New Beginnings
Paul Sprecher
Second Parish in Hingham
September 10, 2006
The Sunday after Labor Day, traditionally Homecoming Sunday for Unitarian Universalist congregations around the country, has been tinged with a new character since 9/11, and the Water Communion has taken on a new poignancy since last year’s catastrophic flooding of the Gulf Coast and of parts of Transylvania where our Unitarian brothers and sisters with the oldest roots continue to follow our faith. For congregations close to the events of 9/11, the experience blasted away pre-conceived agendas and cleared the way for new possibilities. In Washington, D.C., Rob Hardies was just beginning his new ministry at All Souls Church. He had carefully planned his first several months of sermons, determined to provide his very best service to a congregation which has historically had national political significance but which had fallen into a decline prior to his arrival. The sudden intense need so many felt for a spiritual community after the traumatic events of 9/11 transformed his work and his congregation and set them on a new path with a much clarified vision and purpose. My friend and colleague Rosemary Bray McNatt had just commenced her pastorate at the 4th Universalist Society of New York, the only Universalist cathedral in the country, a beautiful facility where long-term conflicts had sapped the vitality of the congregation and reduced the membership to the point that the space was embarrassingly large for the number of worshippers in attendance on a given Sunday. That Tuesday in September, Rosemary found herself with fellow members of the congregation handing out water to refugees streaming by the church, fleeing the horror in downtown Manhattan after the towers fell. Suddenly the petty squabbles inside the church mattered far less than the mission of the church to the world outside, and the church seized the opportunity to clarify its mission and begin to change and to grow.
I suppose all of us in this room will remember where we were when the planes struck the towers, just as those of us who are old enough have emblazoned in our memories exactly where we were when we learned that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. Those of you in the Coming of Age class don’t have that memory, but you will always share your memories of 9/11 with the rest of us. I myself was in my office in Brooklyn where I worked for the Securities Industry Automation Corporation—SIAC for short—the company that handles computer processing for the New York and American Stock Exchanges. My secretary Thelma happened to be looking out of her window, which had a view of the Trade Center Towers, when the first plane hit. We were all shocked and confused; we imagined that perhaps a small plane had gone astray and the damage would be limited. Then, half an hour later, the second plane came around and hit the other tower and it was clear that this was no accident—it was an attack. Thelma’s daughter worked in the building; she was frantic with worry over where her daughter was. All of us on my floor worked for the American Stock Exchange, just two blocks south of the South Tower, so this event impacted directly on people we worked with and for everyday.
I knew two of those who died at the top of one of the towers, but mercifully none of those we worked with closely was injured or killed. I had a second office at the American Stock Exchange as well, facing directly toward the towers. The window of that office was blown out; a beam came through the window of my boss’s office down the hall. I suppose I was fortunate to be far away enough to be shielded from the worst of the pollution and the horror up close to the scene. I spent the day uncertain of how or when I could ever get from Brooklyn to New Jersey and home. Arriving home safely was one of the greatest moments of relief I can remember in my life. For me, it was a wake-up call about how precious life is, and how important it is to spend our time doing what we truly believe in. It cemented my determination to finish seminary in order to leave Wall Street and undertake work that I felt would be more fulfilling and rewarding—the work I’m privileged to do with you here as your minister.
Last year, as I was preparing to participate in my first worship service at Arlington Street Church, we were all caught up in the aftermath of Katrina. Our water communion had to acknowledge the new depth of meaning water had come to have for all of us, so I wrote the Water Liturgy we used this morning to wrestle with the depth of the meaning of water in our living and our dying. I also wanted to make sure that we didn’t forget that, just a week before Katrina struck, several Transylvanian villages which are predominantly Unitarian in faith had been devastated by floods as well. Though a third of a world away, they were our neighbors as much as our brothers and sisters in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. I’m proud to have taken an active part over the past year in engaging members of Arlington Street Church and other Unitarian Universalist congregations in being partnership churches to the First Unitarian Universalist church in New Orleans, and I was gratified to be able to lead a group of sixteen members of Arlington Street to New Orleans over this past Memorial Day to help make the church a volunteer center and to participate in volunteer recovery efforts in the church’s neighborhood.
