Past Services

by Rev. David Usher

November 1, 2015

Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

Bit by bit, nevertheless, it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be rending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

e. e. cummings:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Thomas Moore:

…it is important to honor the dead, especially those with whom we have had a close relationship.  The soul is not limited in its experience to the confinements of life.  Death doesn’t erase a relationship, it simply places it in a different context.  Fostering our relationships to the dead gives the soul its nourishment of eternity, melancholy, mystery, and the kind of relatedness that is not literally of this world.  Many, many stories of the soul tell that it is not fully at home in this life and that it is always trying to break the bonds of this world’s limitations.  We can honor the soul by nurturing our relationships with the dead…

Hugh Robert Orr:

They are not gone who pass beyond the clasp of hand, out of the strong embrace.  They are but come so close we need not grope with hands, nor look to see, not try to catch the sound of feet.  They have put off their shoes softly to walk by day within our thoughts, to tread at night our dream-led paths of sleep.

They are not dead who live in hearts they leave behind.  In those whom they have blessed they live a life again.  And shall live through the years eternal life, and grow each day more beautiful as time declares their good, forgets the rest, and proves their immortality.

George Santayana:

With you a part of me hath passed away;
For in the peopled forest of my mind
A tree made leafless by this wintry wind
Shall never don again its green array.
Chapel and fireside, country road and bay,
Have something of their friendliness resigned;
Another, if I would, I could not find,
And I am grown much older in a day.

But yet I treasure in my memory
Your gift of charity and young heart’s ease,
And the dear honour of your amity;
For these, once mine, my heart is rich with these.
And I scarce know which part may greater be —
What I keep of you, or you rob from me.

Edna St Vincent Millay:

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lonely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains — but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love —
They are gone.  They have gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave,
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

by Rev. David Usher

Twenty or so years ago, the congregation in New Hampshire where I was then minister held an auction, and recklessly I offered two items. I offered four hours of yard work, raking the approximately 4,589,357 leaves which fall on every square yard of ground during a New England Fall. And, I offered a sermon on the topic of choice of the winning bidder. I don’t remember the theme of the sermon I was required to preach on that occasion, but I do remember that the yard work fetched more than double the price paid for my sermon. I guess I should have chosen gardening as my career.

You would think I had learned my lesson, but no, at this year’s UUCM auction I again offered a sermon on the theme to be chosen by the winning bidder, and this year’s lucky winner was Phil Hart. He has already told you what he wants me to preach about, and why.

What is the Spirit? And what is the point of prayer?

Let’s disregard the fact that he is really sneaking in two sermons for the price of one here, and that each theme could easily warrant a whole series of sermons and still not scratch the surface. I’ve got twenty minutes here. Let’s see what I can do.

What is the Spirit? And what is the point of prayer?

Spirituality is a word enjoying an increasing popularity today. It enjoys quite widespread currency, even amongst those who claim themselves to be “Spiritual, but not religious”. People often tell me that is what they are, often when they are trying to justify why they don’t go to church. Perhaps you describe yourself that way. But what does that mean? Is it saying anything interesting or profound? As far as I am concerned, we are all spiritual. To be human is to be spiritual. It is the distinguishing features of our humanity that, as far as we know, we are the only species with a spiritual dimension. We are the only species which asks ultimate questions of itself and of life, the only species which worships, which is self-aware. It is both the triumph and the curse of our humanity.

But what is spirituality? None of us really know. A while ago, anatomists were trying to locate the soul, thinking it must be an internal organ. The pancreas was a favourite, because at the time they had not yet figured out what that was for. Even now, nobody can locate the soul. Nobody really knows why we humans have this spiritual dimension, though of course some people explain it by saying we have it because God gave it to us. But our spirituality is not dependent on belief in a transcendent being. Buddhists seem to do just fine without it. Many humanists also.

The best way I can think of to describe or define spirituality is that it is our human search for and our experience of ultimate connection, a search and experience of connection which can take different forms.

First, there is the connection with the universe. I am guessing I am not the only one who has ever stood outside on a beautiful clear night and looked up at the infinite sky and thought to myself Wow! Just as an aside, “Wow” is one of the most important words in the spiritual vocabulary. “Wow” moments are moments of intense spiritual experience if you are receptive to them. So, you look up at all those stars, and you know that even the closest star is so far away you can’t even begin to comprehend the vastness of what you are looking at. And you know that what seems to you vast beyond measure is in fact just a tiny little out of the way corner of only one galaxy and there are hundreds, thousands of galaxies. And it does tend to make you feel just a little bit. You know that since human time began people have stood and gazed at the stars as you are doing, wondering, marvelling, wanting to make sense of it, weaving it into stories and myths to connect us, the finite, with that, the infinite.

You might know, as your ancestors did not, that the earth is not the centre of all creation around which all else moves, but that this earth is the merest speck of insignificance compared with all that is. You might know all of that. Yet on this mere speck stands all that is precious to you – everything of love and beauty and pain and exultation. Then you turn your gaze from the heavens to this earth and you see all of nature’s intimate beauty and pageantry and complexity, right down to the tiniest insect or flower. You might not be a creationist in the simplistic fundamentalist sense, but perhaps you are drawn to wonder about how all of this came about. How did this miracle of creation happen? Could it all be just an accident?

And the most magical miracle of all, how did life begin? Why did it begin? How, why do you have life? When you ask such questions, not seeking to answer them with science but experience them with wonder, you are delving into the life of your spirit. Because you know that, however small the universe might make you feel, you are part of it, you belong. You are connected to it. You are made of the same physical stuff as all that is, you are, literally, stardust. You are connected with the earth on which you stand, you are connected with the air which you breathe in and out every moment of your life, you are connected with water, without which you could not survive. You are physically connected with everything you see around you, from the most distant star to the tiniest insect. But more importantly, you are connected by invisible bonds, the bonds of the spirit. Spirituality is seeking and experiencing that intimate connection with the universe of all that is.

And here is another eternal spiritual question. What does your life mean?

Spirituality is also the quest for connection with meaning and purpose in your individual life. Like all other life, you were born, you live for a while and along the way you experience some pain, some pleasure, each of us in different measure, and then you die. That is the eternal circle of life from which none of us is exempt. But why? What is the point? Is there a point? Perhaps our human life is just a meaningless accident, a bad joke, and the best we can hope for is to get through it with a minimum of suffering and discomfort, and when we die, that is the end. Or is there some grander scheme, some nobler end than an inevitable return to the dust?

Spirituality is the larger quest for connection with meaning and purpose which places the individual within the context of a grander vision. Some of those answers might seem fanciful to the sophisticated modern mind, but even the most modern mind craves a context. Knowing that you are going to die, how are you to live so that your death does not deny your life’s meaning? Spirituality is seeking connection with purpose beyond self, with that which will not die with you. It is demonstrably true that many people, having acquired financial or worldly success, discover with dismay that such success gives them little satisfaction? Their life still feels hollow to them because they have not connected with a larger purpose beyond themselves. Spirituality is the connection of the individual self with meaning and purpose beyond self.

And that purpose involves ethical living. Spirituality is connection with ethical living.

