First Parish Bedford UU

“A State of the Parish Address”

A sermon by Rev. John E. Gibbons

delivered on Sunday, January 24, 2010

at The First Parish in Bedford, Unitarian Universalist

Opening Words:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

—Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982

Reading:

Two summers ago, I traveled to northeastern Turkey for a walk in the Kachkar Mountains, a stretch of land between the Black and Caspian seas where the kingdom of Georgia flourished during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. During its brief ascendance in this part of the world, Georgia was a kind of Camelot, a Christian kingdom in which strong and benevolent rulers carved a culture out of the wilderness and defended it from its enemies. They imported Byzantine artists from Constantinople to adorn their public buildings, and built an economy that prospered all their subjects. Two hundred years later it was all gone, torn to pieces by neighboring tribes. Now it is a wilderness again, although a beautiful one—a kingdom of mountains, tall pines, and rushing streams populated only by the handful of people who have found flat pieces to farm.

One afternoon in the middle of nowhere, a guide led a group of trekkers up a dirt road toward a small settlement hidden behind some trees. We turned a bend and the outline of a ruined cathedral appeared, a huge gray stone church with a central dome that dominated the countryside. Grass grew between what was left of the roof tiles; () the façade was crumbling, but even in shambles, it spoke to us. The whole group fell silent before it, looking around for permission to enter, but no permission was necessary. It was a hull, a shell. No living thing remained inside, and we were free to explore…

It is one thing to talk about the post-Christian era and quite another to walk around inside it. Christianity died in Turkey—the land that gave birth to Paul and that he found so fertile for sowing of his gospel… The last Armenian baptisms were recorded as late as the 1890s, but today the Christian population of Turkey is less than one percent of the total. Churches that were the jewels of Byzantine Christendom have been stripped of their altars, fonts, and crosses. Many have been turned into mosques while others are open to tourists as museums and still others have been left to rot. Looking around that magnificent Georgian cathedral that had been abandoned for almost a thousand years, I imagined my own parish in its place: the beautiful wooden rafters rotted out and the ceiling collapsed, shards of stained glass hanging from the windowpanes, the carved stone altar removed to some museum along with the processional cross—vestiges of an ancient faith no longer practiced in the land.

Such a thing is not impossible; that is what I learned in that ruin on the hillside. God has given us good news in human form and has even given us the grace to proclaim it, but part of our terrible freedom is the freedom to lose our voices, to forget where we were going and why. While that knowledge does not yet strike me as prophetic, it does keep me from taking both my own ministry and the ministry of the whole church for granted. If we do not attend to God’s presence in our midst and bring all our best gifts to serving that presence in the world, we may find ourselves selling tickets to a museum.

From “A Church in Ruins,” by Barbara Brown Taylor

Sermon:

This is the season for state of the state and state of the union addresses. There’s a lot going on here at First Parish: Love, I feel, is still the spirit of this church and yet we are nearly convulsed by change within and about us. Your perceptions matter at least as much as my own, but once in a while I feel you’re entitled to my sense of the state of our parish. So most of this sermon will be my take on things.

But here’s the background:

In this, my 30^th year of ministry and my 20^th year in Bedford, I run a little scared. There are a lot of advantages to long-tenured ministers, but I also know that ministers can overstay their welcome. It’s not just that I am feeling longer of tooth than of hair (some of you, indeed, can recall when I wore my hair in a ponytail). It’s not just that Megan was, the other day, mistaken for my daughter.

Rather what’s ringing in my ears is the gospel of Satchel Page, you know, who said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” Or perhaps this is what someone should have been whispering to Martha Coakley.

This morning I am very aware and wary and realistic that things can and do change. Neither ministers, nor senators, nor churches are inevitably forever.

