Our Temple, All Space

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday January 29, 2006


READING: from Our Endangered Values by Jimmy Carter

I believe that anyone can be successful in life, regardless of natural talent or the environment within which we live. This is not based on measuring success by human competitiveness for wealth, possessions, influence, and fame, but adhering to God’s standards of truth, justice, humility, service, compassion, forgiveness, and love.


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[extemporaneous introduction -- last night’s Circle Dinner and bacon-wrapped scallops...]


....these were my favorites when I was living on the island, so naturally I was eager to make them for all of you as well. But having never done them before myself, I was also naturally a little anxious about trying to prepare such an ambitious appetizer. Obviously, the first place I looked for an appropriate recipe was on Google, but I also e-mailed a bunch of my friends on Nantucket to see what kind of hints they could give me.

The most useful advice actually came from the “washed ashores,” since folks who grew up on the Island seem to have this information in their DNA, and tended to tell me things like “wrap the scallops in bacon, secure with a toothpick and broil until done.” One person told me about the last time they went scalloping and came home with only three scallops (one of which was empty)...which led to the advice “first, find some scallops.” But after pricing authentic Nantucket Bay Scallops at Whole Foods for $29.95 a pound, I decided to go with the frozen scallops from Trader Joe’s instead.

Another person cautioned me against using plastic toothpicks, while another advised me to soak the wooden ones in water for a half hour first in order to keep them from scorching under the broiler. A lot of people suggested partially frying the bacon beforehand, since it’s almost impossible to get the bacon crisp under the broiler without also ruining the scallops, which (as you probably know) sophisticated scallop connoisseurs simply eat raw right out of the ocean. So basically it’s the bacon you are trying to cook, and the most common mistake is to broil the scallops too long in the process.

This was also the advice given to me by the professional chef I dated briefly when I was still living on the island -- only she used the word “parcook,” and then suggested finishing the assembled appetizers in a sauté pan on the stove rather than under the broiler. But that just seemed like a little too much culinary technique for a novice like myself...maybe I’ll try it the next time instead.

And then without a doubt the most important piece of advice I received was not to cook them too far in advance. Apparently preparing bacon-wrapped scallops is a lot like preparing a sermon: there’s a lot you can do ahead of time in terms of research, and planning, and even selecting and preparing the various ingredients, but if you really want the best results you need to serve them up fresh out of the oven. A bacon-wrapped scallop is not exactly the sort of thing you want to prepare months in advance and then throw in the freezer and try to zap back to life in the microwave at the last second (although I did see a product kinda like that in the frozen food case at Crosby’s Marketplace, and if the price hadn’t been nearly a dollar a scallop I might even have picked up a package just for purposes of comparison).

Rather, the secret to preparing good scallops (and good sermons) is using simple, timeless recipes together with the best possible ingredients available, and to serve them up hot and fresh just in time for enthusiastic consumption by a hungry and appreciative group of friendly and forgiving people. And if occasionally they turn out just a little raw or half-baked, that’s still probably preferable to stale or burnt....


I do want to talk a little more specifically about the Ministry this morning, but not about MY ministry. Rather, I want to talk about OUR ministry -- the ministry of this church -- the things we do together as a community of faith to serve one another and the wider world. According to our historical faith tradition, Unitarian Universalists believe that EVERY human being is called by our Creator to both a general and a specific vocation or “calling” -- first to become the most honest and authentic people of faith we are capable of becoming, and then also to discern the unique gifts which each of us brings to the table in service of both God and Neighbor.

This particular set of beliefs is known as the doctrine of "the Priesthood of All Believers," and it has been an important component of our liberal theology since the time of the Protestant Reformation. Within our faith tradition, Clergy are not like caterers, serving up novel and exotic tidbits to satisfy the sophisticated tastes of worldly and demanding connoisseurs, or even a comforting spread of the same tried and true favorites, rehashed and reheated weekly for mass consumption. Rather, Unitarian Universalist congregations and their clergy work in PARTNERSHIP with one another, attempting always to bring out the best in one another, and together creating something collaboratively which none of us could have possibly created by ourselves.

