TALENT

a sermon preached by the Rev Dr Tim W Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday January 21st, 2007

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” -- Calvin Coolidge

READING: Matthew 25: 14-30

My joke this morning is so old not even Henny Youngman would touch it, but maybe with your help we can still make it work. I’ll give you the set-up, and then we can all say the punch-line together. This guy from the Midwest gets off the bus at the Port Authority in Manhattan, and having never been to New York before, he asks the first person he sees “Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?” And the New Yorker responds (all together now): “PRACTICE!”

Today’s sermon is the second in a little series of sermons I’m preaching as we count down toward our All Church Visioning Event on February 10th. Last Sunday, I spoke about “Time“ and the pressures of the so-called “extreme workplace,” as well as the important differences between “decisiveness” and “discernment,” and between living one’s life on the edge, and living at one’s center. And then two weeks from now I will be speaking about “Treasure,” and how we can best allocate the things we value most toward purposes which are truly worthwhile, and precious to us. And today’s topic, of course (as you can read in your order of service) is “Talent.” But all three of these themes come together around the larger question of how do we need to learn to “do church” differently here in the so-called “information age,” where Time is always at a premium, and our Talents and our Treasure often seem stretched to their limits?

In this first decade of the twenty-first century, truly meaningful connections with our fellow human beings often seem both easier to maintain and yet far more difficult to find in the first place. Our amazing communications technology has linked the entire globe together in real-time, yet often nowadays we find ourselves interfacing more frequently with our gadgets than actually seeing and talking with other people face to face. And as an historian, who basically spent several years of my life waking up every morning with my brain, at least, in the 19th century, this is fascinating to me.

175 years ago, when farmers from New England set out over the Oregon Trail in search of a better life in the Willamette Valley, they left their homes and extended families with the expectation that they might never see their loved ones again in this lifetime. Yet the quality of their correspondence, and their confident faith that they would someday be reunited again in a better place, created a palpable intimacy which sustained those relationships across the miles, and down over the years -- an intimacy often missing from our e-mails, and text messages, and long distance cellular phone calls today.

Yet at the same time, I look at things like the growth of Multiplayer On-Line Role Playing Games, and the proliferation of things like internet chat-rooms and the so-called Blogosphere, and I wonder what is the definition of a “real” community? More specifically, I’ve often asked myself the question: “Is there any future in a Virtual Church?” It seems quite possible, but I’m still a little skeptical. It seems to me that one of the principal attractions of the entire church experience is simply being a member of a “congregation” -- one of a group of people who have gathered in a meetinghouse in order to be together with their “neighbors and fellow creatures” on the Sabbath: a time set apart from the pressures and demands of the outside world in order to cultivate the possibility, at least, of profound relationship, and to create among themselves an authentic community.

And still, no matter how desperately we may seek to escape it, even if only for an hour, the relentless pace of the outside world still intrudes. No matter where we go, everything seems to move more rapidly today than it did two centuries ago. Attention spans are shorter, expectations are higher, people are less patient (or perhaps I should say, more impatient) and likewise more demanding. The desire to get whatever we want “Free, Perfect and Now” (which every consumer dreams of) may still be nothing but a fantasy, but even so, “Wholesale, the Very Best Available, and Overnight” has pretty much become the benchmark of excellent customer service these days, and the standard against which everything else is measured.

And this mentality has even trickled over into what academics and other experts who study these things sometimes call “Consumer Religion,” with it’s language of “marketing” to church “shoppers” by offering better “programs” and “services,” and promoting them with the same aggressiveness as any other commercial advertiser. Still, I think it’s important not to forget that Church has never really been a place where people come to acquire a commodity they desire. Rather, the church is more fundamentally a form of relationship...a community of faith, as well as a place where individuals congregate in order to learn how to bring out the best in themselves, and one another.

Which brings us at last to the topic of Talent. When I first arrived here at FRS nearly four years ago now, I asked our Nominating Committee to start thinking about their job a little bit differently than they customarily had in the past. Inspired by something I’d heard from Rebecca Parker (who is the President of the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley), I asked them stop thinking so much about how they could recruit enough people to fill all the various volunteer “jobs” in the church, and rather start thinking about how to find a meaningful job for every church member: something that matched their skills, their interests, and most importantly their availability, and still contributed to the overall mission and purpose of the church in a significant way.

And I’m very proud to say that, from my perspective at least, they have really stepped up to that challenge pretty well. Not perfectly, of course; nothing in life is ever perfect. There are still some jobs here at FRS that have to be done whether or not anybody in the church is perfectly suited for them and eager to volunteer, and there are always a few people who, for whatever reason, are kept in reserve or choose to take a personal sabbatical. But since a big part of the mission of a church IS precisely to help people discover and bring out their hidden talents, this kind of approach to volunteerism is a big improvement over the old-fashioned “who can we get to do THAT this year?”

Often times folks already have a pretty good idea of what they want to do at their church anyway; they are just looking for permission to get started. And since Unitarian Universalists are without a doubt some of the most interesting, creative and talented people I know, their ideas often share those same qualities. (Of course, because of what I do for a living, I have to admit that I don’t actually know a lot of people who AREN’T Unitarian Universalists -- or at least who ought not to become one).

