Growing Spiritually Together

(Last week your editor received an unusual number of comments and notes of interest and appreciation when the 7-3-05 sermon was circulated in writing. Interestingly, some appreciated receiving it because they did not or could not attend. Others, were appreciative because they felt you could learn so much more upon reading what had been previously heard. This week our member and Pulpit Guest, Andrew Millard, kindly provided his sermon in writing and your editor is pleased to pass it along.)

Sermon
Growing Spiritually Together
10th July 2005
Unitarian Society of Hartford

Andrew Millard

We begin our worship services, small group ministry sessions and even committee meetings by lighting a flame in a chalice. For those of you who may not be familiar with their history, the chalice and the flame were brought together as a symbol for use by the Unitarian Service Committee, which was founded to assist Eastern Europeans, including Unitarians and Jews, who needed to escape Nazi persecution. Hans Deutsch, who created the design, had never seen a Unitarian (or Universalist) church but he had seen faith in action in people who were willing to risk everything for others in a time of urgent need. Deutsch’s flaming chalice was made into a seal for papers and a badge for agents moving refugees to freedom. In time it became a symbol of Unitarian Universalism all around the world.

To me, the flame and the chalice provide one way of representing the individual in community. A couple of years ago I learnt a word, “autokoenony”, that describes some of this sense. In her book, “Lesbian Ethics”, Sarah Hoagland writes: (quote) “I mean to invoke a self who is both separate and related, a self which is neither autonomous nor dissolved: a self in community who is one among many, what I call autokoenony.” (end quote) The flame and the chalice, in this interpretation, teach us two simple lessons. Without community, there would be no place for the individual to stand. Without the individual, the community would go without illumination.

It’s turned out that “community” has been something of a recurring theme for me. Many of you know that, over the last three years, I have been taking courses at Hartford Seminary. Well, out of the ten courses I’ve now completed, the concept of “community” showed up in seven of them. At the same time, I’ve had plenty of practical learning here at the Meeting House. This morning I hope to offer up a few of the things I’ve learnt in classroom and congregation concerning “community” and, in particular, “spiritual community”.

Last week, Charles Huntington addressed the issues of “Democracy and Independence”, in the course of which he also discussed “individualism”. He didn’t use the exact phrase “cult of rugged individualism”, but he talked about it nonetheless. This was a topic that caught my attention in “Environmental Ethics”, my first course at Hartford Seminary, and my first final paper — the first non-science essay I’d written in fifteen years — considered “Voluntary Simplicity and the Ethics of Individualism”. The course was taught by Heidi Hadsell, the new president of the seminary, and one of the articles we discussed in class was hers. In it, she suggested the ideology of individualism as one of the reasons for our failure to act in response to the evidence of global problems. We can only cope when circumstances involve the idea of ourselves as autonomous individuals, and in relation to large societal or environmental problems, it appears that the individual is powerless to make a difference. When the decision to act is made, a focus on individual strategies partially substitutes for, or even completely replaces, public conversation or political action. Heidi noted that it’s not possible to reach the collective level of decision-making and effectiveness of action from the individual level alone. I guess she was never convinced by Margaret Mead: (quote) “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” (end quote)

Well, I took some issue with Heidi’s article, given the central roles that individual decision-making and personal empowerment take in Voluntary Simplicity, particularly her suggestion that (quote) “changes in lifestyle [...] are focused on merely individual strategies of health [and may be] evidence of self-absorbed narcissism” (end quote). I noted, instead, that while examining and simplifying our individual lives allows us to save money, reduce stress, and improve mental and physical health, it also reduces the consumption and waste that contribute to many of the social and ecological problems facing the Earth and its people. The fundamental problem is not, after all, how plastics are made or how we fuel our vehicles but the fact that, as Alan Durning writes in “How Much is Enough?”, (quote) “hoodwinked by a consumerist culture, we have been fruitlessly attempting to satisfy with material things what are essentially social, psychological and spiritual needs.” (end quote)

Thinking about Heidi’s article further, I realized that there are different forms of individualism. For instance, there’s apathetic individualism, as in: “But what can I do?” There’s defeatist individualism: “The problem is just too big, so there’s no point me even trying.” There’s naïve individualism: “I’m sure it’ll all work out. Someone else will take care of it.” (We see that a lot these days, usually in the form of “faith-based economics”.) There’s self-centered individualism: “Well, I’m okay; why should I worry?” And there’s selfish individualism: “If you’re not producing, you don’t deserve to use resources.” I called these “isolating” forms of individualism, since they operate on, and subsequently reinforce, the assumption that each person is an independent entity, only weakly connected to society and the environment to the extent that the individual chooses to exploit them. Thankfully there are also “connecting” forms of individualism. If people are given the encouragement to take control of their own lives, then the wider perspective that follows from the connecting forms of individualism gives them the moral strength to make a difference and prevents individuals from falling into passivity and helplessness when they truly see the larger picture. Such personal growth leads to a more conscious recognition that our activities at the individual level, meager though they may seem, can have an enormous effect at the collective level.

