First Universalist Church

The earth has no desire to stay asleep. That is…impossible! Unnatural. But we women and men, we sometimes seem to want to snore away the years, bury our heads in the covers and hope that someone or something else will tend to the growing and the changing and the life started anew. How much better off would we be if we had skins to shed. Leaves that could not help but unfurl,… if we could simply rub our backsides good and hard against a tree and be done with it, but no, our growth is something that happens inside, and so we can hide it, and we can, we think, avoid the pain if we give up the possibilities.

Jesus of Nazareth is the oldest of all stories: A god in man’s clothing, a goddess’ child come to earth in the dark of winter. He was human, like all of us, but he whispered the earth’s vernal music, wake up, wake up, wake up.

He was a rebel and a revolutionary, and his people wanted him to be a king. They wanted a military leader, someone to overthrow the Romans, someone with THAT KIND of might. Mary Magdalene came and broke a jar of the most costly perfume over his head, proclaiming him king and dead man all in one movement, and the people stayed asleep, upset about the COST of the oil, about her presumptuousness, and Jesus asked them to see her, to see HIM. He sang the earth’s vernal song, wake up, wake up.

He warned his disciples of what was to come, went to the garden to pray – not the temple, the garden, to pray, because he was making a choice he thought he’d never have to make, to die in order to live, to give up being king of his people in order to serve them most fully – and he had to say it out loud this time – WAKE UP, wake up, my friends, can you not stay awake, even for the shortest time, even for our final hours together? Wake up, wake up….

He was handed over to the Romans, shouted down by his own people, killed for being a political traitor, killed like a thief not a God, and the Romans themselves – Pontius Pilate - asks the people, can you not see, can you not hear, why kill your own king, why sacrifice THIS man? But the people are asleep, and nothing Jesus says gets through to them, and nothing Pilate says makes any difference…they cannot hear his whisper…Wake up, my people, wake up…..

If he had shouted it with military MIGHT!!…but then he would not be Jesus and his message would have no saving grace. He came to proclaim heaven on earth, which meant, to his people in his time, that he would organize them into an army and fight the Romans tooth and nail, and perhaps he meant to. I think he did…. But he was true, instead, to his own calling, to the part of him that no one owned, not the Romans, and not even his own people and so he told them the truth as he knew it: That terrible, unpopular truth that a prophet must tell - That more killing would not lead to freedom. That more killing would not lead to peace. That the revolution was within, within the Jewish people themselves, within their own families, their own religious meetings, their own beliefs - that if they were truly living the faith they professed no power on earth could hold them hostage. He told them this at the time when the whole earth can not help but wake up and be reborn, he told them this at the Vernal Equinox, during the days of the year in which we now stand, told them to wake up when surely they could choose to do nothing else,… and yet they slumbered on, ……

This is the oldest and most sacred of all stories, far older than Christianity, and all our faiths will tell it until we can hear. Some day, in the darkest of times, we will finally wake up to the fact that we are the ones creating the darkness, that no one else can be blamed. We will go back to the beginning, shocked and amazed, as the women disciples do, and start with this new knowledge beating fast and true inside of us, that the greatest power in the world is silent and filled with light – that life triumphs again and again, despite our frustration and despair, despite all the roadblocks we throw in the way of our own happiness and fulfillment. Life is the greatest power of all, and we need do nothing less, and nothing more, than embrace it, and grow.

“God, send Easter,” writes poet Lucille Clifton, “ and we will lace the jungle on and step out brilliant as birds against the concrete country/feathers waving as we/dance toward jesus/sun reflecting mango/and apple as we/glory in our skin….the green of Jesus/is breaking the ground/and the sweet/smell of delicious Jesus/is opening the house and/the dance of Jesus music/has hold of the air and/the world is turning/in the body of Jesus and/the future is possible.

Wake up, my friends, my people, whispers the spring, wake up. Every dream we dreamt in our long winter is possible – the good news waiting to be proclaimed. Wake up.

