The theme for September is “The Practice of Invitation.”
Generosity is a long-standing UU value. Exploring how to invite generosity as a practice in our lives, we consider how practicing generosity involves cultivating a spirit of gratitude and hope. We explore how a covenant to freely and compassionately share our faith, presence, and resources can be an invitation for our own spiritual growth.
READING
“Miracle in the Collection Plate” by Marilyn Nelson, read by Damian Redman
Link to Wikipedia page about Rev. Christopher Rush
SERMON
Inviting Generosity
Rev. Joe Cleveland
September 15, 2024
The poem “Miracle in the Collection Plate” by Marilyn Nelson is the only literary work I know of that puts the concept of the miraculous in the context of a church collection plate.
In the poem, the Reverend Christopher Rush makes an appeal for money to use to buy freedom back for James Hamlet who, like Saratoga’s own Solomon Northup, had been abducted into slavery under the aegis of the Fugitive Slave Law.
The community that James Hamlet was part of for three years has gathered together. Rev. Rush says, “we know why we’re here…” The need that’s bringing them together could hardly be clearer. What justice for Brother James would be is clear. Calling him Brother James, Rev. Rush underscores the fact that James is one of them, part of the community, and losing him to slavery is a shocking injustice and a shocking loss for his family and this community, which I assume is his church community.
Things are bad, the world is unjust, but there is hope. There is a possibility for Brother James to be restored to the family and friends who love him. But it will cost. It will cost an “enormous amount.” The audience he’s talking to doesn’t hold the wealthy of their town, I imagine. His people are “living from widow’s mite to widow’s mite.” And yet, Rev. Rush has faith that a miracle can happen. It’s not a faith that God is somehow going to all of a sudden provide the needed funds. God will help, but the miracle he’s calling for is going to be brought about by the people. “Let’s make a miracle in the collection plate!” The miracle comes from the people joining together. All they need is for everyone to do what they can. And the miracle will happen.
In the note that accompanies the poem, we are told that the money required was raised. I think one thing that helped is how clear the ‘why’ was. People knew what they were trying to do.
I’m thinking about invitation as a spiritual practice this month. I think we each want to be invitational, don’t we? I mean, not just as a congregation, but each of us, as individuals in our own lives. We strive to be, hope to be, imagine ourselves to be invitational. I like to think of myself as open-minded and open-hearted. But to be invitational, I can’t just sit here with my open mind. To be invitational, that requires some action on my part. I have to do some inviting, make some invitations. I’d like to make them nice invitations, attractive. Maybe use some good paper and print them in color.
I listened to a colleague of mine share during a sermon that they kind of liked to needle the congregations she works with, just a bit. We UU congregations are welcoming, and we pride ourselves on that. But, this colleague would ask, what are you welcoming them to?
My colleague wasn’t criticizing the congregations they were working with for not having something that they were welcoming people to. The congregations had a lot going on, a lot to offer. There was definitely a there there. The issue was more that the congregations and their people often had a difficult time explaining or articulating what their there was.
On a day when a capital campaign is launching, with a sermon titled “Inviting Generosity,” we can expect that sermon to be trying to get people to give generously to the campaign. And I do hope you all will give as generously as you can. I hope you will take some time to reflect on things and, well, when I do that, when I take some time, I almost always find that I can be more generous than I initially thought I could be. I am inviting you to be generous. But don’t think about money right now: What if what it was you were being invited to was to be generously? You got a nice invitation and you walk in the door and what you find there is generosity. What you find there is a not just people being generous, but a generous way of being?
You are being invited to generosity. What does that mean? It means, Here we cultivate a spirit of gratitude and hope. Three things now come to my mind: A little nugget of Unitarian Universalist theology. Our current political scene. And the experience of awe.
The nugget of UU theology is from a man named James Luther Adams. He spent a lot of time thinking about what characterizes a liberal religion. In a piece quoted by UU preachers a lot (James Luther Adams. “Guiding Principles for a Free Faith.” On Being Human Religiously. Ed. Max L. Stackhouse. Boston: Beacon Press, 1976. 3-20.), he names five “essential elements of a genuine and vital religious liberalism,” (12). The last of the five, the big finish, is this:
“[L]iberalism holds that the resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism.”
A true and vital—vital as in really alive and vital as in really needed—religious liberalism is hopeful. It is about living with hope. It is not a hope that is pollyannaish or thinks that everything is fine. Adams points out that, “In our century we have seen the rebarbarization of the masses, we have witnessed a widespread dissolution of values, and we have seen the appearance of great collective demonries,” [18].
When he says “our century” Adams means the twentieth century. But it feels like he is describing the third decade of the twenty-first century pretty well. “Still,” Adams tells us, “there is something in the genuine liberal perspective that, while recognizing this tragic nature of the human condition, continues to live with a dynamic hope,” (19).
This brings me to the current political scene, and specifically, something that the conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote recently. In a recent column he describes American culture swinging through various stages. He starts with the 80’s narcissism that Brooks says “Trump was the cartoon epitome of all that decade’s extravagances” — through the eventually to now. Then comes 1990’s “the end of history decade—the end of the Cold War, the end of apartheid” in South Africa. Then the war on terror. Then that is followed by what Brooks calls “the age of indignation” which Trump capitalized on. Then comes exhaustion. “Many people were tired of the bitterness, the endless Trumpian and culture war psychodrama,” Brooks says. And now we’re getting a new “emotional tone,” says Brooks, “the politics of joy” which is an answer to the exhaustion that we’ve been feeling, culturally. We need hope and joy is part of that, and he thinks one of the two candidates is giving us some playfulness and joy.
I think we can fairly easily understand gratitude as a practice. People keep gratitude journals and go on “awe” walks, and they feel more gratitude and awe. It isn’t like how with some things if you get a lot of them, they start to lose their effect. Awe and gratitude are not caffeine. The more you practice gratitude and awe, the more you experience more gratitude and more awe.
So can hope and joy be practices, too? If we want to invite ourselves into hope and joy, one of the best things to do is to get involved with a bunch of people and get moving together. Just go for a walk with others, and more awe opens up. I’m getting a lot of this from the book called Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner. When we join in with others, we experience more awe. Keltner notes that
“Cricket teammates whose laughter and joy spread to one another bat better in ensuing innings on the pitch. In one study, it was the shared feeling of success, above and beyond players’ skills, that predicted the likelihood of victory…”
And you know what? That kinda sounds like a miracle to me. People join together, and in the joining together and sharing feelings, whatever people’s skills or abilities are, however they might have thought about themselves individually, we make a miracle together. Here’s James Luther Adams:
“Every child of God has the guidance of conscience, for the Holy Spirit is available to every child of God. But this conscience and the living presence of the Holy Spirit is found in the mutuality of community. Individuals transcend themselves […] through life with others” (8).
In a world beset by growing isolation, division, and climate change, the liberal religious community we call UU Saratoga is needed. We invite people to generosity. We invite gratitude and awe. We invite hope and joy. And we find our hope and joy in one another.
I love you people. Let’s join together, invite our laughter and joy to spread to one another, and make a miracle.
May it be so.
Topics: Generosity, Invitation