The Virtue of Generosity

". . .The goal [of giving] is too manifest to the world a faith that by gathering together in free religious communities we also gather the financial, moral and spiritual resources to accomplish great things."

-The Rev. Silvio Nardoni

Forgive me if that sounds too negative or cynical or pessimistic.

It’s in my nature to be pessimistic, or, as I like to tell my cheerful and ever optimistic spouse, Sabrina , “realistic.” As playwright Ferenc Molnar said in the morning’s reading, “I’m just a pessimist, and unfortunately, in this world of ours, the pessimists turn out to be right.” Believe me, I want to be proven wrong. Even once will do.

So let me begin by saying that I love this church. And when I say that, I am not talking about the building, though I love the building, too. Our Puritan ancestors made a very clear distinction between the building--which they called the “meeting house”--and the church, by which they meant the people, or in their colorfully archaic language, “a company of saints by calling. . . .” For the Puritans, the company of saints included both the visible--those still present here on earth--and the invisible: all those who have passed on to their heavenly reward. The church was both of this world and of the world beyond.

The old Puritan theology with its threat of hellfire and brimstone no longer works particularly well for us Unitarian Universalists, but the distinction between the building and the people does. I have even known a few Unitarian Universalist saints. Leaving aside for a moment, then, the meeting house, let me offer a few reflections upon the church--upon this particular local congregation--which, our Puritan Congregational forebears would have recognized as the complete embodiment of the church universal. Like every church I have ever served, ours is a church of saints and sinners, of angels and curmudgeons, of liberals and conservatives (though even our conservatives tend to be flexible), even (I need to remind you on occasion) of Democrats and Republicans, of gays and straights, of Humanists and Theists, of Christians and Atheists, of Agnostics galore; of the flawed and imperfect and of the beautiful, the guilty and the innocent, the cheerful and the sad, the optimists and the realists--oops, I mean the pessimists--the believers and the doubters. In short, we are made up of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But as Bill Staines’ catchy little song reminds us, “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir.” Everyone has her or his part to sing in the great choir of life. And like every church I have ever served, this one is precious. It is an attempt--however flawed, however misguided, however failed--to build the beloved community here on earth. Sometimes we miss the mark here--the literal definition of “sin”--but occasionally we succeed beyond our wildest dreams or desserts. From my perhaps unique vantage point, I get to see both the worst and the best of who we are. And for me, that best far outweighs the worst.

True, we don’t always live up to our ideals, but the miracle is that we do so more often than you might expect. Sometimes we are too complacent. Sometimes we are mean. I know that I sometimes say things I regret, and I assume that you do as well. But at least we are making the effort, which is more than a lot of people are doing. Yes, we could do better. Yes, we could be more outspoken, take more risks, speak more truth to power. I personally confess to all those shortcomings, and more. We could do better, and be better, than we do and are. I know that. I must share the responsibility for our failures, just as I am more than happy to share it for our successes.

But the fact is, I tend to see the world as a pretty constant struggle. At the most basic or fundamental level, it is the struggle to survive. But it is also the more mundane struggle just to get by, just to keep our heads above water, to keep smiling in the face of adversity and of all the little, seemingly insignificant but often profoundly troubling disappointments of our days. Almost all of us are more aware of our failures than our triumphs. Almost all of us are too hard on ourselves. Not that we don’t need correction occasionally, but that we also need forgiveness for ourselves and others. And that is what building the beloved community is all about. It is about learning to live with our imperfect selves and with other imperfect selves in this very imperfect world. It is not all sunshine and happiness. We know, if we have been around very long, that suffering is real. We know that no matter how seemingly good we have it, all of us carry secret wounds and burdens of self-doubt. I’m sure I’m not the only one present here who is always alert to hear the the sound of other shoe dropping. . . .

By the way, I love this meeting house, too! Yankee as I am, New Englander to the spare and chilly core, I cannot think of a space more compatible to my own, personal spirituality. I love the formality and the beautiful simplicity of this space even as I am sometimes frustrated by it’s limitations. I once called it “a visual prayer,” and I still think that is an apt description. I love the sense of history and tradition that it embodies. But I also love that we use it hard and well, that it hasn’t been turned into a museum yet, and that it rings loudly with the voices, feet, and elbows of our children.

I also lie awake at night every time the wind blows wondering if it will survive the storm. I know how constant, how unrelenting, is its upkeep, and how expensive, and how it is our responsibility. I love our steeple, but I also notice when the paint begins to peel away. Is that rot I see? I worry about what will deteriorate next, and when, and whether we will be able to afford to fix it.

Oh, I know I am just a worry-wart. That’s always been my particular burden to bear. But believe me when I tell you that the worry is real, for me at least, for both the church and the meeting house. I know how fragile both of them are, this congregation and this old building, and how little it would take to destroy them, and I worry sometimes that I haven’t done a good enough job of informing you about the needs of either.

(Before we completed our renovation project, I worried to a few members of this congregation that I really didn’t want to be remembered as the minister who ruined this landmark meeting house! Similarly, I don’t wish to be remembered as the minister who ruined this wonderful church.)

In spite of all the reservations I’ve expressed about our shortcomings, I believe that we have accomplished some incredible things over the last ten years. A glance at any of our annual reports from the last five years would show you how far we have come in financial terms, and a visit to our wonderful new and highly utilized space beneath this sanctuary would give an idea of how much new energy there is at work here.

The statistics are there for those who enjoy such things. We have succeeded in growing not only numerically, but, I would like to think, spiritually as well. We have more opportunities for participation and for spiritual growth at all ages than ever before. Our Young Church program is growing. Our music program is growing. Our adult education program is growing. Our staff has grown and professionalized to a remarkable extent. We are busier than ever and, because of our new space, we are more visible in our community. We are doing more outreach and contributing more to the community, building upon the long and prophetic ministry of Bert Steeves and the commitment of those who have been part of the congregation a lot longer than I have, and all those who have gone before: our invisible saints, to borrow the Puritan typology.

We are also being more generous than ever before, both within this congregation, and without, in the larger community beyond these walls.

But--and it’s a large “but,” I admit--all of this costs money. And it gets more expensive all the time. Health insurance costs alone account for substantial increases in our yearly budget. The mortgage obligations on our renovation project will add another 5% to our operating costs. Salaries and benefits for staff, light, heat and upkeep of our buildings, and program costs keep going up, and all the evidence there is indicates no reason to believe that they are ever going to come down!

In my description of this sermon for the newsletter, I asked how committed we are to what my colleague Silvio Nardoni in the morning’s reading called “the virtue of generosity” in our lives and in our congregation? I mentioned that when Jesus went up to Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday, he was thoroughly committed to his message of radical social and religious change. He really wanted to change the world, and we all know what it cost him to try. That is about as generous as it gets! I guess the bottom line is, how committed are we to our own liberal religious message of freedom, reason, tolerance, and compassion? How committed are we to striving to build the beloved community here on earth? How committed are we to changing the world? I know that not all of us are prophets willing or even able to die for what we believe; I know that’s the extreme. But how committed are we to at least making sure that there is a liberal religious voice included in the marketplace of ideas? Yes, I know that we are not all that we should be or all that we could be, not yet--and I know that we could be doing much more. But we are doing a lot, and I believe that we are changing lives. If we are waiting for perfection before we decide to make the commitment, we might as well give up the ghost. Because, believe me, the resources are already rolling in to those who oppose most of the things we stand for and believe in.

I know that we all expect to get something from our participation in the church. I know that we all want something tangible back. But our participation here has got to go beyond the consumer mentality so common in our everyday lives. And spiritual things are not always tangible. As my friend Silvio wrote, “My faith is that if we teach generosity consistently and with fidelity to the liberal religious tradition that bear, we will have enough money to do ‘great things.’ That,” he said, “is not a provable statement; just an article of faith.”

It is an article of faith for me, as well. I truly believe that we can do great things here at the First Religious Society in Newburyport if we all practice the virtue of generosity in our lives. And something else I can tell you, though there is absolutely no proof I can offer for this, either: generosity, whether of your time or your money, makes you feel good. There is a saying that we should “give until it hurts.” The fact of the matter is, the more you give the better it feels. But don’t take my word for it: try it yourself and see if what I am saying isn’t true.

In spite of my constitutional realism, I believe that there is no limit on what we can accomplish or what we can become. But we have to take ourselves seriously enough to make our church a priority in our lives. It can’t be the last thing we think about when we are making our financial plans. We can’t leave it up to someone else to do it for us or carry our weight. Generosity has to begin with us. Well, there, I’ve tried to convince you, and I am sorry if I have offended you. When you are asked to make a pledge in the next few weeks, I hope that you will consider all that I have said. And if you are not asked for some reason, I hope that you will still make one anyway! As it says in a very famous book, “By their fruits you shall know them.” I really believe it is true. I really do. Thank you for listening, and God bless. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock