Hearing the Life That Lives Within

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, February 4, 2007

An essay by Florida author, Beverly Coyle, tells of herself as an elementary school age child who is so steeped in the forms of liberal Methodism practiced by her preacher father in the rural south, that she suffers doubts about the presence of the holy spirit. The rituals which her father leads, look to her eye as a set of rules to be followed…as a Litany of memorized and comforting prayers, all accomplished by following the rules of their tradition. She worries that the spirit will abandon them all if he fails to get things/rituals right.

So when her father, the minister, agrees to baptize a member of the church by immersion in the ocean…an act most definitely outside of the proper rules of mere Methodist sprinkling, the preachers’ kid, becomes upset. Beverly’s closest friend, Martha, is also a PK…her father- a reverend in the primitive Baptist church. Beverly has always suspected that Martha, steeped in the certainty of her Baptist faith…knew something that she didn’t…Beverly was always curious about the huge, mysterious, baptismal pool behind the pulpit in the Baptist church.

On Easter morning, the day of the ocean immersion…Beverly invites Martha to come along. From their vantage point on the shore, Beverly watches her father in his robe, and the congregant to be dunked…as they walk out to the sand bar…she watches with nervousness and worry and doubt in her mind. Martha, standing beside Beverly, watches in silence, with great intensity. Coyle writes:

“Martha and I stood waiting with the small congregation. We held hands the whole time and Martha talked softly the whole time, which I had not expected of her. This is right before the dove comes down, she said, and while the woman was immersed, Martha said amen and nudged me so that I said it too, quite involuntarily. When they waded cautiously back to shore in the bright morning light that scorched the waters, Martha told me frankly that she’d seen the Holy Spirit out there with them and that the Holy Spirit had kept them aloft.”

The essay is titled “Taking Martha With Me”. And this was the important thing…that Beverly had taken Martha with her….to guide and remind her and stir her faith. The implication is that from that time on, she always took Martha with her in her heart…That she always had Martha within her as spiritual inspiration- a part of her that remained certain in her faith in matter what.

At first I had called today’s sermon, “My Call to Ministry”…but I found a better title, a better ground upon which to stand and speak today… “Hearing the Life that Lives Within”. That’s why we are all here today…to listen, to listen for the call…to hear, if only fleetingly, the Life that Lives in us. So don’t sit back comfortably and wait for me to follow all the forms exactly and offer glowing wisdom…the only thing I’m sure of is that we are all here to hear the call….

And that we all have more life within us…a deeper place to draw upon. And we all need to Take a Martha with us…someone to stir our faith in a deeper life, someone to help us learn to hear with new ears, see with new eyes. We all need to renew our trust in spirit, in grace, in the power of goodness and mercy…which is forgiveness.

I must confess that this isn’t the best time for me to be preaching this particular sermon. For this is not a time of great clarity within me. This is not a time of great inner strength. In fact its been, of late, a time of struggle, of inner turmoil.

I do not stand before you this morning as an example of piety, or prophecy, or blessed assurance.

On the contrary, I come bowed down, needing the mystery of this hour…to nurture my spirit, to reassure me of my worthiness, to remind me of the potential of my ministry, the sacredness of my call.

I’m so glad the choir is singing this morning, because their music lifts me up. I am so glad that this beautiful sanctuary is becoming my spiritual home, because the beauty of this space lifts me up.

I am so grateful to all of you for being faithful, gathering together in one strong body. For your presence, lifts me up. I so appreciate the deep and broad leadership among you…the way in which you pitch in and make so much happen here at UUCR…your devotion lifts me up.

You help me remember the Martha that I carry within me, the Martha that stirs my faith, and calls my spirit forward. The Life that lives in me…the life that calls to me again and again…is religious community itself. I am called to ministry by a holy voice, the voice of the congregation, the voice of religious community…

I carry within me every congregation I have ever been a part of. Each different, each calling forth a different part of me, each asking a different kind of commitment from me…each creative and blessed- revealing another part of the journey…each showing me the way forward. Forward toward trust, forward toward action, forward toward wisdom, forward toward acceptance, forward toward love.

It is faithful congregations that show me the way…faithful congregations that lift me up. And I choose not to trivialize religious community-this sacred gathering week after week, of ordinary and extraordinary people who dedicate babies, guide and support youth, bless marriages and holy unions, come together on holidays and holy days and stay by those who are sick and finally participate in the celebration of each holy life among us.

So together we are called to minister. When I speak of being called…I mean being called to be human…being called to be fully yourself, being called to connect the outside world to an interior presence.

Outside of religious community there are many different kinds of call….many different callings….but if they are wholistic and true…then following your call should make you more fully human, more fully yourself, more fully connected from the inside to the outside.

A call does not always come on a whirlwind…or in a burning bush, or under a bodhi tree…it does not always require changing your name, leaving your family, or living in poverty or celibacy….but a true call does require sacrifice. And what the sacrifice might be, is rarely clear. A true call is also a blessing, but the nature of the blessing is also rarely clear.

Hearing the Life that Lives Within is the spiritual work of a lifetime. Responding to an initial call is only the beginning.

When I first responded to the call to ministry and entered seminary, I had no idea where it would lead me and my family. Responding to a calling, requires first, a willingness to be led. I was led to follow my passion: my love of people and congregations, my passion for justice and peace in the world; my passion for helping and caring for others, my passion for religious study, my passion to use my life as fully as possible.

I took the leap of faith to respond to the initial call and I took my Martha with me…the congregation in which I grew up, and the Unitarian Universalist church in which our family was active. I also took the support of my husband and children.

I received my Masters of Divinity degree and my ordination in June 1990. Through the laying on of hands, of clergy and congregation, I was blessed and empowered to devote my life to spreading and deepening the faith of Unitarian Universalism.

I am in my 17th year of ministry. My 17th year of preaching and teaching and officiating at weddings and memorial services. My 17th year of walking with people who are sick or dying. My 17th year of working for peace and justice. My 17th year of stuggling to hear the life that lives within. Through all the lonely and profound moments of my ministry- for I will not trivialize- worship has sustained me. This hour on Sunday morning has sustained me.

I offer these words on religious community by Jill-Beth Sweeney Schultheis:

Remember Peace
Fear, impatience, anger,
Resentment, doubt, greed,
You are welcome here.

We will hold you until you soften.
We will love you until you begin to melt.
We will sing to you until you remember peace.
Darkness and sadness,
Loneliness and sorrow,
Come You are welcome here.

After ordination, I received another call…the call to serve a congregation and my family and I were led to Knoxville, Tennessee. I learned a great deal from that wonderful congregation. Then I was called again, this time to River Road UU congregation in Bethesda, and there too, I learned a great deal about large church ministry, about team ministry, about new ways to serve.

And then a year and a half ago, I was called here to serve the UU Church of Rockville…to walk with you. To lead and to follow with you. To tend the flame of liberal religion here on this beautiful land, to create a ministry of hospitality , to listen with you ….to hear the life that lives within this congregation.

Yes, congregations receive calls too. Part of our task is to listen together. To be fully human together. To find wisdom together. To work for peace and justice together, to care for one another together…to share our lives and our spiritual journey. To be Martha’s for one another…This is not a trivial thing…a calling requires both sacrifice and the receiving of blessings.

I don’t know exactly how we are called to sacrifice together. I don’t know exactly how we are to be blessed. But there are blessed assurances everywhere within this congregation. And I am waiting to hear the life that lives within UUCR, waiting for our epiphanay, our illumination, our deep call.

Over and over again in sacred literature…saints and disciples and activists are called without knowing where they are to go. I am confident that I am called among you as a spiritual leader…but I confess I don’t always know where we are supposed to go.

Yet I have faith that together we will find our way. I have faith that we will love one another into fullness as a congregation.

Theologian Paul Tillich wrote: “My religion is the answer to the question which I am.” What a beautiful image. My religion is the answer to the question which I am. We are a question….our spiritual being is a presence that is open and potential and without boundaries…We are on a path That seeks to answer the question, Who are we?

That is the task to which we are called…to answer the question of who we are… In our fullest, most blessed, most whole and healed self….and also who we are in community in our fullest, most blessed most whole and healed community.

Everywhere we look there is hope and guidance for the journey. Everywhere we connect to the outside world, there is grace. A moment of potential that goes beyond what we can see in the moment.

To find myself…I need to get outside of myself. To be our fullest self as a congregation we need to get outside of ourself..

One way we get outside of ourselves is through offering compassion to others.

We do it all the time around here. The phone rings and someone is offering concern or information or a story about how one person in the congregation has helped another.

Books are passed that help husbands deal with their wives’ cancer. Support groups meet and in the following week someone who has been lonely gets an invitation to lunch. Someone dies and a group comes together to serve cookies and punch.

An email comes from a leader of the church concerned that a coming cold spell might put some members in harms way….and so offers a suggestion of housing for anyone without electricity or heat.

And committees are planning fund raisers, and dances, and dinners and retreats, and movies, and conversations and parties for the kids….

This congregation has heard the call to compassion…has heard that the life that lives within this congregation is caring and support.

I want you to know how much care is given and received here.

I want you to know so that you too are lifted up.

When you join a congregation you are answering a call. A call to be part of a community of faith. A call to be your fullest self. A call to be compassionate. A call to be a Martha for your minister….a call to be led and to follow where the spirit leads.

Here we create beauty, share our joys and sorrows, enter together into the silence….so that we might hear our call, hear the life that lives and breathes within this congregation.

I am always grateful that I found Unitarian Universalism, that it found me, because liberal religious calls, not for the sinner, not for an elite few, not for a life after this one, not for certainty, not only for joy, or only for despair- But for all thinking, feeling, spirit filled people searching for wholeness.

And while we’re waiting to discern our calling…while we’re listening together in confusion and hurt, while we’re waiting to lead or to be led… We come together every Sunday morning to celebrate life…

My colleague, Arthur Graham puts it in these words…

Beat of Life

If none will sing of life
Then I will sing its praise.
Not in the treble voice of youth,
Nor on instruments of one string,
Nor with happy, laughing brasses,
Nor by cadence, counting on drums
Would I praise life, as those
Who sing hymns only to the sun,
Forgetting nature in torment,
Man in agony.

I would sing,
Soft and sad, surging with emotion,
Remembering pain, fear and death,
Those swamping morasses, and seed beds too,
Where courage, life and growth
Began to bloom, and man in sweat
Quivered at what he saw, and
Spoke in verse, ballad and epic,
Recounting glory, learning self,
Hailing life as the deep surge to be,
Singing in deep voice the hymn
Which extols restless beings tense with destiny.