For many years I have asked what matters most to you? What matter most to you in your life? Your family? Your health? Your job? Your income? Your pet? This Church? God? The world? Over the years I have gotten some amazing answers. One woman told me that her hair used to matter most to her, she loved her hair, she wore it like a crown, like a mantle of beauty and power. And then she got cancer and lost all that hair, and now her health matters a great deal, but more importantly, what matters most to her are her two children, even more than her health. She had faith in them, faith being that word that describes what matters most to each of us. Many, many professed that the church mattered if not most, a close second. Not God as such but her manifestation in the love of those who know you and hold you, and call you friend even if they know all your faults.
I still think it’s important to ask what matters most. As individuals on a spiritual quest, we ask that question one way or another all the time. In fact, it’s at the heart of our identity as UUs. It’s what makes our theology; theology being the study of what matters most.
Deciding on our theology is only part of the story of why we are here. In recent years, I ask another question alongside what matters most. I ask, “whose are we?” To whom do we belong? Who holds our loyalty? Certainly your family? Perhaps other groups? You certainly belong to this church, in varying degrees whether or not you have decided to become a member. We also have 30 or so regularly attending and contributing friends who I consider as belong here. Whose are we? We are each other’s, in our keeping and learning and growing as a people. We help form each other. One of our own, Angela Henderson, who was our intern minister last year is now serving as the UU campus minister at UC Davies and living with her partner Becca, a United Methodist minister in Grass Valley. I just received news yesterday that Angela has passed the ministerial fellowship committee, our equivalent of the bar, and is cleared for ordination and permanent settlement! She texted me as soon as she was out of her interview. She is one of ours that will now go on to serve our fellow UUs for many good and deep years to come. We are living our faith in the best of what we can become.
Whose are we? We belong to a family to be sure. We may or may not consider ourselves as part of that family but we still belong. And yet, I don’t believe this church is a family. Families are complicated by systems of dysfunction that last for life! We have our dysfunctions here but being related for life is something we choose, families don’t get to choose. Whose are we? We are part of this church. We belong here. We are each other’s. The real meaning of humanity, humility and humanism.
Whose are we? We belong to each other but only in the present. Sometimes we can belong to a place or a person who has been lost to us, but even that in time will fade. We belong to one another in the here and now. That realization brings us the greatest happiness.
And this is what ministry is: Answering the question of belonging with the affirmative, right here and right now. I am yours. You know I did a lot of spiritual wandering in my younger years. I left college a confirmed atheist. My religion was renewable energy, I was going to change the world one solar panel at a time and so I pounded up and down the roads of Iowa in my bright Orange pickup knocking on doors, selling solar. I got married and when that fell apart, I was invited by a friend to come to the American Baptist Church up the street. I came and something powerful started to shift in me. I was welcomed, warmly, honestly, for who I was, a broken man with an impossible dream. I came every Sunday. The pastor was a large and kind man. He convinced me that I could turn myself over to a higher power. He found in me a strength I didn’t think I had. And his people were as warm and generous as a people could be. As time went on I healed. I knew I wouldn’t be baptized in that church, but I also knew I could anser the question Whose are we? With the convection, that I was this churches, I was this imperfect man who belonged to God, or to my working definition of God as the Spirit of Life. I belonged to a larger universe and it was good.
Membership is at the heart of what it means to belong here. You are welcome here always. But if you have found here a spiritual home then I encourage you to take the next step: Join us as a member of this congregation. You might think you are a member already, but if you haven’t signed the membership book and made some kind of contribution of record you are not quite there. By becoming a member you are indicating that you find in this place a people, your people. We are a covenantal tradition, what that means is that we are bound together by a creed or a baptism but rather by a promise, the promise we say every week in our affirmation, Love is the Spirit of this Church and Service its Law, by becoming a member you are commiting your life to this proposition. See David Vita, our Director of Membership to learn more.
Becoming a member here is not a sacrifice, it’s a liberation. I am reminded of very popular local church that was having a membership drive and three couples were being interviewed by the pastor. The pastor explained to them that in order to be accepted as members of the church, they would have to show their commitment to God by abstaining from love making for three weeks. He directed them to return in three weeks to meet with him, let him know whether or not they had honored this commitment, and he would make a decision on accepting them as members.
Three weeks later, the pastor was talking with the three couples and asked the first couple, an elderly couple, how they did. The husband explained that they had abstained from for the three weeks, and the pastor welcomed them as new members of the congregation.
The second couple, a middle-aged couple, explained that they had their urges but were able to abstainfor the three weeks. Again, the pastor welcomed the couple as new members of the congregation.
Finally, the third couple, explained that they were much more tempted than the previous two couples. The husband said, “The first week was tough but tolerable; the second week was extremely difficult; and the third week was so bad we had to avoid one another. It all came to a head when, one day, my wife dropped an orange on the floor. When she bent over to pick it up, well, I couldn’t help myself.”
The pastor said, “I’m sorry, but you will not be allowed in this church.”
The husband then said, “That doesn’t surprise me, we’re no longer allowed in that grocery store again either!” (JokeBuddha.com)
Whose are we? I think we belong to these communities, this country, this planet, and the cosmos. We also belong to ourselves. Last week, I spoke about how important it was to recognize and even welcome that which causes us suffering. Only by welcoming that pain to sit beside us, can we stop fighting the pain, which as we all know, makes the suffering worse. In fact, I am more and more convinced that we are really only free to change once we accept who we are as broken in the first place. Tara Broch, a Buddhist teacher, tells the story of a Catholic priest who was battling alcoholism. He had lost his parish, his health, his purpose. Good meaning people tried to convince him to get help, counselling, AA, rehab. Somehow he resisted. And then one day, an old friend of his, who had problems of his own, stopped by to see him. And he said “Don’t change. I like you the way you are”. Suddenly the priest felt a wave of Grace wash over him. Suddenly he felt whole and forgiven. In that simple act of love, “I like you the way you are”, his friend affirmed the essential goodness at the heart of this broken man and with that affirmation, the priest found the strength to go on and get the help he needed. And to this day he is still in recovery and back in his parish. (from Tara Brach Radical Acceptance) When we ask whose are we, we need to start by answering that we are ourselves, good and worthy, our first principle as UUs. Even when we have done terrible things, who we are is not the same as what we have done.
Whose are we? We are part of the divine in ways we can’t always see. We belong to each other in ways we can’t always see, in a connectedness that goes beyond the rational. We belong to each other and the cosmos. The point is to let life live through us, to let love live through us. To welcome life as it is moving through us.This for me is the essence of faith. It’s how we let life live through us and how we make a life worth living. Whose are we? There are many answers to that. But ultimately, we belong to the cosmos. We belong to the earth. We belong to life. We belong to each other. We belong to ourselves. We may not feel that ever widening sense of belonging today, but it is there. You are loved and you are not alone. Amen.
