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Lessons from the Church of Baseballby the Rev. Kerry MuellerService at UUCSS on November 7, 1999
Opening Words#442 "We Bid You Welcome" Opening Hymn #354 "We Laugh, We Cry"The Lighting of the Chalice and a Uniting StatementAs we gather here for worship, Song of ExaltationSince what we choose is what we are, Welcome and AnnouncementsChildren's Story"Sophia's Choice"Rev. Kerry Mueller Have you read this book? Parting Song for Children #413OfferingThe offering is a sacrament of the free church. It is supported by the voluntary generosity of all who join with us. The offering will now be given and received in grateful appreciation of our shared hopes and values. Sharing of Joys and SorrowsAt this time in our service we take a few moments to share what is in our hearts and on our minds. If there is an event in your life, or the life of the world, which moves you this morning to joy or sorrow hope or gratitude, I invite you to come forward and share a few words with us and move a stone into the water, letting the ripples remind us that everything that touches one of us touches all of us. If it is better for you, we will bring the microphone to you. [Sharing] Let us remember to hold in our hearts the joys and sorrows of the whole company of humanity, whether they are spoken and shared or silent and solitary. Meditation with Silence and With MusicLet us share now a few moments of silence. And in the silence may we listen for the deepest, stillest voice of holiness within. [1 full minute] Amen ReadingThe Choice to Bless the World by Rebecca ParkerYour gifts -- whatever you discover them to be -- can be used to bless or curse the world. The mind's power, the strength of the hands, the reaches of the heart the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeming, waiting any of these can serve to feed the hungry, bind up wounds, welcome the stranger, praise what is sacred, do the work of justice or offer love. Any of these can draw down the prison door, hoard bread, abandon the poor, obscure what is holy, comply with injustice or withhold love You must answer this question: What will you do with your gifts? Choose to bless the world The choice to bless the world can take you into solitude to search for the sources of power and grace; native wisdom, healing and liberation. More, the choice will draw you into community, the endeavor shared, the heritage passed on, the companionship of struggle, the importance of keeping faith, the life of ritual and praise, the comfort of human friendship, the company of earth, its chorus of life welcoming you. None of us alone can save the world. Together -- that is another possibility, waiting. The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will, a moving forward into the world, with the intention to do good. It is an act of recognition, a confession of surprise, a grateful acknowledgment that in the midst of a broken world unspeakable beauty, grace, and mystery abide There is an embrace of kindness, that encompasses all life, even yours. And while there is injustice, numbness, or evil there moves a holy disturbance, a benevolent rage, a revolutionary love protesting, urging, insisting that which is sacred will not be defiled. Those who bless the world live their life as a gesture of thanks for this beauty and this rage. AnthemSermonLiving from AbundanceRev. Kerry Mueller I used to attend interfaith clergy meetings in Reisterstown. Every time I parked my car at the Trinity Lutheran Church in their long narrow parking lot, I would look across to Van Dorn's swimming pool supply shop next door. And every time I saw that store, I experienced a little frisson of relief. It's an ugly little stand-alone brick building on a small lot on the main drag of Reisterstown. It's just right the right size for a pool supply store. And Van Dorn's gets along well enough with the Lutherans -- their main visitors come at different time of the week. But every time I saw it, I was reminded that some years ago, the UU's of Northwest Baltimore, now Cedarhurst, gave serious consideration to buying that building. And it just wouldn't have been adequate. Even the main space upstairs was too small. Downstairs, the RE space would have been cramped and dingy. And there surely would have been trouble with the Lutherans -- neither parking lot is big enough, but the brick building had almost no spaces at all. The pioneers at Cedarhurst had the vision and foresight to keep looking. The church -- then less than 60 members -- needed space to grow, space that would nourish their sense of beauty, space to house their religious education program, space to reach out to the community, abundant space in which to be a strong religious community. Two members went out driving around, looking for the right home for the church. And one day they found it, a charming red shingle building on four and a half acres, with a peaked roof and a cute front porch. Downstairs was plenty of room for four large classrooms and open space as well. It was owned by the Congoleum Corporation, which had used it as an employee clubhouse, but no longer wanted it. Three and a half years, $40,000, and an enormous amount of sweat equity later, Cedarhurst was a bustling congregation, leasing that building, filling it on Sundays, using it many other days of the week, hoping to buy it within the year. It was a risk. It is always a risk. You here at Silver Spring know that. You, too, have put your faith in your future as a religious community, and not just your faith, but your capital, and your labor and your years of hope and care for one another. Like Cedarhurst, you know that together you can do things you could not accomplish alone. You have made this beautiful space, you have lived these memorial quilts whose names you read out last week. You have taken care of one another in times of pain and grief, and you have celebrated your joys together. You have been through difficult times together, and stuck it out. Sometimes you have been haunted by uncertainty about your future together. And sometimes you have dwelt in a sense of scarcity. How will you manage to pay the mortgage and a full time minister? How will you invest in the children's future with full time professional religious education leadership? How will you reach out to the denomination and the world beyond these beautiful walls? How will you do it all? These are questions that invoke anxiety. This morning I want to talk about abundance. Abundance is the faith that together we can find enough, enough and more, to do whatever is worthwhile, whatever we truly want to do together. Living with abundance is living with a sense of generosity in the universe. It means being willing to be generous with one's own resources. And it means living with an