Author: Scott Wells

Universalist minister in Washington, D.C.
Posted on

Working to help the hungry: thoughts public and private

I live in Washington, D.C., and I care deeply about my city. In particular, I hate when it becomes an eponym for political misdeeds or a focus of scorn. Remember: the 600,000-plus people of the District of Columbia don’t even get voting representation in Congress. And the Congress reserves for itself the power of our purse. And one part of one party has made a hostage of the budget, and with it he livelihoods of many friends and neighbors in the greater Washington metropolis and worldwide.

Despite the jokes of the lazy civil servant, many of these workers are not particularly well-paid (even in the Congress staff itself) and furlough days have taken a bite. How long will it be when some of these same civil servants will need food assistance, even as the programs are on ice? That members of military qualify for SNAP (food stamps) is itself a shame, lest anyone forget.

Baked into the conflict is what the proper role of government should be, and even if the current impasse is quickly resolved, it’s hard to imagine a happy outcome when that one part of one party is dedicated no less to anti-government than anything else. Which makes me question the natural churchly impulse to private, charitable solutions to social harms, like hunger. Isn’t that just playing into an anti-government script? Especially since churches can barely keep their doors open. The same can be said of many secular non-profits. There’s just not enough labor, leadership and plain old money to restore public needs to charity.

But there’s also the difference between a regularly-operating government and a crisis. Today we have a crisis and so today we have a responsibility to give more to charities that pick up where government initiatives fail. (Our task tomorrow is to push the vandals out of office.)

OK: let’s look at a couple of good ideas that other places could emulate.

  1. The DC Food Finder a “project of Healthy Affordable Food For All” maps meal programs, food distribution sites, mutual aid, market alternatives and the like.
  2. One of the market alternatives is the Healthy Corners program, which supplies produce to corner markets in poorer parts of the District. See the video, too.
  3. SHARE DC (SHARE Food Network) provides set packages of low-cost groceries; participants subdivide and package the food. It’s managed by Catholic Charities and operated through neighborhood churches.
Posted on

A small thought now the health exchanges have opened

One of the most proud institutional accomplishments from the UUA in the past decade or so was the creation of a health plan that a half-time-plus Unitarian Universalist pro could join. But it was and is quite expensive, and it always seemed like the coverage of last resort to me. (I was covered by my husband’s plan in my last pastorate, about a decade ago.)

But now — well, for plans beginning January 1 — Americans don’t risk uninsurability. We can go to the exchanges. So will this mean the accomplishment and the real tangibile benefit of the UUA providing a health plan will end? And does it mean it should end? I know that, if I were in a parish and buying coverage (and I manage the employee health insurance plan at work) I would go with D.C.’s exchange. That’s a basic economic decision, and not a close call.

Posted on

Sermon: "I hate change"

The notes I used when I preached at Universalist National Memorial Church on Rally Sunday, September 8, 2013.

Rally Sunday marks a new year, therefore marks change.

Let me be clear, this is a new-year sermon.

You may hear another new year’s sermon in January, or at the beginning of Advent, but today is Rally Sunday and in our corner of Protestantism, it’s when the churches come back to full activity. It coincides with the new school year – back when the schools opened after Labor Day.

It has distant echoes of successful summer work at the farm. A change like harvest; with mixed images to life and death.

Of course, it’s easy to take the metaphor too far, but there’s a value – even joy, even a blessing – in marking New Years. The world’s Jews have just observed Rosh Hashanah, for instance.

But a new year is also an implied threat. A new start means change, and as we know, not all change is good. Birthdays can remind us about loose skin and loose teeth and lost ideals.

Change happens. I hate change.

This important fact cannot be understated. I’m happy in my marriage, work and home life, and I have a string of settled habits to prove it. There’s my favorite brand of tea, and a familiar path to work. I have a go-to place to order my clothes and shoes, when they need to be replaced. My husband Jonathan and I have the same basic order at our favorite Sichuan restaurant; being regulars, the waitress anticipates our order.

This might sound like boring routine to some of you, and perhaps it is. But stability allows for growth, contentment and happiness. I don’t have to think about some things that don’t need to be thought about. What can be wrong with that?

And I’m not averse to a risk, not afraid of a bit of experimentation – but I have standards for acceptable risk, and don’t stray from them. I used to think I was adventuresome, but that’s simply not true, and I’m OK with that.

I’m happy. Crises are few, resources are sufficient and I’ve lived long enough to know – or to think I know – what’s important and what’s not.

Not to brag, but to simply recognize (with a dose of thanksgiving) that I think my life is going pretty well right now, and perhaps I shouldn’t say any more. I don’t want to press my luck with you. I only want to set a scene.

Perhaps you, too, feel this way about your life. Or you did at one time.

If people live in an accustomed equilibrium, and it has its own rewards you can see why change need to prove its worth. It can even be a threat. After all, a comfortable, convenient seasons of life can be very short, and remembering harder times can wake them still feel very fragile.

Looking back, through my mind’s eye, to some of the people I’ve known – some still with us and some now gone – and I know they would have given anything for ordinary, boring, stable, peaceful happiness.

