Amazing Grace

As part of their training, every Unitarian Universalist minister in the modern age has to do a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE. I’ve done two units of CPE, one in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, and one on the Near West Side of Chicago.


Both of these hospitals are urban hospitals and neither was located in what you might considered a cushy area. In both of them, the Emergency Room was my responsibility.

It is often reported by seminarians that it is working in a medical setting, like a hospital, during CPE, that they first feel like “real” ministers.

I would like to share a story with you. This story takes place in the Emergency Room of that hospital in Chicago.

In the middle of one of my shifts a pair of sisters came into the ER. One of the sisters was quite well, and the other was very sick. The ER Docs called me to “deal with’ the healthy sister, as she was becoming a problem in the ER, and causing anxiety to rise up for the entire ward.
So I went down to talk with this woman.

Because of laws about information sharing and healthcare, I did not record the names of these two sisters, and these 5 years later, I couldn’t recall them if I had to, so I’m just going to assign them two names.

I’m going to reach into the Hebrew texts and call these women Ruth and Naomi, because Ruth is my favorite book in the Bible.

Naomi was sleeping in her room when I arrived to meet Ruth, who was visibly agitated.
I asked Ruth to step into the conference room with me and we began to talk.

Ruth was upset because Naomi was very bad off. Naomi had stage four cancer, and had just told Ruth that she was ready to die.

Ruth, however, was not ready to have her sister die.

And therein lie the conflict.

So Ruth and I had a long conversation about their relationship, and the current state of things. I said to her “Ruth, you’re a healthy woman, with lovely skin, and a strong body. Naomi is not well. And, to be honest with you, Ruth unless you get hit by a bus, chances are very high that you will outlive your sister.”

Ruth looked pained, but nodded to me.

“Now, I can see that you love your sister a great deal, but here’s my question to you; How do you want to spend the rest of your time with your sister? Do you want to fuss and argue with her about her being ready to die, or are you going to spend your precious time  by walking with her and telling her how much you love her?”

“I want to show her that I love her.”

“And how do you think you can best do that?” I asked.

“By just being with her, telling her I love her, and caring for her.”



It is probably no surprise to you that Unitarian Universalist Student Ministers have a reputation in hospitals for not being comfortable with prayer. It’s hard to pray for us, number one, and then once you get entangled in questions like “How do I authentically pray with people whose theology depends on Christ?” and the like, it gets very awkward.

I was no different. But still I felt that Ruth might need to pray, so I asked her to pray with me.

So we took hands, and this is where grace enters the story.

I don’t remember all that I said in our prayer, but I remember that it was a prayer of gratitude for Naomi and loved ones we meet along the way. It was a prayer about how people in our lives influence us, and guide us.

I ended the prayer with a phrase something like “for those we have known our whole lives who have touched our hearts, we are grateful.”

I may not really remember the exact words I used, but I will never forget the next words that Ruth spoke to me. She squeezed my hands and said.

“and for kind souls who we’ve just met, who have changed our whole lives by love. Amen.”


I know that Ruth was thanking her God for me being there, by saying those words. But I don’t think Ruth had any idea the gift of grace that she bestowed upon me that evening in the ER on the West Side of Chicago.


I had been walking through the valley of my own doubts about my ability to minister, about my ability to access the holy in ways that would speak to people who didn’t share my theology. I had been scared to death of praying in public.

And Ruth offered me love.

To me, this is what grace is about.

Grace is a gift given to you by the universe, not because you’ve earned,

or sought it out

or spent years praying for it,

but it is something that you deserve.


I don’t mean deserve like asking God for a new truck, because you work hard.

I mean deserve because you are a valuable child of the Universe, of God, if you will.

Here’s the tricky thing about Grace for us Unitarian Universalists.

We don’t know what to do with it, and the idea that a random kindness comes to us because we deserve it makes us uncomfortable.

Because we deserve it is not a rational statement.


You can work hard and earn a paycheck, which allows you to buy that new truck, which by the way, for the sake of your soul, I hope is a hybrid. ;-)

That kind of thinking makes sense to us.


But a kind offering from the universe around us, to us, just because we are?

That’s hard for us to sit with.


And before all you rationalists out there start dismissing what I’m saying as some sort of “woo-woo” theist thinking, I am talking directly to you, as well.

The story I told you at the start of this sermon, the grace that happened there, was rooted fully in the interaction of two human beings. Each of them having spent their lives on the margins of society.  Reaching out passed our own belief systems, and the ways in society may have tried to marginalize each of us, to connect deeply with the human sitting across from them.


When people in the Subcontinent of India meet one another, they tend to put their hands together, like this. Fingers up, palms together and say “Namaste.” There are various meanings to this act, but each of them is a sign of respect. In the west, we have been taught that to perform this greeting is respectful and sends the message “The Divine Spark within me greets the Divine Spark within you.”

Ruth and I shared just such a moment.


This is the larger, and frankly saving message of our faith. Our Good News. Our Gospel.

We need not believe the same things to reach out to each other in caring ways. If nothing else, we share a common humanity, and that is reason enough to love one another.

Whether it be as Jesus said “love thy neighbor as thyself,” or

In 2002, a group of eight ambassadors from the North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) carried a collection of Golden Rules from thirteen religions to the United Nations.

Joel Beversluis wrote: We'd been invited to visit with the Assistant Secretary-General, Mrs. Gillian Sorensen, to present a framed Golden Rules poster to her for the UN.

Included are 13 messages from world religions that restate the Golden Rule in their own contexts. Aboriginal Spirituality, Baha'i Faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, Unitarianism and Zoroastrianism.

Yes, we made the list of 13 world religions, even though we are less than a quarter million people in the United State, and 5,000 in Canada.

