Sermon by Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon April 14, 2019
My colleague Rev. Peter Friedrichs [1] tells a story about checking in with some church members – a couple he hadn’t seen in a while to ask how they were. They replied, “I think we are both in desperate need of a place where we can have quiet and reflection with no strings attached, and we just aren’t finding that [at church.]”
“No strings attached.”
Does it also seem to you overall that we as a culture are shifting into a “no strings attached” culture? Into a “what’s in it for me” culture?
The sociologist Robert Putnam diagnosed this collapse of community 18 years ago in his book: Bowling Alone. And even 200 years before that, Tocqueville warned that the decay of community would threaten our American democracy. We all know that churches and synagogues are in decline. So, too, are our participation in unions, in local politics, in social clubs, and so on.
American’s faith in institutions is in decline.
And so many people might ask – Why would I be part of an institution like a church? What’s in it for me? And I do hope that we at this church deeply care about the specific needs of each person who walks through our doors.
AND yet …perhaps our most radical belief in this church is that we cannot actually answer the question of “what’s in it for me” without asking “what’s in it for us?” All of us. That radical belief we call the belief in the interdependent web. ((Thank you to James Leach for this language about the question “What’s in it for me?”))
The other day someone said to me – “If you ever move out of Midland, you should take advantage of these incredibly high rental rates. Instead of selling your house and buying in another city, you should rent out your house for that high rate (which we all know is really high) and then rent at the lower rate in the other city. You’ll make a good income.”
“In fact,” he told me, “I know young people who rent out a few houses in super high rental cities and live in a low rent city, and then they don’t have to work anymore.”
But I told him, “My conscience would never let me do that.” (Y’all hold me to that, okay?)
There are teachers and nurses and service workers in this town who cannot afford to pay their bills – who cannot afford to live here – because of these high rental costs.
But my friend reassured me – “It’s okay to be out for your own self-interest some times.”
But that’s an understanding of the self I don’t believe in. See, when I said my “conscience” would never let me do that…it’s actually something deeper than my conscience.
Because I know we are all interdependent, I know it’s ultimately not in my self-interest to contribute to a situation in which teachers or nurses can’t afford to live in our community.
So I don’t even have to say it’s my conscience or my belief or my philosophy – I can get all utilitarian and rational and say it’s just smart!When you actually do the math, it’s truly not in my self-interest to contribute to a housing situation that’s impossible for the working and middle class. Even if I didn’t have kids who needed a good teacher, even if I never needed a nurse… I need to live in a community – and a future – where children are educated well. Where my neighbors are healthy. Where my city can afford to pay people to pick up my trash and my neighbor’s trash. Even if I became wealthy enough that I could afford my kids’ private education, my own private jet, concierge doctors.
“No man is an island.”
My self-interest is so intertwined and interwoven with yours and his and hers and theirs that we use in our church this metaphor of a web.
My self-interest is so intertwined and interwoven with yours and his and hers and theirs that I’ve come to believe the self is really in fact composed of relationship.
The isolated self is a fiction.
And yet – individualism and consumerism continue to tell us we can make it on our own. And so we live isolated and transactional lives.
The organizer Ernesto Cortes laments “the decline of the intermediary institutions in which we are taught the habits and practices requisite for a vibrant democratic culture.” ((Quotes by Ernesto Cortes, Jr from “Toward a Democratic Future” Kettering Review Spring 2006))
We as a church are one of those institutions trying to practice those habits. Cortes says that only by engaging in real conversation with people different from us do “people develop the capacity to think long-term, to consider something outside of their own experience, and to develop a larger vision of their neighborhood, their state, or their society….” He emphasizes: “these are skills that must be cultivated inside institutions.”
Many of us have come to distrust institutions because, yes, they are human institutions – whether it’s a church, or the media, or the government – and so they can all become corrupt. But walking away from institutions because they are too complicated or too difficult, or because we’ve been hurt before, means we are walking away from everything we need in order to really thrive and even survive.
Yes – survive.
Yale professor of history Timothy Snyder specializes in the history of totalitarian regimes and the holocaust. He recently wrote a book called On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. His second lesson – his warning, really, is:
Defend Institutions.
He says that when we consider the risk of totalitarian regimes, we think our institutions will save us: The media, for example, will be able to tell us the truth so we reliably know what’s going on. Or the government, despite many corrupt people, will ultimately save us from the worst. But he says,
No – Our institutions will not save us. We must save them.
So: “Choose an institution you care about and take its side,” he says. Institutions have to be defended because individually we are hopeless.
Individually we are hopeless.
So, especially in a time of declining church membership, and of declining faith in all institutions – you are doing something radical by showing up today. Your simple showing up says that we cannot go it alone in this world….
AND we need more than showing up.
There are “strings attached” to membership in this church because in truth the strings are already there, connecting us one to another. Those strings are invisible, and perhaps not as strong as they yet can be, but they are there. When one of us walks away, that string pulls, and eventually tears the fabric.
Engagement with one another – giving to one another of our time, our stories, our care – these are an essential part of making this church strong.
In their book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell showed through strong data that by many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans. If you hear that and say, “yeah right,” make sure you’re not thinking of just one kind of religious American. You, by being here, are a religious American, and they found that “religious Americans are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life.”
And yet, like I say, it’s essential to do more than just show up on Sunday morning, listen, and leave. Their research showed that “the only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their fellow members.”[2]
So membership in this church comes with strings attached. Those strings are actually just reminders – ways of living out the reality – that we are already attached. The root word of religion – lig – like ligament, means to bind.
The strings of our commitments and our caring and our giving wind and bind us together in powerful ways so we can do what we could never do alone. You cannot sustain a congregation – or any institution – without these strings.
We are in the midst of our stewardship campaign – that time each spring when we ask our members and friends what they will pledge to the church for this coming fiscal year in time, talent, and treasure. Based on what you write on your pledge cards, the Board will make a budget for the coming year and members vote on that budget. The budget tells us what we can do together. How we can be for each other and our community.
And don’t forget we are also asking for your commitments of time and talent. On the back of the pledge card, you can indicate how you can give to the shared ministry of this church. So that also tells us what we can do together.
I often hear great ideas for what we can do – “Let’s bring back forum!” “Let’s bring back circle suppers” “Let’s reach out better to newcomers” “Let’s do more justice work.” And I say: Yes! Let’s!
We can’t do any of this without you. How do you want to give? How can you bring your passions here?
A word that we sometimes use when we’re talking about people filling needs at the church is the word volunteers. And yet that word always strikes me as the wrong word – there might not be a better word, but I still have to say it feels off. …Just as it’s the wrong word if someone finds out my husband is alone with the kids for the evening and says, “oh, your husband’s babysitting the kids tonight?”
My husband cannot babysit our kids because they are his kids. And you cannot “volunteer” at this church because it is your church. Volunteering is what you do at a place whose work you support – but ultimately the work doesn’t belong to you. This church belongs to its members.[3]
It’s your church.
So of course you show up. Of course you make sure a newcomer feels welcome. Of course you weed the garden or do the dishes or pick up that piece of trash in the parking lot on your way in. Of course you take an interest in our finances. Of course you say, “I have this good idea – can you, and you, and you help me get it done?”
No one does everything but we all do something, and that how it all happens.
That’s how this church makes a difference. And boy do I know it has made a difference. This church has not just transformed lives, it has saved lives.
AND we can make an even bigger difference!
So thank you for the ways you make this church what it is.
…Because while I know that giving can be a joy, that giving can be easy, I also know that sometimes it’s not a joy and it’s not easy – just as “babysitting” your kids isn’t always a joy or easy. Just as doing the tasks that make your home a home – or your family a family – or your local government a functioning government – aren’t always a joy or easy.
What we do to save the institutions we care about isn’t always easy – we may not come to every task with pure delight.
For those of you who stay and clean up after the potlucks – you’re not spiritually lacking in some way if sometimes it feels like a chore. And it’s okay if sitting in the back and advancing the slides for our projector isn’t always the highlight of your week. And it’s okay if you feel it’s scary to consider moving beyond our walls to do justice work in our community as UUs.
Our work here isn’t always easy.
But we do it all because it matters. Because its ours.
Because we know that this church – us all together – creates a place that can heal and strive and work and love in a way we cannot do alone.
…Because we know in truth we are not alone.
May it be so.
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
[1] Rev. Peter Friedrichs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_F2RRbYeWJNarSI0tGx7Ihn6wQ3bVtTr-PN1uTwQKhE/edit?usp=sharing
[2] quotes from Jonathan Haidt – The Righteous Mind
[3] For some time the word “volunteers” has struck me as off because of the way a church belongs to its members. So I was delighted to find Erin Wathen’s reflection “Your Church Does Not Need Volunteers.” I owe the analogy about a parent babysitting their children to Wathen.