It’s Just Like Regular Church, Except…

I love my job. What can I say? I just love it. Now, it would be great if I could tell you a few reasons why I like my job so much. After all, a large part of the funding for my position comes from congregations in the Prairie Star District, just like this one. I suppose it would be nice if I could explain to you exactly what it is I’m doing as your Lifespan Program Director—so you’d know whether or not you’re getting your money’s worth. And I hope that by the end of this sermon, you will have some idea of what it is I’m doing…or trying to do. But for now, I’d like to give you a couple of personal reasons I have for loving this job. Okay?

The first one is: I truly enjoy traveling around the eight plains and prairie states that make up this district. And I’m not just talking about the scenery here. I’m talking about traveling around and visiting congregations in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Fargo, North Dakota, and Rice Lake, Wisconsin, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Davenport, Iowa. You get the picture. I love visiting new places, meeting new people, and discovering the folkways of the various fellowships and churches that make up the Prairie Star District. And since we have around 60 or so congregations in Prairie Star, I can see myself enjoying this getting-to-know-you phase of my job for some time.

That’s one. Here’s another thing I love about my job. Because this job is technically a co-employment position with the Unitarian Universalist Association, I’m required to visit Mecca maybe two or three times a year. Of course by “Mecca,” I mean Boston, Massachusetts, the home of both the Unitarians and the Univeralists since their beginnings roughly two hundred years ago. And by “Boston,” I mean Beacon Hill, or, more specifically, 25 Beacon Street. If Unitarian Universalists were required to go on a Hajj like our Muslim brothers and sisters, 25 (as it’s sometimes referred to) would be the destination of our pilgrimage.

Now how many of you have had the opportunity to visit UUA headquarters? It’s kind of neat. Right across from the Boston Common, right next to the Massachusetts Statehouse—it’s really a rather unassuming little building. I walked right past it on my first visit there about three years ago. I don’t quite know what I was expecting, but it was certainly more than the words “Unitarian Universalist Association” on a little brass plaque next to the front door of four-story walk-up. But once I figured out that this was the place, I found my way inside and was, to my surprise, moved by the history of it all.

If you’re like me, Unitarian Universalism is an adopted faith for you, a “chosen” faith. So seeing this grand old building with its list in the entryway of all the American Unitarian Association presidents and all the General Convention of Universalists superintendents, and, after the merger in1961, the seven presidents of the UUA, from Dana M. Greeley to William G. Sinkford, seeing all those names listed there made me feel that I was really part of something much larger than myself, a living tradition of faith.

The interesting thing about 25 Beacon Street is that, like Unitarian Universalism itself, it’s an odd mixture of the past and the present. Along with the requisite portraits of dead white men—all those past presidents and superintendents were men, after all, and, until Bill Sinkford, white—there are more recent photos on the those hallowed walls that represent who we are today. Pictures of crowds at General Assembly full of people of many colors, women and men, gay and straight, with different physical abilities. And right off the entryway of 25, behind the front desk, there’s the UUA Bookstore, full of books by a wide variety of authors—humanists, theists, Christians, Buddhists, pagans, black, white, Latino/Latina, Native American. Although I don’t always agree with all of the policies that come from the UUA, I am proud of the fact that ours is a tradition that is constantly seeking ways to be more inclusive, to bring more and more people to the table.

The most visible sign on those walls of this desire for inclusion is found, I believe, on the open stairway that leads to the second floor. As you climb those stairs you see on your left a series of posters that were developed a few years ago to promote Unitarian Universalism. These are the same posters that show up at random on the opening page of the UUA website. There’s a lesbian couple smiling beneath this caption: “You don’t have to see God as straight, white and a man.” There’s a twenty-something male who appears to be thinking, “Between a professional life and social life, who has room for a spiritual life?” There’s a middle-aged African American man with these words: “I finally found a religion that values freedom as much as I do.” An older couple who say, “We were looking for a church for the wedding. We found a religion.” There’s an African American male holding his daughter, saying, “Talking about the birds and the bees was tough. Then she asked about God.” There are two posters with single women, one says, “Instead of me fitting a religion I found a religion to fit me,” the other, “Social activism is more than giving of your checkbook. It’s giving of yourself.” And finally, there’s a picture of a young girl smiling with her arm around her brother. She says, “It’s like regular school—except nobody flunks.”

I have to say, I really, truly despise that last one.

I’ll tell you why. Like virtually all of my colleagues in other UU districts doing the same work I do, my first professional association with Unitarian Universalism was as a religious educator. And there are two misconceptions about religious education that we continually have to dispel. One is that religious education means Sunday school. That it’s something that takes place in a classroom. That it is as the poster says, “Like regular school—except….” The other misconception is that religious education is mainly for children. That it’s something to do with the kids while their parents are in the big church. That once our children reach a certain age they can make their own decision about their religious affiliation and once they’ve made their decision, our work is done.

