The deep end of the heart

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
August 28, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

There is a set of memes (photos) on the internet where we are shown what our picture of a certain occupation or activity is, and then next to it, a picture of its actuality. They can be very funny. People’s dreams of parenthood, of having one’s own business, of being a college student, etc. What is our picture of how church should be? What is its actuality? What are we doing here? We will talk about our mission and about our new venture into “accompaniment” of refugees as a way to do hands-on justice.

Here is one thing I love about UUism. The DRE in a New Jersey congregation heard that a three year old boy called Roo had been bullied by a grown man for wearing a tutu in public. He got himself a pink and purple tutu, (or maybe he had one already,) put it on, took a selfie and posted it online with the hashtag tutus for Roo. It’s going viral, and other UU men are taking selfies with tutus as well, posting them with the tutusforRoo hashtag, so when Roo sees grown men wearing the tutus he loves, he can be strengthened to resist the cultural enforcers. This feels like love to me. It feels like kindness. It feels like church.

What do you love about UUism? Friday night 240 of us came to eat from food trucks and talk about that. The facilitator asked us what excited us about what the church is doing, and what we wish the church could do in the future. The results are written on the hearts, scrolls and arrows you see up on the wall, and I think you will have fun reading them when the service is over. Some members of the youth group were there, young adults, older adults, and we listened to one another. And a member of the youth group was asked to facilitate one of the larger groups. That is what church looks like to me. Please stand up if you came to the party. Now, please stay standing if you helped make it happen. Now, please just stay standing if you stayed until the very end and helped clean up. Thank you.

The reason we came together is because it is the time of year when we ask one another to make a commitment of financial support to the church, and it’s important for us to talk about what the church means to us, what we are doing together that feels exciting and important, what we wish for, what actions we see as necessary. Those who were there dove into the deep end, listening, hoping together, connecting and wishing. It is these dreams you are fueling as you respond to the canvassers to let them know what your commitment can be. f want to give you a piece of information, and then I will ask you to forget it. If you were to divide the budget by the number of members of the church, every one person’s share would be about 1500.00 a year. Now I’m going to ask you to forget it, because what this church asks is that you are generous within your means. That is between you and your conscience. Giving generously means giving generously enough so you are hoping from the deep end of your heart, so that part of your heart comes to take up residence with this community, so that you take it personally, so that what this church does matters to you. I am increasing my pledge to the church by 20 percent this year. It hurts a little, but I believe in us, in these loves, these dreams you see on the wall. I believe in our mission.

Church is about community, about connecting with one another, meeting people we might not meet in our daily routines, it is about feeding souls; having interesting things to think about and do, helping people be seen and heard; it is about transforming lives: partnering with the working homeless by providing lunches for them, transforming our lives and others’ by visiting people who are in detention, partnering with asylum-seekers by accompanying them to their government appointments, using our privilege as citizens to allow them to be better seen and heard. Church is about doing justice, working to understand and change the structures that “stack the deck” against some people and advantage others. We do things together that we cannot accomplish alone.

My theme for this fall is “Going back to basics,” as I ask you to support this congregation I want to tell you where it came from. We UUs have our roots in the fourth century, with a teacher named Arius. He taught that Jesus was created by God like humans were, that he was the first created, but still not God, and subordinate to God. In the sixteenth century, King John Sigismund and his chaplain, Frances David, declared religious freedom in Transylvania. People came from far and wide to discuss, without fear of being imprisoned, the nature of God.

Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician, had written a pamphlet called “On the Errors of the Trinity.” His ideas were freely discussed in Sigismund’s kingdom, and the ideas that made the most sense to David and the King were known as “Unitarian,” to distinguish them from”Trinitarian.” When John Calvin, the father of the Presbyterian Church, burned Servetus at the stake, his martyrdom energized Unitarianism throughout Europe, and it spread to the New World. Thomas Jefferson liked Unitarian ideas, and wrote in a letter to a friend that he believed, in his lifetime, every young person in the US would be Unitarian.

In the 19th century the Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Thoreau and their friends brought in Eastern philosophy and a love of Nature to mix with the liberal Christianity. In the 20th century, the Humanist movement took the Unitarians in a very rational, skeptical direction, and in 1961 the Unitarians merged with the liberal Christian Universalists, and it is that rich gumbo that strengthens us to hold up our values, to live our mission, to give the gift of our free faith to our children and others who have need of us, and to reach out to those who are hurt, who have been violated, who want safety and sanity of life in this country. We will do our best to choose people who will benefit most from partnering with us. We will connect with one another by volunteering together and having shared experiences.

– Transcendence – To connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life

– Community – To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch

– Compassion – To treat ourselves and others with love

– Courage – To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty

– Transformation – To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world

So here we are just regular people, and this community gives us a chance at these deep things. Sometimes we touch them and other times they elude us. All of these things live in the deep end. The risky area, the place there you are over committed, where you care too much, where your joys are great and your disappointments are painful, I remember finding the UUs, I remember feeling that I was in the midst of my people. A thinking people, a people hungry to be justice makers, who wanted to be better people, I remember loving the way these people talked about nature, were stern with themselves about seeing racism and working against it, where you could be an atheist and go to seminary. I remember hearing UUs talk about God, about believing in nothing, about believing God has 300,000 faces, about love, I remember people who were ok being honest about despair, about being tired, hopeful, wanting to learn more about the lives of gay people, the real complicated history of the slave economy, the story of the indigenous nations who were here when the Europeans arrived. There was courage here. There were questions here. I have been,since then, deeply nourished by our UU people. I have been, since then, deeply disappointed in us. I have been challenged to grow. It feels real. I want to stick with it. I’m coming from the deep end of my heart to support and strengthen this faith where grace surprises us looking like a tall DRE in a tutu. Looking like a teen with a blue streak in her hair facilitating an important church discussion group. How about you?

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