Rev. Joseph Boyd
It’s really good to be here. It’s good to be here on this beautiful Sunday morning, as the November chill begins. It’s really good to see familiar faces here in person, virtual on zoom, a literal reminder of the ways we are connected in both particular and global ways. UUYO is a particular community. Founded over 125 years ago, you have shaped Unitarian Universalism, and the religious and social environment of the world. This is not an overstatement. You have birthed 2 UUA presidents, thought leaders, activists, pillars of both America and the global scene in terms of ethics, leadership, and vision. I feel very fortunate to have come here. See, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. A congregation shapes a minister, as much if not more, than a minister shapes a congregation. So I thought I would give you a little testimonial to begin. When I first came to this congregation I knew I wanted to be a minister.

After being tested, challenged, moving across the country, the calling still stuck. But I look back now, and see that my vision of ministry, though grounded in some experience, was still just intellectual in a lot of ways. I knew how I wanted to live, but I wasn’t sure what it really meant to live it. I don’t know if you’ve had that experience. I had a strong intellectual sense of what could be true, what could be possible, but I had yet to fully test it out. This congregation became the place to test it out. I don’t know where it came from, but I sensed that what made life worthwhile was not the circumstances alone, but the ways we chose to engage those circumstances. I had a strong hunch that in being the minister of this congregation, I may get some insight into what really mattered about being alive, when it all is said and done. And I have. I’m still learning, but there is some insight that has come. I’ve done enough memorial services now to see that all that matters in the end is our relationship to other people, to life itself.

The rest of our accomplishments are important in a biographical sense, but the lived reality of what really matters is the bonds we have with other people. Even our accomplishments are about other people: they can inspire, encourage, motivate. I also thought before coming here that there is an inherent goodness to life, an inherent goodness to being alive, even when circumstances fall apart and don’t go according to our preferences. This was mostly an intellectual sense, but I’ve now felt it thanks to you. You’ve shown me that we’re together in this. We’re together when things go well, we’re together when things fall apart. We’re together through it all. And that makes life good. And that makes life joyful. It makes life meaningful. Because it’s not just about me and my problems. We’re together in these problems. We’re in the same predicament, ultimately. On the surface this may not seem like such great news. Intellectually, it may not sound very satisfying. But in lived experience, it’s very satisfying. It makes life beautiful and poignant and rich.

This congregation has a spirit that is very dynamic and rich. It was there before I arrived. I’ve always felt good in this church. It always cheers me up. There’s a natural buoyancy, humor, and unexpected quality that I quite enjoy. Jennifer gives me a hard time because I like being surprised. I really get a kick when someone or some situation completely usurps my expectations. I think the reason why I enjoy this is because of a lesson I’ve learned from all of you: life can’t be pinned down. You can’t put it in a box. You can’t put a person in a box. You can’t put any circumstances in a nice and tidy box. It will always spill out. It will always show us something we’re missing. It shows us we can’t tame and manage life, even though we might walk around thinking we can. Again, intellectually this may not sound like such great news. But in lived experience, it’s liberating. It means the smartest thing is to be open, not assume. To be open.

I’ve definitely felt more open since coming to this congregation. Open to relationship, open to love, open to unexpected grace. The Annual Pledge Drive causes me to reflect on all of this. Of course we want your financial pledge, so that we can keep operating. Of course we want you to turn in your pledge card ASAP, so nobody needs to call you and do a lot of extra work. Of course we want you to give generously. But I think it’s good to ask a deeper question: What are we pledging to personally? We call it a pledge drive because we make a budget every year based on how much each of you pledges or promises to give in a calendar year. We decide what kind of staffing we can have, what kind of programs, whether we can afford to heat the building for Sunday services, etc. It’s mundane, pretty straight forward, with little complications. Most people are shocked when I tell them what our annual budget is, the budget we are aiming for: $154,000. I’ve had people audibly gasp when I tell them this.

