Because this service was snowed out, I have included the Reflection For All Ages, the Reading, and the Benediction as well as the sermon.

Reflection for All Ages

This is a story some of you have heard before. It was written by a minister named Chris Buice.

Once upon a time there was a queen, a very royal queen, who liked to think carefully about being the queen. She had advisors who gave her information, and advice, of course! But she liked to think for herself.

One day her advisor came to her with some startling news! This advisor told the queen that there was trouble brewing. It seems that the queen next door  was an enemy! Now our very royal queen had never had an enemy before, and she was very sad to learn that she had one now. Her advisor told her that she must quickly call together her army and attack the land next door. The queen told her advisor that she would think carefully, and for herself, about what to do and would see him again the next day.

The next day, when the queen’s advisor returns he finds his queen having tea with another queen – the very queen who was supposed to be their enemy! The poor advisor was very confused. He said to his queen, “How can you be having tea with our enemy? I thought you were going to think of a plan” And the very royal queen, who liked to think for herself, answered, “This is my plan. Instead of going to war with my enemy, I made her my friend.”

Unitarian Universalists, like this very royal queen, are people who like to think for ourselves. And we like to decide for ourselves who will be our friends.

Hymn #413

Reading: “Crab Grass” by Rev. Lynn Ungar

We’ve all admired it even as we’ve cursed the matted roots, white fingers pointing toward new frontiers, the tangled tapestry stubbornly weaving the world in place.

Imagine living that way. Imagine knowing from the ground up that you are tied to the whole, that you are undefeatable, that below the surface undefinable discoveries are always taking place.

Don’t you think there are things worth holding on to with a thousand arms, ten thousand gripping toes? Aren’t the undaunted particularly blessed?

Before you deride the faithful consider carefully where you will put your roots.

Hymn #128 For All That Is Our Life

Sermon: “Ten Thousand Gripping Toes” – Rev Roberta

When the very regal queen who liked to think for herself invited the enemy queen to tea, she was committing an act of radical inclusion on many different levels. She solved the problem of what to do about an enemy by making them a friend instead! She used the tea party – an institution that carries with it an association of civility and politeness and low key enjoyment. - to structure bipartisan peace talks. And when the two queens sipped tea together, they made it possible for both of their ‘queendoms’ to be transformed. Transformed from warring enemies to conversing allies. Transformed from narrow-minded, fear inspired dualistic thinkers to broadly inclusive and relaxed sippers. In short, the children’s reflection this morning was about more than just a very smart queen. It was about the creation of new associational infrastructures.

Now, if I had given this sermon the title “Associational Infrastructures” most of you would have stayed home. What in the world does that term even mean? Princeton theologian Max Stackhouse explains. “Some religious, political, and cultural traditions have allowed and encouraged the development of an associational infrastructure, exercising a minimum of coercion and interference. In these traditions, the genuinely human is found in the twin reality that we are both social creatures – requiring relatedness to be whole – and creative agents – capable of making significant choices about that relatedness. We are, in short, associational beings with wills.” OK, so that’s the definition – groups that are made up of people who freely chose them and freely determine their nature.

Next question. Can you imagine why I could be moved to wax sermonic, poetic, or philosophical about associational infrastructure? “It is here,” continues Stackhouse, “that persons are decisively formed and brought to decisions about their lives; it is here that wider human sensibilities about justice, beauty, hope, or meaning are nurtured, or stunted; it is here that the deepest religious loyalties become concrete, or dissipate; it is here that personal and social freedom lives, or dies.” Is that not poetic? Theological?

Max Stackhouse, whether being poetic or philosophical or practical, edited a book of essays by the wonderfully articulate interpreter of 20th century Unitarian Universalism, James Luther Adams. The introductory essay is called “The Five Smooth Stones of Liberal Religion.” The title refers to the biblical story of the young David, the shepherd boy who became king. When he set out to slay Goliath, he carefully chose five smooth stones for his sling shot.

In the essay, Adams identifies five foundational ideas that form the basis of our liberal religion. These are ideas Adams deems powerful enough to allow us to prevail in our confrontation with our Goliath. Last year I started an irregular sermon series based on these normative ideas. My purpose in bringing these ideas to you on Sunday morning is to reinvigorate your commitment to this faith, to energize you for the work of personal spiritual growth, community building, and the transformation of society.

James Luther Adams spent a significant portion of his academic life studying the concept of voluntary association. He was convinced that when people are free to both choose their groups and direct the nature of those groups, good things happen. That is why Adams so vigorously defended human freedom. He had seen the reality of authoritarian government and the dampening effect it had on the ability of people to gather in voluntary association. He also saw another threat to true human freedom, a threat from the other end of the spectrum: radical individualism. Adams believed that a thriving system of voluntary associations could effectively mediate between the tendency to submit to a group mentality (a tendency exploited by authoritarian leaders) and the tendency to lose sight of the common good (the end result of unchecked individualism). People involved in intentional communities are unlikely to fall victim to the isolation and narcissism of excessive individualism. And intentional communities made up of people who freely choose their association are unlikely to fall victim to the idolatry that Adams had seen firsthand in Germany in the early years of Hitler’s rise to power.

“(A) major principle of religious liberalism,” says Adams, “is that all relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not coercion.” Such a simple concept, it almost goes without saying! In fact, most of us take it for granted most of the time. Not only because we are Unitarian Universalists, people who habitually exercise our right of conscience in religious matters, but also because we are Americans, people whose entire political system is based on the assumption that every individual will be able to exercise that right of conscience.

