| REINVENTING
OUR FAITH
[Candidating
sermon by Reverend Rudi Gelsey, September 8, 2002]
Let
me begin with a true story:
When I was interim in Buffalo, NY in 1983,
I succeeded a colleague from Great Britain,
who spoke with a marked British accent, whatever that is.
People came to me complaining
that what they held against him
was that they could not understand him.
When
I made a telephone courtesy
call upon a colleague and told him about this,
He broke out laughing. It tickled his funny bone,
that after their experience with my predecessor,
they would call another minister with an accent.
You may not always agree with me,
that is par for the course when we honor freedom of the pulpit,
but I hope you will always understand me.
Actually, if people wonder about my accent, they are often confused,
because it is a mixture of Viennese and French, having spent some
15 years in francophone areas, Geneva, Switzerland, Paris, France, and
Montreal, Canada.
This
morning, I want to introduce you to my vision,
so that you can cast an informed vote as to whether
you want to call me or send me packing back to Williamsburg.
The
search committee and I have been struggling to come up with a job description
like:
Assist the congregation in honoring its past and heal any conflicts.
Illuminate the congregation's unique strengths and challenges.
Practice shared leadership
Alert the congregation to available resources for optimum functioning
Facilitate a renewal of vision and mission, strengthen stewardship,
enable you to engage your future with zest
Offer spiritual leadership and professional guidance.
Participate in periodic review of congregational life.
If that is not a mouthful, I don't know what is.
Be that as it may, I want to assure you of my full measure of
devotion,
both as visionary and as a facilitator.
As I look at the history of your Fellowship,
you have created and steadfastly maintained
a beacon of the Unitarian Universalist faith
in a geographically challenged area,
distant from a major population center.
You
are also demographically challenged in terms of
low population density usually
unpropitious to the establishment of a UU congregation.
Actually 20% of UU congregations
are in rural areas or in towns of less than 10.000 population.
So you are not just a small, fragile beachhead
You are part of a larger movement, capable of significant growth.
In the packet you sent out to potential ministers,
there is constant emphasis on your desire to grow.
I hear you loud and clear.
In
your visionary moments,
you even dream of a time when
you might be in a position to call a full-time spiritual leader,
none of this 10 or 20 hours a week.
In a State that stubbornly has
elected Jesse Helms to the Senate,
you wish to be a beacon of liberal thought and life.
You
want to make a difference.
You want to make waves in the Bible belt.
Already you have helped in the rebuilding of
Black Churches that had been put to the torch.
Your minister at the time,
the Reverend Bob Murphy,
spearheaded important work in areas such as migrant workers
and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
Then you welcomed into your midst the Reverend Eileen Epperson,
introducing you to the Interior Life Seminar,
that beautifully stretches souls,
a Presbyterian minister who continues that kind of work.
Her mottoes found on her web site are
"Living Centered, Living Connected.
and this ambitious vision:
By 2010, People caring for the World as a religious act
By 2025, People honoring religious diversity as a gift.
How beautiful!
Many are the strands of your rich heritage.
The ancient Romans had a saying
Quo vadis? Where do you go from here?
I will not be a Cassandra like Winston Chuchill,
even though he was right when during the blitz,
he offered the people of his beleaguered island
blood, sweat, and tears.
Yet this time around, it is America's turn to experience major stress,
in the shadow of the September 11th tragedy
and as we brace ourselves for a decision
on whether to wage war on Iraq.
On some major issues like the International Criminal Court
and a sustainable planet,
our present government is at odds with the aspirations of humankind.
It will take sustained effort to turn around the ship of State.
As
poet John Donne put it, centuries ago
"No man is an island, entire of itself."
Being the greatest superpower on earth
does not give us a licence for being self-righteous,
to swagger, and to tear holes in the interconnected web of humanity.
In these difficult times, we have a special obligation
to proclaim and live the principles of our free faith.
We are not alone.
The Bible, in one of its better moments, cautions us
"What does it profit a person to conquer the whole world,
if one loses one's own soul."
Clearly it would be a Faustian bargain.
So when we speak of growth,
we are not just referring to growth in numbers and influence,
but growth in spiritual depth.
Which
raises a rather puzzling question:
Why, oh why
have we not lived up to the vision of Thomas Jefferson
that in one generation, most everybody would be a Unitarian.
Here
in the Coastal Fellowship, for the last eight years,
in terms of numbers, you have remained on a plateau.
Even as a merged denomination, we now have fewer members
than even half a century ago,
while as a nation we have added tens of millions of citizens.
Would
you not say that it is high time to move forward again?
We are in urgent need to reinvent ourselves.
As a denomination often characterized
as a group of rugged individualists,
our strength is also our weakness.
We may be good in arguing our cause and even winning debates.
We are not so hot at creating genuine community
and active cooperation.
We are better at talking the talk, than walking the walk.
As
one interim colleague told me:
Being a minister in a UU congregation is like herding cats.
Too often for comfort,
we go off in all kinds of different directions.
For instance we have social activists
battling it out with people who are on a spiritual path.
Yet if we look at great spiritual leaders of our times,
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama,
Bishop Tutu,
they were deeply involved in the social struggles of our era.
Our faith, to be relevant, has to be open, inclusive, pluralistic.
We cannot afford the luxury of divisiveness:
Divisiveness No,
Diversity Yes.
And
while we are at it:
Uniformity no,
Unity yes.
We
need to improve in the area of right relations.
When a minister and the congregation work hand in hand,
the result is more than the sum of its parts.
Imagine that one plus one is not two, but three or more,
the miracle of synergy and mutual cooperation.
When, by contrast, we are divided one minus one remains
true to conventional math: one minus one is zero, zilch.
Besides the blessings and shortcomings of rugged individualism
Unitarian Universalists sometimes fear authority.
That fear is embedded in our history.
We embrace the separation of Church and State
and want congregational polity
rather than bishops or a strong central authority.
Here again we can overdo a good thing,
like rejecting even good lay and clerical leadership.
If you were to call me, sure I would want to be creative and visionary,
but also a facilitator and fellow-servant,
to achieve common goals and dreams.
Together we would labor on behalf of the well-being of all.
I
recently discovered this lovely quote by Zangwill,
slightly adapted:
The past is our cradle, not our prison...
The past is our inspiration, not imitation...
the past is for continuation, not repetition.
May
the Force be with you,
Go in hope, go in peace.
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