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Dear Reader.
The following sermon was written to be
spoken. It may not follow the conventions of documents which were written to be
read. It also will not reflect the energy and nuances of the speaker.
If you
can embrace these caveats, please, read on.
Pastor Jef
Sermon
My friends. It’s a wonderful day. It’s a wonderful day to be with you. Enter Rejoice and come in. What a great way to begin our time together. It’s a wonderful day to be invited to walk with you as you take this next step in your life here at FUSW.
For many of you, we are walking into uncharted territory. David was here
for 17 years. His version of Unitarian Universalist ministry was primarily your
version of how ministry is done. As rational people, we know in our mind that
ministry varies with each person ministering. However, in our hearts, many of us
have a harder time adjusting to the idea that anyone can do the job that the
long time clergyperson was doing, and that includes David.
I’m going to give you a brief sketch of who I am, but right off the bat, I
want to share with you that for the next year and possibly two I will be your
Not David minister. As many of you know, I recently spent 18 months in ministry
at the White Plains congregation. You will be my not White Plains Congregation.
We are going to grow together. My ministry to you is listening, coaching,
cheerleading, reflecting and advocating for your process of closing your time
with David, assessing where you are as a congregation and preparing yourself for
a called minister. And you will teach me how you wish to be ministered to. With
any new minister there will be changes. The way we have oriented the room is a
change. It’s different for you to see the minister wearing a robe. On the other
hand, the service structure is pretty much how you remember it.
I come to you already fired. An interim ministry contract provides that I
will be with you no longer than two years and I cannot be a candidate for your
called minister. I believe this is a good policy. My observations and work with
the board are all about this transition. I’m not building a ministry here, I’m
working with you so the next minister and you can build a ministry together. I
have a suitcase in my office. It will be there for the time I am with you. It’s
a reminder that I’m just passing through.
And one more thing, my work with you is part time. I was full time in White
Plains and almost the entire time David was here he was full time. I have to
learn how to provide ministry on a 2/3 time basis and you have to learn how to
operate your society when your minister is not full time.
You have a lot of work to do. Andrea Learner, the District Executive,
will be with us in October to outline the process of assessing your strengths
and growing insight into the type of clergy leader you wish to call.
Two
years ago you went through the flood and the work you did drained a lot of
vitality from you, and many are still recovering. The good news is that the work
you will do in evaluating your congregation really brings focus and clarity. I
believe will energize youse guys.
So who am I to be walking with you down this path? Well I come to you after a
first career in broadcast and corporate television in Cincinnati, which I
enjoyed very much. I come to you after a first career in broadcast and corporate
television in which I knew I was not working out of my center. I was good, but I
was not authentic. I knew my center lay in ministry and I also knew it was a lot
less sexy than TV. Besides, I had my wife Pat, our kids Kate and Christopher and
our cat Doo Dah to provide for.
14 years ago we moved from Cincinnati to Montpelier VT so my wife could take
a vice presidency at Goddard College. Vermont being the huge television hub that
it is, I found time to take chaplain training. I thought it would help me move
toward my center.
After five years in VT we moved to Staten Island in 2001 where we continue to
live. I know what you are thinking. Staten Island? Pat’s new job was in Staten
Island and it was good politics to settle there. In 2002 I began as night
chaplain at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. Calvary is the premier inpatient
hospice in the United States. I also began seminary in the fall of 2002.
Drew theological, a Methodist sponsored seminary, in Madison NJ.
I graduated in four years from Drew, left the hospital after I was vested in
the pension plan, in order to begin an internship at the UU congregation in
White Plains. They asked me to remain after my internship to serve as minister
in residence while Rev. Huston took her sabbatical. In January of this year I
was ordained and in August I began my interim ministry with you. Needless to
say, there might be a few items I held back for the sake of brevity. I want to
share with you a parallel that came to me as I was studying for my work as your
interim minister. My work at Calvary was transitional. Patients and families
came to Calvary as the patient was living his or her last days. As many of you
know, when you come to Calvary Hospital, the Calvary pillow is the last one you
are going to be resting your head on. The patients are dealing with all the
things that go into embracing the ending of one’s existence on earth. The
families were dealing with final loss of the family member who, more often that
not, had been slowly slipping from them as the cancer took its toll.
