Part 1

Hospitality. What comes to mind when you hear that word? What’s your definition? 

Here’s one that comes from Catholic priest Henri Nouwen: “primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.”

Congregations like ours try our hardest to create such a space of hospitality whatever the particular activity or event might be, but especially and above all in the experience of worship. And so we might sing

Come, come, whoever you are

Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving

Ours is no caravan of despair

Come, yet again, come

or we might sing

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table!

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days hallelujah! 

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table!

Gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

Especially and above all, in the experience of worship: we want there to be a spirit of welcome, of invitation, of hospitality.  

But now I want to share with you something I found in the archives of one of the congregations I used to serve—the one in Atlanta. It’s a real letter from 1974, sent to that congregation’s Membership Chair:

Dear Mr. Chairman, 

I wish to withdraw my membership from the UU Congregation of Atlanta.

Having been a member of the congregation since 1925—I do this with great regret. 

But I believe that a church should be somewhat spiritual and inspirational. Not an organization so completely devoted to the development of the arts—music, drama, etc., civic responsibilities and entertainment. 

Your current program of “Jazz and Poetry” for Sunday morning service illustrates my feeling for what this church now stands for. And I cannot, with conscience, completely adhere to such a program. 

Sincerely,

Mrs. J. V. Rogers

And that’s the letter. Here’s someone who had been a lifetime member of the Atlanta congregation–for 49 years!–but there were changes taking place and Mrs. J. V. Rogers could care not even a little bit what the intentions behind them might have been. All she knew is that she hated the result. It made her feel like a stranger to her own congregation. 

Things used to feel friendly, but no longer…

Now, ESP is something else that ministers are not taught in seminary, so I can’t parapsychologically divine what was really behind Mrs. Rogers’ big feelings. She says she doesn’t like the new “Jazz and Poetry” program, but maybe what’s really going on is that she just doesn’t like the new minister, who is so very different from the previous long-settled minister whom she loved and trusted, and so when the new minister brings in this new, wacky “Jazz and Poetry” idea, well, enough’s enough! Or, maybe her husband just passed, and it’s only because of him that she’d stayed loyal to the congregation in the first place. But now that he’s gone, she can finally escape. 

In short, Mrs. Rogers’ complaint against the “Jazz and Poetry” program might simply be a way for her to save face and to facilitate her leaving in a way that leaves her “one up” and the congregation “one down.” I mean, who knows??

But let’s take her complaint at face-value. And when we do, it brings to mind two different worship style preferences that leaders in churches and congregations of all denominations must reckon with. Two different worship style preferences that cut across race and class and educational background and ability and on and on. We do well to bring awareness to them as we think about what our West Shore worship is like and how well it evokes that “welcome table” hospitality feeling….

The first of these worship style preferences is suggested by, for example, whenever we do our For All That Is Our Lives segment. Today’s service is busy so if you’ve never experienced this amazing ritual before, come back again! In this ritual, there is slowness and mystery and silence. It begins with me walking in silence, slowly, to our main chalice, and then I walk, slowly and in silence, to the floor, to light a smaller chalice. When that chalice catches flame, Dave creates a tinkling sound on the piano to emphasize the mystery of what is happening. The ritual flows on. People line up to come to the front, to place a stone which symbolizes something they are carrying in their hearts, and the process is completely introverted. When people have placed their stone, they walk past me to their seats. Many folks accept my offer of a hug, but no one has to. People can pass by in silence, and that is beautiful too. When the rite concludes, I take the basket full of prayer offerings–written down on the yellow cards–and I hold that basket tenderly, like it’s a child, and then I step back up to the chancel, and I place that basket on our altar, and everyone is singing For All That Is Our Lives, and my back is to you because what I am doing is praying over the cards which record your requests. 

This first of worship style preferences, in other words, is a preference for a feeling of depth and stillness and a privacy of emotional experience. It’s a preference for worship being set up in such a way that your solitude feels protected even as you sit in a sanctuary with hundreds of others. What’s happening inside you stays inside you—an introvert’s version of Las Vegas rules. Music which reflects this worship style preference tends to be classical music; sermons which reflect this worship style preference tend to be highly cerebral; language and ritual which reflect this worship style preference tend to be formal and emotionally cool, and: THERE IS NO CLAPPING. 