But when we recognize that the REAL work of a church like ours is to attempt to bring out the best in ourselves and in the lives of everyone we encounter, deciding (or maybe I should say discerning) precisely what it is we want to do is perhaps just as important as getting it done.

This is probably a pretty good opportunity to say just a little bit more about our upcoming All Church Visioning Event. I’ve never really participated in anything precisely like this before myself, and our District Executive Lynn Thomas, who will be facilitating the event, assures me that it will no doubt be significantly different from similar-sounding events some of you may have experienced in the past yourselves. Our slogan is “Bring Your Passion, Create a Plan.” And it’s going to be much more than merely an exercise in brainstorming ideas -- most of us could probably brainstorm more ideas in an afternoon than we could ever possibly achieve in a lifetime. Rather, this is an opportunity for us to discern which of our dreams is truly most important to us, and to share those dreams with others; and then, in a relatively short span of time, to meet together in small working groups to flesh out the details and begin to create viable action plans right there on the spot for making those dreams come true.

And of course, all of this is generated by your enthusiastic participation, and your personal response to the big, overarching question (which we’ve heard restated in many forms): what do you most aspire to see here at FRS any time in the foreseeable future?

An activity like this All-Church Visioning Event not only provides a great opportunity for figuring out what is truly important to us as a community, and then bringing those things into sharper focus -- it also incorporates an alternative understanding of “Leadership.” If you never paused to think about it carefully, it might easily be assumed that leaders are supposed to lead, to be in charge. The leader is supposedly the one with vision, who has all the answers, and tells us what to do; the leader is supposed to make all the hard decisions and solve all our problems, and all we really have to do is follow along and not ask too many questions. There are a lot of people in the world who think of leadership in just this way, and they generally get exactly the leaders they deserve.

But real leadership is actually a lot more complicated than this. And Shared Leadership -- where the so-called “followers” actually have a meaningful voice in determining where they go -- is even more complicated still. I’ve long believed that in a church the size of FRS, at least one-third of the membership of the congregation ought to have some sort of active, leadership role: which is to say that they have the authority to make independent decisions within their own agreed-upon area of responsibility, and also to organize and facilitate the participation of others, who may be perfectly willing to help with the tasks, but don’t want to have to take the time to figure it all out for themselves. And all this takes place within the framework of a larger set of well-understood and widely-shared organizational objectives, which they themselves have helped to create, and are deeply committed to.

I was talking with a colleague the other day who is having a little trouble getting the lawn mowed at his church on a regular basis. Actually, he’s been having this same problem for years. Every once in awhile someone will suggest to the Parish Committee that the church ought to just go ahead and hire a lawn service; then someone else will complain that it’s stupid to pay perfectly good money to hire someone do something that church members are perfectly capable of doing themselves, and who may even offer to take on the responsibility of organizing a group of volunteers (or at least serve on a committee charged with that duty), but before too long, the task of organizing volunteers to cut the grass becomes even more time consuming than actually cutting the grass itself; people get busy, and can’t or don’t follow through, the lawn becomes overgrown, and someone else suggests to the Parish Committee that the church really should just go ahead and hire a lawn service....

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Just because we may be capable of doing something ourselves doesn’t necessarily mean that we ought to. Sometimes (in fact, often times), Time truly is more valuable than Money. Sometimes our Talents truly are better utilized in other ways.

Whenever I hear the word “talent,” I immediately associate it with musical talent -- something which this congregation is truly fortunate to be blessed with in abundance, and which I deeply appreciate because I have so little of it myself. Yet as any talented musician will tell you, it doesn’t really matter how “gifted” one may be, talent needs to be carefully and diligently developed in order to achieve its full potential. Those of us in the audience may witness the performance and feel overcome with awe, but it only countless hours of practice and rehearsal which make that performance possible.

I’ve never really been certain exactly what the distinction is, but in my understanding Practice is about building skill and proficiency through learning and repetition, while Rehearsal is generally about improving quality and consistency through focused practice of a particular piece of music. But obviously, there’s not really a sharp or clear distinction between the two -- at least not that I can see. And Performance, too, has a dynamic relationship to Practice and Rehearsal. I’m told that it is possible to become over-rehearsed, in that through too much repetition the passion is sometimes drained out of the performance; and also that improvisation is only possible after hours and hours of devoted practice. And naturally there are some pieces of music which are so difficult and complex that they are simply impossible to perform without significant practice, and rehearsal.

But if you stop to think about it, the music itself doesn’t really care whether we are practicing, or rehearsing, or performing. We perform before an audience. We rehearse with our fellow performers. We practice by ourselves. The process of learning and playing our part brings out and develops our natural talent, and improves our mastery of the music itself. And then ultimately, it is in the act of sharing that music that our talents find their full expression, and expand beyond merely our own personal pleasure and satisfaction.

And then there is always the Parable of the Talents, which has taught our civilization for two millennia now, that it is not the amount of talent we have, but what we do to develop our talents, that truly matters. So take that lesson with you as you leave this place, and return to the demands and the pressures of the world beyond these walls....