“Full Bloom” Service

3/2/08

Reading: “A beloved community requires a fallow field in which to plant its seeds.

Because this is our community, the one that we not only seek, but create and grow, it is born out of our intention, our creativity and passion. We must both see it in our mind’s eye, see the vast potential first, then create it for ourselves – and for others. Remember (and much of creating community is just that, remembering) that you will create your beloved community from two sources: one is the knowledge – the remembering – that it already exists and two is the accepting, the embracing it when you recognize it.

Just as the key to leaving the Victim Triangle is summoning the courage to make the journey away from playing the old roles, so is the creation of your Beloved Community summoning the courage to be your true self. Yes, it is often lonely out there, but as you deepen your trust in your true self you will attract community members to you.

Remember to allow astonishment and openness to the possibilities of new members showing up from unfamiliar places, in new ways, surprising you with their availability, their numbers and their love for you. This is your community, and you can create it as you wish, as it meets your present-day needs and desires. It is a living, organic creation, changing, flowing, moving, shifting, transforming as you and your colleagues do. Participants come and go, yet still some core remains, the core of loving affirmation of who you really are.” - Rev Jacob Watsonermon

I do not have the green thumb in my family. My partner, Craig, became concerned this past fall that the jungle of houseplants in his office was scaring away his staff. He asked me if he could bring some of the potted plants from his office to my house. I said, “Yes, absolutely, as long as you would like them to wither and die”…..I do not have the green thumb in my family.

So, when the canvass committee announced this year’s stewardship theme, Let It Grow, my private thought was – Oh no. I am in so much trouble.

The time has come, my friends, to talk of many things. We are getting ready once again to pledge our time and talents and our money to this church community, and as you gather in different ways to communicate your hopes and dreams for this place, your needs and your gifts, some of you have asked me, What is MY vision for our church? What is my passion? Why am I here, and where am I taking us? And while there is no doubt in my mind that a healthy church community is like a garden in full bloom, you’ll forgive me if I depart from that metaphor. It’s just hard for me to picture myself as a gardener. I don’t spend any time in gardens, but I spend a whole lot of time here, and I’ve been paying close attention.

Ministers have passions just as their congregants do. Some of my colleagues are fueled by their passion to grow churches, and they do that very well. Some are fueled by their passion to preach, and some by their music ministry. A growing number of my colleagues are passionate about children’s ministry, some are driven to provide crisis care in a variety of situations, and some get out of bed every morning for the sole reason that they and their people are involved in a specific cause for justice. My driving passion in ministry is none of these things, though I am educated about, and engaged in, all of them. My driving passion in ministry is always love of a people. My driving passion in ministry is all of you, and the hope, every day, that my love for a group of Unitarian Universalist people can help them uncover their full strength and their full beauty and that together we will change the world. I have not come here with a vision for this church, I have come here with a deep desire to hear YOUR vision of this church, and to help lead you where you want to go. I have all the skill sets you will need to navigate. I await a destination.

It’s important, before we name the destination, that we see who and what we are now. Let me tell you what I’ve seen and heard of you and amongst you this year.

This is a church that has struggled to have enough money, enough people, and a consistent ministry. That is the recent past. In that recent past there was a sort of family of people keeping everything going, from the bean suppers to the RE program. No matter how many people attended this church, the culture has been that of a family, and the church was upheld by, and served, that family. Luckily for us, many members of that family are here with us still.

This is a church that has enough money, enough people, and a consistent ministry. That’s where we are today. On top of that, we have a religious education program that outstrips anything a small family can keep track of. With 190 members, and 130 children, our kids just about outnumber us, and that’s a wonderful problem to have! The community uses our once quiet building 7 days a week. Try to schedule a meeting with your committee at the last minute and you will see – there’s no space left in the inn! And, as far as I can tell, we officially welcome about 40 newcomers a year, with another 40 whom we see at Sunday morning services but who may not make it to one of our Newcomer gatherings. We are, without meaning to be, a seeker church, the kind of church evangelical Christian churches strive to be.

