Sermon Series: Church -- Risky Business
Feb 5 - Dreaming Big (podcast here), Rev. Justin Schroeder
Feb 12 - Remembering Who We Are (podcast here), Rev. Kate Tucker, including a 1972 sermon reading by Minister Emeritus Rev. John Cummins [see Rev. Tucker sermon excerpts below]
Feb 19 - The Meadow Doesn’t Know About the Stock Market (podcast here), Rev. Justin Schroeder
Feb 26 - The Nature of Risk (podcast here), Rev. Justin Schroeder
First Universalist is in the process of becoming a vibrant and welcoming base camp. We are well into our strategic planning, and our pledge campaign, and we are asking the big questions: What claims us? What saves us? What are we willing to give? What are we willing to risk? What are we willing to try? Are we ready to live at that risky intersection of spiritual growth and social justice? Are we ready to give, receive and grow, in deeper and bolder ways? It’s risky business, but the answer that changes us and the world is YES!
Excerpts from Rev. Schroeder's "The Nature of Risk" sermon (also quoting Cornell West, 1993):
"As prisoners of hope, we are not defined by our fears, nor limited by our dreams... We hold ourselves open, ready to respond, when new possibilities erupt among us... When we stop giving, opening our hearts, hope slowly dies... We are never more the spirit of life than when we are giving."
Excerpt from Rev. Tucker's "Remember Who We Are" sermon:
Risk goes with our mission; it's part of "give, receive and grow." And where there's risk, there's probably some fear. And I want to say more about fear....
The flock of butterflies (or eagles occasionally) I experience on Sunday morning are my friends, darn it, because they're telling me "this matters." As is the carbonation I feel when I show up to facilitate a small group for the first time, just wanting these nine precious people to find each other and known each other. As are the butterflies inside some of you, perhaps, when you show up for the phone bank. Or the Habitat build, wondering if you'll remember how to place the ladder and hold the exacto knife. Or when you show up at choir practice for the first time. Or, here's a stretch, depending on your Myers-Briggs, go into the Social Hall for coffee.
Thomas Aquinas said it's important to distinguish between two kinds of fear.
1) Servile fear is the kind of fear that makes slaves of us, constricts our lives, makes us defensive, and brittle and desperately sure. Servile fear tells us to flee when it's time to stand firm, and stay when it's time to go. It shuts down empathy and connection and compassion. Servile fear: I'll call it spirit diminishing fear.
2) The other kind of fear Aquinas called chaste fear. Pure fear. It's the fear and trembling when the angels are asking something of us. For love's sake, most likely. The fear we feel when we're called to stretch beyond our old limits...It's what accompanies whatever strange new work is mine to do -- parenting, partnering, getting well, moving into the next chapter, taking the new job, leaving the old job, or the old house -- all these cycle of life changes -- all the way to empty nesting, assisted living, and maybe, the gift of hospice. It's the fear we feel as we simultaneously say yes to life and yell for help.
In this world today, in these fear-laden times, it is good to be able to ask ourselves: Is this fear calling me to a smaller, or a larger life?