Church For Sale: Perspectives on the Power and Privilege of Money
A Sermon By The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
January 30, 2005
“Rejoice that we are worthy…, that [we] are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost.”
--from Rev. Olympia Brown, first woman to be ordained by an American denomination (1894), Universalist (569, Singing the Living Tradition)
In the late nineteenth century, Universalists had a clear mission: to combat the Calvinist teachings of a judgmental, vengeful God who would send the vast majority of people to Hell. Contrary to those teachings, Universalists believed that Jesus had died for all our sins, once and for all, and that no one would go to Hell. Their “great message” was of a loving God, and this was the “great true principle” that the Rev. Olympia Brown spoke of as one to stand by and work for and sacrifice for.
A hundred years have brought many changes to our faith, including the gradual joining together, over the first half of the twentieth century, of two similar religions, the Unitarians and the Universalists. Our great true principle regarding the nature of a loving God has become a set of principles regarding the nature of our human relationships to each other and the world. Our mission remains as dramatic, as revolutionary in the eyes of dogmatic religions, as the message of a loving God was to those who only knew fear of damnation when they walked into their sanctuaries to worship. We still replace fear with hope, hate with love, and practice radical welcome, just as our sign on the door states: “All are welcome here.”
How have you been welcomed here? And how have you yourself learned to practice radical welcome towards others?
Some people are still not welcomed in religious gatherings or in society in general. Even some cartoons aren’t welcomed. SpongeBob Squarepants is being targeted right now by Focus on the Family for being too tolerant. Apparently, SpongeBob has been seen holding hands with Patrick the Starfish. Actually, I have witnessed this myself, having watched SpongeBob over the years, and he does hold hands with his friend Patrick. When Curtiss told me this story yesterday morning, he came up with an idea of having one of our members dress up as SpongeBob and stand in the middle of Thornydale, waving people to come to a church where all are welcome.
Luckily, we aren’t the only religious organization to promote radical welcome. The United Church of Christ, or UCC, churches also practice it, and they beat us to it in terms of welcoming SpongeBob to their congregations. I picked up an email yesterday afternoon that Ken Brown, our District Executive, sent out on the list. He provided a link to the UCC website where their lead story is a radical welcome to SpongeBob, with pictures showing him visiting their headquarters in Cleveland and “knowing that he will be greeted warmly inside.” The story quotes their general minister and president, the Rev. John H. Thomas, as saying, “Absolutely, the UCC extends an unequivocal welcome to SpongeBob…. Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we." The author of the story, J. Bennett Guess, paraphrases Thomas as saying, “…the 1.3-million-member church, if given the opportunity, would warmly receive Barney, Big Bird, Tinky-Winky, Clifford the Big Red Dog or, for that matter, any who have experienced the Christian message as a harsh word of judgment rather than Jesus' offering of grace.”
The UCC welcome is based on Christian theology, akin to the Universalist teachings of the loving and non-judgmental God. Unitarian Universalists and United Church of Christ members have joked that the UCC acronym stands for “Unitarians Contemplating Christ.” We have a lot in common with that denomination, and maybe as the years go by and our mutual organizations evolve a little more, we may find ourselves joining with them just as we did in 1961 combining the Unitarians and the Universalists.
For now, though we have liberal leanings in common, our faith is no longer tied to Christian teachings as tightly as the UCC, though other liberal denominations, or churches in those denominations, are finding wisdom in other religious traditions as well. We are freer to worship without reference to the Bible, and have been doing so for a long time. Jesus’ message is one of radical love, to both us and the UCC, but we are ahead, in my opinion, in practicing that love within our congregations, in accepting some of the traditionally oppressed groups, such as women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders, equally in our midst as well as our ministry.
Our mission is relevant and important in this world today. Radical welcome is a concept under siege in our nation, as are the principles we affirm and promote. Who else speaks out for the inherent worth and dignity of every person? How are justice, equity and compassion being undermined by our government today? Who practices acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth? Who promotes the free and responsible search for truth and meaning? We are not irrelevant. In fact, we are sorely needed in our society as the liberal religious voice, one of several others, thank goodness, but more often than not, on the cutting edge of our evolving sense of what is important to human beings gathering in a community which extends radical welcome and upholds love as the great true principle of life.
Now we embark on the effort to expand our welcome, to make room for all who search for that non-judgmental love we offer without requirements to worship under any particular religious dogma. We are hoping to expand our facilities so that we can explore our faith and worship together, in whatever ways inspire us as the future unfolds and our principles and purposes become clearer in our lives.
The Rev. Olympia Brown said to “stand by this faith…without counting the cost.” A hundred years later, the Rev. Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King School for the Ministry, says the same thing in a different way:
Your gifts—whatever you discover them to be—
can be used to bless or curse the world.The mind’s power,
the strength of the hands,
the reaches of the heart,
the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing,waiting,
any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
bind up wounds,
welcome the stranger,
praise what is sacred,
do the work of justice or offer love….You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?Choose to bless the world.”
