While it may well be an apocryphal story, I heard that a family visited this church recently - a father, a mother, a 12-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy. I'm sorry to say they didn't like it much. The father didn't like the sermon; the mother didn't like the choir; the 12-year-old girl said it was "boring." But the 10-year-old boy said, "Well, what did you expect for a dollar?"
So it goes in this coin-op - consumer culture. We expect to get what we pay for. My task on this Canvass Sunday 2000 is to persuade you it just isn't so - here, at First Unitarian Church we don't get what we pay for - we get far, far more.
Author Robert Fulghum helps prove the point. This Unitarian Universalist minister found a pot of gold at the end of a literary rainbow; he has done very well financially. You know the books: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It, Maybe, Maybe Not and others. However, instead of a lavish life style he is generously giving his windfall to groups like the ACLU, the League of Women Voters and Planned Parenthood. Fulghum provides a homiletical text when he writes: "I have a strong feeling, that as a human being I owe the pot, and to the degree one can give back to it one ought to."
The pot I'm thinking of is not the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, nor is it the pot as in the pool or the kitty of a card game. Nor am I thinking of going to pot - and, of course, I'm not thinking of pot as in pothead. I'm thinking of pot as in the large kettle into which the master chef pours fresh food and out of which comes a delicious stew. "Nourishing a Healthy Congregation." Consider our congregation as a common pot into which we all dip from time to time.
Thursday night the topic for discussion at the Building Your Own Theology 2 class was the church - its nature and mission. And while we had different ideas about the issue of Unitarian Universalist spirituality and the nature of ultimate reality, on one point we were agreed: It is the richness and warmth and diversity of the people in this community that draws us here like a magnet. As Thornton Wilder once said, "Unitarian (Universalist) faces make such pleasant reading."
My friend and colleague Max Coots is even more graphic as he likens people to a vegetable garden - a fitting image as we hover precariously perched on the precipice of spring in anticipation of planting our own gardens. Again, think of the nourishment we take right here. Think of the people, the individuals you know sitting in this sanctuary or teaching in one of our classrooms or one of their young students. "Let us give thanks for a bounty of people: for children who are our second planting, and, though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are;
for generous friends, with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;
for feisty friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;
for crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;
for handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn; and the others, as plain as potatoes and as good for you;
for funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes; and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;
for friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you throughout the winter; for old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time; and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;
for loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;
and finally, for those friends, now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter; for all these we give thanks."
Many of us believe that with this vegetable garden - this company of friends who gather here at 220 South Winton Road - we do get far more than we pay for.
But the parallels between a church canvass and food do not end. The old story of stone soup has many variations. Consider this one, created especially for the occasion.
Three lonely souls were driving past the First Unitarian Church of Rochester. They were on their way home and they were tired of the emptiness of so much of modern culture and hungry for spiritual substance. They longed for some respite from their over-hectic lives and so, one Sunday morning, they decided to stop in this particular church and see if they could be filled.
Unlike in the original story, the people in this place eagerly shared of their abundance with the three strangers. Instead of saying they had no food to give away, these people enthusiastically shared.
The three strangers were grateful, and so they told the people that they would like to help make stone soup. While in the French folk tale the villagers exhibited a scarcity mentality, the congregants on South Winton Road quickly brought of their abundance to the common pot. Some brought strong voices with which to sing; others brought a desire to learn side-by-side with others; still others brought their desire to create a just and peaceful community in Rochester and the world; still others brought a quiet wisdom to the conversation; still others brought a longing to create things of beauty inside and outside the church; and others brought forth an abundance of food which they called pot-luck. Before long they had created a tasty stone soup out of the rich experiences of each one. The three strangers and the parishioners on Winton Road together proclaimed, "We shall never go hungry, now that we know how to make soup from stones."
Neither the strangers nor the villagers could be mere observers; each was a cook. **** Comedian Flip Wilson was once asked what his religion was. He said, "I'm a Jehovah's Bystander." The person who asked him said, "You're a what?" And he said, "They asked me to witness, but I didn't want to get involved."i Lest you think I have exhausted this metaphor of food and religion, let me tell you a Rabbinical tale of Heaven and Hell.
A rabbi spoke with the Lord about Heaven and Hell. "I will show you Hell," said the Lord, and they went into a room which had a large pot of stew in the middle. The smell was delicious, but around the pot sat people who were famished and desperate. All were holding spoons with very long handles which reach into the pot, but because the handles of the spoons were longer than their arms, it was impossible to get the stew into their mouths. The suffering was terrible.
"Now I will show you Heaven," said the Lord, and they went into an identical room. There was a similar pot of stew, and the people had identical spoons, but they were well nourished and happy, talking with each other.
At first the rabbi did not understand. "It's simple," said the Lord. "You see, they have learned to feed each other."
Nourishing The Healthy Congregation: a one-minute mini-sermon in the midst of footnotes.
To be is to be for others. We celebrate life as we give life.
We give from a sense of thanksgiving, for being guests of existence.
We give life in many ways - by our time, by our energy, by our words, by our resources.
Our monetary resources are an extension of ourselves - a kind of store-up selfhood.
They are an investment in the human race.
They are a statement of faith in the future.
They are a physical embodiment of a spiritual life, and a moral commitment.
They endeavor to make real in the world what is imagined in the heart.
They bespeak equity and compassion, balancing the scales of justice. This is as true of our religious communities as it is for us. To be is to be for others. To give is to live. As Winston Churchill said, "We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give."
Nourishing the Health Congregation: Nourish: to feed or sustain with substances necessary to life and growth; to foster, develop, promote (i.e., feeling, attitude, habit).
Healthy: well-being, soundness, vitality, wholeness.
Congregation: an assembly of people for religious worship, teaching, caring, action.
We are a healthy congregation, but health does not come automatically; it requires deliberation, intentionality, commitment on the part of its people.
The substances necessary to life and growth are the time and energy of its members and friends. But this is not enough. It also takes the financial support of those who identify with its religious purposes. A congregation is not an entity, but an organism - a vital, ever-changing, creative process. That dynamic is not automatic, but demands devotion.
The health of a congregation is measured by how well it serves its constituents and its community. Our congregation is centered in the spiritual life of corporate worship, sustained by a caring community in which people engage in mutual ministry, by an educational community in which religion is seen as a life-span undertaking, by a community of moral discourse and social action.
We have accomplished much as a congregation, but the most dangerous attitude we can have is to rest on our laurels, thinking only of what we have done and not how what we have done can point to what we yet shall do. We have much of which to be proud, but we know there is much more for us to do - for each other and for our community.
We know that the ultimate fate of this congregation depends on only one person - you. While there are many worthy charitable groups in our community supported by the whole community, the First Unitarian Church of Rochester is supported only by its friends and members. Thus, nourishing this congregation I believe merits a high priority in our giving.
We are part of the living tradition, creatures of a glory not of our making,
Recipients of a blessing not of our deserving,
Benefactors of a mystery beyond our comprehension.
We are part of the living tradition, inheritors of the work of generations gone before,
Children of that great cloud of witnesses who have blessed us by their work in days gone by.
Students of those who taught by what they did and said long before we appeared upon the earth.
We are part of the living tradition, taking up our lives where they left off,
Accepting the adversity of our time as they did in their time,
Celebrating the blessings in our age as they did in theirs.
Here we gather to rededicate ourselves to the unfinished task before us.
For this we give thanks.
Nourishing the Healthy Congregation: We have suggested a recipe for giving to support our church. We ask you to find your appropriate place and give out of your abundance, not following the example of the villagers in the Stone Soup story. Now let me suggest a recipe for receiving:
Take one plot of lovely land within the City of Rochester. Erect on it a world-class building, designed by a creative architect who inspires both parishioners and visitors from around the world; gently scatter some towering trees and a sea of flowers lovingly and carefully planted to form an informal woods garden; place in this garden a Memorial Wall at which people gather to welcome new life into the world; to exchange loving vows; to bid farewell to beloved friends.
Into this handsome cooking pot, gently pour the spiritual stories of a thousand and more people - beat in vigorously the varied experiences of an intergenerational company; blend in common values - the inherent worth of persons, the integrity of the human conscience, compassion for others, concern for the world and commitment to the interdependent web of existence;
put in a pinch of controversy - a few curmudgeons for zest - and several deep thinkers for flavor; fold in a Minister of Music with sixty or so committed voices; add in one cup of an Education Minister who loves children of all ages; stir in a Parish Minister who lives in amazement that the whole concoction does not fall apart --and you have stone soup for the soul.
We ask you to give to this common pot as well as to receive from it. Is this not food worth savoring? Is this not a meal worth far more than the price on a menu?
"I have a strong feeling, that as a human being I owe the pot, and to the degree one can give back to it one ought to." Amen.
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