For lots of people, no matter what their race and class and educational background and ability and on and on happen to be, THIS is what authentic spirituality feels like. Inspiration happens like THIS. 

But then there’s a second worship style preference, very different from the first. This second style preference is clearly suggested by people’s wild applause when Dave Blazer not so long ago played Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” ON THE ORGAN and it was about just as rocking as the real deal. Or when the Free Spirit Band plays rock music on first Sundays. Then there are times when I am preaching, and the energy feels big, and I ask you Amen? and I get an Amen! back. This second worship style preference I’m talking about, in other words, is a preference for experience that is emotionally amped-up, not toned down. Not introverted, but extraverted. We’re singing the hymn “Blue Boat Home” and you want to sway along with me, you want to feel in your body the rhythm of this amazing song. You want to get a little carried away. You want to feel immersed in the preaching and the music and everything else in the service. As for clapping? Clapping for this worship style preference is not just tolerated but preferred because clapping is how energy gets raised and moved. It’s not so much about appreciating a performance as it is about raising energy.  

For lots of people, no matter what their race and class and educational background and ability and on and on happen to be, THIS is what authentic spirituality feels like. Inspiration happens like THIS. 

I suspect that the Atlanta congregation, back in 1974, was trying to incorporate some higher-energy elements (the jazz and poetry) into its worship, but that was a culture shift Mrs. Rogers could not abide. Not her preference. “I cannot, with conscience,” she said, “completely adhere to such a program.” 

All these years later, these two worship style preferences are still around in Unitarian Universalist congregations, and we can consider each its own worship culture. The burning question for us now, here at West Shore, is this: is polarization inevitable, in which one culture dismisses the other as fake and they want nothing to do with each other? 

Is MONOculture our fate? Or can we find a way to be MULTIcultural?

Whatever our worship style preference, can we still sit at the same worship table and be friends, and make new friends? 

Part 2

Worship for Unitarian Universalists: one way to look at it is to see it as a common meal that we’re all seated around, and dish after dish of soul food gets served. Because we’re hungry. Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday has seen lots of things, and it’s time to replenish and renourish. It’s time for renewal. Dish after dish of soul food is served up, and we dig in.

Yup, there’s a sense in which West Shore, in its Sunday service, is like a restaurant that feeds the soul. 

But now, what if some of us are, theologically speaking, hungry for a big steak (or some other dish full of meat), and others of us are vegetarian and the very thought of meat grosses us out? 

I mean, life would be easier if we were all omnivores in our spiritual tastes. We’d all just eat anything. But in reality, I think that some of us, theologically, are like carnivores, and others of us, theologically, are like vegetarians. We can disagree about the specific tastes of what we prefer in worship THAT MUCH, even as we completely agree on the abstract Big Picture of our faith.

When we come into this space, and worship ideas and words wash over us, that’s precisely when our diversity over specifics gets challenging. What if the songs contain meat, or the prayer that’s prayed, or the sermon that’s preached? Good for the theological carnivores, but what about the theological vegetarians? The vegetarians just can’t take such food into their mouths. To them it’s disgusting! It’s just disgusting. 

Take a certain three letter word, “God.” Some of us (the theological meat eaters) need to hear this word, otherwise worship is a shallow experience. We come to worship under the impression that we’re being promised a juicy hamburger, but if there’s no meat in between the two buns, we will justifiably feel that we’re a victim of bait and switch. Where’s the beef? Exactly what that word “God” means can be all over the map, but that’s ok, we’re Unitarian Universalists! But at bottom we know that the human personality responds to poetry and symbol and story. Good things get unlocked and released. 

A word like “God” can do that for us. 

That’s the theological meat eaters among us. We might have liked the hymn we sang earlier today, #23, “Bring Many Names,” because it proclaims that the traditional image of God as exclusively male and adult and patriarchal is wrong; it proclaims that we ought instead to “bring many names”; that we ought instead to invoke in our prayers a strong mother God as well as a warm father God, an old aching God, a young growing God, a great living God. The theological meat eaters singing this hymn might have been brought to tears. 

But not everyone in this space prefers meat. The theological vegetarians among us feel deep suspicion towards that three letter word. Perhaps it was part and parcel of years and years of abuse we experienced at the hands of parents or other adults so it triggers terrible memories for us. Perhaps it was a crutch we saw used again and again to support social prejudices of one kind or another. Perhaps we saw it used again and again to bolster arguments that were, in truth, rationally threadbare, rationally dishonest, rationally lazy. So we, the theological vegetarians, have abolished the word “God” from our vocabulary. We’ve crossed “God” off our list. 

Please, DON’T “bring many names.” 

That’s the snapshot of who’s sitting around our Unitarian Universalist worship table. Theological carnivores, theological vegetarians.

This is my 20th year as a Unitarian Universalist minister. I’m celebrating my 20th anniversary this year. And let me assure you: when anything gets dished up in worship, the urgent question always seems to boil down to: Does that worship dish have meat in it? Does it? 

Now, I need to connect some dots. So far, we have explored two different worship style preferences: higher-energy and lower-energy. To this we are adding two different theological preferences: pro-God talk and anti-God talk. Yes, I am oversimplifying. And here comes more oversimplifying: for the purposes of this sermon, I’m wanting to say that theological carnivores tend to prefer higher-energy worship, whereas theological vegetarians tend to prefer lower-energy worship–introverted energy, deep energy, calm and collected energy. Clapping is full of meat. Not clapping and keeping things quiet is vegetarian. 

I say all this, for the purposes of this sermon. And I am guilty of oversimplifying! Because we know what real life does to labels: it makes them false. People are complicated. There are those among us who enjoy the meat of God words who may also prefer services that are lower-energy in style; and there are those among us who don’t like the meat of God words who may also just love a service full of high energy. 

Labels only go so far. Analogies only go so far. 

Let’s do the best with this analogy, which, despite its limitations, is helping us bring awareness to the very real differences in worship tastes among us (the Mrs. J. V. Rogers among us, the spiritual carnivores among us, the spiritual vegetarians among us). It puts some precise names to some tensions that maybe you are already well aware of.

Congregations across the land have tried to solve it. Not just Unitarian Universalist congregations. Disagreement about worship preferences cuts across all kinds of religious communities, Christian and otherwise. It does. And let me share with you one of the main solutions that congregations have “cooked up”: the toferky solution. Are you familiar with tofurkey? It’s tofu that’s made up to taste like turkey. Tofurkey music, tofurkey language, tofurkey atmosphere. Minimize cultural differences of any kind—minimize high energy vs. low energy, minimize clapping vs. no clapping, minimize God vs. never mentioning God. 

Minimize all that. Make things generic enough to offend no one. Make it monocultural not multicultural. And honestly, to be frank, the resulting monoculture–at least for UUs–is going to be middle-class white culture. Middle-class whites are the majority among us. That’s our default setting, and that’s what the tofurkey solution is going to revert to. 

Equally, I could speak of hospital food. Sort of nutritious. But tasty? UGH. 

What do you think? Is that the kind of soul food we want to serve up? The tofurkey kind? The hospital food kind? 

Do you think it’s possible to create MULTIcultural worship that displeases no one, not ever?

Part 3

Some time ago I was at an Interfaith Habitat for Humanity house build. I had been asked to say a few introductory words about Unitarian Universalism, so I did. Here’s a bit of what I said. 

I talked about how Unitarian Universalism’s open-arms embrace of religious diversity can be viewed as an outgrowth of its historical origins in Christianity. The words “Unitarian” and “Universalist” appear in Christian history 2000 years ago, from the very beginning, and the words of Jesus and the Bible have always been central among us. 

Then I pointed out a Biblical passage of particular power for us: Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Written by Paul, this language reminds us about how Jesus would repeatedly transgress the identity politics of his time by inviting exactly the wrong kind of people to sit at his table and eat with him. Back in his day, the people who sat at your table made a big statement about who you were. It wasn’t the casual thing it is today. If you sat with people you weren’t supposed to sit with, you were doing something politically explosive. But that was Jesus. Jesus was explosive. Jesus was countercultural. But for a purpose. It was his way of pressing the point that everyone has inherent worth and dignity, not just some, and this affirmation has, all these years later, become our Unitarian Universalist First Principle. 

And then, to that interfaith Habitat for Humanity gathering, I went on to say that over time, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Unitarian Universalists felt called to make the language of Galatians 3:28 even more open and inclusive—to say, in effect, “There is neither gay nor straight, there is neither Christian nor Buddhist, there is neither atheist nor theist, there is neither black or brown or white, but all are one in a compassionate and abundant Spirit of Life and Love.” All belong to the Welcome Table. Every one. 

That is why today the world should see us as post-Christian. 

This is not to deny our Christian origins but only to affirm that we have grown into something “more-than-Christian.” Because: we draw from many sources not just Christianity; we seek out truth from wherever truth may come. 

That’s a bit of what I said to that Interfaith Habitat for Humanity gathering. And the point I want to underscore here and now is, first of all, that we do not embrace our “more than” stance of openness and inclusivity as an end in itself. We embrace openness and inclusivity because it’s how the Spirit of Life can reveal itself in a most vital way. When the circumstances are opposite this, when they are monocultural and exclusive: the Spirit in the room turns oppressive, it turns hurtful, it turns traumatizing. 

Therefore we follow Jesus and we follow all those who practice the open and inclusive Welcome Table. 

And therefore–this is the second thing–therefore, we must add even more language to the Galatians 3:28 passage: “There is neither preferrers of high-energy worship or preferrers of lower-energy worship, there is neither theological meat eaters or theological vegetarians, but all are one in a compassionate and abundant Spirit of Life and Love.” All belong to the Welcome Table. Every one. 

We want every one, because multiculturalism is worth the price of admission to experiencing Spirit of Life aliveness in our midst.

Spirit of Life, come unto us.

Sing in our hearts all the stirrings of compassion.

Blow in the wind, rise in the sea;

move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.

Roots hold us close; wings set us free;

Spirit of Life, come to us, come to us.

I will pay the price of all the challenges of openness and inclusivity–yes I will–if it means I can get some of that Spirit of Life hope and renewal. 

I will pay the price if I can get some of that Spirit of Life sense of connection and a sense of vitality. 

I will pay the price if I can get some of that Spirit of Life energy that keeps me from dropping out and keeps me showing up every day with an open heart. 

I will pay that price. 

Will you pay that price? 

Is the price worth it to you?  

I do absolutely believe that all our struggles with all our differences are worth it, to the end of more multiculturalism, because it’s about removing stumbling blocks from more people plugging in and more people experiencing an abundant Spirit that liberates and renews. 

Plugging into that liberating spirit–that’s why we create a free space in our worship where the stranger can enter and become a friend and no one becomes an enemy. 

That’s why hospitality matters. 

I just don’t think the tofurkey solution is going to work for us. Frankly, any kind of strategy that has as its number #1 priority “make everybody happy” feels wrong to me. Nothing short of an omnipotent God can do that. There is no such silver bullet strategy in the human realm. The majority of the work of happiness is in fact something we each as individuals do. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Jesus himself might be preaching from this pulpit, but what if you take mortal offense at the fact his dress is inappropriate? He’s wearing sandals! His outfit is muddy! Disrespectful! Who does he think he is? 

The tofurkey solution is really just another version of perfectionism and just another way of trying to make the church into some kind of omnipotent God–the sort of God we probably don’t even believe in. 

Gotta kick the tofurkey solution to the curb. 

The way forward, as I see it, is a combination of intentional worship planning and then the personal discipline each of us can bring to the table. 

Start with the worship planning. It’s always been my commitment to creating worship that tries to be adequate to our Six Sources and to the multiple cultures of this community. In some services, the energy will feel quiet & deep, it won’t feel right to clap, and maybe the God word will never be spoken at all. The experience will be completely meatless. I hasten to add that this doesn’t mean it’s going to be a tofurkey experience. If you are vegetarian or vegan you know that the diversity of possible dishes is staggering. Chickpea Pancakes With Greens and Cheese. Spicy Skillet Lasagna With Ricotta and Spinach. Indian Butternut Squash Curry. And on and on. Meatless worship can absolutely be incredibly diverse and full of sharp spiritual tastes that are the opposite of tofurkey. 

