RevThom

On Friday I picked up the new release from Death Cab for Cutie, who I will be seeing live in concert for the 2nd time on Friday, May 30th. Narrow Stairs is their 7th full-length studio album. It is also, in my opinion, one of their most diverse-sounding recordings.

(My weekend included a lot of time in the car including a trip to Olathe and a trip out to Powell Gardens to perform a wedding so I had the opportunity to listen closely to this record.)

The opening track, "Bixby Canyon Bridge," has the mild feel of a song that The Shins might have recorded, particularly if you listen to lead singer Ben Gibbard's vocal inflections. "Your New Twin Sized Bed" sounds like Death Cab doing their best Jack Johnson imitation. Finally, the song "Pity and Fear," considering its unusual percussion and rhythm section arrangement could almost be mistaken for an 80's Peter Gabriel song, at least until the end when the song accelerates its tempo and becomes a bit harder.

I happen to believe that Death Cab's later recordings are as good as their earlier sound, but those who are critical of everything that came after The Photo Album will love the 9th track, "Long Division", in which they return to their earlier sound.

My favorite two tracks on the album are "No Sunlight" which has all the bounce and buoyancy of songs like "The Sound of Settling" and "Crooked Teeth", and the interestingly titled track "Cath..." whose bright - even transcendent - guitar riffs disguise depressed of a relationship fated to failure. The song employs a narrative voice, perhaps of a jilted ex-boyfriend, to describe the snap of wedding pictures and the swirling emotions of that moment. The subject matter is quite similar to "Death of an Interior Decorator" off Transatlanticism.

As with any Death Cab album, not every song immediately stands out. A few of the tracks, like "Talking Bird" and "The Ice is Getting Thinner" seem like they are trying too hard to emulate the magic of their cross-over hit "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." Likewise, the songs "I Will Possess Your Heart" and a few of the songs that fall in the middle of Narrow Stairs did not immediately stand out to me. Oftentimes, the songs by this band that don't immediately catch me turn out to be some of my favorites.

I begin this sermon with two stories for you to consider. Both are true stories that involve children in our church community.

The first story: One morning a mother and her child entered the church and the child made a bee-line for the downstairs classrooms. “No,” the mother instructed, “You are supposed to join the other children for the first fifteen minutes of the worship service.” The boy responded, “Oh yeah, well I want to go ask that Thom guy, you know, the guy who owns this place, and see what he says.”

The second story: A four year old was visiting with his grandmother who attends a church that is more theologically conservative. The four year old asks his grandma if she should come to church with him. Trying to be polite the grandmother replies, “Well, I will have to ask your parents if I can go.” The child responded, “Grandma, it is my church too.”

So, which is it? Is it, “let’s go ask that Thom guy, the guy who owns this place”? Or, is it the second story? “It is my church too.” Who owns the church? I bet you can predict how I am going to answer this question. How many of you think I’m going say that child number one is correct, that I own the church? How many of you think that child number two is correct, that the members of this church own the church? However, the answer I’m going to give may surprise you, but before we answer this question, I better say a little bit about what it means to own the church.

It is true that the second you sign the membership book in this church, you become a co-owner of this church. You own the church together with all the other members of the church. You own the church. I like this language of ownership a lot more than I like the language of membership.

As some colleagues have pointed out [on the Minister’s Chat List], membership is a word whose currency is losing value. Most of us are members of something. Sometimes “membership” just means the right to use. This is the case with something like gym membership, where we pay some amount per month for the right to use all the services of my gym. Other times, people pay for membership in something that is free for everybody. Some of you are members of KCUR or KCPT. Public radio and television are completely free, but some of you pay a fairly small amount to join as a member as a way to show that you support the services they provide for free to everyone in entire community. Similarly, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is free too. But some of you pay for a membership because you believe in having a great museum in our city. You support the services they provide for free to everybody and you derive very few tangible benefits from being a member. I am a member of American Civil Liberties Union. I paid about $30 to become a member. I derive absolutely no benefit from this. If my first amendment rights were violated, the ACLU will not ask if I am a member before they take up my case. No, I am a member because I believe in what the organization stands for and am willing to support it.

Sometimes, membership means even something weaker than this. I decided to go searching through my wallet to see what was in there and discovered that I was a Borders Rewards Card member. What does it mean to be a member of Border Rewards? It costs nothing to join. In fact, all I did was give them my email address and they knocked about $10 off my purchase. They don’t call me to ask me to help work the register or paint the store. They don’t ask me to pledge or serve on a committee. They don’t seem to notice if I go months without walking into their store. They don’t even care if I make purchases at Rainy Day Books. They expect no fidelity and demand no loyalty. In fact, they just send me lots and lots of coupons.

More and more, the word membership means less and less. This isn’t good news for those of us in the world of the church where our concept of membership involves active service, frequent participation, and high levels of generosity. In fact, we often ask for lots and lots of service, intense participation, and sacrificial generosity.

So, instead of talking about membership, I am going to talk about ownership. I want to say that when you sign the membership book you actually become an owner of the church. You own part of the church. What does ownership look like? What does it mean to be a good owner? Everyone here owns something. Some of you own a car or a house, or you own a small business or a pet cat. And along with owning that thing comes responsibility, a duty of care, and a certain amount of pride of ownership.

Let me digress for a minute and tell you that while my parents were visiting last weekend they announced to me that they got a new cat. This was a big deal to me as all the animals that were a part of our household when I was growing up – the dog, the two cats, the ferret, the turtle – have all gone to heaven since I moved out. Then, my parents confessed to me that the cat was invisible. I wondered if dementia might be setting in. I asked them to explain what they meant by an invisible cat and they told me that when they brought it home it ran and hid and they haven’t seen it for weeks. They know it is alive because it comes out to eat the food they set out and it uses the litter box. They just never see the cat. They’ve searched everywhere – and mind you, they don’t have a large house – and the cat is utterly undetectable. They are currently in the process of setting up “nanny cams” all over the house to try to find this cat. By the way, they named the cat “Smuuch.” They call the cat “smuuchy”… smuuchy, their invisible cat.

But I digress. I want to talk to you about membership and ownership. There are various ways of being an owner, some more honorable than others. Our goal is that every person in our community takes pride in ownership. Although there are too many examples to lift up, I want to lift up a few examples of pride in ownership. The first example is the Julia’s Voice group. Sara and a couple of members had the idea of starting a “Mothers for Peace” group. So they organized and went out and got $6,000 in grants and studied and invested themselves in putting together what I understand to be the largest peace rally in the Kansas City Metro Area in the last five years.

Two women had the idea of sponsoring a day of programming for women in the church and took ownership of this idea and organized a wildly successful women’s wellness retreat attended by 44 members of our church.

One member had the idea of starting a children’s performance group. You saw the fruits of her act of ownership earlier in the service. And how can I forget the angels who demonstrate their pride in ownership when things just sort of appear in the church without anyone taking credit for them? Brand new flat screen TVs and DVD players show up in Saeger House. Wireless internet arrives in Saeger House. I get this cool head set microphone I am wearing. The Saeger House kitchen gets a new stove, a new microwave, a new coffeemaker. Saeger House gets news guttering and a fresh coat of paint. All from angels who take pride in ownership.

It is not just members of the church either. I decided that one of the things that would be very good for the church and very exciting for my ministry would be to have an intern minister. I told the board that it would cost the church less than $3,000 to have a full-time intern. They said, “Go for it.” I assembled an intern committee to select a candidate. I secured $8,000 in grant funding and $4,500 in additional funding. The church agreed to come up with the other $2,500. All of these: Julia’s Voice, the Women’s Retreat, the Children’s Performance Group, and many others are examples of pride in ownership.

What does pride in ownership mean? It means taking good care of our buildings and grounds and taking responsibility for our property. It means paying our staff fairly and not exploiting them in the work they do for us. It means offering benefits and valuing the work they do. It means fully funding our programs. It means stepping up to serve. And, it can mean exercising ownership by going above and beyond. Those in our church community had a passion for an intern, a “mothers for peace” group, a children’s performance ensemble, and a women’s wellness retreat. They went out and made it happen. You can too. You can too. Two men can organize a men’s retreat. Ten parents can get together and fund a position like a youth-advisor. Five can do it if one of them is a decent grant-writer. Each of us has the potential of practicing ownership.

