Chosen
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
March 4, 2018
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Being a minister is a lot like being a stand up comedian. In order to survive, let alone thrive, you need to have decent material, good timing, lots of patience and…most importantly, a forgiving audience. Otherwise, in the words of the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, “You don’t get no respect.”
I learned this early on as a chaplain intern at small regional hospital not far from New Haven, CT. There I was charged with visiting patients first thing in the morning, just before surgery. The reactions to my presence were varied. Sometimes people reacted with fear, thanks mostly to television and movies which have left people with the impression that a chaplain’s job is to deliver dire news. (It’s not, that’s the doctor’s job.)
More common was a dismissive eye-roll or abrupt, “No thanks.” Attributable, at times, to pop culture stereo-types of clergy as buffoons or zealots intoxicated by their own magical thinking…not to mention that some of the most public religious figures in this country happen to fit that stereo-type quite well.
And then there were people, who either genuinely wanted to talk or pray or weren’t really sure, but nonetheless took a chance to let me into their lives, however briefly. These were, each and every time, acts of faith. And not so much in me, for surely some of the times I was let in I said the wrong thing or missed a cue or larger concern someone raised, but rather faith in the potential of human “being” to reveal to us, through experience rather than thought, the depth of our interconnectedness. Or, as the Christian scriptures put it, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20)
The spirit of this passage from the gospel of Matthew reflects, in part, why people gather together and form religious community. Indeed as the writer Annie Dillard, using broader language, observes, “We are here to abet creation and to witness it. To notice each other's beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.”
Below the surface of the gospel passage and of Dillard’s words rests the foundation necessary for each idea to become lived reality. That foundation is stewardship. Specifically, the stewardship of relationships.
We may be used to hearing about stewardship as providing the resources necessary to assure the operation and continued existence of an organization or institution, like a church, like this church. And certainly that is often a desired and necessary outcome of responsible stewardship, including here at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church (BUUC). As you often hear me say, this community wouldn’t exist without your support, that is, without the time, many talents and, yes, money you so generously give to it. As the familiar saying goes, “Them’s the facts.”
And indeed, it’s, in part, why my husband and I pledge to the church every year and the church conducts an annual canvass, which starts today. The support of the church, including financial support is the privilege and responsibility of every member and an invitation we extend to friends of the congregation.
But the decision to pledge or how much isn’t, for me, just a matter of dollars and cents, my own or the church’s. It is much more about tending to my relationships…with BUUC, its people, ministries and mission, and more broadly with the ideals of Unitarian Universalism (UU) itself, our chosen faith.
Now, in case you’re wondering what I mean by chosen faith, let me first share with you what I have most commonly encountered as people’s understanding of that description. The most frequent understanding I’ve encountered is related to the fact that a significant percentage of our membership become Unitarian Universalists as adults, after either leaving their childhood faith or having been raised without a religious faith. Thus, they chose Unitarian Universalism. Another understanding is related to a much cherished principle that individual Unitarian Universalists are free to explore and choose their own theology, giving them far greater freedom to determine the contours of their spiritual journey. A less commonly expressed, but widely practiced understanding, is UU’s are free to determine the degree to which they engage with this faith while still claiming it as their own.
We could debate the merits of any of these understandings and I’m certain in doing so we would find something to laud and lament in each. But rather than do that, I’d like to propose a another, somewhat different understanding of Unitarian Universalism as a “chosen faith.”
It is true that from our religious ancestors right up to the present hour people have chosen to be here and many, to be members of this religious community and this faith. Over time some people inevitably leave. Not just this church, but Unitarian Universalism. But others stay and not only do they stay, they grow and deepen in their connection to this church and to this faith.
All along a transformation is taking place and whereas once they chose this church and this faith, gradually they themselves become one who is chosen. Which is to say, there is a point at which this faith, and this church, as a living manifestation of that faith, lays claim to our hearts and minds in a way that is experienced as we belonging to it rather than it belonging to us. Sometimes people describe this as feeling as though they are a part of something larger than themselves, which is the basic yearning at the heart of all spirituality.
This yearning is what I hear in the words of our reading by Dana Worsnop this morning, “I Want To Be With People.”
“People in…
Beloved community where I don’t have to think like everyone else to be loved, to be eligible for salvation.
People who:
Value compassion, justice, love and truth, though they have different thoughts and opinions about all sorts of things.
Independent-minded people of good heart:
Who have many names and no name at all for God and who see me in me goodness and dignity, failings and foibles, and who still love me.
People who:
Feel and are guided by their inter-connection with all existence…who see life as a paradox and don’t always rush to resolve it.