And perhaps that’s your story now because there too much – well, too much life going on right now.

Uncontented people may welcome change more, if the prospects are good.

Revolutionaries in every age know that, if you want to change the government, you need to appeal to those who have the most to grain in the new regime.

And if the current situation is really bad, anything will seem better. Even the unthinkably costly – one’s freedom, one’s home, one’s life — has the merit of being different than what exists now.

But it needn’t go that far. Like other important parts of our life — being born, falling in love, experiencing loss, approaching death – coping with the changes of life welcomes a theological response. And finding a healthy theological response in one of the reason’s this church exists.

Which brings us to that plain and obvious truth: Change is inevitable.

Whether desired or not, change is inevitable.

It comes for individuals and communities alike. We respond to changes outside us, and our responses change how we act. Even refusing to change makes us change.

The rent goes up: we move or economize, for instance. Family members get sick: we change our plans and routine to accommodate then. Government policy shifts: we rally supporters or re-frame further action.

This new year, in the autumn, is less about the endless possibilities of new life, and more about gathering harvests and taking stock of what we have done, and how far we have gone. How far we have gone, and what we hope to do or be, and how much time and energy we may have to accomplish it.

And for many of us who live in Washington, whose lives connect and revolve around issues of public policy, we know all-too-well that the product of our life work can be eroded or even swept away by powers and circumstances we cannot control, and may not even understand.

Everything that’s born must some day die. Willful passivity is no escape.

But we do have resources to make the best of it? And what about those challenges from scripture?

How we interpret change.

These are some of the images that speak to us from scripture. The two big images that pop out of the lessons today are (first) that God is like a potter who can choose to work on us, or discard the work put into us, and (second) that the basis of relationship an ideal follower of Jesus should have is as a student – “disciple” literally means “student” – who disowns family.

If you want to empty a church, start with this passage from the Gospel of Luke. In the beginning of the passage, Jesus was speaking to “large crowds” – and not like a celebrity motivational speaker. The gospel says these large crowds traveled with him. They were a community, and Jesus’ threatening message was about the basis and limits of that community.

But we hear these words differently than the first hearers would. The potter’s transforming art surely was more like we’d see an architect or engineer today. And the requirements of family unit then must have made Jesus’ demands particularly threatening, perhaps as a test or lesson.

Let’s consider the part of today’s gospel reading that causes the most heartburn:

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

But the direct way’s not how I think that should be read. It certainly isn’t the way it has been lived among faithful Christians for millenia. So, what do we do?

The approach to scripture in the liberal churches requires us to inquire broadly, even using our imagination and personal experience. Sometimes, we need to look at scripture sideways. If we don’t or won’t approach scripture broadly, it’s too easy to treat the Bible as a cookbook for lunatics – easy to discard as irrelevant – and we’d all be poorer for that.

Let’s take a slightly less alarming line from the same passage:

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Of course, some people have given up all their possessions, retired from the world and followed Christ. Or they gave up all and dedicated themselves to lives of perfect service. The early ascetics in the desert come to mind in the first case; Mother Theresa, say, in the second.

But they are so far in the minority that if these alone are Christian than there are nearly none in the world. (Some would agree with that assessment.)

In any case, we can change what acceptable behavior means. Slavery was once accepted; now it’s viewed with horror. The same goes for infanticide. Growing, if imperfect consensus, worldwide is for cooperative action in international conflict, democratic participation and accountability in government and access to basic education. And if the realization of these goals seems laughably far off, think about the state of affairs 50 years ago. Or 500 years. Or 5,000 years. The hard work is changing behavior in a way that means more blessing for more people.

I say this to remind us that we do not live in the same moral worlds that Jeremiah or Jesus lived in. I think we’re in a bigger, and in many ways better world than then.

Jeremiah’s ministry ended 2,600 years ago; Jesus’s about 2,000.

We do not just live in the same world as they do. Times changed.

For people new to Universalism, know that the affirmation of faith we read together a few minutes ago descends from one more than 200 year ago – I’ll link to it in the web version of this sermon, to be found later this week at the church website: universalist.org.

It ended on this high note:

“holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected, and… believers ought to be careful to maintain order and practice good works; for these things are good and profitable unto men.”

Holiness is a closeness and likeness to God, perfected in our behavior. We cannot be God, but we can can respond to life in God-imagining ways, and enjoy the true happiness that results from it. We can be wise and constant, a source of blessing, seeking and active. And minding God’s arc of time: expectant yet patient.

Jeremiah’s parable of the potter and Jesus’ call to follow him are both challenges – and not subtle challenges – that this closeness and likeness to God requires definitive and deliberate action.

Now, how do we put this into practice?

For one thing, we rely on other people to gauge what’s important and valuable – sometimes as a good example, sometimes bad.

The collective experience informs our personal experience, and – and this is a hallmark of the liberal church — our personal experiences – plural – inform our collective experience. The flow of influence is both ways.

Adaptability is key

The first response to change – wanted or not – is adaptability.

Adaptability for each of us personally. Adaptability in our households and family life. Adaptability in this church. Adaptability in this city and the nation. Together, this will make the world better than if we let the ages wash over us, helplessly.

