A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
March 1, 2009
Today is Stewardship Sunday…sort of. This morning is our opportunity to think about stewardship, generosity, and all that relates to both. This week is our extended time to think some more about stewardship and generosity, to sift it out, to dream about it, to imagine, to reflect, to connect, and to prepare for next Sunday, when those among us who have agreed to lead our annual stewardship venture will help us morph our thinking into actions of commitment and commitments of generosity. So let’s call this morning Stewardship Advent Sunday.
What are we about with an advent? An approach, a preparation, a pregnancy of sorts, with the guarantee of an outcome if not a guaranteed outcome. For what are we preparing? Not quite a baby, but a hope that this congregation that was born 288 years ago will continue to breathe and will thrive.
During those 288 years, we have known good times and not so good times. Imagine all the members and friends of this church across these 29 decades. Imagine that all of us are assembled here this morning. Consider what we have witnessed in our cumulative lifetimes.
We the assembled historic congregation have borne witness to wars that tore body and soul, from the wars of European newcomers with the indigenous nations of this continent through the world wars of the 20th century into the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To each of these episodes of carnage, members of this congregation have borne witness as religious community. Members of this congregation have participated on battlefields and in the halls of power. Members of this congregation have figured in the founding and evolution of world organizations such as the United Nations, designed to convene in peaceful and respectful assembly an almost unimaginable diversity of cultures and viewpoints. Members of this congregation have convened in this Meeting House with what has sometimes felt like an almost unimaginable diversity of viewpoints, however culturally monolithic we might seem, to stretch our individual personhoods into a larger soul, the soul of religious community.
Yes, we have borne witness to wars that tore body and soul, and we have borne witness and continue to bear witness to the hope that peaceful assembly on matters intimate and global describes the foundational nature of this faith community. To paraphrase that 16th century Unitarian martyr, Francis David, as we sought to love alike, we didn’t always think alike. The fabric of our community has been shredded and parsed many times over. The fabric of our faithfulness has been stretched. The largesse of who we seek to be stops short of nothing less than beloved community.
We the members and friends of this historic congregation have borne witness to an ongoing roller coaster of socioeconomic health. While it wasn’t until the 19th century that economic statistics were even documented, there have been other markers, from weather to wars, that described economic cycles before that time. In 1797, seventy-six years after this church was founded and over 200 years ago, economics were topsy-turvy in response to deflation in the Bank of England propelled by England’s war with France in what was known as the French Revolutionary Wars. It was a crisis that lasted three years. This, by the way, was a time in the history of First Parish when there was no stewardship campaign. No need! This congregation was supported by taxes! Such would be the case until 1824, when we were no longer the “town church,” a delayed reaction to the 1820 separation of church and state in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Not a great time for a stewardship drive, since the previous five years were marked by a major financial crisis in this nation, with “ widespread foreclosures, bank failures, unemployment, and a slump in agriculture and manufacturing.” How did we do it? Somehow, we did. Those of you in our imagined historic congregation who hold the stories of this time are more than welcome to share your strategies for our own day.
Jump ahead to 1857. The iconic Rev. Joseph Osgood was your minister then. Just two years earlier, the women of First Parish had purchased an organ for the Meeting House. I trust that they paid cash. In 1857, over 5,000 banks failed and unemployment soared in reaction to the failure of an Ohio based bank that burst a bubble of European speculation in U.S. railroads. Sound familiar? Not the railroads, but the bursting of a bubble? Unemployment was rampant. It continued for three years, but in 1857, no one knew how long it would last.
Time for the 20th century, although the roller coaster of famine and plenty moved in its perilous course across the intervening years. It was October 1929 when another bubble burst. The fallout known as “The Great Depression” would span more than a decade. Some of you recall that time. It was not pretty. Soup lines and hungry children were commonplace in the national landscape. My own mother was 20 years old then, a young nurse in a small Midwestern town. Yes, she’s 100 years old now, and she still clings to habits of frugality. She also shares readily the stories of neighbor helping neighbor during the leanest of times because “What else could we do?” In 1921, just eight years before the fallout, First Parish had celebrated its bicentennial, still flush with the illusion of a booming economy, still hopeful that World War I, known then as the Great War, had been “the war to end all wars.”
As the nation recovered, albeit largely on the dubious economic merits of the Second World War, Roscoe Trueblood came to this pulpit. For 24 years, Rev. Trueblood joined with you as you continued to find your place in this community and this faith. During these two score and four years, some of you remember that you wound your way through three economic recessions, spanning a decade between the early 1950s to the early 1960s.
And here we are today. Take a deep breath. Times are tough. Times have been tough in the past. You, the historic congregation bear witness with your scars of loss and grief and yes, with your proverbial merit badges of resilience and vision and commitment. Stewards all, you have walked the walk; you have kept the faith.
The winter from which we are emerging has been marked by war and socioeconomic crisis. It has also been marked by a spate of illness and injury and loss. You, the historic congregation, have known such seasons intimately. Just three years before this parish observed its bicentennial, 21 million perished from the 1918 influenza epidemic linked to war that also ended that year. If you visit Central Cemetery, I don’t doubt that you will find an undue number of headstones marking lives that stopped short that year, lives fragile in their infancy and their age. How many funerals did our Meeting House host during this period of rampant illness and loss?
Surely one of the most poignant records of life’s fragility in our historic midst are the Cohasset Mariner Quilts, one crafted by the women of Second Parish, known to us today as the Second Congregational Church, the other, by the women of First Parish, known to us today as First Parish Unitarian Universalist. Thanks to current member, Penny Myles, we have a historical narrative of these two quilts, both crafted in the 1840s, just a few decades after the centennial of this congregation and about 15 years after the splintering of First Parish into First and Second Parish. (Sometimes, we haven’t been so good about not having to think alike to love alike!)
