Being home for the summer is an interesting change. It is easy to get used to being at school, living and working among the self selected group that has much of the same interests you do is a different experience then living among your family and returning to the church that sent you to seminary in such a loving way.
I've been reading a lot about ministry and about what it is like to be in ministry. One thing that stuck out for me was something I read in "This Odd and Wondrous Calling" (wonderful book by the way). Lillian Daniel, one of the two authors, wrote about being an intern and how she was going to correct all the problems with the church with this great sermon. One of the people in the church commented how it was time for their annual lecture, because the intern was going to speak.
This stuck with me. When I was preparing to preach at my home church last Sunday I was trying to be cautious about not being a lecture. Yet it was a little challenging. I don't think the sermon could have been anything else. Overall it was about my first year at seminary. As I said, being a UU in a Christian Seminary is hard. Being a Christian in a UU church is also hard. I also talked about our tendency to avoid talking about who we are, about our differences and our real diversity.
This is something that is discussed well in "Engaging Our Theological Diversity" a 2005 report from the Commission on Appraisal. I really think Unitarian Universalism has a lot of unique potential. But this tension toward Christianity is something we have to work with. It is still something I have to work with. But being at school this year has helped a lot.
Our greatest ideals are about diversity and acceptance. Yet there are those who leave our churches because they feel rejected by the jokes about Christians, by the disdain toward spirituality. This does not live up to our ideals of acceptance.
Anyway, I was surprised by how positively the sermon was accepted and em brassed. There were many who thanked me for my words.
It's another reminder that you can never be sure who might need to hear what you have to say.