expectancy that the world will be generous in return. Our Christian neighbors speak of abundance, and they mean trusting that God will provide. Most Unitarian Universalists would put it rather in terms of trusting each other. Abundance is being willing to give up solo control of some portion of our goods, to share control with our neighbors. If we pool our resources, if we trust each other to make good use of those precious dollars and even more precious hours of time, there is no limit to what we can do. Paying off the mortgage, paying just salaries to your employees, catching up on deferred maintenance -- these are not obstacles, or even goals, but intermediary steps. These are how you get to the place from which you will thrive as a true blessing to the world. Some years ago I read a science fiction book about the end of civilization in the form of a nuclear holocaust. (I have forgotten the name of the book or the author -- if anyone recognizes it, I would be glad of a reference) In the book, we don't actually see the bomb blasts or the immediate destruction (only the glow of a mushroom-shaped cloud in the rear view mirror of an escaping car). The story follows the fortunes of a small group of survivors, people unhurt by the bombs and thrown together almost at random. It happens that they have access to a sailboat and some supplies. Using these, they head for the southern hemisphere, away from the fallout. They have lived as secure North Americans, people of wealth and substance. At first they take comfort in this fact, and continue to act and feel like rich and powerful people, doing their best to isolate themselves from the destruction and poverty all around them. Slowly they realize that their credit cards will do them no good in the new world. By the time they reach the Caribbean, they understand that their American dollars aren't much use either. All their wealth now consists of the boat itself, and the weapons and beer and whiskey they have on board -- and themselves, their skills, their courage and their faith. Before too many weeks have gone by, they have met up with the fate of all refugees, facing hunger and illness. terror and real hardship in a world where all the old structures are gone. The mother in the group longs for a real grocery store, with a McDonald's next door. But those days are gone. Our group, acting from the ancient fear of the "other" treats all other groups as potential enemies, fighting several gun battles to stay alive. They manage to survive, and after many adventures, find themselves at the tip of South America on the island of Tierra de Fuego. The boat is broken up in the storm that brought them there. They are there for good, and they know in their hearts and in their guts, what it is to live with the expectation of real scarcity. But living from scarcity, hoarding and guarding their goods, isolating themselves from the poor people of the world, is what has launched the missiles of war, and landed them them to these desperate straits. The last scene in the book is one that puzzled me for years. Suddenly this band of hardy survivors takes up a new strategy. With the last of their ammunition they kill some game, enough food to last them for several days. But instead of hoarding their meat, they make a feast. They call to other people they find on the beach and invite them to dinner. They are betting all they have now on a new way of life. From now on, they will live from abundance, trusting that sharing will create a climate of mutual care. It wasn't until I myself was able to live consciously with that sense of abundance that the scene made any sense to me. They will trust that expanding their sense of "us" to include these strangers will in the long run be a safer strategy, one that will lead to greater prosperity for all. I've seen other examples of abundance in the years since I read that book. When I looked more carefully, I saw that abundance had been operating in my life for years, often without my noticing. Usually for us today, it is not so stark as giving away half of the last bit of food you may see for a week. But abundance is real. It must have been twenty five years ago that I began to realize a sense of abundance connected with my then mother-in-law. Irene was a generous person. She trusted me to make good use of her wealth. When I was the very young fiancee of her only son, she entrusted me with the diamond from her engagement ring, reset to fit my finger. For Christmas -- a holiday not in her normal repertoire -- she gave me a lacy white nightgown and peignoir, the sort of thing that every bride of that era dreamed of. When I graduated from college a year and a half later, she gave me a beautiful pearl necklace. But it was after several years of more routine gift exchanges that I noticed the abundance she built into the relationship. Sooner or later, whatever gift I gave to Irene, came back to me. I began taking greater care with my gifts to her. It is usual in this culture to operate out of a sense of scarcity. We tend to see limits, not possibilities. We tend to think about protecting our share of the pie, rather than thinking about how to grow the pie. There is always the temptation to try to insulate me and mine from the world, rather than to bless the world. In the last presidential election, there was a certain candidate who promises to build a wall around America. We may hear more from him again this coming year. There are plenty of individuals who would like to draw a wall around themselves, to cut themselves off from all the risks of being in community with other people. But hat we give to the world comes back to us. Do you remember hearing about an old lady who gave over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to one of the historically black colleges a year or two ago? I don't remember her name or the name of the school, but her story has stayed with me. This woman had worked hard for many years as a humble cleaning lady. It was not a high paying job or a glamorous career, but she got by. She lived modestly and saved her money. In her old age, she used that money in the best way that she could imagine -- she gave it to an institution that would improve the lives of generations of young people over the years. And when she died this summer, she left substantial legacy for that school. That is abundance. She made much with little, and gave that much to the greatest purpose she could think of. Sue Bender, in a lovely book called Everyday Sacred, gives another touching example of how our gifts return to us. She writes: I gave a talk to a book club in Oakland. All the members had lost their homes, lost everything in the terrible Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire of 1991. They lost pictures, mementos, diplomas, records -- the little