terrible were to occur, there is always someone present to correct the situation.  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men.  Alice, on the other hand, is of a different mind.  She is not quite a pessimist (we might call her a “concerned citizen”).  She can smell disaster in the air.  She knows that dizzying heights and pompous eggs do not mix.  “Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground?”  But Humpty Dumpty maintains his invulnerability.  “Of course I don’t think so!  I’m not going to fall.  And if I do, there is a back-up plan, a sure-fire scheme that will guarantee my survival.  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men will simply put me together again.”  If only things were that easy!

            Just who or what is this Humpty Dumpty?  Of course, Lewis Carroll portrays him as an egg.  However, there does not appear to be any substantiation for this (except in Alice’s imagination).  Some historians believe that Richard III, King of England from 1483-85, is a likely candidate.  After all, Richard (in Shakespeare’s rendition) has a hump.  And, in Richard’s last battle, his horse (the “wall” on which he sat) was shot from under him.  And as he was surrounded by Henry Tudor’s opposing forces, his men realized that it would be impossible to put him and his kingdom “together again.”

            Other experts, however, tend to believe that Humpty Dumpty was not a person, but a tool of war.  During the English civil strife of 1642-48 the Royalists, led by King Charles I, were stalled at the town of Gloucester, until a certain Dr. Chillingworth convinced the king to build a siege engine that would exactly span the banks of the Severn River.  Then the armies of Charles could cross the river and scale the walls of the town.  However, the good citizens of Gloucester learned of the strategy and, during the night, dug their bank more distant from the opposite shore.  So . . . when on the following morning Charles’ men attempted to launch “Humpty Dumpty,” it failed to span the river, broke into pieces and sank.2

            Still another story identifies “Humpty Dumpty” as a cannon mounted on the top of a church, designed to protect the town of Colchester from invasion by the Roundheads.  However, “Humpty Dumpty” took a direct hit from a cannon ball and tumbled to the ground, breaking into a thousand pieces.  And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would never be able to put Humpty together again.

            Which is the “real” story?  Take your pick.  Reality has been lost in myth and truth has been reduced to a child’s nursery rhyme.  We can only hope that the meaning of the poem—that those who are inflated with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and invincibility are destined for a great fall—will continue to instruct our consciences.  But there is one nagging question.  After the fall and after life has been smashed into smithereens, is there no way of reconstituting it?  Is there no possibility of putting the pieces back together again?

            Sixty-three years ago our world was thrown into chaos.  Nation rose up against nation and tribe fought against tribe.  When the guns were silenced and the fires extinguished, millions lay dead and millions more were wounded and displaced.  Europe was in ruins and two cities of the mighty Empire of Japan had been wiped from the face of the earth.  Could anything restore humanity back to its former state?  Could any effort rebuild the broken lives and broken relationships that had resulted from the horrors of war?  You know the answer.  The Marshall Plan was conceived to aid in the recovery of Europe.  The United Nations was formed in San Francisco to serve as an international forum to address human need and to forestall future conflict.  Old colonialisms began to crumble and a new spirit of self-determination began to emerge.  A heightened sense of awareness regarding “human rights” burst forth like wildfire and became the passion that inspired the hearts of men and women the world over.  The “Humpty Dumpty of humanity” was being pieced back together again.  Obviously, none of these efforts was perfect.  Old animosities still smoldered; old hatreds still threatened stability; old mistrusts still impeded the coming of the Kingdom of God.  Nevertheless, the endeavors undertaken in the wake of World War II demonstrated that human community could be restored.

            But what about the religious community?  Has it experienced the same kind of fracturing and can it be put back together again?  In the 1800s the Protestant churches were deeply split over a variety of issues—the nature of baptism, how many works of grace there really were, whether or not humans had free will, to name a few.  In foreign lands, however, the missionaries from these churches were having a difficult time explaining their differences to the native population.  It seems that the African and the Asian could not appreciate the subtle distinction between a Baptist and a Methodist, between a Presbyterian and a Congregational, between a Lutheran and a Reformed.  The missionaries were embarrassed.  They realized that their aims were largely the same, but that the sectarian names they represented were an impediment to achieving those aims. 

Out of their realization and embarrassment grew the ecumenical movement—the recognition on the part of the religious community (at least the Protestant religious community) that cooperation, not conflict, ought to be the mark of religious expression.  “Ecumenical” is a word derived from the Greek “oikoumene,” meaning “one household.”  The movement became convinced that somehow the spiritual dimensions of our lives ought to lead us to the conclusion that we are members of “one household.”  While today (approximately 120 years after the movement began) there is no “super-church,” and while only a few of the Protestant churches have effected mergers with one another, yet there is a renewed consciousness throughout the world that faith communities ought to stress what they hold in common, rather than what they deem as distinct.  To this end there has been greater cooperation among religious groups, the formation of interfaith councils and exchange of ministers and ministries.  Indeed, there is presently in this country a movement called “Common Ground”—an effort, spearheaded by a Harvard professor, which seeks to remind the churches what they share, as opposed to what they do not.  All of this certainly sounds as if there is hope for Humpty Dumpty—that despite the fractious character of American religion, the pieces are slowly being fitted together to re-form a “whole egg.”

