Sermon
Welcome to the Evangelical, Holiness Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington. Hallelujah and Amen!
I imagine our newcomers are wondering if they walked into the wrong church this morning. And perhaps some of our long-term members are wondering the same thing.
What’s going on here? Gospel music in a UU church? We don’t believe in this stuff – do we?
What’s going on here is worship. There’s no doubt that we Unitarian Universalists worship differently than others. A recent news item noted that:
“A woman who fainted and hit her head when she fell off a church stage during a prayer service because she had become overwhelmed with emotion, sued the Sydney Christian Life Centre church in Sydney, Australia for not having someone to catch her when she fainted ahead of schedule. She is supposed to have fainted later on like everyone else. Had she fainted when everyone else faints then she would have been caught by the people who are put around the stage to catch the people who faint at the right time…”
That’s a problem we don’t have in our worship services – until we start asking for generous pledges. We do tend to be more subdued in our style of worship, though you wouldn’t know it this morning.
What does worship mean to you? The meaning of worship for me and for many other Unitarian Universalists goes back to the original meaning of the word which is to shape things of worth.
We are shaped by many forces in our lives, by parents, family, friends, nature, government, and especially the media. We come here to get an inoculation to some of those influences so that we may be shaped in a way we hope will make us the best possible person we can be.
The word religion means to bind up, to reconnect, to bring fragments into a whole. Worship then is the central activity of religion because through worship we reconnect with that which is of worth, thus making us more whole and holy human beings.
And what is of worth to you? Not just of worth but of the most worth, the highest value, the greatest meaning. This is not a place or time to deal with superficialities – that’s what we do most of our lives. When you walk through those doors and sit in one of these pews you are confronting the essential issues of life.
Those issues are encompassed well in the vision of this congregation created about five years ago. That vision incorporates three paths.
The first path and the first purpose of worship is “Community Building, Growth, and Outreach.” In our church, worship is not the creation of a minister alone; instead it is a community project. Do you have any idea how many people participate in our services? This morning there are two ministers, the music director with the choir, the Second Street Singers, and most of the worship associates. Next Sunday the dancers will add their talents.
Then there are the ushers, greeters, sound engineers, and of course the essential coffee hosts. That comes to about 65 or 70 people. But let’s not forget Rev. Pebbles and the many church school teachers who are teaching our children and leading them in worship while we are here and so that we can be here. That makes 120 or so of us involved in one way or another in worship just this morning. Isn’t that amazing!
And let’s not forget all of you who simply show up. You leave the comfort of your homes so that you may shape this service with your presence, singing, laughter, tears, thoughts, feelings, warmth, and generosity. Just by being here you proclaim your commitment to this faith and to our common worship experience.
There are a multitude of small groups in our congregation, and it is in small groups that we do much of our bonding as a community. But it is on Sunday mornings that we come together as a religious community to worship, to shape and be shaped by those values we hold in common.
It is here that young sits next to old, Republican next to Democrat (be nice), gay next to straight, black next to white, blue collar next to white collar. At the end of the service you may hold the hand of someone who was just married or had a child or just lost a loved one or is going through a divorce or who was just told by the doctor that the horizon of the future is much closer than expected.
This is where we come to celebrate and worship together. This is where we come to hold each other close when darkness envelops us and to nudge each other forward when we are fearful.
And this is where we share our joys and sorrows. The sharing of Joys and Sorrows has long been a controversial ritual not only in our church but in many other UU congregations. When it works well, it is moving and healing, but when it does not work then it diminishes what we hope to accomplish.
A true community does share their joys and sorrows with each other, but I believe the most genuine way to do that is in our small groups, especially our covenant groups, where you are invited not only to share significant moments of your life but you can also enter into relationship with others who can help you to celebrate and to heal.
As you can see this morning, the ministerial team has changed the joys and sorrows segment of the service into something more personal and less public, but we do hope you will continue to share your concerns with each other at the Joys and Sorrows Table, in the Coffee Hour, and especially in our small groups. In the words of James Baldwin, “The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment that we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”
The second path is that of religious and spiritual growth. This religious community is vital to us, but if we are here only for community then we become a social club instead of a church. Our bond with each other gives us the support we need for a committed spiritual exploration.
Our worship services help us to struggle with the spiritual issues of our lives and to grow from that struggle. On ancient maps where no one had yet explored it read “Beyond here there be dragons.” We do enter into areas where there be dragons, where we have great battles to fight.
