November Theme: Trust To Boldly Go When That Leap of Faith Calls Sunday, November 8, 2015, 11:00 a.m. 12:15 p.m. Call to Worship Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones What does it mean to take a leap of faith? Whenever we live into something new, which is always risky and uncertain, we take a leap of faith. We can t completely know where we will land. We take a leap of faith when we move into each new phase in our lives: every time we start a new school year, take a new job, or leave an old one; every time we fall in love or fall out; every time we parent or care for a child or say good-bye to one. A Leap of Faith. For that matter, we take a leap of faith every single time we get up and face a new day. A poem by Aryanto Nugroho captures what I m reaching for with this phrase leap of faith. When I reach out to Aryanto, my new Facebook friend just this week, he writes back: I m happy that my writing can be used for a worship service faraway from Indonesia. Please also send our greeting and friendship to your congregation, a friendship from Unitarian Christian Church of Indonesia a church Rev. Aryanto started with a small group of people 20 years ago, now with over 500 people in four cities. That was a leap of faith! So here is Rev. Aryanto Nugroho s poem: A Presence summoned hearts from all ages, whole, holy. They answered the summons humbly, to find Light. They saw, tasted, and lived the sparks, and proclaimed the brilliance to the shadows. They did not brag of prosperity, nor tout their shining intellect, nor use some mighty gift of power. Simplicity of heart was their only gift.
Now the summons sounds again. A still small voice for singular people, whose honest hearts opened, filled with love for neighbors, which is love for God. Do we hear the still small voice? Can we respond with our lives? Will we join the gathering ranks to reflect the Light of Presence into a confused world? Do we hear the still small voice of whatever it is that is calling to us now? Can we respond to that call with our lives with broken-open wholeheartedness? Will we join the gathering ranks to reflect the Light of Presence into this confused and hurting world, to make Love visible again and again in large ways and in small? What kind of trust does it take to say Yes, yes, oh yes! to these questions? Welcome to worship! Would Lydia Tan and Nilesh Mudupalli come forward to make some light for us, as they light the chalice, the symbol of our far-ranging Unitarian Universalist faith? Sermon What Do We Do When a Leap of Faith Calls? Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones Trust our theme for this month of November What kind of trust makes it possible for us to take a leap of faith? To move into that moment, or that season, when we decide to boldly go, maybe not where no person has ever gone before but where we have never gone? And remember, we re talking about the big leaps like moving into a new calling, a new relationship, or ending one, like learning to live without someone we love maybe some beloved represented here on our Día de los Muertos altar and the not-soobvious leaps, like getting up in the morning committed to living this new day as fully as we can. Like facing growing older, no matter what age we are now. What kind of trust makes it possible for us to take all these ordinary and extraordinary leaps of faith? Now, one definition of the word faith is trust, so the two are already linked. But I m puzzling over how to tease out and touch the trust that we need to make a leap of faith partly because I am blown away by some recent examples.
Just a few weeks ago on October 18, almost exactly 20 years after this congregation survives a massive fire, we have fire trucks parked out front and here in the sanctuary, fire chiefs and fire fighters and long-time congregants and brandnew congregants and our city councilmember and other special guests and it is one whopping great service and party. Toward the end of the service, we call onto the labyrinth everyone who helped fight the fire, and rebuild after the fire, everyone who painted or cleaned or suggested we put a labyrinth in the middle of our sanctuary, everyone who showed up for worship when we were wandering in the wilderness of athletic clubs and senior center cafeterias, everyone who gave a dollar or mortgaged their house to make a contribution. When all these people come down, the labyrinth is overflowing, and I think, This is Love made visible this leap of faith these folks take to save not just the building but the church, so that we can all be here today, honoring yet another group of folks who take a leap of faith 150 years ago to start this whole ball rolling. What makes these leaps of faith possible? A hunger and a longing, a need, for this kind of community those people simply couldn t not do it/start it/build it/save it. A love for a place, and for this endeavor, which binds people together through difficulties that could have torn them apart. And not the least, a trust that they could do this amazing thing and underneath that, a trust that even if they don t succeed, it is worth trying. A trust that taking the risk, moving into the journey, is the way into more Life. I bet that the author of our Story for All Ages, Misty Copeland, as she takes her leap of faith into becoming a ballet dancer, is also fueled by a hunger, a need she can t not do it and by love for her art and her tribe, and by trust that she just might succeed and even if she doesn t, it is worth trying because dancing, at whatever level, means more Life for her. Because you see, even when one of our leaps feels like a failure as in a marriage that ends or a career that doesn t work out the trust that that leap is and has been in the direction of more Life can help us leap right into the next new lifegiving change. So I m puzzling over this intersection between trust and a leap of faith because I am blown away by such examples. And also because I m in the middle of a leap of faith myself right now. Now, most of you know that, with my co-author Karin Lin, I am writing a book. Almost two years ago, I get a kind of summons from leaders at the Unitarian Universalist Association, who ask me, and then Karin and me, to submit a book proposal about Unitarian Universalist congregations on the road to building multicultural Beloved Community. My own life story and my faith create a hunger, a love, and trust in this project. I have a deep trust that our religion and these times we live in demand that we create loving, committed communities that embrace all