When you have a family culture, but thriving programs and a steady stream of new members and visitors the people who care about such things call you an “In-between” church. We are an in-between church, no longer a small church, and not yet a big church, and this is not a comfortable place to be. If you’ve been here a long time and you feel tired, that’s why. If you’re new and you feel a tension here, that’s why.

Some of you may have noticed during your Interim year last year that in-between churches make ministers nervous. Actually, they make some ministers afraid. It’s the Monty Python skit, “Run away….Run away….” But fear not, my friends. In-between is a beautiful place to be.

If you’ve been reading my column in our newsletter you will know that I am a fan of poet and artist Brian Andreas. One of my favorite pieces of his work is this picture of a crazy skinny black and white body with an exaggerated, almost monstrous, but luminous face attached to it and the text reads, “This is a creature on fire with love, but it’s still scary since most people think love only looks like one thing, instead of the whole world.”

All we have to do, folks, to ease the tension and move on into our new skin, is become a church on fire with love.

A church on fire with love – and unafraid.

A church on fire with love does not spend time debating whether or not it will grow, and whether or not something will be lost when it does. A church on fire with love goes out and tells all the lonely, struggling, bruised and hopeful people in Yarmouth, N. Yarmouth, Cumberland, Falmouth, Portland and…. – bruised and hopeful people, people like us – that we are here waiting to embrace them with open arms. A church on fire with love shouts its own existence from the rooftops, and when people show up to find out what all the rucus is about, a church on fire with love welcomes them, we embrace them – the more the merrier, the extra place at the welcome table is already set. We were looking for you, says the church on fire, we were hoping you’d come.

A church on fire with love has a driving passion that is SHARED. There is a mission, in a church on fire with love, and everyone there knows what it is. After all, you don’t proclaim who you are and what you believe most efficiently in newspaper ads and radio spots….We will put out banners this spring, and we will have a website that fully represents us, we’re working hard on our communications. But we most effectively proclaim who we are by what we do. In the past we have each done our own thing, in this church community. Each of us running in a different direction, while others yell, “Good job. That’s lovely!” as they run off the other way. In a church on fire with love we will make the hard choices and then we will move together, as one, and we will use our considerable economic resources and our love of environmentalism to tear down systems of oppression in our area and across the world – some of us pulling the babies out of the water, and some of us heading upstream to see how they got there in the first place, but all of us working toward the same goal and putting our faith in action, WITH our families – WITH our children and elders - with one another, every day.

A church on fire with love is not afraid. A church on fire with love calls it like it is. We are not here to be NICE to one another, we are here to deal with the hard stuff out loud, to dive in deep and plumb the depths of our souls. You can deal with the pleasantries around the water cooler at work and over coffee with your in-laws. Come to a church on fire with love and demand that people be their best selves, and know that the same will be asked, demanded even, of you. Not everyone likes everyone at a church on fire with love, but they love one another deeply. In this way they get things done, and done right. We don’t have to spend much time tip-toeing around things, when we are a church on fire with love, wondering whose feelings we’re going to hurt with our suggestions. Instead, we are all empowered to take ownership of this place and to be involved, and when something needs painting we all paint it and when something needs fixing we all fix it and when there’s celebrating to be done we’re all there laughing and when we mourn we mourn together. No more of this “Come if you can” attitude, my friends. A church on fire with love says, “This is THE place to be!” A church on fire with love is full of people whose mantra is, “WE. SHOW. UP.”

If you’re one of those straight-shooting, type A, balance sheet kind of people and you want to know, plainly, where your money is going to go this next year, I can tell you that we’re paying a top-notch staff – many of us engaged in UU ministry at the national level as well as what we give to this community, that the music ministry is expanding, that the RE program is the best program in Maine, and that our youth programming is constantly expanding – we serve three different groups of youth right now, that we are ready to proceed with a new mission statement and an integrated social justice program, that our website is being updated and a communications team put in place, that adult religious education programming is another top priority, and that the District is clamoring for our attention and we refuse it at our own risk. Those are the facts, and there’s a much longer list that we can talk about anytime.