            But what does this have to do with where we sit?  Unitarian Universalism has not split, though during the past 40 years it has, more than once, come close to “falling off the wall.”  However, individual churches in North America have split.  (Locations shall remain nameless in order to protect the innocent).  The question is:  Can these churches be restored?  Can these communities be reclaimed?  Can all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put Humpty Dumpty together again?  You must believe that the answer is “yes,” else you wouldn’t be here.  I am convinced that the answer is “yes,” or I wouldn’t be here.

            Separation and estrangement are terrible things.  When they occur in a marriage, they have a debilitating and de-humanizing effect.  When they occur in a religious setting, they rend the fabric of the community to shreds.  How can that person claim to be spiritual and harbor the attitudes she does?  How can this person who sits next to me in church believe the way he does?  Why can’t others understand religion the way I do? It’s all so very simple.  Expressions (or thoughts), such as these, continue to exacerbate the situation; and they make it nearly impossible to re-establish the fellowship, the warmth and the caring that should characterize every community of women and men—especially a religious one.

            Rebuilding a religious community—rebuilding a church—requires that we relegate all of those things which separate us as humans—names, designations, religious titles and identities, denominational perspectives, theologies, practices—to a position of secondary importance, and elevate to a level of primary importance simple trust.  Simple trust.  How easy to say; how difficult to effect!  There is something in our very bones that warns us to be cautious.  There is much about the complexity of our contemporary world that reminds us to be on guard.  And yet, communities are not formed (or re-formed) through caution; they are formed through boldness, through daring to trust my care and well-being to another (or to a group of others).  They are formed by my recognition that I am accepted by another (or a group of others).  They are formed by the awareness that my thoughts count, that my hurts will be understood, that my celebrations will become the cause for celebration by the entire community.

            I am reminded of a scene from the movie Charade.  In the course of the story  Audrey Hepburn has fallen in love with Cary Grant.  However, she discovers that he has been lying to her.  In her effort to get away, she is confronted by a gunman (Walter Mathau) who is ready to kill her.  Grant calls out to her to trust him one more time.  Hepburn asks:  “Why?  Why should I trust you?”  To which Grant responds:  “I can’t think of a reason in the world.”  Therein lies the essence of trust—to rely on someone when there is no reason to do so.  Soren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, said that it is like jumping into seventy thousand fathoms of water.  Now I know that this goes against the grain of hard-nosed rationalism.  I know that it is antithetical to our scientific desire for proof.  But I believe that it is this type of reliance that reconstructs the broken pieces of our community and serves as the motivation for this church being “a light to Ft. Myers and to the nations.”

            A recent author observes that “[T]rust does not reside in integrated circuits or fiber optic cables.  Although it involves an exchange of information, trust is not reducible to information.  A ‘virtual’ firm can have abundant information coming through network wires about its supplier and contractors.  But if they are all crooks or frauds, dealing with them will remain a costly process involving complex contracts and time-consuming enforcement.  Without trust, there will be a strong incentive to bring these activities in-house and restore the old hierarchies.”3

            And how do we cultivate this trust.  A moment ago I mentioned the ecumenical movement.  I think that we should initiate a “new” ecumenical movement, particular to Unitarian Universalism, but extended to all who wish to join a community of trust in order to continue their spiritual journey.  Rather than calling it ecumenism, we should call it ec-UU-menism—a movement that reaches across religious divides and acknowledges the commonalities of the human quest.  If we are serious about this new enterprise, we can overcome thinking about others as humanists or Christians or pagans or Buddhists or Jews or Hindus or animists.  Who knows?  If we put this into practice, we may not only re-bind ourselves together as a religious community.  We might become a model for the entire Unitarian Universalist movement—and then for the whole world.

                                     Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

                                    Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

                                    All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

                                    Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

 That is the original (more or less).4  But with our efforts at reconciliation and restoration, a more appropriate verse might be: 

                    The egg lay in pieces all over the ground.

                    The people despaired that a man could be found

                    To gather the yolk and patch up the shell

                    And promise the folk that all would be well.

                     But lo in the distance a trumpet was heard.

                     The king’s men were shouting, the horses were spurred.

                     They raced to the rescue and came to the spot

                     Where Humpty was lying, beginning to rot.

                  And then with the effort of horses and men

                      The parts were assembled and took form again.

                      But this time good Humpty was filled with a soul;

                      Through the efforts of people, the egg was made whole.

                                                                                                                                    AMEN

© 2001, "Mark A. Ehman"                                            Sermon's Page