This is my sermon from last Sunday, September 22, 2024 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Danbury, CT. I reflect on how we hear and respond to the invitation to relationship, covenant, and participation. My focus is on the invitation to be part of a congregation, but I think what I have to say applies to many relationships and involvement in any voluntary association.
Being a member of a congregation is to accept an invitation into a deep relationship. This is what we call covenant. We’re invited into sacred vows, promises, a marriage, a monk in a monastery, a partnership, comrades in the struggle of human existence. Here in our congregation that covenant relationship is one that practices diverse, loving community, encourages spiritual growth, works for justice, and celebrates the good in life.
This relationship is an invitation to comfort and care for others. An invitation to know and experience the variety of human differences. An invitation to do what you can to create a just and sustainable society. An invitation to pursue a continuous journey of spiritual growth.
How do you experience this invitation? Do read a weekly email? Do you speak with Me and Sierra Marie and Jerry and Sherry and Margaret? Are notifications always popping up on your phone? Are you getting your mail from the mailbox every day checking for a formal envelope? Are you listening for opportunities to get involved, participate, and attend things as they surface in casual conversation? Do you look for announcements from the order of service and spoken notices on Sunday morning asking for your help? How do you experience this invitation to Covenant?
I believe that congregational life and membership mirrors life in general. Invitations are constant but it’s only when we notice them that they seem to pop up. I believe that we experience the divine, God, spirit, through the people, places, and events in our lives. Life is one long, continuous invitation to come along, join the party, hang out, go on a date, be part of the club of humanity. Please join us, we’d love to have you. Most Sincerely Yours, All THAT IS.
Every moment of every day, the phenomenon of the cosmos swirls around us. But it’s that morning we get up early, maybe with a loved one, and go outside, maybe to the back porch, maybe to a city park bench, maybe to the beach and watch in wonder as the sun rises, devastated by the star moving through the early hour atmosphere. Letting there be light everywhere. Every moment of every day strangers walk past us, drive past us, flash by us on the internet, but it’s only when someone steps in front of us and holds a door with a huge smile taking up their entire face that we notice our fellow passengers on spaceship earth.
Being a member of a congregation is going to church. Showing up on Sunday. Attending an event. Joining a committee. The week to week and day to day existence of faith communities look surprisingly similar from the outside. But when the sermon says something that speaks directly to your heart as if it was written just for you, The song Jerry sings is from own private playlist of life’s most important moments soundtrack and you can’t believe Jerry has read your mind again, when your children return from outside and downstairs smiling and laughing, when someone invites you to their home for dinner, when your committee receives that thank you letter from the community partner you helped with a donation, when you stand outside in the bitter cold advocating for justice and all of a sudden it’s not just the ordinary I went to church today, it’s special. It’s immediate. It’s heartwarming. It’s something that helps you get through and reminds you why you bother to belong to a faith community in the first place. That’s when you notice it. Just like everything else in life. When it’s special, we notice. When it grabs our attention, we notice. When it snaps us out of rambling shame out of the past and anxious worry about tomorrow, and captures us in a moment. That’s when we realize that the invitation was there all along. You come too. Join us. This party is for you.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s short poem epitomizes this. Every common bush afire with God. But only we who notice take off our shoes. Taking off our shoes because it’s holy ground. I have Methodist minister friend in Texas who always preaches her sermons barefoot. I once asked her why. Is it because the church is holy ground. And she said, “sort of. But more like everywhere is holy ground and so is everyone. So, I take off my shoes.”
The covenantal relationship we are called to at church asks us to pretty much go barefoot. This is love at the center of everything.
Even though we proclaim love at the center of everything, we sometimes don’t place it there. We get sidetracked by our own selfishness, our culturally ingrained expectation that we put ourselves at the center instead of love.
The opposite of Love and covenant is consumerism. The opposite of authentic relationship is transactional relationship. And unfortunately, all too often, church, synagogue, temple, assembly, faith communities of any kind become merely transactional.
I went to a conference about thematic preaching many years ago, back before monthly themes had caught on in Unitarian Universalism. And the church that hosted the event had a monthly sermon series going on about the topic of Grace. I also noticed something in all their advertisements and promotions that surprised me – not one image, poster, or announcement promoted anything other than the month - it was May – and the theme of Grace. No Sundays were mentioned by date. No preachers were named. No specific topic was described anywhere. “We’re talking about Grace this month.” I wonder if we could do that? If we could say, we’re talking about invitation this month and leave it at that. We’re so used to a marketing mentality that it seems almost alien to not have a sermon title and description. But we’re not about titles and descriptions. We’re about relationship.
We often think about our involvement in church transactionally. I don’t like this or that. I want a church with youth programs or social justice activism. I want fewer hymns and more jazz, We get put off sometimes if something is going on that we personally don’t like or isn’t our favorite or not intended for us.
I heard the retired pastor emeritus of Riverside church in NYC once say that no one should like everything that’s going on in their church. In a vibrant multi-generational, multicultural church you should only like about 75-80% of what happens at your church. Because if you like almost everything, If you like 99% of stuff that goes on at your church, you can be fairly certain that only people exactly like you are at your church and will want to be at your church. In our polarized age, that might sound tempting at first, but it’s not beloved community. It’s not diverse. It’s not welcoming.
Covenant invites us into deep relationships. We live in a world of shallow relationships. A world where we call people friends who we acknowledge on social media. Covenant calls us to make friends. Not everyone in a congregation will be your friend. But I certainly hope you have and make a lot of friends here. Not just people you like that you see on Sundays, but people you invite more deeply into your life.
Covenant invites us to serve. Both in the congregation and in the world. The Baha'i community has a fascinating way of selecting leaders. Every member of the community is a potential leader. All their communities and each level of their religion is governed by teams, not individuals. And from the local level to the international level they have a basic way of electing leaders. There is no campaigning. There is no nominating committee. There is no debating or even discussing potential leaders. What happens is that when it’s time to select members of the leadership team, every member of the community writes down names on a piece of paper. If 5 leaders are needed, it’s five names. If 9 are needed, it's nine names. And then the people, the five most, the nine most, whatever it is, the people who are named the most times on all the ballots serve. Exceptions can be made for things like illness, or other severe disruption or trauma, but if able, people serve. That’s part of the deal of joining the community. What people don’t know they learn. And the Baha'i take this very seriously, they only name people they think are ethical, capable, kind, good examples of living lives of Baha'i values and so on. What if our covenant relationship calls us all to be leaders? At some point in our time here. In some way? What if our covenant relationship calls all of us to share in the work of the community.
We have wonderful greeters who say hello to you on Sunday as you walk in, but we are all invited to greet new people and make them feel welcome? We have amazing volunteers who work with Sierra Marie to create programs and community for children youth and families, but we are all invited to make this place welcoming and supportive of children, childhood, parents and parenthood. We have a great staff and board that is thinking about how to grow and publicize our congregation, but we are all invited to into this work as well. In fact, as person invited into our covenant relationship the most vital and important thing you can do for the long term health and vitality of our congregation is to invite others into it? In every study and survey that anyone ever does on the topic, when people are asked why they chose a particular church or why they visited a particular synagogue or mosque, the overwhelming number one answer, in some studies up to 85-90% respond Because someone invited me to join them?
If you’re every wondering about why there aren’t more people here or more children or more families or more people of color or more queer people – ask yourself, when it the last time I invited them? As you have been invited, go and invite others!
I’m hoping that our theme has invited you to deepen your participation. That deepening might be through attention, taking more notice and more detailed notice of our community life. It might be taking on a role of more responsibility in the community or volunteering more. It might be deepening your study of Unitarian Universalism. It might be inviting someone you know to join you here. And as I ask you to invite others, I once again invite you.
I await your RSVP.
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