Now Is the Time

Rev. Roberta Finkelstein October 14, 2007

One of the heroines of the Hebrew Scriptures is Queen Esther. Esther was, by all accounts, a beautiful woman with a beautiful soul. She was an orphan, raised by her uncle Mordecai. She was sent to the court of the King of Persia, who fell in love with her and made her his queen. The marriage was a happy one; but Esther had to conceal the fact that Jewish in order to survive in the Persian palace. Mordecai also became an official on the staff of the king, and was able to save the king’s life when he learned of a planned coup. For many years the king himself was unaware of the fact that both his queen and a trusted advisor were Jewish. Then anti-Semitism raised it’s ugly head in the person of Haman. Haman was, according to the biblical account, an evil and jealous man. He wanted everybody to bow down to him, and since the king valued his advice, he gave the order. This was a problem for Mordecai. As a Jew, he bowed to no person; his only allegiance was to Yahweh. Haman was furious, so furious that not only did he order Mordecai to be put to death, but all the Jews in the kingdom. Mordecai went to Esther and urged her to speak to the king and save her people. Esther was afraid Even she was not allowed to initiate a conversation with the king; she had to wait to be summoned. And how angry might he be to learn that for many years she had deceived him? But Mordecai urged her to save her people, saying, “And who knows whether you have not come to this kingdom for just such a time as this?”

So Esther went to the king and told him the truth – about herself and Mordecai, and about Haman. The king prevented the mass execution from happening, and everybody, or almost everybody, lived happily ever after. Until the next time . . .
Who knows whether you have not come to this place for just such a time as this? I’m willing to bet that every minister who has ever stood in this pulpit has used those words from the Book of Esther, or similar words, to exhort the congregation to action. Time after time, decade after decade, events have transpired that remind us, urgently, that the saving message of liberal religion is badly needed. Anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism – all rear their ugly heads in the persons of those who claim wisdom or expertise or just plain power. The environment is degraded by greedy and senseless corporate policies, young women and men are sent off to war to protect the economic interests of a select few. Human rights are discarded in the name of security, freedom is compromised in the name of patriotism, justice is sacrificed on the altar of ideology.

My friends, I may not be the first minister to stand here and plead with you to stand up to the powers that be. I won’t be the last. Every time somebody has told this congregation that ‘the time is now’ they have spoken the truth. In every age, there has been a pressing need for a religion that proclaims inherent worth, seeks justice and equity with compassion, champions diversity and the right of conscience, puts democracy at the heart of faith, and recognizes the interdependent web of all existence. Now is the time to stand up and be heard. And now is the time to put aside small differences and stand united with other Unitarian Universalists and with our Association in order to be as effective as we can possibly be in our mission to save the world, or at least our small part of it.

Today is Association Sunday. All over the nation, Unitarian Universalist congregations are celebrating our relationship with the Unitarian Universalist Association. The UUA is a voluntary association of congregations. That means that it exists because groups of people like you made a conscious decision to work together. Why, you might ask, when there is so much to do right here? Why bother with sending some of our precious money off to a larger organization? Why bother using our precious volunteer time coordinating with and communicating with that larger body? Why trust the expertise of a staff who serves all of the congregations instead of ours alone?

We join in voluntary association because we are hopeful people. One of the hallmarks of liberal religion is our optimism. We take full measure of the problems of the current age, but we continue to believe that by working together we can make things better. Just as we continue to hope that the nations of the world can bring about global health, global sustainability, and global peace by  banding together in an association known as the United Nations, so too we hope that our separate congregations can bring about our hoped for goals by banding together in an association known as the Unitarian Universalist Association. We are better, and more effective, and sometimes even smarter, when we are together.
Our participation in Association Sunday has two aspects to it. One aspect is financial. At the end of the sermon we will have our offertory. We will ask you to make a more than usual donation to the offering basket. The board has voted to send $500 from this mornings offering to the UUA. These funds will go towards a capital campaign that is focused specifically on growing Unitarian Universalism. The money will not go to the operating budget of the Association; those of you who donate regularly to the UUA through the Friends program should understand that the money you give this morning is different. It goes into a completely different pot. Half of the Association Sunday fund will go to pay for a nation wide advertising campaign. This full page ad in this week’s Time Magazine is the first fruit of that campaign. Another 25% will be distributed, through the districts, in the form of congregational growth grants. The other 25% will support a Diversity in Ministry team. The sad truth is that while we have long espoused ethnic and racial diversity, our track record on calling and settling ministers of color is very poor. This team will try to address and correct that.

