by Rev. Joan Van Becelaere
Ohio-Meadville District Executive
(Homily was preceded by the story “Higgins – A Drop With a Dream” by Chris Buice)
Have you ever felt like a teeny tiny drop?
In a greeeeeeaaaaaaat big bucket?
Have you ever felt like you knew what needed to be done and how to do it?
But everyone else thought you were all wet?
I know I sometimes feel like Higgins in the bottom of that big empty bucket – like I’m all alone out there. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
As Unitarian Universalists, we don’t need to feel alone.
Our 7th Principle tells us that we honor the interdependent web of existence. It tells us that we are all connected, that we are all in this together.
We have lots of other drops around us, working with us, caring for us.
We have the other members in our congregations.
We have the other congregations in our clusters.
We have the clusters that make up the whole Ohio-Meadville District.
And we have our sister Districts of St. Lawrence, Metro NY and Joseph Priestley in our Central East Regional Group.
And then we have the whole Unitarian Universalist Association.
That’s a lot of people.
All learning from one another,
All cooperating with one another,
All in covenant with one another –
All working together to nurture spirits and help heal our chaotic and hurting world.
We should all know and trust that NO Unitarian Universalist congregation,
no Unitarian Universalist stands alone in this world.
We are all part of this web.
We are all in this together.
A growing spirit of covenant & cooperation lives in our midst.
There is a new spirit alive that enables us to come together as individuals, as congregations, as districts, a regions, as Unitarian Universalists.
It helps us step beyond our old boundaries, our old walls, our old ways of thinking and being and doing.
It helps us go beyond our familiar old buckets and reach out to one another to help heal our world.
And this new spirit lives here at Summer Institute.
We are not alone.
Since the early days of our Puritan religious ancestors, we’ve made covenants with one another and promises to each other to show we aren’t alone. The first, and maybe greatest of these covenants was created back in 1646. Back then, the early Puritan churches of New England, our ancestors, were in danger of being taken over by the English Parliament. Parliament was trying to tell the churches how to organize, how to think and what to do. – and our Puritan ancestors didn’t like that one drop. So they planned to tell Parliament to back off and leave them alone.
But the churches also realized that if they were going to tell Parliament to back off, they also needed to explain why and how they were going to govern themselves. They had to come to agreement on how they were going to work together to support one another in their new homes in North America.
And so they created a covenant that is called the Cambridge Platform.
This Cambridge Platform said that each congregation was independent and autonomous That each congregation had the right to choose its own leaders, own its own church property and ordain its own clergy. The Platform said that membership in a congregation is voluntary, it’s your choice, and not determined by where you were born in the parish.
And that’s how we Unitarian Universalists are organized today. We call it congregational polity. But that was not all the Platform said.
It also outlined a Covenant of mutual support for all of the congregations. It named six major ways in which all churches would promise to help one another.
1. The first was mutual care: they would always work for the common good of all congregations.
2. consultation: when a church needs advice, they can ask for “the judgment and counsel of other churches.”
3. admonition: when a congregation is going down a wrong path, a path that would hurt its people, “which they do not discern or are slow in removing or healing” other churches should bring it to the troubled church’s attention and help out.
4. participation: members of one church visiting another are fully welcomed and ministerial services are loaned by one church to another if a minister is sick or has to be absent for a period of time.
5. recommendation: when a member of one church moves to the region of another church she/he is admitted at once “to the fellowship of their covenant.”
6. relief and succor: the churches would offer financial support for “the necessities of poorer churches”
When a congregation became part of the New England group, it was expected to join in this Covenant with the other congregations to support one another and work for the good of all.
The Cambridge Platform is the foundational document for our congregational structure today. It’s at the root of our way of working together. The Platform said that Congregational polity is not JUST about the independence of the local church. Rather it means that we are a Covenanted Community of Autonomous Churches. That’s why today, our official name is the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
In our Unitarian Universalist history, there have been times when we have honored the Platform and the Covenant of mutuality.
And there have been times when we have, frankly, forgotten all about it.
I believe we are just now moving out of a long period of time when we forgot about our larger Covenant and the lessons of the Cambridge Platform.
Not all that long ago, we might publically say that we were part of a larger movement, but in practice we acted like we were pretty much alone, like a drop in an empty bucket.
