The Post Modern Preacher

Caveat to this: I've been guilty many times of both privlege and entitlement. I try each day to not abuse privlege or act entitled. I am a caucasian male who is heterosexual. I come from a place of power.

The world doesn't owe you anything. When someone or something which puts a lot of time into you and into community asks you to be generous back to it you are and you don't whine about it and you don't complain how unfair it is. When something helped raise you and mold you and gave you meaning and life asks for your fair share and you complain that it is being unwelcoming look in the mirror. Look hard in the mirror. Was it because you weren't asked all along to give of yourself? Was it because you didn't know that sacrifice meant more then shelling out the five dollars to the church instead of to the popcorn at the movies on Friday night? Was it because of your skin color that you haven't had to work as hard to get where you are since somehow more opportunities came your way? No matter how much you are struggling, others have it worse.

Stop focusing on how scarce things are and start focusing on how abundant things are. Cultivate gratitude instead of spite. Cultivate generosity instead of envy.

This weekend is the NERSCC retreat. I hope it goes well, I hope it allays concerns, and I hope it helps clear up what is a somewhat murky process. I worry sometimes about ministry. I really am inspiried by the JudeoChristian tradition's use of intellectual, justice oriented leadership. I value pastoral ministry. What troubles me is that I am not so very Buddhist. I am not all that humanistic even if my God isn't the God most humanists rally against. I wonder if I am enough since I do not always have the gift of faith. I wonder if I am enough since I have a tendancy to be overly strong when tenderness is required. My prayer is that I will find the mercy and the ability to touch those who do not share my belief but who will work with me to build beloved community despite diversity.

My most memorable experience with Universalism was in a Sunday worship service listening to Reverend Max Coots preach on the difference between the Unitarians and the Universalists. This was in the summer of 1993 and I knew UUism in the experiential way of a teen but not in the historical contexts. My grandmother had been a Universalist and his sermon touched something that struck a chord with my historical ancestry.
The sermon was given at the Sackets Harbor UU meetinghouse and it was within a year of when Max had retired from the Canton, NY church. Ministers emeritus have a relaxation about them, which carried forth into the sermon. The sermon spoke on how the Universalists were the country folk. The Unitarians were considered heretical in their cities predominantly around Boston but the Universalists were those heretics out in the country. Since I lived in a rural area it gave me a sense of ownership of the faith. I never felt a lot of connection to the Boston Brahmins in my teenage years since my family was very working class but something about circuit riders preaching a message of eternal salvation for the whole of humanity meant something romantic.
We shared a religion and a tradition that was attainable to all believers. We did not require a sophisticated Summa to contain our theology. Universalism met people where they were and gave them something to build and grow on. It offered hope in the face of Calvinistic despair. It gave a promise of a better world. It gave meaning to all seekers.
My grandmother was a Universalist. I am a Unitarian Universalist. When I heard his sermon it connected the generations. My heretical belief continues through the ages that the divine reality loves the world far too deeply to condemn it for all eternity. Alice Tripp understood Jesus in ways I understand Jesus. Alice Tripp understood God in ways I understand God. Rev. Max Coots helped me to see this and to feel this.

I was wondering lately what is the whole point of this religion thing. There was a time when everything felt real and authentic and wonderful about faith, about my denomination, and then I stepped behind the curtain. What I discovered changed my world. Religion fills a hole in my life. Something about being affirmed in community and being challenged in community in affirming ways helps me to become who I should be. The rub is I am better at doing this for others then for doing it myself.

I purposefully have taken some time to step back from any preaching time so when I return to the pulpet I will have had my Walden Pond time and can put forth Civil Disobedience. I get a rush every time I preach. This scares me. I worry that while my rhetoric and my presence inspire people my words were not enough. Can I divorce my words from my presence, my intonation, inflection, and bodily rhetoric?

I have been looking in academia to learn real, tight, authentic preaching, authentic worship, authentic ritual and what I have found is logos when I want pistis. I want to believe again instead of deconstructing everything. I want to believe that hope exists and that I can give people hope.

A lot of I statements there. Why? Well it is because if done well seminary should be a process of becoming and it should challenge one to evaluate themselves at every level. Preaching is powerful. Authority causes all sorts of complications where a preacher's word is raised up on a religious level and that can never be taken lightly. Red flags and caution signs need to be in place. Danger, Will Robinson, a preacher is on the loose. My life will be spent convincing people to grow, to learn, to transform. Who I am and what I am needs deconstruction if I am going to live this responsibly.

