A sermon by the Rev. Daniel Schatz, delivered at BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, May 2, 2004

Sermon:  Sustaining Souls

Several years ago I spent an evening discussing Small Group Ministry with members of a New England church who were interested in starting a covenant group program.  At the end of my formal remarks, I asked the members of the audience if they might be willing to simply get together in small groups over a meal and talk about their unmet needs in their church.

One of the most respected elder statesmen of the church stood up and slowly walked to the front of the assembly, faced his fellow congregants and said he was interested in joining a covenant group.  He had wanted something like this for years, he said, because he was lonely.  “I do not have any friends,” he finally confessed.  Waves of shock rolled through the gathering.  How could he be lonely?  He was a revered and beloved member of the congregation, a pillar of the church.  Many people expressed disbelief.

When the group quieted down, the man spoke again, saying, “Every man in this room who is my age knows what I am talking about.  Our social upbringing has taught us not to talk about our feelings.  We are not supposed to be emotionally vulnerable or close to anyone except our wives.”

As I listened to him, something changed.  I could hear his heart beating.  I could hear my heart beating.  I could hear other hearts beating in the room.  At that moment, we were all one heart and thus all one breath.  One deep, long, loving breath infused each heart with new life.  (Let’s not forget that the Hebrew word for spirit refers to a movement of air, wind, the breath of life itself.)

And at that moment, I learned why covenant groups are transforming our Unitarian Universalist movement today.  They are ministries for the heart.

- Rev. Dr. Thandeka

            Why did you come here this morning?  What are you doing here?  Was it the doughnuts that brought you out?  Was it the music?  Was it the sermon?  What brings you here each Sunday?

            As much as I like to think that it’s the things we do well at BuxMont – Sunday services, coffee hour, religious education, I know that’s not really what it’s all about.  After all, you can get more wisdom from your local library than you could ever get from a preacher, and if you have doughnuts at home you can always get the chocolate ones.  And you probably have a stereo in the living room with all your favorite music.  I come for the children’s stories, but if I tried I could get those at home too.  People don’t come to churches, fellowships and temples because of the content of Sunday morning, no matter how good that content may be.  Almost everything we do here we could do almost as well at home, alone and on our own schedules.

            Before you all get up to leave, let me quickly say there are reasons why it is worth coming here, and on more than Sunday mornings.  There are deeper purposes for religious community than the trappings of that community, no matter how much we get out of religious education, Sunday services, special events and coffee hour.

            There’s a better reason why you are here.  This deeper purpose is something we cannot find alone.  It isn’t worship or music or education or even social justice, because these are things we could each do independently. 

            A few years ago I lived alone in Charlottesville, Virginia.  I was a chaplain resident at a major hospital, and it wasn’t easy work.  An average week was sixty-five hours, and about once every ten days there were on-call nights.  I worked with people who were dying, learning to live with disabilities, watching their loved ones slip away, or struggling with mental illness.  At the same time I was dealing with crises in my own life – the death of a grandmother, the end of a relationship, life discernment and career challenges.  I attended services at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Unitarian Universalist church, and I loved the preaching there.  But I was lonely.  I needed more than Sunday services and fellowship.

            So I started going to the small, midweek services held on Wednesday nights as a time to stop and breathe and just be for a little while.  I went in order to make sacred time.  And I started going to a twenties and thirties group (TNT for short) for community, pure and simple.  There were a lot of lonely people in the group, so it seemed like a good bet for community.

            Every day I would go to work and be with people in the most difficult moments of their lives, and once a month I would join a group of about 10 other UUs – it didn’t matter that they were young adults; what mattered is that they were people – and we were a community together.  All of our activities – presentations, field trips, dinners out – were less important than the simple fact that we each now had a group of others who cared about us, listened to us, and didn’t mind if we talked about our own lives for a little while.

            After a month or two, the effect was tangible.  In my hospital work and with my colleagues I was more calm, focused and collected, less needy, more open to the spirit.  I even have evaluations to prove it.  Joining with a small group at my church opened me in the ways I needed to be opened and sustained me in the ways I needed to be sustained so that I could be the kind of person I was called to be.

            I was in Charlottesville for only one year, and still count some of the people I came to know through that group among my closest friends.

            We discover the deeper purpose of religious community when we are lonely and in need of companionship.  We discover the deeper purpose of religious community when we are in grief and come searching for care, when we are lost in the whirl of a life gone too chaotic, when we have deep joy in our lives and need someone with whom to share it.  We discover the deeper purpose of religious community when our souls are empty and in need of sustenance.  And we discover the deeper purpose of religious community when we recognize, deep in our hearts, that life is a journey and that we do not wish to travel alone.

            We come here on Sunday mornings and Saturday nights and Tuesday evenings and all of those other times because we are human beings with souls, our souls need sustaining and that is what BuxMont is for.

            Getting ready for the sermon this week, I went on a search for material, anything I could use to talk about sustaining souls.  As I rummaged through the books and papers in my office, I put on a Tracy Chapman CD. 

