The water is wide, I cannot get o’er,
And neither have I wings to fly,
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I.
We stand on the edge of a river this morning. This morning we take our first steps into this river known as “the church year.” And when while we work together to cross this river, and both shall row, when we get to the other shore of this church year, a lot will have happened.
I will have found, hopefully, another church to minister to. You will have found your next, settled minister. In order to do so, you will have been led by the Ministerial Search Committee through a lot of conversations and workshops which are designed to help you get the most accurate picture of yourselves as a body, so that the most effective match with a minister can be attempted.
This year your Board of Trustees has committed to a policy and procedure review, going through them all, in preparation for your relationship with your new minister, and to have a more solid grounding in how you, the congregation, will be in covenant with each other.
And when we get to the other shore, we will look back at our journey this year with satisfaction.
I was reminded this week of our Pilgrim ancestors.
Oh, and if you didn’t know, the Pilgrims and the Puritans were our theological ancestors.
In 1620, when the Pilgrims landed finally at Plymouth Massachusetts, they recorded that they climbed to the top of the hill, and thanked God for their journey and the bounty they could see around them. That meeting house, that church that was founded in 1620 became a Unitarian church in 1800. Since the merger of Universalism and Unitarianism, it has considered itself a UU church since 1961.
Like the Pilgrims who came to Plymouth, our year traveling the waters together will result in some of us getting wet. Some of us will be bumped and bruised and challenged. As happens every year in a community, some of our members will die this year, and some babies will be born to us. And unlike the Pilgrims in a boat, we are on land, and new people may wander in from the metaphorical cold to join us. Heck, you might even invite them.
At the end of the year, the congregation will stand, together, and look upon all the work you’ve done to get there. You will look around and see the bounty of your community and your surroundings.
And you will know that it is good.
During our blending of the waters ceremony, each of you were asked to say aloud one word that represented what you will be bringing to the congregation this year. The speaking aloud part is very important.
The Hebrew people recorded in their Holy Book that it was when God spoke the words “Let there be light,” there was light. It is when the Provost of a university says, aloud, that you have been granted your degree, that you actually are granted the degree. Your diploma is only the written record of that declaration.
When two people join in marriage, there is the civil part, which is the license, which is written upon, but it is in the exchange of vows that the actual marriage takes place.
Our words matter.
Think back for a moment to the words you heard over the water just a few moments ago.
Our words are sacred.
The water is wide,
And alone, I can not get o’er.
And neither have I wings to fly.
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I.
This past week the Religious Education committee held a teacher training. And something Leroy said, really struck me. I’ll get to that in a minute.
As the song says, both shall row.
Here’s a funny thing that came up in our teacher training.
This congregation has a very strong commitment to religious education, right?
The number of children in our congregation keeps growing and growing. Soon we’ll have a new Director of Religious Education.
And right over there, is a half-million dollar building, a physical statement of your commitment to religious education. This congregation believes in religious education.
And yet at the teacher training, there weren’t enough teachers to run all the classes that we have this year.
When we have a child dedication here, we agree as a congregation, to a person, to help to raise that child and support that child and show that child that they are loved in the world.
At the Democratic National Convention, President Obama said this:
"We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense."
I want to now paraphrase the President. “We, the people of this congregation, must recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together, that a freedom which only asks what’s it in for me, is unworthy of our founding ideals.”
Here we have religious freedom. Your personal theology is your business, no one here is going to tell you what to believe.
That is antithetical to our founding principals of religious freedom.
Freedoms, though, also come with responsibilities. If you want the children in our faith to grow up and stay within our faith, someone must teach them.
Now, maybe you’re a person who taught Sunday School when your child was involved. Maybe, like me, you never had kids in Sunday School (or anywhere else!) If you can identify with either of these statements, I challenge you to consider teaching this year.
No, Jacob and Alexander and Maeve and Ellise are not my children in any biological or legal sense. But they are our children in that they are part of our religious community. These children are ours.
We are short teachers this year, not because of some draught, we are need more teachers this year because we have abundance! We have enough young folks this year for not 2, but 3 classes all year long, and also we are able to run our age appropriate human sexuality class for K-2. That’s how large our Religious Education program has grown, thanks in no small part to Paul’s work and to the work of the Religious Education Committee.
The other component to our being short of teachers this year is that many of our teachers are serving this year on the Ministerial Search Committee, which is a very big and important job. The very fact that at least 5 of our usual teachers are on this committee of 7 indicates how much this congregation values religious education.
Those on the search committee have a big job this year, and will be required to miss church with us on several Sundays, which makes it more difficult for them to teach this year.
Consider teaching. See Lila during our potluck, or email me and we’ll get you involved.
And now onto what Leroy said. Leroy mentioned the phrase “I and Thou.” I and Thou is the title of a book by Martin Buber, a philosopher/theologian of the 20th century. Very briefly and simplistically stated, Buber says the following. Firstly the word Thou is not a formal version of “you.” Thou is actually a form of very intimate address, or is used to be. Language after all changes. I and Thou is about our relationship to the Divine, the intimate relationship, the mutually caring relationship between one being and another.
Leroy said that he wanted to teach this year because he wanted the children to experience the deep knowing and respect akin to Buber’s idea of I and Thou.
I can not think of a better reason to be a teacher, or a better way of putting it, than Leroy did.
Build me a boat that can carry two,
And both shall row, my love and I.
This is not the boat of some impressionist painters, or some old romantic movies, where one person in the boat is carrying an umbrella and the other is doing all the rowing.
Think for a moment about the work that Bill and Leroy do in the world, in part by their own community ministries, and in part in the name of our congregation. Think for a moment about Leroy’s work with veterans.
Think for a moment about Bill’s mission to feed the hungry, and how he has offered up opportunities for all of us to share in that mission.
And both shall row, my love and I.
Together, the congregation will row.
You will work to coordinate your rowing, you will work cooperatively. You’ll share a similar goal of getting to the other side of the river.
Mistakes will be made.
People will get tired, and have to stop rowing for a while.
There may even be disagreements about the direction the boat is going because one person rows more strongly than their rowing partner.
But with cooperation, we will get to the other shore.
And when we have landed, in June, we will be able to see the world from a new vantage point. Our worlds will have been expanded. Our hearts strengthened by hard work, and our gratitude for each other deeper more grounded for the labor shared.
The water is wide,
And alone, we can not get over.
And we don’t have wings to fly.
But we have a boat.
And it carries many.
And we all shall row.
My dear people, and I.
© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
September 09, 2012.