and big things that made up their history and the history of their parents and grandparents. In another little essay, Bender recounts what she learned from her friend, Helen, who also lost everything in the same fire. After the fire one of the things that pleased me so much," Helen said, "was that all my favorite recipes came back to me. Just three days ago I went to a lecture with a friend and she said, 'Oh, I was thinking about you last night because I made your lemon ice cream." writes Bender. The echoes, indeed, seem magical. But the very act of giving is magical as well. Five years ago I went before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the UUA. This 45 minute interview would determine whether or not I could be ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister. It was a difficult and intimidating process. One of the things that made it easier was that the local UU theological students provided chaplains for the candidates. My chaplain was named David. He was a lovely young man, very kind and caring, and he tried valiantly to distract me from my anxieties. I was recalcitrant. He was the one person that day I didn't have to be nice to or have to impress. I continued to stew silently. But he was there, and I was grateful to him. Several years later, I had the opportunity to take my turn as the chaplain. It seemed only right to return the favor. The Committee was meeting at a hotel in Baltimore. I spent Monday of that week as one of the official chaplains. The scene was like a cross between a graduate student party and a wake. Since there were two panels and three time slots, at any given time there might be fifteen of us gathered in the lobby, candidates, partners, friends, and chaplains. One student might be off in the interview room meeting with the committee, one waiting to go in with the other panel, one waiting to hear the results of the interview -- that was the hardest time, like waiting for the jury to come back in -- and one or more elated -- or dejected -- candidates who had already been through the process. The chaplain's job was just to be there, to listen to anxieties, to receive snarls if snarling was what the candidate needed to do. I couldn't affect the outcome. I couldn't really do anything. It was hard work, just being there, but very satisfying. I met wonderful people, colleagues in the ministry now, people I might not have met otherwise. My gift of time to them was a gift to me as well. Indeed, I came back that Wednesday, although there were several other chaplains available. I needed to come back. On Tuesday, between the two days of chaplaining, I had spent the day in Philadelphia at the funeral of Irene, my former mother-in-law. It had been a hard day. I had driven some 200 miles all told. There was the sadness of Irene's death. And all the anxiety of spending the day with my former husband and his extended family. At the end of that long day I had to sit through an endless and frustrating church meeting. On Wednesday, it was a gift to me to return as chaplain to the UU students. The magic of that gift healed my weariness and brought me back to myself. What I had thought of as abundance from me to them, turned out to be simply abundance all around. We can always find plenty of opportunities for abundance in our lives. It takes a little courage, a little trust, and the hope of living more connectedly with the world around us. Today is the official beginning of the canvass here at Silver Spring. This pledge drive is the means by which this congregation raises most of the money that enables you to be a religious community. But you need more than a successful canvass. Because there's no point in being a religious community unless you act together to make the world a better place, both for the people within the church, and for the world beyond your borders. Perhaps you saw the article in the Washington Post Outlook section a month ago, a story called "Faith and Numbers" by Presbyterian minister Henry Brinton. He talks about tithing -- giving 10% -- recognizing that taxes, college tuition, Social Security and all the demands of life mean that few people in main line churches actually tithe these days. And he talks about the desire to support causes other than the church. Still, he writes, I can't help doing the math. If the average family in my parish makes $50,000 a year (probably a low estimate for two-career families, but high for retirees and recent immigrants), and if each family tithed 10%, our annual budget would be $1 million. As it is, we struggle to raise $200,000 a year. These numbers might not be so far off here at Silver Spring. Perhaps we're in good company. Brinton goes on to talk about what can happen to churches in an atmosphere of scarcity: Churches can so easily find themselves in a downward spiral: Cutting the budget back to necessary expenses, they create a poor environment for inspiration, including the inspiration to give. Then, with fewer financial resources, the church can do less and less, and before long members lose interest and the congregation begins to die. In those circumstances, the budget-cutting leaders are certainly being fiscally responsible, but what they end up doing is strangling the life of the church. Success, abundance, a vision of hope and commitment to the future. This church has done a great deal of good over the last five decades. Now is the time to assure the next half century. I have been hearing inspiring stories coming out of this canvass already -- one person who sees the canvass as an opportunity to examine money as an embodiment of spiritual commitment, another couple who decided to match last year's pledge even as their income freezes in retirement. These are examples of abundance thinking. Everyone needs to be generous. For those with small means, generosity may be a small amount of money, but it will be generosity nonetheless. For those with greater means, generosity will be a larger amount of money. If everyone is generous, rich and poor alike, the money will be there. The real question before you is "How do we need to bless the world?" What will true generosity of spirit enable us to do? What vision do we have of ourselves as a religious community? All right, let's trust each other, and find the resources together to make that vision happen. I won't be here next church year to take part in that vision. The vision is yours. Your settled minister will help you to realize it. But I hope that you will live from abundance and live out your vision of a thriving vital religious community. And when, from a distance, I see you growing and living from abundance and blessing the world, I will feel blessed. For you will have created abundance in my life. Hymn #131 "Love Will Guide Us"Closing WordsIf here you have found freedom, |