"Plays Well With Others"

A Sermon by the Rev. Daniel Charles Davis

For the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem, NC

November 19, 2006

A funeral.

A short time ago I participated in a funeral at a Catholic Church – a funeral for the mother of a Unitarian Universalist. The priest had offered me the opportunity to participate, and said that I could sit at the altar for the duration of the service. But since I was only reading a Psalm, I declined and decided instead to sit with the family.

I was touched by his graciousness.

Later in the service, Communion was offered. As you may already know, by Roman Catholic law, the Eucharist is only shared among Catholics.

Now, I had violated this law since the days of my Presbyterian youth. I remember my Protestant indignation rising in me, saying, "How dare they exclude me from the Lord’s table?" Whenever I was visiting a Catholic church, I got in line for communion – my own private reformation. The procedure was different from church to church, but I just did what the people in front of me did: Accept the host on my tongue or in my hand, wine or no wine, I self-righteously stole Catholic communion. I relished every adolescent victory over the pope and his dogma.

But here I was, an adult; I was not anonymous; I was guest clergy written into the order of service.

It would have been very rude to misbehave. I still disagreed with closed communion, but now was neither the time nor the place for protest.

Then the priest did something I had never seen before. He said that he realized that many faiths were represented among the congregation, and that although his tradition prevented him from offering communion to non-Catholics, he wanted to invite those non-Catholics who felt comfortable to join the processional and receive a blessing. He made the effort to include me and the other people outside of his denomination. My smug inner child melted. I stood in line, and when it was my turn I did not have to pretend to be Catholic. He blessed me in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. I did not quibble with the words, for I felt the blessing his heart was giving. He was saying, "You are my guest. My practice may be different from your practice, but we belong together."

I was happy that the priest had learned how to play well with others. He followed the dictates of his faith, yet still found a way to include me. As I walked back to my car after the service, someone called to me. "Hey! I think I played softball against you." I said I was surprised he recognized me without the tie-dyed T-shirt that our team wears, and he said that our team was one of the nicest teams to play against because it always looked like we were having fun. And I realized that UUs also knew how to play well with others.

Softball and funerals are only two of the places we run into people of different faiths. It can be a challenge:

How do we be authentically ourselves yet respectful of others? We need to be present as Unitarian Universalists, being present in the community, while not wanting to be like those who push their religion on others. Yet if we stay silent we are not being true to ourselves. Are you out of the closet as a Unitarian Universalist? What has your experience been? This fellowship can function as a closet – a place where we hide on Sunday and secretly meet our friends. It is the one place on earth where we can truly be ourselves.

In a world that seldom plays well with us, it’s nice to be in a room of like-minded people. But who are we when we leave this closet? Do we suffer in silence the rest of the week?

Another image of the fellowship could be a therapist’s office: We come in wounded, we are healed, and that strengthens us to go out as individuals to heal others. We are from churches that tried to make us ashamed of who we are, who we love, and what we believe; the fellowship offers restoration of our self- esteem and as individuals we are strengthened until we can share kindness with others. Sometimes we come with anger, and through the Sunday service we find an inner peace, which allows us to find a purpose that we carry into the world. We may come in loneliness, yet we find community and offer an invitation to other individuals to join. We may feel disconnected; at the fellowship we connect to others. Thus we are able to reconnect to the world. It is to be hoped that this congregation helps transform each of us into better individuals, and as better individuals we play well with others.

There are many UUs who have an individual presence in the following institutions: Crisis Control, Second Harvest, AIDS Care Service, the partnership for home ownership, and even local government. But individual participation is different from institutional participation. Institutional presence involves a group of people going out into the community in the name of Unitarian Universalism, and this does not have to be on some deep philosophical level or for some definitive social action. One of the best examples of our having an institutional presence in this town is our softball team.

I was at the funeral as an individual representative of our tradition, acting with my own personal issues about communion. But after the service I was recognized as being part of a team. Being in a church softball league is an institutional way to be involved in the community. We may be in competition with other churches, but we are also in cooperation because we are in the same league. We have agreed to play well with each other. We are part of the community in a way that transcends our individuality. We are an institution that interacts with other institutions. We do social justice work with CHANGE. We provide rehearsal space to the Symphony Chorale – and in exchange we get an ad in the symphony program, so people in the community know us as "that church that supports the Symphony." We are also the congregation that hosts another institution, the food co-op. When people wonder where to go for alternative foods, we’re on their list. Acting as an institution makes us an organic part of the community, just as an organ is part of the body.

If we do not become an integral part of the community, then we will be seen as outside agitators. Outside agitators can have profound impacts on an organism. If you ever had the flu or other virus, then you know this. In the sixties, the Goodmans, the Schmidts, the Mayas, the Felmets were outside agitators, Yankees who noticed that this town had a problem with race relations. H.O. Goodman’s letter to the ministers’ association during the sitdown strikes infected their consciences. And institutional churches like Knollwood Baptist were able to push for change in this town. Outside agitation can be fun. Tying a pink ribbon around our building in support of gay rights shocked the community. But interacting as an institution with institutions like GLSEN (the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network) and PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) is what promotes real change in the community. When I think of the body of Forsyth County and which institutions make up its whole, this analogy might be fitting. The Moravian Church may be the skeleton, representing the beginning of our history. The Baptist Church might be the muscle, while for many years the heart and lungs have been R. J. Reynolds. Though tobacco is not so good for the heart and lungs, that tobacco money has partially funded transplants as medical centers like Baptist and Forsyth have become the economic circulatory system.

So, to continue the analogy, instead of being a series of individual infections, we decided to stop being outside agitators and took our rightful place in the healthy, functioning body of Forsyth County. I say our rightful place. Unitarian Universalism arrived in Winston-Salem in 1951. Wake Forest University arrived in 1956. Both came essentially from outside of the community.

Now, Wake Forest the school was invited in from Wake Forest, NC, a considerably shorter distance than that from Boston, Massachusetts and the UUs. Wake is celebrating its 50^th year in Winston-Salem. This is our 55^th year. We probably will never be as large an institution as the university but we can be an important part of the community nonetheless. The small adrenal glands can have a profound effect upon the much larger brain. As an institution we can be this community’s call to action, and something integral to this community’s survival.

We do not have to be on the outside looking in. We can be a player. We can take our spirituality to a new level. Playing well with others is difficult; it is far easier to retreat into our refuge of religious liberalism. It is also easier to lob explosive treatises of protest. But neither involves the hard work of engagement.

It is easy to respect the inherent worth and dignity of ourselves. By trying to play well with others, we have to respect their inherent worth and dignity. Only then will we know if we really believe in that principle. It is easy to believe within the walls of our institution, but if we do not practice it with other institutions, then we have a small belief indeed. There is no conflict between being a socially active church and a spiritual one. We gather each Sunday and contemplate the meaning of inherent worth and dignity. If we then do not practice inherent worth and dignity, then our contemplations mean little. So I offer a chance for us to work as an institution for the inherent worth and dignity of people in our community. This Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., I encourage you to attend Knollwood Baptist Church for the interfaith Thanksgiving service. Different faith institutions are gathering to help two social institutions. If you bring boxes of macaroni and cheese, they will go to the Crisis Control food pantry. If you bring money, it will go to AIDS Care Service. You are allowed to bring both.

But mostly, bring yourselves.