A sermon preached by Rev. Diane Teichert
Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church
May 2, 2010
Maybe you’ve heard this contemporary story. It’s in the oral tradition, meaning I guess that the author wishes to remain anonymous.
Once upon a time, not too long ago and not so far away, there lived a very devout man of the cloth. Now one year in his area there were tremendous rains that turned into a flood. A dam burst in a nearby town and the water came down the valley covering everything in its path. The devout man climbed to his rooftop and clung there, praying to God for help. Soon a motor boat came by and a soldier offered him a hand to come aboard. “No, thank you,” the man said; “God will save me.” As the man could not be coaxed into the boat, the soldiers went on.
Then the water covered the house and the man was forced to swim. Soon another boat came by and the people on board threw him a life preserver. “No, thank you,” he called, sputtering a little; “God will save me.”
Finally a helicopter hovered above and dropped a line. “No, than you, God will blub, blub, blub,” the man coughed and sputtered as he waved them on and went under, once, twice, three times.
When the man awoke, he was in heaven standing before God.
“God, you said you would save me, but you let me die,” he complained.
“I tried to save you,” God said. “But you refused all my help.”
“Not so,” the man said.
“Look,” God said, “I sent you a motorboat, a life preserver, and a helicopter. If that’s not help, I don’t know what is!” (from Doorways to the Soul, Elisa Davy Pearmain, Editor). Through the years of our lives, we need so many kinds of help, as we heard in the reading a few moments ago – “All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.” Most of the time we get the help we need, one way or another – motorboat, life preserver, or helicopter.
Sometimes, it’s true, we don’t accept the help we’ve been offered, due to pride, stubbornness or just being clueless about what was being offered.
Other times, sadly, we ask for what we need, but help doesn’t come.
If congregational life is good for anything, it’s good for making sure that help arrives. No one of us should be high and dry on a rooftop for long.
This is a service about the many ways of caring. Today we are honoring in particular the behind-the-scenes leaders of the congregation who enable us to help each other within the congregation, the We Care Coordinators and the Pastoral Care Associates. I’ll get back to them in a few minutes.
But first I want to acknowledge that there are more public ways, too — as diverse ways of contributing to congregational life as there are people in the congregation, really. That’s stating the obvious, but really every way is needed. Even just your presence here is a gift to others.
Too, our financial contributions (I say “our” because I contribute too) will be especially important this coming year as we absorb the loss of rental income from the tenant whose impending departure will allow us to reclaim the space in our RE building for our own and community uses, and less-demanding renters.
And, of course, your time is valuable (some of us feel it’s more difficult to give our time than our money), whether it’s doing menial but key tasks like starting up the coffee and tea urns on Sunday mornings or helping out on a Work Day (that’s on Saturday May 15th, folks!), or tasks that are more involved like serving on a committee or the Board, volunteering in the office, teaching the children, advising the youth, or facilitating an adult program during Enrichment Hour (which starts at noon and all programs are always open to newcomers, dropinners as well as consistent attendees), hosting social or fundraising events, or contributing to the quality of our worship experience with music, dance, art and the spoken word, or the hospitality tasks of greeters and ushers.
And so far I’ve only named the internal roles, the ones we do for ourselves within these walls. There are many outreach roles as well, acting on our values in the wider community. Did you know a group of PBUUC folks prepares chili and serves it to homeless and hungry people at lunchtime on the fourth Tuesday of the month at a church in Hyattsville? And we provide homeless people with overnight shelter here in this meetinghouse for an entire week in the winter. Also, just this last Thursday I and a couple of you met with the principal of nearby High Point High School and learned that he would welcome our involvement in one or more quite interesting projects with students and/or their parents… so stay tuned on that! Environmental action, racial justice, immigration reform, election reform… nearly endless are the causes members take up or raise funds for… And if you want to learn more about any of this, in order to join in on something, check out the newsletter on display in the foyer or go to our website or visit the Involvements Fair early next September. We do a lot here, and we’re glad of it!