Of course, there are lots of ways to practice ownership poorly. I do this with my car. My car is filthy. I wash it about once every two years. And when I do, it gets washed by some middle-school soccer team trying to buy uniforms by washing cars in a mall parking lot. And I feel really embarrassed about how filthy my car is so I make an extra-generous donation.

Ownership is a responsibility, an art, and a sacred act. When done well, it enriches our lives. When done poorly, the results are highly disappointing. When done poorly, ownership can be a kind of “slumlord-ship” in which you do not fulfill your responsibilities of ownership. Or, ownership can be a kind of “squatter-ship” in which you take what the church has to offer without adding much. Or, it is possible to stake one’s claim as an owner and then practice abandonment or neglect. Or, you can practice ownership and membership like my parents’ cat practices “cat-ship.” Lots of time in hiding, coming out to sneak a morsel, and then dashing off. Undetectable membership.

During the annual meeting following the service, the Finance Committee will present the congregation with a budget with a $30,000 deficit. During the service and during the annual meeting we will pass out green forms with opportunities for you to raise your level of ownership. A balanced budget is not a fancy budget. If we have to make budget cuts, they will not be fun ones. If the church was a car, we’d be talking about cutting brakes and seatbelts; not Bose surround-sound speakers. If the church was your house, we’d be talking about cutting running water, heat, and refrigeration; not putting off installing granite countertops.

So, who owns the church? The answer is more complicated than you figured it would be. At the beginning of this sermon I presented you with two false choices. Does that Thom guy own the church or does the church belong to each and every one of you? You expected me to say, “you.” But, my answer is actually “both”… and it also “neither.”

I consider myself a co-owner of the church. In addition to the $8,000 in grant funding I secured I also make a generous financial pledge. [During the sermon, I disclosed what this amount was. I don’t feel comfortable posting it on-line, but I did feel comfortable sharing the amount with the worshipping community at SMUUCh.]

On one hand, I am proud of the fiscal contributions I make to SMUUCh. On the other hand, it represents a dynamic which I sometimes see, a dynamic of myself or other staff members or a small handful of members filling the gaps when everyone, collectively, does not live up to their responsibility and exercise pride in ownership.

I’ve taken a small, informal poll of some other UU congregations around the country to see how their stewardship drive turned out this year. Some report falling short whereas others have recorded hugely successful drives. One UU church in Iowa roughly half our size exceeded their goal and will expand several staff positions. Another UU church with about double the membership of our church set and surpassed a $1,000,000 pledge goal. If we pledged at the same level as they do, we would have a $100,000 surplus instead of a $30,000 deficit.

So, who owns the church, the membership or the minister? Both and neither. The answer, in fact is this, when you sign the membership book, or enroll your children in religious education you have made a commitment to practice responsible ownership. The real owners of the church are whoever exercises ownership over the church, everyone who takes responsibility.

And, in a different way, we are not the owners of the church. The church is neither owned by its members or its minister. It is actually owned by the living tradition which embodies the values, virtues, and sacred purposes for which we exist. We are merely asked to be stewards and caretakers of it for the brief lifetime in which we are have been blessed to be entrusted with this holy purpose.

UU Minister Dan Hotchkiss has written about this concept here.

We own the church; we don’t own the church. But we are surely entrusted to its care, to its vitality. We are surely its fiduciaries. We steward something much bigger than ourselves, for more than ourselves. We guard something that will outlive us. And, right here and right now we have the chance be the stewards of all the sacredness and possibility with which we have been entrusted.

I recently told a friend of mine about my parents’ cat “Smuuchy.” The friend, in turn, told me about her cat, who went into hiding for six months when the cat first joined the family. After time, the cat decided, “Well, I guess I can be a part of this family.” The cat came out of hiding, and sought out meaningful human contact, relationship, and community. It is a choice we all can make.

Postscript
At our annual meeting, our members filled out commitment forms for an additional $13,240. In addition, 5 members volunteered to help organize fundraisers during the 2008-2009 church year. We are very, very close to closing the gap!

[On, Mother's Day, May 11th a group in our church called "Julia's Voice" hosted a peace rally that attracted an estimated 500 people who stood shoulder to shoulder over two long blocks in front of a large Mall in Overland Park. I delivered this sermon-in-three-parts at the worship service that morning. For the first part, I give thanks to Sara Sautter who helped with the editing and to Dr. Valarie Ziegler, the author of a biography of Julia Ward Howe entitled, Diva Julia. This book taught me most of the facts of Julia's life that I describe here.]

Part I: The Life of Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward was born in New York in 1819 into an upper-class family. Her father was a strict Calvinist and feeling it was his duty to “protect” her, limited Julia’s exposure to society which he deemed sinful and a bad influence. This was particularly hard on Julia, a creative, free spirit who aspired to a career in letters and enjoyed flirting and mixing with society. Fortunately, learning was treasured in the home in which Julia was raised and she was a prodigious reader and writer. By age nine, she was reading works like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Paley’s Moral Philosophy.

She immersed herself in writing poetry, reading philosophy, and learning foreign languages. Remember, this young woman was bright, so she frequently found ways to subvert her father’s harsh restrictions. One evening she asked permission to invite a few friends over. Permission granted, she planned a gala ball with dozens and dozens of attendees. Surveying the noisy, busy, crowd, her stunned father remarked, “Well, I guess we have different notions of what was meant by ‘a few friends.’”

Following the death of her father when Julia was twenty, she enjoyed a brief period of great freedom before once again coming under the control of her brother and uncle. She made a name for herself as a New York socialite and her delicate features and bright red hair combined with her intellectual refinement and playfulness made her the “belle of the ball”.

Though many men noticed her, only one captured her heart. At age 24 she married Samuel Gridley Howe, eighteen years her senior, who hailed from a Unitarian family in Boston. At first, it would appear that their marriage would be the matching of two dynamos.

Julia was a literary star in the making and Samuel was a handsome young doctor; a truly dashing figure who returned a hero from military service during the Greek Revolution. In Boston, he had turned his attention to educational innovation and care for the blind. Later he would become an ardent abolitionist. In fact, Samuel Howe was among the Secret Six and used a portion of Julia Ward Howe’s inheritance to help support John Brown’s abolitionist activities. What had the potential to be a powerful marriage of equals turned out not to be. Samuel believed that a woman’s highest calling was to be a mother whose actions were limited to the domestic sphere.

Like her father, Julia’s husband disapproved of her literary and public aspirations. Soon enough, Julia was entrenched in motherhood, bearing six children in the span of twelve years. Pregnancy was difficult for Julia. She suffered physically with each birth, her life on the line several times. In addition, she suffered from what we now know as post-partum depression, sinking deeply into a melancholy that plagued her spirit. Though she loved her children and found her life better for being a mother, she was always somewhat resentful of motherhood, especially for the way it cut into her desire to study and write.

Julia Ward Howe was a special mind. In the few moments of peace she could find she relaxed by reading Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.” Notice, I said “Immanuel Kant” not Janet Evanovich. She also found time to publish poetry collections and plays. Her husband was deeply critical of these activities. On the positive side, her husband’s efforts as a doctor-philanthropist exposed Julia to social causes. During a visit to camps of Union soldiers to work on sanitation, Julia Ward Howe penned the lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Julia Ward Howe was widowed in her mid-fifties. It was finally at this stage of her life that she could take on the public role she had always desired. She combined her literary talents with her developed ideas about justice and became an outspoken leader in the causes of women’s suffrage and pacifism. Despite the restrictions of Victorian society that prevented women from having a public role, Julia found ways for her voice to be heard.

Julia twisted Victorian notions of gender and in order to advocate for women to have a greater public role. The culture assumed that men belonged in the public sphere and women belonged in the home, but the culture also said that women were naturally tender, nurturing, and compassionate. So, Julia argued that women needed to play a public role to help balance out man’s brutality and militarism.

