Today I conclude my ministry career. Although my ordination is for life and I’ll likely find small ways to serve as a minister in the future, today is the last Sunday I expect to preach from a pulpit of my own. I’ll offer an extended benediction, some “good words”, both for you at the close of this interim ministry, and for me, as our paths diverge.
Today is a triple ending.
The end of our church program year.
The end of this interim ministry
And, for me, the end of my professional career.
All will end in a half hour or so at the close of this morning’s worship service.
But we know no endings are truly final. Every ending is also a transition toward a new beginning. We close our eyes and we open them again. We stop to start. We set a dividing line between this and that to organize our days and years but as with all divisions in this seamless universe, our divisions are only acts of naming that the flow of space and time pays no heed to.
The church program year ends at the end of June, but the church year itself continues for two more months over the summer Sabbath and will lead to a new church year beginning in September.
The interim period we entered three years ago ends today, but elides directly with the contract ministry about to begin. Your new minister’s first workday is Tuesday, with only the gap of a single Monday between now and then.
And though I will conclude my professional career at the close of this morning’s worship, I will continue to be an ordained minister. I will retain my fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association. I imagine that there will be opportunities in my future to preach a sermon, or officiate at a memorial service, or fill in for a few months for a minister on sabbatical or maternity leave. After a sufficient break I may feel inspired to accept those offers. What I know I won’t be doing again in the future is filling a regular church pulpit as a regular minister.
Instead, I’m going to go back to pick up the work I was inspired to do with my life as a young man. I grew up loving art, and music, and literature. I read all the time. I played the piano at home. I played clarinet in school bands and orchestras. In 1980, I entered UCLA as a music major. I finished my college career in 1985 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in music composition from California Institute of the Arts.
The AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s and my desire for a secure middle-class paycheck led me in a different, and not unwelcome direction, but I’ve always retained my passion for the arts, and now that the paycheck isn’t important and I have some free time, I’m looking forward to creating a new chapter in my life as an artist, composer, and writer.
So today won’t be an ending, for me. Or for you, either. But it is a significant transition, for me, and for the church.
Today we part ways. I’m driving to Palm Spring tomorrow. The church will continue to cycle its way forward through the rest of this church year and into another, accompanied, as you have been many times before and not for the last time, by new leadership.
So as we look toward our parting later this morning, before the space widens between us, what should we say? With our work together complete, and our time together closing, how shall we bless what was, and how shall we bless our separate new beginnings?
All year, this year, I’ve been looking at the fundamental spiritual issues of theology, ethics, and church life and challenging myself to come to some final thoughts. I’ve been purposefully subverting the usual Unitarian Universalist preaching strategy of raising provocative questions, offering a range of perspectives from a variety of wisdom sources, and then leaving it to you all to figure out an answer for yourselves.
That’s the liberal approach to religious truth-seeking, to let the truth well up from the midst of all of our experiences and intuitions rather than privileging any one voice, neither mine, nor scripture, nor church tradition, nor anyone else’s.
But that approach is incomplete if it only ever leads to slippery questions and never pinning down personal answers. It’s always been my aim on Sunday mornings to send you home with something to think about, but also, hopefully, with some determination to settle that week’s question for yourself before I pose another one the following Sunday.
We need a firm foundation for faith to be useful. So this year I’ve tried to model a strong faith by sharing a little more openly my personal theology, hopefully as an invitation for you to be similarly bold in claiming your own faith answers.
It’s been a year of spiritual basics. Trying to distill down thirty years of thinking about these issues to the most essential and the most sure. And to look beyond some of the superstructure that gets built up as a spiritual life, and to expose the lower levels. What is a spiritual life built from? What’s at the bedrock that holds the whole thing up?
Today, as we reach the end of this sermon series, it seems called for to simplify even further. What is the foundation of the foundation? What is the base of the basic?
One of my earliest sermons, when I was first preaching, as a student minister in this church, was a sermon titled, “Why Join a Congregation?” with a question mark.[1]
I suppose, like so many sermons, I was really preaching it for myself.
Being new to church going again, I was trying to justify for myself my involvement. What was I hoping to get out of joining a congregation and a religious tradition? When nearly none of my friends or family members thought being part of a church community was necessary to their lives, and, in fact, quite the opposite, most of my friends and family saw churches as institutions that threatened healthy lives, what was I doing here?