This is where we do battle with the monsters of fear, grief, hatred, loneliness, greed and the ego itself. This is the place where we struggle to learn to love, to grow our souls, and to connect with that which is greater than ourselves.
This adventure of the soul is reflected in the flow of our worship. I’ve arranged the order of service in a different way this morning to help you better see how it expresses the dynamic stages of life.
We gather together, center ourselves, commit to our community, explore and deepen our spirituality, and then return to our daily lives hopefully with a new sense of wonder and dedication. This drama reflects the stages we go through in our lives and the spiritual journey we are on. By reenacting it every week, we are encouraged and supported in that journey.
Worship has not always been like this for Unitarian Universalists. Believe it or not, there was a time when you would not dare sing gospel songs in our churches. Our tradition is one of viewing worship primarily as educational. The appeal was to the intellect and the will rather than the senses and spirituality.
Today we still see teaching as a vital part of worship, but our openness to diversity has helped us to add more dimensions to our liturgy.
- With our welcoming of gay, lesbian, and bisexuals has come a celebration of the body and sexuality.
- Feminists have brought with them the need for egalitarianism over hierarchy.
- People of color have urged us to show some enthusiasm in our services, sing some gospel and for god sake move that body a little bit.
- Our Buddhists have revealed the need for silence and meditation.
- Christians have supported the need for prayer.
- The Pagans have opened up the world of nature and ritual.
- Our youth have urged us to get out of our heads every now and then. And on and on.
What I love about our Unitarian Universalists faith is that we are pretty good at adapting to change. Many religious communities are trapped in the past, but we know that religion and worship is a changing, growing, evolving process, both shaped by our needs and shaping us in turn. In the words of Gabrielle Roth, “We have to be able to be gods, lovers and artists, we have to be soulful if we’re going to be happy, if we want peace – and the soul is the part of us that is the creative process.”
The third path for worship is social action and ethical development. On our Sabbath the bonds of community and the sustenance of our souls moves us to reach out beyond ourselves in ethical action and justice-making.
I know many of you are still suffering from the recent elections. And I know others are celebrating. But let us remember that our worship services hold all of us. As Unitarian Universalists we believe that the foundation of our faith is compassion and utmost respect for one another, even when our positions perhaps seem intractably divergent. As UUA President Bill Sinkford noted, "We may not all take the same stand, but we can all stand in the same faith."
We do believe that whatever your theology or politics, you should be living them out in your daily life. We are shaped by worship, and then we are called to shape the world around us.
Worship should always ask the question, “So what?” So what do we do with the love of community and the revelations of spiritual growth? Where do we go from here?
The “So what?” is that we are called to respond to the spirit with ethical actions. James Q. Wilson writes that “[Humanity’s] moral sense is not a strong beacon light, radiating outward to illuminate in sharp outline all that it touches. It is, rather, a small candle flame, casting vague and multiple shadows, flickering and sputtering in the strong winds of power and passion, greed and ideology. But brought close to the heart and cupped in one's hand, it dispels the darkness and warms the soul.”
Our chalice represents that small candle flame, and it is one that lights the way for our acts of compassion and commitment to social justice.
The “So what?” of this service is this: I challenge you to allow yourselves to be shaped by worship on Sunday mornings -- not just when you feel like it, not just when the topic is to your liking, not just when the weather cooperates -- but every single Sunday morning. It is when worship becomes a spiritual discipline, a habit rather than happenstance, that we are truly nourished by the love of community, sustained by the life of the spirit, and moved to reach out in compassion.
And then I challenge you to expand that spirit of worship more to your daily lives, to transform the ordinary into the holy by creating sacred time, to stand in wonder before the beauty of nature, to give thanks for the blessings of love, to stop and feel your connection to all of life and to God.
In the words of Jacob Trapp, “Worship is the mystery within reaching out to the mystery beyond. It is an inarticulate silence yearning to speak; it is the window of the moment open to the sky of the eternal.”
Let us worship together.
Amen.
I BELIEVE IN WORSHIP
by Ralph Millsap
I first approached this church in the Spring of 1998 out of ignorance and curiosity. I had long ago abandoned my fundamentalist Christian upbringing and developed a personal set of spiritual beliefs. I was searching for a place that would welcome and support my spiritual journey. At that time, I shared the popular understanding of Unitarian Universalist. They were bad singers because they were always reading ahead and don’t ever make one angry because they’ll burn a question mark in your yard.
And then, I attended a service. It was in this sanctuary that these stereotypes eroded quickly and I learned that this was a place that created an environment that welcomed people of diverse backgrounds and interests. It brought them together in such a way that Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, and those embracing a variety of other beliefs, worshiped together. A very special place indeed.
As I explored my areas of interest at this church, I was drawn to the worship experience at UUCA. I sensed such a grounding in the worship service. I can’t define that—“grounding,” but it is a word that seems to best describe what I know that I get from it. I leave with a centering, with a stronger sense of self and affirmation.
Over time, I came to look forward to various aspects of the service. How much I enjoyed sitting in the sanctuary prior to the service as the prelude set the tone for worship and helped me to transition to a peaceful state of mind. The chalice lighting, which is the closet our service comes to ceremony, has come to be very meaningful for me. It symbolizes all that defines us as a group—the only group in my life that is defined by common value. Those values are articulated as the seven principles. It is in these principles that we come together as a group.
When I hear that statement read by the Board Member, I feel such a sense of pride. That after such a long search, I could find a group of people that share a sense of responsibility to all of humanity while offering freedom to everyone to find their own spiritual path. I can be so critical of other religions when their beliefs are expressed dogmatically and with arrogance, but when that statement is read I hear it as a culmination of so much that has occurred before.
I hear the words of those champions of the rights of humanity- John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Sometimes a chill runs up my spine as I listen to the Board Greeter read that statement and in the silent echoes of this building I hear, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
In our seven principles we have achieved the spiritual equivalent. We provide people here the spiritual freedom that is equivalent to the political and social freedom that was made possible by the founding of this country. We have marvelous variety in our services, but regardless of where we go thematically in any given service, that statement by the Board Member serves as anchor. It is why we are here. It is what binds us and defines us as a group. It serves to remind us that we are here to celebrate our shared values and at the end of the day the fact that we, such a diverse group, come together to worship is statement unto itself. When I worship here I also celebrate that.
I BELIEVE IN WORSHIP
by Robert Buckman
Jane and I have been members of UUCA since 1997. About a year after joining some old friends, Wayne and Mary Ann, were visiting from out of town. Both are life-long practicing Roman Catholics.
We invited them to join us at a Sunday service. After the service Mary Ann turned to me and asked, “Is this really a religion?”
I was at first dumbfounded at the question. I recall my next reaction was that this was not an unreasonable question from Mary Ann’s perspective. After all we do not ceremoniously take the Torah from the Arc; we do not drink sacramental wine; and our worship service not only does not reflect any dogma—we announced that it is so..
My third reaction was sure we don’t have a dogma; sure our services are not filled with historic rituals like other established religions, but why are these sacred grounds and these simple walls so important to me. Why when a 9/11 happens do I rush to UUCA and why when I am personally troubled do I call my brother Abe or seek comfort in my Covenant Group. And it is this what I will try to share with you today.
I retired at the beginning of 1997 and both Jane and I felt the need to put down deep roots. Speaking for myself at that time I was troubled that I had neglected my spiritual side and indeed felt a profound spiritual void. I felt adrift and remember being frustrated at not been able to articulate what I really believed in.
It was serendipitous that our first--and last—stop was UUCA
Mary Ann’s question brought into sharp focus for me that I no longer felt spiritually vacant, and that indeed I needed to remind myself that had not felt that way in a long time. I don’t know when this transformation took place, but it did.
Our involvement with UUCA started with a worship service, one not so different from this one. As I recall here was an announcement in the Order of Service about a Men’s Book group that was meeting that night. Jane encouraged me to attend. I did and I was moved. I had never been around a nicer, less judgmental group of men in my life.
We attended worship service the next Sunday, and after reading the UU covenant and listening again to the Board greeter we went to the standing desk at the rear of the sanctuary—and with a nudge from Joan signed the intent to become members.
Jane and I try never to miss a Sunday worship service. It is one hour during the week when my mind and ego take a rest and I am able to feel touched, inspired and part of something loftier and bigger then myself. I feel drawn in and comforted our UU-style rituals that we call our order of service—prelude, chalice lighting, hymns, reading, etc.
While Sunday worship service is central to my spiritual fulfillment, it is not the only element provided our UUCA. I am active in the Labyrinth Project Committee and regularly walk the labyrinth; I am active in the Men’s Book Group and in a Covenant Group and have been regular participant in the Buddhist Fellowship.
