The Church/ The World

A sermon offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette

February 16, 2003

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Reading

Country Song

"The Old Country Church"

There's a place dear to me, where I'm longing to be

With my friends at the old country church.

There with mother we went, and our Sundays were spent

With my friends at the old country church.

Precious years of memories, oh what joy they bring to me

How I long……. once more to be,

With my friends at the old country church

Sermon

Welcome to church.  What is church? What can it become?  Why do we come here?

While we are here, there is more than a chill wind outside – there is a storm – there is a storm outside while we are here – that beats against our walls and that rattles our precious windows.

In truth, we come here in part to come in out of that chill wind – as people have sought sanctuary for generations …  Yet, we have learned, as generations before us have learned again and again – that the wind follows us here – inside.  It blows in our minds and rattles our hearts.

We knew it was coming – a year ago – 2 years, and longer ago – when our leaders led us to war, to scarcity, to disappoint the democratic dream – when the so called powers that be have failed to help shape a good world.  This has ever been.  Once, church was established so that the powerless could endure their powerlessness – survive this world on the way to the next one.  “Be Ye not Conformed to this world” said the Teacher Paul.  But this church is different.  We are truly non-conformists – but our hearts do belong to this world and we long for it’s reform.  The roots of this church were in the impulse to non-conform and to reform, and to remake the church in a more humane image.  Yet – as the wind blows – vision may be obscured and the purpose of church may be lost.  But today more than ever we need to know why are here -- to know what church is.  We need to know and shape what church can be.

            I’m well aware that some who are gathered here feel some discomfort with the label – church – some wish this were a congregation, some wish it were a meeting house, some wish it were still called a fellowship – but – you know what they say about ducks.  This isn’t a theater, a lecture hall, or movie house.  This is a religious gathering – we are drawn together not simply by social interests – but by the deepest of principles and values.  People drawn together by meaning and by seeking.  And by expectation.  Each of us arrives here with expectations based upon a lifetime of experiences.  It’s our experiences and our responses to them that shape at least to some extent the expectations we have here – that we bring here – that bring us here.

You may be drawn here by your intellect -- to attend a church where you don’t, as they say, have to “check your brains at the door.”  Unitarian Universalist Churches are referred to as the Thinking person’s church.  A young person I know who attends another church in town asked me recently -- “is it okay if I think something different than what my minister thinks.”  I replied, trying to stay as much as possible in her framework,  “Well, that’s why God gave you a brain.”  You may come hoping to have an adventure for your mind – you may be a seeker, and explorer -- you may hope to do more than untangle old texts or get tangled up in dogma – you may actually hope to find new ground – to bring your own and modern perspectives to ancient human challenges.  You may be drawn by the desire to engage in a religious life and practice that expands your mind and broadens your intellectual horizons. 

You may be lured by your hunger for some deeper feeling in your life – a feeling you are allowed to have.  My same young friend asked me – “is it okay if I feel something different than what my minister tells me that I should be feeling?”  Just imagine if I told you today how you should feel?  It would be a scandal.  Unitarian Universalists assume that feelings grow and change.  That, complex and challenging as they may be – are part of our wholeness.  You may come here hoping that this week the hymns will move you – that you will find yourself connected to the other people here by singing with them.  You may be listening to the gathering music, the readings, the intergenerational portion and want to find your feelings stirred.  You may have come here with a heavy heart – and find yourself seeking solace – as humans do.

You may be attracted here by the idea that there will be one hour of your week in which you can reach for those moments of insight that give life real meaning – those times when the superficial is moved away and you catch a real glimpse of the wonder of being.

Your children may have brought you here – as you want them to develop deeper values than they can see modeled in much of public life.  You may have wanted them to feel less alone as young free thinkers and part of a community that would cherish them.  You may have learned leadership in some church group and wish that for your children…or for yourself. 

You may have come here because you felt too long like the only one who ever questioned the truths you were told – by preachers, teachers, and politicians.  Perhaps you want to find a community of people with the moxie and the depth to know that the truth grows and changes and that we shape the world as we learn together.

You may long for history, for continuity: for a community to cherish, remember, support, tolerate you at your worst and call you to be your best.  To celebrate and mourn with you.

Church is all of those things and more.  All of those things are the work of the church, the ministry of the church – and more.  A number of years ago, the interim minister, Reverend Robert Flanders asked you to think about what sort of church you were and wanted to be.  I’m told that he described the four types of church that have been defined by scholars of church life – most notably – James Carroll in his book Varieties of Religious Presence.  Of course, these models blur – but every churches leans toward one or another.  And the church is never an island – it’s shaped by the world around it – it breathes in the climate and the times.  Like the wind whistling outside and in. 

