Sermons

Preacher: Rev. Margaret A. Beckman

READING – “I want to Be with People” By Dana E Worsnop
Often people say that they love coming to a place with so many like-minded people.
I know just what they are getting at — and I know that they aren’t getting it quite right.

I don’t want to be with a bunch of people who think just like me.

I want to be in a beloved community where I don’t have to think like everyone else to be loved, to be eligible for salvation.

I want to be with people who value compassion, justice, love and truth, though they have different thoughts and opinions about all sorts of things.

I want to be with independent-minded people of good heart.

I want to be with people who have many names and no name at all for God.

I want to be with people who see me in my goodness and dignity, who also see my failings and foibles, and who still love me.

I want to be with people who feel their inter-connection with all existence and let it guide their footfalls upon the earth.

I want to be with people who see life as a paradox and don’t always rush to resolve it.

I want to be with people who are willing to walk the tight rope that is life and who will hold my hand as I walk mine.

I want to be with people who let church call them into a different way of being in the world.

I want to be with people who support, encourage and even challenge each other to higher and more ethical living.

I want to be with people who inspire one another to follow the call of the spirit.

I want to be with people who covenant to be honest, engaged and kind, who strive to keep their promises and hold me to the promises I make.

I want to be with people who give of themselves, who share their hearts and minds and gifts.

I want to be with people who know that human community is often warm and generous, sometimes challenging and almost always a grand adventure.

In short, I want to be with people like you.
 

SERMON

Yesterday, along with about 65 other good folks, I was at the UU church in Ellsworth attending the training for nonviolent direct action. I figured that it might be a good idea to brush up on my skills for being an activist while practicing love and determination. Anyway, at the end of the day I was trying to slip out a little early so I could get on with other pressing matters. Best intentions. One of the other participants, a man named David, followed me out into the hallway. He said, “So hey, did you say you’re a minister?” Oh no . . . . . .   With a start like that, it’s rarely a short conversation. “Because, if you are, I have a couple of questions I’d like to ask you.” Ugg, even worse. Now I will be asked the questions he’s been harboring against religion for the last who knows how long. But, here we go. “Yes, I did say that I’m a minister. I serve the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Castine. How can I help you?” After talking about whether Jesus is God and if UU ministers have to go to school like other ministers and how Christians came up with the concepts of heaven and hell and whether or not mystics are more like each other than they are like traditional members of their own religious tradition, he finally got to the real question. “Why do people go to church anyway, and especially a church that doesn’t provide answers to life’s big questions?” (I had already told him that ours is not a place where people are given the answers but is more of a place where we share in exploring the questions and seek our own truth and wisdom from within.)

He was not being facetious or a smarty pants – he was really asking.

Well, David, that’s a very good question.

Why do we come here? There are probably as many answers as there are people here this morning – and more if we count the people who come – just not today.

My best answer is that we come because we are better together. And that’s what I told David. He got it – right away. “Oh, so do you provide comfort and solace to people who are hurt or grieving?” “Well, yes. We also provide a safe place for people to ask those big questions you already mentioned – heaven and hell, the meaning of life, what is valuable, how to live an ethical life, etc.” And he asked – “Is that what you do as a minister – provide comfort and solace to people?” “Well, yes, sometimes I provide that. I always try to. And we encourage each other to be the best we can be, to be our best selves. And when we come together as a congregation, we promise to support each other in good times and when life gets really hard. And we stand together in Love for Justice and Peace.”

As we finally parted company, he nodded his head and extended his hand to me. “Thank you for talking with me. You’ve restored my faith in ministers a little bit.” “Well, I’m glad. And, David . . .  see you in church?” “Oh, I don’t know about that. But, I have been here a couple of times.” “Well, this congregation will always be here for you when you’re ready.”

Why do we come here? Because we’re better together.
Of course, there is a lot more to it than that, but it’s a good place to start.

As Unitarian Universalists, we don’t share a common doctrine or dogma around which we organize our beliefs or our thinking or our Sunday services or the rituals that mark our life’s important events. What we do share is a commitment to be the best we can be and to help each other as we each make our way through life. In order to be really great spiritual companions, we need to know each other. We need to know what brings us joy and what causes us pain. We need to be willing to risk sharing our lives with each other, and that’s not always easy. It gets easier with practice. With practice, we begin slowly and with the simple things. No one sits down at the piano ready to play complicated classical or jazz music at tempo the very first time. Practice. It has been said that it takes about ten thousand hours of practice to be an expert at something. Short of ten thousand hours of dedicated church time, surely, we can get better at sharing our lives by keeping an open heart and a listening ear.

