A Year of Justice

It is good to be together again.

This afternoon the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry here in California, will be having a training here, after church. Perhaps you saw the training on our church calendar, which is on our website, maybe you saw Kevin Byrne’s request for volunteer help through our weekly eBlast. Maybe this is the first you’ve heard of it. Anything’s possible.

The Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of California, or UULMCA for short, is one our largest and best organized Legislative Ministries across our nation. In the past 10 years they’ve done a lot of work, organized a lot of folks and made a real name for themselves in Sacramento. Rev. Lindi Ramsey is just completed a decade of work with that community ministry.

And we know a little bit about community ministries here in this congregation. We have two ministers who work in their “semi-retirement” for the greater good of the people of this very county. We have Rev. Leroy Egenberger who has been working with veterans and their families, helping them to adjust to life after military service, and we have Rev. Bill Greer, whose ministry of feeding those who are hungry has deeply infected and affected almost all of us. By its very nature, Rev. Leroy’s work is quiet and contained.  But not Rev. Bill’s.  If you have worked with Bill in the kitchen, or served food in the last year, please raise your hand.

I am grateful for the work of both Bill and Leroy. They do things that I cannot. I wouldn’t have time to run a program that feeds hundreds of people each month, and I don’t have the training to do the specialized work that Leroy does.  They are both tremendous assets to our congregation.

Rev. Lindi Ramsey is another person whose work I am grateful for. When I arrived in Modesto 20 months ago, and Lindi called me up to do some sort of political action, I responded, and so did Rev. Denis Paul. We showed up in your bright yellow clergy shirts, and helped to hold 4,000 prayers from across theological and geological barriers, that were being delivered to Governor Brown’s office, hoping they would inspire him to consider more equitable immigration policies.

He was unable to answer our prayers that time, by the way.

At the time we first met in person, I told Rev. Lindi “I’m so new to California, and I'm so new to ministry, that I have no idea which end is up with regard to the political and the social in California. I also don’t feel like I have much time right now to figure it all out. So how about we make a deal? When you need me to show up, you just call me, and I will show up. You give me the talking points you want me to say to any media who asks me, and I will say it. Our ministries are co-mingled.”

I have said similar things to both Leroy and Bill.

And so I have now been to Sacramento, to the State Capitol, and petted the Golden Bear in front of the Governor’s office 3 times. That is more times than I was EVER in the State Capitol of Michigan, where I lived for 27 years and was a gay activist.

So when the UULM asked to hold a meeting here today, I said “Yes!” and was inspired to talk with you this morning about a year of social justice.

In June, Solange Gonçalves Atlman was a guest speaker in this congregation. Ms. Altman is an immigration attorney and shared with the congregation a terrific talk about immigration and the unjust laws that currently govern it here. She told us heart breaking stories of children who, by no choice of their own, came to be here in the U.S. without documentation.  She also quoted to us a rather famous story of an exchange between Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“In 1848 Henry David Thoreau, a transcendentalist, was arrested and jailed after refusing to pay his poll tax, a tax that would be used to support slavery and its extension through a war with Mexico intended to acquire its northern territories. His friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson came to see him in jail, and exclaimed upon seeing him, "What are you doing in there?" Thoreau replied, "Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?"

Thoreau's brief detention became the inspiration for his essay, Civil Disobedience. In that essay he explains that in a constitutional republic like the United States, people often think that the proper response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but to obey and respect the law, in the mean time, until it is changed. But if the law is itself clearly unjust, and the lawmaking process is not designed to quickly obliterate such unjust laws, then Thoreau says the law deserves no respect and it should be broken. He tells us that "it is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for what is right."[1]

Immigration reform and the just treatment of those in our community who among us without documentation is an issue that we take seriously and work hard for in Unitarian Universalism. The very president of our Association of Congregations was arrested in Arizona two years ago protesting the treatment of so called “illegals.”

The UULMCA gave me my first chance to be a voice, the voice of a religious leader, on the issue of reforming the laws for immigration.

But the UULMCA does more than work to reform immigration policies. They work on environmental issues, developing lay and young leadership, and for years worked to coordinate efforts to provide marriage equality for same sex couples here in California.

Let’s hope they can retire that topic once and for all.

But it’s not just Rev. Lindi Ramsden and the UULMCA who are doing the work. The UULMCA is, for me, a clearing house of information. The UULMCA cannot do its work effectively without dedicated Unitarian Universalists who work hard, who carry signs, who go to city council meetings, who pack lunches, and hug those who are marginalized.

