I WANT TO KNOW A Stewardship Sermon
James Ishmael Ford
5 March 2006

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And Ruth said, entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.
Ruth 1:16-17

As I hope you know we’ve formally kicked off our annual Stewardship campaign. With a little luck you’ll have already received my letter announcing the campaign. Within days you should be receiving a packet of materials explaining our current situation and not long after that you should be receiving a call from someone on the campaign. If for some reason or another you find you haven’t received these materials, please feel free to call the office and we’ll get you connected.

In my letter I spoke briefly of the deeper reasons I hope you will support this campaign with enthusiasm. I want to expand on that a little today, exploring what it is I see we’re about here in this Society. If you’ve been attending here or at any other Unitarian Universalist community for anytime at all, you know our tradition is hard to define. We assert we’re non-creedal, that is we have no test of faith, no statement of belief one must sign on to before being admitted to membership. We’re inclined to say rather we’re a covenantal faith; that is our religious communities are based upon a willingness to be together. I’ll return to this and what it might mean in a bit. But first I want to raise up some thoughts and feelings about us and what it is we’re up to within this liberal religious tradition.

I currently serve on the Board for the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry, together with, I should add, Ned Leibensperger, who these days serves as its president. We here at FUSN have deep connections with that venerable organization, the oldest church run social service agency in the country. In fact lots of us are involved one way or another such as, just thinking of a couple of names off the top of my head, Michelle Walsh and Cheryl Lloyd. Jim Schmolze, who we will be remembering later today served as one of our official delegates to the UUUM.

Anyway yesterday Ned and I were at the Urban Ministry Board retreat. And several things came up that give shape to my remarks today. For instance we were talking about that slippery quality to our UU theology when another member of the Board, Byron Rushing, a state legislator, himself an Episcopalian, offered that we may say we’re hard to describe, but if a Martian were to land today and examine a dozen or so of our congregations, the Martian wouldn’t have much trouble describing us. Sadly, before Representative Rushing could say what that description might be, our facilitator, for the tenth time up to that point dragged us back to the actual purpose of the retreat.

That was okay with me. I’ve been thinking about this a whole lot, and I’m pretty sure I can say what it is we’re about. Admittedly, getting it down to a few well chosen words has been difficult. From time to time I’ve drawn upon some of the old slogans, such as the Unitarian “Salvation by character,” which hasn’t gotten a lot of traction here, and the Universalist slogan “Love over Creed,” which seems to have deep resonances for many of us here.

I’ve noticed how in the Principles and Purposes, that official attempt at describing us, many, most of us find particular meaning in two assertions, the first announcing every person has some inherent dignity and worth. The other, the seventh in that list, describing each of us, the world, all of existence as being an interdependent web has particularly caught our collective imaginations. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring how those apparently contradictory assertions, we are unique and precious and yet we are completely created out of each other are a coherent expression of our living liberal faith.

But a simple statement that draws it all together has been illusive. Not being a Martian, I appear to be standing too close to the matter. I think I’ve gotten near the right statement at least once. The Religious Education program at the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Durham, North Carolina has a mission statement which has fired my imagination. Their slogan is, and I quote, “Nothing less than saving the world.” Nothing less than saving the world.

Now there’s a phrase that might shock a UU. It’s a phrase that might offend a UU. It’s certainly a term that begs for unpacking for a crowd like ours. UU minister and poet Lynn Ungar gives the best challenge and definition for a Unitarian Universalist understanding of salvation I’ve so far run across. She writes “By what are you saved? And how?/Saved like a bit of string,/tucked away in a drawer?/Saved like a child rushed from/a burning building, already/singed and coughing smoke?/Or are you salvaged/like a car part – the one good door/when the rest is wrecked?//Do you believe me when I say/you are neither salvaged nor saved,/but salved, anointed by gentle hands/where you are most tender?/Haven’t you seen/the way snow curls down/like a fresh sheet, how it/covers everything, makes everything/beautiful, without exception?”

