healing

SERMONS

Healing

Rev. Mary Katherine Morn

I heard a story recently about a congregation that didn’t understand the power of history. I may have even told this story in a sermon–honestly, I can’t remember. It’s a great story, though. It happened when the new minister arrived. It was her first week and she was learning her way around. People were gracious and open to her ministry. She was feeling glad for their openness in sharing their stories with her. That first Sunday she felt confident and at ease. The first part of the service went exactly as she had planned. The energy was right. She was communicating well and she felt the responses, the expressions and the body language of the congregation, were engaged. It was odd that they all sat on the left side of the sanctuary–but she adjusted to that without any trouble.

Then right the offertory came. People seemed to be giving without hesitation. The plates were brought forward. Then as the ushers carried walked back down the aisles to their places, everyone stood up. It wasn’t time for a hymn–it was time for her sermon. She started to stand and motion for them to be seated. They started moving. It looked as though they were leaving. But they didn’t leave. They simply moved to the right side of the sanctuary. All of them. All at once. She was so undone by this she could hardly remember what she said in her sermon. At coffee hour she asked several people about the pre-sermon shift. They just smiled and told her that’s what they did.
It took her weeks to find someone with more information. A second-generation member of that congregation who was now living in a nursing home had the answer she wanted. When they built their first small church as a congregation it was heated by a gas stove on the left side of the sanctuary. It hadn’t warmed the room by the time the service started, but by half-way through the service that side of the room had become too warm. They’d had central heat for years now. No one in attendance by then even remembered there had been a stove. Yet still, every Sunday, they stood and repeated this unnecessary ritual of moving to the other side.

We rarely have any idea what kind of power history plays in our lives. We just don’t think much about it. I’ve come to believe that within institutions, congregations in particular, history has a life of its own. The people involved may be long gone. And still the feelings or attitudes related to an event in history will sneak out one way or another. This often results in far more disturbing consequences than a funny ritual of moving in the pews. An anniversary celebration is a great opportunity for a congregation to become a little more familiar with itself and its ghosts so that it can recognize them and treat them accordingly.

This morning’s service celebrates the last decade in the life of this congregation. Like the other four decades in our history, this one has funny stories, shining moments, and times we might prefer to forget. Most of us were here for at least some of the nineties. So the stories from this decade touch more of us directly. As many of you know we’ve been telling some of these stories over the last month. Because the early part of the decade contained so much struggle and pain, we felt it was important to give people an opportunity to talk about feelings that they still carry. Or new feelings that might arise. The lay ministers have been available, and are available today (with blue nametags) to offer a compassionate ear. Seek them out if you would like talk more about this.

I do not have the time, in this sermon, to give you the complex details of history for any part of this decade. Instead, I want to offer you my very subjective reflections on what this past decade means to us as a congregation. How it has shaped us and continues to shape us. I will begin with a very brief recounting of events in the early part of this decade. In 1993 the minister of this congregation resigned his ministry of twelve years. He had been found guilty, by a denominational body, of conduct unbecoming a minister. He had admitted having had affairs with women he was counseling. The several years before his resignation were marked by increasing conflicts over his ministry. In the last eleven months of his tenure here there were very difficult conflicts among members resulting from his professional misconduct and his unwillingness to resign his ministry after the disclosure of his misconduct. Some believed he should have been allowed to stay. Others understood that he had betrayed the trust of the community by his misconduct and could no longer minister to many who had been harmed directly and indirectly.

In the years following the minister's resignation, some of that harm continued. As happens when a congregation experiences such trauma, people attempted to understand what had happened. Some blamed the people who had been victimized by him. Others sought to defend those who had been harmed and so became targets themselves. Some left–a group of sixty or so were so angry they organized a new congregation. Many others simply slipped quietly away. Being here was just too painful.

Slowly, the pieces of this shattered congregation were being put back together. Some helped the congregation understand the nature of professional misconduct and its consequences. Some offered ministry to those who had been directly harmed by his misconduct. Some attempted to bring people with divergent views together, to hear each other. Some diligently worked to rebuild the institution. Some taught religious education to our children. Some led the board through policy review. Some helped strengthen the institutional structures that hold this congregation together. Some simply showed up. Either still, or again. Demonstrating their faith and hope in this community.

