A sermon by F. Jay Deacon
Preached at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
February 1, 2004
A sermon by F. Jay Deacon
Preached at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
February 1, 2004
I don't know whether we're going to so thoroughly despoil the planet that we choke on poisoned air and convulsions in our climate or if we're going to shift so overwhelming a share of the wealth to the very rich that our economy simply collapses — or whether we will so antagonize virtually every other nation on this globe that we're perpetually at war until that one catastrophic one comes around. I don't know what's going to happen out there.
But I know that, in the meantime, here we are.
Trying to compose our lives, best we can; trying to be the sort of people we can admire.
Here we are, in this community of faith that has made that its project since 1825. Gathered around a faith that holds up before us, draws out of us, those ways of being human that we can admire.
The philosopher Jacob Needleman summarized what those forebears of ours were about, and what we, too are about, when he said this:
They and we have devoted ourselves to the question, how are we, how am I, to live fully in this world of birth and death, the world of organic life on earth, the world of society, responsibility, making and doing — while at the same time fulfilling transcendently higher and greater possibility of human existence?1
We can look at the question academically. We can have grand and noble thoughts about all this. We can read the news and feel outrage and sorrow. We can keep up with, and have thoughts about, just about everything.
But how can we be here; and, how must we be here? Two important questions.
How can we be here — how do we survive and thrive? How do we live with our heartbreaks and hopes?
How must we be here — for what are we responsible; what calling, what imperative, meets us in this place and this time where we live our lives?
The first one comes first. Really, it has to. Like the message on the airplane about putting on your own oxygen mask first. To survive and thrive.
Can I do it all alone? Can you?
Maybe. I mean, it's been done. I can think of times in my life when there really wasn't anybody there who would stand in solidarity with me, give me hope and courage. And in those times we find, because we have to find, that the resources we need for our living are within us.
But.
There is nothing like the noble example, or the reassuring witness, or the wise insight, or the penetrating questions, of somebody else. Or their care, their faith.
There is nothing like the rejuvenating strength of love.
Here we are. We know we need this place. We know our kids do, too. Last week — hearing our eighth graders speak from this pulpit was enough to convince some of you to sign up for the Membership Journey class. Which of us, when young, had anything like that going for us? There are many in this Valley who should be here, who need this place. The world needs its gentle and visionary influence.
Is that too much to say? But before you're too cautious, too hesitant, too reticent, too modest about the importance of this place, consider.
Consider this faith of ours. Because it isn't just we who gather here. There is the presence, the ennobling strength, the far-seeing vision, of this faith of ours.
Eighty miles north of Chicago, in Racine, we have a congregation called the Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church — so named because, for a decade, Rev. Olympia Brown was their minister. She was ordained in 1863 — she was, in fact, the first woman ordained in America with full denominational authority — by our own predecessor, the Universalist Church in America. I might note that the second woman so ordained, Augusta Chapin, was ordained just a few weeks later, by the Universalists, and she served our congregation in Oak Park.
But Olympia. It's now 1920, thirty years after her ministry in Racine, and she's 85 and she returns to preach a sermon called "The Opening Doors." Not coincidentally, this is a few days after women first voted in the United States — and as you can guess, Olympia Brown had devoted herself to the cause of women's suffrage. Her sermon was a celebration of the great breakthrough. She said, "It is worth a lifetime to behold the victory."
You can't think that Olympia Brown would stop at celebrating a past accomplishment. She was issuing a call to perseverance, an appeal for lives shaped, in integrity, by this faith of ours. It was a plea to her old Racine congregation to take this liberating faith into the new world outside the meetinghouse doors. There would be more times and occasions when this vision of the sacred essence of each person would need urgently to be heard in this world. So today we spoke a little passage from that sermon.
