"A Bell Awakened" by Rev. Thomas Schade

Tue Jun 5 14:28:49 CDT 2007

M I N I S T E R’ S   M E M O

"A Bell Awakened"

(From a sermon delivered by Rev. Schade on May 27, 2007, and edited by Rev.
Merritt)

The kid you see walking down the street with those white earbuds in his ears
may be listening to a sermon; maybe even a sermon by a Unitarian
Universalist minister. There is a whole generation of people who when they
hear about this religion of reason, tolerance and interfaith respect, don't
go looking for a church to visit, but google it and start downloading
podcasts of sermons and looking at websites.

One UU minister who serves a small church in the Midwest puts his sermon up
as a podcast on the internet every week. A podcast is an audio recording of
a sermon that you can get through your computer and play either on the
computer or on your IPOD. He says that 3 to 4 hundred people download his
sermons on average, and he gets emails from as far away as China. More
people hear his sermons through the internet than show up in his church
every week.

I am calling for us to consider forming a new ministry for First Unitarian
Church, a NEW and ADDITIONAL ministry. Right now this church is thriving.
What we are now doing - especially worship on Sunday morning - needs to
continue and grow. With new ministry we enter into a new set of
relationships.

Let me lay out two examples of new ministry.

“Mission work.” Mission work is serving people in the community to meet
their needs, without the purpose of explicitly promoting one's religious
point of view. Our work with Interfaith Hospitality would be considered
"mission" work. After all, we do not plan to do that work to introduce the
guests to Unitarian Universalism. Far from it, unless we are explicitly
asked, our volunteers probably say nothing about how this church approaches
religion to the guests. We know that just because a family needs a place to
stay for a while doesn't mean that they are shopping for a new church, or
experiencing some sort of spiritual awakening. They need a place to stay; we
have room, so we try to help. End of story.

>From feeding the hungry, to sheltering the homeless, to tutoring children,
to supporting Elm Park Community School, to working with the immigrant
communities, to developing a cadre of advocates to assist people as they
work with the health care system, or even try to find their way through the
new health insurance world: how can we be of service? Which of the many
possible projects could enough of us develop a long-term sustaining
commitment to?

“Evangelical ministry.” There are all sorts of evangelical ministries that
don't involve wearing a signboard and pressing pamphlets into stranger's
hand outside of the DCU center the night of Sharks games.

Our message is not "join our church." Our message is take your spiritual
life seriously, take time to worship and take time to pray. Our message to
people is learn to practice tolerance and inform yourself about the
religious variety of humankind. Our message is that everyone can serve and
that each of our lives will be richer, fuller, better if they are lived in
the fullness of the reality that is our world today.

The poet Denise Levertov expresses our message so clearly:

A certain day became a presence to me
There it was confronting me -a sky, air, light:
A being. And before it started to descend
>From the height of noon, it leaned over
And struck my shoulder as if with
The flat of a sword, granting me
Honor and a task. The day's blow
Rang out, metallic - or it was I, a bell awakened,
And what I heard was my whole self
Saying and singing what it knew: I can.

We have been given an honor and a task, and it should wake us up and get us
to vibrating like a bell.

We have been blessed by this church community. When I remember to step back
and look at it whole, against the wider sky, I have to ask, “What are we
being called to do?” History and chance and our spiritual ancestors have put
us here - with resources, with money, with a stunning building, with this
body of incredibly talented and energetic people! For what? For what far
purpose?

I remind you of the words of Jesus: "When a lamp is lit, it is not put under
a basket, but on the lamp stand where it gives light to everyone in the
house. Like the lamp, you must shed light among the people, so that, when
they see the good you do, they may give praise to God in heaven."

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.firstunitarian.com/pipermail/firstumemo_firstunitarian.com/attachments/20070605/9cb95167/attachment-0001.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 2569 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.firstunitarian.com/pipermail/firstumemo_firstunitarian.com/attachments/20070605/9cb95167/attachment-0001.gif