Until her death at age 91, Julia Ward Howe traveled tirelessly as a lecturer and organizer. She spent her 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s this way:

She founded and served for 23 years as President of the Association of American Women.
She was President of the New England Women’s Club.
For 10 years she was President of the Massachusetts Women’s suffrage Association.
She headed the New England Women’s Suffrage Association.
She helped found a General Federation of Women’s clubs.
She helped to organize clubs committed to the advancement of women from San Francisco to Newport, Rhode Island.
She founded a woman’s journal and served as its editor for twenty years.
She published at least six books during this time, ranging from an autobiography of Margaret Fuller to collections of poetry.
She preached in pulpits across the United States, founded a group for women clergy, spoke at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 and became president of the United Friends of Armenia in 1894.
She continued as an active member of at least three different philosophy clubs in Boston.
She traveled to France and Italy and delivered addresses on women’s rights in fluent French and Italian.
She was the only women elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters before 1930.
She received honorary degrees from Tufts, Brown, and Smith College.

Wow! Simply, wow!

Part II: “Let the Voice of Julia Ward Howe Speak”
Today is Mother’s Day, May 11th, 2008. Today is the 1,880th day of the Iraq War and the 1,826th day since President Bush announced that the mission had been accomplished. We have been in Iraq longer than we were at war with Korea, longer than we fought in World War II, longer than we fought in World War I, and longer than we were engaged in the Civil War. To date, the war with Iraq has claimed the lives of 4,075 American soldiers. On the fifth-anniversary of the Iraq War, my colleague The Reverend Don Southworth held a public reading of the name, age, hometown, and military rank of every member of the United States armed services who had died in Iraq. With only a five-minute break to use the rest-room half-way through, the reading lasted over five and a half hours (and nearly wrecked his voice for Easter Sunday.)

Today is Mother’s Day, May 11th 2008. This is the first of three sermons on the subject of war that I will deliver over the next four weeks. Two weeks from today, on Memorial Day weekend, the service will consider the life and poetry of William Stafford, a Kansas native and conscientious objector during World War II. Two weeks later I will preach about the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan and about what moral responsibility we have to the people of Darfur. Concerning conscientious objection during World War II, the worship committee engaged in a rich discussion about the way that our involvement in that war has been mythologized in our collective memory. And yet, and yet it is impossible for me to imagine a persuasive argument that military action against Nazi Germany was not warranted. And, concerning the Sudan, we need to ask the question of whether there is a peaceful way to end the genocide, bring justice to the refugees, and hold accountable the perpetrators of genocide?

These are all hard questions. They are hard questions that demand from us tremendous depths of moral and religious discernment. This morning we are going to wrestle. Two weeks from now we will wrestle. And two weeks from then, we will wrestle some more.

As a result of the religious and intellectual freedom we affirm as Unitarian Universalists, I must state that we are not all of one mind regarding the War in Iraq. Are Unitarian Universalists ever all of one mind? The diversity of thought in our church includes absolute pacifists who believe that all war is wrong. We include people who believe that military force is sometimes warranted, but hold that this was not the case in Iraq. We include people who believe that we have an obligation to stay in Iraq until it has been stabilized and others who hold that our continued presence there is inherently destabilizing. And, we do include some people who do subscribe to a political philosophy that holds that nations like Syria, Iran, and North Korea constitute threats to the world and who would support the United States proactively disarming the threats that these nations pose to us and to our allies.

And, good for us. Good for us. Because our church is not a place for people who’ve already figured out all the answers. Our church is a place of discernment, dynamic encounter, a context for listening and learning. And, at the end of the day, we may not all think alike. But that isn’t the point. We aspire to neither theological nor intellectual orthodoxy. As Francis David said, “We need not think alike to love alike.”

The other part – and listen very carefully – is that our church is not a place where we talk for the sake of talking. We shouldn’t get stuck in a state of analysis paralysis. Rather, our discerning and our encountering should lead us to act based on our careful moral discernments. Later in the service you will hear the voices of our Julia’s Voice organizing team about their decision to take action. What they have done is what I hope everyone will do on matters that concern them deeply. Discern. Organize. Act. And lift up this church as a place that aids in discernment, values your conscience, and inspires you to act on your convictions.

1,880 days is a long time. Our country is experiencing war fatigue and, for many people, the fact that we are at war is not something we consider on a daily or weekly basis. The front page of the newspaper or the lead story on the news concerns the latest news of the stock market or gas prices, the role of super-delegates in deciding the Democratic nominee for president, Britney Spears, or whatever else. The latest news from Iraq gets pushed back further and further. One colleague of mine begins the “candlelighting” portion of her church’s worship service by lighting a candle as a solemn reminder that our country is at war.

Of course, for so many people in our larger community and in our own church community, there is no danger of forgetting that we are at war. Our own church contains those whose spouse, whose niece or nephew or cousin, whose close friend is serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. Several members of our church, including a number of the leaders of Julia’s Voice, sponsor soldiers with whom they correspond with on a weekly basis. Many of us – counselors, social workers, employers, others – see the soldiers who return injured physically or psychologically or who are just trying to readjust to life again after being on the battlefield for a year or longer.

Emerson once quipped that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. In the life of Julia Ward Howe we see not only a brilliant mind, but a woman who evolved tremendously over the course of her life. From the “belle of the ball” to one of the leading figures for women’s freedom and agency. Early in her life she pooh-poohed women’s suffrage; on this subject she changed her mind one hundred and eighty degrees. She went from the author of a battle hymn and a donor to the activities of John Brown in Bleeding Kansas to a strict pacifist who declared that, “We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.” Her story is the story of an evolution of thought, conscience, and the capacity for bold commitment.

Part III: The Voices of Julia’s Voice
I asked those who have been involved in planning today’s Julia’s Voice event to speak to what their participation has meant to them. Let us listen to the voices of Julia’s Voice:

Several members of the group told me stories of emerging consciousness and faith development. One woman wrote that she became a pacifist in third grade and was confirmed in this identity when she saw her older sister’s friends agonizing about the Vietnam draft. She became a feminist by participating in high school athletics and witnessing the resistance to Title IX. She wrote that Julia’s Voice has provided her with, “a group that lets me speak from my faith as a UU; from my assertiveness as a feminist; from my passion as a pacifist; and from my overwhelmingly powerful and uncontrollable instinct-turned-rage as a mom to protect my sons, and other mothers’ children from the senseless devastation that is war.

“Mothers have a unique voice vehemently objecting to this international pattern of responding to difference, misunderstanding, financial greed, and a concept of “self-interest” with violence. Mothers also have centuries of experience negotiating peace in our families, and our communities – skills that are urgently needed everywhere.

“Julia Ward Howe’s example gives UU mothers a long, historical mandate to find our voice and urge others to join us in speaking out not only against war, but for learning and using the tools for peace.”

She wasn’t the only person to use the word rage in her personal statement. Another woman wrote that she, quote, “became involved in Moms Against War because I am saddened by the many lives lost in this… war. Not only are thousand of young American men and women dying, but many innocent Iraqi men, women and children have perished as well. This movement has caused me to reflect on my beliefs and values. I believe that it is our duty to speak up, stand up, and show our outrage… Women have the gift of bearing life; and they also have the passion to preserve it.”

Likewise, another member of Julia’s Voice chimes in, “As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe in the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. Mothers and others can be role models for defending principles without violence and destructive behavior…. Hopefully this event, where we stand side-by-side together for peace, will demonstrate to the people of Johnson County, Kansas, and beyond, that mothers and others are a powerful force for good. We will be heard!”

The youngest member of the Julia’s Voice group, wrote these powerful words, “Despite not being a mother myself, the idea of honoring your mother struck home for me. My mother was in college during the Vietnam War, and was active in anti-war actions. And yet, I thought about my own generation and how silent it has been. There is no draft in place pulling my peers overseas, yet the war still strikes a nerve with me through the media, and due to the proportionally high number of my peers who chose to enter the military right out of high school. When you are from a small town, military service is an economic opportunity where there are few, and is also seen as a right of passage for many young men. In 2004, a childhood friend of mine, Marine Lance Cpl. Christopher Wasser died of injuries in Iraq.

“For the sake of mothers of fallen soldiers, such as Chris's mom, who are steadfast in their belief in our presence in Iraq, I cannot stand here to question whether he died in vain, but I can say that I can think of how much good could come from putting our military to a [different] use... Mothers bring children into the world to bring light to the world, and we can all stand for peace in order to bring an end to this time of darkness.”

Similarly, the lone man in the Julia’s Voice group wrote that, “I had never been involved in a protest or stood for anything really. As you know, [my son] was on the trip to Boston for the Coming of Age trip where Sara and Nancy came up with the Julia's Voice idea. When [he] came back he had changed and he had taught me to look at my own coming of age at 45 and to take a stand on what I might do in my place in the world. I had supported the start of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I had felt misled and keep thinking what my response might have been if someone had invaded Kansas City.

“I have always felt that Moms had a greater capacity for love and caring in the world. They also have a great ability to create community and for the most part they always lead with love and understanding. Therefore, I know that if Peace in the World is possible, it would start with Moms.

“My own Mother's loving voice, even though she has been gone for many years, is with me in all I do in my life. We owe it to our Moms to have world peace. With out them we wouldn't even be here.

“With three boys of my own, I can't imagine losing one of them to war. I don't know how any Mom can handle losing a child to war and every child we have lost to war today hurts me so.”

Finally, our own Sara Sautter eloquently writes, “Occasionally I watch the New Hours with Jim Lehrer. At the end of these nightly broadcasts, the program pays homage, in silence, to the fallen soldiers in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Smiling faces, 22, 24, 19 years of age flash upon the screen. The silent fresh faces of young men and women who will never have the privilege to craft a full life – to love and to lose, fail and succeed, follow a passion, anticipate the blooming of dogwoods, watch their own children grow into adults.

“I can also feel the pain that the mother and father must feel. An aching, gnawing ‘how-will-I-survive-this’ pain. The pain I was feeling for the fallen soldiers and their parents was not alone. It was accompanied by anger. Anger because the deaths of these young people were preventable.

“Where is the justice here? Where is the mercy? This is why I became involved in Julia’s Voice. To give voice to the pain that mothers in this country, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Rwanda, in Israel, in Palestine, in every single country on this planet feels, and feels so deeply, when she loses a child. To resolve that each of our children deserves a full life to love and to lose, fail and succeed, to follow a passion.”

These are the voices of Julia’s Voice. This afternoon, they will be heard.

Opening Words
[This morning’s opening words were read by two children in the church. They stood on either side of a table holding baskets over-flowing with flowers for the Flower Communion Ceremony.]

This table was empty before we placed these flowers on it. The church was empty before we entered it.

Now, this table has many flowers on it, and looking out at you I see many faces.

[Holding up a Red Flower] Many of you are like this red flower, full of fire and passion. You care deeply.

[Holding up an Orange Flower] Or, you are like this Orange flower. You are daring and original.

[Holding up a Yellow Flower] Some of you are like this Yellow flower. Your faces are full of sunshine and you are content with life.

[Holding up a piece of Green Leaf] Some of you are like this piece of green. In the Earth you find wonder and amazement. You care for this planet

.[Holding up a Blue Flower] Some of you are like this blue flower. You come to church with grief and sadness.

[Holding up a Purple Flower] Some of you are like this purple flower. In the West, purple is the color of royalty, of Kings and Queens. You have come to regain your faith in the power and goodness of humanity.

[Holding up a White Flower] Some of you are like this White Flower. You look to the future… to learn… to grow… to change.

[In Unison] We are a diverse community. We each bring our own gifts and together we make a beautiful arrangement. Let us bless these flowers and bless our church community.

Sermon
For the reading, I read the poem “A Man Walks Through His Life” by Jane Hirschfield. The poem gives us the image of a man walking down a road and eating apples, pears, and peaches that grow abundantly on trees on either side of the road. The poet’s voice interrupts and states her desire to confront the man and ask him, “Where is the plum tree you planted?” The poet stops, as if a peach pit has become stuck in her throat. She realizes that she too consumes the labors of others.

Jane Hirschfield’s poem bears a striking resemblance to a few pieces we frequently use in Unitarian Universalist worship services. Consider these words by The Reverend Peter Raible:

We build on foundations we did not lay.
We warm ourselves beside fires we did not light.
We cool ourselves under the shade of trees we did not plant.
We drink from wells we did not dig.
We profit from persons we did not know.
We are forever bound in community.

I assure you that I could come up with similar readings and quotations, poems and sermon excerpts sufficient to fill an entire sermon’s duration. I will spare you this monotony.

James Baldwin, a Harlem Renaissance author well-aware of the pain, oppression, and injustice manifest in the world was able to claim that a central question of our existence should be, “What do we do with all this beauty?” [Rebecca Parker has featured this quote by Baldwin in her writings.] If I could be permitted to slightly alter his question, I would ask, “What do we do with all this beauty, all this beauty we did not create?” On this Flower Communion Sunday, I want to riff on the theme of “beauty we did not create.”

For those of you who are newer to Unitarian Universalism, let me recount for you, briefly, the tradition of the Flower Communion, an authentically Unitarian ritual. The Flower Communion was developed by a minister named Norbert Capek, who converted to Unitarianism in New Jersey in the first decades of the twentieth century and then returned to his native Prague to found a Unitarian movement there. His congregation in Prague was largely made up of former Catholics who desired religious services that were stripped of traditional rites and rituals, smells and bells. But, one Spring day Capek had a revelation and instituted a communion of flowers the very next Sunday. It was a ritual representing the uniqueness we each bring to our common community and the gifts we receive from encountering one another. The ritual was simple: each person was to bring a flower. During the first hymn, children in the church would process with baskets of flowers and lay them on the altar. These flowers would be consecrated, blessed, and prayed over. Finally, each person would leave with a different flower than the one they had brought.

Capek’s life had greater significance than his being a liturgical innovator or the Father of Czech Unitarianism. When Nazi Fascism took hold of Germany and Hitler’s army blitzkrieg-ed across Europe, Capek resisted, was arrested, and was sent to die in a concentration camp. Before he was sent to Dachau, he spent a year imprisoned in Dresden. While awaiting his eventual journey to the gas chambers, he wrote letters, meditations, prayers, and hymns. One of his meditations, written while imprisoned, went like this:

In the depths of my soul,
There where lies the source of strength
Where the divine and the human meet,
There quiet your mind, quiet, quiet

Outside let lightning reign,
Horrible darkness frighten the world.
But, from the depths of your own soul
From that silence will rise again
God’s Flower.
[As quoted in a sermon by The Reverend Judith Miller.]

James Baldwin lived under the yoke of the dual oppressions of racism and homophobia, but asked, “What do we do with all this beauty?” Capek went to his death contemplating the triumph of the human spirit and divine beauty.

What I am trying to get at here, albeit indirectly, is that the perception and appreciation of beauty is not a trifle or a frippery. It can be an exercise in courage. It can enlarge our hearts.

What do we do with all this beauty, all this beauty that we did not create?

In theology there is a word called “grace.” When we speak of grace in the religious sense of the word, we are speaking of all the good that we receive that comes to us unbidden and undeserved. Grace has to do with the universe conspiring to bless us, to offer us the blessings of forgiveness, kindness, care, and beauty despite our own failures to earn these things.

Of course, when we speak of grace using the term in its more secular sense, we often speak of dancers, musicians, actors, and athletes who seem to move easily and effortlessly through a world that is often hard and cold and indifferent. The religious and secular meanings of the word “grace” are related in a sense. Each seems to say that the world is a place where our endeavors are fraught with difficulty and challenge, but that sometimes, somehow, we can manage to transcend this hardship. Through something, something from outside of ourselves or from within we manage, in the words of a decade old sermon by Ken Sawyer, “to do better than we very well ought to given the circumstances.”

Grace: A ballet dancer’s pirouette. Grace: A fluid motion of Mario Chalmer’s fall-away three-pointer with 3 seconds left in regulation in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game. Grace: a pear, an apple, and three peaches despite the fact of the plum tree we left unplanted. Grace: “All things which come to us as gifts of being from sources beyond ourselves.” (To paraphrase Richard Fewkes)

Whenever I introduce the Flower Communion Ritual I like to encourage everyone to take a flower whether you have brought one to contribute or not. To take, even if you have not brought, is a lesson in grace. I like to say that our flowers have the magical power to do a fish and loaves, feeding of the multitudes, type of thing… which, by the way, is also a story about grace.

Maybe it is the theologian in me… Maybe it is the poet in me… Maybe it is the romantic in me (as reluctant as I often can be to admit that such a romantic resides within me)… but whatever it is, I have found myself in an encounter with beauty and grace, a beauty I certainly did not create and a grace to which I have no rights of entitlement in particular. It is possible to understand grace in a theistic sense or in a naturalistic sense or in a humanistic sense. All I know is that I have profit from beauty I did not create.

This is the way of community, incidentally. Like Norbert Capek pointed out when he used Spring flowers as a metaphor for the gifts we give to and receive from community, community can be a source of grace and often we receive more than we put in. Like fishes and loaves… like our flowers that seem to magically multiply… somehow we are part and party to something greater than the sum of what everyone puts in. Somehow.

There is a line by Albert Camus that I have always thought of as deeply inspirational. Camus writes, “In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible Summer.” This quote, I can’t help but think has something to do with the willingness to appreciate and apprehend beauty.

And that is what is we are going to do in just a second or two with our Flower Communion liturgy. I find that it works best when we pass the baskets through the congregation. When you receive a basket select out a flower for your neighbor. Give your neighbor the gift of that flower, and offer your neighbor a blessing: “Please accept this gift of grace and beauty.” I invite you to participate.

A week ago, I got to travel to Seattle to attend and speak at a retreat for all the Unitarian Universalist ministers in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia. We stayed at a beautiful Catholic retreat center right on Puget Sound. Late one evening, sitting around a table with a group of other ministers, we began sharing poems that were meaningful to us. Here are a sampling of poems that were read:

Cheese Penguin by Sarah Lindsay

The Change by Tony Hoagland (scroll down to the entry for Tuesday, January 11)

America by Tony Hoagland

My Dead Friends by Marie Howe

A Contribution to Statistics by Wislawa Szymborska

Playing with Three Strings by Rabbi Schulweis (scroll to the bottom of the page)

(Thanks to Rob Eller-Isaacs who introduced me to both the Howe poem and one of the Hoagland poems.)

This spring I presented a four part sermon series on different aspects of Renewal. This theme is apropos of Spring, the season of the renewal of life. Follow the links below to the four sermons in the series:

On Easter Sunday (March 23) I preached on Bodily Renewal.

On March 30th I presented a sermon on Emotional Renewal.

On April 13th I considered the topic of Community Renewal.

The final sermon in the series (4/20) considered Relational Renewal.

Whenever I preach on certain themes, I often ask two psychologists in our church to loan me relevant books so that I can gain a greater insight into the subject matter. You probably already know that I do most of my sermon writing at my local coffee shop and sometimes taking the books that they have loaned to me has caused a bit of a drama to unfold. When I was preparing to preach on Anger, for instance, I sat in the coffee shop and received worried looks as I flipped through the Anger Management Workbook. And, when I preached on Depression last December I got even more concerned looks as I prepared for that sermon by reading two books on how to survive depression.

Well, for my sermon this morning I went back to their lending library. Picture it: there I was, sitting in the coffee shop, researching when suddenly, sitting right next to me was the most gorgeous and stunningly beautiful woman in the world. She was reading one of my favorite books of all time. My heart skipped a beat. Then she turns to me and asks me in a sultry voice, “So, what are you reading?” I turn slightly away, panicking about how to answer. I can only delay for so long; she deserves an honest answer. The book they had loaned to me was called, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. “Oh,” she says, looking slightly dejected. “No,” I say, “This is not how it looks. I’m NOT trying to make a marriage work.” (This was, in hindsight, probably the wrong thing to say.) And from there I could only dig myself deeper. “I’m not actually married,” I say. In a matter of seconds, her face had turned from fascinated to disappointed to appalled to deeply confused.

When I choose a topic on which to preach, there are often two ways that I approach the task. There are some sermons that I just know. They dwell within the core of my being. I embody them and the task is just to bring out the truth that resides inside of my heart and mind. And, then there are sermons that are not like that at all, sermons that don’t come from any place of knowing that lives inside of the core of my being. These are the challenging sermons, the sermons that require of me new discovery, research, and a journey into new realms.

This morning we conclude the four part series on renewal with the final sermon in the series. We’ve considered bodily renewal and emotional renewal. We’ve considered how communities of people can rebuild and resurrect themselves. And, this morning I want to talk about how it is possible to renew relationships between people. It is the last sermon in the series because, well, because it is the one I dreaded preaching the most.

Now, I’m sure that many of you came here expecting me to speak on a particular kind of relationship – romantic relationships, partnered relationships, marriages. This morning won’t be about those but it also won’t not be about partnered relationships. Those relationships are most definitely on my mind; I will officiate at seven weddings in the next few months – some for members of this church, others for friends and relatives of church members, and two for friends of mine.

But I hope I can speak of relationships more broadly this morning, and that what I say can be gleaned by everyone here and applied to whatever your particular circumstances are. Our marriages, our partnerships, our romances are usually the primary relationship in our lives and the relationship we tend to think of first. But we live within a broad and expansive network of relationships. I would be willing to bet that just about everybody here has a strained or estranged relationship with somebody. It might be your partner or spouse. It might be a child or parent or sibling or some other relative. It might be an in-law. (I’ve heard that people don’t always get along with their in-laws.) It might be a friend. It might be a co-worker or classmate, a boss or a teacher. You might have a strained relationship with a member of this church or the minister of this church. But I would guess that just about everybody knows somebody with whom things just are not clicking. And, what this morning is about more than anything is about how to get things to click again.

One hypothesis: for the most part, the greater the investment that exists in a relationship, the greater the effort we will extend to renew that relationship when things are not at their best. A couple that has spent years and years together and has reared children together will shell out for counseling and couples enrichment. We don’t go to measures like these for that really horrible cousin who lives two time zones away and we, for the most part, just resign ourselves to tolerate him once every two years at the family reunion. When the stakes are raised, we are more open to doing the work of repair and renewal.

Another hypothesis: Every relationship goes through cycles, through ups and downs. The more we have invested in the relationship – invested in time, invested in emotional energy, invested in how important we consider this relationship in our lives – the more capable we are of weathering the low points, the valleys that are inevitable in all relationships.

I recently spoke with a woman in this church whose wedding I performed. I asked her for her relationship wisdom. She said, “Seventy percent of the time we are just fantastic together. Fifteen percent of the time we can’t stand each other. And the other fifteen percent of the time we are out of sync. I am moving closer while he is pulling away or vice-versa.”

So, what do we make out of this? In school work, 70% is a C-minus. Does this person have C-minus relationship? In basketball, a 70% field-goal percentage makes you the greatest player of all time. It makes you Wilt Chamberlain. (On second thought, he may not be the best example for us to emulate in our relationships.) But using the basketball analogy, 70% is a Hall of Fame relationship.

I am guessing that numerical metrics and specious analogies may not be the most useful way for us to go about evaluating relationships… or maybe not. In a marriage, is the experience of mutual satisfaction and contentment 70% of the time good? And, it also depends on how bad the “bad” is. And how would we compare this to other relationships? A consumerist example is probably lacking, but how would we evaluate a restaurant where we only enjoyed the dining experience seven times out of ten? And, what do we make out of people who endure year after year of disappointment. The Chicago Cubs have not won a World Series in 100 years, and they still have thousands and thousands of loyal fans. Would any of us remain in a relationship that disappointing for that long?

Perhaps I am over-thinking here and getting a bit too philosophical and a bit too speculative. We are supposed to be discussing the renewal of relationships, and we have two choices: We could look at dysfunctional, strained relationships and identify the characteristics that threaten relationships. Or, we could look at healthy relationships and tease out the key factors contributing to that health. We could ask ourselves questions like, “What are a few key elements that make your relationship successful?” “What are a few practices that contribute to vitality in your relationship?” “What does relationship renewal mean to you?”

Questions like these are not just for couples, or relationships between two people. There is a whole school of thought by which groups of people can revive. The process is called Appreciative Inquiry, and it is described this way:

“Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives ‘life’ to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable. Appreciative Inquiry involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. Instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design. It seeks to build a constructive union between a whole people and the massive entirety of what people talk about as past and present capacities: achievements, assets, unexplored potentials, innovations, strengths, elevated thoughts, opportunities, benchmarks, high point moments, lived values, traditions, strategic competencies, stories, expressions of wisdom, insights into the deeper spirit or soul – and visions of valued and possible futures.”