The poster lists our First Principle, that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every individual, as a variation on the Golden Rule.

In January, 400 gathered UU ministers were told by an excellent preacher of the Southern Baptist tradition that it was time for Unitarian Universalism to step out of ourselves and be noticed.


The Rev. Dr. James Forbes, Minister Emeritus of the Riverside Church NY, NY talked about the first and second great awakenings in American history. He quoted 1 Kings: 19:11-13 to us.

11 “Go out and stand on the mountain,” the Lord replied. “I want you to see me when I pass by.” All at once, a strong wind shook the mountain and shattered the rocks. But the Lord was not in the wind. Next, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 Then there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  Finally, there was a gentle breeze, 13 and when Elijah heard it, he covered his face with his coat. He went out and stood at the entrance to the cave. The Lord asked, “Elijah, why are you here?”

Dr. Forbes then said to us; and I am paraphrasing here, the first great awakening happened in the 1730’s and 40’s. It was about God earthquake. The preachers stood up and shouted about salvation and God’s anger.

But that isn’t you.

The Second Great Awakening took place between 1790 and 1830. It was a fire, spread by the search for purity in churches.

But that wasn’t you either.

But now we’ve come to the time where there will be a Third Great Awakening, the awakening of the Still Small Voice.

And that is you.

Your faith has stood on the leading edge of social justice and equality for hundreds of years, yet few know who you are.

Because you are still small voice.

But I’m here to tell you that the we need you. The world needs you.

In a world where we are ever more thrust into gatherings of people, at work, in schools, in our very families, we need the leadership of the people who aren’t just now learning how to do things like this, we need the leadership of the experts.

And you my friends, are the experts.

So stop hiding your light under a bushel, step out of Elijah’s cave and shout “We are here, and we can help!”

Dr. Forbes lay bare for us ministers the challenge of our faith.

We need to stop being shy about the faith that we have found, and it’s many gifts, and difficulties, and to witness to the world

what the grace of humanism can look like.

I have quoted Rev. Bill Sinkford before saying “we are all humanists in that we know that we can rely only on human hands to fix this broken world.”

In that vein of humanism, whether you’re a Christian, a Buddhist, a Pagan, and “I’m not sure at the moment,” we can all participate together.

As Robert Latham said last week, we need to change our message from Unity in Diversity to Diversity in Unity.

It is our inherent Diversity that, when used for a common purpose, makes us just the very people who can go forth into the world and be vehicles of grace.

Because we won’t stumble when faced with co-workers of differing faiths, because we, religiously have room for different belief systems.

Because our faith calls us to speak up for the powerless and the voiceless, no matter what their gender expression, or who they love, where they were born, or how impoverished they are, we can be vehicles for grace.

The challenge for us, I think though, will be for us to be recipients of grace. That may require a humility that we, as a people, struggle with.

And so I encourage you, friends, to open yourself to the possibility of grace.

Learn, truly learn deep inside of you, that you are a person who deserves to receive grace, perhaps seemingly randomly from the universe, just as much as you feel the responsibility to save the world, and all her people, but demonstrating our own loving humanism.

© Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and Delivered to

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County

March 3, 2013.

Evil

Evil is icky.

It is never really any fun, it always includes pain, and even the most dastardly villain is harmed by performing an act of villainy, although the payback may not be quick enough for some.

Evil is also hard for us, as Unitarian Universalists, to theologically engage in. As I mentioned two weeks ago, our lack of a theological response to evil is, according to Coretta Scott King, one of the primary factors that she and her husband didn’t become Unitarian Universalists, even though they regularly attended a historically famous Unitarian Universalist church in Boston while he was attending university there.


Our faith started out as two faiths, both of whom were born during the Age of Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment itself was a response to the superstitions of the Middle Ages, where evil roamed freely in the woods and in the night.

After all, the Age of Enlightenment is all about reason, and reasonable people do not commit evil.

In some way, it could be argued that since rational people do not commit evil, evil has no place in our systematic way of thinking about the world except to “other” it.

Evil happens over there. Evil happens in some other corner of the globe.

Evil is the abuser, the oppressor.

We are not this thing called evil, we are nice people doing all that we can to make the world a better place.


Recently, the Revs. Denis Paul, Lucas Hergert and I were discussing evil.

From that discussion rose the thought that evil existed in a corporate body, a body of many, many people, each making decisions,  decisions that are not in themselves evil, but as a collection, become a kind of corporate evil.


This led us to a discussion about Thomas Hobbes’s book, The Leviathan, from which I quoted in January. Hobbes’s book describes the society as a great living body of individuals, from whom a monster is made.

Hobbes, it may be suggested, didn’t have the highest opinion of humanity.

And when I say “may be suggested” I’m really only kidding. Everybody who reads Hobbes knows that he doesn’t have a very high opinion of humanity.

Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan Minister who is most famous for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” in which he compares humanity in the precarious predicament of being dangled over the fires of Hell by a God who is supremely disappointed in us. Edwards looks like a lightweight when compared to Thomas Hobbes.

And while I’m confessing things, yes, talking about Thomas Hobbes did bring up Calvin and Hobbes.

Which also it brought up John Calvin. Who it can safely be asserted, did not think too highly of humanity, either.

John Calvin had Michael Servetus burned at the stake. Servetus published a book called On the Errors of the Trinity, in which Servetus, the medical doctor who first articulated the human circulatory system, says that there is no text evidence for a Holy Trinity in the Bible, but in fact, there is only a Unity of God. God is one being, not triune. For his Unitarian heresy, Calvin had Servetus burned at the stake, his book strapped to his leg, using green wood, so that it would take longer.

It may seem odd now, but this faith of ours has some of its roots in Calvinism, which believes predestination, in the salvation of the select saints, and the eternal damnation of those who are NOT the “elect.” In the Calvinist view we are either condemned or saved, depending on what God has to say about it, and nothing we do, for good or ill, while we live plays any bearing on the outcome. This is what our Pilgrim and Puritan ancestors believed.

We rebelled against that notion and embraced the two theologies that are at our core. There is only one God, man is made in that image, and God has given us reason and minds, and a desire to improve the world around us.

In our modern expression, this has evolved into the idea that each person must find what is, for them, the ultimate value, using both our heart and our minds.

The second theology is that God is a loving God, that God would never condemn any person to eternal punishment after death, and instead loves the wicked and the just equally. Because God’s capacity to love is so much greater than human understanding.


But still we carry some of that Puritan work ethic, and part of that Puritan ability to judge our neighbors quite harshly.

The upside to the Pilgrim work ethic is we have an underlying "understanding" or belief that hard work will result in a good life. That if we keep our noses to the grindstone, if we don't stray too far from the path, we can retire when we're old, and be okay.

The downside is that somewhere in the back of our psyche we make the connection that since those who work hard are rewarded and good, and their life will reflect that.

This also means that in our subconscious we equate a life that is less than desirable is the result of a poor work ethic, or poor moral compass.

Which of course, is not true.  But it is deeply imbedded in the American subconscious.

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but it’s people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves… It is in fact a crime to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor.  Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold.  No such tales are told by American poor.  They mock themselves and glorify their betters. - Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse Five”

If evil is in fact, many small acts motivated by indifference or anger, or hate, what does it mean when I tell the homeless person that I have no change for them?

What prompted this burning question behind this sermon was one act.

Denis and I were walking the dog, and this guy, I’d guess in his mid-20’s, with a bottle of what I assumed was alcohol wrapped in a small bag, asked us for some change.

And afterward I wondered about the role of this one act on the way to a more corporate evil.

It is only one act, and it may even be a true statement, that I had no change, but when does my statement, echoed by the voices of many people, over time, when do we slip from a single interaction of indifference into a corporate act of evil?

It was a true statement. I didn’t have any change, and more and more I find this to be the case, as I pay for everything with a debit card, but is that the part that matters?

Here is, as Paul Harvey might have said, part of the rest of the story.

When this man asked me for money, I made a quick assessment of him. He was sort of unwashed, stumbling around a bit, it was about 9:00am. He was carrying a bag that I was pretty sure had a 40 ouncer in it, and I didn’t have any change to give him.

But did I stop and ask him about his life?

No.

Did I ask him if there was something else I might help him with?

No.



So here you have, in just about 5 seconds, a small number of acts that I committed.

Judgment.
Disregard.
Apathy.
Dismissal.

How many small acts of indifference does it take to make a corporate evil?


If you have spent any time in a city of any size, you have been asked for spare change by some stranger. And perhaps you’ve become callous to it. Blind to it.


But what if someone really did need just $5 in gas to get home? What if that person was really just looking for enough money for something to eat?


The world is full of stories of great kindness shown to someone in need. There’s been a whole “Pay it Forward” movement, there are people who offer kindnesses, with no expectation of return, but that the generosity will be offered, in its due time, to another, of your own acquaintance who needs a little help.

Think back for a moment to little Chen, who loved his grandfather so much that he planted a little seed in a pot made by his grandfather. This seed he loved and nurtured for a whole year, even with the seed did not respond to his care.

Think, for just a moment, about how kinder the world would be if people had a little faith in their fellow humans.

More faith than I displayed on that Thursday morning a few weeks back.

Here is a quote from a person named “D. Sutten.” In all of the years that I have had this quote, I have not been able to figure out this person’s first name, or anything else about them.

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

I am not suggesting that you leave this sanctuary, and offer all of your worldly possessions to those who may ask. Jesus had many, many great ideas, and some of them weren’t so practical.

I am not suggesting that you give away all your worldly goods and follow me.

What I’m saying to you is that if we follow the advice of D. Sutten, we will not spend any of our precious time worrying about how the other person got on the bus. If we let D. Sutten be our bodhisattva about this, our teacher who helps us to see the path of the Dharma, if Sutten can show us to be unattached to the idea of fairness…

If we can let go of our own Puritan work ethic…

Just long enough to be charitable to our fellow humans…

And I don’t necessarily mean charitable with spare change,

But a kind word or two. A gentle inquiry…

Then it won’t matter to you if the $5 for gas is really for gas.


The important thing is that in an act of kindness, whether with change or not, you will not, at the very least, be contributing to the act of corporate, collective evil, if you act in kindness.


There but for the Grace of God go I.

I heard this phrase once while square dancing. My club, Chicagoland’s largest Square Dance club, was hosting a dance, and people from other clubs had come into the City to participate.

It was a sight to behold.  The Chi-town squares was founded 27 years ago to give same sex dance partners a place to square dance, because they weren’t allowed to dance together in any existing clubs.

I don’t want to get too far down the rabbit hole with this story, so I’ll cut to the chase.

During the dance, NPR was there, doing a story on our club. They were interviewing an 80 year-old woman from the Republican suburbs of Chicago about being at our dance.

When the interviewer asked her about dancing with this gay club, she responded:

Well, at first I wasn’t to sure about all this. I mean, I’m just not used to watching men dancing together, holding hands and the like. But this is my 10th year coming to this dance. They always serve the best food, and they’re always so genuinely welcoming to us, more traditional folks. And they dance so well. Like I said, I was nervous the first year I came, but then I met these people, and I thought; “There but for the grace of God go I.” These people could be my children, just as easily as they are the children of some other parents. And after that I decided that God must love them, and I should, too. And in all these years, they have been nothing but gracious hosts to us.

This is the kind of response that I wish I’d had two weeks ago when that man asked me for some change.


