Why I Am Being Called Elsewhere

All Souls Community Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan

September 27, 2009

The Reverend Doctor Brent A. Smith, copyright@2009

INVOCATION

We give thanks for this day, and its beauty and promise.

We give thanks for the light returning from darkness.

We give thanks for the blessings of family, friends, and the company of companions.

We give thanks for hands that hold ours when we are hurting, that hold up our bodies when we are weary, and soothe our spirits when we seek solace.

We give thanks for a day we did not create, and the hope that lies in every moment of trial and triumph.

We give thanks for having been given trust and love, to give trust and love back to the world, and from the gift of this day, build a greater life for all souls.

CHALICE LIGHTING

We light this Chalice to remember a truth,

Consecrated through the ages by the service and sacrifice

Of individuals and communities:

There abides a unity and freedom of the Spirit,

Expressed through a love for all souls.

Prayer

The Prayer and Meditation this morning is a story that needs only a simple set up to tell but a depth of receptivity to hear.  So, I would invite you into a deep quiet, a time of deep connection between the self and the deeper self, the self and God.  It is the purpose of our communal worship, a common goal, the freedom of each to discern their life’s calling, and to find through the bonds of community, the strength to live out that calling, fully and freely, in a love for all souls.  This is our holy endeavor, to plant freedom and harvest love.  And this morning it begins with a first step into a story.  Nothing more is required of you.  Give up the effort even to relax because it is your birthright.

I watched him for a long time.  He was so engaged in his task that he did not notice my approach until he heard my voice.  Then he raised himself erect with all the slow dignity of a man who had exhausted the cup of haste to the very dregs.  He was an old man, a full 101 years.  Further talk between us revealed that he was planting a small grove of pecan trees.  The little treelets were not more than two and a half or three feet in height.  My curiosity was unbounded.

 “Why did you not select larger trees to increase the possibility of your living to see them bear at least one cup of nuts?”  I asked.

 He fixed his eyes directly on my face with a gaze that took in the totality of my features.  Finally he replied, “These small trees are cheaper and I have very little money.”

 “Do you think you’ll live to see the trees reach sufficient maturity to bear fruit?”

 “No,” he replied.  “But is that what’s most important?  All my life I have eaten fruit from trees I did not plant.  Why should I not plant trees to bear fruit for those who will enjoy them long after I am gone?  Besides, those who plant because they will reap the harvest, have no faith in life.”

Sermon

 The path we have walked together as congregation and minister has largely been through the land of the love for all souls.  The congregation’s name and our faith tradition declare it so.  And during this expedition we have sought a larger land than our narrow, particular loves – we love some people and not others, some causes and not others, some moments of our lives and not others.  Plant in your heart the Love that is something more than what you can now conceive of or attain, and all of creation will blossom with you.  But, it is the hardest of all spiritual practices to live by, which is why much of religion does not.

 This is an historic sermon because it is a first for a congregation begun in 2001.  And I want to be as direct and honest as I can, as I have always tried to be in this pulpit.  The distinctive thing about pulpits in Unitarian Universalist churches is that they are free.  It requires the speaker to whom it is lent to be honest, forthright, to speak in love of what is true in his experience.  He cannot seek the favor of the congregation while speaking here, or fear its disapproval or the disregard of anyone.  Spiritual Freedom requires something more than that.  And this is the only pulpit in Grand Rapids that is free in this spiritual way.  From my experience I know this with a depth that is unique and authoritative.

 The membership received a letter in the mail this week telling what I am going to state publicly right now: After a three month period of intense discernment I have chosen to withdraw my name from consideration for the Called Minister position which you are currently pursuing.  While I am contracted with you as your Consulting Minister through July 2010, and will remain to fulfill that obligation and those responsibilities, I am confident that it is time for me to pursue ministerial opportunities in a new way.  I am also confident that in our time together we have re-established our faith tradition - Unitarian Universalism - and its unique religious role – of liberating and cultivating the human spirit – in this church such that spiritual freedom can again thrive in Grand Rapids.

 Our congregations seek to embody the spiritual freedom this pulpit symbolizes.  In that pursuit they come to maturity when they freely elect a Search Committee to pursue the settlement of a Called Minister.  It is a blessing to do this for choice is the giving of consent, and giving consent is characteristic of freedom.  After your founding in 2001, your growth walked you into this new stage of maturity last June when you elected the first Search Committee this church has ever had.  You have crossed an historic threshold and into a wider future for you and for freedom in Grand Rapids.

 Today I want to communicate directly why I chose to withdraw my name, and then answer any questions you may have.  Please forgive this format, which is more suited to the classroom than the sanctuary, and lectures more than the sharing of the self in depth, which is characteristic of our worship.

 I have loved my time working with you to build this church.  I have loved the opportunity to walk with you in seeking to live out the mission of this church: to liberate and cultivate the human spirit.  We have sought to live the spiritually free life that love creates.  In this experiment, my personal mission has been to live so as to be an example of this kind of spiritual life.  And into this expedition I brought my personal mission, my calling, to build strong and free churches.

 As best as I can determine that is what I was called here to Grand Rapids to do.  I know I was called to help build a great liberal church.  I just mistakenly thought that was Fountain Street Church.  I thought that the spiritual freedom that is the fruit of love was planted and harvested there.  I was wrong, and it took me two years to realize that.  One of the requirements of freedom is that one take responsibility for one’s decisions, right or wrong.  But, I was not wrong in coming to Grand Rapids because I did discover I my calling to help build a great liberal church: You, All Souls, a Unitarian Universalist liberal church.  That is what I discovered in our time together which, at the end of July in 2010, will be eight and a half years.  I hope I have been a good and faithful servant of that calling.

 This announcement may come as no surprise to some and a complete surprise to others.  Being free we respond to the choices of others and the trajectory of life’s events in different ways.  But, since this decision is my responsibility to take, and in this free pulpit my responsibility to be forthright and honest, I’ll give my reasons, starting with what are not the reasons for withdrawing my name.

 I am not withdrawing because of any choice you made or didn’t make, or because of anything anyone said or didn’t say.  In freedom my choices are my responsibility.

I am not withdrawing because you didn’t tell me enough how good I am, or told me too much how bad I am.  I cannot live my life for the approval of others and be free.  No one could say or do anything that would drive me away or entice me to stay, for freedom requires something more of me.

I am not withdrawing because you cut my salary last June, though you will need to revisit fund raising and fund raising policies.  Freedom requires something more or you, too.

I am not withdrawing because I thought you wouldn’t call me.  In fact, feeling confident you would led me into deeper discernment and the recognition it would only be fair for me to decide before you voted to call.

I am not withdrawing because we don’t like Grand Rapids.  One cannot seek a call based upon locale, and be free.

I am not withdrawing because of those who won’t come to church because I am the minister, because they do not extend freedom to the church to choose and walk with its minister.  They only want to walk with people they like and prefer.  Obviously, I am not staying because of those who only come to church because I am the minister, because they do not extend to me the freedom to follow another calling.  Besides, I don’t worship at either the “Church of Brent” or the “Church of Not Brent,” and would invite you to do likewise.  For now there is All Souls Community Church.

I am responsible for my decisions, as you are individually for your responses, and as a church for your future, and none of us can base spiritual freedom on who is or is not in a pulpit.  Spiritual freedom is larger than any one personality.

I am withdrawing my name because I do not feel called to walk with you in your next stage of development.  I had a role in helping bring spiritual freedom back to Grand Rapids, which suffered in the darkness of conservative and liberal orthodoxies since 1939, the last time there was one of our churches on this city’s landscape.  Grand Rapids has suffered in so many ways during those 60 years, under oppression and illusion.  I was called here to educate you about our history as a religious people; to lay the foundation for worship that liberates the spirit; and to help you set the foundation for a free organization, and the practices necessary for laypeople to form the bonds of love that keep human beings free.  You have graduated into a new stage because you have emerged into your own distinct identity  I am proud and my heart is full.  You are free to call your own minister as I am free to seek to what and where I will be called next.  Right now I do not know what or where that will be, anymore than you know who your first Called Minister will be.  I am anxious as you.

That is the great and powerful thing about freedom.  Its blessing yields the openness that is tomorrow, the hope of new things.  To those who fear and shun it, and seek to destroy it, even if they claim to love it, it is the anxiety of not having certainty.  Who knows what tomorrow might bring?  In church, it can lead individuals to measure their own self worth, and the ultimate worth of freedom and love, by which individual is or is not in a pulpit.  The church can strangle itself in the culture’s certainty that economic disaster is upon us.  The church can dissolve amidst the bitterness and futility born of fear.  And in fear of freedom churches of all kinds can worship the past more than the future, and create liberal and conservative orthodoxies that all stifle the spirit.

 I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.  And I can live in fear of that, or in trust, in faith, towards something more.  Faith is not about correct or incorrect belief.  Human beings don’t possess the ability to discern ultimate truth, only proximate truth.  We are wrong more than we are right, and the best hitters on the Detroit Tigers baseball team fail two out of three times.  How can anyone claim they are right absolutely and for all time?

Spiritual Freedom requires something more.  We are finite and do not live by holding correct beliefs or believing rightly.  Spiritual Freedom is planted in the soil of something more.

I chose freely to withdraw my name because the work I was called here to do is coming to an end.  I am afraid of August 1 because as of now I don’t have a job.  I will try to insure my anxiety does not make me stupid, and will actively pursue finding what I am called to next; just as you will actively pursue your first Called Minister, unless your fear and anxiety makes you stupid!  You see, we’re walking together to this trail’s end to keep each other from being stupid!  And then after August 1^st we will find we are still walking together, but in a new way.

Particular loves come to an end, sometimes by our choices, sometimes by the trajectory of life’s events, and sometimes by a combination of these.

But Spiritual Freedom requires something more; more than fear, more than bitterness, more than anxiety, more than the need to seek the approval of others, or to worship personalities or one’s own opinions.  And, more than any and all particular loves which must need come to a conclusion.  And even those particular loves that are great loves, that last a long time, must someday come to an end, although I would tell my wife I do not plan on dying this afternoon or tomorrow.  But, I am not certain.  Spiritual Freedom requires we live by something more than the short duration of our particular loves.

Freedom is sacred because it is planted not in the soil of our particular loves, but in a Larger Love.  Our particular love as minister and congregation will come to an end.  That was always a part of our bond because part of it is a human bond of affection, and all of our particular loves end.  But, their soil and harvest is a Larger Love, a Divine Love, that we plant so that those who come after us can reap, which we call the Love for All Souls, which we human beings can only approximate in our particular time and place, even in our widest affections.  This Larger Love never ends and exists everywhere.  This Larger Love beckons us all, in freedom and responsibility.  And it is beckoning you even at this moment.  You, the great liberal church of and for tomorrow, built by our hands to cultivate religious freedom, diversity, inquiry, and community, the great liberal church that declares there exists a Larger Love, and proclaims we are called to serve it, the Love that is for all souls, beckoning all now, as it did from its beginning, “Come, come, whoever you are, …”

AMEN.