This year, though, I’m going to challenge us to focus energy on Social Justice. I know, I know, we have that whole pesky “search for a new minister” going on, and that whole “rethinking the way we fund our Fellowship” thing, oh, and the whole “This is our 60^th year gathering together as a congregation,” thing.

All kidding aside, I think these are exactly the reasons that we should really focus some serious energy into Social Justice.

I want to tell share with you and story I read on the Ms. Magazine blog. It’s the story of a group of women in Israel who call themselves “The Women of the Wall.”[2]

These women, who are of different branches of Judaism, have been meeting together and praying together for 24 years, at the Wailing Wall.

So what, you might say, people have been praying at the Wailing Wall since Herod the Great started building  the Second Great Temple in 19 BCE (before common era, what used to be called “Before Christ”) and it was destroyed by the Romans in the Frist Jewish-Roman war in 70 CE (what used to be called A.D.)

Well, it turns out that the Women of the Wall do not pray in the tiny section of the Wall that the Ultra-Orthodox have decided should be the section for the women. No, these women have the nerve to pray wherever they want to, along the wall! Also, to the consternation of some, they read aloud from the Torah, which according to some, is against Jewish Law.

In the 24 years they have been meeting, they have been hassled, harassed, tear-gassed and arrested for praying together along the Wall. Shira Pruce, who is the Public Relations Director for the Women of the Wall, was interviewed for the article, and she reports that the ultra-orthodox have used their political influence unduly in trying to restrain the freedom of expression and religion expression in the democracy that is Israel.

I bring you this story from Ms. Magazine in part to bring you back to the reading earlier by Emerson, that great radical, that great free-thinker, who we are so often proud of. He says there are some things that are fated, and that there is a nobility in accepting those things.

And yet his dear friend, Henry David Thoreau challenged him on it. And this example of these women praying together offers yet another challenge to that idea.

So, not to through Emerson out with the bathwater, I ask you, what are the things in your life, in our collective lives, that are noble to accept, and which are the ones we should work like Hell to change?

I have seen a bumper sticker that says “Well behaved women rarely make history.”

I must confess that I love that bumper sticker.

Think of all the women in our faith’s history that have re-shaped the world because they refused to accept the status quo, and also think of the men who worked by their sides.

This, as well as a self-examining faith that requires no statement of belief or creedal test, this is among the greatest gifts and challenges of our legacy.

We are a people who work to improve the world around us. We claim little, if any knowledge about the next world, the world beyond death, even if there is one.

As unsure as we are about all of that, we are as sure that it will take the hands of people like us to shape the world into a more fair and just world for all.

Theodore Parker famously wrote “the arc of the universe is long and it bends toward justice.” Well, the arc isn’t going to do that all by itself. It’s going to require people to help shape that arc.

Working actively for social justice can do many things for us as congregation. As we are out visible in the world, more people will see us, more people who are like-minded to us may see us and wonder just who those people over there are, and why do I keep seeing that group of lovely folks at every social justice event I attend. Maybe I should go talk with them.

Working actively for social justice will catch the attention of minister’s who are looking for just such an amazing group of people who are here, in Modesto.

Working actively for social justice will help to enrich our lives both individually and collectively, and aren’t we a congregation about enriching lives?

So let us commit ourselves, in this our 60^th year as a Fellowship, let us renew our commitment to engaging in social justice.

You can start by staying around for this afternoon’s meeting.

---

[1] Unjust Laws: The Moral Case for Immigration Reform,” © Solange Gonçalves Altman, 2013

[2] Misogyny at the Wall, http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/08/05/misogyny-at-the-wailing-wall/

A Year of Justice

© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and delivered to:

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County

August 11, 2013

Fathers' Day

Good morning and welcome to the First Church of Subtlety’s Annual Fashion Day. [Editor's note, we were pretty much ALL wearing Hawaiian Shirts.]

If you are visiting us this morning, please do not be alarmed. We do not always dress like this. It’s true that some of us do, it is only once a year that we all do it, and that’s every Fathers’ Day.

Welcome to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County.  We are glad you joined us this morning.

We are a congregation of people who gather each week, and sometimes more often than that, to share our lives, our joys, our sorrows and the days that are just regular. We are a non-creedal, non-doctrinal religion with no required belief systems. There will be no test, and no one here will ever tell you what you should believe.

