Davidson Loehr
September 24, 2000
UNISON READING: #488
Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow.
OFFERING:
Not long ago, Old man Robertson, who had lived a rather ordinary life, died. He had always dreamed of giving his life amidst some heroic feat, saving a life or averting disaster. One morning while eating his oatmeal, however, he quietly died without any such heroism.
He was explaining his confusion and dismay to an angel carrying a clip-board when the angel reminded him that he must have done something right because he was in the part of heaven where only heroes were admitted. He protested in disbelief, “But these people all look so ordinary. Where are the knights in shining armor and the quarterbacks?” The other angels shook their head and one explained, “Real heroes aren’t famous. They’re people who make the impossible happen. They keep hope alive. Mrs. Thompson, for example, taught the underprivileged how to read and Mr. Franks was a music teacher.”
“What did I do that was so heroic?” asked Mr. Robertson.
“Let’s see- Robertson- Robertson-” The angel checked her clipboard. “Ah yes: It says here that just before you died, your final pledge check cleared at the bank.”
CENTERING:
About 800 years ago, a visitor entered the town of Chartres, France, where the great cathedral of Chartres was under construction. It was a huge project- it took over a century to complete- and nearly everyone in town seemed busy with an activity in some way related to the giant cathedral.
The visitor went up to a man who was busy with some large stones. “What are you doing?” he asked. “I’m cutting stones,” came the reply, “I am a stonemason.”
Not far from the stonemason was a man carving some wood. “What are you doing?” he asked this second person. “I’m carving wood,” came the answer, “I’m a carpenter.”
Several more people from several more occupations brought similar answers: the glassblower was blowing glass, the solicitor was soliciting donations, and the architect was planning pillars.
Off in the distance was a peasant woman with a large broom, sweeping up the sawdust, stone chips, glass fragments and other debris, tidying up after the workers had finished with their fragmented tasks. To her, the question was the same: “What are you doing?” The woman stopped sweeping, stood up straight and turned toward the visitor with a broad and proud smile. “Me?” she said, “Why I am building a magnificent cathedral to the glory of God!”
SERMON: “Talk Is Not Cheap”
The expectations we have for our churches are part of a special kind of relationship. We bring ourselves, our energy, our money, and vulnerability and curiosity to church. We deposit them here, invest them here. But what we expect in return is a kind of miracle – moreover, a miracle that really can and does happen.
In the ancient churches, they had a word for this process. They said the church consecrated the energies, gifts and money brought. It put them in the service of sacred causes and callings. This transformed the meaning of the money and energy, and the quality of what believers got in return. Their gifts were put into the service of higher values, they believed: something sacred. This was the church’s part of the bargain. When it worked, the people got, as a return on their investment, gifts of life back from the church – gifts of the spirit, of a greater appreciation for life, an eagerness, a deeper feeling of its sacred nature and of their sacred nature. That’s the miracle
We have, as it’s been said, “gifts differing,” and each of our gifts is a gift of life to our churches. Those who can make music fill the air with the sound of the Holy Spirit in one of its purest forms. Those who are over with our children now sharing their gifts as teachers bring the children who are our future the lessons of the spirit which we have to share with them, and an intelligent understanding that can – we hope and believe – take the place of prejudice.
Our money is a gift too. The gifts of our money represent gifts of potential to a church. Money lets us dream bigger dreams, and gives us the funds to pursue those dreams, as individuals and as a religious institution. Without the ability to dream, a church loses a lot of its spirit. But unless a church can keep that ability to consecrate money, to maintain that vulnerable and magical kind of atmosphere that lets people feel that here the Spirit is alive and well, is not fenced, then people will rightly feel that the church is failing at its chief task as a religious institution. And then, with the magic gone and the spirit fenced, people will cut back their pledges, or withhold their money altogether, because somehow it no longer feels like the church is keeping up its part of the bargain.
This morning’s Centering story was about this kind of magic, this ability to consecrate, that a good church has. For the carpenter, stone mason, and the other workers, putting in time at the cathedral had just become a job. The horizons of what they felt they were doing there had been reduced to merely cutting wood and piling stones together. Only that woman with the broom really knew what she was doing there. For her, the magic of the place was alive and well. It may have looked like she was just pushing a broom, but she knew better. She was doing her part in building a magnificent cathedral to the glory of God. Her work had become consecrated, dedicated to a higher kind of calling. And consecrating her work had consecrated her life, as well.
This is magical, but it isn’t supernatural. We are measured by the size of what we serve with our lives, and the bigger and more noble the cause, the bigger our own lives feel. There is that same bargain.
This magic doesn’t happen only in churches. During the last Olympics, I watched a couple interviews with professional basketball players who repre-sented the United States. Here were world-class athletes who had already “made it”: they were making millions of dollars a year playing pro basketball, had fan clubs and talk shows and the rest of it. What’s left for them? Yet in these interviews, they had that open-eyed look that little kids get when they have been transformed by magic from a bigger world. This was the first time, they said, that they had ever represented something as big and as magnificent as the entire United States. This wasn’t just for the Chicago Bulls or the Houston Rockets. This time when they played, they knew they were a part of the spirit and the pride of the whole United States of America. It trans-formed them. It was the highest and most satisfying activity of their life, they said.