I’ve known of several churches that have used Appreciative Inquiry as they’ve entered into a period of intentional renewal. And, while it is a tool that is usually used by communities, I don’t see why it couldn’t be used in smaller unit relationships. I don’t know if any of our psychologists have used appreciative inquiry in couple’s therapy, but I don’t see why not.

This is a sermon and not an amateur psychology lecture. So, I would like to connect this discussion about relationship renewal to both our Unitarian Universalist principles and to our common church life. The word “relationship,” (well, actually the word is “relations”) occurs in our UU Seven Principles, in the second principle that describes our goal of fostering, “Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.”

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations: sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Two of these words are pretty simple. It is no stretch for us to affirm “justice”, which is to say that we should not exploit, deceive, or oppress others human beings. And compassion is another word that is fairly basic. It refers to a duty of care that we have for others with whom we interact.

Equity is a word that may be a little bit more unusual. I had always thought it was a synonym for equality, but I consulted the dictionary and found this was not the case. According to the dictionary, equity refers to having qualities of fairness, reasonableness, rightness, honesty, impartiality, candor, and uprightness.

I also think it is telling that I would just sort of assume the word meant equality. Equality is a word that has great appeal to many Unitarian Universalists and I wonder if subconsciously I just assumed that the word was there in the seven principles. There are all kinds of equality that are worth fighting for and that Unitarian Universalists have fought for over the years. We’ve have been on the cutting edge and on the front lines of the fight for marriage equality, gender equality, racial equality, and so forth.

So, why not put the word “equality” there? Because not all human relationships are based in equality and, if I can say something controversial, nor should they be. This does not mean that there aren’t fights for equality worth fighting. I am simply saying that power is a real and necessary part of many human relationships, despite the fact that we may wish that it wasn’t. There are real and necessary power differentials between adults and children, for example, and to pretend that there isn’t is a recipe for bad boundaries.

Even though it isn’t a topic for polite conversation, we are a microcosm of society and members of this church vary widely in terms of the privilege and wealth we enjoy. Privilege and wealth means the capacity to wield power – to wield power for either tremendous good or for tremendous ill. To try to pretend that we are all equal is to deny that some of us have positions of power that allow us to impact the world significantly.

If this discussion of power is worrisome to you, I ask you only to think about your job. Do you have the same power your superiors have or the same power those who report to you have? Sometimes this fact can be deeply frustrating, but that’s life and there are good reasons for it.

It has been interesting to tune into the news at various points during the day over the past week and see the Pope doing all the things Popes do when they visit the United States. Seeing it, I am reminded of just how unlike Catholicism Unitarian Universalism is. We are far, far, far less hierarchical, which for the most part is good although, to be completely honest I am insanely jealous of the Popemobile. But seriously, even though we are one of the flattest faith traditions in terms of a lack of hierarchy, even I do carry some measure of power in my position. I am human, but more is expected from me. My words and actions are subject to special scrutiny and what I say often has an exponent attached. To deny this would be a form of self-deception. Ministers don’t get to be just another guy or just another gal.

So, while we strive for equality in some circumstances, we realize that complete and utter equality is neither attainable, nor, in certain circumstances, desirable. So, we aim to use our power wisely… to use our powers for the cause of justice, in the exercise of compassion, and to further the demands of equity.

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations. That list is a great start. Just off the top of my head I would add accountability, forbearance, understanding, and appreciation as other traits worth developing in human relationships.

I want to conclude by talking about the renewal of relationships in church life. We are all people with many relationships: partners and spouses, parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren, siblings, relatives, in-laws, friends, co-workers, colleagues, supervisors, teammates, and so on and so forth. We also have a relationship with others in the church and with the church itself.

That relationship, between our own selves and the church, sometimes follows the same pattern of a romantic relationship or a close friendship or even a kind of familial relationship. We go through periods of infatuation. We are smitten by the church. We go through periods of disillusionment. We go through periods of feeling out of sync.

When this happens, we have a choice. Our response is our choice. We can either let the relationship dwindle and atrophy… or we can take steps to heal, renew, and rebuild. The best news of all is that it is our choice.

Just as it is our choice (as well as our sacred duty) to practice Justice.

Just as it is our choice (as well as our sacred duty) to practice Compassion.

Just as it is our choice (as well as our sacred duty) to practice Equity.

It is our choice and our sacred duty to work on ourselves and to work towards whole and holy relationships. These choices speak volumes about our character.

Community. Community is a word that comes easily to the lips. It is a word that we think we know what it means when we say it. This morning’s message is about community. About its possibilities. About its struggles and strivings. And, when community is threatened or endangered, about its healing and its renewal.

I think that the amount that the word is tossed around speaks to the volume of people’s hunger to be a part of communities. In the society in which we live, a society in which extended families are scattered across states and across continents, a society in which many of us know little about our neighbors, a society of so much impermanence and instability, the idea of community has enormous appeal, enormous draw.

And, so the word “community” is tossed about. We hear about such things as retirement communities and gated communities. We hear phrases such as, the African-American community, the gay community, the Jewish community, as well as communities referring to immigrants from different countries: the Jamaican community, the Laotian community, and so on. And then there are other sorts of communities: The theater community. The arts community. The swing-dancing community. The model train community. You get the idea.

And, of course, there are church communities. As one of my Unitarian Universalist colleagues puts it, “People come to us for the worship service but they stay for the community.” I find this statement to be true a lot of the time. When I hear people talk about what is most important for them as a part of this Unitarian Universalist church, “community” is often one of the top things if not the top thing that is mentioned. And perhaps what this means is really self-evident, but it may be worthwhile to unpack the idea of community a little bit this morning.

I want to offer you a quick glimpse into how I think about community, and how I regard Unitarian Universalist religious community in particular. I’m not one hundred percent certain that I came up with these ideas on my own, but if I did pick them up somewhere, I know not from where. I think about community this way: for a community to be a community, you must have meaningful engagement and interaction with people who are very similar to you and you must have meaningful engagement and interaction with people who are a little bit similar to and a little bit different from you, and you must have meaningful engagement and interaction with people who are quite different from you.

Suppose you are a retired person in your seventies. For this church to be community to you, you would need an opportunity for meaningful interaction with those who are very similar to you. So you might take part in the Ulysseans, our group for active seniors. But you would also need the opportunity to interact with those somewhat similar to you. So, you might sign up for Dinner for Eight and meet people more diverse in age and life stage. And, you would also need the opportunity to interact with those very different than you. So, you might sign up to be a Val Pal next February and have the chance to get to know a child in our church community. Or, you might volunteer with the Interfaith Hospitality Network and work with homeless families in Johnson County.

Or, suppose you are a coupled person in your thirties with small children. You would find deep connection with people quite similar to you in the “Thirty-Somethings Group”; if you sang and you joined the choir you would make connections with people somewhat similar to you; if you attended the training in two weeks and joined the lay ministry team and visited homebound members of our church, that might be an experience of forming deep relationships with those different from you.

My point in all this is that being around only those who are very much like you does not make a community. It makes a club. And, if everyone is extremely different from you it is difficult to feel like part of a community as well. So, it takes both of these, all of these, being with people who are sort of in the same boat you are in and encountering the other who stretches you.

The other part of being a church community is in recognizing that we have a responsibility to make our church a place where anybody can find community. A critical mass of Ulysseans, or Half-timers (as our 40ish to 60ish group calls themselves), or 30-somethings is important for all the participants in those groups to be able to find community. But, what about college students? What about those for whom English is not their first language? What about people of color? What about Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender persons? What about those living below the poverty line? What about billionaires? (I would hate to think that a billionaire would not be able to find community here. They need others like them to feel like they belong.) And, what about Republicans? I’m completely serious here. I want every single person who walks through our door to be able to find community here. That means building a critical mass of people at each point along a scale of diversity that includes racial and ethnic diversity, age diversity, gender diversity, political diversity, theological diversity, and more.

Community: Deep connections with people very similar to you. Deep connections with people somewhat similar to you. Deep connections with people quite different from you.

When Unitarian Universalists speak about community, they often prefix an adjective to the word, referring to something that is called “Beloved Community.” The term “Beloved Community” was made popular by Martin Luther King, whom our nation mourned last weekend on the 40th anniversary of his death. King’s concept of Beloved Community was contained in the immortal words of his famous speech, “One day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers…. One day every valley will be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight.” King’s dream was more than racial integration. It was about deep encounter with difference across the entire spectrum of human experience.

This morning’s sermon is the third in a four part series on renewal. The two previous sermons dealt with two aspects of individual renewal, the renewal of our bodies and the renewal of our emotions. This morning we shift to consider renewal within groups of people. This morning is devoted to the renewal of communities and next week’s service will concern the renewal of relationships.

In the reading before the sermon I selected words by the gifted poet Nikki Giovanni, words that addressed the anger and the fear, the profound sadness and existential despairing of the Virginia Tech community following the shootings there a year ago. If one were to sit down and create a list of communities afflicted by devastation or violence, the list would stretch on and on. To the example of Virginia Tech we could add Northern Illinois University and the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Natural disasters have ravaged communities as close as Greensburg, Kansas and all across our nation from hurricanes in Florida and New Orleans to wildfires in Southern California. Terrorist attacks leveled skyscrapers in New York City and crashed a plane into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. And, I’ve just limited these examples to the devastations of the past few years in our own country. If we expanded our gaze around the world or cast it back into the past we could magnify exponentially our list of devastations.

I do not want to rehash these horrors at any great length, but rather ask what might be learned from them. Why do some communities heal more quickly than others? What makes some communities more resilient than others? What prompts some communities to renewal while others remain stuck in destruction, or worse, respond to their trauma with bitterness, hatred, and conflict? What can we learn? I ask this question of what we can learn not because we face any great crisis, although in the case that we should this wisdom would be important. No, I ask this question because I believe that these extreme examples can teach us how to deepen our own lives in this church community and in the other communities to which we belong.

So, let us explore a few of these examples and see what they have to teach us:

Let’s begin with the story of the paper menorahs in Billings, Montana. (I recounted this story as our children’s story.) Billings is a fairly white town with few people of color and few religious minorities. The town had become a popular gathering place for white supremacists and similar hate groups. Hurling bricks through the windows of Jewish homes was not the first instance of hate crimes in the city, and it was not the first time the people of the city had come together to resist hate. The town’s painters union volunteered to repaint for free any home, business, or place of worship that had been defaced by bigoted graffiti. When skinheads harassed those attending the town’s African-American church, neighboring churches sent white allies to witness and support the town’s small African-American population.

Psychotherapist and author Janice Cohn was so moved by this story that she set out to study it. From the story she went on to write a children’s book and a children’s play based on these events. Asking the question of what gave the people in the town the courage to stand up to hate, she first pointed to a number of the town’s leaders: the editor of the newspaper, the police chief, and members of the clergy. These leaders helped to create a vision of the type of community Billings could be and should be. People came together to stick up for one another as a community.

Another example is found in the writings of Rebecca Parker, the President of our UU seminary in Berkeley, California. Rev. Dr. Parker writes about speaking at a special service of dedication for the UU Church in San Jose, California which had burned down and which now had been rebuilt.

“In the moment of devastation, they resolved to restore the shelter for human hope that their ancestors had built. They pledge their faith to those who had come before them and those who would come after them. They took hands across the generations, and they held on. They grieved the loss and then went to work. The rallied and rebuilt. They rolled up their sleeves and painted. They got out their pocketbooks and wrote a check – and then another. They stayed late through meetings to hash out the details and choose the right direction. They were in it for the long haul…. They created beauty from the ashes. Not just the beauty of a resurrected building, but the beauty of a communion of people bound together by devotion to something that seemed impossible.” [Blessing the World, p. 59-60]

Parker, in her sermon of celebration, makes it clear to point out that the congregation in San Jose “didn’t just make a replica of the past. They rebuilt what was lost, but they created something new as well.”

One of my colleagues in Florida tells me of how, in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma, locals feuded about how to rebuild a part of the city that was emotionally significant. Some would settle for nothing less than a complete rebuilding of the area how it had always been while others pushed for the rebuilding to capture the heritage of this meaningful location but also incorporate new features.

Rebecca Parker writes much the same thing when she talks about what happens when the old sanctuaries fall. (And, by “old sanctuaries”, she does not mean church buildings. She means churches, buildings, homes, neighborhoods, cities and, more than that, she means the sanctuaries we imagine in our minds and hold in our hearts.)

“When the old sanctuaries fall… we need to rebuild with something new as the cornerstone… something that marks the awareness that love for one another is our only security. Faithful solidarity with one another on this planet is the only power that is stronger than violence or terror or devastation. Joining hands, working together to create beauty, risking for the sake of a future we hope for but cannot see, but still moving in the direction of what we dream can be.” [Blessing the World, p. 61]

So, where I am going with all of this? One of the most compelling passages in the Bible is found in Ezekiel 37. In this passage, the prophet Ezekiel has a vision where he surveys a barren field littered with dry bones. In the vision, Ezekiel has a conversation with Yahweh and the bones are brought back to life: first they stand up; then they are “enfleshed” with sinew, muscles, and skin; and, finally, the breath of spirit and soul and life reanimates them.

Even though this is the birth of Spring, it is a time when many of us feel like dry bones. In the church world, many ministers have been known to say, “Everything after Easter is gravy.” In the academic world, the end of the school year approaches. Many of us look forward to planned vacations during the Summer months. And, at church many of our board and committee leaders await the conclusion of their terms and tenures of leadership.

What do we do when our communities feel like dry bones? What renews them? This morning we’ve looked at communities that have had the strength to move forward after great trauma and loss. We can learn from their examples. This morning we’ve also considered the diversity that empowers this church. When you are feeling dry, remember that here you can encounter others who understand you deeply and that there is the breath of newness and the thrill of difference all around you… always. Amen.

Opening Words
[These opening words were written by Rev. Thom and read by a child in our congregation.]

When children are young sometimes their parents tell them not to make faces or else their face will get stuck that way.

When a child is mad and furious and angry, she may make an angry face. Let’s see you squint your eyes, bare your teeth and make an angry face with me. And her mom will say to her, “Don’t make that face or else it will get stuck like that.”

Or, when a child is upset or sad, he may make a pouting face. Cross your arms, stick out your bottom lip, and make a pouting face with me. And his mom will say to him, “Don’t make that face or else it will get stuck like that.”

And, sometimes, children just feel silly. They like to stick out their tongue or make their nose into a pig snout or pull on their ears or do funny things with their eyes. What is the silliest face you can make? And, the parents of this child will say, “Don’t make that face! It might get stuck like that and what if you had to walk around for the rest of your life with your tongue sticking out.”

Now that I am older and know more, I know my parents were wrong. My face didn’t get stuck looking angry or sad or silly. But, every once in a while, I see somebody who looks mean all the time. Or I see somebody who looks angry all the time. Or I see somebody who looks sad all the time. And I wonder: were their parents right? Did this person’s face somehow get stuck like that? Or, is this person just constantly angry or mean or sad?

I guess some people do get stuck feeling the same way all the time. When they do, what sorts of things can they do to get unstuck? What can make them smile or laugh? This morning’s worship service is about these sorts of questions. Let us worship and let us learn together.


Sermon
A few weeks ago I was at the gym, riding the stationary bicycle while watching the news on CNN. As I pedaled, my gaze lowered to the bottom of the screen, to those scrolling news bits that cycle from right to left across the TV screen. And then an item passed that read, and I am not making this up, quote, “Sirius Satellite Radio to launch station dedicated to 24-hour coverage of Eliot Spitzer scandal.”

I had to confirm if it was true, and it was true. Allow me to quote the actual announcement from Sirius: “For those who can’t get enough of the sex scandal that brought down New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Sirius Satellite Radio has launched what it is calling ‘Client 9 Radio,’ a special channel dedicated to covering all aspects of the Spitzer saga.”

Among the many questions one might ask about this is, “Why?” And, who would actually listen to such a station? And, could a person who would set their dial to “Client 9 Radio” be described as a healthy, balanced person?

Or, take another news story that is stirring people up at the moment, the story about the various controversial statements made in sermons by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Last June I had the pleasure, and it was a pleasure, of spending a day with Reverend Wright as he presented a day-long workshop to UU ministers on the subject of prophetic ministry and congregational growth. And, while I don’t mean to spend too much of my allotted time this morning playing the role of cultural pundit, I might offer a few observations about this news story. First, spending a day with Rev. Wright I found him personable, funny, engaging, and flat out brilliant. He served for seven years in the Marine Corps and Navy and was the valedictorian of his naval corpsman training. He has earned advanced degrees in theology from some of the world’s finest Divinity schools. In a thirty-six year ministry in Chicago he built a ten-thousand member mega-church that later affiliated with our sister denomination, the United Church of Christ.

Jeremiah Wright is to the South side of Chicago what Rev. Bob Meneilly is to Prairie Village, only Wright is several times more accomplished. Last week I had the chance to run into Bob Meneilly and George Tormohlen and discuss Rev. Wright with them. I asked them, “If someone sifted through every remark you’ve ever made in all your decades of public speaking and picked out two or three sentences and played a loop of them over and over again on television, how would it make you look?” They agreed that they have said things just as controversial as Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Three brief comments:

First, Jeremiah Wright didn’t say anything about the United States that the prophet Jeremiah in the Bible didn’t say about the people of Israel. In fact, compared the Biblical Jeremiah, Reverend Wright is fair and balanced and calm and restrained. Allow me to read from the Biblical Jeremiah:

“The Lord shall raise his hand against the inhabitants of this land. For all, high and low, are out for ill-gotten gains; prophets and priests are frauds, every one of them; they dress my people’s wound, but on the surface only, with their saying, ‘All is Well’ All well? Nothing is well! They ought to be ashamed because they practiced abominations; yet they have no sense of shame… Therefore they will fall with a great crash and be brought to the ground on the day of reckoning.” (Jeremiah 8: 10b-12)

Second, you can find sound-bytes from just about any pastor in America – McCain’s pastor, elders in Romney’s Mormon church, Clinton’s pastor (I presume), Mike Huckabee himself, the evangelical leaders who meet with President Bush, not to mention Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jerry Johnston – and, yes, Bob Meneilly, John Tamilio, and even some guy named Thom Belote – you could find sound-bytes from any of these people that would make Jeremiah Wright sound moderate and understated.

Third, the media stations, like those that think it would be a good idea to create a 24-hour station devoted to Eliot Spitzer, that repeat sound-bytes over and over and over are engaging in exactly the same sort of emotional manipulation and distortion that they accuse Reverend Wright of trying to stir up in the pulpit.

Alas, I digress. It is just that anger, rage, and indignation are easy places to begin if we are going to speak about emotions. There is a well-known bumper-sticker that liberals tend to put on their cars. The bumper-sticker reads, “If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.” The people who put such stickers on their cars are alluding to issues such as war, poverty, health care, discrimination, environmental degradation, and so forth. But anybody could put this bumper sticker on their car. If you are not outraged, you are not watching CNN.

This morning’s sermon is the second in a four part series on the theme of Renewal. Today, I want to address emotional renewal. Then, on the second and third Sundays in April, I will preach the third and fourth installments of this series addressing the renewal of communities and the renewal of relationships.

I’ve decided to begin this morning with anger, outrage, and indignation because they are some of the easiest emotions to recognize. I want to branch out and also consider other negative emotions like fear, jealousy, and anxiety. And, I do not want to focus just on the so-called negative emotions either. I want to ask whether, it is entirely healthy or ethically defensible to strive for perpetual happiness, sanguinity, and bliss.

To place this question in the language of pop-culture references, we can think of Neo’s dilemma in the movie The Matrix. In the film he is given the choice between two pills. One pill will cause him to return to the reasonably comfortable life with which he is familiar and which happens to be nothing but an illusion. The other pill will reveal the truth. In Biblical language, the question is whether he should eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge or not. Is there anything to be said for ignorant bliss? Or, as Bobby McFerrin sang, “Don’t worry, be happy. Cause when you worry your face will frown and that will bring everybody down. So, don’t worry be happy now.” How different that is from Martin Luther King’s injunction that we should become maladjusted and live with the experience of a divine discontent.

What I’m trying to do here is to ask you to imagine balancing emotional states. On one hand is every joyful feeling. On the other hand is everything disturbing and outrageous. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the question seems to be: “Just how happy and content and at peace should we be?” To which side should the scales tip?

But, it occurs to me that perhaps I have framed this question incorrectly. Maybe the question is not about which emotions we are justified in feeling – in response to the events of the world, in response to our own personal lives. Instead, maybe the question concerns what emotional states help us to live well and effectively. There is an important distinction here:

Red-eyed anger might be justifiable. At the same time it may be counter-productive to feel this way.

Despair and gloom might be justified. At the same time they might be counter-productive to feel this way.

So, let me suggest this definition. Emotional renewal is what we do to be able to cultivate feelings that help us to live effectively and courageously and meaningfully. Emotional renewal is less about feeling good than about feeling in ways that help us to live well. Unfortunately, understanding what Emotional Renewal is and figuring out how to make Emotional Renewal happen are two completely different things.

Oftentimes, emotions are unwieldy things. Emotions are what they are. The paradoxical truth about emotions is that the more we try to exert absolute, willful control over them, the less we are able to manage them. Within our society, we have a tendency to try to suppress or stuff or avoid or just plain deny certain emotional states. Anger, worry, sadness, disappointment. Sometimes there’s the temptation to lie to ourselves and others about our emotions, to pretend we don’t feel how we feel. We say, “Oh, I’m not bothered,” while inside we seethe. “Really, I’m fine,” when we are steamrolled by sorrow. “Everything is OK,” when we are upset.
Emotions are what they are. And denying them is not the most constructive way to face them.

In the midst of writing this sermon I happened to run into my colleague Reverend Kathy Riegelman. So, I asked her what she thinks she would say if she had to preach a sermon entitled “Emotional Renewal.” She said that she would talk about finding that delicate balance between burying our emotions so deeply that we become flat and numb and the opposite, having no capacity to express our emotions well which leaves a person an emotional wreck.

While writing, I was also sidetracked by a phone call from my good friend Reverend Eva Cameron in Iowa. I asked her the same question. She said that she would talk about how, in her opinion, Americans choose to spend so much of their free time doing things that are emotionally avoidant. These things include web-surfing, computer games, and watching television. These things also include addictions – alcohol, drugs, gambling, over-eating – things that people compulsively do in order to avoid a certain feeling. She continued that if she were to deliver this sermon she would recommend engagement with activities that are emotionally expressive rather than avoidant. Such activities include meditation and other spiritual practices, exercise, and intimacy.

Sometimes, being the serious list-maker that I am, I wonder what it would look like to take an emotional inventory. To actually make a list of the emotions I routinely feel and then to actually name what it is that I do when I feel that way. And then, perhaps, to add a third part to the exercise and ask, “Well, how is that working out for me?”

“How is that working out for you?” [When I delivered this sermon I had no idea where I picked up this saying until several people told me that it is a frequent saying of Dr. Phil. Yikes.] The question, “How is that working out for you?” is a very brash and in your face expression. At the same time it is very liberating. It suggests that we might change… perhaps not change the way we feel but change the way we react to how we feel so that our life has better outcomes.

For our reading before the service I read a meditation written by Victoria Safford entitled “A Map of the Journey in Progress.” [The reading came from her book of meditations Walking Towards Morning. As I conclude the service, I return to her reading in which she takes not an emotional inventory but makes an emotional map.

In that reading, Victoria Safford writes, “Here is where I found my voice and chose to be brave.” Where is that place for you?

Safford writes, “Here’s a place where I forgave someone against my better judgment.” Where is that place for you?

She writes, “This is the place where I said no more loudly than I’d thought I ever could.” When have you done this?

She writes, “Here’s a place, a murky puddle, where I have stumbled more than once and fallen. I don’t know yet what to learn there.” Where is your murky puddle?

The reading by Safford ends with these words: “Here is where, if by surgeon’s knife, my heart was opened up – and here, and here, and here, and here. These are the landmarks of conversion.”

I wonder where your landmarks of conversion are? I cannot know those places as well as you know them. If the cartography of your emotional life was laid out before you, what places on the map would you point to and identify as the landmarks of your conversion, of your emotional renewal?