Stewardship is a way to bless the world. It means standing by this faith, as Olympia Brown put it. We stand by our faith, we bless the world, by caring that Unitarian Universalism be a strong voice in society and a viable presence in the community.
I know we’re a small association of congregations. We don’t have the 1.3 million that the UCC has, but we’re also a people who extend the kind of radical welcome many, many others feel uncomfortable with, a welcome that goes beyond religious absolutes and social restrictions. As one of my colleagues put it last week at our minister’s meeting, “We may be small, but we do make a difference.” I have witnessed that we make a difference to many of you who sit here today, who have been made to feel welcome here, and who extend the hand of welcome to others in return.
A steward is one who manages another’s finances and property, as well as their affairs. We are all stewards of our faith and this particular congregation when we choose to support it with our gifts, whether of mind, hands, heart, or of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, or waiting, as Parker put it. Money is there as well, not as a different sort of gift, but as a different form of mind and heart and hand. Money is our life energy in a tangible form, a form that can be used to store up and exchange the energy we expend. Our money is way to transact our lives.
Responsible stewards give both gifts of mind and heart and hand as well as money to support this faith. Stewardship goes beyond buildings and operating budgets, and even capital campaigns, but those basics of existence and expansion are critical to the ministries in which we engage, whether through your minister and religious education director, choir director and office manager, or through the many volunteer ministries in which people engage all year long within and without these walls.
We have come a long way as a congregation, because most of us have been responsible stewards. We’re one of the growing congregations in an association whose membership in other parts of the country is declining. Some days we reflect on what we’re doing right and maybe help other congregations by sharing our best practices. Other days, we look back at how other congregations have helped us by sharing what works and doesn’t through workshops we have attended over the years. We’re fifteen, soon to be sixteen, and busting out our seams. A new challenge is before us: how to continue to stand by this faith and bless it with our gifts as we take on building a bigger home that will hold us all.
I said that “most of us” have been responsible stewards because not all of us are. We can’t expect everyone to be, although we can hope, but differences in level of experience with the congregation and our faith, and differences in level of commitment leave some people behind in willingness to give. It has been shown that for most liberal congregations, 20% of the members give 80% of the budget. And it’s not a matter of income. Some of the highest givers are middle level income or lower. Much depends on a person’s relationship with and understanding of money. More depends on how deeply someone understands the mission of our faith and engages with the power of their own ministry.
In his book Creating Congregations of Generous People, Michael Durall points out that “Some people rank asking for money high on the most-feared list, right up there with public speaking.” (p. 19) People in our society have inherited some funny notions about money as well as speaking about it, remnants left, I believe, from that same period of time in which, as Universalists, we were fighting against the judgmental God. I even have a colleague who mentioned writing the dreaded stewardship sermon and being sure not to say the word “money!” I assume most of you came because you weren’t afraid. I put it right there in the title: “Perspectives on the Power and Privilege of Money.” We here are privileged not only in our society, but in the eyes of the entire world, to have the money we do and the opportunity to put that money towards efforts that bless the world.
Unfortunately, we are behind dogmatic denominations who apply their authoritarian approach to asking for money as well. There are many people who tithe, or give ten percent and are expected and encouraged to forego expensive things in life in order to give more. Money isn’t a hidden agenda, either. There is a story in Durall’s book about Martin Luther King, Sr., who, upon his call to the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, ended their long tradition of secrecy and opened the pledge records. “The practice of anonymous giving,” he is said to have thundered from the pulpit, “leads to the practice of anonymous non-giving!” (p. 15) As non-tithing Protestants, Durall says that most of us could double our pledges and “hardly notice the difference” in our checkbooks.
The other issue we have to face as liberal congregations is the fact that we live in a consumer-driven society. Durall paraphrases Juliet Schor of the Harvard Business School in saying that “Americans see or hear an estimated 38,000 advertisements for consumer products each year and are encouraged to buy what they want now or go into debt for it…[That is] heady competition for the traditional once-a-year stewardship sermon.” (p. 6)
38,000 to 1! No wonder people come to church with a consumer approach to religion. The impulse, when asked to give to the fund drive or the capital campaign, is to ask, “Am I getting my money’s worth?” rather than, “Am I giving my life’s worth?” For it isn’t what we are getting, but what we are giving, and that goes completely against the barrage of messages we get from the rest of society. When you join us, you are not joining to get something, although you do, but to give something, to give back “to a bruised and hurting world” as Lauralyn Bellamy says in our hymnal.
Let us give back to a bruised and hurting world a larger more visible and viable ministry, with love as the mission and the gift, and a radical welcome extended to all. Let us give our life’s worth and stand by this faith which has welcomed us into its arms.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson