First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
June 1, 2003

You should know that last Wednesday I bought an ice cream cone with $300 of this society's money - and this society does not have money to throw around; in fact, we barely have the money to pay our bills. Those who were at the annual meeting know how difficult this past year has been financially, with heating costs more than doubling, and a most unfortunate lawsuit settlement. Our reserves are perilously low, and we have been coasting on the funds from the Housing Humanism project, the last of which will be spent when we pay Harmon Glass at the completion of the window wall replacement in August. Like everyone else with money in the stock market, our investment income is down, and some of our most generous supporters are facing reductions in their income, or significant uncertainty about their jobs. Our contributions are always lowest over the summer, when some folks aren't around to remember to drop off their pledge checks, and this year we won't even be meeting in the building during July and August. It's no wonder that Bill Scattergood, our accounting manager, is biting his tongue, and his nails, a lot these days. After September, when we see how this fiscal year actually ends up, and after the window wall project is finished and paid for, we are going to have to roll up our sleeves and do something about our reserve fund. Let me urge you, if you have not yet turned in your pledge for next year, please do so right away; there are still eighty-some pledges outstanding, and this makes it extremely difficult to plan effectively. Please check your statement, and make sure that your pledge for this year will be paid by the end of June, so that we can close the books on the fiscal year accurately. And if you possibly can, plan to keep up your payments over the summer, so that our cash flow doesn't entirely dry up in the heat!

So, given the perilousness of our circumstances, why was I at Sebastian Joe's, trading a three hundred dollar check for a single scoop of banana chocolate chip, and wishing that it was a bigger check? The bottom line is that it was because of what I believe this congregation and this institution ought to represent to the community beyond our doors, and because I think we have an obligation as neighbors. The Minneapolis Park Board has determined, as part of their cost cutting strategy, not to run the fountain in the seven pools at Lowry Park across the street at all this summer. Leaving it dry will save them, according to their calculations, about $15,000. Of course, this decisions comes as a huge disappointment to all of us who enjoy the beauty and tranquility of those gentle pools and waterfalls as part of this little green oasis in the heart of the city. But sometimes good things come out of challenges, and several families from along Douglas and Mount Curve have gotten together to see if they can raise the money through contributions to run the fountain at least part of the time over the summer. Wednesday afternoon they invited all the neighbors to gather for ice cream and fund raising, to kick off their campaign. Since Jan Devor and I only found out about this issue, and the effort to address it, on Wednesday morning, we didn't have time to go through a lot of formal process; we could only draw from money that was under our direct control; in her case, the proceeds of the pop machine downstairs, and in my own, money from weddings that I conduct for non-members, and what we knew we could put our hands on was $300. I wish we were in a position to do more; heck, I wish we had the wherewithall to put a sign on the kiosk at the top of the park that would read "The operation of the seven pools fountain is a gift to the people of Lowry Park and Minneapolis from the First Unitarian Society." I think that would be some of the best advertising we could buy, in the long run. We're not there, of course; not by a long shot. Nevertheless, I am confident that that hastily scraped together couple of hundred dollars is an important statement, one that is not lost on those with whom we share this neighborhood, and that will come back to us many times over in awareness and good will. But what I want to call to your attention is not so much what it says to the neighbors about us, as what it says to ourselves. It says that our job, our mission as a community of faith, is to give some kind of hope or beauty or something to lift the spirits of the people around us; that our most essential purpose lies across the threshold of this building, in service to a wider world.

That mission, to bring comfort, sustenance, and inspiration to the larger community, is the real reason why we need money. Our true purpose is not to maintain a talented staff or a functional building for our own convenience; it is not to build up reserve funds for the pleasure of contemplating a healthy bank balance. The reason that we need to be fiscally responsible is so that we can respond with confidence to the need for ministry beyond our threshold; so that we can take the values of humanism out into the world, and make a difference with them. There are two basic ways in which we do this; one is by direct service, and the other is by example. When we create coalitions to try to stop our nation going to war, when we work to build affordable housing in this community, when we donate computers to an inner city child care center, when we cook for the Simpson shelter soup kitchen, we are carrying out the ministry of service for the purpose of which this institution exists. When we operate as a democratic structure, when we listen thoughtfully to views which differ from our own, when we strive to make sure that everyone can be included in our activities, regardless of their mobility challenges, or their cultural background or their ethnic identity, when we exert ourselves to be responsible landlords and stewards of our property, then we are doing ministry by example, demonstrating what our values look like in practice, so that other people may judge of their adequacy.