Standing amidst the ruins of that church in Turkey and pondering her own church and ministry, Barbara Brown Taylor concluded:

“Such a thing is not impossible; that is what I learned in that ruin on the hillside. God has given us good news in human form and has even given us the grace to proclaim it, but part of our terrible freedom is the freedom to lose our voices, to forget where we were going and why. While that knowledge does not yet strike me as prophetic, it does keep me from taking both my own ministry and the ministry of the whole church for granted. If we do not attend to God’s presence in our midst and bring all our best gifts to serving that presence in the world, we may find ourselves selling tickets to a museum.”

Besides that church in Turkey there really was a Universalist Church in New England that was famous for its baked bean and brown bread community suppers. The suppers were more popular than the Sunday morning services. Pretty soon the proceeds from the suppers were the church’s chief source of income and they increased their production capacity. And pretty soon after that they decided that the baked bean and brown bread business was a whole lot more profitable than the church business, so they shut down the church. And think of that the next time you enjoy your can of Friends baked beans and brown bread.

Of course, like software development and senatorial campaigns, it’s pretty darn difficult to prophesy and so-called futurists have a very dismal track-record. My favorite story of unanticipated change comes from my mentor Rabbi Ed Friedman who at one time during the Johnson Administration in the 1960’s oversaw some of the Great Society programs in the South. There in a small town in Mississippi, there was a popular southern cooking establishment that featured ribs and chicken fried steak and coffee so thick and strong that it was said to be able to “float a wedge.” The restaurant was also whites-only, racially segregated. Well sometime in the 1990’s Friedman had occasion to re-visit the area where he had worked decades before and, to his amazement, not only was the restaurant now integrated but most of the patrons were inter-racial couples! The real shock, however, was that the cuisine also had changed. No longer ribs and chicken, the menu now featured sushi!

We live at a time of unprecedented change. Virtually every institution – be it the family, the community, the government, the schools, the corporations, communications, entertainment (John played the chimes with the old tones of N-B-C!), the music industry, health care (thanks a lot #41), the butcher, the baker, the senator, the candle-stick maker…all have vastly and precipitously changed. The institutions of religion are no exception.

Don’t get me started about reading the wedding notices in the newspaper. (Newspaper? Remember? It’s that folded paper thing.) Every other wedding, it seems, is officiated by an internet-ordained minister of the Universal Life Church, or the Church of Do-it-Yourself Spirituality, or a one-day license issued by some bureaucrat for $25. Why should Megan and other recent theological school graduates rack up tens of thousands of school loans?

Theological schools of all denominations are drying up and blowing away. Our UU Meadville Theological School, once affiliated with the University of Chicago and which only a few years ago had plans for a multi-million dollar expansion has nearly succumbed to on-line distance learning and is reinventing itself as an affiliate of Megan’s alma mater Andover-Newton. Andover-Newton, which started in the early 1800’s as an orthodox alternative to the radical Unitarians at Harvard Divinity, my alma mater, now has more UU students than any other seminary and to survive is reinventing itself as a spiritual center for progressive Christians, Jews, Muslims and probably any other religious group whom they can attract to a strategic alliance.

Mainline Protestant and Catholic churches nationally and in Bedford are struggling, some are experiencing precipitous declines; and like many many other once-familiar institutions, some will indeed wither, dry up and blow away. It’s happening.

Yes, there are exceptions. I’ve told you about the Highrock Church on Mass Avenue in Arlington. It was a former Universalist church that closed, succeeded by a Greek church that later moved to larger facilities, it’s now home to a Christian evangelical “emergent” church that has three services every Sunday morning, rock band (they gave their organ – who wants it? - to Follen Church in Lexington), PowerPoint, free lunch continuously available; and at the service I attended there were nearly 200 people, 80% of whom were Asian and under 30. That’s an extraordinary demographic!

I’ve also told you that we have active parishioners here who, on Saturday evenings, go to the PubChurch on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston across from BU. It meets in a dive of a bar called the Dugout (as a student I had some familiarity with the place) and the PubChurch serves up poetry and music and sermon and conversation and a few cold ones. Theologically they’re Christian but in a way that is respectful and incorporating of Buddhist, secular, feminist, GLBTQ and diverse amalgamated identities.