On the First Parish quilt, known as the Album quilt, there is a bittersweet reminder of how women of that time used this art as a testament that they had lived. Sisters commonly sewed squares that adjoined each other. In the case of the Hall sisters, it was as if they had stitched their memorials in the pattern of a family plot. Susannah Hall’s square held the inscription: “Hope on, hope over.” It was dated August 26, 1846. A few years later, at the age of 24, Susannah was gone. The wistful thread coursing through each square was a longing to be remembered. Life was fragile and precious.
Just yesterday, we celebrated the life and memorialized the passing of a dear and lovely young woman whose spirit of resilience embodies what it means to persevere with grace. We have been reminded again and again this year, this winter, and through the seasons of our historic faith community that life is fragile and precious.
We are reminded through reflection on times and circumstances past that this is a resilient congregation, upheld by the tensile strands of love. This has been a cruel winter, but it is not the only cruel winter we have weathered. You are a well-weathered congregation, seasoned by centuries of communal faithfulness. You are stitched together not by hard and fast creeds, but by a covenant of love that endures.
Do we always love well? Of course not. Do we have occasion to practice the hard stuff of forgiveness? Absolutely! Does redemption have a place in our faith? I surely hope so. Such is the ballast of religious community grounded in a relationship of covenant.
Consider where you have been. Consider the season upon us. Consider the approaching spring. Be reminded that just a few years ago, you adopted a statement of mission. Let it be a mirror for our spirits this morning:
We welcome all to our inclusive spiritual community. We affirm our Unitarian Universalist Principles and put them into action by worshiping together, caring for one another, and working for a safe, just, and sustainable world.
Ours is a mission of resilience, inclusiveness, affirmation, faithfulness, hope, perseverance, caregiving, and commitment.
Echoing those words that we spoke responsively:
“Alone in the world, I was beset by sorrow and hurt in my life—so much loss and emptiness, so little hope and understanding.
….Then I came into community, a religious community of hope and love. Here I found support and compassion, wisdom and grace, and the power of shared suffering. And together we made life sweeter.”
You, the assembled congregation of 288 years have made life sweeter. You, the assembled congregation of almost three centuries, have persevered.
Twenty-eight laughs, an underestimate; 9 hugs, think thousands more; 52 smiles, add an infinite number of zeros. A free day, a morning perhaps, to take them all in: priceless! Okay, this quip from the MasterCard commercial doesn’t distill it. How could it possibly do so? Close to three centuries of laughter and tears, births and marriages and illnesses and loss, economic rollercoaster rides, wars and epidemics, congregational splits and familial trials, and yes, the winter at hand. Yet the laughs and hugs and smiles and hope embodied in our very mission statement testify to the religious community that you have chosen, the religious community that has made life sweeter. This morning is a time to ponder this. This morning is priceless.
BUT that commercial, that MasterCard commercial, gives a clue to something else. The structure that cradles these priceless dimensions of our faith community carries a cost. Even a MasterCard credit card comes due. Our religious community is priceless, but it is not costless. It costs us time and energy and yes, money, that construct from which some of you recoil. But do any of us enjoy the comforts of homes rented or mortgaged without paying the bill? Do any of us enjoy the benefits of education for our children without paying the bill? Do any of us head to Shaw’s or Stop n’ Shop or in the most basic ways sustain ourselves without expectation that there is a cost?
Our religious community may be priceless, but the sustained covenantal relationship enhanced by the exquisite beauty of this Meeting House, the meeting rooms of our Parish House, the professionalism of staff called and hired, the richness of curricula that lend wisdom to our young and not so young, the music that peals from this sacred space Sunday after Sunday all carry a cost. Cherish what is priceless, and ponder if you will how we will bear the cost together, as we consider the commitment and opportunity of stewardship.
Yes, it’s a tough time, but we have weathered tough times before. We can do it now. It is my hope that for those who know especially tough times, we will do what we can, and for those whose homes and pantries and even a few vacations are secure, we will do more than we think we might. Religious community is sustained by gifts given and received, not in equal portion, but equitably.
If in years hence, you are imaginatively reassembled as a historic congregation of 388 years, I am counting on each of us to know that on our watch, we cherished the priceless and bore the cost. Let’s take a week and think about what this religious community means to us. What will we do to sustain it? What will you do to sustain it? I know you’ll respond generously. I’m counting on you. I will do my part.
I love you and am so grateful for each and every one of you.
Amen.
Sources:
Jan Carlsson-Bull, “Sacred Quilts,” A Sermon given at First Parish Unitarian Universalist, Cohasset, MA, February 5, 2006.
Selwyn D. Collins, Ph.D., “Influenza in the United States, 1887-1956,” Extract from Review and Study of Illness and Medical Care with Special Reference to Long-time Trends, Public Health Monograph No. 48, 1957 (Public Health Service Publication No. 544), http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/influenza_collins.htm.
“Congregational History,” First Parish in Cohasset, http://www.firstparishcohasset.org/about/history.htm.
Michael E. Hanlon, The Great War in Numbers, excerpt with permission, El Sobrante, CA, THC Publishing, 1992, http://www.worldwar1.com/sfnum.htm
“List of recessions in the United States,” from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States.
Penny Redfield [Myles], “The Cohasset Mariner Compass Quilts,” Paper prepared for Liberal Studies 401, Simmons College, December 9, 1991.
Douglas Taylor, “The Blessings of Community,” from For All That Is Our Life: A Meditation Anthology, Helen and Eugene Pickett, Editors, Skinner House Books, 2005.
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