There are limits, of course, to what unorganized individuals can achieve, particularly when it comes to wide-spread cultural attitudes, so Voluntary Simplicity also emphasizes the development of one’s creative interests, relationships and involvement in the community. These activities help to prevent any falling back into the self-centered, isolating forms of individualism that deny a healthy sense of the individual in community. (And so, a couple of semesters later, I was thrilled to learn of the word “autokoenony”.) It’s about the balance between looking out for one’s self and playing a part in the larger society. As Sallie McFague writes in “Life Abundant”, (quote) “The process view of the one and the many, of unity and differentiation, is close to the ecological view: unity is characterized by radical individuation in networks of profound interrelationships and interdependence.” (end quote)

Some of you here attended the Social Justice Empowerment Workshop that took place at the Meeting House a couple of years ago. Perhaps you were as struck by “Gilbert’s Wheel” as I was. There are a few variations of “the wheel of balanced church programming”, as developed by the Reverend Richard Gilbert of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, NY; the version shown on the back of the order of service is from the recent edition of his book, “The Prophetic Imperative”.

Rev. Gilbert writes that the four pieces of the wheel (quote) “are understood, not as administrative categories, but as functions of the church occurring at many programmatic places. These aspects of the total program are interdependent. Not one succeeds unless all the others succeed.” (end quote) In this version, Rev. Gilbert describes each piece in terms of a community — or, rather, different aspects of the same congregational community: “a celebrating community”, “a caring community”, “a learning community”, and a “prophetic community”. Without each of these aspects, the community is not whole; the community as a whole thrives to the extent that all of these aspects are healthy and developed.

The Reverend Paul Beedle of the Universalist Unitarian Church in Riverside, CA, looks at the pieces of Gilbert’s Wheel using an agricultural metaphor. The celebrating community is the field in which the congregation’s spiritual life finds its expression; the caring community forms the seeds from which the congregation’s spiritual life may spring forth in abundance; the learning community provides the roots that support and sustain the congregation’s spiritual life; and the prophetic community is the fruit of the congregation’s spiritual life. I think that we, here at the Meeting House, are doing a pretty good job of cultivating these aspects of our community, though in varying degrees. I want to stress, though, that the four aspects are interdependent and interrelated, not standing alone and separate. It’s interesting that our governance structure, implemented a year ago, is divided along the same lines as the pieces of the wheel. It’s also unfortunate, I think, since each of the pieces needs to be the responsibility of every council and every sub-council and committee, and we only weaken ourselves if we think and act as if it were otherwise. So, I invite you to spend a little time, over the coming days and weeks and months, to consider your involvement in each of these four aspects of congregational community. If you serve on a sub-council or committee, try viewing its activities through the lens of Gilbert’s Wheel.

My ninth and tenth courses at the seminary, during the last year, were both concerned with Christian scriptures. According to the course requirements, I took the courses in the wrong order, with “Paul’s Corinthian Correspondence” last Autumn and “New Testament Survey” this Spring, but I see this as moving from the specific to the general and that’s how I’ve been trained as a scientist. (Besides which, the Christian scriptures are such a varied mix of writings that I don’t think that doing a brief overview of them all first really helps that much.) The theme of community cropped up in both of these courses, though in slightly different ways.

For instance, back in the year 50 or so, the Christians in Corinth had a lot of problems: some of them participated in prostitution at Aphrodite’s temple or ate meat from animals sacrificed to idols; the powerful used the courts as a way of increasing their power; perhaps worst of all, the rich would get drunk at the Lord’s Supper while the poor went hungry. In studying Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, I noticed that he would try to counter many of their individual excesses with instructions based on what was good for the community as a whole. In fact, it almost seemed to me that Paul came close to suggesting that it is only through community that salvation takes place, rather than at the individual level.