JRR Tolkein wrote, through the voice of Gandalf the Great:

“Some believe it is only GREAT POWER that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small, every-day deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

This woman could’ve easily forever stayed away from dancing with my old club, but she didn’t. She stretched herself, and found herself expanded by Love.

Don’t we deserve also to be expanded by Love?

It can happen to you, one act by one act.

The choice is yours.

Make it a good one.

Ministerial Authority

What makes a minister?

In some faith traditions, for example our orthodox Christian friends, it takes a call from God. For our Jewish friends, it takes years of schooling, the same for our Muslim friends.

For the Universal Life Church, based here in Modesto, it takes an internet connection.

Believe me, I was as surprised as anybody to find the world headquarters of the Universal Life Church at 3rd and F when Denis and I were out looking at places to rent a year ago, in preparation for moving here.

Ministerial Authority rests, like a tri-pod, on three legs.

In Unitarian Universalism, there is a clearly spelled out way to become a minister. In order to reach the service of your ordination you must have completed a number of tasks. Being Unitarian Universalists, though, there is some variation in this path toward ministry, but in general one must:

Have a bachelor’s degree. It doesn’t matter the subject of your study. It can be a bachelor’s of science or art. It can be in English literature, astrophysics, elementary education, as long as you have one from an accredited college or university.

You then have to seminary.  There are two Unitarian Universalist seminaries in the United States. Starr King School for the Ministry, where Rev. Grace went, as did Bill Greer and Denis Paul.  There is Meadville Lombard Theological School, which as you likely know, is where I went. There are two in England. There is one in Manchester, and one at Oxford University.

A majority of our clergy though go to non-UU seminaries. In fact, only 30% of UU ministers graduated from a UU seminary, and the other 70% go to other schools. Harvard Divinity is one of these schools. Yes, it used to be a Unitarian seminary, but it went non-denominational several decades back.

This doesn’t mean that ministers who haven’t attended one of the four Unitarian Universalist seminaries don’t get exposed to things like UU history and polity. Part of the required study for each minister includes these subjects, and so people who study elsewhere than Starr King or Meadville Lombard will take these classes through these two seminaries.

So as you look for your next minister, I shouldn’t like you to worry about that.

So, after you decide to that you want to become a minister, you apply to seminary.

And then your journey gets complicated.

The Unitarian Universalist Association has requirements for ministry.

At any given time, there are several hundred students pursuing UU ministry. Last I checked it was somewhere around 530 in a year. There is one man, one community minister, the Rev. David Pettee, who is their shepherd.  It his job at the UUA to help guide student ministers through the UUA process.

There is also the requirements of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, who are part of the UU Minister’s Association. After four years in seminary, you appear before them, in Boston.

And of course, there are the requirements of your seminary. Which, are not standardized in anyway, and may or may not line up with some of the requirements you have to meet with the UUA or the Fellowship Committee.


Seminary is the only full-time, four-year master’s degree that I have ever heard of. This is not to disparage other master’s degrees, but in order to get an MDiv, a Master’s in Divinty, it requires some 36 credits. Which roughly translates to three years of full-time academic study and one year full-time as an intern minister.

In almost any other discipline, this would be equivalent to a doctorate.


While you are signing up for your classes, you have to keep one eye on your school’s requirements, one eye on the Fellowship Committee’s requirements, and one eye on the UUA’s requirements.

Yes, I know, you only have two eyes.  Me, too.


The UUA has every person who wishes to become a minister go through steps. First one must apply to be an aspirant minister. This requires you to get a congregation to sponsor you. After that, you go to see a committee, the Regional Sub Committee on Candidacy, or RSCC, a committee made up of lay and clergy folk, who approve you to go forward—at which point one becomes a Candidate for the Ministry. Or they ask you to go back to your process and address certain concerns they may have.

But before this step, it is recommended that you complete no more or no less than one year’s equivalent of seminary, a unit as a student chaplain in a medical setting and a career assessment.

A career assessment is a 2 and a half-day psychological exam. It involves a lot of writing in advance, a lot of test taking and group work. It costs close to $2,000.

The good news for you folks here, is that I passed my career assessment, and I have paper proof that even though I may be a little unorthodox, I’m not a danger to myself or society.

All kidding aside, though it’s a pain to get through, and requires 40 or more hours of preparation, on top of your school work and your job, I did get some valuable information about myself out of the deal.

One of the things the RSCC does is review this battery of tests and asks you what you learned about yourself from them.

After you pass the RSCC, you immediately make an appointment with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, because sometimes there is a two to three year back-log to see them.

And in the meantime, you take classes, you learn about theology, church systems, more theology, examine your place in the world, more classes, and most often, do your internship.

Applying for your internship means competing against about 100 other seminarians in a nation-wide search to work in a church. You’ve had interns here in the past, I know.

All this while reading 1 to 2 books a week, per class.

Two thick, books. With lots of new words you don’t know.

So by now our fictional Candidate for the Ministry has successfully complete their internship, most of their studies, and it’s time to appear before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, or MFC.


Recently, we started watching Downton Abbey, and there’s a seen in which Lady Mary, the eldest daughter, is warding off a suitor by telling the story of Andromeda at the dinner table.

Many a student minister feels like Andromeda when it comes to appearing before the MFC.


To even appear before the Fellowship Committee a candidate has to create their MFC packet which includes just about everything about them.

And you thought the principal was lying when they threatened you with a permanent record….

In this packet you include the report from the Career Assessment, your Chaplaincy papers, your grades, essays on 10 subjects, an 8-page checklist certifying that you’ve read these books, and you certify that can demonstrate competencies in 17 subject areas.

Yes, 17 subject areas.

And then you fly to Boston and spend the most nerve-wracking 45 minutes of your life, appearing before a panel of 9 people who will decide if you’ll be allowed into Fellowship. This is not a foregone conclusion. Some people are told that they must come back and appear again, some are given a list of tasks to complete, and some are just granted preliminary fellowship.

One has to be in Fellowship before one can be ordained.

And then one has to submit three progress reports before entering final fellowship.


These are just the steps, the mechanical, I can check them off my list steps, that it takes to be authorized to be ordained by a congregation in our faith.

This is one of the legs that ministerial authority rests upon: the training.


It is part of our polity, or how the way that our church is organized, that only a congregation has the authority to ordain a minister. It is only the individual church that can bestow the title of Reverend to a person.

On Apirl 14, 2011, my home church, the First Unitarian Society of Chicago, ordained me. Ordination, they stressed, is for a life-time. They had a special congregational meeting some weeks before the ordination to vote to ordain me. With that ordination, they gave me responsibilities.

Ordination is a very special event. Almost no minister can talk about their ordination without getting a little misty eyed.

When the congregation stood, as one body, and read the words, blessing me and naming me reverend, it was a holy rite. It was them, these people who knew me at my best and worst, affirming…announcing to the world, putting their own reputation on the line, that they stand behind and with me.

When my home minister extended to me the Right Hand of Fellowship, she was placing in a line of ministry that goes back to the dawn of time.

When the congregation gathered around me and laid their hands on me, my parents and Denis with me, they dedicated my life to the service of our faith and to the service of the larger humanity.

This is the second leg that ministerial authority rests upon: the ordination.



The final leg on which ministerial authority stands is that of Call.

This is the most personal of the three, and perhaps the hardest to define. For each individual minister, or each individual person living a religious life, their call is different.

You yourself have a calling, or else you wouldn’t be here with us.

Call is a deeply personal thing.

One aspect of my call is that I feel called by the love of those people who have loved and supported me to go out and love as widely and wildly as I can.

And this is, for me, a sometimes frightening thing.

But I remember my training, I remember my ordination and the church who stands with me, no matter where I travel, and I think about the call of Love, and I square my shoulders, and I do my best.

In balance, I do no better, and no worse than any of you.



In the middle of the twentieth century, there was a man who followed his call.

His name was the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

Though, speaking strictly as an historian, we are too close to his actual life to accurately predict this, I believe that Dr. King will prove to become one of the legends of humanity.

And speaking of ministerial authority, Dr. King had it. No question.

But without the people, he would have had nothing.

One can have training, and one can have call, but if a minister doesn’t have relationship, none of that matters.

Whether that ministry take place in a congregation or in a social service agency or in a hospital, without the people, ministerial authority is like one hand clapping.

And Martin had the people, didn’t he?

There is so much one can say about the ministry of Dr. King that it’s hard to find just one thing that speaks to you.

Perhaps you already knew this, and perhaps you didn’t, but Coretta Scott King, in an interview with the UU World some time back, said that she and Martin had considered converting to Unitarian Universalism. While he was in Boston University, the Kings attended services weekly at the Arlington Street church, which is on the Boston Commons.

In the end, though, they decided to stay with the Baptist church for two reasons. One was that they felt that in order for Martin to do his work, they would need the power and the energy of the black church behind them. The other was that the Kings felt that Unitarian Universalism lacked sufficient tools and conversation about Evil.

Evil just happens to be next month’s theological theme.

But they did find things in Unitarian Universalism that spoke to both of them. One of them was our tradition of non-violent, peaceful, and as Henry David Thoreau had written: Civil Disobedience.  Dr. King acknowledged that he was inspired by Gandhi as Gandhi used non-violence to free his people from the British Empire. Gandhi himself acknowledged that he was inspired, in part by the writings of Thoreau.  Gandhi worked with British Unitarian Minister, Rev. Margaret Barr, to establish schools in India that would teach religious values, but not be based in the divisiveness of religion, as the then established schools did.

As we take tomorrow to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let us take time to consider the lives that he and Coretta lived. Think about the people who inspired the Kings.

Think about Dr. King’s call, and all that it accomplished.

And think about what might have happened if his call and leadership hadn’t ended that fateful, horrible day in Memphis, when he was only 39.


May each of us be inspired by the lives of our heroes, those known internationally, and those known only to us, to live lives that matter.

Go in peace,
Go in wisdom,
Go boldly into the world with love.

Amen.

© 2013 The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and delivered to

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County

January 20, 2013

Defining Our Terms

In the month of January, in keeping with the project of exploring one theme each month, we are going to explore “Religious Authority.”

Religious Authority might, at first glance, seem sort of an odd thing for a group of Unitarian Universalists to be discussing, because, really, what does authority have to do with our religious beliefs anyway?

Aren’t we the church were you can believe anything you want to?


We are in fact, not the church where you can believe anything you want to.

In fact, I would submit to you that we are the church were you believe that which you must. We are called to believe that which calls to us from deep within ourselves. And since we are many, so are the truthes that call to us.

And any one of us will be negotiating between two or more ideas about what truth is, at any given time.

So, no, this is not the church of you can believe anything.

The expression of our faith is NOT passed down from one person, whether she or he stands behind a pulpit or not.

Here each of us is called to reach deep within our sense of the religious and bring forth a guidance, which we must believe.

Not what we’d like to believe.

But what we must believe.

Even if those beliefs can sometimes be profoundly inconvenient.


Often when people first consider ministry, their ministers, or a minister who knows them, will tell them “If there is anything else you can do, you must do that thing. You can only go into the ministry if you can go into nothing else.”

This may sound like a funny thing. You can only go into the ministry if you can do nothing else…

In two weeks I’ll be preaching about ministerial authority, and we’ll talk some more about things people to say to seminarians, but for now I wanted to place that phrase “if you can do nothing else” in front of you.

