From You I Receive

Good morning.

It’s good to be home.

This morning I want to talk with you about Hymn # 402.  Will you sing it with me?

From you I receive, to you I give, together we share, and from this we live.

It was way back there that I first heard this hymn, and it seems a fitting theme for my first return to this congregation as an ordained minister.

Because from you I did receive. I received a warm welcome in the Autumn of 1996.

And I continued to receive. When my relationship with the man who brought me here ended, this church helped me. When I didn’t even have a glimmer of an idea that I might have the potential to become a religious leader, the wiser souls than I in this congregation asked me to serve on the Religious Education Committee. And from there I entered into church leadership, and then heard my call to ministry.

A call I must say that has lead me to work in churches in England, Canada and that far off foreign land known as California.

When I officially joined this church as a member, signing the membership book in April of 1997, I want to say it was the 14^th, I took it very seriously. And I tried to give. Which wasn’t always easy.

For most of my time as an active member of this congregation I was a very underemployed person. I was either working a job and a half and trying to pay for classes at the City Colleges, or I was a full-time student, or seminarian. There was a brief shining moment when I finished my bachelor’s and had a real, adult job, and when that happened, I did pledge what I thought was a “respectable” amount. And by that I mean I felt like I was no longer a junior member of the society because I could pledge “big boy” money, like a grown up.

Mostly though, I gave with labor. I moved a lot of chairs and tables, I was on a lot of committees, I sang a lot of songs and taught a lot of classes.

These gifts are also valuable.

Together we share:

As I said recently to the congregation that I serve in Modesto California,

There are Sundays each year that ministers dread.

Pledge Sunday is one of them.

Some of you may have heard me say that one of the greatest losses in my life as I became a minister was the ability to talk about my faith, and what it has done for me, without the person hearing this story hearing not my words, but a sales pitch.

Pledge Sunday is similar.

No matter what I say today, no matter how much time I spent crafting phrases and doing research for this sermon, there are those who will hear nothing but the following words:

We need you to raise your pledge.

So for those who were waiting to hear those words, there you have them. And now I want you to forget them.

I have said in the past that Church is not about money, but money is the oil that allows the machinery of church to run.

Church is not about money, but money is the oil that allows the machinery of church to run.

Time was that I used to pay my pledge every year when I got my tax return because that was the only time I had any extra cash. It wasn’t much lubricant for the church’s workings, but it’s what I could offer.

And from this, we live.

This church is a lively, vibrant place, full of wonderful people, and truth be told sort of famous and infamous around the Unitarian Universalist world.

We are known far and wide for our racial diversity and for our attention to that. We are known, widely, as having a Unitarian Cathedral.

I don’t think that this church would be so well known if it didn’t live deeply with itself. And by that I mean, we live in each other’s lives. We visit each other when we’re sick, we offer to help each other in many ways. Together we have sat with the dying, holding their hand until their last breath, and rejoiced in a new baby, born into the family.

We live deeply together.

We live deeply together because this church home is very important to our lives. For some this church is essential and central to their lives. There are people who have organized their lives around the love they feel in this church. 

I know this because I have been one of them.

When I hinted to Rev. Barbara that I would be in town this weekend, and that I really, really wouldn’t mind at all if I were invited to preach, she graciously invited to me preach. And for that I thank you, Rev. Barbara.

Then later, when we figured out the theme for today, I was like “Really? I have to go home and preach about stewardship? I have so much to say to these people that I love and miss so desperately, and I get stewardship? I’ve already preached on stewardship this year! This is like being told there someone has slipped in a second Mother’s Day into the calendar!”

But then I realized that, truthfully, it’s actually a wonderful thing for me to talk with you about. Because now when I talk with you about stewardship I have, literally, a more global perspective then I did when I was here 48 Sundays a year.

A gentleman named “D. Sutten” wrote these words:

Some go through life getting free rides; others pay full fare and something extra to take care of the free riders.  Some of the free riders are those who make an art of “knowing the angles,” others are rascals, others lazy; but some really need help and could not ride unless they rode free.  I don’t spend much time worrying about the free riders; but I am a full-fare man, first and last.

Some of you may not know this, and some of you may have forgotten this, but I am a collector of quotes. I have been collecting them since I was 14. Long before computers entered households, I sat with a spiral bound notebook and recorded quotes that spoke to me.

Long before I’d even heard of Unitarian Universalism, many of the quotes I collected came from both Universalists and Unitarians. So clearly, when I walked through those doors back there for the first time, it was a natural fit.

