I had a difficult time writing the sermon this
week. My intent was to provide a look at
where we have been as minister and Congregation for the past few years. I found myself staring at the blank page and frustrated with being
unfocused because I hadn’t expected this topic to bring me to the places it
did. I walked away several times and
then it hit me. What I really should be talking about is personal
ministries. You see your letters, cards,
and emails always, usually, are about your experiences in this community. I turned to the Unitarian Minister Erik
Wikstrom for inspiration. He writes, “Imagine [this congregation] not as [an
entity] led by a few overly taxed volunteers but one where leadership is a
broadly shared ministry that members of the community undertake for the deep
joy of it.” For many here this is the case, but I ask each and all of you this
morning, “What is your ministry?”
I believe each of us has one, at least one. Yet
I’m wondering if some of you might be shaking your heads, musing to
yourselves,” “Isn’t it enough that we honor our pledges, that we volunteer our
time, that some of us take on positions of leadership in this Congregation? Now
we’re supposed to be ministers! Let’s
back up. Let’s back up into what I mean when I talk about shared ministry,
about the ministry we’ve shared together and the ministry you will share with
your next chump -- I mean minister.
We can blame our specifically Christian forebears,
especially our Protestant forebears, for this notion of shared ministry. And we
can blame something called congregational polity for the focus on shared
ministry within our Unitarian Universalist practice. And we can blame that quip
of “deeds not creeds” for our emphasis on putting our faith to work in what we
do over the matter of what we believe. Shared ministry emerges from a notion
called “the priesthood of all believers.” It’s grounded in the early Christian
understanding that experience of the divine was mediated solely through the
figure of Jesus, whom devout Christians understand to be God in the flesh, the
son of God, if you will. The early Christian church had no priests. It was
informal and egalitarian, with each believer expected to use her or his
individual gifts to build up the Christian community, which was pretty wobbly
in those days of the Roman Empire. This understanding receives especially
strong emphasis in the First Letter of Peter. Believers are implored to “Come
to him, to that living stone….and like living stones be yourselves built into a
spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.”
Of course a quick trip through the history of the
church tells us that the non-hierarchical approach to building “a spiritual
house” was honored in the breach. When Martin Luther took up his hammer and
nailed his 95 theses—or points of frustration—on the door of the Castle Church
in Wittenberg in October of 1517, he had had it with an established church that
had reached a point where access to the holy was not only mediated by an
exclusive cadre of priests, but mediated for a profit. The Reformation had
begun with one angry monk. And we
Unitarians — not even known as Unitarians yet, but already simmering with the
ingredients of what has been called the “radical Reformation” — went even
further. Thirty-six years almost to the day after Luther had committed his act
of defiance, the Spaniard Michael Servetus, was burned at the stake on orders
from Luther’s colleague, John Calvin, for questioning the authority of the
Trinity. Was Michael Servetus ordained? No, Servetus was just one of those
living stones, but with a different set of beliefs than what had hardened into
the hierarchy of the Christian church. Servetus helped put the “radical” into
Reformation.
We who are Unitarians and Universalists and now a
blend of both have long been notorious for our radicalism. We’ve been dubbed
heretics as if it were an insult, when a heretic is simply one who exercises
choice. To be creatures of choice is core to our practice of faith and doubt.
So we move into the notion of congregational
polity, its own special form of choice. Our Unitarian Universalist
congregations, exercise this choice, this heresy, with each congregation calling
its professional ministers, ordaining us, and serving in a mode of independence. A few years ago, a commission of our
Association spent several years pondering the notion of congregational polity
and came up with a report that spoke to the interdependence that defines us. It
was a report written by committee — how else would we UUs take on a
non-hierarchical topic? — but I found myself reading it with pleasure. Within
the topic of congregational polity, there’s a provocative discussion of
religious leadership, which moves into a discussion of shared ministry. I found
this passage jumping off the page:
“One key aspect of Unitarian Universalism is our
belief that ministry of the congregation does not belong exclusively to
ordained clergy, but to everyone.”
The text continues with some commentary that comes
to us from an earlier committee’s report on ministry in which commissioner Neil
Shadle explained:
"Ministry is the vocation of every person of
faith, [and] Unitarian Universalism, as a democratic faith, affirms the
“priesthood of all believers;” we are all lay ministers, whether or not we
choose to be professional religious leaders."
Here we are, coming full circle back to that
notion of the “priesthood of all believers.”
But the circle had already expanded, thanks to
that great giant of a 20th century theologian, James Luther Adams. Adams taught
over the many years of his career at Boston University, Meadville Lombard
Theological School, Harvard Divinity School, and my alma mater Andover-Newton Theological School. He occupied
fully the slice of history that was his, commenting, writing, engaging
students, and taking on the brokers of power and privilege through the
questions that rocked his time. It’s not surprising that he stretched the
“priesthood of all believers” into the priesthood and prophethood of all
believers. Prophets, we might remember, were those annoying flower children of
the Old Testament — Jonah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos. Troublemakers all, they
called the populace of their day to take seriously stuff like loving your
neighbor as yourself and honoring the divine by so doing.