            If you come here seeking a shelter from the challenges of life, a private peace – you are seeking a sanctuary church.  From small to large – churches have long acted as sanctuaries –the primary function, to provide an anchor in a wild world, a setting of pastoral comfort, the creation of a kindred community, and a time of peace and escape.  A small church was situated in an in-town neighborhood in a large city.  The minister was a charismatic man who’d been disenchanted with public ministry and had formed the congregation in the 70’s.  Free thinkers – the congregation refused to be called a church, though they sang hymns, beat tambourines, gathered every Sunday morning, took up a collection, signed for membership, and was lead in every way by the personality of the minister – until his retirement.  The congregation owned the building, an old church overlooking a park with a sign over the front door with the word “Sanctuary” painted in gold letters.  Despite having values reflected in the neighborhood around them, the church couldn’t find a way to reach out and grow.  They often heard sermons about how unique they were and how dangerous the world is to freely thinking, freely loving people.  The church was around 50% lesbian.  Many were local activists, the congregation carried a huge banner in the annual Pride March, and placed an ad in the paper each week, yet the congregation was basically inward, without a social action program of its own.  Eventually they chose to ordain their own clergy. 

The next sort of church presence in the world is the civic church.  In the center of many New England towns find the oldest church – it’s usually Unitarian Universalist.  Beside it sits the quiet cemetery, ancient with angels and skulls etched into gravestones leaning with the passage of hundreds of years.  Families that can trace themselves back generations belong to that church – and to the congregational one across the street.  The mayors come out of these churches, the council folk, doctors, attorneys attend, landed families are charter members.  These churches keep the town going – as once the town kept the church going.  They are civic churches.  The pillars of the church and the pillars of the town can be seen there every Sunday.

Another grew to more than one thousand members during the Civil Right’s movement, lead by courageous members and ministers.  It was active in voter registration drives, in civil disobedience, and in becoming a meeting place for local civil rights groups.  Although it changed over the years, it retained some of the activist spirit, pledging a portion of the operating budget to social justice groups, supporting a literacy program, and hosting controversial public speakers.  This model of church is the activist model – visibly serving the community, as Unitarian Universalists, engaged in the issues of the times and teaching and preaching a gospel of social responsibility. 

Finally, there’s a church that’s uncommon among Unitarian Universalist churches – the Evangelist church.  Even the word causes a cringe.  The dictionary says that while this word has roots in the affirmation of Christian scripture it’s marked by militant or crusading zeal.  The word also has roots in early Christian Church history when embattled believers worked to share their newfound faith and then later as they crusaded to bring pagans, Jews, and Muslims to Jesus or to death.  Today these churches are seldom militant, yet, they seek to reach out – as the activist church does – but this church does so primarily to save souls -- to spread their good news and bring more sheep into the fold.

Okay let’s throw out the word evangelical and let’s call it, instead, a teaching and liberating church.  What would it look like in a Unitarian Universalist Context? Going door to door bringing people our principles, a massive bibliography, and a blank journal to write their own thoughts in?  Public speakers and a broad education program bringing free thought to the community?  Or a TV show in which different beliefs are honored and explored?  A radio show that promotes conscience and pluralism?  Somehow, I can imagine us spreading the word that people have minds to think, hearts to feel, and hands to work with?  We’d share the many good newses?  Instead of threatening people with hell afterlife we’d suggest that pluralism and free thought are the most hopeful path that can lead this world in this life out of the hell of ignorance, hatred, and violence we face. That to me is a saving message worth sharing, worth building a church for. 

These four models of church are part of our history and experience – whether we attended any, all, or none of them.  The images of church are all around us and in us.  For a while, I lived in Decatur, Georgia – as you enter Decatur from Atlanta a sign greets you: Decatur, City of Churches.  I was unchurched for most of my life.  I never attended the Old Country Church – but I know it from many people.  A small part of me even hankers for that church – its quiet ministry, long relationships, lazy picnics, long services, family dinners, births, marriages, and deaths.  For its rootedness in the land around it, rustling trees, quiet cemetery, the shelter of its routine.  But, our images of these churches all carry the distortions of memory or the tender wash of illusion.  They are dreams as well as memories.