People who:
Let church call them into a different way of being in the world….who support, encourage and even challenge each other to higher and more ethical living and inspire one another to follow the call of the spirit.
People who:
Covenant to be honest, engaged and kind, who strive to keep their promises and hold me to the promises I make….
Who give of themselves and share their hearts and minds and gifts.
People who:
Know that human community is often warm and generous, sometimes challenging and almost always a grand adventure.
People like you.”
Perhaps you heard in those words, some of what draws you to Unitarian Universalism and here to BUUC week after week, year after year.
If not, or even if so, how would you, personally, complete the line, “I want to be with people who….?”
Here’s some thoughts that come to mind as I recall conversations and experiences we’ve shared…
I want to be with people:
Who nurture and support my own and my child’s spiritual development and growth. People who value the contributions of young and old alike.
Or who show up on a freezing cold day to remove radiators from the sanctuary and parlor that are filled with frozen water and so heavy it takes six people just to carry one.
Who get together to prepare and serve meals to hungry people in our community through our Community Dinner or partner with organizations like SMOC or like Angels and Backpacks, which provides meals for children who experience food insecurity at home. People who work together with organizations to prevent domestic violence or provide gifts for refugee children at Christmas.
Or people who call, send a card or check in on each other when we’re sick or going through a tough time.
People who are happy you’re here, period. No matter if you’re gay, straight, or unsure, have two moms or two dads, a mom and a dad, are divorced, or are single. No matter the color of your skin or if English is your primary language. People who are happy you’re here no matter how hard the world tries to make you feel unwelcome.
People who respond to challenging times in the life of our nation creatively and generously with hope, like our choir has done, performing throughout the year, including this morning, Neely Bruce’s “The Bill of Rights.”
People who regularly laugh and cry…and walk together on this strange, wonderful journey we call life. Who gather to celebrate the living and honor the dead.
People who do their part to make sure all of this and more is possible week after week, year after year, generation after generation.
People who have chosen this faith and this church community and who, in time and with some reflection, discovered themselves chosen too.
People like you.
Now, here’s the catch. It’s not as easy as simply wanting it. We, in fact, must choose to be chosen.
Remember we’re talking about stewardship, about caring for something and in the present context, caring for our relationship to one another, the church and to Unitarian Universalism. Stewardship is not a one time deal. It is an ongoing practice, something we renew our commitment to, moment to moment, with the choices we make, come what may.
And if you were wondering earlier in the service or sermon what happened to Jesus out in the desert and what that story could possibly have to do with stewardship at a UU Church, this the moment you’ve been waiting for…
So in the story Jesus goes out into the desert to do some thinking, well really, some discerning. He already realizes he’s drawn or called toward the life that history will remember him for. A life which has laid claim to his heart and mind. Which is to say, he’s been chosen. What he’s in the desert to figure out is how can he be faithful to being chosen. And it is at this point the Devil shows up.
It is often said, “The Devil’s in the details” and indeed the devil’s temptations ultimately help Jesus discern a path that permits him to essentially choose to be chosen. To turn the desire to follow his calling, into a lived reality.
Now, the thing about Jesus’ calling is it not conventional. He’s called to serve rather than rule. To model power through vulnerability rather than by force. And in all things to take the long view, rather than demand immediate results…that is to realize history, or what some call God’s time, is much greater than we can fathom.
What the encounter with the devil shows us is Jesus came to realize in order to take up this unconventional way of living and being, he has to give up ways of being and living in the world that will pull him away or place him at odds with his call.
So he has to resist the temptation, give up the opportunity to be a self-serving show off by turning stones to bread if he is to truly take up his call to serve others. He has to resist the temptation or give up sole reliance and devotion to material strength and power the Devil offers if he is to take up the exercise of spiritual power. And he has to resist the temptation or give up defiantly imposting conditions on his call if he is to take up and be sustained in work whose impact he may never know. A life which requires faith in the best of circumstances and especially in the absence of immediate results.
In each decision to give up one thing that he may take up another, Jesus is renewing his practice of stewardship. By tending to his relationship with that which has chosen him Jesus chooses to be chosen.
In arguably less dramatic ways, each of us must decide each day, even moment by moment, what we must give up in order to take up a life that will feed and sustains us, mind, body and spirit. The life that calls us, that has chosen us and which is manifest in people, institutions and traditions to which we find ourselves drawn, sometimes inexplicably so. Places like this church community.