We believe what we believe because we can believe no-thing other than that.

For some of us, embracing that we cannot not embrace, what we must embrace, comes at the end of a long, difficult journey and that often begins with a crisis of faith.

Along this journey, or really any religious journey worth embarking on, some words, terms and concepts must be encountered, wrestled with, knocked to the ground, dusted off, and sometimes even formerly rejected terms, for full, deep healing to take place, some ideas must be re-embraced, even if means having a different relationship with these deeply important things.

Since your worship associate for the month, Janice Goodloe, and I sat down and gave this sermon it’s title of “Defining Our Terms,” perhaps it’s time to talk a little bit about the definition of the two words “Religious,” and “Authority.”


This week I went down to the Main Branch of the Stanislaus County Library to find the Oxford English Dictionary. The big one. With all the etymology of words and examples of that particular definitions earliest written example.

As you might be able to tell, doing this kind of research is sort of a guilty pleasure.

The first word I looked up was “Religious.”

Religious
a. Adj. Imbued with religion; exhibiting the spiritual or practical effects of religion; pious, godly, god-fearing, devout.
b. Most religious; used as an epithet of royalty
c. C. Holy, sacred
d. Of persons bound by monastic vows; belonging to a religious order, esp. in the Church of Rome.

Okay, so there wasn’t anything really surprising in this definition. But there was an additional note, and this, my friends, is why I love the OED.

The note says: Religion etymology. By Cicero connected with relegere to read over again, but by later authors with relagare to be bind. The latter view has usually been favored by modern writers in explaining the force of the word by its supposed etymological meaning.

I am familiar with the, according to the OED, more modern idea of where the word religion comes from. To bind up, together.

It’s a very sweet meaning, isn’t it? It leads one to the idea that we are journeying together, attached to each other by our shared beliefs.

It’s very poetic, too, deep with imagery and the possibility of poetry.

But I am actually more interested in the lessor known concept of the origin of religion; relegere, to read over again.

Cicero’s meaning is more about the practice of religion, the constant practice of the art of belief.

I’d like to share a story with you. It’s from a book entitled A Monastery Within: Tales from the Buddhist Path, written by Gil Frondal

An engineer had been a regular and devoted visitor to the monastery for many years. The meditation practice taught at the monastery was the only thing that made sense to him. In fact, the pragmatic logic of the meditation teachings gave him hope that he could overcome his chronic unhappiness and deeply felt pain. He tried all the meditation practices that the Abbess taught him. He began each practice technique with enthusiasm only to have each end with the same frustration. He would encounter a wall he couldn’t pass. The closer he came to the wall the more he would recoil back into trying to think his way out of his pain.
Offering him much support, the Abbess encouraged him to relax, trust the practice, and simply feel his inner pain without reacting to it. After many years the Abbess decided a different approach was needed.
During his next visit to the monastery the Abbess told him that if he wanted to continue being her student and to be able to return to the monastery he would have to take on a special practice.  Once he had completed the assignment he could then return for deeper teachings. Once more feeling hope, the engineer quickly agreed.
The Abbess said, “For two years I want to you volunteer ten hours a week at the maternity ward at the local hospital. The hospital needs people to hold babies who are born pre-maturely. If they don’t receive enough physical contact, the babies will not grow healthily. When you have finished these two years, please come back to see me.”

The man was quite perplexed by this instruction. But because of his trust in the Abbess and his failure to find any relief elsewhere, he plunged into volunteering in the maternity ward. He was surprised at how small and fragile the babies were that he held. He would hold them ever so carefully. He would watch their every breath because they all seemed in danger of stopping breathing. He spent a lot of time thinking about how he could more effectively care for the babies he held. But there was nothing more effective than simply holding them against his chest.
After about six months he started feeling something quite new. He started to feel a little spot of warmth and softness in the very center of his being. Since this was a foreign experience that didn’t fit any of the ways he thought about himself, he ignored it.
Ignoring it was the best thing he could have done because it prevented him from interfering with the warmth by thinking about it too much. Over the following months this tender spot grew until it pervaded his body. As it did, the cold, dark wall around his heart slowly relaxed, thawed and dissolved.

When he had completed his two years of volunteering in the maternity ward, the engineer returned to the monastery. The abbess saw immediately that he was a changed man. He was no longer desperate and he was no longer trying to fit everything he experienced into a conceptual framework. Now he wanted to learn what else the Abbess had to teach.

Giving him a new instruction, the Abbess said to him, “When you meditate, don’t think about what is happening. Rather, let your awareness be seated in the tender warmth you feel in your body. If you do this, any meditation practice you do will be fruitful”

The man found this to be true.



This is Cicero’s meaning. It is in the re-doing, the practice, the mastery, this is where the word religion has its greatest meaning.

It is true that we come together, that we, as the signer of the Declaration of Independence did, we affix our names to paper, to be bound together. By so doing, we are engaging in relegare, being bound together.

It is in the relegere that we manifest our beliefs.


As to the definition of Authority, the Abbess in our story is an example, albeit a very gentle example, of the most common view of authority.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Authority thusly:

I. Power to enforce obedience
1a. Power or right to enforce obedience; more al or legal supremacy; the right to command, or give an ultimate decision
1b. In authority; in a position of power; in possession of power over others
II. Derived or delegated power;
2a. Derived or delegated power; conferred right or title; authorization.
2b. With inference. Conferred right to do something.
1569. Bp. Scott in Strype Ann Ref. I App. Vii 13 By commission from him, prestes hathe aucthoryte to forgyve sin.
III. Those in authority.
3b. Power to influence action, opinion or belief.
IV. Power to influence the conduct and actions of others; personal or practical influence.
V. Power over or title to influence, the opinions of others; authoritative opinion; weight of judgment or opinion, intellectual influence.
VI. Power to inspire belief, title to be believed; authoritative statement; weight of testimony, sometimes weakened to Authorship, testimony.