Of course, the professor disagreed with me! Contemporary Christianity, so far as I can tell, is largely about a personal relationship with Jesus, and, as I have heard it explained, all someone needs to do to be saved is to accept Jesus as their personal savior. From my point of view, though, salvation by community makes a lot of sense, particularly within Unitarian Universalism. For me, life is not about getting my name into the right book so that when I’m dead, some part of me that still exists ends up in paradise, whatever that actually means. Personally I believe in life before death, and that brings with it a number of consequences for how I live. As Verner Dozier, in “The Authority of the Laity”, put it, we are called (quote) “to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, to work out what that means [...] in a world threatened by nuclear extinction, ravished by greed that secures the very rich at the expense of the multitudes of the very poor, seething with age-old racial and religious hatreds. This is the world we are called to turn upside down.” (end quote) Life is about living the best way I can, making a real difference here on Earth, doing my part to ensure that the good fortune of life itself is available to others, now and in the future, just as it has been available to me — and the only way to do that is through community. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:26: “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”

My final paper for “New Testament Survey” focused on the issues of “faith” and “works” as addressed by Paul and James. Paul, as is told in stories about him, had been a zealous student of the Jewish traditions and became a fanatic, a relentless persecutor of Christians until his famous conversion experience. Though still claiming his heritage, he became critical of the role of “law” — in other words, circumcision, dietary restrictions, Sabbath observances and the like — and insisted that faith was much more important than religious observances. Paul believed that “justification” — being “made right” in the eyes of God — was a gift of grace, and contrasted this with the wages that a laborer would expect to receive as payment for following instructions. We know much less about James than Paul — whether he really was the brother of Jesus or not — but superficially James appears to have remained more sympathetic to his Jewish roots. While Paul criticizes “works of the law” meaning religious observances, James is concerned with charity, service to others and healing the world, in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets like Amos. James believed that good deeds were an inevitable consequence of genuine faith, faith that must lived and expressed. Without those good deeds, real faith does not exist. Faith without works, James insisted, is dead. Or, as put by a soldier of the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War: (quote) “People who have principles but no programs, turn out in the end to have no principles.” (end quote)

Last month was General Assembly, this year in Fort Worth, TX. As usual, there were a wide range of lectures and workshops that provided excellent resources: books, videos and other materials that some congregations have developed, valuable lessons from some congregations’ experiences, and plenty of hope that, even when the religious right seems to be taking over society, Unitarian Universalism will thrive and grow. Everyone, it seemed, was talking about small group ministry, and the theme of congregations as communities growing spiritually together was more or less evident throughout General Assembly. There were a few workshops on the idea of “welcoming as a spiritual practice”. I really like that way of putting it, because you can’t be welcoming all on your own and so this is a spiritual practice that you cannot do without involving other people. I think that we, as Unitarian Universalists, need to find and develop more such spiritual practices that create and strengthen the connections within our community. Otherwise, as the Reverend Kenneth Collier of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, CA, writes: (quote) “Unitarian Universalists sometimes spend so much time and energy worrying about and praising the autonomy of the individual that we forget that individuals standing alone have about as much strength as a bunch of stones lying around on the ground.” (end quote)

And we need to extend this outside of Sunday mornings, too. In “The Circle of Simplicity”, Cecile Andrews calls for the development of “the spirituality of everyday life”, where everything we do supports an interconnected view of ourselves and our world. While most people in the United States describe themselves as religious, fewer people actually engage in religious activities, little of which is not confined to inflexible hierarchies that have calcified within layers of dogmas and habits — the poisonous and parasitic mistletoe that ultimately kills the tree of spirituality. Religion becomes something to do one day a week and on special occasions, rather than something to live every day of the year. Part of the change we must make, small and obvious though it might sound, is to embrace life itself, to live as if the purpose of life were to really live rather than to make money and amass material goods. We need to exorcise the bogus spirituality of consumerism and the almighty dollar and act in a “life-sensing and life-serving manner”, reinstating a spirituality that celebrates life — human and non-human — and that affirms our right to it and our place within it.

Perhaps we even need to reframe spirituality itself, and view it as something that extends across time and space. The trend that emphasizes individual spirituality — “the demonic of privatization”, as the great Unitarian Universalist scholar and activist James Luther Adams called it — over community involvement and the traditions of the Hebrew prophets needs to be confronted with “faith-in-action”, a lived faith that expresses itself in justice and charity. Though faith should come first, it should be deep in the sense of mutual and abiding trust and not shallow as in a simple belief that something is true; justice-making is necessarily the fruit of deep faith. Quietism — withdrawing from worldly concerns and indulging in passivity and apathy — stifles faith and renders it irrelevant, just as legalistic adherence to rules and rituals lets faith wither away unnoticed until all that is left is an empty shell of pietism. At the same time, ethical action must be based on faith for it to be effective. Our goal should be faith that is neither quietly hidden nor displayed ostentatiously, justifying the individual in their faith and leading them into service to the greater community as a natural expression of that faith. In these times when the demonic of privatization appears to be all but triumphant, when we have never been more aware of the needs of each other, society and the larger human family, we are called to grow spiritually together, to accept a living faith as a gift of grace and to develop that faith through service to others so that the whole Earth may be saved.

Let us know of any comments, errors and corrections - thanks (revised 7/11/05)