A friend told me that he has faith because it gives him hope that there is the potential for something better. He has seen children with guns in their hands. He has seen dead bodies from military violence. He knows how much despair is in this world. Still, he has hope for something better. That is what faith gives him. I am honored to look at the dreams of dreamers. Maybe in the dreams of dreamers we will find the commonwealth of God.

When I was getting into the thought that ministry might be my career, I had a conversation with a minister who told me how lonely life is in the ministry since you cannot be friends with someone and minister them. I feel this isolation a bit at school since I am surrounded by those whose theological values include the notion that God caused Katrina as punishment for the sins of America, the notion that God hates homosexuals and they are likened to pedophiles or practitioners of bestiality. To nuance this it is a small subset of BU STH which thinks this way. That is why a retreat with fellow UU seminarians was one of the greatest gifts I could recieve. Full weekend immersion with authentic worship and with authentic dialogue fed my soul in ways that it has hungered for.

The retreat helped me understand a bit of what I am looking for in my quest to understand the point of UU liturgy. Spiritual practice plus education helps to form transformation. The mind/heart needs to be awakened before it can be taught. The teaching needs to be inspired if it is to transform. The power that you wield from the pulpit is not evil if you continue to use the mantra "power with, not power over". Truly following the charge from Murray, the weekend gave us not hellfire but hope. The RSCC is not full of sharpened claws and horns looking to tear apart ministerial aspirations. They are there to hold your hand through the process to a point before your mentorship is passed to the MFC. Good mentors ask something of you. Any less and you would have a disservice.

Justine Urbikas is running for the Central Midwest District Trustee. Her bio is first in the list of candidates from the CMWD. When Unitarian Universalists ask what young adults are doing to serve please see this shining example of someone not going the professional ministry route giving her time and her efforts to our denomination.

"The world is made up of stories, not atoms"
This comment came up in New Testament this morning. The quote comes from Muriel Rukeyser I believe. I appreciate that the meme is really trickling down that telling stories really gets people somewhere. Storytelling forces subjectivity in the world.

Faith, especially liberal faith, is a transformative agency which fulfills lives and saves lives. The mission of the Liberal Church must be one that inspires faith, and helps to move the world on the arc toward justice. In an address to the New York State Convention of Universalists, Rev. Bill Sinkford said, “The purpose of Unitarian Universalism is about saving souls.”
Soteriology is not a topic broached in liberal faith all that much. It sounds to “churchy” or “Christian” for liberal humanist liking. However, the soteriology embraced by Sinkford and the salvific message offered by liberal faith is not for life after death. The salvation liberal faith offers is one for life after birth. Liberal faith saves one’s soul from the disconnect our world provides. Liberal faith saves one from the fear that life does not matter and saves from the idea that one is alone in this world. Liberal faith saves individuals from oppressing others and saves individuals in their fight against oppression.
Liberal religion fulfills lives. It completes people by showing them the possibility of beloved community and righteousness in action. Liberal religion allows whole persons to worship in the light of the sacred instead of forcing seekers to deny themselves. Coming as one is allows one to grow into what one can be instead of into a mold that dogma dictates what one should be. This fulfillment is the gift bestowed by subjectivity and relation with an engaged faith instead of objective truths and false creeds.
The mission of the Liberal Church needs to encompass both salvation and fulfillment for it to be something more then a social club or benevolent society. It needs to embrace theology as a way of staying true to a core message that belief, hope, love, and faith still matter and still are valid ways of experiencing religion.

This week was Boston University's Islam Awareness Week. Speakers were brought in and panel discussions happened. The event I found most interesting was Hisham Mahmoud's talk on Jesus in the Koran. Many Christian Unitarian Universalists and Mulims have a very similar Christology. Jesus, while not God incarnate, is something special. Jesus was an ascetic teacher/preacher/healer and his ministry is much more important in our understandings of him then his passion. My Muslim sisters and brothers don't believe in the death on the cross. That is something I believe in. God's prophets often fall to grisly deaths because of the lives they live. Still, we need to hold on to their lives. The presentation and subsequent email to Hisham has pointed me toward some reading on source criticism of the hadith tradition.

My harshest criticism is that the presentation was somewhat disconcerting with arguments made by proof texting. Everything I've learned of exegesis demands the knowledge of the context of the document. That means one verse is not enough to explain or proove anything. Even my beloved beatitudes are not just a good sermon, they are part of Matthew's rhetorical attack on Phariseic Judaism. Contextual settings mean arguments on doctrine based off of single verses fail.

My favorate comment of the week came from Abdur-Rahman Syed who told the crowd his frustration with liberal Americans who really don't take religion seriously. Religion really does matter. Faith really does matter.