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A Beacon, A Sanctuary, A Powerful Voice Rev. Paul Beckel First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org May 6, 2007
This being human is a guest-house, every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house, empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. Rumi
A human being is a part of a whole called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Albert Einstein, in Ideas and Opinions
WELCOMEWe come together today, not because we expect to find answers here, But rather because we expect to be encouraged in our questioning. We come together today, not because we are certain of our own righteousness, But because we are continually searching for what is true, beautiful, and good. We come together today, not because we seek absolution for our sins, But to acknowledge our failures and to seek courage to make amends. We come together today, not because we need to be told what to believe and how to act, But because we gain courage from one another to act according to our own conscience. We come together today, not to find a God remote and unapproachable, But to discover what is transcendent and transforming within and between each of us. We come together today, not because we believe that holiness exists within these walls alone, but rather to have our hearts and minds directed to the holiness of all that is. For these reasons, and countless others unspoken, we come together today. [Suzanne Meyer, adapted]
We also come together today to pool our resources so that together we might accomplish what alone we cannot. Today I will be asking you to support an effort by the Unitarian Universalist Association to launch a national marketing campaign. If you are here for the first time let me assure you that you are our guest and you should just let that collection plate pass you by with a smile. But still, if you are here to find out about Unitarian Universalism and to ask yourself whether our liberal religious heritage is one that can challenge you, and help you to become whole, then you’ve come on a good day. Welcome.
GATHERING SONG Gather the Spirit #347 RESPONSIVE READING by Gordon McKeeman Ministry is all that we do—together.
Ministry is that quality of being in community that affirms human dignity—beckons forth hidden possibilities, invites us into deeper, more constant, reverent relationships, and carries forward our heritage of hope and liberation.
Ministry is what we do together as we celebrate triumphs of our human spirit: miracles of birth and life, wonders of devotion and sacrifice.
Ministry is what we do together with one another—in terror and in torment, in grief, in misery and pain, enabling us in the presence of death to say yes to life.
We who minister speak and live the best we know with full knowledge that it is never quite enough. And yet we are reassured by lostness found, fragments reunited, wounds healed and joy shared.
Ministry is what we all do—together.
MUSICAL MEDITATIONMESSAGE I served a congregation in suburban Cleveland for 5 years before I came to Wausau. That congregation, SouthWest UU, had recently been launched by a grant from a large congregation a couple of suburbs to the north. It was a very generous gift that West Shore UU made to get SouthWest UU started. West Shore had held a capital campaign and they had designated 10% of the money raised not for their own needs but to help another congregation get started nearby.
Since I directly benefited from that support I have always felt grateful, and I have fantasized about passing that gift forward. Unfortunately, in the context of our recent capital campaign, this would not have succeeded. Even though our recent fundraising has been wildly successful, the conditions weren’t right for something like the West Shore/SWUU deal.
For most of us there have been times when just getting by was all that was feasible. I hope that this church will be a place for people who are just getting by. And also for those with a few extra bucks in their pockets, and also for those with more money than they know what to do with. I especially hope we will be a place for people who move in and out of those situations over the course of their lifetimes.
Opportunities to support the growth of nearby congregations will come at other times in other forms. Even today our congregational president, Richard Olson, is preaching down in Stevens Point.
I feel fortunate to have these neighborly UU connections. Next weekend I’ll be doing a pulpit exchange with Rev. Roger Bertschausen from Fox Valley UU in Appleton. In the past 10 years or so that congregation has grown from around 100 members to around 400 members. I’m not saying we need to be like Appleton. Actually, since they are in the planning stages for their own capital campaign, I anticipate that their leaders are going to be looking in this direction for inspiration and friendly challenge.
Our enormously successful capital campaign, by the way, is an example of the many benefits of being in association with other congregations. UUA consultants helped us to recognize what was feasible and then, without controlling the details, they helped us to see what we could do for ourselves.
Also next weekend, speaking of denominational connections, Christian DeGregorio and I will be going with four youth group members to a district UU youth conference in Appleton. We are looking to our future and excited to see the development of young leaders and strong connections within our wider movement.
== What is a sanctuary? A sanctuary is not a space, not even a pretty space with evocative colored windows and ancient mystical songs. If you come into this space with a troubled mind, it may be hard to let it go unless there is a person here with whom you can connect. More than the soaring vaults, we are each other’s sanctuary from the raging absurdity out there.