And if you have not plugged in yet, I hope you will feel an inner urge to heed something calling you, or someone phoning you during this season of nominating committee calls, and get involved. I believe you, and the congregation, will be the richer for it! It’s like I said in a high school commencement address three years ago, in part, “…what I want to say to you today is this: let your light shine.”
“If you don’t know you’ve got one, you do. Find it. It’s an inner light. It’s Love’s light in you, which some may call God, but it doesn’t matter what it’s called. It only matters that you know it’s there, and honor it.
When it flickers and might go out, cup your hands around it. And find friends or family to help you shelter it from the wind.
When it glows, pay attention. Learn what makes your light burn brightly, come to know what makes you glow. It’s a sign as to what will give you joy in life—not mere happiness, our fickle friend—but joy. It’s a sign of your calling in life.
Clergy author Frederick Buechner says that you have found a calling “when your deepest passion meets the world’s greatest hunger.”
As you graduate today, whether you go off to the military, a workplace or further education, I want to suggest to you that your real job now is to discover where your deepest passion meets the world’s greatest hunger.
That means there is a way in which the world needs your light, your particular light. Your job now is to find out what the world sorely needs that you can passionately give. And, to let your light shine!”
Church leaders, like leaders in any setting, do their best work when their role gives their particular light a chance to shine for a greater good. That is not likely to happen if we merely recruit a warm body for that opening on the board or find some poor soul to take over a floundering committee. The question is not “will you do this that the church needs from you?” but “how are you called to serve?”
Volunteer roles here should be fulfilling, not exhausting; they should feed your passion, not squelch it; your soul should grow, not shrink, and leaders ought not slink away after a good term of service—instead they should be welcomed to attend Sunday services unencumbered by duties so they can re-stoke their inner fire and then possibly be invited back into service in another capacity that speaks to them.
Too, your congregational volunteer roles should draw on as well as deepen your faith. The two can be exquisitely intertwined: if we approach our church work as though it is rooted in our faith, our spiritual life, then that work will deepen our faith, our understanding of life, ourselves and each other. Otherwise, we will burn out, dry up, wither away. Commensurately, if we feel ourselves to be growing in spirit, depth or love, that feeling will draw us into greater service. If it does not, that personal growth will be self-centered, narcissistic.
It’s only human to want to serve and so the invitation to serve is a gift. Congregational life offers you a precious gift when it asks you to consider serving in a way that sparks your passion.
On the other hand, some jobs just need to get done. Maybe spreading gravel in the parking lot doesn’t spark the passion of enough people for the job to get done. Many hands make light work, you know. So that’s when you’ve got to make the work fun, become friends over it, tease, reminisce, discuss the meaning of life, and otherwise carry on while doing it.
Remember Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer,
“Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music
issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step.” But poor Tom was supposed to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence.
“Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged.” His friend Jim comes by, but Tom’s efforts to persuade Jim to take over the whitewashing have barely succeeded before Aunt Polly catches Jim loitering with Tom and both boys are punished.
Along comes Ben, who says to Tom haughtily, “Say – I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work – wouldn’t you? Course you would!”
Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: “What do you call work?”
“Why, ain’t that work?”
Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: “Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.”
“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?” The brush continued to move.
“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth – stepped back to note the effect – added a touch here and there – criticized the effect again – Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed.
` Presently he said: “Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”
This reminds me of a dear colleague’s story. The picket fence, on the property line of her UU church in small-town Massachusetts, needed painting. The proposal to paint it the colors of the rainbow, one color for each picket, was up for a vote at their annual meeting. The alternative was to whitewash the fence, as usual. This was the late 1990’s, GLBT issues were definitely on the radar screen and some in the congregation saw painting the fence like a rainbow to be a form of social action for the cause. And others thought it an undesirable affront to the Baptist Church with whom they shared their property line, but not their support for gay rights. The vote was taken, counted, and announced. It was a tie.
Now, my friend had been a member of the church before starting theological school and was called to be their minister when she completed her ministerial training, so she had long been a voting member there and everyone knew it. After the tie vote was announced, someone loudly asked, “Did the minister vote?” She hadn’t. “Well, let her break the tie!” This is why you will never see me cast a vote at a congregational meeting!
Anyway, some church work appeals to our passions. And some church work just must be done. In that case, those UU’s had a fence-painting party a la Tom Sawyer, with whitewash!
Let us now ponder, in a moment of silence, the many gifts we give to each other here. An invitation to serve is a gift when it asks us to serve in a way that sparks our passion. It is a gift to be truly present to another person. We give a gift, the opportunity to help, when we reveal our needs to another person. And, when we reach out to help another person, we give a gift of ourself, our time and our care, and open ourselves to receiving gifts unexpected in return. (silence).
Amen.
RITUAL OF GRATITUDE AND SUPPORT
Today we are recognizing two groups of volunteers who do, I believe, have a passion for the service they give. And, any of them will I’m sure tell you that they have gained even as they’ve given of themselves.
One group, the We Care Coordinators wearing white carnations, is responsible for orchestrating the congregation’s practical help to congregants with a short-term need. Would Elizabeth Scheiman, Iris Peabody, Esther Nichols, and Jeri Holloway please come up now? Many of you have been the We Care helpers whose help they orchestrate, to send a card to someone who is in mourning, make a meal for someone who’s just come home from the hospital or for a family suffering a recent death or rejoicing in a new baby or to drive someone to church, medical appointments, or on errands; visit someone in a hospital or nursing home; or be a phone-buddy for a home-bound elder, calling regularly to check in and express interest and care.
Please wave a hand if you have ever responded to a phone call from a We Care Coordinator and helped out in one of these ways… See, it’s something that lots of people can do. Thank you!
You have a chance today to “re-up” for the We Care Network, and those who have not helped out yet have a chance to join in and indicate how you might help – if you complete and turn in the survey inserted in your bulletin, you can be a life-saver, and get a candy life-saver, too! Remember, you can always decline if a We Care Coordinator calls asking for your help at a time you cannot give it. Even if you have completed a survey in the past, please do so again today because we are updating our We Care Network list. The Coordinators will be standing at the doors to the foyer at the end of the service to collect your survey and give you a life-saver.
The second group is the Pastoral Care Associates, wearing red carnations. Would Lynn Johnson, Theresa Meeks, Raman Pathik, and Deb Rubenstein please come forward now? Carol Boston, who is a stalwart and gifted Pastoral Care Associate, is out of town and unable to be present today.
The Pastoral Care Associates are trained to provide intensive one-on-one pastoral support for individuals going through a difficult time for whatever reason. They call or visit congregants, not to be therapists, but to be confidential and caring active-listeners over a period of time, the duration depending on the needs and the relationship.
Each group will meet with me every four to six weeks, reviewing these important ministries, sharing experiences and strategies. Gratefully, two new We Care Coordinators and two new Pastoral Care Associates are just now beginning two year, if all goes well, terms of service. But one or two more volunteers for each group are sought, so that the ones who’ve served longer can move on to other passions if they wish.
So please let me or one of them know if you may be interested in joining them. And if you should ever find yourself needing the help that a Pastoral Care Associate or We Care Network can provide, just contact one of these fine people, me, or the church office. Over the years, many congregants have been served by one of these groups – if you have, please wave your hands.
Let us pause now in a moment of silent gratitude for the commitment and caring of these individuals. Their roles as servants are mostly hidden, like pearls in an oyster, yet so valued and, indeed, valuable. By their service, they help the congregation of Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church to become the Beloved Community we are called to be.
(silence)
And, in another moment of silence, let us ponder the many gifts we give to each other here. An invitation to serve is a gift when it asks us to serve in a way that sparks our passion. It is a gift to be truly present to another person. We give a gift, the opportunity to help, when we reveal our needs to another person. And, when we reach out to help another person, we give a gift of ourself, our time and our care, and open ourselves to receiving gifts unexpected in return. (silence).
Amen.