What a joy this week has been!  You are an open, honest, fun, smart and creative group of people!  I spent some days and nearly every evening this week simply enjoying your company, listening to what you care about, where your hearts are.  And almost invariably, your hearts are here.  I said we arrive here, hands cupped.  After spending this week with you, my hands remain cupped, but, no longer empty they are filled as a result of your generosity of spirit and the welcome you created for me.

Last week I introduced my theology of congregational ministry and this week we’re looking at congregational outreach.  How we serve each other and how we serve the world.  As a religious community, we are members of a congregation with whom we are in covenant, but we are also members of a common humanity to which we are also bound.

The etymology of the word religion is ligio meaning to connect or bind (like ligament).  Relgio is to reconnect.  Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison-Reed once famously wrote, “The central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all.” Of course, as UUs, we have a Principle of Interconnectedness, a covenant to affirm the interdependent web of which we are all a part.  We know we’re bound, each to all.  It is an essential tenet of our faith.

Last week I suggested that at our core, what holds us together is our covenant, our decision to be together and the best way of describing what it means to be UU is to say that, as a covenanted community, we come together often to find the ways of love.  Today, I’d like to extend that definition a bit.  I think we might be here not only to find the ways of love, but to act out of them.

Some American religious institutions, so concerned about their dogma, draw unnecessary and sometimes irrational conclusions from the doctrine to which they’ve submitted.  Or, maybe more accurately, they mine thousands of years of human history to justify behavior ultimately twisting doctrine to fit their already drawn conclusions.  Either way, it’s not how we do things.  We start with the concept of love, the notion that we all have inherent worth and dignity and remind ourselves of the ways we are profoundly connected, each to all.  Behavior is easy to discern from there.  We ask ourselves, “How are we most loving?”

Before I go on, I want to apologize for my constant use of the word love.  It’s horribly overused.  We’ve used it so routinely it has become smudged and worn, dog-eared and tattered, almost greasy from all the little fingers that have touched it.  But it is the primary word.  The word that comes before all other words, the word that holds language together.  And so I am using it since without it, there is nothing else.

As a UU community, we start not with a written doctrine, but with the more fundamental religious notion of connection, each to all.  We are entirely dependent, not only for shared needs like electricity and food supply and roads, but for liberation, justice, inspiration and hope. The aboriginal Australian activist, Lila Watson once wrote, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But, if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together.”

Our liberation is bound, each to all.  We are eternally connected, regardless of whether or not we know that.  Some folks on this planet are more aware, more likely to live from the deep places of mutual dependency.  We in the suburban US don’t necessarily know what that’s like.  We enjoy instead the American myth of independence rather than interdependence.  We are proud when someone pulls themselves up by their bootstraps (an action I don’t think is actually physically possible).  We love the image of the Puritans landing on Plymouth Rock and starting their own community.  Of course, they had each other and a profound commitment to their shared values and mutual support, facts overlooked in the mythic imagery. In that environment and under those circumstances, mutual dependence was central to survival.

I’d like to suggest, that mutual dependence continues to be central to survival. There’s a story with which I’m sure you’re all familiar.  I’m changing some of the details in my retelling but the story is the same.  A woman was at home when her doorbell rang.  It was a young man asking her if she had any food, that he was very hungry.  She let him in and made him a big meal.  The next week the doorbell rang again; this time it was a family.  They said they were very hungry, so she let them in and made them a big meal.  The next week an elderly couple came to the door also very hungry and hoping for some food. After feeding them, she left the house to find out why so many people are hungry.  The feeding of the people, that’s charity and completely necessary.  When people are hungry, we need to feed them.  Going into the world to find out why they’re hungry, that’s the beginning of justice work.  That’s the structural work, the more controversial work of ending the hunger.

But there’s something in the story that’s missing, something about her own survival we’ve neglected.  When the woman leaves her house to help, she is also being saved.  Her liberation is connected to the liberation of those who are treated unjustly.  A life separate from her neighbors, a life in which the bonds remain veiled, is a life of ignorance.  She lives in her beautiful home with all the food she needs, not knowing the depth of relationship or quality of life available outside her doors. If she stays alone in her house, she might live and die never knowing or experiencing a life bound to all.

Once she heads out, she needs more than her good will.  She needs her whole self.  She needs the pieces of herself that feel afraid and alone and overwhelmed by the hunger.  And she needs to find those hungry people and ask them what they need and how she can join in their struggle.  It’s an offering of Self, not wisdom or connections or money.  Like ministry, social justice begins with an offering of self; at the center, this is about authentic relationship. Effective social transformation happens as a result of conversation and connection.  I was a chaplain and adjunct faculty at Iona College for ten years.  I was originally hired to create an alternative break program to bring students around the country and abroad to study issues of poverty and injustice.  One of my regular programs was at Lake Traverse, a Lakotah Sioux reservation where I brought students each summer.  The first summer, we lived and worked and made friends and then we left.  The next summer when I returned with a new group, the son of one of the elders in the community wouldn’t speak to me.  That first year he’d been very active, but the second time he kept his distance.  I learned that after we’d left, he’d emailed several of the guys he’d befriended, but none had emailed back.  He thought we were there to build relationships and then felt like his life was just a tourist attraction.  There was much mending that had to be done as well as a rethinking of how we integrated the Sioux and the Iona College communities.  The solution was grounded in relationship, modeled by a friendship that the boy’s mother and I created between us.  To the traditional model of charity vs. justice, I learned something about solidarity.  Effective outreach is not about giving people what they need, but about changing the structures that create the need for charity and doing it in relationship, doing it in the spirit of love and companionship.  If we start with our covenant to find the ways of love, we simply extend those arms of relationship beyond our walls.  We are not only in covenant with each other, but with a bruised and hurting world.  We have a promise to heal, to serve, to stand in solidarity, on the side of love.  We are bound, each to all.

