Sermon #66 (4th December 2022 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
So: Why are we here? There are various ways in which you might choose to take this question. In the first reading, the one Brian gave for us earlier, the question was directed at the individual: ‘Why do you come, John?’ In the sense of: ‘why do you faithfully show up here every week, and muck in to help, when your life is already full-to-bursting with other commitments, and there are plenty of other fun things you might choose to do instead on any given Sunday morning?’
I wonder how each of us might answer that question. It might also be instructive to cast your mind back and think ‘why did I come here in the first place?’ Perhaps you came out of sheer need – out of loneliness and a need for connection – out of a desire to be in a community of shared values – or out of a spiritual hunger that couldn’t be met in other churches where you were excluded. Perhaps you were going through a life crisis of some sort and it was a slightly random throw of the dice. All of those are ‘whys’ that I’ve heard many times from people who’ve ended up in various Unitarian congregations (and all of them are reasons I could put my hand up to, ‘whys’ that first brought me here, back when I was in my mid-20s and joining a Unitarian church wasn’t an obvious life choice).
And once you’re through the front door (whether that’s the physical door or the virtual door of a Zoom waiting room) there’s a follow-up question: ask yourself ‘why did I keep coming back?’ The factors that bring you back – or put you off, never to be seen again – aren’t necessarily going to be very noble or profound. Maybe the coffee was terrible (thumbs down) but the cake was great (thumbs up) so on balance you decided to give them another chance the next week. Maybe the sermon was only so-so (thumbs down) but you got talking to a few friendly souls after the service and had a deep and meaningful conversation (thumbs up) and those early connections you made brought you back again. Maybe someone was a bit standoffish (thumbs down) but the experience of having an hour of safe and sacred space left you feeling peaceful and uplifted (thumbs up) and you realised you could do with a regular dose of comfort and inspiration in your life. Perhaps, once you got into the habit of coming, the ‘why’ simply faded into the background, became unconscious. Coming to church is just The Thing You Do On Sundays now. Or you made friends in church, so of course you come, because it’s where you’ll see your friends. And – like ‘John’ in the story we heard earlier – maybe you realise we’d miss you if you weren’t here. And that by showing up, and helping out, you keep the church alive, and keep the doors open in welcome, for the next person in need who comes along. It makes me think of Rev. Cliff Reed’s reflection, ‘Being There’, in which he says:
‘It matters that we come here when we can, not just for what each may gain, but for what we each may contribute by our presence and participation. Remind us, in our heart of hearts, that if we want our church to be there for us, then we must be there for our church. And remind us that, if we want its members to be there for us in our need, then we must be there for them in theirs. In our strength, may we be strong for those who feel their weakness. In our weakness, may we be ready to take the proffered hand, for through it we may receive the strength that is divine.’
Wise words from Cliff Reed there. And I think in our heart of hearts most of us know this to be true. Church community, at its best, is a network of mutuality – of give and take – we’re not consumers.
As well as asking ‘why are we here’ I think it’s important to take a moment to think about who’s not here – and why they’re not here – this is something that I think about a lot. Let’s imagine asking ‘why don’t you come’ to those people who very likely have many of those same needs and desires that brought us to church – needs for connection, community, and spiritual enrichment – but we are here this morning and they are not (and in most cases they’re not involved in any other church or religious community either). This is an important thing to check in with ourselves about from time to time, I reckon, if we’re to avoid becoming an inward-looking social club that only really caters for ‘people like us’. I’m thinking about people who would be at least curious about giving church a try – I know many people are suspicious of religious institutions for a number of quite legitimate reasons – but there are people who do consciously yearn for connection, community, and spiritual enrichment – but their circumstances make it difficult for them to show up here on a regular basis. For many people there are practical obstacles which make it much less likely they will cross the threshold of a Unitarian church in the first place. I’ve made a list: geographical isolation (it’s not like there is a Unitarian church on every corner; we’re thinly spread and only the most determined are going to travel a long way to check us out), ill-health, disability, irregular or unpredictable work patterns (or simply overwork and exhaustion), caring responsibilities, and perhaps a sort of peer pressure (with churchgoers being very much in the minority these days it doesn’t necessarily have to be a hostile anti-religion kind of peer-pressure; it can just be that all your contemporaries are having brunch on Sundays, or possibly getting over a big night out on Saturday, and if you want to engage in any kind of ‘normal’ social life your Sundays may be accounted for). There are lots of reasons why people might not actually get here on a Sunday morning (even if they’d love it if they did). Here at Essex Church, over the last couple of years, we’ve begun to address some of these obstacles with our commitment to providing hybrid services and other activities which are accessible in new ways. But it’s important to keep reminding ourselves that there are many people who could benefit from our spiritual community – and we could benefit from their presence – yet they face these various barriers to participation.
And if we’re thinking about who’s not here we also have to acknowledge the flipside of the ‘habit’ of coming to church that I mentioned earlier. For many of us it’s a positive thing that church is just The Thing We Do On Sundays by default. But it seems for quite a few people the pandemic broke that habit – they liked coming to church in-person well enough – but when we closed our doors, they didn’t much like coming to church online – and by the time in-person church resumed the habit was broken. And, anecdotally, churches up and down the country have seen that happen. Numbers have dropped. In all the upheaval of the last few years, some people have moved away; some have died; much-loved ministers have retired or left the profession; some stalwart volunteers called it a day; those who came back found that their beloved church was not how they left it. A lot has changed. And if our primary reason for coming to church in the before-times was ‘out of habit’ then it’s no wonder that, for some, the habit was broken under all this strain and upheaval. ‘Habit’ is a fairly weak reason for ‘why we come to church’. If we have some deeper sense of intentional commitment – to a common purpose and shared values – it is, perhaps, less likely we will drift away during times of challenge and change.
