Communion, Community

I'd like to remind you all that the 2009 Revival DVDs are now available through the UUCF Bookstore. Experience the Opening Worship and "useful righteousness" and the Keynote Worship featuring Bishop Carlton Pearson's Words of Life sermon. Watch for your own reflection. Share with your small group. Each DVD can be purchased for $15, shipping included, or you can order both for just $25. Buy multiple sets at the discount price of $20 a set. Such a deal!

Sharing the DVDs in your small group is a way to foster community and to extend the spiritual connection with UU Christians all over the world. One of the purposes of the UUCF Revival--and the UUCF--is to help build connections among us and to remind us that we are not alone. There are others who catch the spirit of Jesus as we do and who find God in many wonderous ways. At Revival, we regularly heard and experienced suggestions and ideas that we could integrate into our home fellowship groups.

Early Saturday evening, we joined in a Communion Service, led by Rev. Lillie Mae Henley. I have always been taught that the Communion service is a meal, commemorating the Passover meal on Holy Thursday that Jesus shared with his friends. If you look through the Gospels, you'll also notice that Jesus does a lot of eating and drinking with friends...and strangers and the curious and the outcast. I love that image of gathering around a table (even if it's an elegant altar and not my beat-up kitchen table) and reconnecting. Rev. Henley's sermon was touching and heartbreaking at the same time for she gave us the life of Jesus from his mother's perspective in Mary's own voice. And Mary had a mother's story to tell. Of her hopes and dreams for her son, of her confusion over his choices, of her deep sorrow at his death. The sermon reminded me that we share life around those dinner tables and breakfast tables. We create our communities at our meals, our picnics, our tailgate parties, our communion services. Take a look at the Communion Service on the UUCF Revival website. Use it, adapt it to bring communion to your own small group.

Later that Saturday night, those of us who had not yet traveled home gathered at a Tulsa restaurant called The Local Table. This was the day of the spring snow storm, and we drove through 6-inch slush to reach the restaurant. Most businesses in town had closed because of the storm, and the owners were delighted that we had not cancelled our reservation. Being a restaurant that uses locally grown food, they were looking forward to our large group. We found seats for 25 of us in a small room with the feeling of a darkened, cozy study with sleek furniture. Space was a little tight, but the conversation and energy flowed around the room and strengthened our bonds. Excellent food, excellent company. Communion.

The last official Revival gathering was the Closing Circle, led by Rev. Suzanne Meyer. At this traditional Revival ceremony, we formed a large circle to pray for safe journeys and to lift up special intentions and our home churches. One-by-one, we shared two things. The first was what we would take with us from the weekend, what would we remember, what would "keep us going".

The second was unexpectedly powerful to me. That was to simply state where we were traveling that day. This was the first time throughout the entire weekend that I grasped the geographic scope of the Revival participants. People had come from every corner and area of the US and from Canada. Though we are many, we are one body. Communion.

Where do you experience Communion in your life? In the past month, when did you experience the most tangible sense of connection, of community?

Jesus, The Wisdom Teacher

For all of you just joining us, I'm sharing experiences I had at the 2009 UUCF Revival in Tulsa in March, and we're using those experiences as springboards for discussion and reflection.

One workshop I attended that weekend was called "Saving Jesus from the Christian Right and Secular Left" and was moderated by a minister from the United Church of Christ. As one participant said, "I don't think that Jesus needs to be saved. He can do that for himself. But I'm willing to listen."

First, we watched a video from the Saving Jesus curriculum, a 12-week DVD-based study for small groups presenting leading religious voices of today, such as John Dominic Crossan, Matthew Fox, Marcus Borg, and Amy-Jill Levine. The sixth video is Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition and focuses on the oral tradition that Jesus used to greatest effect in his ministry--parables. Parables are an exquisite form of storytelling which ground the story in commonplace, everyday images, and then shifts perspective within the commonplace to make you think, sit up and take notice, or nudge your perceptions. The power of Jesus was his ability to create these stories with a radical force. He described the status quo: the Roman occupation, the status of Jews in society, the rule-based Jewish community. He showed how the status quo oppressed. Then he shifts. Through his storyline he tells his listeners that they are pure, worthy, everything that society tells them they are not.

I particularly valued the teaching that in reading all the parables, we should be on the lookout for not only personal sin, but also systemic sin; not only personal injustice, but also systemic injustice. Jesus was a master at showing both at the same time. The example parable is the one about the generous landowner and the laborers in his vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). Remember? The landowner hires laborers throughout the day and when the end of the day comes, he directs his manager to pay them all the same rate whether they worked a full day or only a few hours.

Jesus begins by saying the "The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner..." So we know that Jesus is going to describe the environment, our mind set, our internal moral compass the way God wishes it to be. The story is one of outrageous generosity. Underneath, two other realities arise. First, is the gut reaction we (and the grumbling laborers) have to such generosity. It's unfair. It's unjust. People should be paid at a rate reflecting the work they do. Jesus' first lesson is that we need to radically reorder our thoughts on this matter to create the kingdom of heaven on earth.

The second reality is more subtle. Here we are, at the height of the harvest season when it should be "all hands on deck" so to speak, but at the end of the day, there are still laborers milling around without a job, "Because no one has hired us." (v.7). Here is systemic injustice. There is something wrong with a system that has jobs available, but can not bring the workers and jobs together so that workers can work and jobs can be filled.

This second reality is evident even today. Jobs in the suburbs could be filled by workers living in the city, except for a lack of good public transportation and affordable daycare. High tech jobs go unfilled due to a lack of re-training for manufacturing workers and less emphasis on math and science in our schools.

Jesus often speaks on two levels; it's up to us to recognize it and become aware of the situation around us. Personal injustice and systemic injustice. If we tackle the systemic injustice, will all the personal injustices be resolved? What's better, putting our efforts toward systemic solutions like teaching the person to fish, or putting out the brushfires by feeding him today?

What do you think? What will you DO?

It Takes A Small Group...

One enjoyable aspect about the UUCF Revival in Tulsa was the opportunity to meet and talk with people from all over the country, from many UU congregations, and from many spiritual perspectives. At every meal, I chose a different table. At each workshop, I listened and learned and shared with a different group. At break times, we gathered in the comfortable arm chairs of the church library, rubbed shoulders as we viewed materials at the Book Sale, and found quiet corners for private chats. Revival also offered the more formal variety of gathering--small group sessions.

Each attendee was assigned to a group of 5 to 6 people, and that group met together three times over the course of the weekend. Our leaders used excerpts from a UUA Tapestry of Faith program called Spirit of Life as the source of topics. We lit a chalice, a UU practice that sets aside the time and space as sacred and draws us into the Divine. By way of introduction, we shared our signature motion or movement. We sang the beautiful hymn Spirit of Life and considered what the hymn means to us and why it's so popular. With pens and pencils, we drew our Spiritual Paths. We reflected on and discussed our prayer lives and composed prayers that tapped into our deepest needs. We offered each other affirmations. In just a short time, we shared on a level that many people never experience, even avoid. We practiced listening, brought our whole selves, and learned to trust the circle.

We modeled the Kingdom of God.

In the UU faith, such gatherings are collectively known as the Small Group Ministry. Some of the groups form for social purposes; others focus on service or social justice action. Still others are created specifically to carve out time and space for reflection on spiritual topics, deep listening and sharing. These are not therapy groups, except to give our Spirits the attention they crave. These are Covenant Groups, Spirit Groups or Chalice Circles. Our Revival small group experience illustrated how our Christian Fellowships in our own congregations might serve us better and teach us to regularly lead with our hearts.

It takes a small group to foster the feeling of connection within the large community. It takes a small group to support each other in spiritual growth. It takes a small group to learn how to listen, to accept, to allow the Divine in.

Do you have a small group of people with whom you regularly meet and share your spiritual self? What do you gain from the experience? What draws you back to the group time after time? If you don't have such a group, are you ready to make a commitment to one? Enough to seek out opportunities in your congregation or with spiritual friends?

It takes a small group to root us in a community of God's love so that we can sprout wings and fly into life.

"For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." (Matthew 18:20)

"Roots hold me close; wings set me free; Spirit of Life, come to me..." (#123, Singing the Living Tradition)

May it be so. Amen.