First Parish Sermon Archive

This is the time of year for grand addresses to graduating classes, praising the efforts of those about to set forth and raising the prospects of achievements to come, with titles like, “A Bright Future Beckons.”

As it happens, that is also the title of my sermon this morning, although what I had in mind when I conceived it was not your personal job opportunities, except of a volunteer sort, or other sources of personal fulfillment, blessed may they be. I was thinking of our life together as a congregation.

And I apologize to those who are here just for this morning, visiting from Seattle or maybe from here in town but not a part of this church community, at least not yet, and maybe never. I was on sabbatical recently, and one of the things I do is visit other houses of worship on Sunday morning. I get to see how other people do things, and what seems to me to work and not to work so well as I experience worship from a pew.

But as much as anything, I go because it is Sunday morning and time to worship, to have an hour of time apart from the rest of the week to cogitate, to muster internal strength, to sense a peace and hope beyond the power of any event to destroy, and to be at home in a community of like believers - even if as UUs we believe so differently about so many things, but that is a part of our alikeness.

So welcome here, those of you visiting from Seattle or Natick, I hope the morning’s music and peace and even the ideas may be of help to you on your spiritual journey, if not in the great sweep of your life’s unfolding, at least between now and the end of next week, even though I will use the minutes allotted to the sermon to talk about the future of the particular religious community that worships in this room.

I mention this room in part because of one of the sermons I heard. Arlene Sutherland was preaching at the First Parish in Lexington, where she is serving as interim minister. She was preaching on the fear and anxiety that people were feeling in March as the economy and the stock markets were doing poorly. She acknowledged those emotions as being natural, but spoke of the help of having a church community where other things were treasured, friendships and caring and values and hope - as they had been by others in that very room for generations, through all manner of awful times. The building is very much like ours, of the same style and era, and I know I’ve made that same point here.

I am in a ministers’ study group and this spring our topic was Abraham Lincoln. So I read a fair amount about the Civil War, by far the most deadly in our national history. It dragged on for years, the outcome uncertain; and come Sunday, people gathered in this room for the friendships, the caring, the values, the hope. Later in the spring I was with thirty-three other UU ministers, gathered from all parts of the country, only a few from New England. The group was asked how much their churches’ histories were part of the life of the current congregation, and around the room the common answer was, not at all.

Of course one can carry the historical focus too far. I was at another ministers’ conference, this time in England, where Unitarianism was once strong but, like other churches there, is not any longer. The keynote address was on growth, and a lively presentation it was, urging the ministers to work harder at saving their churches from wasting away by appealing to potential new members. And the first question was, But when will I have time to work on the church history?

Luckily, we’ve got both the history and a bright future, as my sermon title suggests. It is a future the congregation has spent a good deal of time and effort considering these last few years, as it - as you - created together a five-year plan, encompassing the congregation’s communal life, its finances, and its building needs.

As anyone here can imagine, the enthusiasm for a capital fund drive to bolster our financial base, which is to say, the endowment, and to add desired building space to our campus, while it still exists as much as ever, has been put on the back burner until the economy and people’s assets are more rosy.

In the meantime, the attention to our communal life will continue, and to those aspects thereof identified by the future planning effort as being worth addressing. A nice thing about that effort was that it found that most people were mostly happy with most of what goes on around here. More than mostly happy, really, as most recently illustrated by the canvass and the auction and the generous support of the members here.

I would not want to have all the time and thought given to the future planning effort go any less rewarded than possible, given that not everything everyone wanted will happen, or could, given the finitude of time and existence.

But there will be a chance to see what things there are that we might undertake between us, many of which will be shepherded along to this committee or that by Mary Kay Peacock, one of the new members of the governing board, called the Parish Committee, who will be the shepherd.

Erin and I will have our tasks to tend from the report. In fact, as an example, I will do one now. The report says Erin and I should be more public about what our availability is for pastoral counseling. We are available, and in fact we each do counseling as a regular part of our weeks. We maintain confidentiality, although we do tell each other with whom we’re meeting and in some general way, why. The counseling is usually situational and short-term; we can make referrals in other situations, and do.

But I hope the suggestions in the report stir up interest, action, and even enthusiasm from lots of us. This is my pitch for voluntarism, my hope that part of what you will find gratifying and soul-serving in the church year ahead, the one that begins in September, will be the chance to work on one or more of the activities here at First Parish, the choir, perhaps, or the Rummage Sale, Sunday school, or one of our many fine committees.

I like to think committee work really can serve the soul and be fun as well as an agent of accomplishment. But we haven’t found a really good way of matching people with the places they will enjoy serving. So this year’s recruiting tactic is, have the senior minister work it into a sermon.

For example, you all know the great job the Newcomer Committee does at the table downstairs during coffee hour. They also schedule events for newcomers, and it is they who get the story into the town paper every week. Wouldn’t you love to be part of that team, including some of you newer folks who can remember was being new was like? Let me know, or tell Lea Anderson, who’s done such a good job as chair we should let her move on to do something else well.

Of course, there is the Interfaith Hospitality Network, which, as noted on the insert, is ready to give you slots in our hosting this summer. I’m down for an evening and an overnight so far.

And then there is a new committee that Ann Gordon, about to be church president and chair of the board, Erin, and I will be putting together over the summer, or starting to. It’s the Community Life Committee, which will work in concert with a new part-time staff position, the Community Life Coordinator, to enhance the congregation’s communal experience between Sundays, as called for in the report. The position is being independently financed by two generous donors, but won’t be filled until we have the committee to go with it. So talk to Erin or me or Ann.

Praise be to the gods of ecclesiastical practice, the goals of the congregation and my own for the years ahead are entirely in synch, which may be what comes of a relationship that stays in place for thirty-five years. But of course Erin, Polly, Penny Kahn our administrator and I will each have our own emphases.

For me, the most obvious example is, the report says the congregation thinks our worship life is going great and doesn’t see much need to devote time to its improvement. Me, I come back from sabbatical focused on how to use the coming years best with the worship service among the items at the top of my list.

Polly does such a great job finding music to fit a Sunday’s theme, I plan to do better at working farther ahead, so she knows more in advance what is coming, and so I can entice you all in the newsletter and the town paper with the topic I’ll be handling, and enlist our best story-tellers to contribute. We will never get it down perfect - at least I never will - but we can minimize the number of moments like happened at the service I was part of last Sunday in Toronto.

It was an installation ceremony as the minister finished his tenth year with the congregation, one he had started from scratch with just eight members, so they skipped the installation. Now they have 120, and they must have all been there, with family and friends. The place was packed. Congregations in Canada have chaplains, one per church, lay ministers who can perform weddings along with other pastoral tasks. We ministers processed and sat down, the chaplain rose to begin the service by lighting the chalice, then look up at the crowd and said, “Anyone have a match?” It took a few seconds, but there was a man who did.

Seriously, though, as a mentor of mine, the late Vincent Silliman, once wrote, “…The truth is that the Sunday Service, or its equivalent, is the central feature of the life of any church — not just a sermon, or a customary program, or the experience of being together for a purpose, but the whole thing. This fact is related to the make-up of human beings. For humans are unique among all creatures in their reliance on an inner life of purposes, evaluations, appreciations, and commitments. This inner life is what religion is. And it is for the cultivation of the inner life that church services are maintained: an inner life that is related in turn to our daily activities as individuals and as members of society.”

I want our worship to be the best it can be.

For one thing, it will make a difference when it comes to increasing the number of members, as the report suggests we do by 20-25%, a goal I find appealing and mean to work on in the years ahead. I am always happy to have someone new here to get to know, someone to add their point of view to the rich mixture of outlooks we so enjoy, a new personality, a new set of skills and interests and experience.

So I try to fashion my remarks from the pulpit with new folks in mind, but I’m sure I don’t always succeed. It’s important to talk with new people as well as friends during coffee hour, and to park so there are spaces for visitors close to the meetinghouse. There are some other creative ideas in the report, as you’ll see when the whole list is posted, like creating a mentor system for new families and individuals. And then just keeping newcomers in mind in any discussion.

I share the sense that many of you have, including Mary Kay, that all in all, as a congregation we are doing a lot of really good things. Come autumn, we’ll keep it up and with a little extra staff support, even do more. A bright future beckons.