We will, however, in keeping with our covenantal faith, encourage you in your spiritual growth, expect you to grow as a human being, which also means helping you when you stumble or your stuck.  

We welcome you into our church home, no matter your financial status in life, or your first language. You are welcome here no matter where you are on your spiritual journey, from “I don’t really know what I believe” to Humanism, Buddhism, Goddess worship or some blend of all of the above and more. You are welcome here no matter who it is that you love, how you define your gender, and who your ancestors are.

We hope that you will stay after our service today for our Father’s Day Potluck, and don’t worry if you either didn’t know about it or forgot about it, we always have plenty to pass around. It’s a good time to get to know us and for us to get to meet you.

We bid you welcome.

 

The first thing I’d like to do this morning is to wish Happy Father’s Day to all of the Dad’s out there. 

I’d like to lift up two new Dads, and they would be Rev. Dan Kane and Darin Jensen, who on Friday officially adopted their daughter who had previously been in their Foster Care.

They were supposed to be on a plane to Hawaii today celebrating the adoption, but on Thursday they got a phone call from Social Services and they are now caring for a 6 day old little boy who has neither a name nor a birth certificate yet. So Hawaii went out the window and three became four. The little boy is their daughter’s biological brother.

Dan Kane is the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Community of Lake County. On Friday Denis and I drove to the First Unitarian Church of Oakland to celebrate their successful adoption of their daughter Ella. Also on Friday 14 people from Darin’s congregation drove 4 hours to take part in the adoption ritual at the Oakland church.

It was quite the way to kick off what has become kind of a big weekend for Fatherhood.

Yesterday, we held the memorial service for Dave Waterman. I mention this because over the course of planning his service, I got to know his daughter Jean, and meet both Dave’s son, David, and Grandson Kitri. I also got to meet Margaret’s other two daughters, having met Carol on one of the occasions where she came here to service on a Sunday morning.

It was sort of a hard service to plan, with Jean being in Oregon, and trying to navigate the complications of a blended family. One should, and Jean did, thoughtfully navigate the waters of invitation and obligation when dealing with death and step-siblings. 

Yesterday as we were making the final preparations for Dave’s Memorial service, we received word that Margaret had died on her way to the hospital. When Margaret’s daughters arrived during Dave’s Memorial service, we took a moment of silence to honor her, and to welcome Anne, Carol and Joan. The family gathered together, and supported each other in a very beautiful way.

These flowers here are from yesterday’s service.

For me, these two events, the beginning of a legally recognized fatherhood, and the death of a man who cared for these 5 adults were very tempting to use as bookends on a day like Father’s Day.  

But Fatherhood is more global than these three men.

This weekend, Superman opened, and that’s a whopping story about Fatherhood I’ll tell you.

Well, I’ll tell you later, first I want to tell you about a blog post I read this week. It’s called Why I Hate Father’s Day.”

He starts of by saying: 

I hate Father’s Day. I know that as a father I should like it, but I don’t…. Beyond the flawed, Valentine’s Day-esque premise behind it (“You really need one day of the year to show someone you appreciate/love them. Don’t you dare show them on any other day of the year. Don’t. You. [Bleeping]. Dare.”), Father’s Day and its surrounding hullabaloo show just how flawed our society’s view of fatherhood remains.
Even with father’s staying home with their kids more than ever, with more women than ever being the primary bread winner in a household, at a time when the constriction of traditional gender roles is easing up a little bit, along comes Father’s Day, where all the stereotypes of the emotionally distant, non-nurturing father trot back out like some aging hair metal band starting yet another tour to pay for rehab and alimony for the band members’ eight ex-wives.
Father’s Day commercials and gifts all have the same underlying message. “Thanks for not abandoning me, Dad. And occasionally you did stuff with me that was manly and didn’t involve caring for me in any way.”  None of the loving messages Mom got last month.

And then our Blogger friend who remains anonymous goes on to list the most common Father’s Day gifts and what they represent, one example: “A tie. Real message: go back to work and do your only important duty, providing for us financially.”

Ultimately, Father’s Day is just a symptom of the profoundly low expectations society has for fathers right now. All you have to do in order to be a good father is not abandon your child. Everything else makes you father of the year.

This post coupled with the release of the latest version of Superman, who has two fathers with very differing agendas, has put Fatherhood front and center this weekend for me.