I certainly hope that nothing like the catastrophe of 9/11 marks the beginning of this ministry we are commencing together! But our awareness of that tragedy is a reminder that what we do here is serious business; that life can be fleeting, and that tragedy can overtake us. How we choose to spend our days is important, and bears earnest attention. We as a congregation have not lived through the sort of catastrophe All Souls in Washington, D.C., 4th Universalist in New York and First UU in New Orleans have lived through, but these past years have not been entirely free of stress and conflict, either. We, too, have a chance for a new beginning here, most notably with the beginning of our ministry together, but as importantly with your own choices about how we as Second Parish shall move forward together. Every beginning is an opportunity but also an ending. Some of you who are coming of age this year are just beginning high school, and some will graduate this year. Deedee & I just had a graduation in our family this year as our oldest son David finished art school and began his life as a fully-fledged adult, on his own at last! Weddings begin a new life for the couple but change the relation of each partner to their parents. Every beginning is also an ending. Even catastrophes can be opportunities for awakening from ordinary living to a new commitment to service, to rising above ourselves, to exercising compassion toward our neighbors. Tragedy reminds us of the stakes of living, and calls us to consider how we may not only live, but live well.
At a time of beginning like this is for us, it’s important to take the time to reflect on what is important about what we are doing here and what meaning it has for us and could have for others not yet part of our community here. I believe there are three key questions to consider at the beginning of any ministry, and I challenged your leaders to consider them at our retreat several weeks ago: Who are we? What are we here for? Who is our neighbor?
So who are we here at Second Parish? Well, that’s pretty obvious! Why, there’s Gene back there, and Helene over here, the kids are upstairs in RE, you Coming of Age youth are here and there, we’re youngster and elders—some of us a little older than we might prefer, but…. We’re us, isn’t that obvious? OK, but suppose someone is considering joining us? How do we describe ourselves to folks who don’t know us already? Well, for starters we have our affirmation: “With love for each other and with respect for each person’s search for truth, we unite – in the spirit of Jesus – for the worship of God and the service of our neighbors.” We have our Second Parish mission in the insert of the order of service. We share the principles and purposes of the Unitarian Universalist Association which we read together earlier, and we have a chalice as a part of our worship; we are Unitarian Universalists here. We are also a small church, a family or pastoral sized church. We want to be a church where we know each other and recognize everyone who’s here with us on Sundays. We don’t want to be part of a large, impersonal community, and we want to be directly involved in our church and in the work of our church. We identify with direct, hands-on work rather than abstract, faraway causes unrelated to us. We want to be small but healthy—not tiny, certainly, but a size we can feel comfortable with.
What are we here for? Again, this may seem utterly obvious as well. We’re here because we’re here, because we’re here…. Actually, I think there’s a song like that, to the tune of Auld Lang Syne: “We’re here because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here….” It goes on from there without any variation whatever. The note on one of the websites with the words says, “Repeat until you get tired.”
Perhaps better, we’re here because we want to be in the company of others who share some of our goals and ideals. We are made for community. As our centering thought from Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley puts it, “If, recognizing the interdependency of all life, we strive to build community, the strength we gather will be our salvation.” We are not just individuals; we are made for each other. But there’s more to why we’re here. William Ellery Channing, leader of the Unitarian movement in this country in its early days and our one genuine Unitarian saint, put it this way:
There is, I am
sure, in the human soul a deep consciousness, which responds to [the
minister], who sincerely and with the language of reality, speaks to it of the
great and everlasting purposes for which it was created. There are sublime
instincts in [humanity]. There is in human nature a want which the world
cannot supply; a thirst for objects on which to pour forth more fervent
admiration and love than visible things awaken.[1]
We have a need not just to be together but to worship together. We’re here because, together, we find here meaning and purpose in our living. Here we have a place where, as Abraham Lincoln put it, we may listen to the “better angels of our nature.” We are challenged to go beyond ourselves, to stretch ourselves in the direction of possibility, to commune with that which calls to us, deep calling out to deep.
Oh, and we’re here in this place because of the church itself, this very place, this sanctuary built so long ago, our traditions, the music. We’re here because this has been such a place for us and our predecessors in these pews. There is power in the memories in these walls—we’re here because of that as well.
And who is our neighbor? In the first place, of course, we are each other’s neighbors. We are committed to caring for each other in sickness, celebrating with each other in joy, walking together in love throughout our lives. We wish that more of our literal neighbors were here, and we’ll be more active in inviting them to join us on Sunday mornings as well as for special celebrations and holidays. Some of our neighbors struggle with addictions, and we can be proud that we have been open-hearted hosts of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings—half of all AA meetings in Hingham occur here at Second Parish, seven a week in all. Some of our neighbors are hungry, and we are proud hosts of the Food Pantry every second and fourth Tuesday. This is an interfaith effort, but I think more of us might want to get involved in this effort. Perhaps when the time comes to find a new director, that person could come from our ranks. For you Coming of Age kids, I think this might be a great opportunity for a social action project.