And, in other services, we will serve more than just vegetables. Maybe the worship sermon opens with the Free Spirit Band playing a song by Rush, followed by huge applause. Maybe the opening hymn mentions God. Ok, that’s a lot of meat served up front. But then the chalice lighting is all vegetables, the Worship Associate’s reflection is all vegetables, the For All That Is Our Lives segment is all vegetables. Then comes the sermon. There he goes again, inviting folks to respond. Maybe he is preaching about the God of Jesus, and he goes on and on excitedly describing how, when Jesus spoke of God in his native Aramaic tongue, he would literally describe God as a compassionate womb able to hold people in care and love. A compassionate womb! Where’s the patriarchy there? But–it’s meat. It’s a lot of meat. Then we extinguish the chalice, we sing the closing hymn, the benediction words are spoken, and it’s all vegetables. In these sorts of services, the diversity we serve is amped up even more. We do this because we know that our spiritual hungers are that diverse, the hungers are that urgent. 

Looking towards the future: over the course weeks and months, there’s going to be some services that contain more meat. Other services are going to have less meat. The strategy here, again, is not perfectionistic tofurkey, but a plan to create a wide array of services that are each super tasty and give people something to savor. Some services you will just want to get up and clap. In other services, getting up and clapping would feel completely inappropriate. 

Let the tone—higher energy or lower energy—be your guide. 

Let’s just dwell on this just a moment more—regarding clapping. If the energy in this space is slow and deep and contemplative, why break the mood? Why smash it to bits with clapping? Let’s not do that. But if the energy is flowing, if we’re grooving, if the Free Spirit Band is doing its Free Spirit thang—well, if you didn’t clap, that would feel weird. Let clapping add to high energy if high energy is in the room. But if the room feels quiet and introspective, clapping becomes a distraction, and unhelpful. 

So that’s a little about worship planning. Now let’s touch on some personal attitudes and practices you can bring to the worship table–“table manners,” if you will–that will make all the difference. My contribution to the worship could be 100%, but if you don’t bring these attitudes and practices with you, well, you’ll walk away feeling frustrated. 

The first attitude is: If it’s served up, you don’t have to eat it. The principle underlying this goes all the way back to our earliest Unitarian churches in Transylvania. 455 years ago, the first (and only) Unitarian King in history, King John Sigismund, ruled that the preacher is free to preach as their conscience guides; the people in the pews are free to either accept or reject as conscience guides them. Ever since then, the shorthand way of saying this has been: Free pulpit/free pew. Translated to the worship context, it means that if we are strict spiritual vegetarians and we’ve been served up plenty of vegetables early on in the service but then the minister goes on to plunk down a piece of meat, then please (you spiritual vegetarian you) don’t let it taint your experience of the entire service. Don’t allow that. Just use your fork and nudge it over to the side. 

Just nudge it over. You don’t have to eat it. 

Even more than this, know in your heart of hearts that the spiritual carnivores sitting around the table right beside you need to hear that word. They need to hear about a strong mother God, a warm father God, an old aching God, a young growing God, a great living God. Hearing this feeds them. Let them be fed. Don’t demand that all your personal preferences must be satisfied in absolutely every little thing, when such a sense of entitlement means that others among us must starve.  

Please be more generous. 

Please make peace with your dislike as part of a larger, big-hearted generosity that demands that all be fed. 

In fact, I invite you to reframe your personal discomfort as direct evidence that another person is actually being fed—and please rejoice that they are being fed! 

That’s attitude number one to bring to this West Shore worship table, and here is attitude number two: Your turn is coming. Let me tell you, when your religion draws from Many Sources, as UUism does, you’ve got a world of material to work with. It’s fantastic! But you can’t get to all of it in a single service or even a single year. So if you feel like your particular passion hasn’t come up in worship, ask me. We might have done a year-long sermon series on it just before you arrived, but you wouldn’t know that, so naturally you’re wondering why you’re not hearing much about it. But on the other hand, maybe not. So ask anyway. I’m always wanting to hear about your passions. I love you guys and we are building Beloved Community together. 

Finally, attitude number three to bring to the table: Try it. Be open to a new thing. 

OK, the dish that just got served up looks really weird. Is it meat? Is it vegetable? 

I can’t tell…. Smells different. 

Huh. 

Hm.

Well. 

Maybe I’ll try it…. 

Maybe if you try it with me, that will make it more fun….

We just don’t have to be rigid, like a certain Mrs. J. V. Rogers from Atlanta Georgia all those years ago. 

Give it a chance—you might just grow to like it.