Many years ago, when I had a long term girlfriend, my own Dad told me, when I asked him if I’d ever have my life together enough to have children of my own, my Dad told me “No one ever has his life together enough to have children, but you will just work it out, like we did.”

Truth be told, it didn’t sound like much of a plan to me. On the one hand, I believed my Dad. On the other hand I thought his strategy could use a little work.

And this past week, this is what happened to our friends Darin and Dan. They had worked for years to adopt their daughter, and then, without any notice whatsoever, suddenly there’s this other child who needs a home.

My Dad has always sort of reminded me of Superman’s Dad, well, his Earth Dad, Jonathan Kent. Jonathan and his wife Martha had really wanted a child, but nature had not given them one. Then out of the sky falls this rocket ship with a baby.

That’s not the part of the story that reminds me of my Dad. I did not come to Earth in a spaceship, I arrived in the very ordinary way that has been happening for tens of thousands of years.

Pa Kent, as he’s known in the comic books, is a simple man, a farmer; a real salt of the Earth kind of guy.  He does his best to impart good life lessons to his son. He loves his son, and it doesn’t matter that he and Clark are not biologically related.

This is the kind of guy that you can admire.

My Dad, too, spent most of my life, well has been spending all of my life to date, trying to teach me lessons about how to navigate the world in a way that is honorable and has integrity.

I do my best to do him proud.

There’s a lot in Superman about nature versus nurture. Clark Kent’s Dad is a Kansan Famer, 6th generation. Kal El, Superman’s other name, Kal El’s father is Jor El, and he is a distant task master. Depending on the version, Jor El mostly thinks that his son, Kal El will be worshipped on Earth and become its ruler.

In the film released this week, Kevin Costner plays Pa Kent. In order to protect his son’s secret, he faces certain death, all the while looking at his son, his hand motioning Clark to stay put, telling Clark that he would rather die protecting his son’s secret, than force Clark to save him and expose himself to danger.

Our blogger friend, Name, will be happy to note that the Dad who does the nurturing has the greater influence on his son.

And I don’t think that Pa Kent ever got a tie for Father’s Day.

So where are all the images, the iconic images of the Nurturing Father?

Happily, you needn’t go looking into comic books for them, you only need to turn your face to humanity. Real life men.

Dick and Rick Hoyt, for example, are a father and son.  Rick was born without the ability to move or speak, and his father, Dick, has done extraordinary things with his son. For thirty years Dick has competed in marathons, triathlon’s and other endurance races all the while keeping his son with him. This means, that in a recent triathlon in New England Dick swam the 1 mile, all the while towing his son in an inner tube behind him, he bicycled 24 miles with his son in a special chair that hangs secured to the front of his bike, and ran pushing his son in a three wheeled cart. Their fastest time in a marathon is only 30 minutes behind the world record. 

THE REAL WORLD RECORD, run by a man who isn’t accompanied by his son.

Dick credits his son, Rick, with inspiring his father for 48 years. The doctors recommended that Rick’s parents institutionalize their child, but the Hoyts refused.

Rick asked his Dad to run in their first event to benefit a local high school athlete who’d been paralyzed during play. This was in 1978. Since then, Dick had to get on a bike for the first time since he was a boy, and learn how to swim, so that they could eventually work their way up to triathlons.

Dick did all of this, he says, because his son, after running their first race together, told him “Dad when we run I feel like my disability goes away.”

In 1989 Dick and Rick Hoyt completed the Iron Man Triathlon, which is a 2.4 mile ocean swim, followed by 112 miles of bicycling and then a full marathon.

(I’m finding it hard not to use the world Superman right about now.)

I would hope that it would go without saying that there are men in our lives who we are not related to by genetics who influence our lives.

Just to show you how pervasive this is, when I was writing this sermon, I was going to reference the time we spent together on Mother’s Day speaking into the air the names of the women who have nurtured us, and I was going to say  “Please speak aloud the names of the men who have mentored you.”

Even when you think you’re thinking about these things, with an eye and an intention on not repeating them, still we repeat them.

In the next few moments, I would ask you to speak aloud the men in your life who have nurtured you and mentored you. Those who have made you feel safe and valued. Those you look up to. 

As with Mother’s Day, there are wounds and scars left us by our male parents, too. We need to make space for those feelings, too. Unkind words, or actions, by the very men whose job we understood it to be to make us feel safe.

Parenting is of course, a very complex job. It is often difficult for both the parent and the child, as each of them is merely a human being with gifts and deficits, and even when there are the best of intentions, there are mistakes made.

