Love is the Spirit
A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, VA), September 7, 2008, at the UUC Building Dedication by Annette Marquis, MSW, Thomas Jefferson District Executive.
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Love is the Spirit |
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It is a great joy to be with you today and to be in this incredible sanctuary. When I was last here in July of 2007, you had not yet broken ground. It was only a dream, a dream interrupted by tragedy and tears, but a dream you wouldn’t let fade. You gave your time, your money, your sweat, and your tears to turn that dream into the reality we are enjoying on this day. Congratulations on your hard work and thank you, thank you for your generosity, your commitment, your dedication, and your faith. Nothing excites me more than a congregation that is on fire with the spirit of Unitarian Universalism. This building is a tangible symbol of that fire. But this building and all the incredibly hard work you have put into it is meaningless unless you infuse it with love, fill it with spirit, and permeate it with an unconditional welcoming. For you see, as proud as you obviously are of it, this building is not for you. As tempting as it might be in these troubled times, this building is not your private sanctuary where you can hide away from the rest of the world. To be true to your faith as Unitarian Universalists, the doors of this building must be wide open. In making the commitment to this building, you have made a commitment to all the people who have not found you yet, to all the children who need to learn how to develop their faith, to all the people who need the saving message of Unitarian Universalism and do not yet know you exist. It is only in reaching out and inviting them in that you live up to the promise of what you have created here today. So where do you start? Now that the building is finished, the contractors have gone home, and the dedication is over, what’s next? You have laid the groundwork for an exciting future, one that can change the future of Blacksburg and the entire New River Valley. What will you do with the future you hold in your hand on this early September day? Let me suggest three things that can move you from this day into the future you want to create.
Now, I’ll tell you that, in talking to congregations, I don’t usually start a list like this with “care for yourselves.” It is all too often, in my opinion, that our Unitarian Universalist congregations become self-centered and self-absorbed and as a result, unconsciously close their hearts and their minds to those who are not among them. But you are in a different place. In the past two years, you have been through a lot, from the capital campaign, to your minister’s sabbatical, to the tragedy at Virginia Tech, to personal crises with individual members and staff, to the building project, and I would dare say many more things that I don’t even have a clue about. You are wounded and you are tired. It is time to give yourselves and each other permission to rest. I encourage you to take the next few months a little more slowly, to have more social occasions with each other, to have fewer and shorter meetings, to take time to celebrate and intentionally plan time to enjoy each other. Laugh together, have fun with each other, relax, enjoy each other. You deserve that, and in fact, it is imperative that you do so in order to prepare yourselves for the next phase of your congregation’s development. Secondly, once you have renewed yourselves, once you have felt the strength that comes from taking care of yourself, it is time to reach out and embrace others in the community that are longing for a spiritual home such as this. When I was 6 years old, my family and I moved from a Detroit suburb to the South – Rogers, Arkansas to be precise. As Northerners in our small town of about 5,000 people, we were often referred to by the locals as “Yankees” and in not so polite company, “damn Yankees.” And not only were we Yankees, we were Roman Catholic to boot – the worst possible combination. As Roman Catholic children we attended the small 3-room parochial school at the far end of town. St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School was run by nuns from St. Scholastica’s Convent in Fort Smith, AR. St. Scholastic’s was an order of St. Benedict. Interestingly enough, Benedict’s Way of Love forms the basis for what we as Unitarian Universalists embrace today as radical hospitality. In Benedictine spirituality, the monks need the "other," the stranger. The stranger brings another face of Christ into their lives, and therefore practicing hospitality is to welcome Christ. Radical hospitality leads to a provocative degree of acceptance -- acceptance not only of the poor, the stranger, the injured and the needy, but also of the enemy or opponent. This is the same challenge Jesus presented: the challenge to love the enemy. So as I child I was taught about radical hospitality. At yet, as a student at a parochial school, not sharing the same experiences with other public-school children, we were separated from our community. We were the children that the owner of the dime store in downtown Rogers would report to the Truant Officer whenever we were out of school on a day the public school children were not. You see, we not only got Federal holidays off from school, we got to be off on the Holy Days of Obligation. Some of these Holy