We Americans tend to think that we invented political democracy, and the philosophical ideas that undergird it. But the truth is, the philosophy of mutual and free consent developed first in religious institutions – most particularly the free churches of the radical reformation. The basic belief of those free churches was, in Adams’ words, “God works in history where free consensus appears under the Great Taskmaster’s eye.” In other words, human beings were meant to be free, and we were meant to work out the meaning of our freedom in groups.

Those free churches that I speak of were established by our religious ancestors, the Anabaptists and others who insisted that only at the age of reason could a person choose for themselves their religious faith. In the 1500’s, the idea of every adult choosing their own religion was extraordinary and dangerous. Proponents of this practice lost their lives in its service – burned at the stake as heretics, or drowned in the rivers in a cruel parody of their radical church’s radical practice of adult, rather than infant baptism. We are the inheritors of their courage and their conviction.

The members of South Church are also the inheritors of a legacy of courage and conviction. This is a time of transition for South Church, a time when you will honor that legacy by reflecting together on your identity, your vision for the future, you core values, and, yes, your associational infrastructures. In the language of the UUA Interim Ministry Handbook it is a time to “ . . . review your goals, assess your programs, consider the quality of your life in common, and “tune up” for a new era. . . (it) can be exciting, even transformative, when devoted to self-examination and institutional renewal.” It is a time for intentional choices. Every Sunday, every one of you makes a choice to come to church. You reconstitute this voluntary association with your presence. You make this room holy with your presence. That truth is the basis for every other truth about South Church: your presence is what matters.

People suffered in an earlier age so that today you could exercise that right of coming together. Physical torture broke their bodies, but neither prison nor banishment could break their spirit, and the spirit of the principle of free association that lives on. And you know what? Every time you show up for church, every time you wake up on Sunday morning and make the decision to grace this room with your presence, you redeem the lives of those who sacrificed themselves on the altar of freedom. You redeem their suffering simply by showing up. Like every freedom given to us, the claim this one lays on us is an obligation to exercise it regularly and gratefully. Don’t take for granted this privilege of choosing the location and style and philosophy of your worship life. Don’t take for granted this privilege of associating freely with these people who share this sanctuary with you this morning. Take a minute, right now, to look around this room. Look at the people who have exercised their freedom and chosen to associate with you today.  

Now look around the room again. But this time, look for the people who are not here. Think first about folks who were members of this church at one time, but for various reasons are not anymore. Some have moved away, some have drifted away. Perhaps they would drift back if they knew they were missed; if they knew how much it matters to you that they chose to join with you. As you look around, if a particular individual or family comes to mind – somebody you used to enjoy seeing or talking to – and you realize that you haven’t seen them for a while – I’d like to ask you to make a commitment to go home today and give them a call and let them now they were missed. (Pause)

Now think about people who have visited once or twice, but haven’t yet gotten comfortable here. Would you be willing to reach out to a newcomer and try to make this church more welcoming to them? Would you make a commitment to talk to somebody you don’t know at social hour today, somebody who is waiting hopefully to be acknowledged and welcomed? It is your obligation, every one of you, to accompany the newest members of South Church on their journey into the heart of this congregation. To make a faith commitment to the principle of voluntary association means not just showing up, but making it possible for others to show up with you, and join you in determining the direction of your very precious associational infrastructure.

“Historically,” Jim Adams says, “the more profound forms of religious liberalism began in the modern world as a protest against ecclesiastical pecking orders.” Contemporary Unitarian Universalism, with its radical commitment to the power of the local congregation and its membership, is a perfect example of an associational structure that lives out that protest in a positive and healthy way. “This protest,” he continues, “often found its sanction in the basic theological assertion that all are children of one God, by which is meant that all persons by nature potentially share in the deepest meanings of existence, all have the capacity for discovering or responding to saving truth, and all are responsible for selecting and putting into action the rights means and ends of cooperation for the fulfillment of human destiny.”

In other words, we begin with a belief – that all human beings have the potential to be good persons in search of deep truth. That believe becomes the basis of liberal religion when you do more than just think it; you have to act on it. The action piece requires that you come together in relationships based on mutual and free consent, and that together you seek out the ways in which that inherent good can be actualized in all of us. Unitarian Universalist congregations are proud to say that we belong to a faith based on covenant rather than creed. No belief is imposed upon you, but together you enter into a voluntary association with explicit mutual expectations. The covenant, freely chosen, is the basis for the infrastructure that supports your individual aspirations as well as your communal yearnings. What is the covenant of South Church? What is the basis for your associational infrastructure? Does it have the tensile strength of crab grass? “Don’t you think there are things worth holding on to with a thousand arms, ten thousand gripping toes? Aren’t the undaunted particularly blessed? Before you deride the faithful consider carefully where you will put your roots.”

Closing Hymn #114 Forward Through the Ages

Benediction:

Let this gathered community be one that redeems the lives of those who deeded to us our freedom. Let it be the place where wider human sensibilities about justice, beauty, hope, or meaning are nurtured, not stunted; where the deepest religious loyalties become concrete, and are not dissipated; where personal and social freedom lives and prospers and never dies. Let South Church be the living, breathing evidence that Unitarian Universalists do indeed offer one another radical and loving acceptance and the opportunity to grow in spirit.

Amen