In the end, the attention, care and decisions we make in support of this life and the people and places that nurture it, including through our annual pledge, is stewardship. Where people like you…and me..choosing to be together, here, choose to be chosen. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
March 4, 2018
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Being a minister is a lot like being a stand up comedian. In order to survive, let alone thrive, you need to have decent material, good timing, lots of patience and…most importantly, a forgiving audience. Otherwise, in the words of the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, “You don’t get no respect.”
I learned this early on as a chaplain intern at small regional hospital not far from New Haven, CT. There I was charged with visiting patients first thing in the morning, just before surgery. The reactions to my presence were varied. Sometimes people reacted with fear, thanks mostly to television and movies which have left people with the impression that a chaplain’s job is to deliver dire news. (It’s not, that’s the doctor’s job.)
More common was a dismissive eye-roll or abrupt, “No thanks.” Attributable, at times, to pop culture stereo-types of clergy as buffoons or zealots intoxicated by their own magical thinking…not to mention that some of the most public religious figures in this country happen to fit that stereo-type quite well.
And then there were people, who either genuinely wanted to talk or pray or weren’t really sure, but nonetheless took a chance to let me into their lives, however briefly. These were, each and every time, acts of faith. And not so much in me, for surely some of the times I was let in I said the wrong thing or missed a cue or larger concern someone raised, but rather faith in the potential of human “being” to reveal to us, through experience rather than thought, the depth of our interconnectedness. Or, as the Christian scriptures put it, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20)
The spirit of this passage from the gospel of Matthew reflects, in part, why people gather together and form religious community. Indeed as the writer Annie Dillard, using broader language, observes, “We are here to abet creation and to witness it. To notice each other's beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.”
Below the surface of the gospel passage and of Dillard’s words rests the foundation necessary for each idea to become lived reality. That foundation is stewardship. Specifically, the stewardship of relationships.
We may be used to hearing about stewardship as providing the resources necessary to assure the operation and continued existence of an organization or institution, like a church, like this church. And certainly that is often a desired and necessary outcome of responsible stewardship, including here at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church (BUUC). As you often hear me say, this community wouldn’t exist without your support, that is, without the time, many talents and, yes, money you so generously give to it. As the familiar saying goes, “Them’s the facts.”
And indeed, it’s, in part, why my husband and I pledge to the church every year and the church conducts an annual canvass, which starts today. The support of the church, including financial support is the privilege and responsibility of every member and an invitation we extend to friends of the congregation.
But the decision to pledge or how much isn’t, for me, just a matter of dollars and cents, my own or the church’s. It is much more about tending to my relationships…with BUUC, its people, ministries and mission, and more broadly with the ideals of Unitarian Universalism (UU) itself, our chosen faith.
Now, in case you’re wondering what I mean by chosen faith, let me first share with you what I have most commonly encountered as people’s understanding of that description. The most frequent understanding I’ve encountered is related to the fact that a significant percentage of our membership become Unitarian Universalists as adults, after either leaving their childhood faith or having been raised without a religious faith. Thus, they chose Unitarian Universalism. Another understanding is related to a much cherished principle that individual Unitarian Universalists are free to explore and choose their own theology, giving them far greater freedom to determine the contours of their spiritual journey. A less commonly expressed, but widely practiced understanding, is UU’s are free to determine the degree to which they engage with this faith while still claiming it as their own.
We could debate the merits of any of these understandings and I’m certain in doing so we would find something to laud and lament in each. But rather than do that, I’d like to propose a another, somewhat different understanding of Unitarian Universalism as a “chosen faith.”
It is true that from our religious ancestors right up to the present hour people have chosen to be here and many, to be members of this religious community and this faith. Over time some people inevitably leave. Not just this church, but Unitarian Universalism. But others stay and not only do they stay, they grow and deepen in their connection to this church and to this faith.
All along a transformation is taking place and whereas once they chose this church and this faith, gradually they themselves become one who is chosen. Which is to say, there is a point at which this faith, and this church, as a living manifestation of that faith, lays claim to our hearts and minds in a way that is experienced as we belonging to it rather than it belonging to us. Sometimes people describe this as feeling as though they are a part of something larger than themselves, which is the basic yearning at the heart of all spirituality.
This yearning is what I hear in the words of our reading by Dana Worsnop this morning, “I Want To Be With People.”
“People in…
Beloved community where I don’t have to think like everyone else to be loved, to be eligible for salvation.
People who:
Value compassion, justice, love and truth, though they have different thoughts and opinions about all sorts of things.
Independent-minded people of good heart:
Who have many names and no name at all for God and who see me in me goodness and dignity, failings and foibles, and who still love me.
People who:
Feel and are guided by their inter-connection with all existence…who see life as a paradox and don’t always rush to resolve it.
People who:
Let church call them into a different way of being in the world….who support, encourage and even challenge each other to higher and more ethical living and inspire one another to follow the call of the spirit.
People who:
Covenant to be honest, engaged and kind, who strive to keep their promises and hold me to the promises I make….
Who give of themselves and share their hearts and minds and gifts.
People who:
Know that human community is often warm and generous, sometimes challenging and almost always a grand adventure.
People like you.”
Perhaps you heard in those words, some of what draws you to Unitarian Universalism and here to BUUC week after week, year after year.
If not, or even if so, how would you, personally, complete the line, “I want to be with people who….?”
Here’s some thoughts that come to mind as I recall conversations and experiences we’ve shared…
I want to be with people:
Who nurture and support my own and my child’s spiritual development and growth. People who value the contributions of young and old alike.
Or who show up on a freezing cold day to remove radiators from the sanctuary and parlor that are filled with frozen water and so heavy it takes six people just to carry one.
Who get together to prepare and serve meals to hungry people in our community through our Community Dinner or partner with organizations like SMOC or like Angels and Backpacks, which provides meals for children who experience food insecurity at home. People who work together with organizations to prevent domestic violence or provide gifts for refugee children at Christmas.
Or people who call, send a card or check in on each other when we’re sick or going through a tough time.
People who are happy you’re here, period. No matter if you’re gay, straight, or unsure, have two moms or two dads, a mom and a dad, are divorced, or are single. No matter the color of your skin or if English is your primary language. People who are happy you’re here no matter how hard the world tries to make you feel unwelcome.
People who respond to challenging times in the life of our nation creatively and generously with hope, like our choir has done, performing throughout the year, including this morning, Neely Bruce’s “The Bill of Rights.”
People who regularly laugh and cry…and walk together on this strange, wonderful journey we call life. Who gather to celebrate the living and honor the dead.
People who do their part to make sure all of this and more is possible week after week, year after year, generation after generation.
People who have chosen this faith and this church community and who, in time and with some reflection, discovered themselves chosen too.
People like you.
Now, here’s the catch. It’s not as easy as simply wanting it. We, in fact, must choose to be chosen.
Remember we’re talking about stewardship, about caring for something and in the present context, caring for our relationship to one another, the church and to Unitarian Universalism. Stewardship is not a one time deal. It is an ongoing practice, something we renew our commitment to, moment to moment, with the choices we make, come what may.
And if you were wondering earlier in the service or sermon what happened to Jesus out in the desert and what that story could possibly have to do with stewardship at a UU Church, this the moment you’ve been waiting for…
So in the story Jesus goes out into the desert to do some thinking, well really, some discerning. He already realizes he’s drawn or called toward the life that history will remember him for. A life which has laid claim to his heart and mind. Which is to say, he’s been chosen. What he’s in the desert to figure out is how can he be faithful to being chosen. And it is at this point the Devil shows up.
It is often said, “The Devil’s in the details” and indeed the devil’s temptations ultimately help Jesus discern a path that permits him to essentially choose to be chosen. To turn the desire to follow his calling, into a lived reality.
Now, the thing about Jesus’ calling is it not conventional. He’s called to serve rather than rule. To model power through vulnerability rather than by force. And in all things to take the long view, rather than demand immediate results…that is to realize history, or what some call God’s time, is much greater than we can fathom.
What the encounter with the devil shows us is Jesus came to realize in order to take up this unconventional way of living and being, he has to give up ways of being and living in the world that will pull him away or place him at odds with his call.
So he has to resist the temptation, give up the opportunity to be a self-serving show off by turning stones to bread if he is to truly take up his call to serve others. He has to resist the temptation or give up sole reliance and devotion to material strength and power the Devil offers if he is to take up the exercise of spiritual power. And he has to resist the temptation or give up defiantly imposting conditions on his call if he is to take up and be sustained in work whose impact he may never know. A life which requires faith in the best of circumstances and especially in the absence of immediate results.
In each decision to give up one thing that he may take up another, Jesus is renewing his practice of stewardship. By tending to his relationship with that which has chosen him Jesus chooses to be chosen.
In arguably less dramatic ways, each of us must decide each day, even moment by moment, what we must give up in order to take up a life that will feed and sustains us, mind, body and spirit. The life that calls us, that has chosen us and which is manifest in people, institutions and traditions to which we find ourselves drawn, sometimes inexplicably so. Places like this church community.
In the end, the attention, care and decisions we make in support of this life and the people and places that nurture it, including through our annual pledge, is stewardship. Where people like you…and me..choosing to be together, here, choose to be chosen. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be