Yes!  Now Is The Time!

a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church of Alton IL, March 15, 2009

“We don’t want to grow in numbers just for the sake of growth.” -- Rev. Kathleen Ellis

 

Yes!  Now IS the time!  The written word on the page doesn’t quite convey the emotion of the spoken word - whatever the inflection of speech adds gets lost in translation somehow.  I guess that’s okay, because I have mixed emotions about what time it is anyway:

Now is the time I feel the warmth and rebirth of spring coming right around the corner, but

Now is also the time I wake each morning to ever-worse cold, hard economic news.

Now is the time I sense the energy and excitement in the air at church functions, but

Now is also the time I come to church and find out who’s fighting with whom around here.

Now is the time when I want to build us all up and tell all of you how well we’re doing, but

Now is also the time when some of us are feeling the twinges of burn-out and fatigue from doing too much and not taking enough care of ourselves.

Now is the time when I want to tell all the old stories of success and victory and overcoming all obstacles, but

Now is definitely NOT the time to fudge the facts, to tell half-truths or bold-faced lies that spin the facts instead of expose the whole truth.

Now may in fact be the time to say “Yes!” in the face of all this change and challenge;

And I know that Now is definitely NOT the time to give up and throw in the towel just because so much has changed, just because we face so many challenges. 

Hey, we wanted the world to change, we just didn’t know how it was gonna.

 

It’s pledge drive season and you’ve heard an awful lot over the last four or five weeks about - eek! - money.  But the pledge drive is almost over, and Now is the time for the last overtly pledge drive sermon you’ll hear for awhile.  I want to begin by telling you three things I’ve been thinking about this church this week.  Three things:  tradition, hospitality, and authenticity.

First, tradition.  We nurture here a sense of tradition tempered by a sense of newness.  We do a lot of things here the same way people who came here before us did them because they found those things to be worthwhile and valuable and inspiring in their day and time.  We want to honor those people and their experiences and since we, too, want to find things that are worthwhile, valuable, and inspiring, we try doing things in the old ways like they did.  But we do a lot of things in new ways, too, because times change, situations change, people change and (hopefully) grow.  That means we’re constantly walking a tightrope between tradition and innovation - you might say we have “a tradition of change.”  Sometimes that’s comforting and sometimes that’s challenging, but always that’s what people need in order to grow.

Next, hospitality.  We are hospitable in more ways than one.  Most easily identifiable, we’ve been through the UUA’s official process to become a Welcoming Congregation for lbgt folks, and that’s a celebration.  More than that, I hear all the time how friendly the people in this congregation are to our first-time visitors and our guest preachers and others who join us.  Other churches may struggle to get their members to open up to the new people among them, but we already do very well at being friendly and open.  We’ve also begun to invite visitors to join us for the 4^th Saturday lunches when we provide meals and - just as importantly - fellowship and hospitality to people who really need meals and fellowship and hospitality.

The third thing, and I believe the most important, is authenticity.  My assessment of us in this regard is, well, mixed.  I perceive that we are honestly striving toward being who we say we are, but we still fall short.  As far as being welcoming and hospitable goes, we are welcoming to many people.  But there are gaps between our practice of hospitality and our vision of the beloved community - we do have more work to do to be truly open to people living with mental illness, for example.  And as for being authentic to our tradition, there is an obvious energy in our gathering, and when we say we are excited to be here, I think we mean it.  When we say this place is comforting as well as challenging, I think that’s right.  This can be a restful place of replenishment for people to recharge for the week ahead, and conversely, we dare to challenge each other with tough questions, we do ask a lot of each other. 

Are we authentic and true to our traditions?  More often than not.  But are we innovative enough?  Less often than we aspire to be, for too often we fall back on thinking that what seemed new in the 19^th century or that what seemed new in the 20^th century or that what seemed new 5 years ago will suffice for innovation now.  Doing so, we delude ourselves:  Times change, situations change, people change and (hopefully) grow.  We can try new music, we can try new forms of worship, we can try new committee structures.  But it is a new world out there, and we’re going to have to keep trying new things to keep up with all those changes. 

 

I want to share with you some of the changes that have been proposed for this budget cycle:

--  A safety crib for the nursery that would allow whoever is working with our nursery kids to get them out of the building quickly and safely in the event of an emergency.  It’s a crib with wheels that’s big enough to hold all the kids at once so we can get them safely out of harm’s way.

--  A paging system that would keep parents of kids in the nursery better connected and able to be notified of any issues that might arise while their children are being cared for.  I think these two things indicate where our highest priorities are:  our highest priority is our children, and doing the best we can by them.

--  Something that caters to the ease of our members and friends in this new age of electronic banking:  automatic debit so you can pay your pledge without having to write a check each month.  It’s been a long time coming, but I hope we’re there.  (Also, we’re installing ‘donation’ buttons on our website…)

--  Other changes we continue to work on: we have a smaller Board and a more functional Program Council.  We’ve needed a better communication system for committee chairs and other leaders and now maybe we’ve got the structure in place - if we can learn to talk to each other effectively, if we can learn to speak the truth to each other in love.

 

I hear people talking about money and the pledge drive and our traditions and about “what we could do if…”   I sometimes hear a few things in those private conversations or public pronouncements that I’d want to quibble with.  (If you don’t find anything around here you want to quibble with, you must not be paying attention.)  I should tell you that around my house, we say that “what you heard may not be what I said,” so I urge you to be careful about what you think you hear around here because it may not be quite right.

You may think you hear someone during the pledge drive say that we should really be like the Mormons or the Catholics and all give a set amount because then we’d have no money problems at all.

But I tell you, we are not Mormons or Catholics because we don’t want to be Mormons or Catholics - we’re UUs, we’re proud of it, and anyway, we can’t all give the same amount, so get over it.

You may think you hear someone during the pledge drive say that we want more from you than you can give.

But I tell you we don’t want you to give more than you can; we want you to grow in your ability to give back a portion of the gifts you’ve been given.  It’s the growth in your understanding and ability that’s important, not any absolute amount or percentage.

You may think you hear someone during the pledge drive say that it costs ‘this much’ to be a member of this church.

But I tell you that, while it’s true that this congregation incurs certain costs for opening the doors, there is no minimum financial cost to be a member of this church.  If you can’t personally match what it costs to keep these doors open, then someone else is here to help.  If everybody does their best, then it all works out.  That’s the way we work - not everybody has the same resources, but we should all share a desire to do our best and contribute as best we can. 

You may think you hear someone during the pledge drive say that you have to do better.

But I tell you that doing better is between you and your God, however you understand that.  No one here should try to mediate your relationship with the divine for you.

Now don’t let these things get lost in translation.  You need to develop an understanding of stewardship for yourself, not be told by somebody else what best for you.  I hope our Stewardship Committee can help with that over the coming year, and do more to educate us on the broader meaning of stewardship and taking care of all our resources.

 

For four weeks now, we’ve heard people stand up here in this pulpit and tell us what this church means to them.  The Johnson family today, both adults and children mentioned crafts and friends as reasons they like coming to church.  They said they liked the physical space of the building, that they were still figuring things out but enjoyed working on spirituality and the spiritual life with the people of this church.  Their chalice circle is important to their experience here, and they are happy to be in a place that has moved beyond tolerating glbt people to acceptance of glbt people - there are too many places in the world with separate water fountains, they said.  Here, we can be together in important, respectful, and deep ways.

Dick Blanton last week told us that since he’s been a part of this community for seven potlucks (by my calculation, that means seven months), he’s found that our practice of “deeds not creeds” has changed his attitude toward church.  He said he’d never been called “distinguished” before, which I think must have been an oversight because he and Pat have been involved in social justice activities for decades, from the early civil rights era right on through today for the rights of blgt folks.

The week before, Jennifer Herndon told us she comes here for the chalice circle she belongs to where she gets to know people and they get to know her in ways that even her closest family and longest-term friends don’t get to.  She ended her remarks with this:  “I think of this church as a home base, a starting place for my week where I can give gratitude for the things that are great in my life and where I can meditate upon and learn and reflect upon how I can make myself better in the actions of my coming week.  I know this church has made me a better person, and I hope in turn that makes the world a better place.”

The week before that, Paul Hebert used the idea from our Seven Principles of the “interconnected web of life” to say he thinks of this church as an “interconnected extended family.”  He went on to say, “Other churches extract a price that is too steep for me to pay - that price being the requirement that members subscribe to an entirely dictated system of beliefs.  This church has no such cost of ownership;  each individual’s personal beliefs are not only allowed but encouraged to remain their own.  It is our differences in beliefs that is celebrated here.  We weave a rich tapestry by combining the differences among us, and I encourage each of you to contribute to the continued evolution of this tapestry by whatever means and in whatever way you can...”

 

My wife Linda and I have talked about what this church means to us and we’ve decided, because of those discussions and because of our means, to pledge $3960 this year.  That’s $330 per month.  I tell you this not to flaunt ourselves or to flog you, but simply because I feel it’s vitally important to publicly state our commitment to the goals of this church.

This church means a lot to a lot of people.  The work of this church is not the work of one person, or two, or three, but of all of us.  The work of this church is not about numerical growth but about growth in depth of spirit and growth in depth of commitment - numerical growth may be an outcome of that, but it is beside the point.

If a long history of social justice work appeals to you, Now is the time to say, “Yes!”

If knowing other people in deep ways appeals to you, Now is the time to say, “Yes!”

If weaving not just our similarities but our differences into a beautiful and ever-evolving tapestry appeals to you, Now is the time to say, “Yes!”

If making ourselves and the world a better place appeals to you, Now is the time to say, “Yes!” 

Now is the time to say, “Yes!”

Now IS the time to say, “Yes!”

So may it be.