Most of us have a sense of right and wrong. We want to live with integrity and authenticity. We want an ethical code. And we want it not only for our own benefit, we want our lives to touch others. Some people distort personal spirituality into an exclusive focus on themselves. They think that it is all about them, that the only thing which matters is that they get themselves to some imagined paradise and it does not matter what happens to others. I think there are very few absolutes in spirituality, but here is one. If it is only about you and the state of your soul, so that you have no regard for the physical or spiritual well-being of others, then your spirituality is worthless. Authentic spirituality is about living in right relationship with others, all others, in ways which contribute to their good as much as it does to your own. Every great spiritual teacher has said the same, if in slightly different form. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.

Spirituality is the search for connection: with the universe, with meaning and purpose, and with ethical living.

There is one other very important aspect of spirituality. Spirituality is about practice. Some people think that spiritual experience is just something which happens. Certainly moments of heightened spiritual awareness can and do happen spontaneously. Such moments of spiritual ecstasy are real, and can and do come unbidden.

However, spirituality is also a practice. It is a discipline. And that is where prayer comes in. Some people seem to regard prayer as a sort of celestial shopping. Let’s see, these are the things I would like – er, a new car, to lose ten pounds, to cure an illness, and for the Giants to win the world series. And in return, to pay for it, er, I’ll be good. Or at least, I’ll try to be good. For a while. Maybe. Prayer is not doing a deal with God.

Two men had been out fishing all day, they had drunk quite a few beers, and they had not realised that quite a storm had been brewing. By the time they did realise, they were a long way out to sea, the waves were high and pounding down on their small boat, and to top it all off, the engine wouldn’t start. They were in a lot of trouble.

“What are we going to do?” said one of them.

“I don’t know. Should we pray”

“I’ve never done that before. Have you?”

“No, me neither. But it can’t hurt.”

So they got down on their knees in the wildly pitching little boat.

“Lord” one of them called out hopefully, “Joe and I have never bothered you much in the past. You get us out of this one, and we promise never to bother you again.”

Prayer is not a shopping list, in spite of the imprecations of those charlatans otherwise known as TV evangelists. Prayer is not asking for favours, it is not hoping to impress a listening God with your piety and getting Him – always a Him – to do as you ask.

Prayer is the conscious and repeated exercise of making yourself available for connection. Connection with the universe; connection with meaning and purpose; connection with right living; connection with your own best self. It is the intentional opening up of oneself to that possibility. It is acknowledging that you are part of something greater than yourself, in which you discover your own best self.

Prayer is seeking what you really want in life, and seeking it in the place where you are most likely to find it. It is casting your net where there are indeed enduring and meaningful riches, not the riches of consumerism but of contemplation; it is looking in the right place, not just where the world shines its own dazzling but ultimately fruitless light. Prayer is a turning away from that which is superficial and unrewarding; it is a willingness to seek in the shadows.

That’s what I understand as the Spirit; it is what I understand as prayer. Some of it, I know, I have expressed in language with which not all of you are immediately comfortable. But, if that applies to you, this is what I suggest. Be the highest bidder for the sermon theme at next year’s auction.

by Rev. David Usher

Well, the pressure is on. The other day I was looking at the results in so far of the congregational survey compiled by the Search Committee as part of the process of determining what you most value about this congregation and therefore what qualities and strengths you would most like to have in your next settled minister. Not surprisingly, the worship services on Sunday features as the single most central and important program, which I guess is as it should be for a congregation. But here’s where the pressure is on. Of those of you who have responded so far – and if you haven’t yet, please do – for 95% of you the sermon is the thing. Yes, you like singing hymns and hearing good music and having a cup of coffee afterwards and being part of a community, but most of all it seems you want to hear a good sermon, one which stimulates your mind and touches your heart and somehow sends you on your way better equipped for the week ahead. Which means, statistically, all but maybe three of you are now sitting there on your chairs, leaning forward expectantly, thinking to yourself, Okay, Usher, what have you got for me today? Give me your best shot. Meanwhile, those other three of you are preparing yourselves for a nice gentle nap. I promise I will keep my voice down so I don’t disturb you.

According to the survey, we are a pretty well educated crowd, so we are used to listening to presentations of various kinds – academic lectures, TED talks, you name it – which challenge and stimulate our minds. We like to be made to think. That’s great. It is an integral part of our religious tradition, and always has been, that the use of reason is not contrary to faith but an essential ingredient of faith. We actively want you to think for yourself, to reach your own conclusions, not to just meekly accept whatever you hear from the pulpit. Though, let me say, it is also okay, and does actually happen from time to time, for you also to agree with what I say from the pulpit. Just saying.

So, the sermon has long since been the cornerstone of the way we worship. Other traditions emphasise rituals and sacraments, and some want you to get very excited and jump up and down and perspire a lot, but it seems we like our sermons and we like them to have some meat in the sandwich. But, here’s the thing. It might be that the structure of a sermon usually means one person talking and the rest listening, but you are not an audience. You are not an audience. You are not simply a random collection of individuals, each passively hearing a spoken message. You are a congregation, and what happens laterally, from pew to pew, is every bit as important as what happens from the pulpit. You come here, not as you might go to the movies or a concert, where you pay your money and buy your ticket but then sit in your seat to watch and listen to whatever is presented without any connection with the others in the auditorium. You don’t go to the movies expecting to meet people, to connect with people. But you do here. You come here to be part of something greater than yourself. You come here to meet yourself in other people, to recognise that you and they are sharing in something deeply significant –the experience of being aware that you are alive amidst mystery and wonder, the experience of being human.

In other words, as the survey also reveals, you come not just to hear whatever I might offer from the pulpit, you come to be together. You come to be part of a community. You come to have who you are recognised and welcomed and affirmed. You come to give to and receive from each other. It is my strong contention that for each of you, the most important person in this room right now is not me, up here in front of you, but the person sitting next to you. The person who smiles their greeting to you; the person whose warmth of welcome makes you know that you matter; the person to whom you reciprocate that fundamental gift of shared human experience. We come here to connect.

“Only connect” wrote E M Forester in his best and best known novel, Howard’s End. Only connect. Above all else, reach out to connect with that which gives your life meaning and value, and reach out and establish meaningful relationships with those around you. You don’t become part of a community simply by paying the entrance fee and then being a consumer of whatever product is on offer. You become part of a community as you open yourself up to others, as you encourage and allow others to open up to you. You become part of a community primarily according to what you give, not according to what you receive.

That is true of pretty much any community, and it is certainly true of this Unitarian Universalist community of the mountains. The community is what you create.

An old story. An old man is sitting on his rocking chair on his front verandah, whiling away the day, when a car pulls up outside his gate. The driver gets out and asks for directions, saying he is new to the area. The two of them get to chatting, and the driver asks what people are like in this neighbourhood. “What are people like where you come from?” asks the old man. “Oh, they are so friendly. They just can’t do enough for you. They greet you warmly on the sidewalk and in the store, everyone helps everyone else out, people where I come from are just great.” “Yup” replies the old man. “People around here are pretty much like that too.”

After a while, another car pulls up outside the old man’s gate, and this driver also is new to the area and also needing directions. The two of them get to chatting, and the driver asks what people are like in this neighbourhood. “What are people like where you come from?” asks the old man. “Oh, they are so miserable and mean. Nobody talks to their neighbours. They squabble and fight over their boundary fences, and they don’t help each other out if they are in trouble and hardly anyone even knows their neighbours’ names. “Yup” replies the old man. “People around here are pretty much like that too.”

You are the community you want it to be.

