Thriving People/Thriving Church Stewardship Sunday, February 28, 2016

Transcription

1 Thriving People/Thriving Church Stewardship Sunday, February 28, 2016 Last October over Columbus Day weekend, while Eliza Blanchard was preaching here, my family traveled north to Southwest Harbor, Maine, to spend the weekend with friends there. We hiked in Acadia, kayaked on Echo Lake, and roasted marshmallows over a bonfire. Those were all fun things we d done before on visits to Sarah and Doug, so we were expecting these activities and expecting to enjoy them. What we didn t expect was Sunday breakfast at the Common Good Café. When we planned the shared meals for the weekend, Sarah and Doug told us not to plan for Sunday breakfast because we d go out for popovers. Chuck and I were not looking forward to this. We re not big popover fans. I m a coffee and yogurt person. Chuck likes his oatmeal. But everyone was going, and Miles and Oliver wanted popovers, and I needed my coffee, so along we went. That breakfast turned out to be what impressed us most that weekend. Yes, they only serve popovers, coffee, juice, and it turned out oatmeal (so Chuck was happy), but it wasn t the freshly made popovers and actually good coffee that made the breakfast special. It was the community. We learned that the Common Good Café is a community project all summer long volunteers gather early each morning to bake the popovers and brew the coffee and serve them to tourists, summer people, and residents. There is no fee for the breakfast you donate what you want in return for what you eat. Since our boys ate nearly 10 popovers between them, we gave a pretty generous donation! The donations fund the winter programs, November through April, when the summer people and tourists have gone. In those months, when many people are out of work and feeling isolated, the Common Good volunteers feed their neighbors. They offer weekly dinners, open to anyone and pay-as-you-can. They prepare extra food which they take to people who can t get out. Monthly they hold a cabin-fever night with dinner and live music and activities for children and adults. They sponsor healthful cooking classes too. Their mission is to provide a community gathering place, education about food and nutrition, and meals that are truly delicious and nutritious, utilizing local ingredients whenever possible, and to have volunteers of all ages, from all walks of life, not only serve the larger community but form a cadre of committed souls who radiate goodwill among themselves and beyond. Bank presidents, film makers, carpenters, fishermen, mechanics, farmers, homemakers, college students, high school dropouts, young moms & dads, teachers, persons being rehabbed via community service, physicians, special needs students from MDI High School: they all come together to chop, peel, stir, serve, clean, and make it happen. The morning we visited was their last Sunday serving breakfast. Most of the tourists had gone and you could tell that it was mostly residents or long-term summer people, like our friends, who were closing up their houses for the season. People knew 1

2 each other, greeted each other, greeted strangers like us, made room for us at their tables, and explained how the system worked. We were already enjoying ourselves on the popovers and the energy of the room, when something we hadn t expected happened. Around the room individuals began pulling out instruments from under their seats or from where they leant in a corner: guitars, banjos, fiddles, ukuleles, and even a washboard bass appeared. Their owners gathered in front of the big window and began to play. More people came in with their instruments until 25 musicians were squeezed together playing the old songs. Sometimes people sang along to There Are Places I Remember, I ll Get by as Long as I Have You, or Michael, Row the Boat Ashore. At one point Oliver leaned across the table to me and said, This feels like church! Yes! I said. Church? you may be wondering. Yes, Oliver was stuffed with popovers and homemade Maine-blueberry jam and you were pleasantly caffeinated and enjoying the old familiar songs, but how is this church? There was no organ music, no seated-inrows congregation, no hymns, no prayers, no sermon. How was this like church? It was like church in the sense of welcome, of being part of something greater than our individual family, the sense of joy, and of being fed. That musical breakfast at the Common Good Café and our Sunday worship and fellowship time at First Parish share the characteristics of what sociologist Ray Oldenburg termed a third place. In his theory, home is our first place and work is our second place. Home and work are both isolating in our homes we congregate with our family, in our workplaces with our colleagues. The third place, in contrast, provides a space to come out of our limited circles and meet people we otherwise wouldn t know. As in the Common Good project, where doctors and carpenters, teachers and students, married people and single people, homemakers, bank presidents, and recovering addicts come together to feed others and be fed themselves, so too in our congregation. The other characteristics of a third place are: it is on neutral ground a place where anyone is welcomed but no one has to be there. It doesn t matter who you are people of all races, classes, social status, educational levels, and political parties are welcome. Conversation is the main activity people are there to talk and to listen, not to lecture. Wit and wisdom are valued. People are kind; conversation is never hostile or mean. No one stereotypes others as those new people or those oldtimers. Third places have regulars who set the tone, and by their aforementioned warmth, wit, and wisdom attract and acclimate newcomers. Third places aren t about the building. In a third place form follows function the space is clean and accessible and contains what is needed for the community which congregates there to thrive. 2

