Ministry

October 18, 2009

The Vision and the Act Reverend Don Vaughn-Foerster

Once upon a time a minister told his congregation that the church needed some extra money.  He asked the people to consider putting a little more than usual into the offering baskets.  He said that whoever gave the most would be able to pick three hymns.  After the baskets were passed, there was a $1,000 bill in one of them.  Excitedly, the minister said he would like to thank personally the person who had given that.  A quiet, saintly woman in the back shyly raised her hand and the minister asked her to come to the front.  When she got there, the minister thanked her and asked her to pick out three hymns.  Her eyes brightened as she looked over the congregation, pointed to the three most handsome men, and said, "I'll take him and him and him." 

Actually, this woman's response to the minister's offer isn't much different from the way people generally approach religion in its organized form.  Like her, many folks come looking for a religious setting that fits their own whims and personal desires.  From this standpoint, especially in the free approach of our Unitarian context, any organized form of religion tends to have as many facets as there are differing expectations and purposes among its members.  Some would have their congregation be mainly an institution with great civic prestige; others, a refuge, untouched by the distortions, fears, frustrations, and anxieties of everyday life; others, a clan of friendly, supportive persons or an ark to keep liberals afloat in a rising flood of dogmatisms and unreason, or a school to instill religious principles, or an agency to correct social wrongs and work for justice, or a platform from which to proclaim religious liberalism to the community. 

FUCV has - and should have - these many facets to some degree.  All are worthy goals and each person should be free to pursue those facets of their choice.  They are largely the reasons people join; and yet they are not the fundamental reason for this, or any, congregation's existence.  They are secondary goals and they tend to become unpersuasive if the deeper, primary purpose of religious organization is not observed. 

It's easy to lose sight of this primary purpose.  The secular world tends to minimize the depth dimension of organized religion while, at the same time, expecting it to be a vehicle for pursuing partial, secondary goals.  This turns the whole thing on its head and leads many people to view religious organizations as only a public means toward private ends. 

Besides, there is what I call the "self-inverting" dynamic - a process characteristic of almost anything people do.  By "self-inverting" I mean the tendency eventually to make a thing into its opposite.  This dynamic is glaring in the history of organized religion.  The Christian church, the model on which much of western organized religion is based, began with the vision of itself as a fellowship of equals based on self-giving love (i.e. koinonia based on agape) and as a place where its members gathered to worship "in spirit and in truth."    But, early organizational demands quickly led the church to create hierarchies that made self-giving love ever more difficult and cut a gap through fellowship, leaving the professional leadership on one side and the ordinary believer on the other.  The result has been a social institution that is not well understood anymore because of the way it is used more for its lesser functions than for its larger purpose. 

Too often this has been the fate of religion in its organized form.  People, who do not understand its larger purpose, tend either to use it according to their whim and immediate need, or to invest it with their private dogmatic ideologies, or to dismantle it.  They start with a creative, idealistic vision (perhaps) but end with a self-serving act.  Thus, organized religion has tended to become not a creative dynamic fellowship but a means for self-satisfaction and need-fulfillment.  In many ways it changed from being a motivating power into becoming a service station.  And, people "buy" things at service stations; they do not live in and "support" service stations.  A dynamic ideal -- one that leads toward understanding and cooperation -- can only be lived in and supported, not bought, or sold, or bartered. 

And yet, the original high purpose of organized religion hasn't been lost.  Actually, that purpose is becoming clear again in our time.  To caring observers it becomes even clearer as the acids of secularism and the dogmatisms of orthodoxy (the chaos of our age) eat away at religious organization.  They see it can be a genuine fellowship of equals who are committed to common values and who relate to one another on the basis of self-giving, self-revealing love.  It can be a place to pursue those impulses to be fully human that enable people to live in the world with one another, fully, responsibly, truly, and well.  In more metaphorical terms, it can be a cathedral of the spirit where our highest ideals and our deepest affections are better under stood and become anchored in our hearts and minds.  It can be where, as one of the major philosophical historians of the last century, Will Durant, said:  we "stand before the stars almost naked of supernatural creed and transmitted moral code," grapple with the chaos of the modern world, and rebuild civilization within ourselves. 

This is the vision (i.e. the larger purpose) that I see undergirding this church's secondary functions as institution, refuge, clan, ark, school, and platform.  It is what gives credibility to those facets of religious organization that members want to use (and are free to use) for their own purposes.  This vision enables this congregation, from time to time, to be less like a service station, doling out what people pay for, and more like an electric transformer, expanding and deepening the lives of those who come. 

So, when this (or any) church seems to lag and to focus on secondary matters, how do you bring it back into being this kind of cathedral of the human spirit?  There are at least three steps.  First, you must make sure that your own whims and desires do not blind you to this church's greatest value.  It's too easy to bog down in doctrinal differences, or to quibble over religious words and habits of celebration and/or worship, or to disagree over how to pursue social change.  If sight is lost of the grander vision of this religious enterprise as a primary means that frees us to be genuinely human together, the whole enterprise is relegated to only secondary importance.  Then, self-servingness and ego-centrism grow so that we stand even more naked before the stars. 