            “Let it rain,” she sang,

            “as I walk these streets unknown,

            to no one named,

            not even myself

            when I’m low.”

Shuffle papers, flip through meditation books.  I needed something on the way souls need sustaining.

            And Tracy Chapman sang, “Give me hope that help is coming when I need it most.”

            Nothing in that collection.  Try another one.  Maybe Whitehead will have something.

            “Give me hope that help is coming when I need it most.”

Whitehead’s no good for this one.  I need something more grounded, more real, more....

            “Let it come, love that lifts me up

            Pain that brings me down

            Everything I’d ever want

            and don’t When I’m not strong.”

I stopped looking and I started listening.  “Give me hope that help is coming when I need it most.”

            That’s what we do.  That’s what we’re for.  That’s how we sustain one another in religious community.  We stop running around so much and make time to be with each other for a little while.  It might be during a service or coffee hour or a committee meeting or a class or something else, but we make time for one another and we give each other hope.  Sometimes that’s all that is needed to sustain a soul – hope and care and listening.

            We don’t always do it so well when we’re running around trying to accomplish things.  We can’t always sustain our souls when we keep life at a distance and in our minds, and we don’t make time to feel as we feel and be as we are.

            There are moments when we need to come together with a small group of fellow life travelers so that we can be together, hear one another, and for just two hours, live our lives intentionally.  This is what it means to make time sacred.  This is what it means to sustain souls in community.

            This is what small group ministries are about.  We sometimes call them covenant groups, because the people in each group covenant to come to the sessions each month, or maybe twice monthly, in people’s homes or at the fellowship.  They covenant to listen to each other, to speak truthfully, to engage with one another not in debate but in conversation, and to respect each other’s confidentiality.  They covenant to serve one another and to serve the fellowship community, to be open to new members who may wish to join their groups, and to multiply into new groups when they become too big.  In a larger sense, they covenant to sustain souls and to create sacred time.  In the deepest and oldest meanings of the word, the people in covenant groups minister with one another.

            It’s not a therapy group, or any substitute for therapy, though most people in covenant groups find it helpful in their lives.  The facilitators are volunteers and may have no particular expertise beyond a simple training program, the ability to manage a good meeting, and a monthly facilitator’s session with the minister.  It isn’t a support group, though people find support through the groups.  It isn’t even a discussion group, although the discussions are profound.  It is shared ministry in the truest sense of the term.

            Congregations that have begun covenant group programs have been astounded at the effect.  They almost always grow in number – and in that process discover that they also grow in intimacy and a sense of belonging.  The small groups bring people together and create a network of relationships through which powerful bonds of community are formed.  And the effect doesn’t stop with the people who have joined the groups – meetings run more smoothly, commitment to stewardship of the congregation rises, people with needs are better taken care of – and most importantly, human souls are sustained and people grow spiritually.

            So a Unitarian Universalist fellowship of four hundred becomes a community of eight hundred, and is more closely knit, welcoming, and caring than it ever was before.  A member of an evangelical megachurch with over twelve thousand members and their own version of small group ministries says, “This is the most intimate church I’ve ever been to.”  And a Unitarian Universalist in Augusta, Maine says “The sharing of our highs and lows, the profound and the mundane bits and pieces of our lives has brought to me a feeling of intimacy with other members of our church to the greatest degree that I have known since I joined the church in 1975.”

            “Give me hope that help is coming when I need it most.”

            Imagine what small group ministries might look like at BuxMont, when we launch our first groups in January.  Imagine what it would be like to be part of a group like that, to sit for two hours, check in with each other about what’s going on in our lives, and then talk together about sacred moments, living and dying, forgiveness, friendship, change. 

            Imagine what it would be like to sit and hear someone else’s story that is powerful and important to them and to you and that you never would have heard during coffee hour.  Imagine what it would be like to tell your own. 

            Imagine you are hurting, and there’s nothing anyone can do to make it better, though goodness knows people tell you what they think you should do and how they think you should feel and you come to your covenant group and you say I am hurting and there are good reasons, and the people your group say, “Yes, we hear you and we care.”  “Yes, you are hurting and we are with you.”  And it doesn’t change anything, but everything is different.  They haven’t told you what to do or how to feel, but you feel encouraged.  The situation is still rotten, but you know for the first time that you are not alone.  Your soul is sustained.

            “Give me hope that help is coming when I need it most.”

Imagine coming to a group with joy in your heart and being able to share that joy with people who are not competitive or jealous, but simply happy that you are joyful.

            Imagine a moment when you are sitting with your covenant group and you are talking about loss or about healing, or about integrity, or about anything, and you hear what the other people have to say and you think about your own life and you come to a realization that you would never have come to if you hadn’t taken two hours that week to sustain your soul.

            You might find God in a moment like that, in a small group of fellow seekers – if God is what you’re looking for.  Or you might find peace, or spirit, or love, or you might simply look and find one another.  And that would be enough.

We live in the covenant of care.

Now I am yours,

and you also are mine.