The reason that I’ve chosen to quote Mr. Sutten to you is because in every pledge drive there is the elephant in the room about money. And I’m going to speak some truth to you.

If anyone is going to speak the truth to you about this, it might as well be me. Because you know I love you, and I love this church, and because you know I won’t be getting any kick-backs from this sermon, I can tell you the truth and you can trust me.

There are people sitting here this morning who are better off than others. We all know this. I told you earlier that I gave the minimum possible pledge every year for almost all of my active years here because it’s all I could afford.

So for those of you who are struggling to get by, I want you to really hear my words and feel them in your heart: You are welcome here. Your contributions matter. No, they may not be the biggest numbers in the list, but you are part of a larger whole, and your part does matter. You are equally valued as a member of this community.

I wouldn’t lie to you.

As Mr. Dutten says “Some of the free riders are those who make an art of “knowing the angles,” others are rascals, others lazy; but some really need help and could not ride unless they rode free.”

Unless you are a rascal, or are making an art of knowing the angles, you are doing your honest, level best for this congregation, and that’s all that can be reasonably asked for.

And it will be gratefully accepted.

The rest of the quote speaks to those who are not currently on the margins of society:

Some go through life getting free rides; others pay full fare and something extra to take care of the free riders.  Some really need help and could not ride unless they rode free.  I don’t spend much time worrying about the free riders; but I am a full-fare man, first and last.

There’s a phrase that I first heard from Wallace Rusterholtz. “Noblesse Oblige.” For those, like me, who don’t speak French, it means “nobility obligates.” Its come to mean that to be of means obligates one to care for those with less means.

Wallace used to tell me that his greatest concern about our American Society was that the sense of noblesse oblige was not being passed down from generation to generation.

From this idea of his, I have been sort of watching to see if he was right. He wasn’t right about everything, but he was right about many things, and this is one of them.

As a society, we’ve bought into the idea that we deserve all that we have, and that it’s our right to have the biggest tv, the fanciest car, and the like.

I’d say a rather more healthy view is that it is a privilege to have these things.

At home I drive a 26 year old Volkswagen Convertible. I bought it last year, on my 44^th birthday. Truth be told, it may be the saddest mid-life crisis car ever purchased.

But I love it.

It is a privilege to have that car, old as it is, without air conditioning… but the top goes down and I live in California!

So the reason owning this car is not a right, but a privilege? Because I could choose it.

I worry that as those of us who have struggled to move from the place where we accept just the smallest scrap tossed at us because we had to, from that place we move to places like choice, we feel like we deserve these things, that we have earned them.

Truth be told, the fact that we can chose is a result of grace.

There are plenty in the world with the same level of education as you who don’t have the choices we have. And because somehow the universe has given us grace, by that I man has treated us more gently than they, we have more choices.

This is a truth that Mr. Sutten recognizes.

He doesn’t waste his precious time worrying about who the rascals are, he knows that there are those in the system whose lives haven’t been as filled with grace as his has been, and he feels a duty to, a duty he seems happily to be fulfilling, a duty to pay full-fare.

Mr. Sutten says “I don’t spend much time worry about the free riders; but I am a full-far man, first and last.”

But clearly, he has spent some time worrying about those who utilize free bus passes. And he realizes that though there may be scamps and rascals, he, as a person with economic security, has a responsibility to those who have less access to power.

By not spending too much time, though, he frees himself from the attachment to what these rascals are doing, and who among us would not benefit by doing the same?

My beloved friends, this morning I am encouraging you to consider, deep in your heart, the mission, the history and the future of this congregation which has given me and others so much meaning in their lives.

As a whole, as a body, the congregation will raise the money it requires to continue operations and build on the legacy of our forebears. How you, as an individual, take part, relies on your own sense of community, duty and responsibility.

Before I step down, I can’t help but engage in a little personal privilege, and I hope you won’t mind.

I am up here preaching to you today because you helped to make me who I am. I am out in the Central Valley of California, in the Almond Capitol of the world, because you helped me to see the potential I had.

My life is become a success because of what I received here, what I have given here, what we’ve shared and how we’ve lived together.

In my ministry, I speak of you often. I think of you often. And when I am not at home, I miss you terribly.

May this church forever continue to be place where the lost can be found, where family does not mean you have the same grandparents and where we inspire each other with acts of kindness, truth telling, hugs, tears and laughter.

Amen.

© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and Delivered to

The First Unitarian Society of Chicago

March 17, 2013