First Parish Cohasset

Chalice Reflection
of
Joan Kovach
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, Massachusetts
March 21, 2010

When we lived in Budapest, I met Yazmine Mohamed. She was a former banker, the wife of the Malaysian ambassador, and the mother of three kids at the school where she was the PTA president. As ambassador’s wife she had the convenience of a driver, and when she learned I was traveling on public transportation, she offered me rides to meetings, for which I was very grateful. That December, her driver also delivered three bags of food from McDonalds to her kids after school, before basketball practice. As Muslims they observed the annual month of fast between sun up and sundown. As a good mom, she wisely managed the blend of religious observance and after school sports. At the end of the month, she invited our entire family to the luscious feast held to celebrate the end of Ramadan.

We made other friends that year who were Muslim. Iiris, who was Finnish, and her husband Mehdi from Iran had three children in the American school as well: Nasar, Ali and Daria, a darling 9 year old who wanted very much to visit New York City. The Rouhalamine Family also invited us to their home, many times, where they served meals of shish kebab and saffron rice and all kinds of other fabulous foods they described and shared with us. They taught us that the dry crispy rice in the bottom of the pot is considered special and saved for the youngest or favored member of the family. When we encouraged them to come and visit us in the states when we returned so Daria could see New York, they just smiled. When the children left the room, they confided that Mehdi’s dark skin and hair and his Iranian passport would make travel to the US difficult for the family and they weren’t likely to make such a trip.

The mechanics who fix our cars are a family of Muslim brothers. One day I presented my prize Miata and told them of strange noises it was making. It could be many things Mohammed said, and I marveled at such a wise response from such a young man. Since then, in our chats before and after car repairs, I’ve learned about their mother and handicapped brother back in Lebanon, how much they love and protect this brother, and how they call home often to check on his well being.  I have not read the Koran, but I believe I have learned about Islam from the people I’ve met who are Islamists. I have learned that Muslims are like us, perhaps the best and worst of us, and that world troubles are not about different religions, but about troubled people.

I light this candle in celebration of the diversity of peoples and the universality of kindness and caring.

“Peace and Islam”

A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
March 21, 2010

Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic year, was the occasion for my roommate, Layla, to give me the gift of this shawl. [Hold it up.] I treasure it. The setting was the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, where I spent my junior year of college. It was mid-point in time between the U.S. troops landing in Beirut and the Six Day War. It was also a time of relative calm in Lebanon, though beneath the surface stirred an uneasy balance of power between Lebanese Christians and Lebanese Muslims, with Christians holding the edge though Muslims outnumbered them. In the Middle East religion, peace, and violence are intimately linked.

I hold this shawl as a personal icon of peace and Islam. Layla was Muslim. Her home city was Baghdad. Not long after the United States attacked Iraq just seven years ago yesterday, I tried to locate my friend. I contacted the university’s alumni office. There was no record of her whereabouts. I continue to wonder about her well-being and whether she’s even alive.

My year in Lebanon was the year I added Universalist to my then Presbyterian identity. I had yet to discover the Unitarian Universalism that would be my chosen faith, as those of us who were not raised “UU” commonly refer to it.

What happened that year that was so transformative for me? I met Layla. I met Tanya. I met Mahmoud. I studied with students and professors and visited families whose religious filters were radically different from my own—from Maronite and Greek Orthodox Christian to Druse and Muslim. To this stunningly beautiful campus on the Mediterranean we came to learn. We came from the United States, Britain, France, Greece, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco, the Sudan, Iran, and Iraq, to name just a few of the nations represented. Christmas Dinner was spent on the terrace of a Muslim family in Cairo. My Christian American friend and I were treated like royalty.

Did I believe then that Muslims were all about peace and love? No more than I understand now that Christians or Jews or even Unitarian Universalists are all about peace and love. I just know that “us and them” isn’t sustainable.

Peace and Islam is a topic I approach beyond gingerly. I’m an expert in neither. I struggle for peace from the inside out and the outside in. I’m in my infancy in discerning the richness of the religion that is Islam. This morning I’m modeling chutzpah, a non-Arabic word as you might know. I’m out on a slim limb as I seek to honor the winning bid made last spring at our service auction for a sermon topic of choice. The winning bidder graciously offered three or four topics, from which I was foolhardy enough to choose the highly complex topic of Islam. I was foolhardy minus one to hone in on the marginally narrower topic, “Peace and Islam.” It could only consume the better part of a lifetime.