On Mother’s Day I encouraged you to love your Real Mother, not the romanticized version of who she is supposed to be. I’d like to encourage you to do the same for your Father.

All those fictionalized father figures, are just that. Fiction. Harper Lee’s father was not Atticus Finch. There is no real Pa Kent. These characters don’t have to live a real life with real pressures, and so they can be heroic and magnanimous all the time.

But we can be inspired by these father figures, both real and fiction, we can be inspired to build relationships in we men are the nurturers, in which we men can lift up those who look to us for leadership and guidance, and we can tell them, with a deep honesty, about the gifts that we see in them, and that we look forward to watching them grow into their fullness.

Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, during one of the many times they were separated by his work to help form this nation. She wrote to him once, regarding suffrage, “John, don’t forget the ladies.” Listening, as one should, to wise women as well as men, I want to heed her advice.

Ladies, you can teach your sons that nurturing is not only the realm of women, but also of men. You can teach your boys that there are other ways to engage with the world other than to pummel it.  I realized that in a room like this sanctuary I am probably preaching to the choir about this.

In seminary, they are constantly training us ministers to consider what our churches look like to the first time visitor, and so for our visitors today, I want to re-state that we are not a weird cult of people who wear….loud shirts… all the time.

We are merely a gathering of human beings whose fashion sense varies, 

who struggle to be the best people we can be, 

who search for answers theologically, 

who show up for each other in times of need, 

who bring food to the sick, 

who celebrate the victories of our children

and who, despite the messiness of our humanity, really do love each other.

May we continue on, in our own clumsy way, making this would a better place.

Amen.

© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and Delivered to

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

of Stanislaus County

The Ones We Count On.

(This service was a service of animal blessing, and so there were about 30 pets of various types and two horses from the farm next door who came by.)

Opening Prayer:

PRAYER TO ST. FRANCIS

FOR Animals, OUR PETS

Good St. Francis, you loved all of God's creatures.

To you they were your brothers and sisters.

Help us to follow your example

of treating every living thing with kindness.

St. Francis, Patron Saint of animals,

watch over my pet

and keep my companion safe and healthy.

Amen.

Homily:

I’m a pet person.

Often when I sit down to write a sermon or homily, I try to make sure that there is some balance between my “natural” point of view and other perspectives.

I realized, though, on this topic that I have been a pet person my whole life, and I don’t really know how to present the “not a pet person” point of view.

I know that there are many reasons why one does not have a pet:

Fear of animals

Allergies to animals

A life that is too busy with travel to properly take care of a pet.

But even for the Non-Pet People among us, pets are a force in our lives.

In literature, in movies, in stories told around campfires, animal companions are everywhere.

We were watching a documentary called “Dogs Decoded,” which sort of went through the dogs genetic code, and our human interaction with their genetics.

Here is some of what we learned from that show. Dogs and humans have co-existed for so long, that they actually may well have had an effect on our own evolution.

When you communicate with your dog, your dog looks at your left eye first, to gauge your mood, and you look at her or his left eye, too!

Cats are known to bring down blood pressure when they purr. Of course, having had a cat for 12 years, I can also report that he brought my blood pressure up a few times!

Cats are soft, and can be the best being to cuddle with, if they’re in the mood for it.

No matter dog, cat, turtle, guinea pig, horse, snake, each of us gets something out of the companionship of our pet.

They make us laugh, they allow us to care for another being in a way that is less complicated than loving another human.

They depend on us for care and feeding.

We depend on them because to them we matter.

And they show us this is many ways.

The wagging tail, the curved tail, the slightly excited version of whatever dance they do, to show us that they notice us, and are happy to see us.

In whatever version of happy they have.

And this is a great lesson for all of us, no matter our age.

We learn to read the happiness of those animals within our care,

Not because they demonstrate their happiness in a way that is most convenient, or comfortable for us, but because we learn to take joy and comfort in their own nature.

And by doing so, we learn, we grow, we become better beings ourselves.

So no matter what sort of genus or species your pet is, unless it’s a pet rock, you depend on your animal companion to increase your own humanity.

And each of us, your fellow humans, benefit from the lesson your pet teaches you.

I have learned that sometimes when you pet a cat, they don’t purr.

I have learned that if you aren’t home by a certain time, a dog can’t hold it anymore.

I have learned that few things help a broken heart like a pet sitting on the couch next to you, just radiating love and care.

From all of this, I have learned how to be a better human. If a person doesn’t want to do the equivalent of purring, I cannot make them.

If you don’t take care of the people in your lives, they will suffer. If you make a deal with someone, you must attend to that relationship.  And if you don’t it isn’t really fair for you to ask more of them then they are capable of.

Sometimes the best thing a friend can do, that I can do as a friend, is to just sit with my broken hearted friend, and be. There are some things that words just can not fix.

Look around the circle at all these pets. All these teachers, mostly without voices. These little beings who are in our lives, teaching, loving, needing.

In the Hebrew Bible, in Genesis, God gives Man dominion over the animals, some say.

I have read that word dominion as “responsibility.”

We have a responsibility for our animal companions. It is our accepted job to play with them, to feed them, to care for them, and to celebrate them.

Remember, always, even when it’s hard, to cherish your pet.

Sticking Together in Mercy

For our Christian friends and neighbors, today is the Day of Pentecost. Every year they celebrate the miracle of communication. I will now read from the Christian Scriptures: The Acts of the Apostles chapter 2:1-8

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.  Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?”

Several years ago, I preached in a church that holds membership in the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations and the United Church of Christ. I had done a history project with them, trying to help them organize, archive and reproduce some recordings of their one-time famous minister, the Rev. Dr. Preston Bradley.

If you ever gotten an email from me, you may have noticed that at the bottom of my email, I quote Dr. Bradley “The world basically and fundamentally is constituted on the basis of harmony. Everything works in co-operation with something else.”

Dr. Bradley’s church was, in it’s heyday, a Unitarian congregation of some 4,000 regular attendees and a radio audience of about 3 million folks. In the 1920’s the term “mega church” was actually coined to describe The People’s Church on the Northside of Chicago.

Their sanctuary seats about 4,000 people.

Well, seated.

Now it seats far less, as the top balconies have been closed off for years.

And the congregation, even though it hosts Chicago’s largest shelter for homeless men, at 150 beds, the congregation has shrunk to about 10.

Yes, 10 loyal followers, many of whom still remember, fondly, Dr. Bradley, who died in 1983.

Though it’s a complex story, with many nuances, The People’s Church has declined largely because it can not let go of it’s past.

Dr. Bradley, for his part, did not leave when it was time for him to retire, and 4 or 5 younger, dynamic ministers, spent years as his Assistant Minister, and were promised that he would retire “in the next year or two.” But Dr. Bradley was unable to let go of his influence, of his fondness for what was in years past, of his own desire to control the direction of the church that he’d built, starting in 1912.

And the church suffered greatly for it.

So here I was a seminarian, preaching in this large auditorium slash sanctuary, on Pentecost to a congregation that believed, at least partially, in the Miracle of the Pentecost.

What to do?

It occurred to me that I might change the question of the Pentecost from the Miracle of Speaking in Tongues, to the Miracle of Hearing Each Other.

What if, the miracle was in fact about listening, understanding and not speaking?


The Rev. Fred L. Hammond wrote:

There is only one place that I know of where people speak in other tongues and others are able to understand them.  That place, my friends, is right here in a Unitarian Universalist Congregation.   And it is a gift that we often fail to cultivate to its fullest potential.
What am I talking about?  Did I suddenly say words that seem incomprehensible?  I am going to do what many Pentecostal ministers do when preaching and refer back to the text of the day.   The text states that when all of these Jews who came from all over the known world to worship in Jerusalem heard the disciples speak, they heard them speak in their own language and were amazed.   The men and women, who had gathered still in grief over the death of their teacher, began to speak in words that others could hear and understand.
And who are we?  We are a people who gather together professing no specific creed.  Right here in this congregation we have people who profess a Christian faith, a Hindu faith, a Jewish faith, an atheist faith, a pagan faith, or possibly a New Thought faith.  We are a diverse people who speak many different tongues.  Yet here we are, covenanting together to create a community that welcomes, promotes our differences.   We have chosen to dialogue together about our various creeds so that when we meet a person who has a creed that is different than our own, we can be open and affirming with that person.  Because we have learned, some better than others, to hear those beliefs and creeds in our own language and at the same time honor the unique differences of their faith. 

Fred and I are friends. When Fred was a student at our seminary, he attended church with me in Chicago.


This is what we are. Out here on the outskirts of Modesto, here in Stanislaus County. We are a gathering of people with different ideas about what holds ultimate value for us, and yet we meet week after week.