For almost four years this congregation did not have a settled minister. Interim ministers came and went. Five of them, in fact. I was called as the settled minister for this congregation in May of 1997. I spent much of that year learning about congregations virtually all over the country. The reason I came here was because of the courage and the commitment I saw in you. I knew there was still pain here. I knew there was still work to do toward healing. And yet none of the other congregations I saw (most of them strong in their own right) felt as strong to me as this one. Now I realize that the strength was possible because of the loss of innocence. Now I see that the faith found in the midst of devastation is the strongest faith. All of this was possible not, I would emphasize, because of the harm done. All of this was possible because a few found their voices of courage to speak the truth faithfully. This faith has radiated out into the congregation and created a mature, cautious, hopeful, committed congregation. One of the strongest congregations I know of.

I do not mean to say that we are as strong as we can be. Or that we are finished with our history. Any part of it, really. Our history holds us. And we must continue to heal from it and continue to grow. For me, the important component is that we open ourselves to each other and to the pain we bring, so that we may understand ourselves and each other more deeply and live with ever expanding compassion and integrity.

In our Unitarian Universalist tradition the way we understand this process of living together in community is through covenant. We do not organize ourselves around a creed. Instead we enter into a covenant with each other. Our mission and covenant statement reads: "We gather in safe and compassionate community, seeking our spiritual truths. We affirm our interdependence, celebrate our differences, and create a thoughtful and harmonious voice for liberal religion. Through the practice of the principles of our faith, we promote social, economic, and environmental justice and continue our legacy of respect and acceptance. We covenant together in a spirit of love and freedom." The first and last sentences of this statement articulate what I understand to be the essence of our covenant with each other. We gather in safe and compassionate community seeking our spiritual truths. We covenant together in a spirit of love and freedom."

These are the promises we make to each other. We promise to make this community safe and compassionate. We promise to act with one another in a spirit of love and freedom. I read a helpful essay about covenant this week by Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams. He says there are five major ingredients that come together to make covenant.

First, he reminds us what Martin Buber has said. Human beings are promise-making, promise-keeping, promise-breaking, promise-renewing creatures. It is our nature to make promises. This is how we live together. And it is our nature, our human nature, to break them and then make them again. This is how we suffer our humanity and heal together. Next, Adams reminds us of the ultimate nature of our covenant. We make a covenant with life. With whatever it is that we consider the transcendent power of our lives. As Adams describes it, the "creative, sustaining, commanding, judging, transforming" power in our lives. Third, a covenant has individual and collective power. Fourth, in his words, "the covenant responsibility is especially directed toward the deprived, whether these be people suffering from neglect and injustice or those who are caught in the system that suppresses them." He points out that this is where injustice and suffering exist–in the space between the promise and the realization. Lastly, Adams says, the covenant has a legal component, but finally it depends on faith, on love, not on law.

The reason I’m sharing all of this is to make clear the power of covenant in our lives. And most especially in our communities of faith. I have heard some people express confusion about how we can still feel so deeply about the events in the early part of this decade. The power of it comes from the power of our covenant and the devastation of a broken covenant. Our covenant represents our deepest beliefs and our highest ideals. So when a covenant is broken the very foundation of our faith shakes. The most dramatic examples of this betrayal can be seen in the stories of women and men who have been sexually abused by a clergyperson. Some do not recover. Their faith in themselves, in life, in God, in love, in whatever had sustained them, is shattered.

The most difficult aspect of recovery, for anyone touched by a broken covenant, is that faith is required. It is faith that has been lost. Stolen. And by grace, or extraordinary compassion, or probably both, somehow faith must be restored.

The fact is, this happens in our lives again and again. We are promise-making, promise-keeping, promise-breaking, promise-renewing creatures. Here in this congregation we have experienced a break in covenant that required extraordinary courage, compassion, and faith to restore. Really there were numerous breaks. The loss of innocence came not only from the misconduct of a minister, but also from the ways we fell short as individuals and institutionally in our response. We continue to grow and learn from this. As long as we are learning from it we will be on the path of healing. As long as our compassion and faithfulness are expanding, forgiveness and reconciliation will be possible.

We were not meant to survive. That means to me that we were not meant to live in innocence. We must live in courage with the knowledge that we are capable of breaking the promises we make. We will hurt each other again. In silence, though, we will remain afraid. As Audre Lorde writes, it is better to speak, remembering to renew our promises again and again.