That means looking to the various specialties we know in other parts of our lives – organizing, project management, communication, art, business, medicine, and others – with what they have to teach, not only how we run our church but about how we identify what’s important.

Theology in plain, living language

Another response is expressing what we believe in a plain, direct and lively way. This seems pretty basic, but like any developed culture, high-level theology has a specialized and often very technical language that can hide and confuse understanding instead of bringing clearer insight. If we talk about God, if we talk about our relationships, if we talk about our worship, if we talk about our lives, if we talk about our fears in a specialized language, it’s easy to believe that the answers we develop here are profoundly different than found in other
parts of our lives.

Speaking clearly and meaningfully about God and Jesus, human nature, the world and the future, sin, community and the future is longhand for the work of theology. It’s not short, but it’s something each of us can understand.

And we can use this voice as a tool for better theological life.

As I said at the start, I hate change, but that itself may change. A new day will come – a new day always comes – and we need to be ready for it.

Faithful and eager, prepared and awake.

Ready to be rallied for flexible and practical and public expressions of how faith should be lived. Join me, join me this Rally Sunday.

Posted on

The Atheist Church hubbub

There’s been a bit of agita in the Unitarian Universalist blogophere about the propagation of The Sunday Assembly, an atheist church (or church-like experience) that’s getting a lot of buzz.

I wrote about The Sunday Assembly in March, and don’t have more to say on the subject. But whiff of impinged ownership I hear from some Unitarian Universalists — that the Assembly should align with us, or that Assembly-goers should go to Unitarian Universalist congregations instead — makes me chuckle. As Unitarian Universalists, I’ve noticed that we lack the capacity to make a grand, new religious expression — Humanist, Christian, Plural, something else — and even create practical and ideological barriers to success, but then get bent out of shape when anyone else does what we could or should be doing. Or simply pretend that the other effort is a clone of what we do (or think we do.) The flourish of theological universalism among Christian Evangelicals comes to mind. So does alternate Unitarian and Universalist jurisdictions.

The Sunday Assembly will have its own problems. It lacks generations of accumulated wealth churches have. Lacks the experience of managing crisis, and developing leaders. And popular movements often rise and fall as fast as they rise. But what they do is their accomplishment or failure. Some Unitarian Universalists might offer help, but the Sunday Assembly is its own thing and displays of jealously don’t help.

Posted on

The red hymnal on Earth 2

So, Hubby and I sometimes imagine a version of Washington, D.C. according to an alternative historical timeline, on a planet we call Earth 2. With today’s realities a bit different, changed by what-could-have-been. The garden variety stuff of science fiction.

And somehow this thought brings me to the thought of Jewish liturgics. OK: I watched several hours of Yom Kippur services from Reform temples on streaming video, but I’ll address that later. Now, I’m going to wade out into the liturgical habits and controversies of another religion, and that’s usually a bad idea, so I ask your indulgence for a moment. Let it be granted that the liturgical innovations of the earlier Reform Jewish generations are commonly portrayed (fairly or not) today as imitating Protestant worship, particularly in predominant use of English, hymn singing; sometimes, rabbinical dress. Reform worship has, in succeeding generations, become more traditional in custom, particularly in its use of Hebrew. (There’s a countervailing movement I’ll try to get back to; again, later.)

But, being Protestant, I’m curious to see what they came up with.

And what did I find? A Reform hymnal contemporary to the 1937 joint Unitarian and Universalist Hymns of the Spirit (“the red hymnal”). Thus my Earth 2 moment. Really, it’s also a parallel to the old Beacon Song and Tune Book: they both include fully-worked services for children. It’s the Union Hymnal.

I’ve round references to the Union Hymnal in print until the 1950s. The one linked here, despite the earlier bibliographical information is from 1936.

It’s not so unlikely a parallel development. There was a time (before this) when the most progressive Unitarians and Reform Jews made goo-goo eyes at each other. (Not sure off-hand if any Universalists joined in.) The 1937 joint Unitarian and Universalist Hymns of the Spirit (“the red hymnal”) starts with a Jewish hymn: “Praise to the Living God”, co-translated by Unitarian minister Newton Mann and Reform rabbi Max Landsberg. It’s also found in the most recent Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition at 215.

And here it is; note there are more stanzas than we use.

The connection cuts both ways, with Unitarian-written texts in the Reform hymnal: here, here, here, here and doubly here. I’m sure there are more.

A resource to review, methinks.

Posted on

Universalist retro wall plaque

While I writing my blog post about Bible-quote wall hangings, I recalled a small “suitable for framing” poster of the 1899 Universalist “Five Principles” a former (now deceased) church member gave me.

Five Principles poster

I had made a scan of it to share, but can’t find that I had ever done. Over the years, the odd attack and data failure has taken it toll. Or I never put it up.

Let me remedy that.
Five principles poster (PDF, 4.4Mb)

Here’s the text:

Our Universalist Faith
The Universal Fatherhood of God; the Spiritual Authority and Leadership of His Son Jesus Christ; the Trustworthiness of the Bible as containing a Revelation from God; the Certainty of Just Retribution for Sin; the Final Harmony of All Souls with God…