If you listen closely, one hears the word “power” a lot in that definition.

What I’d like to focus our attention on, though is the 2nd definition. Derived or delegated power, conferred right to do something.

Accompanying the second definition are the following examples: Derived or delegate power: from a sermon by John Wycliff from 1375 “[He] reproved him sharpli bi autorite of God.”

And, from 1569 the sentence “By commission from him, prestes hathe the aucthrotyte to forgyve sin,” is the example for the subdefinition “conferred right to do something.


These two definitions of authority, dating back to the 14th century, are for our purposes, the most interesting and relevant definitions.

Religious Authority, especially as practiced in our faith of Unitarian Universalism, is based not on divine or legal will, but rather any religious authority is granted by delegation, and conferred.

The engineer in the story could’ve easily walked away, any number of times from the Abbess and the monastery. He could’ve found her assignment too onerous to be bothered with. But instead, he delegated authority to the Abbess, trusting her.

I am the interim minster of this congregation. For a year now, I have been the minister of this gathering of people. Inherent in that is some authority.

But it is authority granted me by the people who I serve.

It is not absolute, it is not eternal.

I am entrusted with it.


And when you call your next minister, you will also be granting them this same source of authority.

We invest each other, here, with religious authority. We entrust each other with our deep wounds, and our brilliant joys. Here we gather, week after week, to hear about how the people we’ve come to love here are doing in their lives.

We are fellow travelers, each finding our own way from journey’s beginning to journey’s end. The more we can invest in each other, the richer our journey shall surely be.




Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
January 6, 2013
© Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Images of God

My first image of G-d looks very much like Charlton Heston, as Moses, when he came down from Mount Sinai in the Ten Commandments.

This is probably not a mistake.

By that, I mean, that’s probably how the movie moguls wanted it to be.

This is in no way to imply that G-d looks like Charlton Heston.

I know that G-d was supposed to be the burning bush, but as a kid, watching the Ten Commandments over the Easter weekend, I couldn’t yet make that conceptual leap.

So, G-d looked like Moses to me for a while.

Robe and staff, a powerful man, an authoritative voice. An angry G-d with rules that he threw down upon the people, for disobeying.

What is your earliest image of G-d?

By now in my life, Charlton Heston has thankfully been replaced by a multitude of images of G-d, and I no longer have to rely on Chuck.

I’m of an age that when I was a kid, John Denver starred in a movie with George Burns, who played G-d. While I’m sure we didn’t go to the movies to see that film, I’m sure I saw it on television. And so the image of G-d the angry punisher was joined by G-d the loving trickster.

The next popular image of G-d I had was that of Allanis Morrisette, in the movie Dogma. As G-d, she didn’t say anything, and she wore an outfit that seemed to come right out of Forever 21. But as G-d, she smiled, benevolently, and she gave forgiveness and mercy.

Add to this dozens of images of G-d from 16^th century woodcuts, paintings of many periods, and what am I left with?

A complex image, a multitudinous image of what G-d might be. If G-d even is, at all.

Many of us struggle with the idea of G-d. Some of us here don’t believe in anything that even remotely smacks of an idea of G-d, but still this image of G-d is powerful, and even we wrestle against it.

A little earlier in the service you were invited to consider the images of G-d that have failed you in your life.

I haven’t read any of the responses, but I think I can make a pretty good guess about what some of the cards have to say.

We are, after all, a group of people, like many other groups of people, and our common humanity is formed from many common experiences.

I’m guessing there are comments in the cards about abuse, about abandonment, about loved ones dying without explanation. There are probably cards about how life hasn’t been fair, or that G-d didn’t love you in the way you were promised as a child.

I don’t wish to minimize any of those experiences.

I merely name them as being universal experiences.

If we can see that our common humanity is indeed common, then we can not only more easily sympathize with the other 7 billiion people with whom we currently share our planet.

Each of these people has had reason to cry in their lifetime. Sobs of grief, tears of laughter, a deep sigh of contentment or resignation.

The air that is in our lungs right now will someday be in the lungs of all of these people.

One of our favorite hymns goes “When I breathe in, I breathe in peace, when I breathe out, I breathe out love.”

Today we have had five more people join our Fellowship. Five more people with whom we shall breathe, locally, and intentionally, to create community.

Often people who join our community are those who have been disappointed by the image of G-d they were given as children. That image of an all-powerful protector, failed to protect them. Or the image of 

an angry-father G-d scared them. Or the omnipotent G-d abandoned them.

This, of course, can be expanded to also include the churches of our youth.

Like many other local churches, we’ve been talking this month about the theme of G-d. For us, this can be a tricky topic, because there are so many triggers so many of us have around G-d and G-d language.

Even if we don’t believe in this thing called G-d, still the concept exists all around us.

For many years, anytime anyone would say to me “I’ll pray for you,” or “Have a blessed day” my blood would practically curdle. I found their statements to be intrusive and presumptuous. Who decided I needed their G-d for anything?

One day, however, I realized that often these expressions, when offered intentionally and thoughtfully, were mere an act of kindness.

An act of extra kindness.

“I’ll pray for you” doesn’t automatically mean “if you don’t convert, repent and give up your sinful ways, you’re going to Hell where you will burn, burn, burn!”

It is a simple offering of care an intention.

How often to you struggle to find a phase that explains to the person that you care about, that you will think of them, in the most sacred way you know how, in hopes that they will heal, or that their situation will improve?

Tandi Rogers, Growth Strategies Specialist for the UUA, and a friend of mine were having a discussion recently, and she gave me permission to share this story with you.