If you ask me WHY I think you ought to pledge, I will tell you that it is a great thing, the greatest thing, to wake up in the morning driven by a passion for ministry and for all of you; it is a great gift to be a person on fire with love, and I suffer no delusion that love looks like one thing, or that anyone in the WORLD doesn’t want some. When I dream about this place, I dream that we proclaim ourselves and be UNAFRAID, that everyone who walks in that door will be welcomed the way I was, by your best selves, by your warmth and joy and hope. We provide something the secular world cannot: we’re here to deeply engage with one another, not just to listen and talk to laugh and eat, but to feed and be fed, to give to one another acceptance and understanding, a safety and a challenge so profound that we can’t live without it. If I have a vision of this church, it is of a group of people the rest of the world cannot live without, which is who I think you really are.

A church on fire with love.

A garden, if you will, in full bloom.

2/3/08 - Mission Impossible

Part I - Jenn

Imagine, if you will, that today is the first time you’ve crossed the threshold into a Unitarian Universalist church. Maybe for some of you, it really is. Were you to open our hymnal to page 2, look at the 7 principles that Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote, you would get a sense – rather quickly – of a religious tradition that is committed to the well-being of others when your eyes land on phrases like “inherent worth and dignity,” “justice, equity and compassion,” “world community” and “peace, liberty and justice for all.” But what it might take you a bit longer to uncover – in fact, some of us may still be doing so – is just how vast and how deep our history of service to the wider community runs. A few minutes ago, our Sr. Youth reminded us of people who have gone down in the history books as having advocated for the rights of others and have made great strides in the name of justice. But up until a few minutes ago, did you realize that those people were Unitarian or Universalist? The list of our Unitarian and Universalist foremothers and forefathers dedicated to social justice is long and distinguished. Their accomplishments are significant. I could recite a litany today, but I wouldn’t want to spoil all your fun. However, I would invite you to take some time to explore our history and get to know some of our religious ancestors yourselves. When you do, I’m guessing you’ll be amazed by the legacy that is ours to uphold.

That legacy, according to the words of UU minister Rev. Richard Gilbert, calls us to a prophetic imperative – a religious mandate for the church to address the systemic problems of society. Given the complexities of today’s world, social change cannot be dependent on a few charismatic individuals but calls for the combined energies of those joined together for the common good.

So what is the role of the church in today’s society? According Thomas Price, there are 4 elements: social service, social education, social witness and social action.

            Social service describes direct assistance given to those in need. For us here in Yarmouth, that would include donations we deliver to St. Bart’s food pantry, monthly meals we make for Friendship House, our split-plate offerings.

            Social education requires us to look at the root causes of oppression, what caused the need for social service and why. In recent years, we have studied the social and political histories of places like Romania and Guatemala. We have educated ourselves about global warming, torture, peacemaking and economic development.

            Social witness is the process of making our convictions public – whether by word or deed. This is where our mission work comes in as we have traveled to deepen relationships with our partner church in Gyepes, Romania and with Safe Passage in Guatemala. Some of us have been to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina or to Orangeburg, SC following the burning of black churches in the south 10 years ago. And some of us have publicly pledged our support for the rights of same sex couples to marry.

            Social action refers to an organized effort to influence policy- and decision-makers. Many in this church participate regularly and enthusiastically in electoral and issue campaigns at the local, state and national levels. Some of us even have devoted untold hours to ensuring that one of our own win state office.

There are many more examples beyond what I’ve mentioned here that demonstrate how we live out our call to social justice. Our concern for the wider world is part of the fabric – the curriculum, if you will – of who we are as a congregation. But in order to respond to the prophetic imperative, Rev. Gilbert challenges us to “grow people of prophetic fire who will understand that helping to repair the world is no extra-curricular activity, it is simply part of what it is to be Unitarian Universalist.”