For a person like myself: smart, a believer in science, dismissive of the supernatural, politically liberal, gay for God’s sake! What was I doing in a church?
The answer I gave to the question in the title of my sermon, “Why Join a Congregation?” is still the answer that I think is correct thirty years later, for me and for people like me.
Why join a congregation? Because, in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, you are surrounded by a community of people who aren’t you.
That’s really the key to what we do here. That’s the point. The bedrock of the foundation. The benefit of church at its most basic.
In a Unitarian Universalist church, you are surrounded by a community of people who aren’t you.
That’s the precious gift that we offer.
First, we offer community, and community connections of any kind are exceedingly rare in our not actually social, social media mediated, and constantly online but too seldomly in the flesh contemporary culture. Here we offer a real community of real human interactions. Handshakes, and hugs, and a cup of coffee from a shared pot, and a slice of cake from a shared sheet. We offer a community of folks who greet you eagerly when you’re here and notice when you’re not. We give you a place to wear that new dress, and speak up in a meeting, and contribute your money and time to a shared project, and if nothing else just to give you a reason to get off your couch and out the door once a week.
It’s sad, but it’s true, that all that is in short supply these days, and for lack of community our friends and neighbors are desperate and depressed and lonely, and as individuals and a culture, we’re making ourselves sick.
Now you could find community in dozens of other ways without coming to church. So though community is an important piece of the answer it doesn’t quite answer the question, “Why join a congregation?”
And here the answer most people think would be the answer actually isn’t the answer for Unitarian Universalists.
Most folks who don’t go to church think that the reason people who do go to church are going there, is because they’ve bought into the salvation scheme being offered and are afraid that if they don’t go to church now, they will go somewhere else unpleasant later.
I suppose that might be true for some folks who attend more conservative churches and other religious traditions, although I actually doubt that’s the primary reason for nearly anybody. In any case, that doesn’t give a reason to join a liberal religious church like Unitarian Universalism where we don’t even pretend to offer any assurance of salvation.
We don’t give you a ticket to Heaven. We don’t give you an answer to your spiritual questions. We give you a spectrum of answers and ask you to choose for yourself, which often just leads to more questions. You could read spiritual books from the library if you cared about those questions, or watch TED talks on your laptop, although that won’t satisfy your need for community. So what do you get from a congregation that you couldn’t get from a bridge club, or a hiking group, or from your best girlfriends and you having a regular brunch date?
And the answer, in a Unitarian Universalist church, is that you’re surrounded by people who aren’t you.
Think about the other kinds of communities you’re involved in, or that you see your friends involved in. They all tend to be groups of similar people. In fact, that’s what brings them together: their commonality.
My friends all tend to be about my same age. We like the same things and dislike the same things; that’s why we’re together. We tend to be about the same economic class. We share our politics within a small range. Parents tend to have friends who have kids the same age as their own kids. Single people tend to make friends with single people.
Of course, UUs share a lot of commonalities, too. There are limits to how radically diverse any cohesive community could be. But there is more diversity in this room then in any other context of my life, and probably yours, too.
We’re intentional about welcoming diverse beliefs, and boy do we have them. But think of all the other ways folks in this room aren’t like you: different ages, different lifestyles, different interests, different family situations, different jobs. Where would you ever meet those kinds of people outside of here? And why, if not for church, would you want to hang out with them?
And yet, because we do hang out with them at church, think how your life is enriched! Think of the stories you’ve heard. Think of the diverse experiences shared. Think of how your picture of what it means to be human in the world has increased depth and detail because of the people you met here who aren’t you.
And if, in the liberal religious method, we look for truth to well up from the midst of all our experiences and intuitions, how much closer do we get to the truth when we include more and more people who aren’t you.
Let me respond to what you’re probably thinking when I praise the diversity in our congregations, because we’re obviously not diverse in all ways. We’ve been trained to think of diversity only in terms of racial diversity, and clearly we aren’t that. We’re also monocultural in several areas like language, and style, and particulars that define us as Unitarian Universalists. In some of those areas we will never be diverse because that would require losing our identity. While in other areas, we would welcome more diversity, although I think we spend too much time fretting about it. But focusing only on those common characteristics of our congregational culture ignores the many, many ways we are diverse and ought to be celebrating the diversity we’ve achieved.