When the patient died, there were prayers to be said, ritual to be observed,
comfort and support offered. The family left Calvary and my ministry for a new
normal. While our time here isn’t nearly that heart wrenching or dramatic,
there is a parallel. We are moving through a time in your congregation where you
are challenged to identify your new normal, which will reflect to your community
and be a presence of the mission and vision of the Unitarian Universalism of
this congregation
And for you who are trying not to be morbid, but are wondering anyway, here
are the numbers, I worked fifty weeks a year, four nights a week for five years.
That’s about a thousand nights. There were at least two deaths that I was called
to a night. I’ll take a moment for you to do the math and then think, ewwwwwwww.
You know, Unitarian Universalism is an evolving denominational experience. As
most of you know, in 1961 the Unitarian Association and the Universalist church
combined to form the Unitarian Universalist Association. Both groups began in
America in the late 18th century as a reaction to Calvinist protestant thought.
The proto Unitarians were unhappy with the way church was done. All who lived in
the parish were required to contribute to the community protestant church, the
Congregational Church, whose roots were squarely Puritan and severe.
You could be a member of another congregation, however you were still
required to pony up for the Congregational church. Our proto Unitarians also had
a problem with the way the church interpreted the Bible. The Christianity the
church justified with the Bible could not be found in the Bible. They
noted there is no trinity in the Bible. They said the Jesus story was a story of
a backwoods Jewish revivalist who called Jews back to living the Torah and that
whole resurrection thing was inconsistent with nature. So as the liberal proto
Unitarian ministers in the Congregational churches began to question and wonder
from the pulpit, there was backlash from conservative clergy and laity. Big
surprise. Wouldn’t happen today. The liberal clergy, who still saw Jesus as
important, just not divine, were sneered at as Unitarian, for their “God as
prime” non-Trinitarian stance. By 1825 there was an American Unitarian Society,
which was established to publish tracts and sermons of Unitarian clergy.
They saw themselves faithful to the teaching of Jesus and the primacy of God
and dissenters to the idea of Father Son and Spirit as co equals. They were also
the educated class, the owners of businesses, physicians, doctors, educators.
Our Universalist side finds its roots from a Methodist in mid 18th century
England named Relly. He questioned the Calvinist premise that there were a
handful of people who were going to spend eternity in heaven and the rest of us
were consigned to hell for eternity. This was a time of hell fire and brimstone
being preached from the pulpits. You’d hear at least a couple of hours every
Sunday from the pulpit about our sinfulness, the wickedness of the flesh and how
generally cranky god was every time god thought about us. Relly said, “I don’t
think so.” He saw god as a loving, forgiving embracing parent image who was both
proud of his children and happy to call all home at death. And that message was
the one that John Murray, often sited as the one who brought Universalism to the
US shore, heard and embraced.
Murray said in effect, “God is too good to consign his beloved to perdition.
Let us live up to God’s expectation of us.” Well what a breath of theological
fresh air. Here was a guy preaching universal salvation. Everybody gets in. This
breath of fresh air became the very popular Universalist movement and
Universalist church in the 19th century. The universalists held on to Jesus as a
divine and saw themselves as Christian and walked the talk of a loving god.
Our choir’s lyric this morning,
In wisdom's lovely pleasant ways
I'll
spend my days, I'll spend my days
I'll learn to watch, to pray and praise
And thus I'll learn pure wisdom's ways
Sounded to me to be very much a
classic Universalist take on spiritual inquiry.
Traditionally the Universalists saw the soul or the heart as the source of
spiritual enlightenment. If the choir had sung, “I’ll spend my afternoons in the
library, I’ll go to classes on Biblical Criticism and attend a discussion group
once a week on the nature of god, And thus I'll learn pure wisdom's ways.