Nonetheless why not “Peace and Islam” on dual anniversaries? The first anniversary I’ve already noted. Yesterday marked the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, tied so erroneously to the 9/11/01 attack of 19 members of Al-Qaeda, a fundamentalist arm of the Sunni branch of Islam “calling for a global jihad,” (struggle or effort) to vanquish perceived enemies of what they understood Islam to be. Like extremist arms of Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, extremist arms of Islam hold high-intensity self-righteousness unleashing the most horrific of acts. Their aftermath clouds for many of us the role of peace in this faith that is one of the great religions of the world stemming from the story of Abraham.

The second anniversary is a 1400th! Yes, 1400 years ago, in 610 CE during the month of Ramadan, which existed before the formalization of Islam, Muhammad ibn Abdallah retreated to a cave atop Mount Hira on the outskirts of Mecca. There he prayed and fasted, distraught over the runaway greed in his own tribe. Legend tells us that in the middle of the night at almost the mid-point of Ramadan Muhammad awoke, seized by the sense of a powerful presence that spoke the first words of what would be the Qur’an, “the recitation.” More revelations followed. What he received were prescriptions in the form of glorious and powerful poetry, but imparted in such a way that he had the good sense to tell no one except his trusted wife and cousin.

Two years passed, and he could contain himself no longer. He began to preach these revelations. Converts were slow in coming and were initially among those downwind of the growing economic disparities in Arab society. Just as Jesus preached a gospel of love as a return to the soul of Judaism, so Muhammad preached a message of social equity as a return to the soul of his culture. Both threatened power brokers of religion and government.

It would take 21 years for Muhammad to receive all 114 chapters, or surahs, of the Qur’an.

Islam means “surrender,” and it was expressed in ritual prayer, originally three times a day and later increased to five times a day. To prostrate oneself was a physical antidote to the arrogance and greed that had become so pervasive in and around Mecca.

An adherent of Islam was called a Muslim,

“….a man or a woman who had made this submission of their entire being to Allah and his demand that human beings behave to one another with justice, equity and compassion.”

Muslims were expected to live according to the precepts of the Qur’an. This meant giving a portion of their income to the poor. And it meant obligatory fasting during Ramadan—the month when Muhammad had received the first revelations of the Qur’an—as a reminder of the hunger known to the poor.

According to scholar Karen Armstrong,

“Social justice was…the crucial virtue of Islam. Muslims were commanded as their first duty to build a community (ummah) characterized by practical compassion, in which there was a fair distribution of wealth.”

Theological speculation was deemed self-indulgent. “….Far more crucial,” explains Armstrong, “was the effort (jihad) to live in the way God had intended for human beings.” The well-being of the community, the ummah, was evidence of their faithfulness.

Fair-play, compassion, and community are at the core of Islam. This is born out in the understanding that the Arabs issue not from Abraham’s legitimate son, Isaac, but from Ishmael, the son of Abraham’s mistress, Hagar, whom Abraham’s wife Sarah had cast out in a fit of envy when she was pregnant and Sarah wasn’t. God served as mediator. Sarah became pregnant after all and gave birth to Isaac. As for Hagar and Ishmael, God had promised that a great people would descend from Ishmael. To Abraham, God made a covenant with him that he would “be the father of a multitude of nations.” Then God promised Abraham that Sarah would conceive and bear him a son and that Sarah would “be a mother of nations.”

According to the narrative of Genesis, God made promises to Abraham about both his sons:

“’As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him and make him fruitful and multiply him exceedingly; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac…’” (Genesis 17:20-21a)

Hagar and Ishmael are said to have settled in Mecca. Muhammad learned from neighboring Jews about these promises made by God to Hagar and to Abraham and Sarah. Muhammad was overjoyed. God had not rejected his people after all. The Jews and the Arabs shared the same father, Abraham; but the Jews descended from Isaac; the Arabs, from Ishmael. In the sight of Muhammad, the historic scale had been tipped toward justice.