3 Finally, a third place feels like your home away from home. You feel rooted and spiritually renewed when you spend time there. Your children are comfortable talking with any adult because they know they are cared for. Adults are curious about and supportive of one another regardless of age or friendship level. When you are there, you are happy and at home. We all need a third place in our lives for us and our society to flourish. Without these spaces, we only get to know people who are like us. Think about your friendships in this church. How many of you feel connected to someone you never would have met if it weren t for this community? How has that connection changed your understanding of yourself and of our society? Do you find yourself thinking differently about health care, end of life issues, parenting, or age? Did your views expand by getting to know someone who grew up UU or Catholic or Jewish? Have you started meditating because of someone you got to know? Gotten involved in a service project through someone else s passion for it? Learned to knit or use a saw, to make jam or chili or chowder? Would you be you without your third place? And research has shown that though we can find third places in bookshops or barber shops, coffee houses, cafés, and community centers, the connections made through religious communities are especially strong and nourishing. Sociologist Robert Putnam (known for his book Bowling Alone) and his colleague Chaeyoon Lim, have produced research showing that the more church friends a person has, the happier he or she is. Church friends are super-charged friends, but we have no idea why, Putnam said at a conference on religion, well-being and health. People who frequently attend religious services are more satisfied with their lives not because they have more friends overall (when compared with individuals who do not attend services) but because they have more friends in their congregations. But churchgoing alone without making friends does not improve well-being: sitting alone in the pew does not enhance one s life satisfaction. Only when one forms social networks in a congregation does religious service attendance lead to a higher level of life satisfaction. (And if you need more encouragement to be part of a religious community, a Gallup study found that people who said religion was an important part of their daily life and participated often, whether in a mosque, synagogue, ashram, or meeting house, were much less likely to smoke and more likely to exercise and eat five fruits and vegetables a day! Look at all healthy options we had at last night s supper!) Though Putnam s research hasn t determined the why for the special benefits of church friendships, I would guess that the benefits are connected to the way church friendships broaden and deepen us. They connect us with others who desire meaning and purpose in life, so presumably they help us to bring more meaning and purpose to our lives. Through these friendships we are more likely to consider what it means to be human, our relation to the universe, and how we are called to serve. And because these friendships aren t based in our having 6 th graders or playing hockey or having served in the army together but in being human together and sharing questions of what it means to be alive and yet know we will die, these friendships ground us in ways others based in shared circumstances may not. 3

4 So how has First Parish helped to assuage your thirst? What were you thirsting for when you first showed up here? Can you remember? Was it knowing you are not alone? Was it a community of people exploring the meaning of their lives? Was it a way to make a difference in the world? How has the water you found here changed you? Have you grown and expanded like the sponge I showed the children? Are you offering water to others? Today we are celebrating Stewardship Sunday when we talk about our financial commitment to the church. Sometimes when we do that we get stuck in the details how much for copy paper? Why should I pay for that? Couldn t they recycle more? And while the details are important that s not what this effort is about. The church doesn t exist to keep up this beautiful building, no matter how historic; it doesn t exist to pay my salary, Beth s, Jackie s, and Donna s; it doesn t exist to educate our children. As Khoren Arisian said, the church exists to transform people s lives and to help them transform the world around them. The church exists to offer water to the thirsty. And our building, our education program, our worship are all about that. We fund them to help make that transformation happen. As Isaiah wrote thousands of years ago, the water that we offer here does flow without cost. We catch the spirit here. We could do that without a building, a minister, a music director, a religious education director, or a parish administrator. We might even be able to do it without that copy paper. But we wouldn t have a place to gather, people who spend their time thinking and planning ways to offer water, as well as offering it themselves and helping others to offer it. You could say that our financial contributions fund the wells we use to find and bring forth our water. And the question of stewardship invites us to see ourselves not just as stewards of money, but as stewards of water. Can we be like the woman at the fountain in Denise Levertov s poem, making sure that others drink their fill? Can we help others to know that water is still there and always there/with its quiet song and strange power/to spring in us,/up and out through the rock? How might we do that? How might we invite others into this third place which we have formed and love? Think about our dinner last night, when people were invited to talk about meaningful times in their lives and the power of those shared stories how might that kind of conversation offer water to our neighbors? After I talked in a sermon about bean suppers to bring people together in the Scituate community, I learned that in different pockets around the church, you d been talking about that idea too. And when I wrote about that in the Mariner s clergy column, I got more feedback on that column than I ve received for any other one. In the library and in the yoga studio, people talked to me about it. Is that where water is needed in Scituate? Do we look at the programs we already offer concerts and adult spiritual deepening and figure out how to make them more welcoming and more connecting? Where is water needed here? Who are the thirsty and how can we help them? For as you have found here a source of the water which solaces the dryness at our hearts, through a well dug by the generations which preceded us in this place and in our tradition, so let us ever continue to maintain that well for the future. Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink, and be whole again beyond confusion. - Pamela M. Barz 4

5 Call to Worship: Hear these words from the ancient poet and prophet Isaiah (55: 1-2a) Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? And these words from the modern poet and prophet Robert Frost (Directive): Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion. The Fountain by Denise Levertov Don t say, don t say there is no water to solace the dryness at our hearts. I have seen the fountain springing out of the rock wall and you drinking there. And I too before your eyes found footholds and climbed to drink the cool water. Readings: 5

6 The woman of that place, shading her eyes, frowned as she watched but not because she grudged the water, only because she was waiting to see we drank our fill and were refreshed. Don t say, don t say there is no water. That fountain is there among its scalloped green and gray stones, it is still there and always there with its quiet song and strange power to spring in us, up and out through the rock. Khoren Arisian, the former minister of the First Unitarian Church in Minneapolis, wrote these words on What is a Church? : If a church is just its minister, then it is only another preaching station. If a church is just a school of religion, then it is only another educational agency. If a church is just a series of programs, then it is only another discussion club. If a church is just another institution whose budget is adequately supported, then it is only another piece of social lumber, and tax-free at that. If a church is just a series of potluck suppers and bazaars, it is only an imitation of more effective organizations 6

7 A true church, then, is more than the sum of its parts. It is more than its building, or its budget, or its minister s sermons. A religious society, in short, is more than its audience; it is a congregation of people who care for one another and for the vital issues of their common life. Only then does the institution of the church become human. 7