As Terry said in her welcome this morning, “You’ll find that you’ve entered a church where you are welcome regardless of your race, your economic situation, your faith background, your gender identity, your political affiliation, or your country of origin. We welcome all people of goodwill.”
As I look back over the thirty years I’ve been doing this job, I would say that my greatest success has been in attracting, building, maintaining, and growing, communities as diverse as we can make them gathered around a set of shared values and committed to a project of making lives of health and joy for ourselves, each other, and the world we share. And I have pushed hard to defend the treasure of our diversity when we slip into destructive thought patterns like, “That’s the way we do things here” or, “There’s no need to discuss the question because of course we all agree.” Or, “The UUA published a statement on that issue so everybody better get in line.”
No. Absolutely not. The liberal method requires that every sincere voice be given room to speak. When we insist that everyone here think just like I do then we lose the great gift of diverse community that makes joining a congregation worthwhile.
I think, broadly stated, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve made and strengthened communities. That’s what parish ministry is: community building, maintaining, and growing. I’m proud of that work. I think it’s good work.
And I think, as we turn now in different directions, that encouraging you to continue that work is what I want to leave you with, too.
My hope for you is that you will continue to put nurturing strong religious community at the center of the mission of this church. That is the best and most precious thing we offer here.
If people want to do charity work, they don’t have to join a congregation to do it. If people want to sing in a choir, they don’t have to join a congregation to find a place to sing. If people want a book club, or a movie night with friends, well all they need is friends, a book, and a bottle of white wine. If people want to join a protest rally about some political issue they care about there are numerous groups that will be happy to text you the time and place to meet up.
For those kinds of interest groups, folks come together and then they go away again without ever sharing any more of their lives than the common interest. But here, at church, we offer true community: community and…. Community and service. Community and music and art. Community and religious education. Community and organizing for greater good. Community and… is what we offer, but strong community comes first.
From your strong community, different church members will be inspired to express their faith in marvelous and varied ways. Some will march. Some will sing. Some will teach. Some will serve on the Board of Trustees, God bless them. But don’t let any of those folks passionately expressing their faith in the way that feels right to them convince you that their expression is the only way to express the faith. Or that their way to express the faith really ought to be the core of the faith for everyone.
Community is the core. The several ways that we express ourselves from that core is one of the diversities that makes a congregation valuable. You do your thing. Do it fully, well, and joyfully. And I’ll do my thing. And then we’ll come back together again to refresh our spirits in our shared community.
With that I will say goodbye, short for “God be with you.”
Farewell, meaning I wish that everything will go well for you as you move off away from me onto the next part of this church’s story.
So long. Adios. Sayonara. Ciao, baby.
On the first Sunday I was with you at the beginning of this interim, I sang the song from the film version of The Sound of Music, called “I have confidence”. I expressed my confidence in you, and in me, and in our ability to work together to heal from the past, rebuild the church, and make a success. I still have confidence in you and confidence in your future.
You know, from 1998 when I finished my internship at this church, until 2022, when I came back to this church as your interim minister, I watched this church from afar. I served my entire ministry career in the greater Los Angeles area, so I was never physically farther than a few dozen miles from here. And you were always in my thoughts. I knew your ministers. I heard your stories. I cheered your successes and I shared your pain.
I even came back, occasionally, for a guest sermon, or for a special event.
I’m imagining our relationship going forward will be something like that. I’ll be gone. But not really gone. This is an ending. But not completely an ending.
The sun comes up. The sun goes down. The seasons turn and spring gives way to summer and fall, then winter gives way to spring again.
In the story of my life, I’m ready to relax a little now and then start a new chapter. In the cycle of the church year, you’re ready to relax a little now, too, before you begin a new season of the church.
The time of rest between the turnings of day to day, week to week, season to season, year to year, or the turning of a page from one chapter of life to the next chapter of life, is called Sabbath. I wish you peace. I wish you rest. I wish you good Sabbath.
And in its time, when the time comes to take up again your good work of building, maintaining, and growing strong religious community. I will be wishing that you fare well. And praying that God be with you.
[1] It began as an article for the newsletter titled, “Why Be Religious?” A few years later, in 2001, I expanded my thoughts into a sermon with the new title.