Ministry

November 29, 2009

Our Mutual Ministry Reverend Don Vaughn-Foerster

Early in my ministry I went to visit a person who was totally deaf.  I wanted to convey my pastoral concern and to offer help if, in the future, my help became useful.  Also present was a close relative of the deaf person, a man who knew sign language and helped me get my message across.  After a while, I found the deaf person could read lips and so I allowed myself to drift into a halting exchange of pleasantries.  Then, there was a sudden, but short, uncomfortable silence.  I felt I had strained everyone's attention too much.   I began to search for something more important to say than I had been saying when the man who could hear said kindly, "It has all been said, hasn't it?"  With a strange sense of relief, I agreed and thanked them for their time, wished them well, and left. 

            As I walked away, I realized that an act of ministry had occurred; but it wasn't the one I had intended, rather the interpreter had helped me not flounder on to everyone's discomfort.  He had ministered to me. The tables had been turned and the minister had become the ministee. 

            This sort of thing happens to me from time to time.  It is one of the main reasons I continue to like my job.  I go places to do things for people but, unexpectedly, something is done for me.  I don't think I solicit these acts of simple kindness; but they happen.  They happen because the people who do them have a caring feeling for others; and, although they may be in difficulty or discomfort themselves, they are sensitive to the discomforts of others and want to ameliorate them.  They are as ready to minister as to be ministered to. 

            What do such people have that others don’t?  How can they make something positive and glowing out of situations when the rest of us feel ourselves at a loss?  They have something – something that fills in blanks that stymie others. 

            You know, people are gregarious; but they seek out religious communities or other similar groups for more than just to be around other people.  That's part of the purpose, of course, but, on another level, they are there to get help for themselves when they are troubled or weary or hurting.  Many people, especially religious liberals, oftentimes don't bother to look for a religious community until they are troubled, weary, hurting, or in need of support of some kind.  Being strong, self-reliant types, we, Unitarians, especially, may tell ourselves that we only go to our church because its teachings are the same as our beliefs or because it is an effective vehicle for our social concern or our self –expression or because the people there help minimize our loneliness.   However, if we are honest with ourselves, we know that an underlying reason (and, for some, the most important reason) derives from this last reason because we expect people there to help us when we need help. 

            We may not be very clear in our own minds about this and sometimes we may drastically mis-communicate what our expectations are.  A prime example for me of this incapacity was the famous Universalist, Horace Greely, who was editor of the New York Tribune during the mid-years of the 19^th century.  Although Greeley had a sharp and lucid mind, his handwriting, apparently, was atrocious.  He once wrote a letter to excuse himself from an invitation to lecture in a Midwestern city.  This is what he wrote:   

“Dear Sir:  I am overworked and growing old.  I shall be 60 next Feb. 3. On the whole, it seems I must decline to lecture henceforth except in this immediate vicinity, if I do at all.  I cannot promise to visit Illinois on that errand, certainly not now.”   

The reply he got was:

            “Dear Sir: Your acceptance to lecture before our association next winter came to hand this morning.  Your penmanship not being the plainest, it took some time to translate it; but we succeeded and would say your time, Feb. 3, and the terms, $60, are entirely satisfactory.  As you suggest, we may be able to get you other engagements.” 

            It is not uncommon for Unitarians to have their own form of illegibility – not just illegible handwriting but confused intentions.  We know we join congregations for good reasons (mutually confirming reasons, we hope) but we may not always be clear on what they are.  Whatever our other reasons may be, whether we acknowledge it or not, we come here also seeking healing and support.  This congregation, like most other religious communities, has a ministry to offer and we expect that ministry, in some way, to benefit us.  It is the glory and the strength of this congregation that it does benefit its members -- although not always, and, I suspect, not for everybody, which is why I want to talk about ministry today. 

            To begin to get an idea of what “ministry” implies, let’s look at the word “minister” itself.   When you "minister," the usual thought is that you attend to the wants or comforts or needs of someone else.  You serve.  We even expect that of public officials and so we often give them the title of minister.  This is what we usually mean when we speak of ministry:  service.  Religious groups have roles and offices set up to assure that ministering ("serving") gets done.  I fill such an office here.  You fill such a role or office whenever you take on responsibilities for doing things for one another -- such as planning programs, providing decorations or refreshments for meetings, visiting the sick or homebound, or working on boards and committees.  It is certainly what a World War II refugee from Czechoslovakia, Dr. Lotta Hitschmanova, did when she founded the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada and dedicated her life to helping people in far-off lands.  She ministered to both Canada and the world.  I mention her because yesterday was the 100^th anniversary of her birth and, although she is no longer alive, the wonderful ministry to the world that she mobilized deserves to be celebrated.  But, in a more spontaneous and informal way, we all fill such a serving/ministerial role when we make a point to visit with one another during coffee hour or to reach out to comfort and help  someone who is suffering or depressed. 

            However, for this really to work, so much depends on attitude.  We may use altruistic language, suggesting that our religious group is here to serve others, but, too often, the tag (the hook) on the end is that we, ultimately, want the group (the "ministry") to exist to fill our own needs.  Unless we remember something basic, the whole project moves from "serving" others because they have needs to "serving" them so that someone will be there to meet our needs later on.  This latter attitude may feel altruistic, but, actually, it is "self-serving" attitude and can make the whole project of community spiritless and empty. 