Like most small churches, we want to see where our money is going and we want to be able to contribute directly with the work of our own hands. I know that many of you are active in a variety of ways in this community, some in Wellfleet, some in environmental efforts, and so on. Here’s a radical idea: Why not claim your membership in Second Parish as part of what leads you to help your neighbors in these ways? Why not say, “I do this because my faith calls me to use my hands to help and not to harm?” Why not say that our principles call on us to respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person and the web of life of which we are a part? In the spirit of Jesus, why not let our light shine as members of this congregation?
Being neighbors counts. The story is told of an elderly lady from a tiny church who went to a church growth seminar at a district meeting hoping to get some ideas for how to save her church. She went up to the presenter at the end of the seminar and said that she appreciated all of his fine ideas about big programs and so on, but her church was down to only fourteen people; what could the few of them do? The presenter suggested finding one place in their neighborhood where they could lend a hand. The few remaining members of that church went to the principal of a nearby school and said that they wanted to do whatever they could to help the children in that school. The principal was surprised to hear from them; he thought their church had gone under years before! There were needs for tutoring, for after school care, for books, for helping out in many ways, and the members of the church did what they could, met teachers, kids and parents and welcomed them into their church community as they continued to do whatever they could to help the kids. The next year the elder went back to the district meeting and was asked by the seminar leader how it was going. “Well, we haven’t done a lot, but we’ve done whatever we could, and we’ve grown from 14 to 96 worshipping with us each Sunday.” Being neighborly on behalf of our church makes a difference; more than that, it is what we are bidden and committed to doing.
This question “Who is our neighbor?” has a history in our faith tradition. The Gospel of Luke [10:25-37] tells the story of how Jesus was jousting with some religious opponents when one of them, a lawyer, stood up to test him by asking “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus turns the question back around on him (always a good idea with lawyers!) and asks “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” The lawyer gives the proper textbook answer: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus replies "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." But the lawyer isn’t quite done. He still wants to look good, to justify himself, so he asks, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replies with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Now, we all know this story, and the term “Good Samaritan” has come into widespread use in our language to mean a person who is passing by and chooses to help someone in distress; there’s certainly that in the parable, but there’s a little more of an edge to it than that. Jesus doesn’t give us any clues about the nationality or race of the victim; he just says “a certain man.” He doesn’t give his listeners a handle to hang tribal or racial or ethnic expectations on—he might as well have said, “A human being.” On the other hand, the Samaritans at the time of Jesus were sworn enemies of the Jews. So if we were looking for a contemporary setting—what might happen today in our world—we might want to say that a certain person was attacked and left for dead by thugs outside of East Jerusalem on the Sabbath; an Israeli soldier passed by, hurrying about his patrol; an orthodox rabbi hurried by on his way to synagogue, unwilling to be sullied by blood on a holy day; and finally a Palestinian man had pity on him, and stopped, and carried that person to the local emergency room, and agreed to pay what was needed for their care. The one we least expect to care for us, the one who has every right to hate us—that is our neighbor! Having compassion for fellow human beings, whatever their circumstances, character, race, or social location—that is being a neighbor. And so, in the spirit of Jesus, we may need to expand our concept of who is our neighbor. Neighborhoods grew around Alls Souls church in Washington, D.C. and 4th Universalist in New York as a result of 9/11, and around First UU New Orleans as a result of Katrina, and their churches have been reshaped and revitalized as a result. Here at Second Parish your local knowledge is of course far in advance of mine, and I’ll need your help to understand our neighborhood and its opportunities for us better.
So part of what we are here for is to love our neighbors as ourselves—each other, of course, those in our literal neighborhood, of course, but also those at a greater distance sometimes—those who suffered from Katrina last year, the people of New York after 9/11, the stranger as well as the friend. “Who is our neighbor?” is a question we will need to return to repeatedly as we clarify who we are and why we are here.
These, then, are the fundamental questions I believe we need to consider at this new beginning together: Who are we? What are we here for? Who is our neighbor? I’ve offered a hypothesis based on the little I’ve been able to learn so far, but all of you are part of this work of answering these questions as well. I believe that by being intentional in considering these questions together we enliven our own understanding of this faith of ours and of the part that Second Parish plays in it. At the same time, these questions also help us as individuals to clarify our own beliefs and to deepen our commitment to our faith in this beloved community of memory and hope.
May the new beginning we embark on this day bring blessings to all of us, to our children and our families, and to our neighbors wherever they may be.
Amen