It is a basic human need to crave affirmation of our worth. It is our first principle that we affirm the worth and dignity of all persons, and that includes our own. If you are anything like me, you want to find people with whom you can share what is real about yourself, you want you and them to be real with each other, to experience the gift of authenticity, your own and theirs. That is a gift which is surprisingly rare, but so precious when it does happen.

As a way of addressing that basic human need, this year at the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains we are promoting what we are calling Chalice Circles. Some of you know them by another name, perhaps as Covenant Groups. After the service this morning, and again on Tuesday evening at seven, there will be an hour long introduction to what Chalice Circles are, how they function, and what the benefits are of belonging to one. I don’t want to pre-empt those more thorough introductory explanations now, but I encourage you either to stay behind today or come on Tuesday evening, and let me just say this now.

My own experience of being in such groups, of various kinds and comprised of different sorts of people, has been over many years. Sometimes it has been within a group with a specific focus, and sometimes we have been brought together by some shared commonality – for example a Men’s Group I was part of for many years while living in New Hampshire. But all of my experience has been invariably rich. In a group based around a curriculum or course of study, I have certainly learned much from the content of that curriculum. But more importantly, I have not only learned about those other people in the group, their stories, their struggles, their celebrations; I have learned about myself. I have been challenged to trust and be worthy of trust; I have learned how I function within such a group. I have learned what it is to see, and be seen.

John Fox captures something of what it means in his poem, When someone deeply listens to you.

When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup

you’ve had since childhood and watching it fill up with

cold, fresh water.

When it balances on top of the brim,

you are understood.

When it overflows and touches your skin,

you are loved.

 

When someone deeply listens to you,

the room where you stay

starts a new life

and the place where you wrote

your first poem

begins to glow in your mind’s eye.

It is as if gold has been discovered!

 

When someone deeply listens to you,

your bare feet are on the earth

and a beloved land that seemed distant

is now at home within you.

The Prospectus which is now available in the vestibule lists the many different classes, courses and groups which will be offered here at UUCM this coming year. I invite and encourage you to take one, to look through it carefully, and to choose which speaks most powerfully to you and to sign up for it. If there is something you don’t see in the Prospectus which you would like to see here, then please, step up and offer it. Many of what is being offered are being offered in a Chalice Circle format, designed so that you are not only sitting next to someone else in a class, but you are deeply connecting with that person, and that connection is an integral part of the purpose of the class.

You have said in the congregational survey that there are two main reasons you come here. For the services which offer you inspiration and stimulation; and to be part of a community in which you make meaningful connection with others and feel an agency in something larger than yourself. Chalice Circles are wonderful opportunities for that deep connection. It is my hope that all of you will participate in at least one such group, that you may be part of the deeply enriching experience that they offer.

Only connect, said Forester. Only connect.

by Rev. David Usher

Some years ago, I read a wonderful book called Drinking the Rain. It was a memoir by the journalist and author Alix Kates Schulman about the summer she spent in a small, remote family cabin in rural Maine. She was fifty years old at the time, and had just been through an emotionally wrenching and bruising divorce, so she repaired to the cabin from her apartment in uptown New York as a way of escape. The cabin had no running water, no power, and was in the middle of nowhere. For the duration of the summer, she led a life of solitary simplicity, foraging for her food – berries, edible roots, fungi – fishing in the nearby pond, being very conscious of whatever waste she produced, and drinking the rain. Hence the title of the book. For the summer she was a modern day Thoreau, learning to strip life down to the basics, cleansing her spirit and her body of the emotional and physical toxins which had been poisoning her. She lost weight; her body became chiselled and strong and tanned, but more importantly, she discovered a spiritual resilience in herself that she thought she had forever lost in the devastations of her divorce.

When she returned to NYC at the end of the summer, she was determined to adhere to the regimen of exercise, healthy eating and simplicity which had been her salvation, but of course, she was seduced and distracted by life in the city. How could she drink the rain in her high rise apartment? How could she forage? Bit by bit she returned to her former less healthy habits of diet and indolence.

Most of us are seduced and distracted by life’s many temptations. We have our occasional moments of re-focusing, of re-committing, of renewing, we have our temporary enthusiasms, whether they be ill-considered New Year’s Even resolutions or responses to the crisis of the moment, but then we fall away. We move on. We forget to pay attention. As that can be true for diet, or exercise, or practising the ukulele, so it is often true for the attention we pay to the issues of the day. We are caught for a brief while by whatever is the cause of the moment, we are energised to take action, but then when it no longer dominates the headlines and the evening news and the twitter feeds, we lapse back into our accustomed indifference.

Just over a year ago, as I am sure you recall, Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Witness accounts of what happened conflicted, but what was true is that Michael Brown was black, he was unarmed, he was shot several times, his body lay in the street for four hours before it was finally removed, and the officer who shot him was never charged. Indeed, he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from well-wishers across the country.

It is unclear why that particular killing attracted such national attention. The killing of unarmed black men and women by the police has been going on for years, but attract national attention it did, and it caused protests in Ferguson which were met with brute militarised force by the authorities. It was shortly followed by other such instances, of Eric Garner on Staten Island, killed by officers who used a choke hold on him, something expressly forbidden by the force’s own code of conduct. There were no doubts about the manner of his death, it was caught on camera and witnessed by the nation, and yet the officers responsible were never charged. So far this year, almost 600 people have been be killed by police in 2015, a hugely disproportionate number of them black, most unarmed. It continues to this day.

I think we can take some pride in what we have done here to be informed and concerned, in the whitest county in all of California, hardly on the ugly front line of the racial divide. We have tried to educate ourselves about institutional racism and how we are its privileged beneficiaries. We invited the Grass Valley Chief of Police to speak to us. We had two speakers, one black and one white, address us about racism at a Sunday service in April. But, I think it is true to say, as a congregation, we are not paying attention as once we were. We have been seduced and distracted by other things, good and worthy in themselves as those other things are.

Meanwhile, on the national stage, in response to this sustained assault upon their persons and their lives, there has arisen the Black Lives Matter campaign. Protests have continued. The first anniversary of Michael Brown’s death was observed with large demonstrations in Ferguson, with many of my Unitarian Universalist ministerial colleagues present. One of them, Rev. Terasa Cooley, a personal friend, wrote afterwards about her experience, and how frightened she was the whole time. How she, an educated, articulate white woman wearing a clerical collar, felt threatened and intimidated by the menacing police presence and the jeering white crowds. She always had the option of melting away. She could retreat, disown her witness. Others don’t have that option. They can’t change the colour of their skin.

I was in Minneapolis this past week, attending the Interim Ministers Training in a hotel adjacent to the Mall of America, that ultimate cathedral of consumerist excess. Not so long ago there was a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mall, with 3,000 people gathered, many of them Unitarian Universalists. Police were called. Even though the protest was entirely peaceful and short-lived, some were arrested on ridiculous, spurious charges by an aggressive police response. Why? Because, above all other values, it must be business as usual. Nothing, nothing, must interfere with the white man making his profit.

Black Lives Matter. How extraordinary it is that even the slogan should be controversial. Do they not matter? Some people say they don’t like the slogan because All lives matter. Well, of course, they do. As heirs to the Universalist tradition, how could we say otherwise? But saying Black Lives Matter is not saying Other Lives Do Not Matter. It is insisting that Black Lives Matter because for so long, for so many, they haven’t mattered. Black lives have been demonised, criminalised, marginalised, brutalised for centuries. White lives haven’t been. Where were those who counter, All Lives Matter, when no attention was being paid to the miserable plight of so many black lives? Is the need for us whites always to be at the centre of attention, always to dominate, so desperate, so pathological that we cannot allow the lives of anybody else, ever, to be lifted up, to be the focus?

I saw a cartoon recently which made the point perfectly. The caption was, All Houses Matter, and the drawing showed two houses, one on fire and the other not, and the fire brigade aiming their water hoses at the house not on fire. We whites are not suffering the indignities of institutionalised racist violence. Why do we demand still that our lives should receive all the concern?

At the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly this past June, the Rev. Rob Hardies of Washington DC told how he discovered this faith in which he is now such a leading luminary. He had recently moved to Portland, Oregon, to start a new life for himself as a young twenty something who had just come out as gay, to himself and to the world, and who was feeling very unsure and unsafe. One day, walking the streets alone, he turned a corner and lo, there was the UU church wrapped in yellow ribbon. The whole church, declaring itself a Hate Free Zone at a time of virulent anti-gay hatred. He went inside, and heard a message that said, in effect, not that all lives mattered, some generic piece of pablum, but that HIS life mattered, HE mattered. He was gay, reviled by some, certainly by many churches, but HE mattered. It was a moment which certainly transformed his life. Perhaps, even saved it.

Many of our brother and sister UU congregations around the country have put up Black Lives Matter banners or signs outside their churches. Many of them, perhaps most of them, have had those banners or signs vandalised. Some have had them torn down, the word Black ripped out. Some have had graffiti written on them. The word All over Black in some cases. The word White over Black in others. No ambiguity about the racism there. Some have received threats over the phone. Remove the sign – or else! Our near neighbours, the UUs in Reno, have suffered this fate to their sign, but they are unbowed. As they have publicly stated, they will not allow themselves to be ruled by fear, they will be guided by faith, they will stand on the side of love. They replaced and rededicated their sign last Sunday, with an overflowing congregation standing firm, standing up, standing out, standing on the side of love.

I wonder. Might we erect a Black Lives Matter banner on our front lawn? We have our rainbow flag, telling the town that we gladly welcome gays and lesbians and all of the wonderful variations of human gender and sexual expression. There was a time when flying that rainbow flag invited ridicule, even violence. There was a time, I have no doubt, when there were those within this congregation who struggled with being so publily identified. Now, the law of the land recognises the right of same sex couples to equal marriage. We have come a long way, even in Rowan County, Kentucky. How many rainbow flags had to fly to help turn that particular tide of human hate and bigotry?

How many Black Lives Matter banners, marches, protests, speeches, demonstrations and interruptions to Business as Usual, will it take to turn this tide of ugly human hate and bigotry?

The necessary price that we, the privileged and the powerful, must occasionally pay so that others might have their share of life’s bounty is that we might have to endure some moments of discomfort, some temporary disruptions, some relinquishment of our entitlements, we might need to accept that it cannot just be business as usual. Did women win the vote because men voluntarily offered it? No, men had to be shamed into it. No social reform has ever happened without the discomfort and displeasure and disapproval of those who held the reins of power. Is it too much to ask that we should accept being made temporarily uncomfortable that others might live?

When I am challenged about my beliefs, my attitudes, my easy assumptions, my initial reaction is usually to resent the challenge. I don’t welcome it any more than I imagine you do. I resent being made uncomfortable. But it is through discomfort that growth comes, it is through confusion that clarity and enlightenment emerge, it is through pain that there is eventual healing.

I invite you to consider that we put up Black Lives Matter banner outside our church. I invite you to consider doing so, in the knowledge that if our experience is anything like that of our brothers and sisters in Reno and elsewhere, it will be stolen, vandalised, destroyed. I invite you to do so, knowing that we might have to put the sign back up, again and again and again.

I invite us not to accept business as usual. I invite us to be ruled by faith, not by fear. To stand on the side of love, not hate. I invite us to risk suffering a little, that the suffering of others might cease.

by Rev. David Usher

A month or so ago I attended the UU Ministers’ Spring Retreat. The program theme for the retreat was death. We talked together in pairs and small groups contemplating the end of our own lives, reflecting on the losses we’ve experienced, and grieving the violence in our nation that disproportionately takes the lives of black and brown men. And inevitably, we spent some time imagining what might happen to us after death.

Maybe sitting around discussing death for several days in a row sounds a little bit depressing. But it wasn’t at all. Instead it was delightful and clarifying. When I contemplate those last moments in my body – assuming I have the presence of mind to be aware of such things – I know that more than anything I do not want to have any regrets about how I lived my life. The retreat served for me as a reaffirmation and further clarity of my life’s priorities. It confirmed for me the choices I am making to be fully alive while I have the chance.

So today I want to talk to you about your life before death. I want to lift up the fact that you have the choice right now – and in every moment which you will experience as “now” – you have the choice to align yourself with the flow of life or to resist what is happening. You can make the choice to be awake and fully present to the experience of being alive or you can shift into autopilot and concern yourself with your various habitual worries. Every day you can decide to look your beloveds in the eye and really see them, right down to their dazzling, holy core or you can squander your precious attention on trivialities.

We are here on this planet for such a brief visit, friends. None of us knows when our life will be over. But we are alive now. What a tremendous miracle! And we have a chance in every moment to make the most of it.

Life is meant to be joyful and its purpose is Love.

The truth is that many of us, maybe even most of us, walk around a just little bit deadened, closed off, disconnected from ourselves and from others. Enveloped in a fog of fear. Choked by regret. Terrified of what the future holds.

We are afraid of some sort of Bad Thing happening.

But you know what? When I look back at my own life and I pick out a few of the “Bad Things” that have happened – events that at the time seemed unequivocally horrible – each of them provided me with a unique opportunity to grow and to learn something important that then helped guide me into the next phase of my life. My experience of life has been made richer because of them – even, or maybe especially, those times when my heart was broken and I thought all was lost. So it begs the question: are those events truly “bad” if as a result I now walk through the world with more appreciation for beauty and the simple gifts of friendship and love? Who is to say whether any particular event is truly good or bad? Anything that happens in your life, even loss, can be an opportunity to move into deeper connection and more love with the people around you.

Here’s the thing we all know. Fear strangles love. Anxiety scrambles our channels so we can’t think clearly. Guilt and shame bind us so tightly that we lose our natural ability to freely and easily reach out to one another in vulnerability and tenderness. Our egos are always on the lookout for danger. Bless their little hearts, they think the best way to protect us is by trying to get everything under their control.

If I could just get the pantry cleaned out… If only my finances were in order…. If only my kid (or my partner or my friend) would just make the right choice… If only the external world would just bend a little then I’d be happy and at peace.

But that’s not the way to peace, friends. Even if the house were spotless, and everyone you care about was making choices you approve of, even if everything you could point to in your life were in perfect order, it is unlikely that true and everlasting peace would descend upon you. The inevitability of change means that nothing stays the same. In time something or another will once again rear up and begin to vex you.

Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh writes, “We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women.”[1]

He says we need to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. But how do we do that? I think first we have to understand it. The urge for violence comes from the ego – it is a protective reaction based on its own delusion of separateness and isolation. It is the part of us that fears humiliation and rejection and abandonment because, ultimately, it is the part of us that fears death.

But there is also something within each of us that resides deeper than the ego. This more subtle part rests in the awareness of our connectedness – to one another and to the source of life and love – to the experience of the Holy. We experience this blessed part of our being when we bring our awareness into contact with the present moment.

The answer is not about controlling the external world. What most of us do most of the time is attempt to relieve our anxiety through all the wrong methods. As the queen in the story I told earlier discovered, it is be far simpler to wear shoes on our feet than to attempt to cover the world in leather. It is our own responses to the external world that will ultimately smooth the path before us.

The other day I was late to meet a friend at her doctor’s appointment where she was going to be receiving the results of a biopsy. I could see that there were two open parking places on the opposite side of the road so I drove up a little ways and made a U-turn in the middle of the street. When I got turned around and was about to pull into one of the diagonal spaces a man appeared there standing in the middle of the space. He yelled over at me, “Hey, sorry dude. But I’m saving this for my friend.”

Okay, whatever, I thought. There was still that other spot. As I began to back out of the first space and re-park in the next one over this other car zipped in from the other side of the street. I had my blinker on and was heading straight into that space. There is no way the driver didn’t know I was planning to park there.

So here I had a situation in which a reaction of anger and frustration would be entirely warranted. I could have gotten mad and felt completely justified in telling one or both of the people off. But I’ve been practicing noticing and letting go of my ego’s resistance to what is happening in the present moment. So this time I shrugged and drove on and found a place to park around the corner. I met my friend in plenty of time and all was well.

Let me tell you though, it was an effort to shrug it off. I felt the tug of all that negative energy – the seduction of self-righteous anger. It wasn’t that I buried those feelings. I’ve just gotten better at recognizing when my ego wants to throw a tantrum.

Without ego there can be no injury. If a tree had suddenly fallen across the spot I would not have been offended. I would have accepted it as simply what had happened. But my ego, always on the lookout for insult, felt the need to defend “my spot” from those who would take it from me.

If I had chosen to stand my ground, fight and win back the parking spot I might have been able to tell a victorious story of vindication. But the truth is I’ve gone down that road before. I know that engaging in a battle like that, no matter how triumphant I might have been, would have left me with some amount of poison in my system for the rest of the day. It just wasn’t worth my peace of mind.

What we do with our attention matters. My true goal was simply to park my car somewhere so I could go meet my friend. I could have indulged my ego. I could have given in to my inner resistance but in that moment I chose to go with the flow of life. And it felt so much better.

I am both inspired and challenged by these words from the spiritual teacher Adyashanti:

“What if you let go of every bit of control and every urge that you have, right down to the most infinitesimal urge to control anything, anywhere, including anything that may be happening with you at this moment? If you were able to give up control absolutely, totally, and completely, then you would be a spiritually free being.”

***

We can achieve a sense of peace not by gaining ultimate control but by realizing that true harmony is in the letting go.

Peace comes when love, and our sense of connectedness with the Source of Life, God, loosens the grip of fear. We can have faith that even if it doesn’t go well, even if we get hurt by taking the risk, there is a deeper safety that we can trust with our whole being.

Listen to this poem I love by Rashani called The Unbroken:

There is a brokenness

Out of which comes the unbroken,

A shatteredness out

Of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is sorrow

Beyond all grief which leads to joy

And a fragility

Out of which emerges strength.

There is a hollow space

Too vast for words

Through which we pass with each loss,

Out of whose darkness

We are sanctified into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound

Whose serrated edges cut the heart

As we break open

To the place inside which is

Unbreakable and whole.

***

Friends, no matter what you believe about what happens after we die, what a tremendous blessing it is to have this one brief lifetime together on the planet.

If we are going to uproot violence from our hearts, this is how we begin. Start to notice in your relationships with your friends and family when your defenses kick up, when you are clinging, resisting, or hiding. You can decide to look past your ego and its seductive defenses, look below your inner resistance and see instead what is actually happening. You can choose anew each day, and in each moment to see into the hearts of those you love. But we need one another’s help, we cannot do it alone.

I imagine hell to be a place where beings writhe and moan with dissatisfaction, mired in fear, seeing no way out. Those times I’ve gotten stuck in my ego defense felt like being stuck at the bottom of a deep well. I was aware that I was in it. I could just barely see the light at the top of the well. But I couldn’t seem to get out on my own. I’ve found that when someone who loves me is willing to see past my ego’s struggle and fight to my true divine and loving self – and they reflect that back to me – I can begin to climb back up into the light.

I imagine heaven to be a place of peace and fearlessness. Here, now with these other beings we get to practice loving, forgiving and seeing beyond the ego to the spiritual truth of who and what we really are. I believe in my heart of hearts that life is meant to be joyful. That happiness is our natural state. We are here to learn to let go of our resistance and simply love one another. Let us choose heaven over hell!

May it be so, Amen, blessed be, peace

[1] Thích Nhất Hạnh, Living Buddha, Living Christ

by Rev. David Usher

Whose church is this, anyway? Whose would you say it is?

One answer is, It’s mine. It belongs to me, the minister. If ever you are having a really slow afternoon, I mean, a really slow afternoon, you might be tempted to read a church history, and if you do you will discover that they often read as if the minister was the only person who was of any importance, the only person who ever did anything. Chapters will be delineated according to the time-spans of the different ministries. That is, of course, a convenient way in which to mark off the years, and it certainly flatters the fragile sense of self-importance of us parsons. To add to our vanity, lots of churches have honour boards in a prominent place which list all the ministers they have had and the years they have served, and it is noticeable that they don’t list the chairs of the finance committee, or the person who devotedly arranged the flowers every Sunday for years, or the person who could always be relied on to say the kind word, or lend a hand, or do whatever small task might be asked of him or her, the people who, let’s face it, are the real glue in any congregation. Furthermore, and this is the clincher, it is my name and not any of yours which appears at the top of UUCM’s letterhead. I rest my case. This congregation is mine.

If only. But, there is an element of truth in that. I do regard this congregation as mine because, for these two years while I am here, it is this congregation to which I am devoting my energies, this congregation to which I am bringing whatever I have of experience, of knowledge, of wisdom and of skill in the arts of ministry. It might be that I am “only” an Interim Minister, and you and I know that my time with you is limited, but even so, while I am here, I am yours and you are mine. It might be that I am in the twilight of my brilliant career, and after Grass Valley I will probably retire to spend my time sitting on the porch and looking vacantly into the middle distance and therefore have nothing to prove, no resume to garnish, but I want this ministry to be successful every bit as much as I have wanted all of my previous ministries to be successful. I want to believe, and I want you to believe, that when we part in June next year, this will have been a fruitful time that we have spent together, that you, and I, have grown not only in numbers, but in our personal spiritual maturity, in our collective organisational efficiency, and in our effective shared social agency.

But even as all of that might be true, you and I know that we ministers are nomadic souls, we come, we stay a while, and then we move on. Whereas some of you are made of more adhesive stuff. You stick around. And as I might say, “This congregation is mine,” so might each of you say the same thing, that it is your congregation. Indeed, I hope you do say that. And what would that mean? It would mean that this is the congregation to which you have committed your heart; it is the congregation where you have found a place in which to be your authentic self, where you can search for the theological truths that resonate with your intelligence and the aesthetic truths which nurture your spirit. It is the community in which you have found fellow feeling with others, whose friendship you enjoy, whose perspective on the world chimes with yours. When you come here, you are coming to the place which is your spiritual home. It is in this community that the coals of your individual faith are kept warm and alive, where the flame of your yearnings for peace, justice and the life of the spirit is enkindled.

And of course that is important. If you did not feel that this congregation was yours, then why would you come? If UUCM did not feed you, challenge you, comfort you, inspire you, you would not be here. You would not come back. You would seek elsewhere, or perhaps you would give up on religion altogether and spend your Sunday mornings reading the papers or mowing the lawn. The fire would cool and finally go out. Each of you wants to be able to say, “This is my congregation,” and to know deep in your bones that it is true.

But, but, when you or I say, “This is my congregation”, we each must do so in recognition that others are saying it too. Yes, this is My congregation, and it is yours, but it is also Ours. If you catch yourself, or somebody else, always saying “I want this, I like that, I preferred things that other way and I plan to keep complaining that things are not exactly as I want them, then I invite you to pause and consider this. I invite you to consider the idea that the very fact that you do not always like everything about this congregation or about the way things are done is, in fact, a wonderful thing, a thing to be grateful for. Why? Because it means that somebody else does like things that way. It means that this is a truly diverse congregation in which we are each learning the subtle but not straightforward art of being a community together, learning how to give as well as take, how to be gracious and generous in how we treat each other. And it means that none of us has the power to dictate everything, to demand that we get our own way, and are learning how to be humble about that. It is fine for each of us to say “I don’t like that”, if we are also open to the possibility that what I don’t personally like is actually for the greater benefit of the larger congregation, and therefore ultimately better for me too, as we each are learning not to place ourselves at the centre of the congregational universe.

The practice of consensus is usually misunderstood. People think it means unanimity, that nothing is decided until everyone agrees, and that everyone therefore has the power of veto. And some people love that, the stubborn, the ornery and the self-centred in particular, because then they can block anything they don’t like. But that is not what consensus means. Consensus, properly understood and practised, means that after full discussion, those who are in a minority recognise that they are in the minority and willingly agree to consent to the will of the majority.

Yes, this is My Congregation, it is also Your Congregation. And together, we make it Our Congregation. This congregation belongs to us, together. The etymology of the word “religion” is from the Latin word, religare, meaning to bind together. Religion is what unites us, makes us one. We congregate, we come together. Without others, it would not be a religion, it would not be a church, we would be lonely and isolated individuals who, like the embers removed from the fire, would soon discover the warmth of our faith fading. We belong to each other because we need each other, and particularly in this faith tradition, we belong to each other not to reinforce our own pre-existing prejudices but to be in authentic conversation with each other, learning that our way of seeing and interpreting the world is only enriched by the views that others have.

A little vignette. In my third year of ministry studies at Oxford, I was joined for two terms by my elder brother, also studying to be a Unitarian minister. There must be a defective family gene somewhere. He came from Sydney to Oxford with his wife and two young children, and lived in a charming college house. One February morning, heavy snow was falling. It was the first time his children had seen snow, and understandably they were excited. They rushed to a window and were peering out at the magical sight together. The younger one, aged three, moved to a different window and gasped. “Andrew, look!” she exclaimed excitedly, “it’s snowing outside this window as well!”

Each of us is looking at the world through our own window. The view might be affected by the shape and size of the window, but the world we are looking at is the same world. We would do well to marvel together at the world, sharing our perspectives, rather than arguing about the supremacy of our own window, rather than insisting that the world can be seen only through our window.

So this congregation is mine. And it is yours. Together, it is ours. But that is not all. It is also theirs. Who are the they? It is several people.

This congregation also belongs to those who have gone before us. We are not constrained by tradition, but we are indebted to it. This is an organic congregation, it grows and evolves as new people arrive and bring their own talents, preferences and enthusiasms, but we are also shaped by what has gone before. We honour those who have preceded us, not by slavish obedience to their ways that were relevant and meaningful to their times but, in the same spirit of openness, freedom and curiosity as theirs, forging our own ways relevant and meaningful to our own times.

And this is also their congregation, those who have yet to find it. As we were glad that others had preceded us, doing the work to ensure that this congregation was here for us to find, so may others be glad that we preceded them, keeping our doors and our hearts open to welcome them. May we be mindful in all that we do of the seventh generation. May the legacy we hand on to the future be that we were true to the calling of our own time, that they may be true to whatever is the calling of theirs.

There is someone, or something, else to whom this congregation belongs. Unitarian Universalism. UUism. Each Unitarian Universalist congregation is independent and autonomous. That this congregation chooses to be a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the national organisation, is a voluntary choice and can be rescinded at any time by a congregational vote. But we do proclaim the UU name, and certainly I do so with pride, and as such we are a shop-front to the world of UU principles and values. We must hold ourselves accountable to those principles and values. We must take them seriously, or we should abandon the pretence of subscribing to them.

So this congregation is mine.   This congregation is yours. It is ours. It is theirs. And it is Unitarian Universalism’s. All of those. The emphasis will change from time to time, but all of those stakeholders need to be kept in mind in all that we do together.

And there is one other who lays just claim on this congregation. God. This congregation also belongs to God. Now, I suspect that some of you have just broken out in hives that I should say such a thing. Don’t worry, tubes of soothing ointment will be available immediately after the service. I say it belongs to God without apology. No, I do not believe that there is A God, a being separate from time and space who presides over all and to whom we owe our obedience and obeisance. God, for me, is the best way I know of expressing that which is Other, that which is beyond and beneath and betwixt the compass of our human world, the magnet ever drawing us to mystery and miracle which our human reason cannot ever adequately explain or ultimately refute but which, if we are wise, we simply acknowledge to be so and gratefully acquiesce in the presence of.

This congregation stands not only as the shop-front for a denomination, a paltry claim if that were all, it stands as witness to what has been true of us humans since we first raised our eyes to the stars in wonder and awe, since we first felt a need for each other that went beyond carnal lust or communal safety but which spoke of love and deep connection, since we first heard the call of conscience that would not allow us to do what seemed immediately advantageous. In other words, this congregation stands for the eternal human quest to be in communion with the divine.

As we celebrate this morning the generosity with which you good people have pledged yourselves to sustaining the coming year of this congregation’s worship, work and witness, I want to say to you that your giving is to more than just the tangible, visible fabric of this congregation. Your giving of self is a recognition that we each are more than we seem, we each are better than aims and ambitions that end with self. We each are called to that which is ever beyond us, beckoning. We each are called to be part of the generosity of Life, we are called to share the abundance which is all around us and deep within us. And we each are blessed when that call is answered.

So may it be for us all. Amen.

by Rev. David Usher

There was once an old farmer, a poor man who had worked his fields all his life, day in, day out, without ever making any money, never doing better than just scraping by. All he had to help him in his labours were his faithful old horse, and his son. One day, his horse, which had pulled the plough so faithfully all these years, just upped and died. And the old farmer’s friends were quick to gather around to offer their sympathies on this misfortune. What a sad thing, they all said, that your faithful old horse has died. Well, replied the farmer phlegmatically, It’s too soon to tell.

But, as it happened, just about that time an insurance policy that the farmer had bought years before and had forgotten, well it matured, and he came into a little money, and with that money he could buy another horse. Isn’t it great, all his friends chorused when they gathered around to celebrate this piece of good fortune. You can get another horse. Well, replied the farmer, It’s too soon to tell.

Pretty soon, though, it became very evident that this new horse, fine looking beast that it was, had no heart for the drudgery of pulling a plough. It just refused to be yoked into that kind of menial work. The farmer’s friends were quick to gather. What a terrible shame that you spent all that money on a horse that is useless in the field, they cried. Well, replied the farmer, It’s too soon to tell.