That’s the kind of magic I’m talking about, and the kind that churches, at their healthiest, are supposed to be offering. That’s what consecration looks like up close. It is a power to transform lives by letting us live within larger visions and more inspiring dreams.
We’re offered the chance to worship within vast horizons, and we become changed by the size of what we worship. It’s magic. Consecration. When the Spirit isn’t fenced in, it can work the kind of magic that told that woman she wasn’t just sweeping up dirt, but building a magnificent cathedral. Her work, her gifts, her energy and her life were consecrated and transformed. Then all things are possible, and the gifts of life we give to our churches are returned threefold as gifts of life back from the churches, as our own spirits are given wings. Consecration. Magic.
It’s ironic: the sacred is invisible, yet people usually count it for more than the visible. This is why I’ve always liked the Jewish habit of refusing to give their god a name or make a picture or statue of him. In a revealing way, the Greeks did this, too. They drew, painted or sculpted most of their gods – except one. That one had no image at all, she was invisible. This was the goddess Hestia, whom the Romans called Vesta: that invisible spirit whose presence made a house feel like a home, and a church service feel like a worship service. That invisible spirit that could transform ordinary time and space into sacred time and space. When we speak of not fencing the Spirit, that is the Spirit that we must not fence: the Holy Spirit, Hestia. It is at the same time the most life-giving and the most fragile thing about any good church.
For all of human history, this quality of time and space we call sacred has been worth more than money could measure. The Jews built great temples to their unnamed and unseen God. The Greeks built magnificent temples to many of their gods and goddesses, including the invisible Hestia. So did the Romans, then the Christians. The one billion Muslims in the world have built gorgeous mosques all over the planet, where they can go to seek the presence of the invisible spirit of Allah, and be transformed by that presence. Compared to the homes of the average Jew, Greek, Roman, Christian or Muslim, these temples were often magnificent and lavish, with marble, gold, and exquisite art and music.
Even here, in this less ostentatious sanctuary, even without the marble and gold, pains were taken to give this room its special feel, with a high ceiling to allow dreams and spirits to soar, and the wonderful expansive feel of the room. And this custom-made pulpit in the shape of our chalice is a joy to behold and to preach from. The whole atmosphere of this sanctuary was designed to provide a space for worship and a home for the invisible, but holy, spirit. Sacred places have always seemed worth it to create and maintain. It’s a bunch of ordinary people, pooling their resources and gifts to create a sacred niche within an ordinary world.
We use the ordinary currency of money to create a temple to serve the ex-traordinary currency of sacred time and space. Yet we hardly ever talk about money.
Money
One reason it’s hard to talk about money in a temple or church is because that’s the kind of currency we come to get away from, so we can focus on more spiritual matters.
Another reason is that Western religion has always made such a point of making the love of money the root of all evil, it’s hard to turn around and ask for it. We remember how the ancient Jews hated it when people worshiped the golden calf; or how Jesus said it was easier to get a rope through a needle than a rich man into heaven.
So we go to churches without much of an idea about what the cost is of keeping a church financially healthy. A lot of people think that if they put $10 in the collection plate they’re being generous. And it’s true that for some people, that is indeed generous. Yet if you came all 40 weeks of the church year and put in $10 each time, your annual pledge would be only $400. You couldn’t maintain a church on that today. The air-conditioning alone cost the church over $16,000 last year, and it will be more this year.
What does it cost to maintain a healthy church that can afford to dream? It isn’t an exact science. It varies in different cities, depending on the cost of living, housing costs, salaries and the rest. When we brought in a consultant who has worked with over 250 UU churches, he estimated that it would cost us about as much as we could raise if our average pledge was $35/week. That’s $1820 a year. Ten years ago I read the figure was about $1000, in cities with much lower housing costs. So whether the actual figure for this church is closer to $1600 or $2000, $35/week is in the right ball-park. It is what I am pledging.
Let’s take some more figures that might inform and surprise you. The wealthiest members of churches don’t pledge according to averages or percent-ages, but more according to a kind of noblesse oblige, to their own sense of commitment and duty and a feeling that they need to share their gifts of wealth with the causes that are important to them. Last year in St. Paul, the top pledges were around $22,000 a year. At All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City where everything costs more, I know of some pledges in the range of $50,000 a year. At the First Unitarian Church in Dallas, the top pledge is about $30,000 a year, with the rest of the top tier in the high teens and 20s. It’s the old adage that we expect and need more from those to whom much has been given, and it is as true in churches as it is in any other nonprofit or-ganization. If your gifts are musical, we need for you to share those gifts with the church. If you have gifts of organization or leadership, we need you to volunteer for leadership positions. And if your gifts are of money – whether you inherited the money or have the gift of being able to do something that happens to pay very well in our society today – we need you to share those gifts so the church can thrive.
