A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church
October 24, 2010

What do you see in this painting? (People answered this question aloud as I carried a framed print around the meeting house so that they could see it. To see it on-line at http://www.bernardhoyes.com/shop/bh-soe-sancitified-joy.htm)  

I see vivid color, movement, rhythm, and entrancement; an interior, but collective  experience. The painter, Caribbean-American artist Bernard Stanley Hoyes, gave it the title “Sanctified Joy.” About it, he says, “The ritual of being sanctified, knowing one is cleansed of earthly despairs, knowing one is in full harmony with one’s God, singing and chanting in unison.” 

I hung this print on the wall of my minister’s study in the first weeks of my first settled ministry and I have hung it wherever I have served since, including here, in my office over in the Religious Exploration Building. Why? I was first attracted to it because it reminded me that there are other ways to worship than how we worshipped in our 1825 meetinghouse with its original wooden pews and high pulpit, and 1875 stained glass windows. And, it was good to be reminded of who was missing in our pews:  most of our people, with only a few exceptions, were many shades lighter than those of these worshippers. The painting inspired, and humbled me, to be reminded of these differences. 

I still love the painting’s vibrant hues, the drumming, the dancing, the strong women’s bodies – its energy.  Over the twelve years I’ve owned this print, it has become for me a sign or symbol pointing us to what we might be. Not that we should be its replica. We don’t want to be mono-culturally dark-skinned, nor all female. 

And, I hope we experience more emotion than these faces show. I hope we laugh, cry, whisper, shout, dance, drum, stomp, skip, bemoan, praise, ponder, brood, pray, meditate, learn, love, forgive, and become emboldened together. In short, I want our worship to be soulful. A few weeks ago, in my sermon about our Unitarian Universalist movement, I said, “If we got our heart from the Universalists and our mind from the Unitarians, now that they’ve been together so long, let’s get some soul!” 

There’s a few challenges inherent in this vision, though. One of them is me. I tend to be calm, warm, but somewhat cerebral. People have appreciated that about me, especially when their own lives feel anything but calm. I’m solidly grounded. But, I’m somewhat reserved. People have appreciated that, too, when their image of a religious leader is “in your face” or “fire and brimstone.” But, I’m not fluid or limber, physically or emotionally. I’m not a natural dancer. I’m a thinker. I was raised in a serious family. That’s somewhat inhibiting to passion!

Well, challenges are good for me and change is possible, necessary even. I’ve been working on it. Back when I first hung this painting, I used to resist the idea that preaching was a performance because authenticity was more important to me than effective delivery. But over the years I came to know that the delivery is only the vehicle for an authentic message. A couple years ago, I took an acting class and hope to again. Now, I work more on my delivery than I used to, so I can loosen up. I hope to preach from notes or even by heart someday, rather than from a text. I want to expand my comfort zone. I have to realize, it’s not about me; it’s about how we can best fulfill our mission as a faith community. If that requires me to change, well, so be it. 

You might have to be open to change too. 

I’ve already discovered that for the most part you are. In my first just over one year of ministry here, we have tried quite a few new things in worship and I thank the Worship Associates for their involvement, creativity, support and sometimes acquiescence. 

The most noticeable, well-received change is that the children and youth are with us for worship in the Meetinghouse every Sunday, for the first fifteen or so minutes except for All Ages Sundays (like next week) when they are here for the duration. We have the gift of being a multi-generational community and worshipping together at least for the start of the service helps us to more fully experience that gift. Also, it is much easier for families to arrive when they know where they are going, unlike before when it changed week to week it seemed.

So, when there is a Together Time, we are trying (with varying degrees of success) to make it be, truly, a “time for all ages,” enjoyable for all and with levels of meaning apprehendable by the youngest, young teens, older teens, and adults of various ages and places in life. I promise you that your Interim Director of Religious Exploration and I review the Together Time shortcomings each week, pressing ourselves to learn from experience. 

Some of the other changes have followed closely after that one, for the benefit of not only the children. The processional with the gong-ringing and Call to Worship is designed to noticeably announce that the service is beginning, in a way that can become a rich ritual over time, with the three sounds of the gong, each fading away into silence as an invitation to listen, center and prepare yourself for worship. 

Also, this new opening was designed to make it clear that the Ingathering Music is meant to accompany your greeting of one another as you arrive, whereas the Prelude is meant for quiet listening. And, because the Announcements used to sometimes run long, which is hard for fidgety children and adults alike, we are trying them out near the end of the service and trying more often to refer you to the bulletin where most are already described, rather than reading them aloud. Other options are to eliminate verbal announcements completely and rely just on the printed bulletin, or do them right after the children leave, with brevity strictly enforced. 

In a change unrelated to the presence of children, we reduced the “open mic” kind of opportunities for individuals to speak, such as to tell their own Joy or Sorrow during the service or the source of the water they brought for the Water Communion on Ingathering Sunday, the first Sunday after Labor Day. These traditions are fine, perhaps, for a small congregation, but the fact is that in a congregation our size or larger, it is misleading to present them as an open opportunity for anyone to get up and speak who so desires, because there just isn’t time for everyone to do so. In fact, it tends to be the same people who do so repeatedly over time while the majority – more reticent, introverted or just more private – never do. And it is nigh unto impossible to enforce standards to prevent self-serving announcements, long stories however touching, or political statements that presume unanimity in the congregation when actually we are not all liberals except religiously. The changes we began to make in Joys and Sorrows last March were not a response to one egregious incident; we were responding to an accumulation of lesser and greater misuses that minimized the benefit there is in hearing people speak in their own voice. 

I concede that the reading aloud of the Joys and Sorrows from the pulpit means that if you do not recognize the name or if one is not given, you cannot express your empathy to him or her during fellowship time after the service. I invite your thoughts on how to address this downside. Perhaps it’s time for a new Photo Directory! In the meantime, hopefully, the Pastoral Care Associate who read the Joys and Sorrows cards, or I, can point the person out to you. Or you might note a few names in the margin of your Order of Service, later find them in the church directory, and send a card or phone them during the week, even if you aren’t sure who they are. We also hope that this increased visibility of the Pastoral Care Associates will invite more of you to seek one of them, or me, out when you are in need of a trained ear, open mind, and loving heart – whether or not you write your joy or sorrow on a card. 

A benefit of this change has been that some people have had the courage to write a joy or sorrow on a card, to be read aloud by someone else, when they would not have found it within themselves to get up and speak it into the microphone. And, now, every Sunday, we have the opportunity to light a silent candle of joy or sorrow during the Offertory. So, as with any change, there are gains and there are losses. As our Worship Associate today said in her Chalice Reflection, for everything, there are some who like it and some who don’t, at least not yet.

Why is the quality, feel, flow and content of our worship experience so important? It is the central, defining and only collective experience we have as a religious community. Also, for many Unitarian Universalists, it is the primary or only explicit spiritual practice we have, to come to service on Sundays. Many of us don’t have a daily spiritual practice; many of us aren’t even disciplined about coming on Sundays. But I think of worship as our primary shared spiritual practice, which (if it works!) informs everything else we do, including our other church activities, but also our family, work, community and public lives. It has the power to transform us, so that our lives have greater height, depth, and breadth – greater joy, deeper sorrow, and a wider view – from which comes the inspiration to transform the world around us also.

“Some people today seem to want their worship to be only one-dimensional: ie ‘uplifting,’” writes denominational leaders, the Reverends John Buehrens and Rebecca Parker [in A House for Hope, p. 151 on]… “but in the [Hebrew] psalms, which have guided generations in learning the dynamics of the Spirit, there is something more multidimensional than ‘uplifting.’ A given psalm… may end with praise. But along the way there will also be honest meditation on times of deep despair and feelings of abandonment, betrayal, and envy of those who seem to prosper without caring either for God or their fellow humans.” 

In other words, worship should have depth as well as height. It should be deep enough to acknowledge the wrong that is around and even in us, and be a time for confessions and intercessions, seeking healing for the brokenness in our lives and between us and others, and providing energy for the reparation of what is unjust and the stopping of what is evil in our world.

Worship, Buehrens and Parker also write, must have breadth enough to be inclusive of all those who are present or ought to be present if our welcome was wide enough to have brought them in, plus breadth enough to include “those who have gone before and left to us the heritage of their memory and their work; and those who are young or yet to come, whose lives will be shaped by what we do or leave undone.”  So, our music, our readings, the sources for our sermons should draw on varied cultures and create various kinds of energy, and help us be open to, rather than fearful of, the future. 

Some years ago, I spent a month of a three-month sabbatical as what I called an “observing minister” at a steadily growing Unitarian Universalist church in suburban Minnesota. The minister, Victoria Safford, had previously served a church that had grown wildly during her time there, but went into a serious and conflictual decline after she left. I wanted to come to understand both what made her worship so compelling and how, this time, she was building the lay leadership that would survive beyond her tenure. It was a tall order for one month. Here is what she says about worship, 

“This is what I have come to believe about human beings:  We require food, water, shelter, air, and stories. Something in us needs to speak and to be heard, to forgive and be forgiven, to sing and hear music, to speak our truth and listen for the truths of others. Because we are human beings – religious humans beings, bound to one another and to sacred mystery—part of our calling is to aid and abet the transmission of beauty and truth.” (In A People So Bold, p. 96)

You have heard it said that the word “worship” at its root simply means the naming and shaping of that which is of worth. “Worth-shape.” That’s what we do here:  we remind ourselves of our values an about what is good and true and beautiful. Our worship does not have anything to do with “bowing down” to a deity or person. We used to say with pride, “here you’ll never be asked to check your brain at the door,” because our faith withstands the tests of reason and science. Now we know that the worship that will grow Unitarian Universalism into the future must be more than intellectual. It must be three dimensional, with more emotion in it than “shaping worth” may suggest. Let’s not leave our soul – our height, depth and breadth – at the door. Now is the time to invite them in to worship with us, with all the vibrant color, movement, and rhythm of the Spirit of Life.

Amen.