Your financial leaders run a tight ship. Most of it is staffing costs, with very little fat. It’s a lean budget. Because it’s so lean, every dollar really counts. I know some of us are in precarious financial circumstances. If that is the case for you, you are in luck. Thanks to some of our generous donors, we have a fund to help people in this congregation and in our community: with rent, heating bills, electricity bills, the things we need. This church has supported the community financially whenever we could, especially during the pandemic. One of our biggest contributions is through our Give Away the Plate program. The church does not make any money from the offertory we take every week, unless you specifically designate it to go to us. If you put a $20 dollar bill in the collection plate or online via the link in the chat box: $20 dollars goes directly to the organization we name every month. We started doing this because we are aware we are mutually dependent. This is true for all of us. Some days you might need us, and we give what we have. Many days the community needs us, and we give what we have.

I like the language of pledge, because it makes me think of promises: promises we make to ourselves and promises we make to our community. I think there comes a point for some of us when we ask ourselves the question: What kind of person do we want to become? How do we want to live? These are great questions, and I’ve come to a couple soft conclusions. One is that nobody can live another person’s life. It may sound obvious, but I think that’s important. It means only you are responsible for how you want to live your life. Nobody can live your life, only you can do that. The second conclusion is though we can only live our own life,  though we are ultimately responsible for what we do with it and how we live it, we can gain encouragement from other people to live and respond a certain way to what happens to us. We are always in communities that are influencing us in sometimes subtle and not so subtle ways: our families, our workplaces, the city we live in, the nation state.

We are constantly getting messages about who we are, what our worth is, and how we should invest our time, energy and money. There comes a time for some of us when we decide to be more intentional about that messaging and influence, and desire to surround ourselves with people who can encourage us to be who we wish to be.

I think this church is one of those influencers. It’s an influence on our life and on the culture at large. It may seem at first glance that our influence is small, quite modest. I assure you, that’s deceptive. I meet numerous people who are inspired by this church, even though they’ve never stepped foot in the building. Some of those people are with us today on zoom. I’ve spoken with people who just drive by to see the light in the cupola at night. It makes them feel hopeful. I’ve spoken with people who have grown up here who now live all over the world, who contact me, because of the work we are doing in partnership for social justice. And honestly during this time, I get messages that it’s good to have a community in this nation that promotes goodness, wholesomeness, and vision.

I think one of my favorite pledge drive themes was “Pledge it Forward.” The idea was that we don’t pledge based on what we get out of this church alone, but the benefit we sense someone else would receive. I think that gets to the heart of it. We don’t live for ourselves alone, and our choices have far reaching impacts. I’m not alive just for myself. I’m alive for you, for all our neighbors still struggling through a pandemic, still struggling with racism, poverty, and a spirit of despair. And we’re not just alive for this year, this pledge drive cycle. We’re alive for those who will inherit the consequences of our choices. And my hope is that we can give them something good to inherit. My hope is those alive now and those alive in the future will know that they are loved and never truly alone. With that awareness, that embodied feeling, all is possible. I’m no longer afraid, and I no longer worry. I trust that it is not our circumstances alone that create us, but the ways we choose to live in those circumstances. And I want to live with joy. I want to live with purpose. I want to live with gratitude. Gratitude for what I’ve been given: gratitude for a lifesaving community that was here centuries before I was born. A community I’ve received as a gift. Gratitude for the life I’m living now with all of you, feeling what I’ve believed intellectually before but now I now through lived experience with all of you: that life is good, there is goodness in life. And that goodness is found in relationship, in covenant, in commitment to what is worthy.

And that commitment begins today with turning in your pledge card. I’m so grateful for our stewardship team. They do so much to literally make this community feasible: to provide salary for myself, Kathleen Hogue, and Sarah King. They do so much to keep this place vital and thriving. If you have never pledged before, you can let us know in the chat box, or let myself or a greeter know after service, and we would be glad to explain that process to you.