I offer special greetings to any of you who are here at the encouragement of a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, or a family member. I want to assure you that it is not my intention to convert you to our religious way of life. There will be no altar call, nor will you be locked in until you agree to join. In fact, you can leave at any time, as long as you don’t go downstairs and eat all the coffee hour refreshments.

Of course, if what you hear sounds appealing enough that you’d like to return, we will be delighted to welcome you back. But I figure there are other people here visiting who are perfectly happy being whatever they already are, and plan to go on being so; but decided to take advantage of the chance to find out what it is that Unitarian Universalists are up to in that big old church in Wayland center.

Well, in many ways, what we do here is not so different than what goes on in other religious communities. We have weekly worship services, special ceremonies for rites of passage, study groups, social activities, and projects in the larger world. We have by-laws, officers, committees, a budget, a staff, offices, a newsletter, and a website. We have buildings, grounds, a couple parking lots, and a bell and a clock in the steeple.

And yet a lot of those things, we do in our own particular, uncommon way. The bell (which sadly is broken just now) was cast by Paul Revere and Sons, and (strange to say) the clock actually belongs to the town. This building is older than your average church, having been built (at town expense) in 1814; in old New England style, we often refer to it as the meetinghouse. Next oldest are our carriage sheds, where parishioners could park their carriages during services. There used to be three times as many.

(Just to finish up our mental walking tour,  behind the meetinghouse is our parish house, where most of the offices and Sunday school classes are. And then there is our newest space, the addition on the other side of the wall behind me, which includes a couple classrooms, an elevator, and my office, right there – which itself is uncommon, because the architect repeated this tall window on the new back of the church, making me the only minister I know who could mount a regulation-height basketball net in his office and take shots between appointments, although I haven’t.)

But maybe your curiosity as an outsider up till now has not focused on the height of my office. Maybe you’ve wondered, say, what we do on Sunday morning when we gather in worship. Well, now you know. I suspect when you were first handed an order of service, it looked pretty conventional: hymns, readings, a sermon, a collection – the usual. But then when it time for the readings, they weren’t from the Bible at all.

They could have been, by the way, and sometimes they are. Just last week I quoted St. Paul in my benediction. But Vincent Silliman, who wrote our responsive reading (and the words to our final hymn, too), was not one of the apostles; he was a friend of mine who was a minister in Maine when I was, too. James Luther Adams [author of the morning’s reading that our intern, Steve Landale, selected] was a teacher of mine in seminary.

Those of us who attend here regularly can forget how unusual it is that we are free to turn to any source for wisdom and inspiration, in the sermon and throughout the service. For a while now I’ve been reading books about preaching written by Christian pastors and homiletics professors, and they are increasingly of one mind: that every real sermon is the explication of a biblical text. Meanwhile, nearly every other denomination has been caught up in the movement toward use of a common lectionary, so that on any given Sunday, the same three readings appear in services all across the country – and all three readings are always biblical.

Not here, nor in any but a handful of UU churches.

Let me pause to note that if you end up spending much time in UU circles, you’re apt to note two things: first, that people use the acronym UU all the time to save themselves the time of saying Unitarian Universalist; and second, that as almost as often as UUs say UU, they refer to something called the Purposes and Principles, and they use the whole phrase, the Purposes and Principles.

It is a statement of what we think we are up to as a religious movement. (Those are also words you’ll hear us use surprisingly often: a religious movement. The word "denomination" strikes some people as too institutional, hierarchical, and centralized; and in our tradition, "church" means a local congregation, as opposed to, say, the Roman Catholic Church, which can mean something global. There are UU or Unitarian churches all around the globe – not a lot, but some – but the UU church always means one of them, not all of them together. So we often end up referring to ourselves as a religious movement, or even, presumptuously enough, as liberal religion.)

To describe who we are as a religious movement, every thirty years or so we engage in the attempt to state those things commonly believed among us. It is not a creed. I know, it looks like a creed, it sounds like a creed, but we are firm in our belief that ours is a creedless religion, so it can’t be a creed. And really, I suppose it’s not: no one is required to believe it.

It has two parts. The first part lists seven values or goals we "covenant" as congregations "to affirm and promote"; but not everyone is equally affirmative about every one. One of my colleagues recently wrote a piece about the first and most famous of the seven, "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." Having been a police chaplain for some years now, she confessed that she had lost her commitment to that article of faith in its absolute form. UUs get to do that, even their ministers: we get to disagree with even the Purposes and Principles, so they’re not really much of a creed.

Plus, the Purposes and Principles don’t try to answer the same questions that real creeds do. They doesn’t say there is or isn’t a god, an afterlife, a purpose to existence, or which scripture or prophet is the one to believe. In fact, as to that last point, about where to turn for religious guidance, the whole second half of the Purposes and Principles tells how it is that "the living tradition we share draws from many sources:
· Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life,
· Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love
· Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspire us in our ethical and spiritual life
· Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves
· Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit
· Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature."

You can find that text in the front of your hymnbook, although without the recent addition of Earth-centered traditions, and in its full form on bookmarks downstairs – although when you come to think about it, a really full list would go on to acknowledge that among the sources we draw from are also poetry and plays, news and sports, columnists and cartoons, family and friends, and so much more. We think the subject of religion is life, all of life, and we’ll look anywhere that inspiration, wisdom, and guidance may be found.

The hymnbook and bookmark also list all seven Principles, which I hesitate to recite to people who may feel they’ve heard them often enough, thank you. But I think it may be interesting for our visitors and guests to hear what most of us hold in common as the nature of our religion enterprise. Our congregations "covenant to affirm and promote:
· The inherent worth and dignity of every person
· Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations
· Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth…
· A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
· The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large
· The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all
· Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part"

That’s what we think we’re up to. And we think that that makes a religion, a firm foundation for our faith, even as it leaves unanswered those questions to which other religions think they know the answers, like is there a god, who or what is it or him or her, or are there maybe more than one, what happens when we die, is there a plan or purpose to life, and in the millennium about to begin, is there any chance that the Red Sox will win a World Series.

We leave such impenetrable mysteries to personal faith, and delight in disagreeing, learning from each other, being challenged and stretched and strengthened in our own beliefs, even as we are supported by the respect and affection we share.

It’s about time we came to a phrase like "respect and affection." Because if you came to church today in hopes of understanding why your neighbors come here, it may well be because they want a place where people share their values, where those values are passed on to their children and encouraged in themselves. It probably is. But you know, we also have really good cooks, so our pot luck suppers are a treat, and you get to chat with the nicest, most interesting people.

Some pretty interesting study groups happen, too, on the widest range of topics, like current courses on Emerson, enneagrams, and world religions. Just a couple years ago a parishioner asked if we could have a discussion group on how we know what we think we know, and two dozen people showed up to consider epistemology together.

Well, I don’t want to sound like the church newsletter (copies of which are available downstairs), but it’s hard to talk about who we are here without the people themselves coming to mind, people in one of the choirs, in the Sunday school, at the Halloween party, young and old, people leading summer worship services, working to keep things up and raise money and minister to each other and to a hurting world, people gathering for the happy times and the sad ones, too, people just being together to make up a community.

Speaking of our gatherings for rites of passage, happy or sad, even some of our longtime members don’t know what we do at memorial services and weddings, never having been to either yet. But they often see child dedications, our other major rite of passage (which others might call a sacrament).

Child dedication ceremonies usually take place as part of the Sunday morning service, though not always; Steve and I did one just yesterday for Drew Holland-Brodney at the home of his grandparents in Sudbury. (And many of you were featured performers, since the service closed with a singing of "All Through the Night," which I had the congregation sing the last time we did a child dedication here, in part so I could tape it to play yesterday as support for the singers gathered in that back yard.)

Whether we do a dedication at a home or here, its purpose is never to cleanse the child of same taint of original sin. Instead, we welcome the child as a precious, sacred trust, acknowledging the sanctity of his or her own personality, and pledging the child our aid. The parent or parents name the child, and I confirm it to him or her. The child is given a flower and often these days, at least with babies, a kiss on the forehead.

I mention how we do such things because one of the three questions I get asked most often by non-UUs is, How do you handle rites of passage? I even had someone ask with real wonder if we did weddings. Well yes, of course, although again, in our own, somewhat uncommon way. In both cases – weddings and memorial services -- our services tend to be more personal than in many other traditions, and much less ritualized and formulaic. People often comment that they are what we do best. There are usually fewer traditional elements, though sometimes there are many. Always, the service is designed for the particular occasion, and that seems to make a big difference.

Our other big ceremonies involve the ordaining or settling of ministers. Both acts are entirely within the control of the local congregation, unlike almost anyone else but Reform Jews and Baptists. The Unitarian Universalist Association, the UUA, headquartered right next to the State House in Boston, certifies would-be ministers as qualified or not and hopes the churches will take their advice; but the churches can do whatever they please. It’s part of what’s called congregational polity, which is the fact that every congregation makes all its own decisions.

The other two questions I get asked a lot are, First, are UUs Christian? To which the answer is, of course, yes, some are. We do come out of the Protestant tradition, having been founded here in Wayland, for example, by Puritans, dedicated Calvinists, Christians with a vengeance. But we’ve been drifting toward a more universalistic outlook for an awful long time. There are still Christians among us, who enjoy being part of a broader mix than being with only other Christians; by now they’re a minority in the movement, but everyone’s part of a minority, more or less, and we like it that way.

And then there is the question of the holidays. I should have admitted by now that with all that congregational freedom we have, practices can differ a lot from one church to another. Some churches go the world religions route and celebrate all sorts of holidays; others try to sneak by all holidays as quickly and quietly as possible.

Us here in Wayland, we’re in the wide muddled middle, honoring many of the major Christian and Jewish holidays as they go by, some years with more attention than others in some unpredictable pattern of creativity and confusion, but always with a special role for Christmas, in part perhaps because one of the best-known Christmas hymns, "It Came upon the Midnight Clear," was written here by one of my predecessors, Edmund Hamilton Sears; and in part because we have several strong Christmas traditions by now, most notably the Christmas Eve services that draw about 600 people.

If it seems like that makes for a lot of talk about Jesus for a couple weeks, on the other hand he is only a part of what we talk about at our celebrations at Easter, for few of us believe in Jesus’ literal resurrection. But we think he was a great religious teacher and model, and we’re happy to celebrate his birthday.

I don’t know if I’ve answered the question that was most on your mind, but if not, catch me at coffee hour or give me a call. I hope I’ve given at least the start of an understanding of who we are. And I hope that understanding didn’t come as too big a shock for any of our existing members, who were happy to sign the membership book last year – which is how you join the congregation -- but didn’t know THAT about us, whatever "that" may be.

And it’s true, a religious home of the sort we offer is not what everyone is looking for. The number of UUs in North America is small – only about a quarter million adults, youth, and children in all our congregations, with the greatest concentration in the immediate vicinity of Wayland, Massachusetts – but it is growing. Because it is just the sort of religious home that some people discover with excited delight, people who have longed for a place that engaged their minds and consciences, their desire for community, spirituality, and service, their need for solace and meaning, all the while it honored their unique souls.

So to any of our visitors, I say thank you for caring enough to listen; please come back if our sort of religious home sounds like it could be the place for your spirit to flourish; and if you’re still just as happy in another faith tradition, or none, blessings on you there – I just hope I have managed at least to suggest, and maybe even to convey, why to some of us, Unitarian Universalism and the First Parish are so important to our lives.
 
 
 

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