Of course, the word minister does mean “servant,” and back in Medieval times much of the administrative and clerical work of the world was in fact done by clerics. The opposite of ministry (or at least its antonym) might be thought of as “Majesty” or more specifically, magister -- the Latin word for “master.” Sovereign rulers would employ both magistrates, who exercised secular authority in courts of law as representatives of the King; and also ministers, who took care of all the little administrative details which kept the kingdom running smoothly.

Ministers of the Gospel meanwhile served an even higher Sovereign, the “Master of the Universe” whose kingdom was not of this world, yet who had given the world the Church in order to serve and comfort the people of God. Here in colonial New England, Puritan ministers sometimes referred to themselves as “ambassadors of Christ,” who were responsible for representing the interests of THEIR Sovereign in much the same way that a foreign minister of some secular government might represent the interests of the King of England or France.

Yet whether humble or exalted, the fundamental work of ministry is service. And according to the doctrine of The Priesthood of All Believers, this is true regardless of whether you are an ordained member of the clergy with some sort of specialized theological education, or simply an ordinary member of a larger community of faith seeking to do God’s work in the world.

Last year just before the holidays I preached a series of sermons about “The Purpose Driven Unitarian” in which I talked about five key activities through which churches serve the wider world: Worship, Education, Fellowship, Community Outreach (which of course includes Social Action) and Pastoral Care. And now I’d like to pick up on that theme by talking a little about how individuals serve within the church -- how we discern our vocation, and discover our own unique “ministry,” as part of a larger faith community.

Of course (as anyone who has seen me out walking with my dog will quickly understand) it is one thing to hear the call, and quite another to answer it. And yet often it seems to me as though just the opposite is even more true -- sometimes we know perfectly well that we are being called to serve, but it seems as though there are so many different places where our efforts are needed that it’s hard to know where to begin. So the challenge of vocational discernment has at least these two components: first figuring out our own unique gifts for service, and then figuring out how and where we can best make use of them.

Discovering our own unique gifts for ministry involves a little bit of soul searching, and a good deal more simple trial and error. It’s not merely a matter of figuring out what we do best -- it also requires figuring out what gives us joy, and leaves us with a sense of accomplishment. In the so-called “real world,” a lot of us get stuck in jobs that we don’t really like but which we do competently enough that other people will give us money to keep doing them...and this is important, because SOMEBODY has to do those jobs, and we all have to eat.

But this should never really happen in a church. In church we are looking for the jobs that will feed us Spiritually -- perhaps not the easiest jobs, perhaps not even the jobs that we do best -- but jobs that stretch us, and allow us to feel like our efforts have really made a difference. And if there are certain jobs that nobody seems to want to do, perhaps it’s time to take a good, hard look at whether that job needs to be done at all. But all of the truly worthwhile jobs will eventually attract someone who considers that particular job worthy of their own best efforts.

And likewise, one of the key responsibilities of the church as a whole is to find a worthy job for everyone in the congregation. These can be big jobs or little jobs or even the very important job of watching others do their jobs and praising and encouraging their efforts. Believe me, there’s nothing like an appreciative audience to make someone feel like their work was worth the effort. And if they then feel inspired to lend a hand as well, so much the better.

The challenge of figuring out How and Where our service can do the most good is even more complicated. Sometimes the most meaningful jobs are not the ones that intrinsically give us joy, but rather those very difficult and troubling tasks where the needs seem overwhelming, and the rewards are not always easy to see. These are the jobs that threaten to break our hearts -- jobs which require a great deal of courage if we are to avoid becoming discouraged, and where the encouragement of others is especially important and appreciated. Yet these are often the most worthy jobs of all, because they allow us to express our most important and deeply-felt values, and even though the results of our efforts may seem small, they are intrinsically meaningful in their own right.

And let’s face facts. We are not always going to be 100% successful in everything we attempt. Actually, let me put this a slightly different way. We are NEVER going to be 100% successful in ANYTHING we attempt. Or if we are, we probably aren’t attempting to do enough. But we shouldn’t let this stop us. The call to ministry is a call to serve something infinitely larger than ourselves, and the work of ministry -- my ministry, your ministries, our shared ministry -- is never done.

I like to think of it as job security.

But just because we understand and accept that we are never going to be 100% successful doesn’t mean that we should think of ourselves as failures. Failure is an entirely different phenomenon altogether. In all walks of life, success is generally the result of a series of failures, and “overnight success” is usually the product of a lifetime of hard work. The only real failure is giving up: on yourself, on your dreams, on God.

I know it sounds a little corny to those of us who are really agnostics (or maybe even closet atheists), but God never gives up on us. So why should we give up on God?

Even if we don’t fully understand, even if we don’t really believe in the kind of Deity we were told about as children, the notion of a powerful Spirit of Creativity larger than our own will or personality, which we can look to for Hope and Inspiration and Encouragement, and which is Just, and Generous, and Compassionate, yet which will always remain ultimately Mysterious and beyond the control of human beings, is an idea in which we can learn to place our trust, a “theory” which helps to explain, however imperfectly, the reality of our experience.

And when we make the decision to serve that Creative Spirit, and to act compassionately and generously toward our neighbors, and to promote hope and defend justice in the world, we are engaging in ministry, whether we chose to believe it or not.

And still, the possibility of failure is a very real danger. In their insightful study of failure in warfare, Military Misfortunes, historians Eliot Cohen and John Gooch present a sophisticated paradigm for analyzing and understanding why some military operations go terribly, terribly wrong. “All battles are in some degree... disasters” military historian John Keegan has observed, but some battles are obviously more disastrous than others. According to Eliot and Gooch, many of these military disasters can be understood as some combination of three far more basic failures: the failure to learn, the failure to anticipate, and the failure to adapt. Any one of these failings is often enough to result in a defeat on the battlefield, while the combination of all three is generally a recipe for a catastrophic military debacle.

But even for those of us who are NOT responsible for planning and leading military campaigns, these same three failings present a similar (albeit somewhat less lethal) danger. What new lessons do we need to learn in order to be confident that our “intelligence” is accurate and up to date? What changes or potential surprises can we anticipate, and how do we prepare ourselves in order to meet those challenges when they occur? And perhaps most importantly, once we discover that a situation is not entirely what we expected, how quickly can we adapt in order to deal with the new circumstances in a timely and effective manner?

Traditional tactics that may have once worked well in times past may be outdated when it comes to overcoming more contemporary obstacles, while the tried and true strategies which allowed us to achieve the objectives of a previous generation may no longer be relevant or appropriate for accomplishing our current mission. Learning how to learn, anticipating the unexpected, and adapting ourselves rapidly to changing circumstances are the keys to overcoming the threat of failure and transforming potential defeat into victory. And it begins when we overcome our fear of trying new things, and embrace the challenge of attempting something we have never done before.

Finally, it’s not enough for just a few individuals within an organization to possess these qualities. They need to become widely shared by everyone, from top to bottom. The intelligence experts in Washington knew that the Japanese were up to something on December 7th, 1941; and had even cabled American military bases in the Pacific to warn them of the fact. But the commanders on the ground at Pearl Harbor -- Admiral Kimmel and General Shorter -- were slow to receive word of this alert, and then failed to anticipate its seriousness or communicate it back down through the chain of command.

Other early warning signs of the impending attack -- radar contact with the incoming planes, and an encounter with a Japanese submarine outside the harbor -- were likewise misinterpreted or ignored, so that when the Japanese struck that Sunday morning it was with complete surprise and devastating effect. And it was only their failure to adapt to the overwhelming success of their initial attack, and to press home their advantage by returning to destroy the fuel depots and repair facilities, that allowed the Pacific Fleet to recover from its defeat and fight another day.

Of course, nothing so serious as a surprise attack by a hostile foreign power ever seems to happen in churches. But the principles at work within the organization are very much the same. As a community, we actively need to encourage one another to learn new skills, to anticipate future changes, and to adapt ourselves to those changing circumstances. We need to communicate more effectively with one another about the things we have learned, so that we have a common understanding of our goals and our mission; and we need to teach one another the things we each need to know in order to accomplish that mission successfully. And when we do, we will have created a truly “shared” ministry. And the larger ministry of this Church will reach out into the world in ways we can now hardly imagine....