I’ve worked a lot with that phrase, nothing less than saving the world. I’ve tweaked it a bit, drawing upon the etymology of salvation in salve, which means, of course, to heal. You’ve probably heard me holding forth on more than one occasion about our work as Unitarian Universalists is nothing less than about the healing of the world. There is hurt, great hurt in the world, and much of what we’re about is healing that hurt.

There’s something there. I really believe it. But it’s, how to say this, second category. It’s about what follows something else. It’s that first category statement, the brief summation that has continued to elude me. Until, that is, yesterday. Lucinda Duncan minister at the Follen UU church in Lexington quoted Dana Greeley, the first president of our consolidated Unitarian Universalist Association. He said our faith calls “us forth to the highest that we know.” Our faith calls us forth to the highest that we know.

So, first a warning. Watch out! Coming into this community is about transformation. Here we are called forth to the highest that we know. We accept that human knowing is always, partial, always through a glass darkly. So, it’s dynamic, and subject to constant clarification. But, knowing that, we share some common intuition that as we faithfully engage our lives, as we call forth the highest that we know - that is as we engage with our whole hearts and bodies, ways through the difficulties becomes apparent. Healing becomes possible.

Here we see much of our common call to action: To look within our own selves, to accept responsibility for our lives within relationship, and then to reach out, to help another, and beyond that, to work for justice in the world, justice informed by that deep knowing of relationship. We’re about transformation, of ourselves and the world. We’re about healing.

Which brings me back to that covenantal faith, our covenant of presence, each of us to the other. This is how we learn to be vulnerable, how we learn to learn. Let me give you an illustration of how it might look, and how powerful and how dangerous it is. As lots of us know I was born into a Baptist family. I actually learned to read from the King James Version of the Bible. So, even as I push rather far into my sixth decade and farther still from my childhood tradition, those biblical stories are still pretty much second nature to me. When I think of covenant, of relationship, how it works, what it demands, and where it might take us, I think of the book of Ruth.

The story is actually very simple; the whole tale takes four very brief chapters. Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons flee a famine in Israel and go to Moab. There the sons marry Moabitesses, as we inherit the term; one Orpah and the other Ruth. As the story progresses first Elimelech and then the two sons all die. Things are rough. Naomi decides to return home. She tells her daughters-in-law to go to their own families. Filled with tears, Orpah takes her mother-in-law’s advice. Then, in one of the most powerful passages in the Bible, Ruth refuses. “And Ruth said, entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.”

So, the two widows return to Israel, where they barely survive by the right of gleaning, harvesting from a small set-aside mandated for the poor by Jewish law. While gleaning on a farm owned by Boaz, who it turns out is a kinsman of Naomi’s, Boaz notices and falls in love with Ruth. To cut to the chase, after a brief courtship they marry, and the awful prospects one could reasonably expect for Ruth and Naomi’s lives are turned completely around.

The book of Ruth is part of a collection called the “Five Scrolls.” In traditional Jewish scriptural ordering it is part of the “Writings.” It has become associated in Jewish liturgical life with the second spring harvest feast, called the “Weeks.” Interestingly, this festival is probably the source of the Christian celebration of Pentecost. Layer upon layer of meaning.

Considering the almost pastoral sense of this story which took place in incredibly tumultuous times, its historicity is challenged in contemporary biblical scholarship. Indeed, Ruth is often dismissed as an ‘historical novel.’ But it does tell us about relationship, covenant, and healing. There is something particularly compelling in the fact that elsewhere Moabites, the community to which Ruth belongs, are possibly the most hated of all foreigners. That acknowledged, in this telling Ruth is a paragon of holiness.

Whatever else may be true, the book of Ruth is a morality play, a telling of what might be if only we would follow the urgings of our better angels. It has an unequivocal Universalist tone, where the stranger, the foreigner is given respect and hope. And, as it ends, it tells us this is in fact the story of King David’s great grandmother.

Be warned, watch out! To come among this community is to court great change. This is what can happen within a covenantal faith. Here we are called to bring forth the highest that we know. Here we are told we are unique and precious and yet bound up together in an intimacy greater than any words can convey. And from that we are called to acts of healing, of standing up for justice, for caring, for living fully.

If this isn’t worth our commitment and support, I don’t know what is.

Amen.