Our goal in sharing our lives and knowing each other really well is Beloved Community. We are not a social service agency or a community club or a civic organization. You all belong to those groups too. But here, we are a faith community and, as such, we are covenant people. We make promises to each other and we do our best to keep those promises. And when we fall short, we remind each other these familiar words:

“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.”

For this is a house of saints and sinners. This is a house of the heathy and the healing; the broken and the repaired. This is a house where we come as we are, without pretense or pretext. We come ready to love and be loved. This is a house where we are known by our true name, where we see each other –and are seen by others. This is a house of Love – no matter what. It is also a house in constant need of grace and forgiveness – because this is a house of ordinary, yet divine, human beings.

Love Beyond Belief. That’s what we do here. That’s how we build and maintain Beloved Community. Love calls us on. There is no need to be a certain way or believe a certain set of teachings. There is, however, a need to make a commitment to share ourselves and to love each other.

Let me share with you some wisdom about Beloved Community . . .

From retired UU Minister, Alice Blair Wesley . . .

Beloved Community – What do we mean when say this?
I link the term Beloved Community to an understanding of human nature, of
how we are made. Under what conditions do human beings thrive? We thrive
best when we cooperate because we love what we are trying to do together,
and cannot keep from loving one another.

Our loyalty follows from what we love. The only freedom ultimately worthy
of the name is the freedom to try to do what we love with people we love.
How could we not love and think worthy and be loyal to a community of people trying to learn the truth insofar as we can know the truth; a community trying to do right insofar as we can figure out what is right; a community longing to treat one another fairly, with respect, with no put-downs and no grudges; a community that tries at least weekly to lift up
what is very important and precious, lest we forget?

Is that not a description of what we’d like a free congregation to be? Wouldn’t such a congregation be a good model for our larger society? If that description fit our congregation, would we not be a light unto the world, a city set on a hill that could not be hid?

Is not a group of people blessed who know that’s what they want freely to try to be together? One bit – just one bit – of the good news is that when we act like we would if we loved one another, we pretty soon love one another. We hear and see lovable features of others when we watch and listen and work together as though we loved.
And this from Rev. Deborah Holder, Beloved Community Minister, Pacific West Region Congregational Life Staff.

Beloved Community is honored and lived into when:

we make covenant together and live that covenant faithfully and joyfully.
we participate with each other through experiences of loss, longing, pain, joy and wonder;
we share the truth about our lives and know that our truth is heard and understood;
we receive each person as a gift from Spirit and make a place for them;
we give expression to our feelings and gratefully receive others’ expression of theirs;
we assume wholeness even in the midst of brokenness;
we carefully work through knots of confusion and disagreement in order to learn what we can never know alone;

We experience Beloved Community whenever and wherever individuals, groups and institutions choose connection, individuality, creativity and mindfulness over separation, individualism, destruction and denial. Beloved Community rests in the awareness that—all evidence to the contrary—we belong to one another.

Because, . . . all evidence to the contrary, we belong to one another, we are better together, and we are not alone – ever.
What, then, shall we do to promote Beloved Community here, in this congregation?

Three things.

Keep showing up.
Speak our truth in love, and Listen to others more often than we speak.
Share the joys and sorrows, the very stuff of our lives, with each other so that we will truly know each other a little better.

Finally, three paragraphs before the end of this sermon we get to the ritual of sharing our joys and sorrows. It isn’t complicated. The sharing of the joys that come to us, expected and unexpected, is surprisingly easy once we get beyond the shyness of thinking that no one is very interested in what goes on in our individual lives. Well, we are interested.

Sorrows. Well, sharing sorrows can be more difficult. The places that hurt us may be deep and wide and intensely personal. Sometimes we cannot speak of these things, they are too personal or too raw. And yet, love calls on; on toward the healing that comes from knowing that we are held in the embrace of a universal love that will never let us go, and, in the embrace of people here who cannot always, or even usually, fix what is broken or heal what is hurting but who will walk beside each of us as we move through the sorrow any one of us may carry right now.

We are interested. We do care. We are learning and practicing a Love Beyond Belief.

And that, David, is why we come to church.
Blessed Be. I Love You. Amen.