These two forms of ministry are two sides of the same coin; neither one is genuine without the other. Consider; how seriously do we take groups who want to run around reforming the world and helping all and sundry, when their own organizations are riven with conflict or incompetence, when their leadership is guilty of misconduct and arrogance, when their checks bounce or their facilities crumble? Get your own house in order, the world tends to say to such enterprises, then come and tell the rest of us how to improve. On the other hand, if all we ever do is to maintain a luxurious building and a comfortable reserve fund and support a staff to cater to our own comforts and pleasures, then what use are we to the world? What good do our values do, and why should anyone listen to us? The ministry of service and the ministry of example are both necessary, and in the end, both are directed outward, to the community that lies beyond our threshold.

Today we recognize two groups who stand upon that threshold; our newly received members, entering today into the covenant of this community of memory and promise, and our graduating seniors, going forth into the larger world of young adulthood. These two groups share a common project, as I see it; for each of these people, it is time to begin to define your ministry to the world. Many, though not all, of our high school graduates are headed off to college in the fall, to begin four more years of sitting in classrooms - and, it may feel like four more years of preparation for real life, which lies out there beyond the next graduation, or the even the one beyond that. And it is true that education is in part a form of preparation. But let me tell you two things before you settle back into the role of the not yet ready. First, and you've probably heard this before, but I urge you to keep it in mind because it is true, your actual education never ends. Frederick May Eliot, the first president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, put it this way; speaking of the professional clergy, he said, "The lifelong character of a minister's education does not mean that the years spent in a divinity school are unnecessary. But what I think it does mean is that we must rid ourselves of the notion that the bestowal of a degree is anything more than a certificate of competence to pursue one's own education with a reasonable hope. Those who receive that certificate will not underestimate its importance."

Education is not simply the process of preparing for life; it is the process of living itself. If you were to wait until you were fully prepared for your work in the world, that work would never come to pass. You will always feel somewhat inadequate to the task you set yourself, if it is a meaningful task; there will always be more to know, and you will learn much from the experience of your life that can never be taught in a classroom. Do not let your education stand in the way of your authentic life.

The second thing I would say to you graduates is this. You will never be the fully human self that it lies within you to become, until you know that you have a ministry to do in this world. Each one of us is called to something, to some work to make the world a better place, to alleviate suffering, to bring justice and compassion to confront the tragedies of the human condition. For some people, this ministry lies in helping others; some are called to the discovery of new truth, others to the creation of beauty. There are many kinds of ministry, and all are sorely needed on this aching and desperate planet. For some people, but perhaps not most, their ministries are offered through their professional careers; this is a wonderful thing when it happens, but it is not by any means the only way. And here's the secret; your ministry is something that you will discover through your passion, and we are never more alive to our passions than in the years you are about to enter. Your unique ministry lies in the things that break your heart and the things that inspire you; in the experiences that make you want to shout and throw things, or that make you want to weep, or that leave you with a song in your soul. Pay attention, in the coming weeks and months, not just to your grades and your friendships, as important as those are, but also to the currents of the spirit as they move in you. Cherish the deep and tender places where hope, concern, and courage are rooted, for it is here that you will find your call, and begin to discern the ministry that is yours to do in the world. The values that we have striven to teach you and to model for you here, the character that you have formed through these years together, will only find its full expression as you reach beyond the threshold of your private lives, energized by an authentic passion, to discover and to make real your own true ministry.

For those who today formally declare their membership in this Society, the same kind of challenge stands. What is the ministry that you are called to do in the world, and how can this community help you and sustain you to carry it out? Where does your passion lie? What injustice calls forth your indignation; what tragedy breaks your heart? As you affirm your commitment to the values of humanism and a free faith, what do those values require of you? We are not here just to give you comfort, although we do intend to give you comfort; rather, we are here to help you discover what it is that the world needs that you have the capacity to offer. We want to encourage and support one another, and we ask you to be a part of that community of mutual care, but we want to care for one another so that we are all better able to carry on the work of human freedom, justice and compassion beyond the threshold of this building. Religious community exemplifies the truth expressed by the French poet Antoine de Saint-Exupery when he said that "Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but looking outward in the same direction." We seek to strengthen one another for the sake of the ministries that we are called to offer in the world, to look outward together to find the places where our values crave to be put into practice.

I know that my own vision of ministry has been shaped by many encounters and many learnings, but one of the earliest, and perhaps most unlikely, was a book that I read in my teenage years, when I was a junior or senior in high school, just a little younger than today's graduates. Some of you may remember it, or the rather unimpressive movie that was made of it; it was entitled The Cross and the Switchblade. This book told the story of a 26 year old pastor from Pennsylvania named David Wilkerson, who in 1958 followed an irresistible call to bring his Pentecostal gospel to teen age gang members in the streets of New York city. One of the encounters he describes vividly in the book is with Nicky Cruz, vice president of the Mau Mau gang, and seemingly a hardened murderer at eighteen. Initially suspicious and hostile to Wilkerson's message of love and Jesus, Nicky is dramatically converted, throws away his drugs, and joins the preacher's crusade. He marries his girlfriend, the mother of his children, goes to seminary, and becomes a missionary to the inner city himself, striving to save young people from the life of violence and addiction that was once his own. Now, this is the standard stuff of Christian evangelism, and it's not as if New York city is not still rife with gangs to this day. But here's the thing that fascinated me, and still does: something saved Nicky Cruz. Something turned around his rage-filled, self-destructive life into a responsible, productive, loving human being, working to serve and save others - and I didn't and don't believe that it was any Spirit of Christ reaching down from the sky. Jesus didn't save Nicky Cruz, but something did; something about religion, and what it means to have faith in something, rather than believing that nothing matters at all, including yourself. And you don't have to think that there is an old man with a gray beard in the sky watching over us to understand that.