When I heard as a child the story of Sarah casting out Hagar, I was horrified and angry. How could Sarah behave so badly? How could God let this happen? In Islam, this is not the whole story. The saga of Ishmael and his legendary descendants and the saga of Isaac and his legendary descendants continue to our day. We can understand the deep rivalry between Jews and Muslims as a family divided. When peace comes, a great family will be whole.

The history of the Jews and the history of the Arabs—and God knows the history of Christians claiming the Judaic tradition—have been fraught with violence. Each has self-righteously claimed to be the offended party. Holy wars have been fought in all religions. None are without accountability. Each seeks validation for violence. Each holds precepts for peace.

In our time, many non-Muslims tend to perceive violence as the heart of Islam. Perhaps some of us in this Meeting House share this sentiment. Hear the words of the Qur’an:

In the 7th surah, we read:
“…And My Mercy encompasses all things.” (7:156)

In the 25th surah, we read:
“The servants of the Compassionate are they who walk upon the earth humbly, and when the foolish address them, they answer: ‘Peace!’” (25:63)

And in the 60th surah, we read:
“It is possible that God will ordain love between you and your enemies. God is Almighty. And God is Forgiving, Merciful. God does not forbid you from showing kindness and dealing justly with those who have not fought against you, nor driven you from your homes. Truly, God loves the just.” (60:8)

While there may not be a message of peace at all costs, there is a clear prohibition against pre-emptive violence.

In his introduction to a compilation of The Koran’s Teachings on Compassion, Peace & Love, scholar Rez Shah-Kazemi notes the likely objections within and without the Islamic world to highlighting only one strain of teachings, namely, the compassionate, the peaceful, and the loving, when the Qur’an contains promise and threat, peace and violence, hope and fear. Because so much emphasis has been given in our time—and he wrote in 2007—to the Koranic themes of threat, violence, and fear, he registers hope that his work

“… will help to draw attention to the absolute centrality of the principles of compassion and mercy, peace and love in the Koranic worldview.”

Peace does not equal pacifism, nor does peacemaking equal pacifism. Pacifism is an absolute, and I respect such a stance. Peacemaking is what I try to practice. As long as I know that I am capable of violently defending myself or another creature, I am not a pacifist. If, however, I feed the fear that another person or another people or another religion is undermining however I consider “me and mine,” and if I act on this fear, I am no more innocent than a hijacker, a crusader, or any of the women and men of history made and history being made who reject surrender to the promise and possibility of love and peace.

Embedded in a poem by the late W.H. Auden are the words:

“You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.”

As humans endowed with conflicting capacities, may we seek to acknowledge our own shortcomings and reach out in love and peace to our neighbor, who shares them.

Salaam Aleikum, Peace be unto you. Amen.

Sources:

“Al-Qaeda,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda.

Karen Armstrong, Islam: A Short History, The Modern Library, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, 2000.

W.H. Auden, “As I walked out one evening,” in The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden, Random House, New York, 1945, 197-199.

My Mercy Encompasses All: The Koran’s Teachings on Compassion, Peace & Love, Gathered & introduced by Reza Shah-Kazemi, with a foreword by Wendell Berry, Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA, 2007.

Huston Smith, The Religions of Man, a Mentor Book by arrangement with Harper & Brothers, New York, 1958.

1958 Lebanon crisis,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lebanon_crisis.

“The Six Day War,” http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/six_day_war_1967.htm.

Peacemaking: Congregational Study Action Issue Resource Guide 2006-2010, http://www.uua.org/documents/csw/csaiguide_pm06.pdf.

(Cohasset, MA, March 8, 2010)

More about the program:

Anthology will be performing a number of new folk arrangements that premiered to great acclaim in Boston last November.  In addition to these new arrangements of classic American folk tunes like “Red River Valley” and “Streets of Laredo,” they will also be performing some of their most popular songs, which include jazz arrangements of lullabies, a bit of Tom Lehrer, and even a song sung by a can of tuna.  This concert will show off Anthology at their best and most varied; don’t miss it!

More about the performers:

Anthology is a professional quartet of enchanting women’s voices. Their expansive variety of music is presented with the fine polish of classical training and an effervescent whimsy that rises from an enthusiasm for all styles of performance.  Anthology’s repertoire is a collection of classical choral music, hot jazz, Renaissance polyphony, world folk traditions, and music from the razor’s edge of local Boston compositions. Anthology sings fresh new arrangements of old classics, discovering exciting new repertoire in children’s songs, TV anthems, popular music, and anything that inspires them.  We hope you’ll enjoy Anthology’s eclectic, a cappella four-part delights!  Anthology is Michelle Vachon, Vicky Reichert, Anney Gillotte, and Allegra Martin (who is also the music director of First Parish Cohasset.)

Press quotes:

“The voices of four women resonated throughout Shirley’s Historic Meetinghouse and sent shivers up our spines. We jumped in a unanimous standing ovation…If you ever have the opportunity to hear Anthology perform, run- don’t walk- and bring all your friends because it will blow you away!”

- Dawn McCall for The Shirley Volunteer

“These women know how to rock the house with kickass pop tunes, and make you swoon with their lush purple jazz chords.  They can do it all… Pure tones, ringing chords and astonishing ability to drop from the most unlikely places into a perfect absolute unison.”

David Traugot for The Contemporary A Cappella Society

For more information about the concert, please contact Allegra Martin at (617) 872-0461.

“Spirit of Life”

A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
March 14, 2010
(delivered partially extemporaneously, so much of what is written below was not spoken,
and some of what was spoken is not written below)

Spirit of Life. It’s become the core expression for how we as Unitarian Universalists name the God we believe in and the God we don’t. Spirit of Life works. For some of us, it seems to wipe clean the scarred slates of our childhood religion. For some of us, it’s what we’ve grown up with. For some of us, it’s perhaps the not completely satisfying synonym for God or “the deity,” but we’ll let it be.

I sometimes imagine asking God or the Spirit of Life or the Great Whomever, “What exactly would you like to be called?” As yet I haven’t received an answer, but if we put that question to our larger world, so many names are offered before any ultimate voice could possibly be heard. It’s rather like an expected child who can’t speak for herself or himself, but whose relatives-to-be can’t restrain themselves from saying to the expectant parents, “Well here’s what I think works!”

Names matter. The ancient Hebrews understood one’s name to be one with the essence of that being. Perhaps that’s why YAHWEH was rendered only as an acronym for “I am who I am,” as YHWH. The name itself was too holy to be spoken or even written in full form.

In the second verse of the first chapter of The Book of Genesis, we read: “the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.” In Hebrew, the Spirit of God translates “ruach Elohim.” It can also be rendered, the “wind of God” or the “breath of God.” In this particular Creation myth—and myth doesn’t mean an untruth, but a way of conveying truth—was spirit, wind, breath that was life giving. I don’t suppose that particular author of Genesis—and there were several—imagined that he was introducing what would be the core expression for a Unitarian Universalist understanding of the Creator.

Throughout the Bible, there are many renditions of what religion commonly uses as the default name—that is, God. There is ruach Elohim. There is Elohim. There is YHWH. There is Adonai, commonly translated as Lord. And there is God.

In this congregation, some of you wonder why we don’t give voice more frequently to the term, ”God,” and some of you wonder why we give voice so frequently to the term, “God.” If we took a vote, which we’re not about to do, Spirit of Life would likely win, hands down.

I see it in your faces when we sing Spirit of Life. It’s not just that this is the consensus about what to call the Holy; it’s the full flow of this song that has become in a few short years the Unitarian Universalist anthem. In her article for UUWorld, Kimberly French writes that:

     “No other song, no other prayer, no other piece of liturgy is so well known and loved in Unitarian Universalism as ‘Spirit of Life’ by Carolyn McDade.”

If someone asked you what you would sing if you were invited to describe our faith in song, I’m betting that most of you wouldn’t hesitate. “Spirit of Life,” of course. If I asked you what you would choose as the most spiritual song in Singing the Living Tradition, I’m guessing that “Spirit of Life” would again be your choice.

We sing it as a song ancient to our souls, yet it was born on a night in the early 1980s, so it’s not much older than our shared Principles and Purposes, adopted in 1986. Just as we proclaim our principles as if they’re creed, we tend to sing this song as a melodic credo.

Like all songs, this one had a pregnancy, a long one, a deeply soulful gestation. Its receptacle was the social activism that has described Carolyn McDade’s life for decades. While she now does workshops and recordings that find their life in congregations well beyond our Unitarian Universalist world, her primary community is not religious, but groups of women who sing together, write together, and join together in mindful activism. Buoyed by the feminist movement, she has allied herself with what she calls simply “the movement”—a term familiar to some of us who are children of the ‘60s. “The movement” for her is not only feminist, though a strong strain of “women’s spirituality” weaves its way through her music and gives voice to her social activism, just as her social activism gives voice to her music.

Born in 1935 and raised in rural Louisiana as a Southern Baptist, Carolyn McDade was just six years old when this nation entered World War II. Even at this early age, she paid close attention to the events of her larger world. The newsreels mesmerized her. Images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are engraved in her soul. In her words:

     “No God I had learned about would ever want or allow such behavior, such suffering, such brutality.”

Carolyn became a teacher, married, and had three daughters. During the time of the Freedom Riders in the 1960s, she lived with her husband and children in Austin, Texas; and she chafed when her church held silence. Her only choice was to break the silence. The theology of her childhood propelled her to action.

I empathize. In my own life and through my own early years in Presbyterian Sunday school, I often wondered why so many didn’t seem to take seriously the teachings of Jesus. Was it all just show, I wondered. A friend introduced McDade to the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, where she found her first political mentors and experienced her first demonstration, marching “from the State Capitol to the Air Force Base.” Peace and civil rights were among the initial causes that found her heart, mind, and body committed to activist social justice.

In the mid-60s the McDades moved to Boston. Jim McDade had found a job at Boston University, and the whole family joined Arlington Street Church, the Unitarian Universalist church just off Boston Common. Home-based sing-a-longs hosted by Carolyn became a feature in the life of the McDade family and the Arlington Street family. Eventually she was invited to coordinate the music for the “first women’s service” at Arlington Street. She found precious little written by women. This was a pivot point. Her own first song would emerge.

During the 1970s, she began to find herself completely at home in the growing family of female activists in Boston. While Carolyn McDade moved in a direction that left church membership behind, her early engagement with Unitarian Universalism left a spirited mark.

Carolyn’s activism moved in crescendo mode, finding voice in opposition to U.S. policy in Central America and the sanctuary movement that countered this policy. It was almost time for “Spirit of Life” to be born.

It was an evening in the early 1980s when she was on her way home with a close friend from a meeting for “Central American solidarity.” McDade reports feeling an overwhelming fatigue over what was happening in the world. Her friend simply sat with her—a presence that endears a friend for life. Once at home, she found herself going directly to her piano, where she prayed with voice rising and fingers on the keyboard. “Spirit of Life” came to life. It embodied her commitment “to continue in faith with the movement.”

Again and again she shared it with the group of women she sang with. When Singing the Living Tradition began to take shape in the early ‘90s, McDade’s song-prayer was so well known that the UUA Hymnbook Commission was unanimous in seeking to include it. Carolyn was reticent: “’I thought of it as a living prayer, not a hymn.’”

Thankfully for all of us, she relented. We find two other McDade songs in this hymnal. “We’ll Build a Land” is the Unitarian Universalist title for the song we often sing, though her chosen title was “Creation of Peace.” The other is “Come, Sing a Song.” In Singing the Journey, the new supplement to Singing the Living Tradition, we find “Rising Green,” which I hope will become as familiar to you as her other songs. Written by Carolyn, it was arranged by Jim Scott, who will be our pulpit guest just two weeks from today.

Our faith exposure to the music of Carolyn McDade is just a sampling of the many songs she has written and taught and performed. Now 75, a resident of Cape Cod, a single parent since the 1970s, and a grandmother of eight, Carolyn is an enthusiastic workshop leader whose primary participants are women who inspire her and collaborate with her in new songs and a ready stream of social activism. In her own words, “I write love songs to social movements.”

Spirit of Life, a love-song, a prayer written late at night. It continues also as the name we commonly give to the holy in our own prayers and meditations, as if it rose from that legendary moment when the breath of the Holy moved across the face of the waters. Imagine the primordial waters singing in chorus, “Spirit of Life, come unto me.”

Let’s lift our voices and sing the first stanza of this beloved song:

     Spirit of Life, come unto me.

We evoke the holy; we call it to enter us. In an intimate personal plea, we ask the Spirit of Life to “come unto me.” Join with me please in the next stanza:

     Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.

Sing, not just sound, but sing in my heart. Stir through song the most profound prerequisite for doing justice…compassion.

     Blow in the wind, rise in the sea;

Remnants of that Genesis force moving over the face of the waters, metaphors vivid for this congregation as we worship together on the edge of the sea, where the wind blows with abandon and the surf arches in tidal rhythms.

     move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.

Our songs and our acts are of the body, the work of our hands, from which rise the forms of justice.

     Roots hold me close; wings set me free;

Roots and wings, grounding and liberating our spirits and deeds.

     Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.

And so it does, if we open our hearts and our minds and our lives to what this will mean for each of us, for all of us, if we join in this love song to compassionate justice, this prayer that we too might become ever more committed to living this faith that we share.

So may it be. Amen.

Sources:

The Book of Genesis, The Bible (Revised Standards Version)

“Come, Sing a Song with Me,” Words and music: Carolyn McDade, in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 346.

Kimberly French, “Carolyn McDade’s Spirit of Life: Unitarian Universalism’s most beloved song, the woman who wrote it, and the communities that sustain her spirit,” UU World, Fall 2007, http://www.uuworld.org/life/articles/35893.shtml.

“Rising Green,” Carolyn McDade, in Singing the Journey: A Supplement to Singing the Living Tradition, Unitarian Universalist Association, 2005, 1068.

“Spirit of Life,” Words and music: Carolyn McDade, arr. by Jim Scott, in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 123.

“We’ll Build a Land,” Words: Barbara Zanotti (Isaiah/Amos), adapt., Music: Carolyn McDade (1935 – ), in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 123.

“Given and Received”

A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
Stewardship Sunday
March 7, 2010

When to say please and when to say thank you? In my earlier conversation with our youngsters, it was clear that in our role playing, they were completely confused about this. Mr. Lion kept saying “Please” when you would think the proper response would be “Thank you,” and Mr. Elephant kept saying “Thank you” when the proper response would seem to be “Please.” We’re used to having our manners in neater boxes!

So it is with what is given and what is received. If I give you a hug, you receive it. If you receive a hug, you’re receiving a gift from me. But was the hug ever mine in the first place? And isn’t it also a gift to me that you’ve received it? And how can you just receive a hug if you’re not also giving one? This matter of giving and receiving gets deliciously confused.

We commonly speak of life as a gift. We also speak of a mother giving birth, even giving life. Which is it? Our mothers, the Spirit of Life, or God the Source of all Life? No wonder we who tend anyway toward out-of-the-box theology get so theologically confused. There are no easy answers. We even struggle with the questions.

As for money, we have an easier time talking about birth and death or sex than we do about our fiscal resources—what we make for a living and how much we give away. Not to worry. This is not, as some would say, “the sermon on the amount.” Rather, it’s an invitation to think about stewardship from a different angle. By the way, when I first typed “angle,” I spelled it a-n-g-e-l. Our unconscious is always one step ahead!

How to give? How to receive? My friend and colleague, Bob Thayer, tells the story of visiting England several years ago and attending Sunday worship with some of his British Unitarian friends—probably before we added “Universalist” to our identity. Bob and his friends sat near the front of the church. (You know how happy I am when you do that!) Now Bob found the service and the sermon completely gratifying, and he was feeling quite generous when it came ‘round to the offering. He reached for his wallet and in true tourist fashion found only a “wad of British pound notes,” all quite large. Breathing deeply, he pulled out a twenty-pounder. His friend glanced over at what he was about to do and raised his eyebrows. “’It’s a rather large donation,’” he whispered to Bob.

I can imagine Bob feeling somewhat annoyed as if to say, “This is my choice, not yours.” Well, his friend suggested that the usher would be in full shock. “He may fall down. He’s never seen a twenty-pound note in a collection except for famine relief in India.”

Bob warmed to the challenge. His friend kept at it, “’Be mindful that this usher will ask you after the service if you would like change.’”

So what happened? Bob dropped the twenty-pound note into the plate. The usher did indeed react initially with a frown, but the corners of his mouth quickly turned up into a broad smile. Then the knowledge washed over Bob that because they were sitting in front, everyone behind them would see that recklessly generous gift, presumably dropped into the plate by one of the American guests up front. Since the Second World War, Bob thought to himself, the British tend to view Yankees, who after all broke rank a few hundred years earlier, as “’over-sexed, over-paid, and over here.’”

At the end of the service, handshakes and hugs were exchanged all around, including Bob and the usher. As Bob stepped out into the autumn air, he glanced back to see the usher take his note out of the plate, then look up, meet Bob’s gaze and mouth the words, “’Thank you very much!’”

What pure joy it was for Bob to surprise the British usher and his friend. I wonder: who gave and who received?

“God loves a cheerful giver.” It was probably one of the first Bible verses I memorized as a Sunday schooler. I didn’t know then that it came from Paul’s Second Letter to the church at Corinth, the same church he had written to about love. Perhaps there was a connection.

When I give generously, it’s not that I feel so cool or righteous or magnanimous. Okay, sometimes I do. But even more so, I feel like I’m returning something that was never really mine in the first place. Ultimately, none of us owns anything. Yet when it comes to church, we commonly confuse ownership with stewardship. This is our church. This is my church. We say it without a second thought. Yet this church is 289 years old. When did it start becoming our church? When will it stop being our church? And this faith that we share… do we own it? Stewards are entrusted with the care of faith and community. None of us owns either. They’re gifts given and received. Stewardship is the precious act of affirming this through the gifts of money and time and love that we give and receive.

I’ll never forget the time I went to Berkeley, California to meet with our Unitarian Universalist Association’s Ministerial Fellowship Committee. I was nervous, anxious even, because this is our denomination’s “deciding council” for prospective candidates for our Unitarian Universalist ministry. I was prepared, well prepared, but the butterflies were having a party inside my tummy. It was a crisp December morning, and I had time to kill before the afternoon meeting. What to do? Off I went to the campus of UC Berkeley, an iconic space in my coming of age history. Once there, I asked a few folks where Sproul Plaza was, the historic site where I was sure I would hear the echoes of Maria Savio and Joan Baez launching the free speech movement all over again. My search was like a little red hen story. I asked person after person where I could find Sproul Plaza. Nobody seemed to have a clue. Then finally, I found someone who guided me there. I walked around, gazing at ghosts and straining for long-ago voices. Then I looked down. At my feet was a bronze hubcap-like medallion embedded into the sidewalk. Inscribed on its surface were these words:

     “This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction.”

A claim had been staked that this small circular space and the air above it should never be property, that it should never be owned by anyone. And I wondered to myself if perhaps the soil that is this earth and the air that we breathe and the water that we drink and sail and swim in is no more ours than the earth was before we were born or will be after we die. And I wonder this morning as we think about stewardship, if this church is no more ours than it was before we were born or will be after we die. Our connection is stewardship, stewardship for this religious community, stewardship for our mission. What we give is received, and the gifts that we receive are given in our very openness to receive them.

Consider once again the house finch of Lois Ann Carrier’s poem. He sings his heart out. “Sun and song pour down…” For his perch, he chose “the blue spruce I once called mine because I planted it.” The song continues long enough for the poet to learn every note. The epiphany rising from this poetic parable? Its concluding stanza:

     “…I grow rich and easy
     as less and less belongs to me.”

The gift that is stewardship is a gift given and received. The gift that is participation in this religious community—participation in all its forms—is a gift given and received. It has been said that it is better to give than to receive, but when we give, we also receive. May God bless our confusion.    Amen.

Sources:

Lois Ann Carrier, “The Gift,” in How We Are Called: A Meditation Anthology, Mary Benard and Kirstie Anderson, Editors, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2003, 10.

The Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, The Bible, Revised Standard Version.

Robert Thayer, “Large Bills,” in Offerings: Remarks on Passing the Plate, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2004.