Sermon: Coming Home – Rev. Eric Banner

I once worked at a Unitarian Universalist congregation that had a sign out front that said, “A home for the liberal spirit.” It wasn't the most prominent sign on the property, but I always loved the sentiment of it, because it captures the three things that, for me at least, are central to what our congregations are about. Spirit, liberalism, writ large, and a home, a place of rest, refuge, and rejuvenation. At least that's what I think a home should be. Which is also part of why no two homes are the same. And even over time the feel of a home changes.
Maybe you've had that experience. Perhaps you're busy raising kids right now and you went back to your folks place one day and saw a new sign on the wall—

“What happens at grandma's house stays at grandma's house.” Maybe some of you have that sign hanging up right now, and your adult children find themselves thinking “That isn't the way it was when I lived here...”

So we're here, at the launch of a new church year, and I tell you, I'm pretty excited about it all. If you read our moderator Pete Christensen's letter this week, you'll know that we are now 10 years out from the start of the building project that made possible the way we meet. If you've been following along these last few years, you'll know that, with the help and support of an awful lot of people, we've mostly finished the punch list that came with that project. Most of the time most of our building works, and with each passing year the calendar fills faster and faster. Our long-term relationship with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute that offers classes on weekdays from mid-September through May, because, as they say, curiosity never retires. Our expanding partnership with Judaism Your Way, because this place was not built to serve our needs alone, but to be a place where people of faith can gather together, living out the message that we need not think alike to love alike. Our own programs include a growing pagan community, meeting to celebrate the quarters and cross quarters throughout the year. A program for our children and youth that has spent years building the foundations so that we can now offer things like the Our Whole Lives sexuality education program across ages, and to help our kids come of age, knowing what they believe, and what we believe, and why. All week long I've been telling people about just how lucky I feel to walk into this building each week and realize I get to work here, my family gets to be part of this place, and it's because of all of you, because you make of this place a home for the liberal spirit.

That is what we are about here. Making a place for a new spirituality. Not one rotting away in the forest floor of a dead and distant past, but one rising from the rich hummus of the wisdom of the ages, and reaching for the sun that still shines brightly before us. Not one made of crumbling buildings, once filled with people, and now filled with rain that tumbles through the places where ceilings and roofs once stood, but one made of hope, and love, and possibility ever renewing.

It was the Rev. Eileen Karpeles, now of blessed memory, who wrote—

Out of wood and stone,
out of dreams and sacrifice,
the People build a home.
Out of the work of
their hands and hearts and minds
the People fashion a symbol
and a reality.

 

__May this house be truly
__a place of Meeting --
__meeting one with another
__in warmth and joy and openness;
__meeting one with another
__in courage and love and trust.

 

May all who enter here
trust one another so surely
that they dare to share the deep fires
that burst into anger
as much as the sweet springwaters
that swell into laughter;
the slow erosion of wounded tears
as much as the soaring song.

 

__May these walls know silence
__as a hundred hearts search inward
__each for its own small spark of hope
__that might otherwise
__be snuffed out in the noise.

 

May these rafters hear the voice of the child
as surely as that of the orator,
and the sound of the (guitar and piano),
the clack of the keyboard,
the swish of the broom,
and know that all are as holy
as the shout of a million stars.

This is the kind of home we build, and rebuild, each week here. A home where stories are shared, and hands are held, and what is learned here goes far and wide to change the world, and to change us.

Right now, this week, and in the weeks ahead, we are finishing the next phase of a conversation about what kind of home this will be, and for who, and how. For the last two years leaders from this community have helped guide a conversation about what the mission, you hear it every week, a sanctuary for spiritual growth, community, and connections, building the world we dream about together, what the mission that we freely adopted, calls on us to do and be here and now.

And it matters immensely that we do that work, here, and in our lives beyond. To take time to reflect on what kind of home we want to be part of, because no two homes are quite alike.

Will it be a home that serves as a refuge for those who have already found us, a place of meeting for the friends we already have, or will it be a place that invites in the stranger, assured of the wisdom that it is not enough to just open the door for ourselves, but to hold it for the one who comes behind.

Will it be a franchise, a cookie cutter of what someone thinks that all UU congregations should be, with the same words, the same themes, the same songs, week after week, or will it be a place where there is a new birth, rooted in this Colorado soil, in the shadow of these mountains and stretching out to the great plains beyond?

Will it be a home where we learn together, or one where we assume we already know everything we will ever need to know?

Will it be a place that proclaims the call of justice, here, and everywhere, reminding the whole world that lovingkindness, care, and compassion are our birthright, for each and every one of us, or will it be one where people walk in the door and get the sense that only a righteous few are included?

Will it be a house of good questions, or bad answers? Will it be a house of insight and wisdom, for ourselves and for our children, or will it be a home for rigidity that masquerades as a strength, but cracks apart in the storm of life, brittle to the core?

Our reading this morning came from that very first water communion service ever. Do you remember what it said -
“we see we must question every box, every definition, every assignment from an authority outside our own beings so that we can create and re-create for ourselves the rituals and symbols that give meaning to us. So we come together to question. To hear. To share. To speak. To inspire. And to celebrate through new rituals, knowing that our energy and our love are transforming.”

First Universalist has been many things over the last 130+ years. We aren't the little church on Colfax, or the congregation of wedges that was put up in 1958, or even the church of four years ago, when you welcomed my family in.

And so, we come home, to a place that is ever present, and ever changing. Like our own homes. The colors or the cabinets or the people in them shift as do the seasons of our lives, but we come home to be held by the people who love us, and who we love. The addresses change, but what makes of a house a home is not the numbers on the envelopes, but the needs within our hearts, and the ones we share them with. The music on the playlist shifts subtly over the years, keeping the songs that stand the test of time, and making new ones as each new generation discovers new possibilities. Classical and contemporary. Singer-songwriter and choral. Hymns from Southern Harmony and songs from the top of the charts. This home for the liberal spirit will not be the same next year, but what I hope will be the same is the values that we hold, and the way that we hold each other.

In care, and accountability—
In moments of celebration and in moments when we feel crushed—
In welcome, and in parting—
And most of all, in dedication and commitment to this world that is a gift, a miracle waiting for us to fall back in love with each and every day—
To find more of it all—
To find more of this.

So this Sunday, as we find ourselves coming home to a new church year, may we dedicate ourselves—

To the uplift of the human spirit, with the inspiration of the prophets and the people of every age who did the same;

 

To the practice of togetherness, in word, and song, and vision, that all might know what it means to belong;

 

To the concerns of our hearts, and to the troubles of the world, no matter how far away;

 

To the cultivation of arts, to exploration of the mind and soul, to justice making, and most of all to crafting ever more possibilities that celebrate this human being that is our lives;

 

To the education of children, to the guidance of the lost or despairing, to the care of all souls, and to the ennoblement of human life;

 

To hospitality of all, of every race and gender, of every age and theology, of every person of good will who walks through these doors, or joins us online, or reads something that we have created, together;

 

To the truth, as we know it now, or shall learn it in the days to come;

 

May we dedicate ourselves anew;

 

To the good we do, and the beauty we love;

 

To the heritage that has been passed down, and to the days that are yet ahead;

 

A gift freely given, gratefully received, carefully tended, and handed on to the ones we will never meet, but will know us by the world we leave behind.

Welcome home, everyone.

Welcome to First Universalist, and all that we will be, together.

Rev. Eric Banner
Senior Minister