I had been going to a gay-friendly Presbyterian church near my apartment up to this point. I’d chosen it because for a brief period my family had attended a Presbyterian church when I was growing up, there was a rainbow flag on their church sign, and it was close enough that I could walk to services. On days I was feeling fancy, I would even stop into the Starbucks and get a mocha latte, and still be in the sanctuary in time for the prelude.
It’s true that I had to skip parts of the Apostle’s Creed, and I never took communion there, but the people were nice, and still being fairly new to Chicago, it was nice to be around people since I hadn’t really made many friends yet.
But this morning I was going to a different church, a church I’d never heard of. The First Unitarian Society of Chicago. I supposed it would be somewhat like the Presbyterian church in that there would be things they would believe that I didn’t, but that I would just skip over the parts that I didn’t want to say.
And it isn’t that I didn’t want to say them out of some sense of moral high-ground. I just didn't think it was polite to lie in someone else’s church just to fit in.
After our breakfast, we walked to church in Hyde Park, up to this big stone, cathedral-looking building. We walked in through the double doors and into, what I learned later was a replica of a 14th century Norman cathedral. It looked very high church, and I got even more nervous.
But then the greeters said Hello, and Greg and I sat down, and the funniest thing happened.
Well, actually it didn’t happen, and that what was funny to me
Nobody paid us any attention.
Nobody shot us, a gay couple, dirty looks. Nobody fell all over themselves to show how liberal and accepting they were.
We were boring! We were just regular and every day to these folks.
And to me, in 1996, that was amazing.
Like Starr King School for the Ministry, here in the East Bay, my own seminary is part of a collection of seminaries, where you can take classes. So I took classes at the Lutheran School of Theology, the University of Chicago Divinity School and so on. This also meant that students from other schools could take classes at our school.
Meadville Lombard is a small school, and the student to professor ratio was about 6:1 in a class. This meant that you could not “pretend” to have done the reading, because there was no sitting in the back of the classroom.
I had a class there on theatre arts in worship. There were four of my classmates there and…. four Lutheran seminarians. We were like the Jets and the Sharks, but only theologically, and there was no dance music.
One afternoon in class, after we’d been together a couple of weeks, one of the women from the Lutheran school asked us about our conversion experiences. Because by now, it had become clear to her that we were not going to be Christian ministers in any way, at least not by her definition, and in genuine curiosity, she asked about our stories.
She told us that at 14 she had welcomed Jesus Christ into her heart, and then a little bit about how that worked in her life. The other three Lutherans told earnest stories that were largely similar.
And the Unitarian Universalists began to sweat.
As each of us told our stories about how we found our way, each as adults it so happened, to Unitarian Universalism I began to notice a pattern.
Unitarian Universalists don’t have “conversion experiences, I think,” I told our classmates. “We have coming home experiences. We spend our whole lives looking for people who are like us, who agree that there is more than one truth, one path, one way to live. We try this group and that church, and then one day, we find ourselves at the door of a Unitarian Universalist church, we sit down, and for the first time, maybe in our lives, we well, we exhale as if we’ve just come home.”
We realize that we have found our people.
Here it doesn’t matter if your people share your ethnicity, the color of your skin, the way you define gender, or your affectional orientation. These are your people.
And like all extended families, you have the weird uncle, you have the aunt who insists on kissing your cheek when you see her. You have ancestors of whom you can be very proud, and some you wish had made better choices. There are the cousins who are too loud, and the ones allergic to peanuts.
But they are your people.
They become your people by conversation. By sharing narratives of lives, by telling their stories about theological journey, and then them asking you about yours.
And here’s the funny part: they listen. It’s not just a polite dance of expected small talk.
And conversation by conversation, event by event, week by week, you go from saying “I can agree with the philosophy of what Unitarian Universalism is about,” to “I am a Unitarian Universalist.”
Conversion by conversation.
There are people among us today who have made this journey from “I agree” to “I am.” It is a privilege to be companions on their journey and to welcome them into Fellowship with us.
If you happen to be a visitor to our congregation this morning, don’t worry, there won’t be an altar call! There’ll be no pressure for you to sign up and join us. These folks have agreed in advanced to join us, after giving it a lot of thought, and going through several afternoons of discussion about what it means to be a member here. Or we were just lucky enough to have them move up here from San Diego where they were members there.
But this is almost universally how we become Unitarian Universalists. We find others who agree that all life should be valued, that each person has inherent worth, and deserves dignity. We believe in an honest search for meaning in the world. We know that no matter what your theological inspiration, Christian, Pagan, Buddhist, Atheist, Hindu, Agnostic, Mystic or some combination, we have only our own hands, and the hands of our fellow travellers, to create a world a place for more fair, more just, and more loving.
On this lovely, crisp morning we welcome new members into our covenant. They by signing our membership book, and then we as a whole, now larger body make verbal affirmation of this, our shared journey.
I hope you’ll forgive me if I get a little religious at a moment like this, but I’m the minister, and I’m somewhat pre-disposed to it.
Will those who are present and who are joining our Fellowship, please come forward?
(after they come forward)
May your individual journey with this Fellowship be long and fruitful. May you come to know that these people will love you deeply, warts and all. That they will comfort you when life is hard. They will bring you food when you are sick, they will cry with you when someone you love dies.
They will celebrate your victories with all of their hearts. They will protect your children as their own.
They will teach you and your kids, by example, how to live a life in concert with your values.
They will challenge you, and push your buttons. They will happily and without complaint accommodate your aging bodies.
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Spirit of Love, look upon us this morning. Swim among and between us. So often we rush from moment to moment in this life, help us to pause for this one moment so that we may recognize its deep meaning,
and celebrate the homecoming of these lovely people.
Amen.
(c) The Reverend Joseph M Cherry
I love this!
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