Then I’d say our lyrics reflected more of our Unitarian heritage.
While the Unitarians were more heady, more intellectual, more east coast, New
England, and the Universalists were more passionate, faithful and spread across
the country, each group saw outreach, social justice, a commitment to making the
world a better place as a witness of their faith.
I began attending St. John’s Unitarian Church in 1969, a mere eight years
after the merger. This was a time in the denomination when we were struggling
with identity. Who were we as Unitarian Universalists? The Universalists were
afraid their more heart centered approach would be crushed by the intellectual
Unitarians. We experienced an influx of refugees from other denominations,
people who had been damaged by the inconsistencies of the traditions of their
childhood and were looking for a spiritual home. This influx of refugees
combined with the challenges of a new identity resulted in a non-tradition.
We began to identify ourselves by what we weren’t. Well we’re not Christian.
Well we’re not Jewish. Many of us don’t believe in god. But we were hard put to
proclaim what we believed in.
We had members and clergy importing various other faith traditions.
Appropriating rituals, which were used without a real understanding of the
cultural conceits that went with appropriated ritual. Religious practice is
culturally referred. You don’t really get it, unless you are a part of the
group. Which is why some religious practices appear bizarre to us and we
wouldn’t appropriate them. Others we have and now, we’re thinking hard about
cultural and religious appropriation in our Sunday practices.
I remember working at defining UUism by what it wasn’t. Perhaps this was a
process that the organization and I had to go through. Perhaps it was growing
pains. I see it as a time of emptiness. We couldn’t stand for what we were,
because we didn’t know. There’s an old saying that if you don’t stand for
something, you’ll fall for anything.
In our reading from Iris Dement, she’s heard the arguments and at least as it
applies to the nature of living so that there is an eternal reward, she’s going
to let the mystery be. It is a mystery. Living here and now is not a mystery.
It’s as real as the alarm going off every morning and knowing you have a reason
to get up.
Dement gets up with, “I believe in love and I live my life
accordingly.” How UU. Believing in love and living one’s life accordingly. Each
morning, the question, because she believes in love, How will I be a loving
being today? How will I stand on the side of love? What does it mean to me today
to be a loving being? You know, it changes as we grow up, grow older, grow
wider, yes I said wider and wiser.
I think we UUs are becoming stronger as a denomination because we are willing
to ask ourselves “what is it that allows me to get up and push on?” Logic?
Philosophy? The truth of the ages? The Universe? God? No God? Something.
Something to hang on to that pushes, pulls, exhorts, comforts or gave the push
and walked away. But something. In my office I have a number of prints. One of
them says, “
“
The early Unitarians and the early Universalists, even
in questioning the dominant faith practice, knew what they believed in. So much
better than looking for inspiration from an institution that one defines by what
it isn’t.
I believe our former refugee mentality is dissolving in the light of UUs
saying life is better if I have a positive reason for living my life as UU.
Dement said I believe in love and I live my life accordingly. What gets you out
of bed?
Van Jones, recently of the Obama administration addressed last years’ General
Assembly. He reminded us that Doctor King told us he had a dream. And he
observed that Doctor King didn’t say he had a complaint. I
submit a dream for the day gets me out of bed a lot faster than a complaint for
the day.
As we walk this path together want to hear about your dreams, I want to hear
your complaints. Chaplaincy taught me I have two ears and only one mouth for
additional reasons than just stereophonic sound.
I believe your board’s decision to ask me to be with you for the next year or
two was a good one. So far, my experience with your board members, with your DRE
John Cavallero, Arlin Roy, society members, such as Mary Magnusson who helped me
get my office in shape, has been a good experience. From my side it looks like
you are putting your best foot forward and I’m impressed.
I look forward to being with you for no more than the next two years. I want
to support you as you ask yourselves who you are and where you want to go. I
will be here for you to talk to. I’ll be here for Society events.
I am happy to be with you today and for the time we have together.
Life
is good
©2009 Jeffrey Gamblee
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