Adams himself had a prophetic gene or two. Why
else would he have written so forcefully about what we’re called to do as
prophets, a ministry that makes most of us entirely uncomfortable? “The
prophetic liberal church,” he claimed, “is not a church in which the prophetic
function is assigned merely to a few.” Adams said, “The prophetic liberal church is the church
in which persons think and work together to interpret the signs of the times in
the light of their faith, to make explicit through discussion the epochal
thinking that the times demand. The prophetic liberal church is the church in
which all members share the common responsibility to attempt to foresee the consequences
of human behavior (both individual and institutional), with the intention of
making history in place of merely being pushed around by it.” And the cherry on
top of his sundae? “Only through the prophetism of all believers can we
together foresee doom and mend our common ways.”
If we take seriously the priesthood and
prophethood of all believers, if we take seriously shared ministry, I’m
guessing that the first act of faith is to hyperventilate. Once we catch our
breath, we can take stock, probably sing a hymn or two, pray desperately, “Why
me?”, and trust that the coffee and sweets will be really great today.
On the other hand, shared ministry can be doing
our part as a spiritual practice; it can be spiritually transformative even.
Such is the case made by Erik in his article. Making soup and sandwiches for
this community or sometimes for folks who have hardly anything else to eat is
as spiritual as meditating at sunrise. Serving on a committee or leading a
Small Group Ministry gathering or teaching in our religious education program
or posting a banner that proclaims “Black Lives Matter” is as spiritual as the
deepest reflection. And sharing your gifts of time, talent, and treasure
ensures that no one here need suffer from burnout. You’re not fully ‘here, now’ unless you’re
actively involved and pulling your share. Shared ministry lets each of us ‘be
here now. As we are called to care about
and work to end injustices in the world, to care for our planet, to enact love
and beauty — we are called to practice for these actions in the wider world by
ministering here in our community. Many of you have or are finding your
ministry within and through the shared ministry that sustains our
congregational life. Some of you may still be wondering, pondering, and even
resisting the notion that “works” go hand in hand with faith, that “spiritual”
goes hand in hand with “practice.”
I believe all of us are here in this Sanctuary for
a purpose. It’s about faith, but faith isn’t enough. At least that’s what the
author of the New Testament book known as The Letter of James proclaimed: “What
gain is there if a person claims to have faith but doesn’t have works?” James
didn’t know enough to let it drop with that. He kept going. “If a brother or
sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go
in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the
body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
Can you imagine having James on your committee?
Well, we have a James-like figure at the helm of our Board of Trustees.
Rev. Mark Howenstein tells us, “The new paradigm is one of shared ministry,
in which all members and friends are responsible together for the healthy
operation of the congregation. In shared ministry, all are called to contribute
their time, treasure and talent, in ways that are distinctive and appropriate
to their circumstances, their bounty and their skills.”
Time, treasure, and talent! That’s a lot, perhaps
overwhelming for some of us. When I get overwhelmed, I start thinking in steps,
one step at a time. Let’s try that right now. What is your ministry? What are
you doing right now that speaks to the faith and works of this Congregation,
that feeds the hungry, that teaches our children, that shouts to the powers
that be in our own time to change course, that keeps the kitchen clean and the
facilities painted, that gives the lawn a haircut and helps the flowers grow and
helps us all grow?
There are four simple questions to consider:
1) What am I good at?
2) What do I like to do?
3) What needs to be done?
4) Is there stuff happening in my life right now
that suggests I scream for help?
What am I good at? Sometimes what we’re good at is
what we least like to do. I’m really good at cleaning a bathroom. I’m really
good at turning a messy paper into a fairly coherent document. Do I like to do
these things? No. So what am I good at that I like to do? Or even that I kind
of like to do?
Okay, on to the next question: What needs to be done?
Well, I believe both the joy and heartache and celebration and rites and tasks
of new ministry need to be done. I believe there are tough corners to turn and
new chapters to write. I could stop here, but there’s that fourth question, and
it’s so subjective: Is there stuff happening in my life right now that suggests
I scream for help? For me right now, probably not. There have been times when I’ve had to scream
for help in my life, and I know that some of you have had to do this too, even
if you first scream silently.
So what is your ministry? Let those four questions
swim in your mind for awhile. Let them play out in your heart for awhile. Then
step back into your understanding of your own priesthood, your own prophethood.
Step back into the circle of this religious community and ask once again, “What
is my ministry?” How will I work my faith?
And your answer? May your answer be some kind of gratitude that you are,
that you are here, and that we are here together on this Sunday morning. May
your answer be some kind of celebration for the bounty of beauty created by
living in paradise. May your answer be some kind of love and friendship and
soul stretching of which we can all partake. May your answer be gratitude for
the miracle of life in which we find ourselves, no matter which side of the bed
you woke up on this morning, no matter how you might have felt as you brushed
your teeth or scarfed down your coffee, no matter how you hoped or despaired as
you walked out the door, risking once again religious community.
Your letters, cards, and emails expressed this
shared ministry, the need for shared ministry.
May you continue to reach out to your minister and express not only what
they did wrong this week but with messages that remind the minister that you
too have a ministry. May we open our hearts and minds and hands, giving and
receiving the gifts of who we are and who we can be in this faith that we share
and this life that we live.
"Letters" a sermon delivered by the Rev. CJ McGregor at 1stUUPB, March 9, 2017
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