January 8, 2012
Matt Alspaugh
This sermon was presented as a candidating sermon, even though I have served the UUYO congregation two and a half years, as consulting minister. The congregation did vote to call me at the annual meeting after the service. — Matt
Introduction
I’ve shared with many of you how I came to find Unitarian Universalism. It was through a recommendation — actually the opposite of a recommendation. I was thinking of trying to find a church, mainly as a way to meet people, to become part of a community, and yes, maybe even find romance — and I asked people at work about some of the churches in town. I asked one young woman, “What about the Unitarian church I pass on the way to work?”. She said, “That’s the devil church, you wouldn’t want to go there.”
The devil church! I decided I needed to check that place out!
As you might imagine, Unitarian Universalism has changed my life. It has certainly changed my career path, but it has touched all aspects of my life. I know this is true for some of you. Our faith has been transformative, even life-saving for many among us.
Last year, I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Monterey, California in February for a week-long training workshop for UU ministers. I was fortunate to have been accepted to the preaching class, for we had an outstanding teacher.
Rev. Dr. Kay Northcutt has taught preaching for many years, but her religious background is Disciples of Christ, not UU. She came to teach us, people outside her Christian faith, because she believes in us. In her plenary sermon, she called us Unitarian Universalists “lifesavers”, she said we are “the hope for the world”.
Now you need to know that these were no idle words. You need to know that she came to teach us at great personal cost. She suffers from a degenerative nerve disease; she had been in intensive care multiple times in the previous year. Even during the time she was with us, we could tell she was suffering. She could teach only in short segments, sitting most of the time, speaking softly, carefully, sometimes wearing an oxygen cannulus. She wondered aloud if this would be her last public appearance anywhere. But she wanted to be there because she sees us as the hope for the world.
In her opening sermon to all the four hundred or so UU ministers attending the conference, she told a story of her childhood.
When my sisters and I were little girls, every time we closed the screen door behind us — as we left home to walk to school –Mom called out the door after us, “Girls! GIRLS! Go find your greatness!”
My sisters and I would look at one another and roll our eyes. All we were hoping for — was to survive one more day of school — and our mom? Well, our mom-was literally calling us to imagine a future — and prepare for it — when that was the farthest thing from our minds ….[1]
At the end of this simple story, Kay asked the ministers, reminded us — “Stop merely trying to survive. Go find your greatness. Go find your greatness, for this era, now.”
As UUs we need to stop merely trying to survive. We need to go find our greatness for this era. As individuals we need to find what it is that energizes us, gives us passion, makes us want to do great and meaningful things. As a church community, as this community of joy and life, we need to work together to find our communal greatness, and put it to work healing the world.
UUYO Accomplishments
So let me take a moment to look back on a few of our accomplishments in the last two years here at UUYO. Not my accomplishments, but our accomplishments, together:
- We’ve grown very steadily in members, by almost 30%. As a growing church, we are a minority in UU circles, as most of our churches are either holding steady or declining. I give our Growth and Vitality team much credit for this accomplishment.
- Our Religious Education program is growing, with nearly 30 kids attending some Sundays. My job has been in part to simply make sure we have enough space for our RE classes.
- We’ve remodeled Channing Hall and are nearly complete with remodeling the Kitchen. We’re beginning the process of improving Schweitzer Lounge, to make it more a pleasant, usable space.
- Our Sunday worship now includes lots of lay creative involvement from a strong Worship Associates team of about 20 people.
- After two great summers with strong, consistent Sunday services, we’ve begun to think about year-round church, with Religious Education and music in the summer.
- We have created a social justice focal point around Farm to Family, focusing on food and sustainability, and we are beginning the Green Sanctuary certification process.
- We have several student members from YSU, and the beginnings of a student group on campus, possibly in relationship with the Interfaith Youth Core.
- We are beginning to look at how we care for our members in need with more organized rides, calls, and visits and other support.
- And yet I also have to acknowledge that the pace of change has not been without at least some conflict and pain.
- I know that disagreements have arisen over resources, such as the use of rooms in the building, and we try to resolve these, perhaps imperfectly.
- I know that some of our changes have caused discomfort for some members, who have quietly stayed away from active involvement.
I know also that sometimes I push people to move quickly on projects. For example, there’s the Chalice Lighter grant application, which is something we’ve been talking about for at least two years. Last week, a few-day window of opportunity opened, but we needed to turn in our application by today, this afternoon. Karen Stangl tells me I brought her to tears this week when she realized I was serious about suggesting we complete this application — in the middle of this busy, crazy week — candidating week!
Perhaps too often I remind myself of words of G. K. Chesterton, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” I sometimes feel like Harold, that child with a great big purple crayon, [in the children's story reenactment] imagining great things, creating rough, childlike sketches of possibility.
But I hope we learn from what we do badly, in all our experiments and trials, and make changes. I think of that line attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” My hope then, is that we move nimbly, try different things, experiment, and make needed adjustments as we attempt to stay on our charted course.
Mission
But what is our charted course? If greatness is the destination we seek, what direction do we set off for? What keeps us on the path when difficulties arise? What kind of compass do we carry, what are those “quiet stars” that guide us as we do our work with this church?
In my ministry here at UUYO, my personal compass, my guidestar has been your mission, which takes its body and shape in the form of the words of your mission statement, printed on the back of every order of service.
And that statement reads: “Our Mission is to build a diverse and transformative spiritual community, help people live lives of wholeness, and promote justice, peace, and religious freedom.”
Here’s how I make this mission into a compass, a constant guide. I don’t quite have it memorized — I’ve tried — but I have internalized it. I’ve made it my own, I’ve personalized it, and I encourage you to do the same.
To claim it for my own, I’ve thought of a shorter version, maybe a personal mission, if you will, that parallels our UUYO mission. My personal mission is still under development, it’s in flux, its in beta, version 0.9.
Like the church mission there are three parts — you can map them from the UUYO mission.
The first part is the personal spiritual journey, the inner journey that we all take in this world from birth to death. How far do we go? What do we do with this time we are given? How do we make sense of our place in the nature of things?
The journey is different for each of us, we each are free to choose our own path, guided by our own intuition, our own inner light, perhaps. The fact that we are allowed, even encouraged to make our own individual journeys is one of the most beautiful and awesome aspects of Unitarian Universalism. It’s beautiful because we are nearly alone among religions in giving people such breadth of individual religious freedom. It’s also awesome, even terrifying for some, because we are given that freedom, and we are expected to go where our own heart leads, not where someone else tells us to go. That kind of journeying can be challenging, for some of the paths we choose may not be easy or well traveled.
But here’s the thing: we don’t have to do this by ourselves, we don’t have to go it alone. This is the second part of the mission. We — the congregation, the UU movement — exist to help people on their spiritual journeys. In this church community, we can count ourselves among a group of fellow travelers, like pilgrims of old, who help us on the way. Part of the role of the church is to be a sort of base camp, a support network for each of us as we make our journeys. We help people live lives of wholeness, to remain in balance. But I hope we go beyond that, to encourage constant spiritual growth, and at times significant life transformation.
In helping one another in this church, we strive to create what I call the “joyful community”. The joyful community is our attempt to create a model of how we want to be with one another in the larger world. In the joyful community, we create a safe space to experiment and learn, to try new forms of being in relationship with one another. In the joyful community, we create the potential for people to be maximally involved, to flourish, to offer their gifts and talents in meaningful ways. When we create the joyful community, we generate tremendous energy and vitality, we get things done, and quickly. We take risks, and learn from our efforts. Our building is full of life, people are happy to be here, it is warm, almost hot, with activity.
What do we do with this tremendous energy? It’s more energy than we require for ourselves, so we direct some of it into the third part of our mission, which is to serve the world. The word ‘minister’ means to serve, so we minister to the world, healing the world, making it a better place. We serve our nearby neighbors most intensely, because we understand the needs of our local community most clearly, but our ability to serve and to heal reaches out in expanding circles, in ripples, out to the region, the nation, and whole earth itself.
Here’s the interesting thing. The act of serving, of offering healing, of being in contact with others who need us, changes us. We find ourselves changed spiritually, transformed, carried along on our spiritual journey as a result of serving the world.
So the three parts of this mission tend to feed and support one another. Being on the spiritual journey is enhanced by being part of the joyful community, and the joyful community creates possibility to heal the world, and healing the world urges us along on the spiritual journey. So we live our lives as Unitarian Universalists by circling, no spiraling out through the parts of this mission: the spiritual journey, in the joyful community, that heals the world.
By cycling through this spiraling, expanding, swirling mission, I believe we do go find our greatness. We find how to truly live.
Rainer Maria Rilke seems to speak to the vision of finding our greatness:
All will come again
into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys,
people as strong and varied as the land.And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
and a sense of boundless offering
in all relations, and in you and me.No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
no belittling of death,
but only longing for what belongs to us
and serving earth,
lest we remain unused.[2]
And so let us be of use, serving earth, healing the world. Let us find our greatness. As Rev. Northcutt implores us, let us be the hope for the world. As the people of UUYO, the joyful community, let us sing out praises for the journey, the endless journey of the spirit.
Notes:
1 Kay Northcutt. Kindling Desire for God: Preaching As Spiritual Direction (p. 119). Kindle Edition.
2 Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours II, 25