Days were in the summer or were days everyone got off such as Christmas and Easter. But there were those other magical days, such as December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary when we didn’t have to go to school. We would still be required to go to Mass early in the morning but the rest of the day was ours just to hang out and play. But no matter how much fun we were having, being off when other children were not made us different, set us apart, raised suspicions, created boundaries. I would imagine that we each have stories of when we were excluded, when we didn’t feel a part of things, when we were “the other.” Take a minute and recall one of those times when you felt excluded. Why were you excluded? Who excluded you? How did it make you feel? Perhaps this is why you came to church to begin with. You wanted to find a loving community where you were not excluded. For you, it worked. You wouldn’t be here today, if it hadn’t. Something in you changed when someone else extended their hospitality to you, welcomed you in, made you a part of things. It’s really just that simple. In all our rhetoric about who we are as Unitarian Universalists, in all our sometimes-heated discussions about faith, spirituality, humanism, God, politics, and belief systems, it all boils down to one thing – do people who arrive at the door of our congregations experience hospitality? In other words, do they receive a friendly welcome and kind and generous treatment? If you answer “yes” to this question, your congregation will grow and more importantly, people who need the spiritual, loving, and communal environment that is found in UU congregations will have their needs met. They will become a part of your community. As UUs, we have done excellent work in showing hospitality to our gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered brothers and sisters. Our work is far from over but I believe we have turned the corner. Over 50% of our congregations, including this one, are now officially designated by the Unitarian Universalist Association as Welcoming Congregations. But we cannot stop there. There are so many more people who need our saving message, our unique form of hospitality. I was recently told about a brochure advertising one of our churches. “All are welcome,” it said in big block letters on the cover. And in the hearts of the people who made up that brochure, this was a sincere and loving message. And yet, on that same cover was a photo of the church with two steps leading up to the entrance—two insurmountable steps for someone who uses a wheelchair for mobility. “All are welcome” but only if you can step up to get to the door. A board of a congregation in our district recently revoked membership and banned a member from their church. The man in question has a developmental disability and probably some form of mental illness. The board reacted to concerns raised by other members that they didn’t trust him, he made them feel uncomfortable, they didn’t like being around him. Now, I know this board considered this question long and hard and I am not here to second-guess their decision. But I am here to say that perhaps feeling uncomfortable by someone in your midst is, in fact, good for the soul. In fact, I wish we all had more of it. I am reminded of a story I heard a few years ago from UUA Executive Vice-President, Kay Montgomery. She tells this story of her discomfort: I belong to the Arlington Street Church in the middle of Boston. “A progressive church with an historic tradition” it says on our answering machine. Going to a church in the middle of a big city has its challenges. There are, for instance, a number of street people who show up Sunday after Sunday. At first I was bemused and then occasionally annoyed that one of them, at least, seemed to have few if any boundaries about when to speak and how to join in. He gives disjointed discourses almost every Sunday at the time for joys and concerns. Occasionally there are meetings about him and who, this time, is going to talk to him about just how close he should or should not stand to those who talk to him at coffee hour. He is, in short, kind of a pain. But you know what has happened to me over time: I’ve realized he’s MY pain and that I like having someone so very different than me at my church and that the work we’ve all done to make him welcome may or may not have helped him but it’s helped the rest of us quite a lot. When I heard Kay tell this story, she remarked, “this man is now the reason I go to church.” As so very hard as it is some days, I have to agree with Kay about that. You see, church is about stretching ourselves. It is about extending our arms and making room for people who stand out, people who look different, people who act different, people who are different. Because it is in this sacred act of hospitality that we truly create beloved community. A couple weeks ago, a child in Tennessee Valley UU Church in Knoxville was quoted as saying, “if that man,” referring to the shooter, “had come to us and asked for help, we would have helped him.” I hope with all my soul that would be the case. I know we try to be hospitable but I also know we don’t always succeed. I recently heard someone say that just because we have good intentions, doesn’t mean we are doing it right. I know we have good intentions but we don’t always do it right. We sometimes fall short because anything more would take us too far out of our comfort zone.