Olympia Brown said, "Dear Friends, stand by this faith." Now, to have any vital relevancy to a world that is changing at a pace that leaves us reeling, this faith itself would have to be vital, organic, living, always unfolding new. And now, 84 years later, Olympia Brown would be amazed, and I think pretty thrilled, to see how this faith has unfolded — from a liberal Christianity to a universal faith, far more, far older, far broader and deeper, than any single one of the world's religious traditions. Here, in these lives gathered here, there are great treasures of Buddhist truth, and Hindu, and Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant truth; and there is Sufi ecstasy and meditation, and there is vital truth from neopagan spirituality, and there are people who describe themselves as atheists, theists, and agnostics, and others for whom the transcendent reality isn't about the existence or nonexistence of a god at all. And all of us seeking a way in life that is authentic, vital, guided by an enlightened moral vision.
From its beginning this faith has "placed before us the loftiest ideals," to borrow Olympia Brown's phrase.
Unitarians and Universalists have always asked questions, demanded that their religion make sense to them and make sense of them, proclaimed the dignity of all.
It was our movement that ordained Olympia Brown and a growing sisterhood of women ministers until just over half our clergy today are women.
It was our movement that, among historic religious bodies, was first to ordain out and proud gay and lesbian and transgender ministers and has fought for our rights and dignity for decades.
The death of one of our ministers in Selma, Alabama, brought the attention of the nation to civil rights. Our UUA Board of Trustees adjourned their meeting in Boston to march in Selma to honor the memory of the slain Jim Reeb, in solidarity with Dr. King and with the multitude of people who had for so long borne the bitter yoke of oppression in the American South.
From its beginning this faith has "placed before us the loftiest ideals," and that noble faith lifted their lives out of pedestrian mediocrity into dimensions of meaning and significance they would not have dreamed without its noble influence.
One hundred seventy-nine years ago, fifty men and women signed articles of membership to form a liberal breakaway, the very first, from the rigidly-Calvinist First Church (it was rigidly Calvinist then). In this place the likes of Lydia Maria Child and Ralph Waldo Emerson could be heard.
And 141 years ago, another band of 35 visionary pioneers, many of them heavily involved in the movement to end slavery and the Underground Railway, formed an even more radical religious society in Florence. At its heyday, 500 people would crowd Cosmian Hall to hear Charles Burleigh preach a new religious vision, call for the rights and equality of women in public life; and to condemn the American institution of slavery.
The rest is history. No, wait — the rest is up to us.
You know, all this has been entrusted to us. Its future is in our hands. And to some extent that we shouldn't underestimate, so is the world's future, and humanity's.
So I want to introduce a word here. It isn't a new word, exactly, but maybe it's time for elucidate a little. Stewardship comes from the earthy sense of the English sty, property, and ward, the keeper of the property, the caretaker of the property of another, the keeper of the enclosure where the livestock are kept. It's an old English word that actually translates a Greek one, oikonomos, which means, literally, the keeper of a house.
We are stewards of this world, and of this faith. And for each of us, there is some corner of the world of which each is steward.
Stewardship means that life is not a spectator sport, and surely this faith isn't. And the greater hold this faith of us has in our lives, the more greatly we are gripped by those loftiest ideals this faith has placed before us —, the greater likelihood that this vision of ours will shape the world that is to be.
And — we aren't in this alone. We are strong when we are beholden to each other in community; we are weak when we strive only as individuals. No one of us alone can accomplish the things we are capable of doing together; no individual has the traction of a company of committed souls.
Those who went before us knew they needed the strength of community gathered around this faith. But they knew that they were not in the world so that the world could remain the same. We know that from this faith, sustained by it, they rose to their destiny — learned how to live fully in this world of life and death, this world of society and responsibility; learned how to fulfill that transcendently higher and greater possibility of human existence.
They gathered not just for the sake of how they, personally, could be here — how they might survive and thrive. They gathered not just for a way to live with their heartbreaks and hopes.
They gathered for the sake of how we must be here — they gathered to ask, for what are we responsible; what calling, what imperative, meets us in this place and this time where we live our lives? They gathered for the purpose of carrying out faithfully their stewardship in this life.
Now — we live in two worlds; we live in this place between two worlds: this outer, manifest, visible world that you can kick and it goes thunk, and this inner, the invisible, transcendent reality.
This faith is a kind of meeting point where two worlds converge, the intersection of the transcendent, the Immensity from which all being flows — and this everyday world of human life and struggle.
Our vision of life — and where it departs from the prevailing view of life out there — turns as much as anywhere on our relationship with money.