            This is not an unexpected phenomenon.  When we start a religious community, or when we join one that is already functioning, it is only human to try to devise a way to satisfy our own wants and to stop there.  This is why religious communities often are compared to the drive-through lane at McDonald's.  People drive up, get what they want, pay a fee, and go on their way with a “happy meal” that may fatten their ego but not really be nourishing. 

            But, the usualness of the self-serving attitude aside, this is not the way most of us want it to be.  Deep down, not only do we want to be ministered to ourselves but also we really do want other people to be helped when they need help.  In what else could gregariousness be rooted except empathy with others?  So, what does it take to make sure that full ministry occurs and is not slanted toward our own self-servingness? 

            The answer sounds simple enough, but it isn't easy to do.  The answer is to move from serving and being served to intending one another's welfare.  This expands the concept of ministry from one of serving to one of sharing.  Actually, this doesn't add anything new to the original meaning of the verb “to minister”; rather, it goes back to the fundamental condition in which serving is possible.  Truly to serve is not possible unless we share -- share what we have with someone who needs it.  It is taking something from me (my food, my attention, my effort, my resources) and giving it to you.  It is you giving such things to me.  Fundamentally, that's what ministry is.  We may call it service, but, fundamentally, it is sharing.  To view ministering to one another as the sharing of mutual resources truly acknowledges that we, each, are members of a larger whole created by our common resolve to care enough for one another that we share with one another what we have -- and are.

Such an attitude breathes real spirit and power into the community we comprise.  It also puts the professional ministry in better perspective as the role that does not do the ministry of the church but facilitates the members of the church doing it with and for each other. 

            As I said, this is easy to say but it is not easy to do.  Not being able to share is most of what's wrong with our world.  It is simple to say "share"; it is quite difficult to do.  There is too much suspicion and antipathy in the world for it to be easy and so, if others don't give us what we want, we cease to feel concern for others.  The question becomes:  Are we truly willing to be clear about our intentions and do we have enough faith in people to risk ourselves by sharing our resources (emotional and otherwise) and our effort with them in their need?  Do we trust others enough actually to invest our own self in their welfare?  If we can't do this for them, how can we expect them to trust and help us?  But, too often, we send each other emotionally tangled messages about our intentions that even we find hard to make sense of – especially when we say, “I want to help you” but add an illegible phrase which means “This is prepayment for you helping me.” 

            You see why it is easy to say that we can breathe the spirit back into our practice of ministry by going beyond serving to sharing, but it is not easy to do.  And yet, that is what we take on ourselves when we set out on a collective religious journey.  When we take on the responsibility of creating a religious community, we also take on a difficult kind of reciprocity:  the reciprocity that calls for the person being helped also to help the helper.  It calls on us not only to serve one another's needs but to intend one another's welfare even when we are in need.  Intending one another's welfare goes beyond doing nice things for others so that someone will do nice things for us.  It requires a mutual affirmation and acceptance – something we may not have been conditioned to give.  It is a very strong and demanding thing to require of us; but it is a bedrock necessity if religious community and ministry are to have integrity. 

            This is what happened for me in that little incident I told you about – when the interpreter made things easier for me.  When such reciprocity occurs, mutual trust and mutual intending of one another's welfare begin to grow right there!  And, as these grow, a bond is established that opens us to a spiritual dynamic that makes us all one body – members of a larger organism of sympathy and compassion that enables us to be who we are as we help one another. 

            At root this bond enables us to be a healing community that helps us all to do a number of things.  It provides a safe and supportive place of fellowship that helps us better deal with crises in our lives.  It proffers comfort and healing when we encounter the griefs and deaths that inevitably afflict us.  It endows us with the opportunity to grow in perspective and integrity and, it is to be hoped, to bring us together as understanding friends.  Such mutuality and trust as come with such reciprocity empowers us to meet challenges that, alone in our singularity, we cannot. 

            The challenge facing us is to give actual flesh to the intention to share ourselves with people so that such a bond -- so that such mutual caring -- will grow.  That is an ideal, of course, and, like all ideals, probably, is not totally attainable, but its pursuit makes the balance of life tilt toward more of love and the good than toward hostility and evil.  If the truth be known, the reason we want to minister to one another is the same reason we want to live, for what is life, after all, but the process of sharing our being with the world and the world sharing its being with us?  One of the great plusses I have found about this congregation, in the short time that I have been here, is that there, already, are many people who understand and practice what I have said this morning.  To many people here, I am only preaching to the choir because such trust and sharing already exist.

            The point this morning is, if we would make this religious enterprise mean the most to us, we will all be ministers to one another.  We will intend one another's welfare.  We will share what we can.  Then, our mutual bond of being shall grow.  We know in our hearts that we are here to be members – helping members – of one another.  As this goal becomes ever stronger in our minds and hearts -- and becomes ever more real in our acts – we will build an empathetic and caring community of justice, peace, and love.