by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Welcome to Bring a Friend Sunday -- we are glad that you are here. If you like or are intrigued by what you hear this morning, we invite you to come to some of our holiday services this season, as we celebrate Advent and the many Winter Holidays of Light over the next 2 Sundays, and mark the Winter Solstice with a special Candlelight Labyrinth Walk on the evening of December 21st. On Christmas Eve we’ll have lessons and carols and an open communion, and the Sunday after Christmas will be another one of our special Celtic Christmas music services. The first Sunday of January we will hold our annual Greater New Orleans UU cluster Jazz Funeral for the Old Year with a jazz band, a parade marshal, and a real coffin in which to bury our concerns from 2010. (Come early! Seats fill up fast.) Join us for any or all of these very special holiday services.
I understand that there are now such things as Internet “cyber-churches” which you can join merely by clicking on their website. You can download sermons, sign up for cyber-fellowship events, and even take cyber-classes. As convenient as it might sound, I find I am troubled by this development. In cyber-church, where are the real, face-to-face, real-time relationships? It seems to me that cyber-church gives folks some of the payoffs of a real church and real religion, but without any of the challenges and deeper meanings.
There’s a quiz you can take on the Internet at the Belief.net site called “The Belief-o-Matic.” I’ve taken it several times, and I always come out Unitarian Uninversalist. (Last night, my score was 100% Unitarian Uninversalist.) But what if I were not a UU minister, and I took the quiz? What if I came out 95% or 100% UU, and didn't ever attend a UU church, should I go around calling myself a Unitarian Uninversalist?
I don’t agree with cyber-church and I don’t think you can be UU all by yourself. To me, there’s no getting around it: Real church and real religion make real demands on real people. Unitarian Universalism, as a liberal form of religion, may be different in a lot of ways from conventional faiths, but that’s one important thing that we share with all religions – within our congregations and in our association, we have mutual expectations of members, and as a religious community, we make reciprocal demands of each other for responsible and ethical behavior, both inside and outside of the doors of our churches. It takes a congregation to do this work; we need each other. As former UUA President Jack Mendelsohn says in our Reading, “We’re all in this together.”
In general, scholars speak of three kinds of religions – ethnic religions that one has to be born into, like Hinduism; orthodox religions that dictate certain beliefs from their adherents; and orthopraxis, religions that expect certain behaviors of their members.
Most Christian denominations, with some exceptions, are orthodox – there is a set of creeds that members must profess in order to stay members. Judaism, on the other hand, is orthopraxic – there are actions expected of a good Jew, but no beliefs.
Unitarian Universalism is another kind of orthopraxis; we are creedless, without any required beliefs. That is not to say that we make no demands of our members, but our expectations are ones of behavior.
In UU churches, there are certain expectations of those who are voting members. In an essay in a book about UU evangelism called Salted With Fire, my colleague Barbara Wells lists six expectations in her church’s Path to Membership:
attend services,
work on your own spiritual growth,
be involved in the life and work of the church,
contribute your fair share financially,
commit to actions in the wider world,
and connect with the larger Unitarian Universalist movement.
She writes that each of these responsibilities of membership are equally important, for each benefits the individual as well as serving the needs of the church.
By no means, however, does this list imply that membership in a UU church is reserved for well-off people with lots of free time. If someone is overwhelmed with job- or home-related responsibilities, it is understood that that person has less time to give. When a household has a low income, a large contribution is not expected. I tell prospective members at our church that a member pledges a balance of their time, talent, and treasure to the best of their current situation. And as different people will have differing amounts of time, creativity, and money, it’s also true that a single individual may have differing amounts depending on the circumstances of their life at a particular time.
And so we come together, not in cyber-space, but in a real building (that needs a lot of work); not alone, but mingled together with some folks who may be like us and some folks who may not be; some folks whose beliefs are similar to ours and maybe some folks whose beliefs are different. We have different experiences and different life circumstances, but we share some important things. We think that this life on this planet at this time has meaning, and that we can positively affect the course of history by our actions and decisions. And we all want to be with other people who share our values, who will stand with us and challenge us when we need challenging, and comfort us when we need comforting.
Stone Soup is a good metaphor for Unitarian Universalism. Alone, all by ourselves, we might not be able to formulate and articulate a clear theology, but together, we find we can do it. All those different ingredients come together and make something better, more nourishing, more interesting, more real, than the mere sum of the parts. We retell that story because it sounds like us.
Another good metaphor for Unitarian Universalism is the Welcome Table. While we normally use the flaming chalice as the pictured symbol of our liberal faith tradition, I think we could just as soon use a table that welcomes all. (Picture us all wearing little tables around our necks!) Every level of ability, every age, every gender, every orientation, every race, every color, every belief, every economic level – everyone is welcome who wants and needs to be part of a diverse spiritual community that encourages spiritual growth and demands the best from us, demands that we combine our efforts to make the world a better place. All of us sitting at the Welcome Table together, sharing that delicious Stone Soup.
In her book, The Holy Intimacy of Strangers, my colleague Sarah York writes:
Hospitality is less about what we may do for others than about who we are when we are with them. It is about serving our faith on behalf of the human community in our everyday interactions. Nurturing trust and goodwill, we create a space that hold another person with the deepest kind of respect.
She goes on to say:
The gift of hospitality is a gift of self, a gift of trust, a gift of courage. As host and guest share a mutual exchange of presence, it is a holy gift of the Spirit in their midst. Even if the host or guest is not aware of the sacred aspect of their exchange, it exists nevertheless.
At our best, that’s who we are – bringing to each other and to this liberal faith community a commitment of our hearts, minds, and bodies, covenanting with one another, with those who have gone before us, and with the Holy (by whatever name or concept that the Holy is known in our lives), pledging to do whatever is in our power to strengthen this community and to work together to bring the sacred gift of hospitality, the Welcome Table, to every person in the world. May all of us come to see ourselves bound to one another in such a covenant, and may we all sit together at the Welcome Table one of these days. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!
