This sermon was given at Stevens Chapel on May 16, 2004 by Rev. Judith Campbell.

Flunking the Stress Test

 

My talk this morning came as a result of a request that I speak on a subject that might more directly address some of the issues facing young adults and people with young families.  And while I like to think that most of our Sunday services - mine and those so beautifully organized by our dedicated worship committee, and our music director Carol Loud - are intended to inspire and inform our entire congregation, I realized that the request went way beyond subject matter and the choice of hymns and selected readings.  The more I thought about it, a much larger question and picture began to emerge.  The question was: why in such a busy and often over committed life, should anyone come to church, especially this one?  In an increasingly uncertain world, this is a church which asks questions rather than gives answers, which challenges as often as it comforts, and which offers as many opinions and definitions on the nature of religion and the experience of the spiritual journey as there are members, or maybe even more.  And it is possible that none of the above is particularly spiritually comforting

It’s not just young people who are flunking the stress test.  It is not just young people who are off the charts and hanging off the end of the “to-do” list by their finger nails.  It’s not just young people who are now nervous in crowds and on trains and planes, because of the real threat of  terrorism on OUR sacred shores. Terrorist attacks happened elsewhere.  How naïve and insulated we were.  We are all flunking the stress test in one way or another, and the last thing church attendance or membership should do is add to it.  The church needs to be an oasis of spiritual comfort and renewal, as well as a place for religious inquiry, information and inclusion.  A place where we can ask the big questions and join with others in the journey we call life, wherever we are and at whatever age.

But today, I think that young people, single or married, face challenges that we who are at or near retirement never had to think about.  For most of us of the “silver” generation, once the nation recovered from the “Great Depression”, most of us had jobs that would see us out if we wanted them to.  Most of us had retirement plans that would not go “belly up”.  And many of us, had the option of being a stay-at –home parent (usually the mom) if we so chose.  There was a certain predictability in our life’s cycle.

In those days, church was what many of us did on Sunday, followed by Sunday dinner, a nap and a sometimes little private time for mom and dad.  Church was about salvation from sin and the good life in the great beyond and good works in the neighborhood and in the far flung missions.  It was about good works now and reaping the rewards later.  It was secure.

If you were of the Jewish persuasion, depending on your practice, mostly men attended  services and attended to the prayer and discourse with God, and the women provided a good Jewish home and environment for the children, and prepared the ritual meals and celebrations which marked the cycle of observant Jewish life.

Somewhere in the United States, beginning after the end of the Korean war and wildly accelerating with and after the war in Vietnam, life here in the United States became very different.  Those things in life which used to be givens for all but the very poor and the chronically infirm - things like opportunities for a job and job security, honest work for honest pay, a place to live, opportunity for education and the security of family and “hometown” life were no longer secure

The pace of progress was accelerating. The human element in so much of the daily routine disappeared in a sea of statistics, and mega-mergers and streamlining and cost cutting and outsourcing.  Life for too many people had become an insecure struggle with no tangible or predictable results other than increased drug and alcohol abuse, more broken families and a dramatic increase in stress-related illnesses.  And within this setting, traditional religion (a broadly sweeping generalization) was not helping.  The old messages of sin and salvation and the one true church (which by the way was all of them) was becoming more and more irrelevant.

Unitarian Universalists in the time after the merger in 1963, in response to these social and cultural changes became a very secular institution.  We were an association of member congregations.   We were a religious denomination which did not use the word “Church” in our name or “God” in our buildings.  We had sit-ins, talk-backs, discussion groups, conferences, marches, civil rights rallies, boycotts, heated discussions. We were fellowships, societies, associations, member congregations; call us anything, but don’t call us a church, and for God’s sake don’t mention “Him.”.

It was very much an angry church in an angry time.  It was an effective vehicle for social witness and social action.  And it is a history of which we can be justly proud. But more than a church, it was an organization and an agent for social and economic change far more than it was a religious denomination.  It was of its time.  But like so many of the OTHER denominations which we would like to point a finger at and say that they did not evolve with the changing social structure, I fear we did much the same thing. We were stuck in social witness and intellectual discourse possibly at the cost of religious and spiritual experience. We are one of the last to bring so-called religion back into the building or the meeting house or whatever we are calling them these days; even though it is clear that a great number of people are seeking a defined spiritual and yes, a RELIGIOUS dimension in their lives. 

Make no mistake: the religious experience is rediscovering its place in Unitarian Universalist buildings, now often reclaimed as churches. But it is a cautious path we are walking.   Many of us came here seeking the intellectual and religious freedom that was unavailable in many more traditional practices and rigid orthodoxies.  Many of us seek the comfort and security of what traditional religion offered us, without the restrictions, the rigidity and the fear it often imposed.  All of us in our sermons and in our Sunday services are struggling to find that delicate balance of that which is intellectually stimulating and spiritually uplifting or inspirational, without losing our core commitment to social, economic and environmental justice.  It’s a challenge.  It keeps me hopping I’ll tell you!

It is no coincidence that UU ministers are forming as many prayer groups as they once formed “study” groups; that UU ministers are studying to be spiritual counselors and spiritual directors; something that was mostly relegated to our Catholic brothers and sisters. And it is no coincidence that many UU’s are seeking spiritual direction and counseling, and paying good money to receive it.

Any organization which claims to be a religious denomination is in the final analysis about dealing with the “Big” questions.  Why are we here and what happens after we depart this life? Questions about the how of good and the why of evil.  Questions about the meaning of this gift of life and how best to make use of it, given how little time we really have.  Add to this, young singles and families: people struggling to meet an astronomical mortgage,  people trying to be most fully human and working in an organization whose only concern is the bottom line. An organization which cares little for the humans it pushes around like chess pieces on a disintegrating board, and only counts the profits left in their wake.

How does a church, any church, offer an alternative that isn’t just another “to-do” on the list from hell. We can’t even offer the promise of salvation or eternal rewards, of heavenly points in the hereafter. How can we be relevant in an accelerating and increasingly chaotic world.  How can we be an oasis of peace and renewal and inspiration and do it in sixty minutes a week, or less if the kids are with us, because they get itchy and they, like the rest of us, have ever shorter attentions spans courtesy of the daily training we receive courtesy of the sound-bytes offered by broadcast media?

First of all, we can’t do it in just an hour.  If we call Unitarian Universalism a living tradition, then we need to be living it all the time to the best of our ability.  The Sunday “fix’, if you will, our Sunday service is and should be the thread which connects us to each other and to that living tradition for the rest of the week. The Sunday service is most often made up of music, time for prayer or personal reflection, silence, the sharing of our joys and concerns and welcoming people new or returning to our midst, and a message. Ideally, all of the parts are intended to create a weekly experience which calms the spirit, refreshes and nourishes the soul and respects the intellect in a way which gives us strength to live most fully in the week to come. It’s a tall order, but it is what we do.  The safety that we offer is not the promise of eternal life, but the safety to ask a question, the safety to challenge the orthodoxy, the safety  to take a creative risk, to take a personal risk, and extend your hand and heart in trust within this community.  This is not generally offered in corporations.  It is the sacred trust that is the core of beloved community.  We have it and we offer it to others, but we also must protect it.

In so many ways, the church has replaced the function of hometown and extended family of generations gone by.  In an increasingly mobile society, churches can extend the hand of spiritual and religious community at a pot luck supper as well as in a Sunday service.  On a habitat walk, in a book group, or by reaching out to an over stretched young parent on a Sunday morning with an offer to hold or entertain a wiggly squawky kid so mom or dad can have the “Sunday experience” that they so desperately need.  In a building where there is no extra room for many of the things we need or would like to have, we need to make that room in our hearts and on our laps and in warmth of our embrace. 

In describing us - Unitarian Universalists in general that is - I once said that, the real prayer begins for us once the service is over.  When we have sung the last verse of the hymn, heard the sermon and eaten the last cookie after the service, that is when we do the justice work of our religion conviction.  The social witness, the work for economic and racial justice and the work of caring for one another.  But the Sunday service is where we begin, and what we come back to, otherwise we might as well work for the United way or the Red Cross.  Don’t get me wrong; they do good work too, we just have a higher purpose, which will be individually defined for each of us; but is deeply and profoundly interconnected.  This is why we come back.  This is what is missing for us when we stay away for too long. This is why Sunday mornings are a spiritual gift to ourselves, all of ourselves.  Sundays for us are not holy days of obligation, they are gifts of the heart and food for the spirit.  And it’s OK to spread the word. Bring a friend to church some day, there’s a lot of people out there who might be really glad you did.

 

Blessed Be.