UU’s are, in general, increasing in membership – though not as rapidly as the population at large; our “market share” (forgive me) is diminishing. Our own First Parish membership is steady with 357 adults but, due to deaths and families moving away, this is not an increase over last year. We need to grow and that’s why we continue to welcome visitors and encourage membership.

There’s a philosopher at Princeton named Kwame Appiah who says that what the world needs now are three things: cosmopolitanism, the recognition that no one value system meets everyone’s needs always and thus we need not just tolerate but cherish differences. Second, we need fallibilism, the “the sense that our knowledge is imperfect, provisional, subject to revision in the face of new evidence.” And third we need more contamination – yes, contamination!

Appiah cites Salman Rushdie as an exemplar of contamination and notes that the book that inspired his fatwa “celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotch-potch, a bit of this and a bit of that is – he says – how newness enters the world.”

Cosmopolitanism, fallibilism and contamination: hybridity, impurity, intermingling, new and unexpected combinations, mélange and hotch-potch. This is First Parish at its best! And if we are to survive and thrive we must continue to be agents of newness entering the world.

Therefore we cannot stand pat and be self-satisfied. We must be a continuous incubator of ways – old and new – of living our mission to promote lives of joy and meaning.

I use those words, by the way, “promoting lives of joy and meaning” because they are contained in a draft Strategic Plan that you will soon see, comment on, revise and, eventually, vote upon.

It directs us to such outcomes as First Parish being a stronger and more diverse faith community; that we will be a transformative presence with a positive impact on the world through service, activism and thought leadership; and that we will develop organizational physical and financial foundations needed to achieve our visions.

Throughout the draft plan there are specific measurable and achievable goals and initiatives, my favorite one of which is that “a certain percentage of the members of the First Parish community will find something to argue with in the Sunday service at least once a year.” I think we can accomplish that; no sweat. There are a lot of other things in it that may be more difficult to accomplish.

We must always be reaching, stretching, looking higher. Not to the point of fear or anxiety or loss of balance; but out of the status quo, out of our comfort zone.

That’s why we are experimenting with two Sunday morning services. How’s that going, you ask? Better than I feared. It’s not quite as crowded or as effervescent in here as it used to be; it’s also true that coffee hour is significantly more comfortable: you can have a real conversation. Scheduling our morning – the Lyceum, the discussion, the ushers, the coffee-makers – is more difficult; finding RE volunteers is actually somewhat easier as some will attend one service and teach during the other.

We are likeliest to continue with two services into next year but an evaluation process will begin this winter and spring. Lee Vorderer will be one leader of the evaluation; please speak with her or me if you’d like to help lead the process.

What about the proposed capital campaign that is recommended to you by the Board and which you will vote upon today? I strongly favor it; I will work for it and I will contribute to it. However, do not support it because I do! The only reason to vote in favor of it is that you believe in its goals and will – as you are able – contribute to it also.

I’m not chomping at the bit to raise money, but I do want us to have the accessibility, usefulness, attractiveness and safety that are essential for us to do our best work. Yes, my financial assets – while recovering – are still worth somewhat less than they were worth at their peak. My overall personal financial condition, however, is actually somewhat better than it was more than 10 years ago when the last addition was built. Back then I figured I could contribute about what a new car would cost me; this time, realistically, I think I can do better than that. Everyone’s circumstances are different.

The goals of the proposed campaign have been scaled back to what an independent analysis has told us we can afford; there’s no gilding of lilies or asking the impossible. We’re not talking about improvements that would be nice. In addition to replacing our elevator and doing necessary structural work, we are talking about deferred maintenance that makes possible the full utilization of our second floor. Were we to have a fully utilized second floor, for example, it is to me imaginable that we could add seating, provide coffee and congenial fellowship space and…perhaps, maybe, possibly… lessen our need for a second service.

But if we are to serve our people, we need accessibility, usefulness, attractiveness and safety. As always, I know, you’ll do your best.