Whatever our humanism means - whatever it meant to me then, at the age of sixteen, and whatever it means to me now - it has to deal with this kind of radical transformation, with this ultimate hope and possibility for the redemption of human lives. For if it does not, if we in our intellectual superiority have nothing to offer Nicky Cruz, if our hearts are not broken by the pain and the waste of what his life was before he met David Wilkerson, or by some other need and woundedness in the world that we are persuaded is ours to try to heal, then we deserve to be nothing but an academic footnote to the history of religion in America. We know that our ministries are as various and as unique as the individuals that make up this congregation, but they have this in common, that they take us across the threshold of our institutional identity and our comfort zones and our easy answers. They call us across that threshold to a place of integrity and meaning, of growth and discovery, where the work that we were meant to do and the world as it was meant to be come together. Whoever you are, wherever you are on your journey at this moment, you have something to offer that is your ministry. And the chances are that when you find it within yourself, in your own passions and hungers and convictions, you will also find that you are not alone; there will be others who share your dream for the world, and your heartbreak, and who want to work together on that mission beyond our threshold. You may, in fact, already be doing it; yours may be the ministry of attentive and caring parenthood, or of hospitality and generous friendship; it may be a ministry to the earth as an active environmentalist, or of creativity as a musician or artist. It will arise out of what you love; it will not be one more responsibility tacked on to your to do list, but a work that calls to your whole being with passionate aspiration. It may be something as quick and simple as working to sustain the quality of life right here in our own neighborhood, right across our threshold, for those who find refreshment and rest for their weary spirits in the flow of cool water through a little green park in the heat of a city summer. It may be as intimate as teaching our children, and guiding them to the threshold of adulthood. It may be a project enduring well beyond your own lifetime, like working to end hunger, or the tragic human folly of war. Whatever your ministry is, whatever it becomes as you grow and change on your life journey, this Society exists for the purpose of nurturing you so that you can fulfill it. We would strengthen you with encouragement, inspire you by example, teach you and equip you and team you up with others who share your vision; we would sympathize with your failures and celebrate your successes. This is the purpose of keeping a roof over our heads and some staff on our payroll and some money in the bank, so that we can foster a community of people dedicated to ministry in the context of a free faith; so that we can show everyone what humanist values look like when they are made real in the world.

My colleague Rebecca Parker puts it in these familiar words:

Your gifts -- whatever you discover them to be --

can be used to bless or curse the world.

The mind's power,

the strength of the hands,

the reaches of the heart,

the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing,

waiting.

Any of these can serve to feed the hungry,

bind up wounds,

welcome the stranger,

praise what is sacred,

do the work of justice

or offer love.

Any of these can draw down the prison door,

hoard bread,

abandon the poor,

obscure what is holy,

comply with injustice

or withhold love.

You must answer this question:

What will you do with your gifts?

Choose to bless the world.

The choice to bless the world

can take you into solitude

to search for the sources of power and grace;

native wisdom, healing and liberation.

More, the choice will draw you into community,

the endeavor shared,

the heritage passed on,

the companionship of struggle,

the importance of keeping faith,

the life of ritual and praise,

the comfort of human friendship,

the company of earth,

its chorus of life

welcoming you.

None of us alone can save the world.

Together -- that is another possibility,

waiting.

We stand always upon the thresholds of our lives, forever called forth into the ministry of our heartbreak and our hope for the world. So, too, as a congregation we stand upon the threshold of our institutional life, seeking by the ministry of service and of example to redeem some portion of human suffering into transformation and new possibility. Our brothers and sisters have need of us, of our love and our conviction; the world waits for the blessing of our gifts, whatever we discover them to be. As we welcome our new members, as we send forth our young adults, as we move into the rhythms of summertime, let us choose, once again, to bless the world; let us - all of us - cross the threshold into lives of service, moved by passion, sustained by community, called by the values that we hold most dear and sacred. Only so is our true purpose and our highest humanity fulfilled; only so is the world made whole and all its people one. And may this beloved congregation nurture and inspire us in that work, that we may build the world we have always longed to see, and become the people we have always wanted to be.