The second thing you need to do relates to your personal conduct with one another.  People tend to use, manipulate, or otherwise control one another so that others can be the means through which they get the group to do the things for them that they want it to do.  People try to make one another into conduits of their own satisfactions.  Oftentimes, in terms of enlightened self-interest, this works out fairly well and satisfactions are exchanged with one another - as long as everyone is willing to play the game -- i.e. to agree that only the secondary purposes are to be pursued. 

However, truly to enliven our minds and hearts and to promote love and understanding, this won't do the job.  It only barters our affections and our services with one another like marketeers.  Marketeers don't need to understand or to be understood.  They only need to make a sale, to effect an exchange of goods or services.  The deeper reality is that the ultimate basis of being religious together is to become not just seekers of satisfactions and need-fulfillment but rather givers of these things to others.  It has been said so often that it is trite (but it is still true):  "Ultimately, only as we give do we receive!" - because it is only as we make room within ourselves by giving that we can create a place within ourselves for what we receive.  It is the giver (not the receiver) who initiates the bond of fellowship, although it is the receiver's giving in return that confirms it.  If you want to be at home here, first help others to be at home here.  Otherwise, there is no home - only a public meeting place of self-concerned individuals and in-groups. 

The third thing you need to do to make sure this church is a true cathedral of the human spirit is to give flesh to its vision.  This means doing what you believe - making your ideals real in life, being true to your conscience in your actions.  This means doing practical, material things that make the liberal religious ideal actually alive and free. 

Since we are now into the pledge campaign for the next fiscal year, this has a special meaning.  It means making certain that the physical existence of this congregation is ensured - that its grounds, building and utilities, that its program, that its staff and its public face to the community are paid for.  Unless this is done, all other things said about free religion are only talk.   We must, in effect, put our money where our hearts and minds are.  We must provide well for the material success of our ideals. 

This is one of the unavoidable costs of freedom.  Unless there is a place to meet, you can't meet.  Unless there are program materials and leaders to work with, there is no program.  Free religion - certainly free organized religion - cannot be practiced unless its bills are paid.

Annually, at this time of the year, members and friends of this congregation are confronted with the challenge to provide enough financial support to make this enterprise work.  Inevitable questions are:  How do you value FUCV - what is its worth to you?  Where would you go if FUCV were not here?  What would happen to the influence of free religion on this end of the island be if this church were to weaken or disappear?  How can FUCV even exist unless all are in it together, unless all give as well as they can based on their need that this congregation exist?  

Nobody can or should set a dollar amount as the cost of membership.  That violates the first principle of a fair and free religion.  Yet, everybody who belongs has the responsibility of giving according to their means and according to the depth of their commitment to free religion.  Because everyone has different resources and different commitments, there is no way to average out such things.  There is only the ultimate practical test of whether both commitment and resources are strong enough to make this church an effective center of religious freedom. Jesus probably never said it, but his principle of "giving to others" implies it:  the Sermon on the Mount would never amount to much unless a large enough amount was given to keep its ideals alive.  Perhaps lost somewhere in the caves of Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, there is a sermon by Jesus entitled "A Sermon on the Amount."  If there is such a sermon, Jesus probably started it this way: "Disciples and Friends of the Spirit, money is a blessing that is of no advantage to us except as we part with it" - at this point he would probably be prematurely quoting Ambrose Bierce.  Then Jesus might continue: "On the subject of money, I have good news and I have bad news.  The good news is that there is enough money for us to support our program, pay our bills, and build a new wing on the temple.  The bad news is it is still in your pockets."

This church's ultimate function is to be the place where we are free to be ourselves-- our most human and humane selves.  It is to be a place where we can focus on what is most important and meaningful for us
and where we can exchange our energies and our spirit with one another.  It is to be a transformer generated from our own energies to confront us with ourselves, to inspire us to live the truth about ourselves, and then to provide that power of love and understanding which enables us to support one another.  In short, we come to this free religious organization to build our world together on moral and spiritual terms free of enervating dogmas.  And, when this happens within this congregation, it, necessarily, spills over to affect the world at large and to reduce to some extent, perhaps, the world's moral and spiritual chaos. 

Will this happen if we are not serious about having it this way?  This question reminds me of the story of Tommy, a little boy who was doing very badly in math.  His parents enrolled him at a Catholic parochial school in hopes that the school's structured approach would help him.  When Tommy came home after the first day, he had a very serious look on his face.  He didn't kiss his mother.  He went straight to his room and started studying.  After dinner he went right back to studying.  This went on for several days and he, soon, came home with an "A" in math.  His mother asked, "Tommy, what was it? ... the nuns? ... the books? ... the discipline? ... the uniforms?"  Tommy looked at her with a grimace on his face and said, "Well, on the first day of school I knew they weren't fooling around when I saw that guy on the wall nailed to the plus sign!" 

We don't have such motivating symbols here at FUCV, but we do have something more powerful than symbols.  We have the trust -- the good faith -- that we extend to one another when we walk through these doors looking for the genuine fellowship of equals who are committed to common values and to the reassurance of self-giving, self-revealing love and understanding.  We have our mutual commitment to one another to do the most we can to live a fully human life together.  We have the power to make our own miracle of loaves and fishes by giving of what we have to one another until what we create together makes our vision real.  When the story line of our book seems to lag, we have the power to write a new chapter.