Feb 21, 2010
Like Rev. Peter Morales [in the reading], like Judy Stone [who offered a chalice lighting reflection], I too remember my first visit to a Unitarian Universalist church. It was in New Jersey, where I drove past this church every day on my way to work. I asked some friends about it. One young woman told me it was the 'devil church'. I was intrigued, since I had had little luck with the various churches of God or Christ. I remember walking into that church, with some trepidation, steeled against any potential evangelization, sitting way in the back, checking out all possible means of egress should I need them. There were no crosses or Bibles in sight, and the hymnbooks were in fact loose-leaf binders. Everyone wore nametags, which made it easy for the name challenged like me.
The minister spoke. This Sunday was one of those rare Sundays where he read from the Bible. It was the story of Mary and Martha, and I was impressed that he read from four different versions of the Bible, just so we knew there was no one authoritative text. I felt immediately at home.
How was it for you? What was your first visit to a UU church like? OK I must stop, and acknowledge that there may be some here who have always been UU, and cannot relate to these stories. It's sad that we don't have more of you with us. You have a perspective that I envy. Please bear with me, perhaps our stories may connect with other parts of your life.
What about your first visit to a UU church? Maybe it was years or even decades ago. Maybe it is today! Maybe, like Peter, a friend brought you. Maybe, more likely, you found UU through other explorations. Perhaps you discovered Unitarianism in your reading of Emerson or Thoreau. Perhaps you found us on the internet. Maybe you took that Beliefomatic quiz[1] on the Beliefnet website, a quiz that seems to point any rational-minded person toward UU. Of course, Beliefnet is now owned by Fox Entertainment, so the Beliefomatic quiz is a little harder to find these days!
And then you came. My guess is that many of you had to work up a certain degree of courage to even think about a visit. You wondered about the risk of embarrassing yourself by not dressing right, or not knowing what to do. You may have worried about knowing when do you stand or bow or prostrate yourself? Or sing? You may have worried about those things, I don't know!
Quite likely, you checked out our website. Most of our visitors have checked out our website. They've reviewed the online newsletter and read the sermons. They've sought answers to even simple questions, like how do people dress at this church. That's one reason it's so important for us to update our website.
And I wonder if, coming to this church, located as it is in the North Side location in the city was part of the reason it took real courage for some of you to come. If you asked your suburban neighbors about visiting a church on the North Side of Youngstown, they might say 'are you nuts?', and recount stories of murder and arson. They'd tell you: why not just find a nice, safe, modern church near the edge of town with easy highway access? After all, aren't they pretty much the same?
So what brought you here? What pushed you out of your comfort zone, to travel down to this place, to notice the architecture which some may find terrifyingly traditional, and yet to still walk up the steps and pull hard on the oversized and heavy door? What impelled you to come in?
I know that for me, when I grasped that handle at that church in New Jersey, I was grasping for rescue. I was in my late twenties, looking back on a decade in which I seemed to be just running in place. I was increasingly despondent, spiritually bereft. My work life was stagnant, a relationship had ended; I was stuck. I have come to label this time in my life the 'lost decade'. Outwardly things looked OK. Like the pigs in the [children's] story, my house had been put in order, but my garden wasn't working right. Since I had no nieces to shake things up, I had to find another way.
I came into that church responding to an unceasing yearning, a terrible longing in my heart. I hoped that the church could offer something that I was missing. It wasn't a set of beliefs, prepackaged, ready to eat. I hoped to find myself in the presence of others who struggled with the same things I struggled with. I hoped to find not answers but ways to make answers. I hoped for friendships, and deep connections, of the kind that I wasn't finding at work, or at the gym, or in bars. I hoped to begin to find purpose and meaning for my life.
Does this sound familiar to you? Then we're in the right place.
After a while, we realize that we're no longer visitors or newcomers, but have integrated ourselves into the life of the church. We may or may not have signed the membership book, but we've made friends, we're doing things for the church, we realize we're regulars. And we find ourselves on the other side of the door, welcoming in those who have the courage to grasp that handle and pull, who step in. We offer them hospitality.
We come to realize, as Peter Morales put it, that,
"Hospitality, true hospitality, is not an obligation. It is not a duty. True hospitality is a spiritual practice, a religious practice. Like meditation or prayer, hospitality connects us with a deep truth and compassion that transcends our selves." [2]
He goes on,
"We are called to feed the spiritually hungry and to offer a home to the religiously homeless. And in the process, we are enriched in spirit." [3]
We know this, but sometimes we forget. We get happily focused on our own activities and friends. We may forget how it was to come in for the first time. We fail to welcome. This work is hard and we slip. Rev. John Buehrens, of Dallas, related this story:
"One Sunday many years ago, before we were married, I took Gwen to a Universalist church that I knew was more traditional in its worship, and might make an Episcopalian like herself feel more at home. … Only a scattering of elders had gathered there for worship. Six rows behind us we heard one woman whispering rather loudly to her companion, 'Who are those young people there? This isn’t their church!'" [4]
We'd like to think we are not like that. But realize that the woman raised an important question: Whose church is it? Whose church is it, really? Whose church is this?
At Unity Church Unitarian in St. Paul, (where I served as an intern before I came here) they claim that the church belongs to what they call the moral owners of the church. The moral owners include far more than just the members, they include all the people visiting, and who might visit, all the people who are served by the church in its social justice work, even the neighbors that might be impacted by the church. All these people should have a voice in the direction of the church. Moral ownership suggests a network of mutuality far larger than just those in the pews every Sunday. Whenever we encounter others in this church or around it, this idea of moral ownership changes our relationship with them. To a greater or lesser degree, they are part of the church, and we have an obligation to treat them with respect.
- So one of the reasons we will have a conversation about our Religious Education after our service today is because we recognize that our children and infants are also moral owners of this church even though they are not actually voting members.
- And one of the reasons we are putting effort into our membership and hospitality, from things like wearing nametags, to a workshop in April on "Belonging to UUYO", is because we recognize that newcomers, some of whom aren't even here yet, are also moral owners of this church.
- One of the reasons that I believe our all church project needs to connect to and serve this North Side community around us is that the residents here are moral owners, too.
I think that one of the paradoxes that exists in our movement is the relationship between believing and belonging. It showed up in the story Judy told of her dad.
Unlike many other churches, we are not bound together by common belief. We are bound by a yearning to be together, to belong.
In most churches, belief forms the outer perimeter, the gates or doors through which one must pass to get to the core, which is to belong, to be part of something bigger. Many of us have had the experience of having to leave our own beliefs at the door to gain entry to such churches. Many of us know friends and family members, who when asked about the creeds and beliefs of the churches they belong to, admit that they don't really believe all that stuff.
So the paradox here is that we try to hold that door of belief open wide. We try to be tolerant of a wide range of believing; our focus is more on what you do than what you think. The challenge is how can we be together with our diverse and sometimes conflicting beliefs. That focus on behavior and not belief allows people like Judy's dad to let go of some of their anger and agitation around beliefs.
So our hope is that we make this place one that you can belong to. And the paradox is that while many people come here with strongly held beliefs that they cannot 'check at the door' at other churches, they find that belief is not the center of this church either. When they realize that others aren't going to do battle with them over belief or try to take their beliefs away, they can hold those beliefs a little less tightly.
The theologian Henri Nouwen tells us,
"When we say, 'You can be my guest if you believe what I believe, think the way I think and behave the way I do', we offer love under a condition or for a price. This leads to exploitation making hospitality a business." [5]
Yet we can go too far to be accommodating. Nouwen continues:
"We are not hospitable when we leave our house to strangers and let them use it any way they want. An empty house is not a hospitable house...When we want to be really hospitable we not only have to receive strangers but also to confront them by unambiguous presence, showing our ideas, opinions and life styles clearly and distinctly. No real dialog is possible between somebody and a nobody. [6]
This relating to strangers and visitors is messy stuff! I know that sometimes I attempt to be nice to a person by holding back my feelings and opinions, and the balance I have to work toward is to be more vocal even at the risk of upsetting someone. Only then can dialog emerge. Others of us have to work toward balance from the other end, by trying to be more diplomatic, listening more carefully and being distinct in their words and actions so that true dialog can happen.
Martin Buber, in his famous work, Ich und Du, or I and You, speaks to the uniqueness and specialness of the connection between beings. He asks,
How might each of us, you and I, be changed by the encounter with the You, with the other? Distinguishing between the relational I-You and the objectifying I-it, he tells us:
The basic word I-You can be spoken only with one's whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a You to become, becoming I, I say you. All actual life is encounter. [7]
All actual life is encounter.
We all require others in order to become, to transform ourselves, to become more whole.
Today's other reading, by Juan Ramon Jimenez, tells us this:
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.
Our connection with the other, with Buber's You is realized through the ones walking beside us, seen or unseen. They visit, they listen, they forgive; they may be our gate to the Divine. They are the ones who will remain standing when we die. Our interconnection with them, the I-You interconnection binds us into the whole intertwined complexity of life. It is through the encounter with the other, that we begin to internalize and understand this connection, and in this we become transformed.
We know transformation is not easy, it is risky; it requires courage. We need to remind ourselves that when we encounter newcomers, strangers, or others, that they are taking risks and being courageous too. And in this act of ferocious courage, as both of us forge bonds of connection and commitment, and both the I and the You become more fully human, more fully whole.
Notes:
1. http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Quizzes/BeliefOMatic.aspx
2. Peter Morales, "Religious Hospitality: A Spiritual Practice for Congregations", www.uuabookstore.org/client/client_pages/3101.pd, p. 2.
3. Ibid., p. 3.
4. John Buehrens, "Radical Hospitality" A Sermon Delivered at First Parish in Needham, September 18, 2005
5. Henri Nouwen Reaching out: the three movements of the spiritual life p. 98.
6. Ibid. p. 98-99.
7. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. By Walter Kaufmann, 1970, p. 62