"In my darkest hour the church curmudgeon showed up on my doorstep with a huge painting of flowers he knew I loved. He walked across my bed with muddy boots, pounded a handful of nails in the wall, hung the picture, turned to me, and said, "I know you're hurting and I'm going to sit here and be with you while you cry some. But we need you. Every morning look up at this picture and know that the world needs you. So do whatever you need to do to get back on your feet, because it's too hard to walk this path with out you.” 

That's why I've given my life to my religion and my religious community, because quite frankly, I've lost my life and was reborn, re-gathered, reclaimed, and recalled. 

Suck it up. We'll let you rock in the corner for only so long. The world needs you."

Might not that man, that curmudgeon become a new image of what we wanted G-d to be? Can we let go of our pain and disappointment about what we thought G-d should have been?

And instead embrace an idea that we are all holy expressions? Each of us is a miracle. A miracle of evolution and natural processes, each of us has survived as individuals because we, most of the time unwittingly, have been able to thwart off the dangers of life so far?

Can you come to see yourself as holy enough to bring a picture of flowers to someone, in your flawed, muddy boots, and hang that picture for someone else?

Can you be gracious enough to be grateful for those muddy boots and the carrying human being they brought into your life?

So often we hear that people join churches to feel a deep connection with something larger than themselves.

Look around you.

Collectively, we are that thing we wish to find.

May we have the wisdom to recognize this truth, the grace to celebrate it, and the wherewithal to endure this, our beloved congregation.

So mote it be.

© 2012 The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and delivered to

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County

December 09, 2012

Give Me That Olde Time Religion!

I must admit to you a certain, romanticized version of ministry in the 19th century.

There is a certain, heroic quality to the Circuit Riding ministers of the Mid- and Actual West. Riding from town to town by horseback, preaching the Gospel of a God too loving to condemn man, or the Gospel that mankind itself is the power the world needs to address our ills.

Planting churches wherever two roads crossed in a small town.

But then I think about road dust, and no consistent places to rest my head and uncertain sources of my next meal, and I feel less tempted.

But still within in me is the urge to share our liberal faith’s good news of both our own capabilities and responsibilities to make Earth a little bit more like the Heaven we imagine.

A few week’s back, while waiting for others to gather for our semi-traditional meal together before our Board meetings, Dane and I popped into the suit shop. We had a few minutes to kill, and there was a pretty awesome suit in the window, so why not?

They didn’t have that exact suit in my size, but I did try on another three-piece suit. I’ve never had a three piece suit, as they’ve been sort of our fashion for a while, but I think they’re making a come back.

Anyway, while I was trying on the vest part of the suit, Dane said he could see me in the pulpit, wearing the vest, after having taken off my jacket, and rolled up my sleeves, raising a ruckus from the pulpit about a Loving God. Sweating, gesticulating and preaching about our mission in the world: to make it a more just place. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll quote Theodore Parker quickly: “The arc of the universe is long, and it bends toward justice.”

Part of my work as your Interim Minister is to take a good look around the congregation and it’s systems, and to ask a lot of questions. Why do you do this? What is the history behind that? How did this tradition come about? When was this paid serious attention to? Who, at your core, are you?

Church today is in service of the question, who, at your core, are you?

I know that this morning’s service is far from what we’re used to doing, and yet it is part of the fabric, the genetic code of this congregation.

The un-named child from this morning’s story loves all the flowers equally, but still has a favorite. How is that possible? Is it because the child’s sympathy for the flower that needs the most care has tipped their affection, alerted them to their concern?

It takes a gentle reminder from “Mama” that God loves all beings equally and sends a gentle rain on the just and the unjust alike to remind our child that there are no favorites.

How often have you both proclaimed a level playing field of caring, and yet upon further reflection discovered a favorite?

It is probably impossible not to have a favorite in almost anything. We have lots of favorites. Our favorite foods, the flowering bush that never fails to make us smile, our favorite chair here at the church and at home.

We have favorite smells, and favorite colors.

Favorite causes that we support.


My gentle challenge to you this morning, friends, is to spend a little less time with your favorites, and try new things. After all, your favorite flavor of ice cream was once unknown to you.

While we are in this time of church transition, it is an especially good time to try new things here, too. While the congregation works toward making the best match possible with your new, world-class minister, it is a terrific time to try a different committee, or another new way of engaging with the community.

Next week we will be officially welcoming new members into our Fellowship. Lots of new going on.


And so what about the past, what about this “Olde Time Religion”?

It is that, it is our past, and in part it informs both our present and our future. Because we are a liberal faith, open to self-examination, we are not tied to the past as if we were its prisoner, rather, the past is a reference point, a place we have been.

And yes, we, the global we, found comfort there. Or else we wouldn’t have stayed here, where we are. And yes, also, upon reflection and discussion, we have gently moved forward from the past to where we are today.

And the journey does not stop here.

The journey continues on. Someday, 40 years from now, when this congregation is on the eve of celebrating 100 years of Fellowship, someone may discover an order of service from Rev. Jody, Rev. Steve, Rev. Grace, or Rev. Leroy, and say “Well, that’s not how we do it now!” in astonishment and with interest. We cannot predict where we will be in 40 years, just as those folks who founded this church in 1953 could not predict where we are today.

But be it 1953 or 2053, one thing will be constant, our openness to self-examination, our religious practice that beliefs are subject to careful consideration, and that some old practices will be left behind, and new practices embraced.

The arc of the universe IS long, and it does bend toward justice.

And the rain comes to the just and unjust alike.

The question remains, what are we to make of that which have been given.

May we be inspired to use our time and talents in ways that create a more fair, equitable and loving world.

Amen.

© Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and delivered to

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County

December 2, 2012.