But sanctuary is not all we can be, and sanctuary is not our final purpose. Because we have to leave this place. We have to go back out. We have to do more than provide sanctuary here. To fulfill our purpose we have to prepare ourselves and one another to go out. Not to spread a particular message, but to live with honesty, courage, and grace.
How do we prepare ourselves and one another for such a task? As if I don’t already ask enough of you I also ask that you be human with one another. I ask you to be forgiving of one another. I ask you to pay attention, figure things out for yourself, and take responsibility for your own opinions and decisions. And in return I offer you no final solutions, no eternal bliss.
Instead I ask you to stick up for one another. Even for the craziest, even for the annoying, even for those in different stages of enlightenment (that is, even people who we think are far far away from anything like enlightenment).
That’s asking a lot. You don’t even know most of the people in this room but I’m asking you to try to know and appreciate them anyway. I’m asking you to be role models to each others’ children, to drive one another to church, and to put up with inconveniences for one another.
I ask you to converse with one another about religion, one of your least favorite topics. Oh we like to talk about other people’s stupid religious views but I ask you to talk about your own religious understanding. Even if you have to stumble and be inarticulate and seem confused, which is difficult for many of you -- who are accustomed to speaking clearly and with authority.
I ask you to defend religious freedom. Which is no easy cause these days. Americans are increasingly ambivalent about religious freedom, free speech, privacy, and other basic principles of our movement. I ask you to make religious freedom real, not just an idea but a practice. I ask you to create a sanctuary for religious freedom.
== What is a sanctuary? There is no sanctuary here that is not made of your hearts and hopes and commitment to make it one. Some of your friends and family won’t understand this. They will ask you, again: how can you be a decent person if you don’t have the right understanding about God... or how can you have any morality if you don’t have the threat of hell or the promise of heaven? These questions really trouble me. Did I get up to change my children’s diapers in the middle of the night to avoid the wrath of God? No. I did so because I love my children and they need me.
I also love this church. And I am here, with you, way too often in the middle of the night, Saturday nights in particular, because I love you.
I love this movement and I love this congregation. I love your goodness and I’m working on loving your wickedness as well. Give me a few more years for that part.
I ask a lot of you. But the gifts I am asking you to share with one another are the very gifts that you have been preparing your whole life to be able to give.
== In colonial New England the churches had box pews with walls all around, and a little door for each little box. Why? Well, those colonists had come here in rejection of government controlled religion and government funded religion, so renting out pews like sky boxes for the wealthy was one way to keep the lights on.
Except they didn’t have lights. And they didn’t even have a furnace. In fact, that’s another reason that they had pew boxes: so renters of the box could keep their space warm. Yes, in the winter they would bring from home a metal box – kind of like a cat carrier -- full of hot coals. This was called a foot warmer and it would provide some comfort for those who could afford one.
Most of those colonial New England churches, founded by the Puritans, were congregational. They were congregational in reaction to having been ruled by hierarchies in the past, either by the king of England or by the bishop of Rome. Fed up with that, they said no, we will not bow down to authority above and far away. Our authority will be within and among us; our authority will be our collective selves. We’ll fund ourselves, we’ll elect our own ministers, and we will know God’s will through our own direct experience.
You might be surprised when you think of the Puritans as stuffy and strict, that these were our forebears of liberal religion. But once they committed to the authority of direct personal experience of the divine, and local congregational power, well, things started evolving in a lot of different directions.
So after 150 years of such evolution, even before the Revolutionary war – in which the original Patriots told their government to go to hell -- there had developed quite a rift between those congregations who stuck to traditional Calvinist theology and those who started to think for themselves ...and celebrate thinking for themselves in religion, and even to build congregations around this notion.
The growing distance between these two approaches to religion came to a head in the first few decades of the 1800s. The word, Unitarian, which had till this time been a word of opprobrium (kind of like “queer” twenty years ago) was finally embraced by a diverse assortment of liberals; before long a quarter of the churches in Massachusetts had taken on the label “Unitarian” with pride.
In Rowe, MA, in 1827, the church split, but not over whether to be Unitarian or Trinitarian (they were decisively Unitarian). But they split, and ever since their little conflict has played out over and over. You see, the Rowe MA church split because one group wanted to move beyond the practice of private foot warmers and instead install a furnace. This way everyone would contribute toward, and share, the warmth. Those who objected to this scheme left and built another church down the road without a furnace.