As a child I never lit a menorah for Hanukkah or the lights for Shabbas – I had no church or temple associations with candles, though I spent years using candles to create peaceful space.  Nevertheless, a few years ago I was in a large Catholic Church and saw the huge bank of candles – and the moneyboxes close to hand.  I found myself spinning back to an era I have never personally known -- of indulgences and a spiritual life purchased from professionals by the laity. 

Church has real as well as symbolic power in our lives – texture and memory in our hearts and minds.  Church can shape our dreams and our nightmares, our worst fears and greatest aspirations.  Church can drive us away if it is unwelcoming, too private, unfocussed.  Church can be a place of betrayal and heartbreak – when trust is broken or church can be a part of our most positive personal history.  Church seldom sticks with people if it’s just a place they’re parked once a week.  Whole generations grew up in the urban sixties and seventies when families began to move away from the church as center and went once a week or once a year.  Church is a whole life experience: from picnics to meetings, classes, sewing circles, funerals, outdoor groups, to social action -- the richness of life supported by a community of kindred spirits. 

Despite the weaknesses of any one of the church models, together they begin to draw a picture of a healthy church and a whole ministry – a holistic ministry.  In a church with a holistic ministry you don’t have to leave your brain at the door, or your heart, your joy or your sorrow, your hunger for justice, your need for healing, your family, your loneliness.  You can come to a church with a holistic ministry and bring your whole self. 

Often when we use the word ministry it conjures up – even for Unitarian Universalists – just one picture: the Person in the Pulpit – the Preacher – the minister.  In fact, the ministry is the whole of the church.  It is the partnership of clergy and laity.  The ministry is how the church embodies its mission – nourishing the members, building its tradition, serving the community, and shaping the world.  The ministry is the gift the church gives to the world and to one another.

One great illusion that people have about churches –is that churches are made by some central office, higher power, inner circle, holy cadre. The truth is that the church is every one of us here.  No magic wand, fried minister, burned out or dumped on leader, or archdiocese will create the church we share here.  When you wonder about a program or service we don’t have yet, you might ask yourself or wonder how you might help create that.  Our principles were written and voted on by Unitarian Universalists, ministers are ordained by the people.  The church is the people – the people make choices and the choices are the program – the program is the people.  The work of our visions and hands together. 

And our church has a Program Council that has been forming and defining itself and working to create a strong foundation to support and growing and thriving church.  We have six program areas that we’ll have time to hear more about next week as our Program council presents the service.  Our program areas reflect our values and our ministry – Lifelong religious education, Worship and Music, Outreach, Community Within, Denominational Connections, and the New Building.  From the walls to the hearts within them   you have the ability to shape this church – as the people here before you have.  Shaped by volunteers and people dedicated to this church – even if they wish it were still called something else.  The difference is – mostly none of us now has to start from scratch.  Yet – we will share the exciting project of building a new home for this church – to house and empower our ministry, to further create a church that nourishes and transforms.  Frederick Beuchner said – calling is where your soul’s deep joy and the world’s deep hunger meet.  That is church and ministry at its best.  Church is the place where yours soul’s joy, cultivated, rises, and meets the hunger of the world in service and celebration. 

Together these models of Church I mentioned, draw the outlines of a church that can nourish its members, shape the ethical leaders of the future, respond to changing times, and share good news without sliding into zealotry.  We can see the alternative outside our walls raging with the wind.  We have to have a healthy rounded church because the world is in us and of us as well as around us.  And as a world we have come to the edge -- and whatever promise the future holds is the same as the promise the church holds -- it is the promise we fulfill together.  This requires our mutual nurture and our work in the world.  It requires a full church program that blossoms and enables every person here to blossom in their time.

Our times are much with us and they are times of challenge – but together we are as strong as you can dream and as great as we can grow.  This is not the old country church – this is our church of today – stretching and growing in response to vision -- to the changes, challenges, and the call of our times.  There is no better time to be in such a place of human shaping and human power and shared endeavor – there is no better place to be than together making this place – a church – the home of promise fulfilled.

Closing words by Carly Simon

We're coming to the edge,
running on the water,
coming through the fog,
your sons and daughters.

Let the river run,
let all the dreamers
wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem.

Silver cities rise,
the morning lights
the streets that meet them,
and sirens call them on
with a song.

We the great and small
stand on a star
and blaze a trail of desire
through the dark'ning dawn.

It's asking for the taking.
Trembling, shaking.
Oh, my heart is aching.
We're coming to the edge,
running on the water,
coming through the fog,
your sons and daughters.

Let the river run,
let all the dreamers
wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem.