At the beginning of the summer, when Scott and I were wrestling with sermon themes, I was captured by the idea that church can be the safe place that you come back to after you've risked - a haven from the consequential outcomes of risking. I was intrigued with child development theory. If you watch a child who is one to two, they will try things new, take some risks, as long as they know they have a parent, a "home base" to return to. They will move out, explore and create if their parent is near. But then the summer unfolded, and as true as this message is, it isn't holding my heart or passion in the same way.
Primarily because of the summer's events:
In June a good friend of ours in Syracuse, a retired political science professor, gave my children a book, If the World Were a Village. It breaks down the world's people of 6.2 billion, to a village of 100 people. What would the world look like?
On food: There is no shortage of food in the global village. If all the food were divided equally, everyone would have enough to eat. But the food isn't divided equally. So although there is enough to feed the villagers, not everyone is well fed: 60 people are always hungry and 26 of these are severely undernourished; 16 other people go to bed hungry at least some of the time. Only 24 people always have enough to eat.
Money and possessions: Village divided equally, each person $6,200. But not divided - richest 20 people have more than $9,000 a year. The poorest 20 people have less than $1 a day - or live on $365 a year. The other 60 people are somewhere in between.
Scott and I watched The Girl in a Cafe, an HBO film which addresses one of the most important questions of 2005. Will this be the year when world powers seriously address the issue of world poverty once and for all? The film is a passionate plea to humankind - to inform and challenge audiences to act. It raises awareness about the important political choices that were facing the G8 conference in Scotland the beginning of July.
In one scene Gina, a new girlfriend to one of the diplomatic aids, unexpectedly launches into a monologue at a formal dinner party with dignitaries from around the world. She learns they plan to compromise and basically sidestep the challenge. She catches this table of 50 off guard in between courses by saying "Don't you see. You are wasting time. You're calculating expenditures, weighing cost benefits as if lives weren't in jeopardy each moment. While we sit here, having this dinner a child dies every three seconds." She snaps and looks around the room, "There is no time to waste. There are no political nuances involved or compromises needed. Hear it tick. In your head. Every three seconds," and she silently ends with a snapping of her fingers.
Then July came. So, after watching the film, the tick continued in my head. The snap was unavoidable, and I watched with anticipation for the results of the actual decisions made at the G8 conference around the 4th of July. But London was bombed, and the conference was overshadowed by terrorism. The tick and snap continued through August.
I read a startling article in the Democrat and Chronicle stating that some are calling Rochester "the Murder Capital of the State" because for the past seven of ten years, we've lead the state per capita in murders.
In August, I got a call from Planned Parenthood; it looked like the Op-Ed I had written in April was finally going to be printed. In it I wrestled with the fact that Rochester has one of the highest percentages of socially transmitted diseases among teens in all of New York State. Why? Because, if the city schools want federal funds to help with sex-ed curriculums, they are effectively gagged from educating teens about basic contraception. It's sobering how the end results of abstinence-only education proves physical and emotional harm in our own town.
Mid month, I sat in a doctor's office waiting for an appointment and there on the table was Newsweek's top 100 high schools in the country. In this county alone, Mendon in Pittsford, Brighton High and the city's Wilson Magnet made the list - top 100 high schools in the country. Meanwhile, the city of Rochester's scores and educational opportunities continue to decline, largely in part to a 30 million plus budget deficit.
And then at the end of August, Katrina blew in a catastrophe that some are saying is the worst in U.S. history - uncovering the disparity between the haves and the have-nots, of poverty and infrastructure, race, class - a peeling back of the layers. And that ticking has become a constant FOR ME. It is no longer an effective pneumonic to remind ourselves of the lives of others; it's blasting away, a cacophony of sound that is irritating and agitating, but should force us to agitate. So the irritation continues, and as it does, I've felt this guttural burn that we don't have time for slow pedantic decisions that churches cannot be simply refuges from the fray, simply a place to regroup and refresh.
At the end of the summer, the question has arisen: Is church the place that restores you so you can go out and do action, or is church the actual player? Do I go to First Unitarian so I can get my battery charged, or is First Unitarian at the epicenter of doing good works?
As much as I like the image of the refueling station, I think we need to ask ourselves, is a battery recharging retreat home from the world place enough? Can this model of church enable people to move quickly and radically enough in order to help - to really help and make a difference - with the needs of the world.
John Crossen, the liberal Christian academic, gets at this when he comments: "As the people of the earth increasingly divide into two mega classes called rich and poor the first step toward the kingdom is deciding that God isn't on the side of racism or oppression, we must ask ourselves: how radical must we be? A church that doesn't answer that question is 'hypocrisy - a transcendental Prozac,' a little vacation each Sunday. Rather than giving coins to beggars we should change the church so that it makes the world a better place, that's what it's for."
This summer at General Assembly, Rev. Patrick O'Neil preached at the Service of the Living Tradition, and he had a great way of articulating this problem for Unitarian Universalists.
He pointed out that we are uniquely placed, calling us the city on the hill, where we are both part of society and the prophet to that society. He said, " It has been the nature of our church and its ministry from time immemorial to wrestle with a kind of schizoid tendency to shift back and forth between full-blown retreat from the world on the one hand, offering itself as sanctuary and refuge, and a full blown engagement and confrontation with the world on the other hand."
He points out that as liberal religionists in the last 20-30 years we've slowly but surely drifted toward a Waldenesque retreat from effective activist engagement. He says: "We've lost our volume, if not our voice. We used to have moral indignation in the face of social and moral causes that once lit up our pulpits in outrage, and I entreat you, do not take refuge while the world around you is going to hell."
So here's what I make of all this - it's not as academic as Crossen or O'Neil, but what I hear is to move from church as retreat house to church as Winnebago - to a home on wheels - as a home that isn't our safe space away from the world but our transportation into the world. What I love about the metaphor of church as Winnebago is the way it both honors our need for some stability, some home base, but also clearly says that the purpose of this home base is engagement with the world. And I may be taking this too far, but I also like the idea that Winnebagos are called RVs or recreational vehicles. Recreational vehicles, when you write it down, can also be read as re-creation vehicles. I love that idea. I think that gets it. That's what we want this church home to be, devoted to the task of re-creation - of re-creating justice, re-creating wholeness, re-creating healing. Indeed, what's made this place feel most at home to us is the fact that we find people who come with the desire to be pushed as much as, if not more, for the desire for rest and refuge. What makes it home for us is we find people who want to be put to use.
But the question is, how? I like Patrick O'Neil's perspective, but I disagree with the way he seems to imply that all this is mostly a problem of will. I'll grant that all of us could work on our will a bit, but I think this issue is more one of something lacking in our organizational structures than something lacking in our desires. I think we want to be a church that can respond quickly, precisely, significantly; I think we all want to shift from refuge to Winnebago, it's just we aren't sure of the steps involved in making that shift.
The good news is that the evangelicals know how to.
OK, they don't know everything, but they do have a few ideas worth stealing. And if we are going to make our church home into the Winnebago we want it to be, I think we might have to humble ourselves and be willing to learn from these folks. Again, I'm not saying they have all the answers and they certainly have a lot wrong; but when it comes to church organization, they do have a number of things right that we liberals often get wrong. I want to lift up three.
In January of last year, about eight lay leaders and four staff went to the Large Church Conference in Boston. Many of us went to a presentation that speaks to our metaphorical challenge. Though many mainline protestant denominations are losing numbers, there are five large Methodist churches in the Houston area, ranging in size from 3,500 members to 14,000 members, diverse in their makeup. Some are very inter-racial, urban, with traditional liturgy. Some are suburban with large campuses, Sunday morning liturgy highlighted by contemporary Christian Rock bands, and large screens for hymns and announcements. The churches varied greatly. But what all of them shared was a church that was a mobile home, a Winnebago. No matter where they were situated they were engaging themselves in the needs of the world. They ran, funded and managed free health clinics, low-income housing projects, counseling for families and couples, grocery stores, teen youth centers and pharmacies. One dedicated 50% of its budget to social justice work. Another for every three dollars that came in, one dollar was given out in service to the world. These churches took Crossen's message seriously. They asked his question, how radical must we be? Now they run church very differently than we do, but two things in particular I think are worth addressing this morning, giving us some clues on how to move toward calling up the Winnebago salesman.
All five of them believed in taking risks. Yet risks were nurtured because when we risk we often make mistakes, and when we make mistakes we need forgiveness. Their holy trinity was - risk, mistakes, forgiveness. One is not given without the other, a three-wheeled approach. "Rule number one," as one of the senior ministers put it, "is that mistakes are a sign of success and are always forgiven, these parishioners are encouraged and allowed to make mistakes in service to their ministry to the world." These churches know that in order to take on big projects, to take on the work of ministry in service to the world, you are going to fail along the way. 'Geez,' who among us on some big trip in our car doesn't get lost, miss the exit, get in a car accident, run out of gas. But what do we do, we get back in the car, and continue on. So do they, they say, oops, made a mistake, fill the Winnebago back up, call the repair company, turn around and get back onto the right exit. They keep mobile and in charge of their command center on wheels even when they've taken the wrong turn.
The second thing the Methodists all had was an other-focused church. In other words - they took internally this call to be in service to the world.
Another way to think of this is rethinking the relationship between church and ministry.
One approach is to think of church as the place that provides ministry to its members; another approach is to help members identify their ministries in service to the world. One takes the approach of church as consumer, the other as arbiter of good works. On some fundamental level if we are to take this on, we must absorb in our bones, I, Kaaren, am not the minister of this church. Scott and Jen are not the ministers of the church; this church is made up of ministers. You are the minister; you are the minister, engaging your life in service to the world.
This means we must ask each other: what is your ministry? What urgent need calls to you? How do you make room in your life for this ministry and how can the church help?
The third and final turning I want us to consider is simple on its surface, and rough on the internals. We need to have the guts to let the pain of the world seep into our epidermis, pass our muscle and sinew, and register into our nerves, making us agitated, uncomfortable. We need to have the guts to be informed and the courage to change. The Rev. Marilyn Sewell, minister of one of our largest Unitarian Universalist churches in Portland, just wrote in the latest UU World words that are harsh yet revealing: "Seeking what is true is dangerous. When we are informed, we must act. Truth means responsibility. So there are things we prefer to be misinformed about or hazy about. Whites don't really want to know how people of color experience their lives, for if we did, we would have to change. We don't really want to know about the specific, concrete lives of people in poverty. We would rather deal in statistics. We'd rather say 'the poor' and objectify them. We don't want to really see, or touch, or smell poverty or mental illness. We'd rather not know what it's literally like for a child to go to school hungry. Because, you know what? We'd have to do something about hunger. We'd have to change. And change is scary."
We need the guts to be informed and the courage to change. Annie Dillard says it best my friends, " When people come to church they should not be handed an order of service with a smile, but should be given hard hats and life preservers; because church should be a dangerous place, a zone of risk, a place of new birth and new life where we confront ourselves with who we truly are and who the church is calling us to become."
Let's board the Winnebago, re-creating justice, re-creating healing, re-creating wholeness. Remember, the ticking isn't going away, but it certainly could use some Winnebagos. May we be so charged. Amen.
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