Radical hospitality requires us to change. It requires us to loosen our grip on the things we have to have in order to be comfortable. It requires us to take risks and move into places that might feel personally unsafe. It requires us to love more deeply than we have ever loved. It requires us to open ourselves to others and to be open to being forever changed by the experience. True hospitality is hard work. The Reverend Rosemary Bray McNatt says it best, “It’s hard to accept people who are not like you, who don’t talk the way you do, or believe the things you believe, or dress or vote as you do. It’s even harder to appreciate them for the things about them that are not like you, to find them interesting and fun, to enjoy the learning that’s part of the experience, and to acknowledge, finally, that you may have to agree to disagree.” But that is what radical hospitality calls us to do. It calls us to let go of our assumptions and to be open to what is true, even if it goes against what we have believed to be true. I was recently having a conversation with a congregation’s board and I was asking them what they were doing to attract people of color to their congregation. The response was, “well, there aren’t people of color that live around here and we’re not on a bus route so it is hard to get here without a car.” I cautioned them to be careful about their assumptions. “For one thing,” I said, “I have a friend who lives less than two miles from here in a subdivision that is approximately 1/3 white, 1/3 African American, and 1/3 Indian/Pakistani. Secondly, I dare say most, if not everyone in that neighborhood has a car.” Be careful about what you think you know. I often hear UUs say they don’t like to evangelize. They don’t want to be like those other churches pushing church on people. And yet, unless we are willing to invite people into our congregations who are different than we are and make them feel truly welcome, they will not enter our doors. Unless we are willing to invite people in, we will remain mostly white, mostly college-educated, mostly middle-aged, mostly middle-class, mostly just like us. As much as I hate to admit it, creating beloved community is not as easy as being kind to people who move through our doors. It is not the same as reaching out to more and more people just like me. Beloved community requires radical, life-changing, hospitality. And not only will the lives of the people we welcome be changed but our lives, too, will be richer for the experience. And finally, the third suggestion I have for moving from this day into the future you want to create is to care for the world. Unless we are working to help heal our world, no amount of self-care, no amount of radical hospitality will matter in the long-run. At this year’s Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, the delegates adopted a four-year congregational study-action issue on Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice. It holds exciting possibilities for congregations to engage each other and their communities in issues related to the production, distribution, and use of food. And this is only one issue you might decide to take up. The important thing is that as a congregation you engage in some work that puts your faith into action. That moves your faith from the head, to the heart, to the hands. You demonstrated your ability to heal recently when you sent words of comfort to the congregations in Knoxville. I know this because they commented to me how very much they meant to them coming from you, you who know tragedy so well. Thank you for reaching out to help others in pain. Your efforts made a difference. You have power to the help heal the world but only if you use your collective energy, combined with the collective energy of over 60 UU congregations in this district and over 1000 throughout this country joining together with interfaith coalitions and other community groups to make a difference that matters.
If you do these three things, this incredible new sanctuary will indeed be blessed. Let me close today with a poem by the Reverend Gordon B. McKeeman from To Meet the Asking Yearss (1984) I stretch forth my hand Knowing not what I shall touch…
A tender spot, I am tentative, trembling… Wishing to avoid hurt, Wanting to link my life with Life,
Lonely, I desire companions Will I touch strangers
Or enemies My hand is withdrawn But still it touches
My vulnerable skin, my furrowed brow, I stretch forth my hand
Knowing not what I shall touch…
May you continue to hope, continue to reach out, and continue to risk. Amen. Let it be so. Copyright 2008, Annette Marquis; Commercial duplication prohibited without permission of the author. UUC Dedication Page |