Dorothy Day, the American Catholic activist once said “It is only for your love alone that the poor with forgive you the bread you serve them.”  It’s a powerful line coming from a woman who knew this life of service well, who lived on the side of love for decades.  That obligation to love is the challenge we accept. It’s beyond charity; it’s the requirement to unveil the ties that bind each to all, to recognize our profound partnership in a common destiny, in the shared future we create together.

There is a perennial underside to charity.  It can serve as a chance to feel kind and generous (sometimes with a whiff of moral superiority) while reinforcing the have/have-not power structure.  Solidarity, different from charity, requires equality or unambiguous recognition of the inequalities.  It requires the patience of growing trusted relationships, unlike charity in which someone is hungry and given food. Solidarity could require the sharing of power and it often requires the ability to consider the tough issues some of us have the privilege of ignoring like racism, sexism, classism and homophobia none of which can remain unnoticed once we really start to pay attention.

Social action really isn’t very different from ministry in a covenanted community.  I’ve been listening to you this week.  You’ve been asking me if we can live in solidarity together.  You haven’t said it that way, but it’s what I hear. You’ve asked me about relationship and shared power and if the ways of love will be extended around this community.  You want to know if I will be present, if I’ll come to social events and committee meetings, if I’ll go to program services and midnight runs.  You want to know if I can support you, if I can be with you through unemployment or illness or during times of great loss, if I can inspire you when you’re heading into something new or ground you when you return.

My question back to you is if you’ll let me.  Will you enter this relationship, allowing me to extend the ways of love around you?  Will you allow me to be present, to come to your social events and committee meetings, go to your program services and midnight runs?  Will you let me support you during times of unemployment and illness and loss?  Will you seek inspiration and grounding as you head into something new and return here again?

Yesterday, as the week was coming to an end, I was wondering why so many of you have told me about plans to expand the building.  Every day of this week I’ve been told about options for parking and limitations around flood zones and ways of moving up or out or over.  I think I understand.  You want to know if there’s going to be room.  Of course, many of you share my desire that we’ll grow as a by-product of being an exciting, bright, vibrant congregation where people find hope come alive.  (Note, I said by-product.  I am in no way interested in growing just so we have a larger number. Growth is not a goal for me.)  But I think, even those who share my desire to be part of a magnetic community, also want to know if there’s going to be room for you.  You want to know if there will be room for you here whether you like the way things have been or crave change. Is there room for an atheist and a theist, a social activist and a homebody?  Is there room if you’re single or married or partnered or have children or don’t have children or want children and can’t talk about children?  Is there room if you don’t know what it means to be UU or have been a member your whole life? You want to know if the new minister will take up too much space.  Will my ideas over-power yours? Will I reconfigure the nature of this congregation in such a way that you don’t fit any more?

My answer is yes, there is room.  There’s always room.  And, yes, I will have ideas, but those are shared ideas.  No one person should be so loud as to drown out the others.  Ministry- like solidarity – is about partnership.  They are both about relationship, about standing together in mutual support for our common goals.  It’s about equality and the sharing of power and resources, not about any one voice being silenced or body being shoved into a corner or pushed out entirely.

There is room.  There’s room right now for all of us and there’s room for anyone else who wants to join us, anyone who wants to find the ways of love and act out of them.  There’s room in the classroom, there’s room in the sanctuary, there’s room in our lives for everyone here and anyone who wants to be here. We can make room.  My sister used to ask my father how he can love her with all his heart if he loved me with all his heart as well.  He told her his heart didn’t have limits.  Love doesn’t have limits.  There is room.

After the morning services are over, I’ll leave you.  As it happens, I’m speaking at a synagogue in Dobbs Ferry about sustainable agriculture and houses of worship.  While I’m driving there, you’ll be discussing me and the future of this congregation and when you’re talked out, you’ll take a vote.  The vote is whether or not to call me as your next minister.  This isn’t like other votes where you need a majority or even 2/3rds, but a minimum of 90% of the congregation.  90%. That’s a lot of people.  Most congregations have 90% votes pretty rarely, but this is an important vote and nearly everyone has to agree.  You’re voting on a lot here. You’re voting on who will dedicate your children and preside at your weddings, who will be beside you in the hospital and bury your loved ones.  You’re voting on a key representative in your community and the District.  You need to ask yourselves if I can represent you well, if you want me to care for you when you’re sick and hold your hand when you’re afraid, if you think I have something to say you want to hear and if my model of ministry is your model too.  You need to ask yourself if I can make room for you and if you can make room for me, if you want me to be for you and if you want to be for me.

You’ve set the bar at 90% in your bylaws, but my bar is a little higher than that.  If 10% of you don’t think this is a match, I will need to know why and will think carefully about your reasons.  I may not accept at a 90% vote.  I’m sure it sounds crazy, but I’m hoping that even more than 90% of you think this is a match. But, lest I’m being vague, let me be sure to tell you that I think this is a match.  I caught myself twice this week saying “we” instead of “you”, as if I already belong here.

I want to stand with you here, in this crazy flood zone with no parking, here in this building that some of you fear is too small, here in this beautiful sanctuary facing the grass and the trees and the creek.  I want to stand with you outside of here, in the world where people are hungry and lonely and searching for companionship. I want to meet with you often to find the ways of love and bring that love out into the world, into broken and bruised communities.  I want to engage the work of unveiling the ties that bind each to all and live out of that wild reality, to know we are connected and to share the ministry of this congregation with you.

Rev. Peggy Clarke