I’ve come here as an outsider, having served four churches in the past three years as an interim minister. And while I have now signed the membership book and am becoming part of this church, I still keep some of the out-sider’s perspective, which is probably helpful for all of us. I’ve noticed, for instance, that there’s a transformation that happens as churches move from small to large. In small churches, people wonder if they should really spend that much; after all, the church is too small to do much or to be very viable. When people give to small churches, they are usually giving to support a small community where they have found a home, rather than supporting a religion with a mission to the “outside” world. In large churches, people know it’s worth the money, it’s money well spent and they’re glad they did it. There is a kind of healthy pride in large churches, as people come to realize that they are integral parts of the larger community and of their religion’s history. It’s a change in mindset, a fundamentally different way of understanding what a church is for and about.
I don’t know how that transformation happens. There’s some magic to it. But I do know that this church has crossed over that line, and most here don’t yet realize it. It’s easy for outsiders to see, however, because your actions show it. This is one of the only UU churches in the country that holds two Sunday services all year long, and has good attendance during summer services. I attended services here this July where there were over 300 adults. The average Sunday attendance here this fall (over 450) is more than half again as high as the average Sunday attendance at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa – a church of about 800-850 members with a posted average Sunday attendance of only 296.
You’re not a little church any more. You’re a big church. And a proud one, with gifts to offer that many, many people in the Austin area need and would dearly love to find. The transition has already happened. You’ve al-ready crossed over the line from little to big, and I don’t think you yet realize it. You reach out into the community, from marches for causes to bring-ing the homeless into the church for Freeze Nights. These are among the actions here that show a big heart and a pride in your presence and role within the larger community and society.
I am telling you these things because I think you probably didn’t know them. I have been here long enough to know that you are generous people with generous hearts who care about this sacred place and want to know how to do your part. So I hope that by being very candid with you I have helped you get some of the information you need to get a more realistic feel for where you would be most proud to be within this church’s culture of generosity. You know how much money you have, how high the church is on your list of important priorities, and I trust you to find a level of financial support of which you can be proud.
You know they had talks like this a couple thousand years ago when the Jewish, Greek or Roman temples needed to be built and maintained. Our sacred places have always cost us, and the cost has always been worth it. And while we are talking about money, that isn’t the only currency in which those who came before us have paid to keep the spirit of religion alive, especially the spirit of liberal religion. Every Sunday, I say things from this pulpit, and you say things during your discussions, for which we would have been burned at the stake if it hadn’t been for the courage and the sacrifice of those religious liberals who have come before us, who have understood the cost of providing sacred places in the world, and who have now passed the baton to us. If you want to know what kind of a race I think the human race is, I think it’s a relay race. Our dreams and achievements are the baton that we pass to those who will carry it beyond us.
In most UU churches, which are quite small, those who attend, if asked what it’s about, would say things like a freedom to believe whatever they like, a nice group of people, and it’s kind of cool lighting a flame at the beginning of the service, because “light” is such a religious symbol and all.
While those things are mostly true, it’s such an incomplete, even shallow, understanding of the real sacred treasure with which we have been entrusted. It has been my experience that in larger churches, people are ready for a much larger understanding of what we are about.
The real story of who we are is as simple, and as powerful, as this flaming chalice. This is a symbol of the story that is at the soul of our way of the spirit. So while a few of you will know this story, I think most of you won’t, and tell you the real secret gift we have been given. It has nothing to do with Unitarians or Universalists. It has to do with something much older, deeper, and more eternal.
A century before Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation, there was an obscure Catholic priest in Czechoslovakia names Jan Hus. Unlike the officials in the church, Hus believed that religion was to be shared with all the people. He preached in Czech rather than Latin so the people could understand and think and talk about the sermons. This was not allowed. And he said that the chalice, containing the symbolic blood of Christ, was not meant to be drunk only by the priest – the practice the Roman Catholic Church followed until after Vatican II – but was meant to be shared with all the people. Hus wanted an open Communion, to open religion to the people in both words and rituals. He knew talk wasn’t cheap, and he said some of the most expensive, and courageous, words in the history of religion. For this heresy, Jan Hus was burned at the stake. The chalice, which holds the flame we light each Sunday, was chosen as a symbol of the open communion championed by Jan Hus nearly six hundred years ago. And the flame we light each week is a symbolic reminder of the flame in which he was burned at the stake for his courageous liberal vision. That symbol of an open religion and that reminder of the costs of such bold dreams are the real heritage of this church, and of us who serve it. In all of religious history, there can hardly be a more sacred or life-giving treasure than the treasure which has been passed to us, entrusted to us, by people like that medieval Catholic priest of whom you may never ever have heard until now.
It is time for us to dream together, and pool our resources to fund those dreams so that together we may continue building this magnificent cathedral to the glory of God, and can pass on the sacred baton we have received in an im-proved condition. Talk isn’t cheap. Neither is freedom of belief. It’s our turn to pay for it, and I think it is an honor to do so. Some who came before us have paid a great deal more.