kinds of difference and that acknowledge and deal with unearned privileges and unjust oppressions, especially in the persistently stuck areas around race and ethnicity. So I take a leap toward something I have been preparing to do all my life. Every time I turn toward this project, I feel that great yes that says, no matter what the end product is, no matter how wavering my confidence in my capacity (as primary writer) to tell these stories with all the vividness and meaning that we imagine, still writing the darned thing is the way to more Life. But that s not exactly the leap of faith that I want to share, literally share, with you. [come down from pulpit] Because the bigger leap of faith is that you and I can discover a way of ministering together that makes writing the book possible (for me) while ensuring that this community thrives (for all of us). And I really do think that this way of ministering together applies to all of us you who are new today, who may be visiting for just one time, and you who have been here for years, and everything in between. Because it s about a way of life, a way of mutually caring for each other that can deepen right now. See, back when I get the contract for the book and I add this project which could be its own full-time job to my already overwhelmed schedule, I don t do that thing everyone says you have to do: give up something in order to make time and space for it. Instead, we keep adding like our much much deeper and more influential presence in our wider community, which is timely and important. I love all aspects of this ministerial calling, most of all getting to walk through life with you how can I restrain any of it? But I can see now that I am just on the verge of or maybe a little beyond the verge of falling flat on my face. Wanting and needing to get the writing done collides with wanting to show up in full force for you. Brené Brown, that guru of vulnerability, says in her book Rising Strong that falling flat on our faces is inevitable once we choose to take any one of those leaps of faith we ve been talking about. Falling flat doesn t mean we are doing something wrong. It means we re trying something new, as we must if we re to live. It means that now we ve got a new perspective. Now we can learn, and rise stronger from the falling. Brown says that rising strong from falling takes a few key things. We ve got to feel all the feelings name them, welcome them, hold ourselves gently with them. So: I m terrified! Terrified that I won t be able to write this thing the way I envision it, or that it just won t get done and terrified that if I schedule all my mornings for writing, then I won t be ministering well enough with you, and folks will, pardon my language, get pissed off, and I ll end up on the streets without a book or a job!
Brené Brown says we should be honest about the whole sordid story we tell ourselves when these feelings of falling flat get stirred up. Because our stories come from our fears, not our deeper trust. So I m also embarrassed. Embarrassed that I didn t figure this out sooner. Embarrassed about overfunctioning. Embarrassed by my perfectionism. And embarrassed that I don t have more trust Embarrassed that it s taken me so long to ask for your help. Because if we are to rise strong, we have to ask for help. We have to trust that those we are asking will do their best, will set their own good and healthy boundaries, and will stay in relationship even when they can t meet another s need. The bottom line, Brown writes, is that we need each other. And not just the civilized, proper, convenient kind of need. Not one of us gets through this life without expressing desperate, messy, and uncivilized need. Part of what we do here in community is respond to each other s needs. These needs can be big and messy, or they may be small and relatively convenient. We re here to respond, to the best of our abilities and within our good and healthy boundaries, to each other s needs to belong, to feel worthy and loved, to learn and grow and change, to break bad old habits (like overfunctioning and not asking for help), and to make Love visible in our lives, in this community, and in the world in which we live. Sometimes that means helping another to pay the rent, sometimes it means sitting with someone when we re grieving or anxious, sometimes it means showing up to support change at City Hall. So, what kind of help do I need? I need to know that even more of you will show up for each other and help to carry our caring ministries when I need to put those hours elsewhere. Join the Caring Hands group you can do that at the Pastoral Care table during Social Hour. Reach out to each other, ask each other caring, curious questions, and listen there are more crises in our lives than are visible. Invite new folks out to lunch and hear their stories; new folks, invite longer-term members out to lunch and hear their stories. Notice who s not here; reach out to homebound folks pay visits, make phone calls. Create more parties come on November 22 not just to sing but to ask what other people are grateful for. Show up next week, because it s Diwali, and because Karin Lin will be here. Sign up for Beloved Conversations, when we get the winter-spring schedule together, so that we can continue to create the story of our multicultural Beloved Community. Figure out a way for us to partner with others around climate disruption! Share the ministry it is yours as well as mine. Be mindful. Break old awkward hurtful social habits. Love each other. Be yourselves. Let me, let us all, know what you re glad about, as well as what you need.
And in midair, in the very midst of this leap of faith, let us all remember: we don t have to shine. We don t have to be anything close to perfect. We just need to show up, our ordinary selves, with simplicity as our gift, and be willing to take the next leap of faith together, as Life calls us on.