In the current issue of our newsletter I observed that there are many activities that right now seem to be thriving at First Parish – and one characteristic of them all is that I had nothing to do with them. I always recall that when my father retired, he was given the newspaper with the gag headline: “Gibbons Finally Retires: Company Stock Soars!” Actually, I do not see a cause-and-effect and, indeed, many of the things I am involved with are also doing well.

In the newsletter, however, I pointed to Amahl and so many exceptional music events; the work being done with Iraqi refugee families; the upcoming trips for youth and adults to learn about homelessness in New York and our religious heritage in Transylvania; the growing number of off-site First Parish programs – at the VA, Carleton-Willard, members’ homes. I could also have pointed out the leadership that First Parish gives to the civic life of this community; to our UUA; to the UU Partner Church Council; to UUSC. Our impact is truly very wide and even global. The Lyceum has grown this year; the Haunted House was so popular it was nearly out of control.

Many many programs seem to have found a zone of self-sustained enthusiasm, what Mihaly Csikszentmihaly calls “flow.” I mention Csikszentmihaly because, were it not for our love affair with Transylvania and things Hungarian, I would not be able to pronounce Mihaly Csikszentmihaly! It’s worth a sermon in itself, but flow is the result of many things – among them autonomy, mastery and purpose. The autonomy of being able to do things the way you want to do them. Mastery in the sense that you’re actually learning something, improving oneself, making a difference. And purpose, the conviction that we are part of something meaningful and larger than oneself.

The state of this parish is in a state of flow, but in all we do we need to maintain grassroots autonomy (top-down things, be they capital campaigns or matters of belief do not fly well around here); we need to feel like we’re learning, improving, making a positive impact; and we need to know our purpose.

After one of the performances of Amahl, I was approached by someone who comes here once in a while. She’s attended other churches and elsewhere she says she occasionally but rarely feels love. Here, she says, she feels love – not always – but often.

We do not feel love when dirty dishes are left in the kitchen sink or towels or tablecloths. We do not feel love when a few people carry a lot of weight to make an Amahl or a Haunted House or a film or a concert series or a committee meeting or a lot of other things while others are slow at best to commit. The personnel committee, the physical plant committee, the hospitality committee, the finance committee – and others – could use a little more love.

In this state of the parish address, I want to say a little bit personally. This ministry remains challenging, satisfying and the greatest privilege of my life. There is nothing else I would rather do….in part because you let me run, dance, hop, skip and jump with the flow of my energies. You let me experience autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Most recently, you know, your encouragement led me to the board of the UU Service Committee. Their human rights work is energizing and profound. Then, about 10 days ago, UUSC’s president Charlie Clements announced that he will soon leave UUSC to take the helm of the prestigious Carr Center for human rights at Harvard’s Kennedy School. This is great for Charlie and, as a strong organization, UUSC will stay strong.

As the Board chair, however, I was then asked if I would be acting president until the permanent position is filled; alternatively I was asked to consider the permanent position. I submit proof positive of my mental health that absolutely I will do neither. I cannot and I really don’t want to. The flattery is nonetheless appreciated. Nonetheless, in the interim, working with the COO and whoever does become acting president, I will share responsibility for the management of the agency. As a result I must be in at UUSC’s Cambridge headquarters with some regularity; I may need to travel and speak to donors and congregations and, we’ll see, visit our partners in Haiti or elsewhere.

When thinking about Satchel Page’s “don’t look back” quote, I came across a few others of his gems:

“Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.”

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”

"Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching."

"You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them."

I invite you to pray with me now because the sun is still shining on First Parish.

I don’t know how old we are; let’s act like we’re still young for love and for justice.

I don’t know how much you pay me. If I have trouble putting food on the table I’ll let you know. Despite it all, I love you still. We could use a few more dances around here.

We’ll win; we’ll lose. We’ll get rained out. I will and I hope you will get up and dress for as much as you possibly can. It is my greatest privilege to serve you.