Chalice Reflection
of
Sarah Shannon
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, Massachusetts
September 13, 2009
Good morning. As I understand it, this morning is about becoming and growing a community in which each person, no matter how big or how small, feels valued and respected and that he/she is a contributing member of the group.
One of the things that I was most looking forward to when I joined First Parish was sitting here as I am today – with my husband, Ken, and my children: a small, family unit that was part of a much larger community of individuals. When we joined the church, we didn’t actually have the two children that we have today. Now, when I go to sit, I will join them and begin teaching my two boys what church is, why it’s important, what I believe, how to formulate their own beliefs, and, of course, how to sit still, listen, and be quiet!
Looking back, I can remember going to church with my parents and sitting in the pews – they were uncomfortable, hard, and stiff. I hated having to sit still and be quiet and I was a sit still, be quiet kind of child, not like my boys. I loved to read. It would have been easy for my parents to let me bring a book with me. I would have been a perfect angel, but that would have defeated the purpose of bringing me to church. I can imagine that for some of the children here today, they are feeling the same way that I did as a child. And, I’m sure that some of the parents of young children are feeling the same way that I do today.
As a member of your RE committee, I believe that days such as these, our intergenerational services, are just as, if not more, important than the RE classes that go on across the street. These services teach our children that what they are learning in their RE classes is part of a much bigger entity and that Sunday isn’t just about another “class” they have to attend after a long week of learning; it’s about a religion; it’s about faith. The opportunity to attend the services shows our children that the two, class and church, aren’t mutually exclusive of each other.
I look forward to working as a part of the First Parish community to grow the Religious Education program and to teaching my children how to be contributing members of this community as well. It is my hope that even though they are small, John and Michael can start contributing now – whether that be by answering questions in their RE class or by listening to Reverend Jan on a Sunday morning and asking Ken and me questions about what she said on the ride home. I love that each person in this worship house has a voice. And I love that the tiny, high-pitched voices are just as exciting to listen to as those that are loud and deep!
If there are any parents who would like to register their children to be a part of our Religious Education Community, I will be across the street after church and would be happy to help you.
“Gospel—that is, Good News!”
A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
for the Sunday of our Annual Meeting
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
September 13, 2009
But there’s more.
We’re a growing congregation. Like the child and the townspeople in the story I shared earlier, we’re planting a garden together. We’re sowing seeds even in this season of almost-autumn. We’re sowing seeds and we’re tending the garden that is First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Cohasset. How?
You got up this morning and you had a choice. What will I do? Where will I be? You came here. You came and some of you brought your children. I see faces that are familiar and faces that are new, kids and grown-ups whom I know and kids and grown-ups whom I hope all of us will come to know. You took a chance that here you would find fellowship and song and questions that matched yours and maybe even some welcome silence—though we’re not as good at silence as we are with the other stuff.
Then there’s our choir. They’re already singing their hearts out with a rousing “Jazz Alleluia” and a traditional spiritual about “Good News.” And there’s the choir that is our whole congregation, as we lift our voices to the strains of “Enter, Rejoice, and Come In.” How can you help but smile when you sing “Enter, Rejoice, and Come In?” Its upbeat melody and steady rhythms remind me of the sounds of a carousel.
How else do we tend our garden? Right after this service, we’ll gather in fellowship across the street. We’ll have a more social chance to greet friends and newcomers, and we’ll make sure that everyone—please let’s make sure that everyone—is included as we gather in clusters and share the news of our summer and our hopes and plans for the year ahead.
Some of you will register your children for our religious education classes. They begin next week. I can’t imagine a better way for our children and youth to grow into caring adults than to participate in a program that builds an identity of caring and sharing and learning about other faiths as well as our own, and for our younger teens to begin a program called Our Whole Lives—OWL for short—that teaches healthy and caring relationships, and for our older teens to come together across congregations for a Senior High Youth Group. This is all good news for how our children grow!
By now, most of you have had a chance to read our September newsletter. In just a few short weeks, nine members of this congregation will leave for Guatemala through a project called Common Hope that this congregation has participated in for close to a decade. You’ll bring shoes that we gathered and purchased last spring, shoes that will find their way onto the feet of village schoolchildren. In fact, it’s not too late for the rest of us to gather even more shoes. Most importantly, you, our Common Hope Vision Team, will bring yourselves, your good will, and your readiness to roll up your sleeves and work on behalf of our neighbors to the south, neighbors who struggle mightily to makes ends meet. And you’ll reunite with Salomon, the young boy turned young man who has been the recipient of this congregation’s generosity for many years. You’ll meet Salomon’s wife and new baby. And you’ll work hard and remember well so you can come back and tell us the good news of your time there.
I could go on. Gospel is alive here. Who we are and how we seek to be for each other and this community and our world is all about the Gospel—that is, the good news of this faith whose core is love.
As background, I grew up as a Presbyterian, which is not a bad thing by the way! As a Presbyterian Christian, I grew up learning what I thought was “the Gospel.” I didn’t know there was more than one! Gospel for the younger me meant the good news of the coming of Jesus and that he was my Lord and Savior. I know there are some Unitarian Universalists who also identify as Christian. If anyone asks me if I’m Christian as a “UU,” I say, “inclusively but not exclusively,”—that is, yes, I am, but I’m not just Christian. I find truth in other religions and in literature and poetry and movies and the drama of the ocean. I know, some of YOU would say the drama of the Red Sox! In this part of the country, the Red Sox is Gospel!
But it’s one thing to be a fan, another thing to be committed to an ongoing community whose driving force is walking together in a covenant—a community promise—of love. As Unitarian Universalists, what is our Gospel? What is our core force? “…the glowing coal at our center is radically inclusive love” are the words Elizabeth Stevens chooses to describe it. Rev. Elizabeth Stevens is minister of the Kitsap Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Bremerton, Washington, and with her permission I share her words with you this morning. Inspired by exciting worship and stirring lectures and the energy of over 3,000 Unitarian Universalists gathered in Salt Lake City, Utah at our General Assembly this past June, Liz wrote of her “strong feeling that the 'glowing coal' at our center is radically inclusive love and that we are called from that center to the work of building THE (global) beloved community.”
Beloved community is a phrase often used by the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King scholars Kenneth Smith and Ira Zepp describe King’s vision of beloved community as “a vision of a completely integrated society, a community of love and justice wherein brotherhood would be an actuality in all of social life.”
Love, community, and passion for both are at the heart of our deepest and widest hopes for this faith community. As for that “glowing coal” at our center, I remember when my daughter Sarah, now 30-something, was about seven years old. On the ride home from church one Sunday, I mentioned something about our flaming chalice. Without a second’s pause, Sarah chimed in, “Oh yeah, that ‘steaming pot of fire.’”
What glows and steams for you? What is your faith gospel, your good news? I’ll be asking you to share your stories over the year ahead. I know you have them, or you wouldn’t be here.
For now, let’s catch some of what Liz and I caught in the presence of our larger UU world this summer in Salt Lake City, some of the “Gospel fire,” we might call it.
Love is at the heart of a campaign launched at that same General Assembly that stirred Liz and me. You’ll hear more about it as the year unfolds. “Standing on the side of love,” it’s called. Like any campaign, this one has a manager. His name is Adam Gerhardstein. Adam is a young adult who manages this campaign out of our Unitarian Universalist Association’s Office of Advocacy in Washington, DC. Right after General Assembly ended, he wrote of his experiences with its launching, which included a number of volunteers who filmed folks telling their own “love stories.”
Each morning [wrote Adam]… the Standing on the Side of Love volunteers gathered in my hotel room/campaign headquarters at 7:30 am. We started each meeting by checking-in about our experiences the previous day. …Here is one story:
‘I filmed a straight woman who said that she stood on the side of love with her daughter and her daughter's female partner, who are unable to marry. As a queer person, I was deeply moved by her words, and my face must have shown a strange mixture of pain and gratitude. Later that day, a Spanish language news program was searching for a Spanish-speaker to interview at the interfaith rally. I'm neither Latina nor an immigrant, but I speak Spanish, so I volunteered. I told the reporter that we were supporting immigrants because it is wrong to persecute families who only want to work hard and build better lives. Afterwards, the cameraperson, a middle-aged Latino man, said a soft and heartfelt, 'Thank you.' I recognized the emotions on his face--they were the same emotions I had felt listening to that mother.’
Adam ends his message with the simple words, “Love is powerful.”
I could tell so many more good news love stories, and so could you, but I have a clock right in front of this pulpit. And it’s telling me that even “good news” has a period at the end of a sermon about it.
This morning’s gospel for me is the good news that we are, that we are here, that we are here together, and that we are here together in the promise of standing on the side of love all year long and into all the years of our life together. May it be so. I love you each and all. Amen.
Sources:
“Enter, Rejoice, and Come In,” Words and music: Louise Ruspini, Arr. by Better A. Wylder (1923 - ), in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 361.
Adam Gerhardstein, “Standing on the Side of Love at GA,” July 7, 2009 e-mail from love@uua.org. A one-time email to everyone who experienced the General Assembly launch of the Standing on the Side of Love campaign.
http://www.standingonthesideoflove.org/
Rev. Elizabeth Stevens, “…the ‘glowing coal” at our center…” quoted from July 2, 2009. Permission to quote received by Rev. Stevens July 7, 2009.
Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp, Jr., “Martin Luther King’s Vision of the Beloved Community,” Christian Century, April 3, 1974, pp. 361-363. Material prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock: http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1603
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