So money is part of what Association Sunday is about. But my decision to take part in this nation-wide event had nothing to do with money and everything to do with the culture of South Church. Your relationship to our larger movement has been, in the recent past, ambivalent at best. And I’d like to change that. First I want to acknowledge that you have some good reasons to be angry with or distrustful of the Unitarian Universalist Association. There have been times in the past few decades when you have not been well served by our Association. You have asked for help and the response has not been helpful. People that you hoped would resolve a conflict did not; people you hoped would help lead you out of a thicket did not; advice you hoped would help you move forward did not.
But to be fair, not all of the services you have gotten from the UUA have been bad. Sometimes a consultant has come and told you a truth about yourselves that you simply did not want to hear. Even though some of these reports were rejected or questioned, the holding up of the mirror had an effect. The truth worked it’s way into the consciousness of the congregation long after the consultant was gone. For example, today at South Church you have fiscal practices that are well-ordered, transparent, democratically determined, and sound from an accounting standpoint. This culture of accountability and transparency is at least partially the result of advice given and initially rejected by consultants from the Association. And you know what, nobody either at the UUA or here at South Church cares whose idea it was. What we all care about is that we have a healthy system in place today.
Another example: the support you got during the search process was positive and healthy. Your Search Committee took full advantage of the resources of the Transitions Office, as did I. I personally believe that the result of that search process was, and is, a happy one.

South Church is a voluntary association – all of you choose to become members based on your desire to be part of a healthy community that lives out the principles of our faith. That is an ideal. Due to the fact that we are all imperfect human beings, we don’t always succeed in meeting our own expectations. Tolerance and forgiveness, a willingness to accept failure as well as success – all of these are essential ingredients of our shared life. The same is true for the Unitarian Universalist Association. It too is made up of imperfect human beings doing their best; sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. To reject a relationship with our larger movement based on past disappointments is to make the classic mistake of throwing the baby out with the bath water. In spite of your experience with the failings of the larger movement, I maintain that we are better when we are together, when we united with other Unitarian Universalists, when we support that movement with our time and our treasure, and when we work together not with the expectation of magical outside solutions to internal problems, but with the hope that shared wisdom and shared experience will enrich us.
Now I know that some of you are thinking of another objection to our enthusiastic participation in Association Sunday. And that is the fact that our own Stewardship Campaign is just winding down. Can we afford to give money away when we don’t yet know whether we will have enough for our own budget? Yes we can. I believe in a culture of generosity. I believe that if we act as though there is more than enough, there will be more than enough. I believe that there is more money in this congregation than we let on, and that to give some of it away will be good for us. It won’t cost us anything in our own budget, it will help us to make yet another culture change – a change from fear and anxiety and scarcity to hope and optimism and generosity.

Do you get it by now that Association Sunday is not about the Unitarian Universalist Association at all? It is about South Church. About our ability to learn from the past and then leave the past behind? To surrender old hurts and disappointments to make room for new possibilities? To stop nursing old grudges and free up spiritual energy for building new relationships? To nudge us towards trust and an affirmation that we are indeed, better together? A better congregation, a better Association, better advocates for justice and peace and a sustainable future?

Now is the time. The time to step up as a congregation, to act as corporate leaders in our movement. Now is the time. The time to be generous, to act as though we know that we have all that we need to do all that we want to do. Now is the time. The time to bring our light out from under the bushel basket and let it shine. To advertise, to affirm our intention to grow our faith, to really live out our principles, and our dreams. Now is the time. In that spirit, the offering will now be received. Please consider two possibilities as the basket is passed. The first is to double the amount of cash you usually put in the basket – so that South Church gets it’s usual share and we have a generous amount to send on to the Association. The other is to take the envelope in your order of service and make a separate donation to Association Sunday. Barry and I have made our donation already, and hope many of you will join us.

The offering for the work of this church, and the broader work of the larger movement of Unitarian Universalism, will now be received.