I am thinking back to Homecoming Sundays in other years, remembering the excitement of anticipation and then the rightness of seeing so many members of the community gathering once again in the sanctuary. “Rightness” is a good word to describe that feeling of sensing once again the coming together of a community of support and of hope that is what First Unitarian means for so many. Homecoming Sunday is a time to gather ourselves and begin again in love.
This year we cannot gather in person, but support and hope remain on the agenda.
The importance of the church is underlined by the presence of the virus, and the smoke from the fires and the uprising on our streets. Even if most of us are comfortable in our homes, the world feels like a particularly dangerous place these days. Some of us are really struggling. We need a homecoming.
This Homecoming Sunday will be different…as so much of this year is different. We will not stream into the sanctuary but instead will join the live stream. The children and youth of the church will not be sung out to go to their classes. Most of them, we hope, will have joined the new Family Worship at 9:15 with their parents and siblings.
We can’t have a big choir on the Chancel, but we have imagined some new ways to weave singing into the service to deepen the welcome we offer.
We all wish we could be together in person, but we will bring the community into our virtual sanctuary in as many ways as we can and celebrate the hope and the love this church stirs in our hearts.
As the year unfolds, so will our ministry. We are beginning our fundraising this Sunday, early. We want to end the focus on fundraising well before Nov. 3. I hope our giving, too, feels very different…simpler, more direct and celebratory. Thanks to so many of you who have become “sustainers,” promising to continue your gifts year-to-year, we will begin with almost 60% of our goal already promised. This year we can’t bring pledge cards down to the front of the Sanctuary on Celebration Sunday. Make your gift now, don’t wait, and we will celebrate as we go and get closer and closer to our goal.
The year will bring a deepening of our work for justice, with increasing focus on partnerships and collaborations — but also with increasing attention to who we are as a religious people and what we claim as our identity. The church will be considering adopting the “8th Principle” this year, a new statement to add to the existing 7 Principles, that names anti-racism and multi-culturalism as central to who we are. Registration is open for a workshop on September 26th that will introduce the 8th Principle, led by Paula Cole Jones from All Souls Church in Washington DC.
The staff has done an extraordinary job of organizing and planning to make this year, while we must be at a distance, a year when the church can be a real support to members of our community and a presence that answers the call of love in the world. Through the hands and hearts of so many volunteers, the church will continue to reach out, continue to explore ways “we” can support all of “us.”
But on Sunday, I hope that our large and now more geographically dispersed community can experience that sense of homecoming and the hope that rises up in our hearts as we begin again in love.
Today, on Sunday, and on every day, may we
Hold one another in love,
Hold one another through the uncertainty and even the fear.
May we hold one another and feel ourselves held.
“See” you in church on Sunday.
Blessings,
Bill