We live in a time ruled — from the policies of our government and this corrupt administration on down — a time ruled by greed and an insatiable grabbing of money. The social contract has been replaced by the shameless contracts of Halliburton and Enron and the unwritten contracts by which our democracy has been rented or even sold to the highest bidder. Yes, we had better talk about money. Under the terms and conditions of the present order, money has become not so much a way of meeting human need as a means for creating imaginary needs. In the treadmill of its pursuit, have you not found — even while medical science makes our lives longer — that less and less of your life is yours to live?
And at that place where the two worlds come together — there's something else where the transcendent spiritual realm and the nitty-gritty material earthly realm meet — the bridge between those worlds is money.
Jacob Needleman spoke truly when he said "Money must become a tool in the only enterprise worth undertaking . . . to study ourselves as we are and as we can become."2
Think of it as a form of energy. It's not that it's good or bad; merely that we should understand it, try to understand it as fully as we can.
The same forces that are at work in our world were also at work in the world of the ancient Greeks, only the Greeks named these forces gods — Apollo, Aphrodite, Chronos. But in our world these forces exert themselves in the form of money.
In challenging times, a spiritual life means finding a way, a path, in life that is authentic and vital. We have to engage all the forces of life — like the figures we find in ancient myths, we have to confront and master all the forces, high and low, that constitute reality.3 And where that work happens is in the midst of ordinary life.
Money is one essential arena for our spiritual work. Do we serve it, or does it serve us and serve those "loftiest ideals" this faith of ours has placed before us? Well, what is our money for?
I spent a previous life in evangaelical Christian churches where everyone was supposed to tithe. That meant that your commitment to your faith community demands a commitment of ten percent of your income. Well, that's just a touch presumptuous, I think, and it rises from a very literal interpretation of some very ancient scriptures that come from a world very different from ours. I saw people who couldn't pay their rent shamed and scared into tithing to their church. That's wrong. There's a lot more to stewardship than money.
But for heaven's sake! Do you know how we UUs stand by our faith? We good cool liberal types used to be tied with the Christian Scientists for the very lowest per capita giving. But we're not tied for last place anymore — we've won the distinction. That's got to end.
What is there in all the world as important as this faith — as Olympia Brown would say — this faith that has placed before us the loftiest ideals, which has comforted us in sorrow, strengthened us for noble duty and made the world beautiful. What is more important than to stand by this faith?
And I am happy to tell you that we Unitarian Universalists have begun to raise our expectations, to think big, to realize the urgency of this work, the treasure of this faith. And that change is reflected in the way we hold our money. In many of our congregations, the vision and commitment is growing and so, too, are the achievements, the growth, the excellence, the influence and impact in their communities and in the world.
Of course, we could just choose to be complacent, and each year repeat the year just past. We can put on our banner, "Give to us, so we can do about the same as last year." Does that excite you?
It doesn't excite me.
What could we do?
Can we dream, and can we build our dream? Can this place be a gathering place and center for vision, great ideas, and creativity?
Can this place be a factor in the scheme of things?
Can it be a place from which great lives come?
Can there be electricity here, events and occasions where minds and hearts open, where great undertakings are begun, where many people find the stimulus and resources they need to fulfill their own human destiny?
What would it take for this to happen?
Can we add another ministerial presence in the form of a ministerial intern? Can we bring on board a staff member to work on membership development as well as financial development?
Can we build on the social justice framework we have set in place and make it glow with white heat?
Can we build a ministry with young adults and college students, and programs for people in many, many other life-situations and with other needs?
Can we finally face the severe building space limitation that throttles and checks our vitality and growth and compromises our future? Can we do that?
It would be hypocritical of me to say all this to you, and then to make a one or two percent pledge myself. So I'm increasing my own pledge from three to five percent, and you know what? That same proportion of five percent, I happen to know, is being pledged by another member who has very limited financial resources. Why should I not match that commitment?
This isn't about some average pledge, some set figure. It's about stewardship, commitment, and generous faith and hope. A few weeks ago I mentioned a bleak period in my life when I was virtually homeless. I remember how it felt when the pledge canvasser was pressing me to make a generous pledge for the coming year, and I couldn't do it. No one should ever have to feel that way. Always there are those who, for the time being, cannot pledge very much or at all, and your place here, your commitment and faith, are no less honorable and sacred.
Some religious institutions simply charge a flat membership fee. That is not our way: every individual's situation is different. Stewardship is about what you do with what you have.
It's about standing by this faith in whatever way you can, in whatever circumstances you find yourself.
You know, it means something to me — that my religious leaders and my spiritual community stand with me today — courageously and very publicly — welcoming, hailing that Supreme Judicial Court decision; — it means something to me that our General Assembly voted absolutely overwhelmingly back in 1996 to call for full legal recognition of our homes and families and for the extension of the rights and privileges of marriage — did this in 1996 — while today the Bishops of Massachusetts are holding mass rallies to defame and insult gay and lesbian people, instructing Catholic legislators to write laws and amend the constitution to support their faith-based bigotry. I tell you, I'm proud to belong to a faith that stands by me and I mean to stand by this faith.
In the great Unitarian library in London I read, in yellowed documents from the 1700s, the writings of one of our great British Unitarian pioneers, Gilbert Wakefield, who dared to challenge an oppressive empire of church and state, almost all alone, in his day, and spent his last years in Dorchester prison. The social historian E.P. Thompson wrote of him4, and I quote, "some strange stove raged inside him."
How much does it matter that we are here? What strange and wonderful stove rages inside us, and what does it matter that it rages?
What will be our legacy?
What must we do, and how can we design our efforts, so that what we do here will count?
We are small. We don't have the membership or influence that a lot of other forces have in our time.
A wise and very bold teacher long ago compared the proportions of things to a minute mustard seed compared to the whole world. What was the miracle of the parable of the mustard seed, and the parable of the sower and the seed? It was the life inherent in the seed itself, and the creative intelligence inherent in it. Your job is to plant it and nurture its growth. It will do the rest. It will surprise you. So will this faith of ours.
Martin Luther King said our lives begin to end on the day that we become silent about the things that matter. At critical moments — both in our lives and in the life of the world — when somebody has arisen and spoken for the noblest human/divine impulses — some corner has been turned. More is in the balance today than we could ever know.
Stewardship means you're responsible for what you've got, for the power you've got, for the seed you have to sow, for the investment of whatever power is given to you.
There is nothing in all the world so important as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before us the loftiest ideals, which has comforted us in sorrow, strengthened us for noble duty and made the world beautiful.
Dear Friends, stand by this faith.
©2004 by F. Jay Deacon. All rights reserved.
The Gospel of Mark, chapter 4: [26f]
The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knofsws not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain . . . But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.
From the Gospel of Thomas, chapter 20.
The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us what the kingdom of God is like."
He said to them, "It's like a mustard seed. It's the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky."
William James, 1907
from Pragmatism
Suppose that the world's author put the case to you before creation, saying: "I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own `level best.' I offer you the chance to take part in such a world. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents sufficiently to face the risk?" [Or would you say] that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity?
Olympia Brown, 1920
Dear friends, stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before us the loftiest ideals, which has comforted us in sorrow, strengthened us for noble duty and made the world beautiful. Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message, that you are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost. Go on finding ever new applications of these truths and new enjoyments in their contemplation, always trusting in life and in love.
We gather as those who carry burdens, race to deadlines, attend to a multitude of cares; as those whose days and hours are filled with the routine necessities of life. We gather with feelings deeply felt and feelings deeply buried: hope and disappointment, gratitude and resentment, love and loneliness, hearts filled and sometimes torn. We have come, bearing within us all these things, holding them as we can, lifted by energies and weighted down by burdens of many kinds.
Let there be released in us our dreams
release our noblest dreamsRenew our dreams within us
unbind them,
Let the wounds be healed that separate us from our noblest dream
Let fears subside, let our yearnings be renewed and refined,
Seen through eyes cleansed by our tears, seen new, seen more clearly and understood more fully
And let there rise from these lives and from this community of covenant — let there rise new splendors, in great beauty and strength
In this silence.