A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
March 5, 2006
Copyright 2006, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
Two months ago, forty-five of us attended a workshop here led by the Rev. Larry Peers called "From Stressed to Blessed". We looked at how our participation in this congregation could feed us and energize us instead of something else we had to do. He gave us a lot to think about and some tools also for clarifying and enhancing our communications, our decision-making processes and our committee work. He gave us a way of thinking about how the church works. Imagine the church as a series of concentric circles. The outside circle, the first circle people encounter, is the welcoming one. How well we welcome new people in determines whether they will become engaged in the congregation and encounter the next circle, that of nurturing. If a warm welcoming circle encourages people to come back, our caring and nurturing of one another helps them stay. The next circle in is that of empowering. If individuals feel welcome here, feel nurtured here, they are in relationship with this community. They have a sense of belonging and a desire to participate in the community. The community helps people discover their spiritual gifts and passions and encourages them to participate in ways that hopefully speak to them, whether it is volunteering in some program or committee that already exists or finding ways to bring a new ministry to life. At the center is the serving circle. This is the heart of it. To quote Larry, "Service to others is a powerful way for individuals to grow spiritually…using one’s gifts, talents, or passion in meaningful and powerful ways." I say service is the heart of it because people come here, we come here, to find a spiritual home, a community of people who can help us and support us in exploring our beliefs, values and spirituality. A community that can support us in living meaningfully, with a depth and connection to our spiritual source, be it Goddess, God, nature, human potential or something we cannot yet name, that grows our soul and gives us hope and energy to make our world a more compassionate and just place to live. That helps us to let our light shine.
These circles are not stages that we work through to reach the center. They work together and we move back and forth. There are times when we are in need of nurture and care. There are times we feel energized and want to give back. There are times we need to be welcomed, even if we have been coming here for years. I learned a lot from the conversation we had about these circles and what we are doing to welcome, to nurture, to empower, and to serve. I was reminded about the importance of communication: letting each other know what we are doing and why, what we need, what we hope for, and the like. I was reminded about the importance of intentionality: This is a community of which we as individuals choose to be part. Thus, it is an intentional one. Taking time to discern, name, and talk through our hopes and dreams, our fears and anxieties, our purpose and vision at all levels is important, whether it is one on one, in small groups, in committees, or as a whole congregation. I also realized that we need to think about these circles not only in terms of individual participation but also as a whole. What do I mean? Well, we can talk about how we welcome and nurture each other as individuals, how we are empowered and serve as individuals and that is how we tend to do it. We may be here for the community, but it is a community grounded in the sanctity of the individual: the inherent worth and dignity of every person, the freedom of belief, and the free and responsible individual search for truth and meaning.
The whole is all of this that makes First Parish First Parish, the interaction of individual and community and more. The whole is not just us gathered here at this moment in time, but also the generations past and future. We have been given an inheritance of covenantal community going back to 1655 and we have an obligation to care for it for the years to come. We have no pope, no Rome, no Jerusalem, no Mecca, no promise of heavenly reward or eternal salvation. We do not have the inerrant word of a supreme being written in stone or in a book, rigid and unchanging even as we grow and change. As Fred Muir says, what we have is covenant. It is what makes Unitarian Universalists who we are. We do not gather as a community around a creed, a set of shared stated beliefs about God, humanity, and salvation. Instead, we gather around relationship and connection, in the hope and trust that we can, together, live life with more hope and meaning, more joy and love, more thoughtfulness and knowledge, more healing and courage, more empowerment and spiritual depth, more truth seeking and justice seeking, more gratitude and generosity then we can on our own. In fact, Muir argues: "I submit that…(because) the essence of our faith is covenantal: you must be in relationship with other Unitarian Universalists--you can’t do it alone" (p. 45). Our covenant is simply what we promise one another to make this community work, to make it a place of welcome and nurture, empowerment and service. It does not have to be a long, complicated thing. It can be as simple as, we promise to walk together in the spirit of love in our search for truth. Or we promise to create here Beloved Community as best we can. Or we promise together to seek justice, love kindness, and walk attentively with the sacred and the holy as we each understand it. Or here we will be cared for and will care for others. We make promises to each other all the time: you and I made promises, a covenant, at my installation as your minister. We make promises to our children and their parents at their child dedications, to couples at their weddings, to the spirits and memories of our loved ones at memorial services, to our new members when we welcome them. Our children and youth makes covenants in their classes. The Standing Committee created one for working together for the year. You get the idea.
And it is through covenant we connect, one to the other, one to the community, us to the whole. And for the whole to survive, to do more than survive, to welcome, to nurture, to empower, to serve us as individuals, coming to this community in need of these things, in hope of these things, in search of community or spiritual growth or religious freedom or religious education for our children or a place to practice our values or just to be accepted for who we are, we as individuals need to participate in the whole. We need to be aware that there is a whole we call our church, First Parish, that needs to be sustained and nurtured, empowered and served in order for us to be a community of individuals, walking together in a spirit of love, in our search for truth, in our working to heal the brokenhearted and liberate those captive to fear and prejudice, including our own hearts and our selves.
Over the next month, you will be invited to think about and to participate in the whole by fellow members and friends of this congregation. First, as you heard, we are holding our annual canvass and will be asking members and friends to make a financial pledge to support the working of the church. We are self-sustaining. The money we raise goes to paying our staff, maintaining our building, and supporting our programs and outreach. We are lucky that we have an endowment whose interest provides for part of our operating budget and that we have money from the rental of our steeple to cellular phone company that allows us to do special projects and programs. However, the majority of our financial support comes from us. We are able to do as much as we can support financially. As Kirk said, there is no set pledge amount. We are not asking for gold, but what Thayer called wampum, sacred gifts, "…what we contribute out of our daily lives, out of hard work…as a form of bonding with one another, honoring our institutions and religious leaders, and respecting our children." I think Tom Wight said it best during a chalice last year (or was it the year before): we don’t ask that you give until it hurts. But we do invite you to give until it feels right. After the service, we will have lunch together and can learn more about the canvass while we share food and fellowship. This is always a lot of fun.
Second, Larry Peers will be coming back to facilitate a second conference with us, Friday night March 31 and Saturday, April 1. The purpose of this one is to help us discern and articulate a covenant for this time in our congregational life: our promises and commitments to one another and the community as a whole. Frank Carpenter began this conversation with you the year before I came. But we have not talked as a whole community since after I was called here. I have been here four years and I think it is a good time for such a conversation. We are growing and full of energy. The Sunday School is bursting at the seams. We just finished looking back at 350 years of our history. We are not in a major conflict or transition. We can take a step back and look at the whole, what it is and what we want it to be. How shall we live together in this community of faith we call First Parish? In what spirit, do we welcome, nurture, empower and serve one another, our community, and the world? How do we as a community embody what matters to us?
Each of us has the right when we are invited, by a canvasser to pledge, or by a person to attend the conference, or by anyone to participate in anything, to say no. To say no, I can’t, or I don’t wish to, or not right now. We respect the reasons why individuals want or need to say no. But each of us also has the right to say yes. And for the sake of the whole, we need to say yes where and when we can. If you can say yes, I hope that you will. And I hope that in your saying yes, you will receive as much or more than you give, that being part of this community expands and challenges and fills your mind, heart and soul. I know that serving as your minister does so for me daily. Each year I am here, I love you and this ministry more. I thank you for that gift and that privilege. I invite you to find that circle of welcome, of nurture, of empowerment, of serving here, in the whole of who we are, that engages your mind and spirit, that names the sacred and the holy, that affirms your values and convictions and calls you to help make this a gentler, more compassionate and just world, that offers you a place to call home.
Resources:
Fredric J. Muir. Heretics’ Faith: Vocabulary for Religious Liberals. Annapolis, MD, 2001.