In the past, it was rare that we knew what was going on in another local UU church, let alone at the district or region or continental levels. This empty bucket attitude was part of a stunted view of Congregational polity that thought the autonomy of the local church was the only thing it was all about.
But we live in a new age. An age of rapid and all too often confusing change. We know we need one another if we are to be more than a drop in the bucket.
I believe that the only way for Unitarian Universalism to thrive in this new world is to build a unified, strong, focused Team. A Team based on the knowledge that we are all… truly… in this together.
In our reading this evening, Margaret Wheatley, said that the mantra of our time is “We are all in this together.” She said “No matter what’s going on around us, if we truly believe that we’re in this together, and we work hard to be there for one another, we can make it through.” And we UUs state in our Principles that we honor the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.
Today, I want to ask all of us to live as if that principle really mattered, to work with the others in your congregation, to work with other congregations in your cluster and here in our district to build strong UU Teams. I want to ask all of us to make decisions –about everything from religious education to youth ministry to budget to communication to social witness — as if the interdependent web really mattered. Because it does matter. And it will matter more and more in the days and years to come.
So how do we Unitarian Universalists, in our congregations and clusters and district, become a Team? – other than all of us going out and buying the same t-shirt. It takes commitment and it takes work. And I won’t lie to you, it’s not going to be easy.
To create an effective team, we must give up our love of self and individualism and truly embrace community. Can we do that? Can we get over ourselves? Can we stop focusing on private needs and open to the greater good, to what will benefit all of us?
I believe we can. Or – to borrow a political phrase, Yes we can.
Can we realize that in this intertwined world, if the least among us benefit, we all benefit? If another suffers, we all suffer.
Yes we can.
Can we let go of our need to blame, to judge, to scapegoat—all the thoughtless and hasty ways we separate from each other and destroy Team understanding and spirit?
Yes we can.
Can we shift away from self-interest and self-protection? And do this everywhere—at work, at home, in public meetings and especially in our congregations?
Yes we can.
Can we give up fear and exchange it for a living and thriving sense of generosity?
Yes we can.
We are all in this together. Our New England Puritan ancestors, the ones who first created the congregational structures and processes we use today, knew this. And so they believed that congregations owed each other support and advice and help. That congregations should share people and services and resources with each other.
In our Congregationalist Covenant, we don’t all need to think alike. We don’t all believe alike. We don’t all vote alike. But just like individual persons covenant to form a congregation, our congregations covenant to walk together and support one another in this exciting, and sometimes chaotic, journey of Unitarian Universalist transformative love.
In the past, we sometimes used to act as if our congregations were organizational Lone Rangers, singlehandedly trying to combat the forces of evil and ignorance in the world. That kind of empty bucket thinking no longer works in this world. We can no longer afford bucket thinking – not if we want our Unitarian Universalism to live and thrive in a new age.
And even though there are times when you may feel like you are a drop in the bucket, just sitting there all alone– you are not. What you do as individuals affects all other members of your congregation. What your congregation does affects all of the other congregations in our district. And what this district does affects the health and vitality of all other Unitarian Universalists in North America and beyond. And the ministry and work of all these other UU congregations and districts directly affects you all.
This new covenant attitude is at work and you can see it when clusters of congregations in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Columbus join together to march in Pride Parades and support LGBTQ people.
You can see it with the increasing numbers of Chalice Lighters in the District who pledge to support other congregations who are working on new ways to reach out and grow. We now have nearly 600 active Chalice Lighters and it’s growing.
You will see this covenantal spirit when UUs from all over the nation gather in Phoenix AZ later this month to Stand on the Side of Love for immigration reform.
By Standing on the Side of Love, we declare that our principles require us—in the face of prejudice, violence, hate crimes, and mean-spirited attacks on those perceived as “different’— to stand up for respect and dignity for all and harness the power of love to stop oppression. We are all in this together. The interdependent web matters.
With Theodore Parker & Martin Luther King Jr, we believe that the arc of the universe is bending toward justice – but there is nothing automatic or easy about this process. The arc doesn’t bend on its own. It requires all of us, working together, as a Team, to make it move.
For a long time, we UUs have lived as if our congregations were organizational Lone Rangers, as we were drops in the bucket. But now we live in a new age , a new time. And I believe we can live in a new way, building a new world–working as a Team–when we all know that we are in this together.