It isn’t that I think we aren’t offering something valuable in our religious education programming for children and youth. In fact, there are some amazing success stories associated with Unitarian Universalist religious education. For decades congregations have been using The Church Across the Street and Neighboring Faiths, its successor, to teach our children and youth about other religious traditions. And Our Whole Lives, the successor to About Your Sexuality, is so highly regarded that it’s used not only by Unitarian Universalist congregations, but by United Church of Christ congregations and Planned Parenthood as well. At their very best, the religious education programs in our congregations are places where children can learn what it means to be a moral being in this universe, someone who can act with integrity, who knows that they have the ability to change this world for the better.

Problem is we sell ourselves short when we say, “It’s like regular school—except nobody flunks.” For me, that’s like saying “It’s like regular church—except…what?” Nobody prays? Nobody has to go to Bible study? It’s like regular church—except nobody goes to hell? If there’s anything wrong with the way we present ourselves to the general public, I have to say this is it. We often insist on describing ourselves by what we are not. We’re the church that has no creed, no dogma, do beliefs. We won’t impose anything on you or your children. Come as you are, stay as long as you’d like. If you can’t find something worthwhile here, so long—it was fun while it lasted.

I, for one, would like to think that we do offer something worthwhile here. And I wouldn’t describe it as “It’s like regular church—except….” I would describe it as “It’s like regular church—plus….” It’s like regular church because we gather together once a week and listen to sermons and chat during coffee hour and serve on committees and do good work in our communities. In that regard, we’re a lot like our neighboring faiths, the church or synagogue or mosque across the street. And to be honest, if all we were was that—except, I don’t think we would be here today. Our faith tradition would have died out years ago if that was the best we could do.

But here we are. Small and mighty. Surviving and, I sincerely hope, thriving. Why? Because we offer something more. Regular church—plus. We offer it in our religious education programs for children and youth, we offer during our Sunday services, and we offer it in our adult programming. It’s something that goes back to our very origins, it’s in our collective consciousness, it’s the beating heart of our living tradition. We offer the opportunity for individuals to gather in a community of faith, a community grounded in a living tradition of faith, a community where each and every one of us can discover for ourselves what it means to be a person of faith. We are, indeed, the faith of the larger liberty.

And that is not regular church—except. That is regular church—plus a whole lot more. Somewhere St. Paul said that it was up to the individual to work out his or her own salvation in fear and trembling. Well, since we are Universalists, we don’t have so much fear and trembling. But, it is still up to each and every one of us to work out how we are going to be on this earth, how we are going to be in relation to each other, how we are going to have what Ralph Waldo Emerson called “an original relation to the universe.” And when we, as individuals, decide to do this within the living tradition of Unitarian Universalism, when we do this in the context of a community of faith in communion with that living tradition, we are choosing to work out that relation with more integrity and autonomy than we could in almost any other faith tradition I can think of. We are walking the high stakes high wire of this life without a creedal or dogmatic net below us.

There still may be some fear and trembling involved here, but there are other things as well. There’s joy and exhilaration and contentment. Why? Because we do this not out of coercion, not because of the threat of eternal damnation, not because we’ve numbed ourselves to the sometimes archaic language and tenuous beliefs of other traditions. No. We do this because we know we are free. We know it in our heads and feel it in our hearts. And we have made the decision to neither live without freedom or without faith. This is why we call our faith liberal. We enter into it freely.

And we should be liberal in sharing our faith as well. We should offer this faith freely. Now I think we do this fairly well with the children in our religious education programs. After all, we don’t just teach them about our neighboring faiths—we also teach them about our own. The place were we may be a little more stingy in our offerings is with our youth, our young adults, those of who are middle-aged, and our elders. Think about it. Most churches that I know of that provide any sort of information about our faith tradition do so during one of maybe four New UU sessions. And if a church is really on the ball, they may offer a class on the history of Unitarian Universalism every once in a while.

What I would like to see in our congregations is more programming that lets all of us talk about faith. This faith. Our faith. Programming that encourages individuals to reflect on what it means for them to be a person of faith, what it means to be part of whatever congregation they have chosen as their community of faith, what it means to be part of the living faith tradition known as Unitarian Universalism. If sincerely believe that if we did more of this within the walls of our congregations, in small group settings, in adult education classes, in book discussion groups, if we did more of this in our churches, then we would be much easier for all of us to talk about our faith outside of our churches.

And that, I believe, is the very best way to offer this faith freely to others. Now I’m not talking about proselytizing here—you know the joke, what do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with a Unitarian Universalist? Someone who knocks on doors for no apparent reason. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about Unitarian Universalists who are well-versed and comfortable in their faith, who are willing to speak up in their communities as people of faith, who truly believe that our congregations and our tradition have something of value to offer. I’m talking about people who are willing to offer this faith and all it calls us to do and be, with our heads and our hands and our hearts—mind, body, and spirit.

That, I believe, is a faith worth standing by.

--The Rev. Phillip Lund