CALLED TO SERVE
James Ishmael Ford
17 October 2004

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver

Last year I had the pleasure of preaching an installation service out in central Massachusetts. In that sermon I told the true story of an Episcopalian congregation that called an English priest to be their minister – more or less sight unseen. A congregant had been in England and heard him preach. Pretty much everything else was arranged by phone and letter, including the contract.

When he arrived the new rector’s very first sermon was on the nature of ordained ministry. He spoke of the three traditional aspects of ministers as priest, prophet and pastor. He then added a fourth characteristic: prince. This was a snooty congregation and they liked the Oxbridge accent; however bottom line they were Americans and they weren’t interested in a prince. It took a year and a lot of money to get rid of him. In my sermon I went on to explore some aspects of our ordained liberal ministry suggesting a more humble vision of what that might be.

Just so you understand the setup for this service; I was invited to preach but had no idea what else was going on that Sunday afternoon. So I was surprised as the service began to wind down and the person invited to give the charge to the congregation, which was going to be pretty much the conclusion of the whole thing, proceeded to explain to everyone present how they were kings and queens, the people really in charge. Following which she had little paper crowns distributed into the congregation, asking everyone present to wear one. I have a copy of the video that was made that Sunday and we all looked like we’d just arrived from eating at Burger King.

I’m sure the person with the crowns wasn’t trying to suggest anything more than the preciousness of each individual and the amazing potential gathering at our birth. But put together with my sermon illustration it looked as if the weight of overweening pride simply shifted from pulpit to pew. It had an uncomfortable feeling of power play. Like the UU ordination that took place in California in the seventies, where at the conclusion of the rite a clown ran forward and threw a pie into the face of the newly ordained minister.

It has been my experience that ordinations and installations are filled with great energy. There is pomp and circumstance. Usually there are processions and visiting ministers and representatives of nearby congregations, occasionally with the great and the good from town and denomination. And I think this is appropriate. But the appropriate has to do with something bigger than a particular congregation settling a particular minister into a particular job. Today let’s think a little about ministry and what it means for us as Unitarian Universalists.

I’d like to start with an assertion that might catch a few of us off guard. Although if you’ve been hearing me of late, perhaps not. I believe we’re a people of faith. I believe out of this faith we find we’re about some very very important things. Sadness and suffering are storms raging through our hearts. There is a world of hurt that extends out of our human conflicts, both internal and external, which threaten our individual happiness, as well as us as a species, and indeed, even threatening the continuation of life on our planet.

But there is good news: our liberal religious faith offers a vision of reconciliation and healing. Our faith, our vision has been articulated in part in various ways. Our historic Universalist and Unitarian slogans “love over creed” and “salvation by character” are splendid examples. When we think about what those slogans point to we begin to understand what a powerful message we embody. We are separate, unique and precious, perhaps deserving a crown; and at the same time one, woven whole out of the world, each of us as common as dirt. These two truths pull apart and come together, now completely contradictory, now two sides of single coin. And we, everyone in this blessed world; experiences this mystery as love. Love for our precious life, love for the world and all within it that gives us birth, supports us in life, and to whom we return at death. This love is closer to what we are than the blood coursing through our jugular veins. Experiencing this love as our deepest reality fully reorders our understanding of how we treat each other and the world which is our mother.

Bottom line: our liberal faith tells us we are all one family, and it tells us everything we do counts. Salve, healing, the reconciliation of the world is in our hands. This is the good news of our Unitarian Universalist faith. It’s true few of us come into our congregations completely aware of this call to the wisdom of our hearts, this call to love and because of that love, to service. Often we come because of the kids. Often we come to meet people. Often we come to do a little good in the world. But the wonderful thing is as we come together in our covenant of presence to our own hearts and minds and to each other we discover this bigger thing: how we are indeed woven out of one another and our experience of that reality is nothing less than love itself. And so we find in small and great ways how everything we do counts for vastly more than we can calculate.

It’s the best bait and switch I’ve ever found. We think we’re buying a kazoo and we discover we’ve purchased the Boston symphony. Now if we really are about love and service then our understanding of ministry becomes very important. Ministry means service and I suggest the service of love is our common call. It is what we do out of our faith. It is the call of our deepest hearts and it is the hope of the world.

In that light let’s spend just a few more minutes reflecting on what our Unitarian Universalist ministry might be. Now in the west there are essentially two understandings about the nature of ministry. They go by the grand theological terms “ontological” and “functional.” The ontological view holds that ministry is the province of a special class of people and the rites of ordination actually change the character of the ordinand. Functional means pretty much that: who ever does ministry at any given moment is a minister. Ministry is more an action than a particular person, a verb rather than a noun. We Unitarian Universalists stand within this second perspective.

The great Universalist and later Unitarian Universalist minister Gordon McKeeman, one time president of Starr King School, our seminary in Berkeley, California, summarized this view when he wrote “Ministry is all that we do--together. Ministry is that quality of being in community that affirms human dignity--beckons forth hidden possibilities, invites us into deeper, more constant, reverent relationships, and carries forward our heritage of hope and liberation. Ministry is what we do together as we celebrate triumphs of our human spirit. Miracles of birth and life. Wonders of devotion and sacrifice.” I would only add that it extends into every aspect and moment of our shared existence on this planet as Mary Oliver tells us in her poem “The Summer Day.”

Let me underscore this: we’re all called to the work of ministry. Ministry is our shared calling within the mystery of love. To practice effective ministry demands vulnerability and an understanding of limitations. We are finite creatures born of the infinite and destined to return to it. Our particular actions, limited and hesitant are nonetheless when inspired by our deepest intuition of interdependence, of vital love, is the work of the divine. Sometimes that means speaking truth to power. That requires courage. Most often that means gentle hands reaching out, one human being to another. And that requires another kind of courage.

Now the reality is while we’re all called to ministry and ministry is what is being done; for about ten or twenty thousand years now we humans have tended to divide up our shared tasks. And so we’ve a long tradition of giving over to some among us who’ve been especially prepared in various ways the responsibility for focusing our energies on specific tasks like ministry.
Later today I’ll be preaching an installation service and I’ll be making most of the points I’ve already shared. Then I’ll shift to a consideration of the nature of the ordained ministry as a task and a symbol of this manifestation of this incredibly important work we share: the healing of the world. But here I want to take us in the other direction. Let’s reflect just a little on the nature of our shared ministry.

There are many ways in which we minister. I think of the women’s alliance and its long history of service. I think of those who serve us through maintenance of our building and grounds. I think of those who serve on our board and many committees. I think of our ushers and those who take on the many small but necessary tasks of our common life. Have no doubt these are vital, indeed critical, ministries.

Me, I often think first of the ministry of religious education. I think that because it reflects our unique style as UUs. Ours is a faith in the possibility of learning and expanding, of becoming. In this particular congregation the one among our founders we particularly remember and celebrate is the educator Horace Mann – and I find that so appropriate.

I think of our various ministries of presence. I think of the Zen group and the Insight meditation group each drawing upon the wisdoms of the east in support of our great vision, seeking to deepen our individual understanding of our interdependence through these practices of silent presence. And I’m particularly taken with our Small Group ministries, focused as it is on another way of presence through the arts of conversation. Let me remind you of the workshop coming up this next Saturday, Oct. 23, 9 a.m. to 11:30 in the Parish Hall. If you really want to explore an authentic spiritual discipline, check out our homegrown UU spiritual practice.

I’m so honored to be among people given to the ministry of social justice. We engage the aspects of this ministry in a bewildering richness of ways – from concerns with the earth, to feeding the hungry, to educating orphans in Africa, to visiting prisoners, to seeking housing for the homeless and those in danger of losing homes, to supporting civil marriage for all, to re-visioning how people relate to one another in our Commonwealth and our nation.

And last in this partial litany of ministry I think of our lay ministers and our care crew. The lay ministers in our congregation hold the traditional place of deacons in our protestant heritage. They are given the charge of the care of our community. They focus on those two particular areas “the listening heart and the outstretched hand.” Their work is perhaps most the listening heart. They coordinate the second part, the outstretched hand which consists of another form of ministry among us, our care crew: the volunteers who take on specific tasks of service here within our community, driving someone to the doctor, preparing a meal for a shut-in, mowing someone’s lawn, shoveling a driveway, the many small things that reveal the truth about our community as a gathering of faith, as the manifestation of love in this world. There’s a signup form in today’s order of service. If you haven’t yet considered this part of your ministry, I hope you will today.

And that’s the point. We are a gathering of love. We are about the healing of the world. We do it in small and large ways. But it is one thing. Ordained and called, volunteering for a committee, working on our Board, teaching a prisoner to paint a watercolor. It all counts, it all counts for everything. That’s what I have to say today. We are, all of us in this room, called to a ministry of love. It’s a joy. It’s a mystery. It’s the heart of our hearts and the hope of this world.

Amen.