In order to grow people of prophetic fire, then, we must be intentional in our efforts. We must weave into our congregational curriculum opportunities to share our good fortune, educate ourselves about oppression, bear witness to that oppression and do the work to move beyond systems that oppress. One way of doing this is, well, as our sermon topic suggests, by undertaking mission work. Christmas Eve Homilies.

Or rather, as the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King told us, no one of us is free, until we are all of us free. Mission work, then, is no longer about converting the heathens, if it ever was, but about teaching ourselves how to be advocates for others by engaging in their lives and struggles, so that we can name what keeps us and them from being truly free in this life, and so that we can break those chains.

In the prophetic church we still come to church to worship together. Worship is a celebration of life, and of love, a time for reflection and renewal. It is religion – a “binding together”; it is the liturgy we follow that allows us to reach calm and meditation – “the people’s work”. But most of us want and need more than to worship together. Most of us “cry out for work that is real”. The prophetic church is what we long for, and mission is how we get it. Gilbert says it this way, “In short, life is our only chance to both grow a soul and repair the world. We cannot really do one without the other.” (Gilbert, 19)

I am a liberationist theologian, and I’ll talk to you about that some more at the beginning of a March, but being a LIBERATIONIST in a LIBERAL faith like ours is tricky. One of my mentors, Paul Rasor, argues in his book Faith Without Certainty that it can’t be done, liberation within liberal faith. But, I think he’s wrong…I think we UUs have often been liberationist amongst the liberals. Take, for instance, Theodore Parker.

“Southern slavery,” Parker wrote, “is an institution which is in earnest. Northern freedom is an institution which is not in earnest.” According to Glibert, Parker formed a “Vigilante Committee to help runaway slaves, many of whom he harbored in his home, keeping a loaded pistol on his desk to defend them. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 challenged Parker as both man and moralist. He reasoned that if truth came directly from God, if human concepts of truth were finite, than there must be a higher law for men to follow than the sometimes wicked laws of men. He determined to follow that higher law, disobey the act, and counsel others to do the same. In so doing he incurred the wrath of many. During a religious revival at Park Street Church in Boston on March 6, 1858, the following prayer was uttered against Parker: ‘Lord, we know that we cannot argue him down, and the more we say against him, the more will people flock after him, and the more they will love and revere him. O Lord, o Lord, what shall be done for Boston if thou dost not take this and some other matters in hand.’” (Gilbert, 44)

Part 2 -

So what does this work mean for us as UUs? When it comes to transforming our world, will we respond as religious liberals or as liberationists? Are we ready to seek the answers to hard questions like how we, as a mostly white, middle-class religious tradition, are implicated in the social structures of oppression? What types of privilege are we afforded that depend on the continued suffering of others? How can we use our privilege to overcome suffering? What are we willing to give up in order to do so? From his book, Faith Without Certainty, UU minister Paul Rasor states that

“[l]iberation theology…calls for “class conversion.” It tells us liberals that if we really want to work for justice in the world, we need to rethink our own identity as human beings and moved toward an intersubjective solidarity with the oppressed. A liberating praxis calls not just for social action but for a new way of being…, an engaged solidarity with the suffering and oppressed people of the world.”

In doing mission work, we are beginning that process of engagement. We are moving beyond providing social service – the writing of checks and donating supplies (which, don’t get me wrong, are important acts of generosity) – and moving to the bearing witness of suffering and initiating the steps toward realizing change. We commit ourselves to doing what it takes to transform the world and, along the way, we find ourselves transformed.

Doing mission work is not the same as taking a feel good vacation. There’s the hassle of travel, the unease of being in unfamiliar terrain, the physical discomfort of hard work, bad food, contaminated water and, yes, lice. You can do all the reading you want to educate yourself on the conditions you’re walking into, but in that moment of actually seeing for yourself and bearing witness to extreme injustice in the world you – or at least I – am challenged physically, emotionally – and religiously. I have felt horrified, heart-broken, guilt-ridden and, yet, compelled. Compelled because my faith tells me that as long as there are people suffering in this world, there is work for me – and for us – to do.

This is where my personal beliefs interface with my professional call as a religious educator. I agree with Dick Gilbert that the place of social action in our congregation and in our movement “…becomes not a hobby or avocation of a small coterie, but the overflowing concern of the church for the world in which it is a part. It becomes one vital expression of the very nature of the church as a Beloved Community.”

So, in order for us to grow people of prophetic fire who can respond to that prophetic imperative, we must be showing our children and youth how to do this work. We must give our children age- and developmentally-appropriate opportunities to understand the complexities of the world we live in and to make a difference. We must be teaching them about their religious tradition and its history of achievement in working for change. We must teach all of young people how to articulate their beliefs. And, then, we must find opportunities – both near and far – to send them out into the world to put those beliefs to work.

Actually, this is the work that we all should be doing – young and old alike. This is what it means to be people of faith working for Beloved Community. While I am confident we will continue to demonstrate our collective commitment to social justice, I know that it won’t always proceed easily or smoothly or as we might expect. But, is it impossible? I don’t think so. In fact, I believe that it is critical in our quest to move toward our 6th principle – “the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.”

Part 2 – Jennifer

Mission impossible….I named our service Mission Impossible this week, chuckling to myself….Much to the horror and chagrin, I’m sure, of our office manager I went out to change the wayside pulpit myself, humming the theme song the whole time. But, I wasn’t really thinking about old TV shows or movie stars while I was out there. I was thinking about Jenn and me. Because Jenn and I agree that social justice work, that being mission driven in not only POSSIBLE in our faith, but foundational to it, Jen and I are a little impossible! While we love our colleagues dearly, we are always the voices upsetting the mix, wondering how those babies got into the river in the first place, piping up at odd times and in tense situations with “Sexist!”…”Homophobic!”….”Where was the worth and dignity in THAT statement?”

We’re like the story of the great-hearted soul who ran through the streets shouting “’Power, greed, corruption! Power, greed corruption!’ For a time the attention of the people was riveted on this single-minded, open-hearted person for whom all of life has become focused in one great question. But then everyone went back to work, only slightly hearing, some annoyed. Finally, a child stepped in front of the wailing figure on a cold and stormy night. ‘Elder,’ said the child, ‘don’t you realize no one is listening to you?’ ‘Of course I do,’ the elder answered. ‘Then why do you shout?’ the child insisted, incredulous. ‘If nothing is changing, your efforts are useless.’ ‘Ah, dear child, I do not shout only in order to change them. I shout so that they cannot change me.’ (Gilbert, pg 4)

Reverend Henry Meserve’s once asked the provocative question: “If you were arrested for being a Unitarian Universalist, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Clearly, as we heard from our Sr. Youth this morning, a number of our forebears would have been convicted. And clearly, Jenn and I are going to end up in that metaphorical jail. Since you have hired and called not ONE of us, but TWO, I can only believe that you feel as we do, and that you are ready to engage in what it means to be the prophetic church. If you are hanging back, perhaps thinking, “Well, SOMEONE will have to bail them all out,” remember that the truth is that even one of us imprisoned means that all are bound…that if every single one of us, within this community and across the nation, is willing to be arrested for our convictions, eventually there will be no jail that can hold us all, and we will all be free.

Gilbert, Richard S., The Prophetic Imperative, Skinner House Books, 2000, pp. 9-12.

Gilbert, Richard S., Growing People of Prophetic Fire, The Fahs Lecture, Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly, June 24, 2006.

Rasor, Paul, Faith Without Certainty, Skinner House Books, 2005, pp. 162-3.

Gilbert, Richard S., The Prophetic Imperative, Skinner House Books, 2000, p. 152

First Universalist Church • 207.846.4148 • 97 Main Street, Yarmouth, Maine 04096