So the horse was released to roam free in a field, and the farmer noticed how fleet it was, why that horse could run faster than any other horse the farmer had ever seen. The farmer decided to enter the horse in a local race. And sure enough, the horse won, and with it, a handsome purse. The neighbours were there like a shot. How fabulous, they exclaimed, that this horse is a racehorse, you have won all this money, and will likely win even more money. This horse will make your fortune. Well, replied the farmer, It’s too soon to tell.

Now the farmer’s young son decided he wanted to ride this frisky and fleet racehorse, so one day he saddled up and away he rode. Unfortunately, the only horse he had ever ridden before was the faithful old plough horse which, at best, could summon up a gentle canter. But now he was on a horse racing at a full gallop, and it was not long before he fell off. He broke his leg badly. There was immediately a knock on the door. The neighbours. Oh, how awful, they wailed, that your son has broken his leg, he is permanently crippled, and will not be able to help you in the fields as he did before. Well, replied the farmer, It’s too soon to tell.

Soon after, war broke out, and all the young men in the county marched off proudly to fight, all, that is, except for the crippled farmer’s son. And all of those young men, in one terrible battle, were killed. And the grief stricken neighbours came to the farmer, How lucky you are that your son did not go off to fight and die. And the farmer replied, Well, It’s too soon to tell.

Easter is supposed to be a difficult season for Unitarian Universalist preachers. Given that we likely do not subscribe to the notion of Jesus’ physical resurrection from death, as celebrated in mainstream Christianity today, what is there for us to say? I recall a ministerial colleague in England once telling me that he had only one Easter sermon. He said it was a really great sermon, and whenever he preached it he got a rapturous response, but after he had preached it, he had nothing else to say because essentially this sermon said, It didn’t happen. Jesus did not emerge from the tomb. End of story. Really, is that all there is say about Easter? The dreariness of denial. What joy there?

On the other hand, I have no patience with the Unitarian Universalist approach which ignores the Christian story of Easter entirely and regards it as a purely Pagan celebration of the return of the flowers and birds and the delights of spring, tra la. Of course, I know that Christianity appropriated the Pagan festival of Oestra for its own purposes. Of course there is rich symbolism to be tapped about the miracle of rebirth in nature after the darkness of winter, even as new life is said to have emerged from the darkness of the tomb. But remember, I grew up in the southern hemisphere. There it is autumn now, not spring.

To ignore entirely the magnificent story of Jesus in the Easter event just because we don’t accept the orthodox imposition of what it means is, I believe, needlessly to impoverish ourselves of something deeply, deeply profound. Above all else, the story of Jesus in the Easter event, is one of the most compelling narratives of what it means for us, you and me, here, today, right now to be fully alive to our own humanity; what it means for us, you and me, here, today, right now to be fully open to the divinity which might yet shine within us; what it means for us, you and me, here, today, right now to embrace life in all of its uncertainty and unpredictability, it grubbiness and its grandeur, and to stand firm in faith that life is good, and we are blessed beyond words to be part of it. Even if, especially if, we can never know for certain what any of it means. Even if, especially if, we can never eve know if it means anything at all.

All of us live within a context which is always and ever too large for us to comprehend. What is the meaning of your life? Never mind such a big question about your whole life, what about that thing that just happened to you yesterday? Was it a piece of fortune good or bad? Was it cause for celebration, or consolation? The job you applied for and did not get, which for a time left you discouraged and deflated. It seemed at the time like such a bitter pill of disappointment. But then, you applied for something else, and you got it, and it turned out to be so much more rewarding and fulfilling than the other job would ever have been. The new relationship, in which you first feel such giddy delight, but which later turns sour and you wonder why you ever allowed yourself to be seduced into something in the first place which later caused you such anguish. Is any decision we make, any event which befalls us, is it for good or for ill? Well, it’s too soon to tell.

That old farmer, I think we can safely assume, was not there in Jerusalem on that fateful Friday when Jesus was crucified, but if he had been, and someone had come up to him and said, Isn’t it terrible that all of our hopes in this man have been so cruelly dashed, or even if they had said, Isn’t it good that we have finally got rid of that troublesome preacher, I suspect that old farmer would most likely have replied Well, it’s too soon to tell.

It is always too soon to tell whether our present endeavours will be for the longer term good or ill of ourselves or others. It is always too soon to tell if the processes of the present are laying welcome or unwelcome foundations for the future. And that is one of the key messages of the Easter event. That it is too soon to tell. For in the depths of our greatest despair can be born our greatest hope; in the midst of seeming death can be found the ultimate triumph of life; in the most impenetrable darkness even the smallest candle can cast the most happily received light.

Who could have foretold, that first Easter in Jerusalem, what far-reaching and profound consequences would ensue as the result of the life and death of that obscure peripatetic preacher from Palestine? Who could have foretold that two thousand years later, that that life and death would be commemorated by millions, billions around the world?

The miracle of Easter is made more so, not less, by believing in the full and unambiguous humanity of Jesus, human, just like the rest of us. Had Jesus been a deity, God incarnate sent knowingly to die for our sins, then the ordeal of his crucifixion, unpleasant as it would have been, would have been little more than a passing inconvenience, a temporary discomfort before he returned to heaven. Even I, I think, vain as I am, might be willing to endure such passing unpleasantness if I had a guarantee, signed by God, that I would enjoy the eternal adulation of the people.

But if Jesus was fully and solely human, as I believe him to have been, like us, then therein is the true power and impact of the Easter story. Easter is not about the victory of God over death. It is about the victory of us living fully in the face of death, living fully beyond death. We too, like Jesus, are fully and solely human. We too, like Jesus, are frail, faltering and fearful, yet we, yes, even we, can, like Jesus, become divine in the way in which we come to terms with our humanity, come to terms with our finiteness, even in the face of what seems like defeat and annihilation.

The story of Easter which profoundly moves me tells about a man who had been cruelly betrayed and abandoned by the very people had once professed their ardent discipleship, a man who knew he was soon to die a grisly death, who feared that everything he had believed and hoped for was soon to die with him; and yet who went to his death with a prayer of love in his heart and forgiveness on his lips.

We can never know what will be the impact of our lives, the sum effect we have upon the gradual unfolding of the human enterprise. It is always too soon to tell. We cannot know in our own immediate time frame. Kings and warriors who thought themselves mighty and proud in their own time have disappeared to history without trace. And an impoverished itinerant preacher who never travelled beyond his own immediate country, who wrote no books, who died in humiliating circumstances, is remembered and revered twenty centuries later. We are told that Jesus’ last words were “It is finished”. Even he didn’t know. It was too soon even for him to tell.

Each of us has to come to terms with our own mortality, our own finitude. How to do that has been one of the most penetrating and persistent of all religious questions. Given that we have to die, how are we to live? It is never for us to take full and final measure of our own lives. The miracle, to which the Easter event of Jesus gives abundant testimony, is that death does not negate life; despair does not negate hope.

The challenge which is ever before us, is to believe, and to continue to believe, in spite of all the disasters and ills which might befall us, in spite of our littleness and our frailty, in spite of our humanness, that how we live our lives is of supreme value, how we relate to other people and to the world matters and matters deeply, and that what reconciliations we make with ourselves and with our God affect the entirety of creation beyond our knowing. We can never know the full story of our own lives, because that story continues to unfold long after our deaths. We cannot know, because it is too soon to tell. It is always too soon to tell. But we can have faith, because the time for faithfulness is always now.

by Rev. David Usher

Today marks the official launch of UUCM’s Generosity Campaign.  And what is that, do I hear you ask?  Well, it is two things.  It is the opportunity for you, and you, and you, for each and all of us, together to fund the dream of what we want this congregation to be.  Nobody else is going to do it.  Whatever we want this congregation to be is for us to dream, and then for us to make real.  And, AND, it is the opportunity for us to grow in our spirits.  It is the opportunity for us to experience, deeply, what each and every single religious teacher and tradition has said: that only through being generous can we feel our spirits grow.

Let me say right now, honestly and without dissembling, that I think you are an excellent congregation.  No, really.  You are.  There are many fine things happening here, because there are many fine people to make them happen.  Look around you.  Go on, look around you.  What do you see?  Do you not see people you are glad to know and whose friendship you cherish?  Do you not see people who are doing good things in the world – helping to feed the hungry and homeless, visiting the sick and the imprisoned, speaking out in the name of justice, befriending the stranger, comforting the broken?  Do you not see people of talent, of intelligence, of goodwill, people with a deep yearning for peace and justice in the world and also for a resonant coherence in their own lives?  I hope that is what you see.  It is what I see.

But, Houston, we have a problem.  It is a problem which, I am embarrassed, no, ashamed to admit.  Here is two statistics which I hope will embarrass you as much as they do me.  Across all denominations in this country, we Unitarian Universalists rank second in average income.  And a very close second at that.  Our average per capita income reflects the fact that we are blessed indeed, that we enjoy bounty far beyond our share.  And where do you think we rank according to the percentage we give to our own faith?  That’s right, dead last.  Dead last!  There is a serious non-alignment between the values we espouse, great values, noble values, values which the world is in desperate need of more of, values which we know can and do not only transform lives but save lives; and the resources we give to make those values real.  Rich as we are in gold, why are we so poor in spirit?

For the sake of the world, and for the sake of our own souls, we cannot, must not let that continue.

As excellent as this congregation is, it is seriously under-staffed.  Why?  Because it is seriously under-funded.

We say we want a first class religious education programme for our young people, a programme which includes things like the Our Whole Lives sexuality curriculum, and yet we assign pennies towards it.  Be in no mistake, Our Whole Lives, OWL, saves lives.  It saves the lives of young people wrestling with their sexuality, and for whom OWL is the precious lifeline that reassures them that, whatever their sexual identity, they are loved, they are welcomed, they are valued for who they are.  Whether or not we offer OWL might be the difference between a young person in this town, in this very congregation, choosing to end their life in despair or go on in hope, as it has been the difference for countless others elsewhere.  Truly.  It is wonderful that this congregation is a Welcoming Congregation, deliberately choosing to be open to gays and lesbians and bi-sexuals and the trans-gendered.  But that crucial witness is not a one-off deal.  That witness must be on-going.

We say we want excellent music to enliven our worship, but apart from Jim, our fine pianist, we rely on the efforts of volunteers to make it so.  Music is essential to the worship life of a congregation.  Music with variety, energy, passion, all skilfully executed.  I mean no discourtesy to the efforts or skills of those volunteers from our congregation who do contribute to our musical life, and do so with great talent and to our great appreciation, but if we want a consistently excellent music programme, we have to pay for it.

We say we want to be a force for good in the wider community, but to be so in addition to our own engagement it requires organisation and administration, and yet we engage someone to administer our affairs on just a few hours a week.  We cannot grow to be who we would wish to be without effective and adequate administration.  We say we want excellent ministry, and yet we do not offer a salary which is likely to make that happen.  I am not complaining about my compensation.  I am in the fortunate stage in my life where I am free from most of the financial obligations of raising a family.  But if you want your next settled minister to be as excellent as you want them to be, you must offer a salary commensurate with that excellence.

And all of this is possible, easily within our grasp, if we Unitarian Universalists would only match how we say we value our faith with the resources we have so abundantly at our disposal.  If those in other denominations can show how they value their faith, why cannot we?

I need your help here.  I am going to ask you a series of questions.  To which, I trust, the answer will be Yes.  A resounding Yes!  Let’s practise.  Here is the first question.  Will you respond when I ask you a question?  And the people said Yes!

Do you want this to be a place where the worship inspires your questing minds, soothes your troubled heart, worship which celebrates life in the fullness of its joy and wonder?  And the people said Yes!

Do you want young people to feel a fully integrated part of this congregation, to learn the subtle art of what it means to be a person of faith, to know that their spiritual health and well-being is as important as ours!  And the people said Yes!

Do you want music to make your blood pump, your heart rejoice, your spirit soar?  And the people said Yes!

Do you want to be involved in the work of the world?  This very weekend, hundreds of Unitarian Universalist leaders from throughout the country have gathered in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of that infamous chapter in This country’s history.  Two of those white protesters murdered at Selma, the Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, were Unitarian Universalists.  Selma was fifty years ago.  Selma is today.  Just this past Friday, in Madison, Wisconsin, another unarmed young black man was shot and killed by a police officer.  Tomorrow evening, here at UUCM, we will host an open meeting with our local Police Chief, to help ensure such a thing never happens here.  Do we want Black Lives to Matter?  And the people said Yes!

Not far from here, undocumented immigrants are incarcerated for no reason other than wanting a better life for themselves and their children, an aspiration upon which this very country was founded.  Do we want equality and economic justice for all people? And the people said Yes!

Do we want a planet fit for our children, and our children’s children, to inherit?  Do we want to treat this earth as our precious home?  And the people said Yes!

Do we want our lives to matter?  Do we want congruity between what we say and what we do, do we want to be agents for good in this world, do we want our hearts to be opened in generosity?  And the people said, Yes!

Here’s a challenge I offer you.  Let’s be conservative about this.  Our total attendance today, at both services, will be, say, 100 people.  Let’s suppose we each buy just one fancy coffee a day, at a cost of $2 a time.  What if we each pledged to give up just one coffee a day during the week.  We can still go wild on the weekends.  If we were each to do that, that is $1,000 a week.  $50,000 a year!  This congregation would be transformed, if each of us would give up just one cup of coffee a day which, let’s face it, we don’t really need anyway.  Our physical health would be better.  And so would our spiritual health.

I mentioned in my sermon a month or so ago that I tithe.  I give away to causes which are important to me, 10% of my income.  I give 5% to Unitarian Universalism in its various forms, local, national and international, and 5% to other causes.  I have done so for the past seventeen years, and it is the best thing I do with my money.

On April 19th, I will be making my pledge to the financial well-being of this congregation as part of my continuing attention to my own spiritual well-being.  On that Sunday you are going to be asked to make your pledge to support the work and worship and witness of this, your congregation, in the coming year.  When it comes time for you to make that pledge, I ask you to think about what this place really means to you.  Think about how it has enriched your life, how you want it to enrich the lives of others around you, and others who are yet to walk in the door seeking a religious home as you were once seeking.  Think about the debt we owe to Leal Portis and the others who, twenty one years ago, planted the seeds of this community the fruit of which we now enjoy.  Think about how you match your values with your actions, your words with your deeds.  Think about how you can make your dreams for this congregation a reality.

Will you do that?  Will you?  It is my charge and my challenge to you, that when on April 19th you are asked that question, you, the people, will say Yes!  So may it be.  Amen

View the entire sermon in PDF format.

 

Download a PDF version of the sermon.