I think we can be honest, and we don’t have to feel guilty admitting that we struggle with this same question in every era! As technology advances and when resources change (when budgets are tight or flush) expectations change. I was looking around the building this week thinking about phone systems. Because when we contracted with Nickolai Construction last fall, we had to leave several things out of the contract, pieces we could arrange for ourselves later when we had a few more dollars to work with. So now it’s getting close and we need to figure out how and where to wire for phones. It may seem obvious that we would put phones in the offices, but in the disorder of our temporary move to Yawkey Hall Samantha ended up without one. So this week I’m looking around wondering where to put phone jacks, and trying to think frugally, wondering: do we need phones in the kitchen or Yawkey Hall or the basement? And I think, lots of people have cell phones if there is an emergency. Is it necessary for us to provide phones or do we just ask people to bring their own?
Why am I sharing this trivial administrative detail? Because churches of every denomination go thru these debates year after year. Should coffee be a form of hospitality or should we be like some of the mega-churches that have their own Starbucks? Should religious education be a basic part of our mission or should we charge an additional fee to families with kids? Should we charge people to have weddings? The list goes on and on and there are no clear dividing lines. A lot of you have Ipods. Maybe it would make more sense, instead of paying an organist, to ask you to bring your own music and turn on your headphones during the musical meditation.
Those early Unitarians and Universalists were seriously bent on independence from outside control. Yet even these people found themselves gathering together, not just as individuals within congregations, but as congregations joining in association. The first convention of Universalist congregations was in 1785 -- 222 years ago. They gathered knowing that they needed one another and could provide mutual aid.
So that’s an ongoing question for us as a congregation. It’s a question for us as an association of just over 1,000 congregations in the U.S. And certainly is a question for each of us individually: should we insulate, or radiate? Should we keep our heat among ourselves or should we take down the barriers? This is a question of efficiency and evolving technology, but it’s also a question of purpose.
It’s a human inclination to hold on to the good stuff. I believe it is also a deeply human inclination to give it away.
I was shocked when I first heard the story about the furnace. I had never imagined a church without a furnace. I just took it for granted. How often do we also take it for granted that this town will have a place for religious liberals? Please let’s not take that for granted. Many many people in this town do not know that a liberal and religion can be uttered in the same sentence.
They don’t know. And that calls us, I believe, to give ourselves away.
Yes, I think this is one of the deepest of the human predicaments (and there are many): the longing we have between hanging on and letting go, between frugality and generosity, between security and liberation. These are not pairs of opposites. Frugality and generosity. The spiritually healthy person -- and I know several here -- the spiritually healthy person has mastery over both sets of inclinations: hanging on and letting go, frugality and generosity, security and liberation. I wish I knew how….
== This is a weird time in the life of the congregation. I don’t know if I have a clue about what is going on here. After years of really deep and broad collective effort to put us into this time of transition, I have a sense that people are ready for a breather. And this year has been a breather in a lot of ways, weirdly quiet, even a bit anticlimactic. And at the same time the generosity is just off the charts. You love this church. There is no doubt about it.
Maybe it’s just a fallow time. That would make sense after all of the focus groups we’ve put ourselves through in recent years. I also have a sense that with all of your generosity, you’ve decided to throw up your hands and just give it all away. Those of you who are relatively new, those of you who will become members next year or a couple of years from now -- whether you know it or not, you have been given a multimillion dollar gift to enjoy, to share, and to take care of. It’s yours.
It’s yours. It’s a gift. So you can walk away from it. You can use it, suck it dry, and leave it for dead (that happens to churches all the time). Or you can say, “Wow!” and become a grateful steward of this priceless treasure. I said multimillion dollar gift a minute ago even though a price can’t be put to it, because what is “priceless” and intangible is hard to imagine.
So let me clarify: the gift I’m talking about is NOT this building. The gift I’m talking about is this congregation. And when I say this congregation I’m not talking about two hundred some church members, plus another 200 kids and friends and visitors. I’m talking about 137 years of liberal religious heritage. 222 years of American Universalism. Countless millennia of human beings striving to grow in their humanity. The gift you have been given includes all of this history: the memories, the hopes, the acts of courage and compassion and missteps and recoveries. This gift includes the collective wisdom of lived experience of parents and poets, business and civic leaders, and renegades.
But I’m not just talking about 137 years of people or their actions, I’m talking about their interactions, their relationships that still pervade the atmosphere here, still touch and shape us and hold us to account. The countless rides given to neighbors, and I’m not just being romantic here it really happened – even sleigh rides. The countless acts of cleaning up after a service or an event, unasked, unrecognized. The countless times that people didn’t feel like coming, but they knew that there would be someone visiting who would be looking to put a face on Unitarian Universalism, and they wanted it to be a welcoming face. Countless times that people were caught in the act, acting on our principles of honoring the inherent worth and dignity of someone who was deeply doubting themselves. Acting on the principle of respect for the interdependent web of creation by making sure that the recyclables got into the right container. Little stuff and big stuff. Ministry of every sort.
Why do I love this movement so? I stumbled upon Unitarian Universalism when I was lost. And so I’m grateful to have been saved by some friendships when I was deeply in distress. That was 1990, 7 years after I had given up on religion for good. And you know, things in my life are better now. But I still have disappointments, I have regrets about stupid things that I say and do almost every day. I find myself being hypocritical; I find myself reticent and unable to share what I wish I could share. So I love this movement that keeps reminding me, without kicking me when I’m down, reminding me of my ideals, and supporting my freedom and my responsibility to define and to live up to those ideals.
There is so much I want to share with you. I want to share my excitement about experiences I have had: experiences of transcendence while sitting far out in the wilderness alone. And I want to share with you the experiences I have had with small groups of people: brainstorming and then putting our ideas to work. And I want to share with you my transcendent experiences, one-on-one with people, sometimes in the midst of fear and pain, uncertainty and frustration… and sometimes in the height of joy.
And I want to share the transcendent experiences too which involve no feeling whatever: the calm silence in the midst of hundreds of people.
== Universalism began in colonial times as the sharing of Good News. It began as a move away from the Calvinist message of doom. Circuit riders, esp. in the Midwest, went from place to place sharing not hell but hope. They needed nothing but their hearts, a horse, and some hospitality. The Universalist circuit riders faced questions not unlike those we face today. How can you preach a religion without hell? If you give people authority to believe what they believe, won’t you just end up worshipping the lowest common denominator? No, we end up honoring the highest values that we hold in common. They ask, how can you have a religion that’s not based on the supernatural? I mean, what are you going to preach about? Love? Gratitude? Forgiveness, Hope? Generosity? Freedom, kindness? What kind of a religion is that?
Well, it’s called Unitarian Universalism, and it is alive in us. It has grown and grown in ways that are much deeper than numbers. Over the past few years the numbers have spoken powerfully in that your contributions to our future have been phenomenal. But much more important, I think, has been the less visible growth, underground, in the way we understand and appreciate one another, in our growth of our congregational self concept, and the growth of trust in our future… Our growth has been evident far beyond these walls where we are putting our principles in action in our workplaces and neighborhoods and families.
== Once again today I am presenting an opportunity for you to contribute financially to the growth of our movement. The Unitarian Universalist Association rarely asks congregations to take collections for special projects. It was five years ago that such a collection was taken to start campus ministries. Over 1 million dollars collected that year from over 700 congregations made it possible to begin UU groups on over 100 campuses around the country.
The UUA is not a hierarchy telling congregations what to do. The UUA is an association of congregations -- it is us. The UUA exists so that we can pool our collective resources in order to create hymnbooks and curricula for children’s and adult religious education, for building loans and the education of ministers and religious educators and musicians and lay leaders in shared ministry.
Today congregations across the country are being asked to contribute to a project aimed at growth for the association. We realize that numbers are not everything, but we believe that there are more -- many more -- people out there who would find our message to be liberating and saving. We are collecting for a national advertising campaign to help more people recognize that “liberal” and “religious” can exist in the same sentence. I do not think that the details of the marketing have been worked out, but there have been trial runs in a couple of cities in recent years in preparation.
And actually not every UU congregation is holding this collection today. Most will be holding their collections next fall. But Rev. Stephan Papa, who discovered Unitarian Universalism in this very congregation in the 1960s is organizing this campaign, and he has asked us to be leaders, along with 7 other congregations who are taking the collection this spring. So let’s show what we can do.
Again, visitors, guests, please pass that plate on by with a smile. We certainly have no expectation that you will be doling out for an organization you’ve never heard of before. But I do ask you to come back again next week and continue to learn about us and see if we can walk our talk about hospitality, hope, and meaning.
If you can give $50 to this cause, bless you. If you cannot, bless you. You can also take an envelope home, write a check, or put it on VISA. If you would like to contribute but the cash is not flowing these days, there is something even bigger you can give, and that is to share of yourself with another person this week. Take the risk to tell another person about your quirky religious beliefs. And I say that because ALL religious beliefs are quirky. ALL of ‘em. It’s just rare for people to admit perspectives that defy convention. It’s rare for people to listen to others and to allow others to share their own quirky views without passing judgment. I am grateful that we have such a place here, together. |