We meet not just to tolerate the beliefs of others, we come not to convince each other that our doctrine is better than theirs.

We come together and we happily drink in the diversity of theology, or no theology as the case may be. We revel in the ideas and the people who are not carbon copies of ourselves.

What other congregation in Stanislaus County has a Buddhist Sanga on it’s campus?

No one.

This is just one, albeit happily very visible, aspect of what makes this congregation special.

We are the place you can bring your Muslim friends, your Buddhist friends or your friends who are Sikh, or your friends who are seeking….something…. even if they don’t yet know what the name of that something might be, or how it will co-exist in balance with the other really important feelings and ideas that they have inside them.


Here we have heard members of our congregation say, over and over how this fellowship has been a life-line for them in the midst of their most trying times. When loved ones have died, when jobs and relationships were lost. When they felt alone and vulnerable, they turned to this congregation.

Here we have heard triumphs of the human spirit. We have heard of decades long hurts addressed. We have heard of graduations, of finding love. We have celebrated and cheered for new babies and victories of grandchildren. We have heard that we have saved someone’s life, because we were here.

This is exactly the importance of our ritual of sharing Joys and Sorrows each week.


It’s true that we may struggle with words like Mercy, Grace, Forgiveness, Religious Authority, God and other big concepts.

But this is part of what makes us so amazing! We struggle with them. No one tells us:

This is our doctrine, and this is the party line you must tow.

Instead, we wince at a word, like Amen, and then we try to figure out why we wince, and what that might mean.

We do this in coffee hour, and we do this in small group ministry circles. Each Fellowship Circle meets monthly and each circle is responsible for some act of service to the congregation or the world at large. Today’s lunch has been provided for by the Fellowship Circle led by Marcia Gilbert and Denis Paul. It’s members are Mary Randall, Jack Lackey, Doreen Souza and Avonelle Tomlinson, so you should thank them today.

At other churches, you can oooo and ahhhh over pictures of grandchildren, true enough.  But you are not likely to find the rest of what happens here at any other place.

We are unique in this county. We are celebrating 60 years of fellowship here in the Central Valley.


We don’t have a creed, and there is not test of faith to be a member of our community. No one should ever tell you that you don’t belong here.

We are one of 1,100 independent churches that call themselves a Unitarian Universalist Congregation. That comes with both a legacy and a challenge.

This year we have heard stories from several congregants about how they found their way here, this oasis. About what it means to be a non-joiner, and to join. About being amazed that there were other people out here in the Central Valley who thought about things, and felt things, in a similar way that they did.

If we are going to continue to be not just a home, but an effective church, living our faith out loudly and boldly, we must stick together.

Even when that means that we don’t agree. Even when sometimes our ideas are not the ones that the majority go with.


All week I’ve had this image of an old-fashioned barn raising in my mind.

It may be sort of a funny image, I know. But imagine with me a short film of Amish men building a barn together. See them lifting walls, and hammering in wooden pegs. Imagine them yelling to one another, to be heard.

And see the women, cooking enough for an army. Watch them talk amongst themselves about what is important to them.


This community, even though it may have gender divisions that we might not agree with, this community is a thing of beauty. Each person, from the youngest to the eldest, does their part the best that they are able to do, for the benefit of all.

Who cares if the barn being raised isn’t yours…this time.

You may be next, you may not.

What matters is that your friends and neighbors come together, to build this barn, which will sustain your life. With hammer or wooden spoon, the entire community pitches in.


At your best, this is what this community does.

We are a beacon of liberal faith. We are the church of the open mind and the helping hand. We are the church with the big yellow sign out front that says “Standing on the Side of Love.”

We are a safe place for those who might feel otherwise marginalized. Be it because of their gender expression, who they love, their political or theological ideas, their first language, where they were born.

Here they can be safe. And new comers can be safe, but they must first know we’re out here.

We must let them know that we’re here.

To be a congregation that changes the lives of the people of Stanislaus County, we must let them know about us, and we must be strong. To be strong, we must come together, even if sometimes we bump into each other a room full of toddlers learning to walk.

When we bump into each other we must show grace, offer forgiveness and in doing so engage in the very practical and spiritual act of creating mercy here on Earth.

We don’t claim to know what happens in the afterlife, if anything happens at all. We do know, though, that we have only our own hands to change the world.

And many hands make light work of a heavy load.

May we all put our hands together, each according to their finest gifts, and get to work