Everything I’ve talked about so far is very much focused on the individual – why are you here? And why are others not here? – but really this is just a preamble to a more significant question: Why are we here? As in, what’s our collective purpose? What’s the point of us ‘doing church’? You could take that on a local level, thinking about one congregation, or the whole shebang of Unitarianism. It’s possibly an easier question to answer in more traditional, creedal, churches. But for us it’s not so obvious. It’s something that needs a bit of care and attention to discern.
Our second reading, ‘Religious Community is Not Enough’ by Tom Schade, presented his sense of ‘why we are here’, and it’s an approach that appeals to me, at least as a starting point for exploration. According to Schade, our purpose as a church is to change the world by encouraging people to see differently, think differently, live differently, and – little-by-little – shift the wider culture to the good. For him it’s not about getting more bums-on-seats (or boxes-in-the-Zoom-gallery), not about coming to church for its own sake, but it’s about coming to be transformed, and to help transform the world. And, who knows, if we were to articulate our purpose in that way, it might inspire others to join us…
I dangled a free gift in front of congregation members who attended today’s service. Here it is: a little book titled ‘Why Are We Here? Discerning Our Unitarian Mission in an Upturned World’. If you’re at the church in-person please pick up a copy to take away; if you’re a congregation member or regular attender joining online please drop me an email with your address; if you’re visiting us from another congregation or viewing on YouTube I don’t think I can stretch the generosity of our committee to give the freebies away to you too but it’s £5 to buy from Essex Hall or all the usual online outlets.
This little book contains the text of five short talks from last year’s online Hucklow Summer School. Five different speakers each giving their own angle on the theme on this question of ‘Why Are We Here?’ (full disclosure: the first talk is by me). And, starting in January, we’re going to have a once-a-month online gathering to reflect on these five perspectives in turn and share our own. The first one will be on Wednesday 11th January at 7pm, and it’ll mostly be the second Wednesday of the month, except in March when we’ve swerved to avoid a clash with another event. Do join us. (You don’t even have to read the book as the talks are all on YouTube and available as a podcast).
Today is just the start of a process – that’s part of the reason why I chose the title ‘Start with Why’ – because discerning and embracing our collective sense of purpose takes time, and care, and we’re not going to come to a conclusive answer today with me presenting my views in a 14-minute sermon. But it’s a hugely important question for us to wrestle with for a whole bunch of reasons. Having a truly shared and collective sense of purpose, one that we all truly own, strengthens our community. And it enables us to be much more thoughtful and intentional about what it is we are doing here than if we just keep doing-what-we’ve-always-done out of a sense of habit and institutional inertia. It also helps us to stay committed during times when the going gets tough (as it has these last few years).
Having a clear sense of our ‘why’ can help us gain greater clarity about ‘what’ and ‘how’ (and possibly also ‘when’ and ‘where’). Sharpening our sense of purpose shapes what we do next and how we do it. We are, let’s be honest, a small community – both as a congregation and as a denomination – and we need to make choices (sometimes quite difficult choices) about where we put our limited energy and resources as we go forward. Having a sense of our shared purpose can focus and sharpen our decision-making as we ask ourselves: does this or that activity fit our values and serve our mission?
It’s worth noting that the precise shape of the vision won’t be the same for every congregation – there’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all answer to the question ‘why are we here?’ – each group has its own particular context, resources, history, and quirky collection of humans to work with – and these variables will shape each congregation’s self-concept and aspirations, though we’re all part of one Unitarian movement pulling in broadly the same direction. Some congregations have thrown themselves into social action and campaigning, others are big on local community service, while we here at Essex Church have never really had a very locally-based congregation, so perhaps that’s why we’ve been unusually well-placed to focus on making our activities accessible online, in order to open up our Unitarian message to those who might have been accidentally excluded in the past. You might think of it as each congregation having its own unique and particular ‘charism’ or ‘calling’.
As I said, we’re just starting the conversation today, and I hope a good number of you will join me in our monthly explorations of the theme from January. But to close I’ll share a few words from the book, written by my colleague, Rev. Dr. Rory Castle-Jones, minister with Gellionnen chapel in Wales. This is his answer to the question ‘why are we here?’ and it’s one I can really get behind. He writes:
‘Why are we here? Well, I think – at the risk of sounding a little dramatic – we are here to save the world… We need a church where we can work in unison to prepare to help those hit hardest. We need a church to change the way our entire civilisation functions, as it destroys our world and itself in its relentless pursuit of profit. We need a church which is both sanctuary and prophetic, both a safe haven and a voice of protest. We need a church which can draw on several hundred years of loving community, and radical action – to hold aloft God’s flame in the face of a world gone mad – and offer hope, offer love, and offer a vision of a world fundamentally and radically different from the one in which we live today.’
Wise words from Rory Castle-Jones. May it be so, for the greater good of all. Amen.
Sermon by Jane Blackall
An audio recording of this sermon is available:
A video recording of this sermon is available: