Earlier in the service Rev. Alison shared words of Thomas Lamb Eliot, the first minister of this congregation, as he asks the question of why it is we go to church?
Eliot first references the ocean salt breeze or seeing the sunlight on Mt. Hood, and finally ponders, “Why do you care to know that this earth is not a stagnant, self-centered thing, as the nations once believed, and rejoice rather to know that it rolls in restless obedience, a creature moving through immensity, a sparkle of dust in the midst of the universe?” Finally he comes to the conclusion that “People are not made to grovel, but to soar. We gather here to remember that. We take one solemn hour, one blessed day, to open our minds.”
I expect today we might have some of the same answers when it comes to why we gather. And I expect some of what we would say might be different. But that part about making a space to open our minds, that part about gathering together—that part about soaring….” That a lot of what he had to say still resonates, at least it does for me.
With Rev. Alison’s installation this afternoon I found myself going back to the history of this community and for what might be called this congregation’s story—or perhaps even its calling.
The story goes back in the 1850s when Portland was a young, frontier town with a population of around 5,000 people. Back then Unitarians often called themselves liberal Christians and they were part of a number of other Christian congregations. It was their belief about who Jesus was that set them apart. For them Jesus was a teacher but not necessarily a divine teacher. In their world that divinity was possible in all of us. They wanted to emulate the modeling they saw in Jesus.
Mary E. Frazer and Sarah J. Burrage met in Portland in 1863 while working for the Sanitary Commission that worked to support soldiers and their families during the Civil War. They were both Unitarians from Massachusetts and their faith had come to be very important to them. They both longed to have a congregation here in Portland but it seemed there just wasn’t quite the critical mass of people to do that.
But that changed when the minister of a Congregational church preached a series of sermons criticizing their beliefs, and that group of people—mostly women—decided they had had enough. They discerned a call for a church of their own. They did not waste time but started raising money. And the best way to do that? By sewing—whether it was making cloths for people or repairing cloths that had more life in them. And that gave them their name—the Ladies Sewing Society. And it wasn’t long before they were well on their way to achieving that goal.
They first asked the minister in San Francisco to buy them a communion service for their church. Next it was money for land and a building. They chose two lots on what was then then a ways from the center of the downtown, close to Pioneer Square is today. And they soon had constructed a building on one of those lots. And soon thereafter it was money to bring their first minister to Portland. The first two ministers from back east they approached turned them down. It was their next choice—Thomas Lamb Eliot—who said yes. Now back in 1866 that meant coming from the east and that journey necessarily took them on a long voyage that included passage across the Isthmus of Panama. It would be on Christmas eve of 1867 that Eliot, his wife and young son arrived here in Portland.[1]
Alison, I know your own journey west has had its share of surprises and yet I have to say it probably was not quite as challenging.
Our spiritual theme this month is calling and I want to reflect this morning on that sense of call that I believe can also happen with institutions—and in particular this congregation. Why is it people come together and what is it that sets any particular organization apart?
Now certainly with the beginning of this church there are some patterns that have been established through time. A long commitment for the church to be connected to the life of the city and the larger community. From the very beginning, Thomas Lamb Eliot and his congregation were very much involved in the justice work of the day that called them to action in all kinds of ways. In those early days it was the Sanitary Commission. When Eliot was getting ride in a carriage he saw the driver beat the horse and soon thereafter founded what would become the Humane Society.
The Humane Society is still around, as are many of those other organizations. But what does that legacy mean over time and how is it that views and perspectives change? Part of the responsibility that comes with telling the story is trying to see the story through a wider and wider lens. In the case of that origin story it is easy to leave out the part about the native people who were here in the first place before those white settlers arrived from back east.
Indeed it is acknowledging the fact that those settlers—most of all Eliot—brought with them a belief in a social hierarchy that in fact had themselves at the top of that order. That anyone who was not a white landholding male was somehow lower on that order. How what we now call justice work was for them more likely called charity. And with that a definite sense of those with more giving to those with less and within all of that a definite sense of privilege.
And how beliefs over time do change and evolve. This afternoon the installation service will begin with a land acknowledgement naming that the people who were first here had that land taken and that they have never been made whole. I expect that would have seemed pretty strange to those founders of the church all those years ago.
And who knows what else may seem strange. This week I found myself reading once again the history of the church and read an anecdote about Thomas Lamb Eliot inviting a female minister in the pulpit but needing to keep it a secret even from the women who were among those founders because even for them it would have been too controversial.
One of the causes that Eliot and his parishioners championed was women’s suffrage. He preached that women should not only be able to vote but that they should be able to enter the professions of their choice. In 1874, Eliot invited to Rev. Augusta Chapin, the second female minister ordained by the Universalist Church, to preach at First Unitarian. But he didn’t tell his parishioners or the press she was conducting the service. He was so concerned that if they knew they would stay away. He later described the service as one “of great truth and power.” And after the service, Mary Frazier, one of the women who founded the church, validated the decision but also said: “well, I am completely converted, but if you had asked me before, I should have been entirely opposed.”[2]
Welcome into that tradition of women preaching in this pulpit too, Rev. Alison.
Part of the story of any group, any gathering of people, is how it tells its story as it moves through time. How the norms and people change. Imagining how those early founders would have handled a woman preaching or a gay man or a person of color or someone who does not see themselves on the gender binary … how would they see the church of today? Would they recognize that church?
What are those threads of continuity and what are those things that call us to look at things in some new light? In our lives we are each the product of our own stories. We are each the story of our own power and privilege and oppressions. We have each learned to live in the world and move through the world in our own particular way, with our own particular stories. Of our own particular hurts and wounds and places of pride and of healing.
Perhaps one of the roles of the church is helping us to see ourselves—or to recognize how we haven’t been seen—in all of that. In the church we hopefully come to see our own humanity as fully as we can—and the humanity of others too. To come to recognize all of the possibility—and our limitations as well.
What holds all this together is a covenant. The promises we make to be together in community. The most basic definition of covenant is to come together, to come together. It brings us into covenant with those who have gone before us. It brings us into covenant with those who are here now. And it asks us to be in relationship with those who will come after. That too is part of our charge, part of our story. The covenant if a living thing—something that changes and evolves. Something that is being constantly renewed.
So just want does that mean for us at this particular moment in history?
The church is now, of course, at a kind of cross roads once again. A new ministry is in formation. And it happens at a particular time in history. I’m aware these days of how every Sunday people are coming here for the first time or coming back for the first time. I’m also aware of the losses we’ve known. Literal losses of lives in these covid times. And losses of patterns, of routines, of a sense of safety in what we can and can’t do.
How the place we were several years ago will not return.
What is the calling of this congregation at this point in time and in history?
Our Board of Trustees reflected on the question of calling right now, including which questions should we be asking? Questions like who is our neighbor? How are we to be relationship with our city? What is our mission today? One person asked the question of what would it mean if the church just ceased to exist? What difference would that make?
Those are good, big questions.
One of the roles of the church is to help us see how our own lives are connected to something much larger. And to see our lives in those ever widening circles. We understand how our own struggles are not just our struggles but part of what it means to live in this world. It is in the church that we find a container for our own experiences and see how our own lives share so much with those around us. In the speaking of the joys in parish concerns we get a glimpse of what our lives have been or will be. Whether we have had a joy or sorrow that day we are reminded that life will inevitability have its share of joys and sorrows. It helps to remind us that we are part of a larger continuity.
And we are in times when it is easy to feel as if we could lose our way. There is much that is uncertain. There is so much that seems in peril-most of all the very life we know on this good green earth. So much that would have us see the other not in relationship with us but simply as that, the others. Yes, there is much that would have us losing our way.
Author Anne Lamott recalls about a story told by her minister in her book Traveling Mercies.[3]
“When she was about seven,” her minister said, “(my) best friend got lost one day. The little girl ran up and down the streets of the big town where they lived, but she couldn’t find a single landmark. She was very frightened. Finally a police officer stopped to help her. He put her in the passenger seat of his car, and they drove around until she finally saw her church. She pointed it out to the officer, and then she told him firmly, ‘You could let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here.’”
“And that,” Lamott concludes, “is why I have stayed so close to (my church) – because no matter how bad I am feeling, how lost or lonely or frightened, when I see the faces of the people at my church and hear their tawny voices, I can always find my way home.”
As a community—as people and ministers together—we act as a kind of compass for one another. We are here together to see that we are headed in the right direction and to have a place where we can whatever course corrections are needed.
Ministers are congregations grow and prosper and struggle together. They are greater together than they would be separately. At its best, the relationship can be a mutual flourishing. They learn together, hopefully grow together. They can learn to walk their talk together. They can frustrate each other in all kinds of ways. And sometimes there is hurt and brokenness. But in the end hopefully there is also the possibility of healing. That all of it, in the end, is grounded in relationship. That in the end it is grounded in love. And like any relationship, it is important to be intentional. That’s probably part of why we’re having an installation ceremony later today.
Its important to be clear about the promises we are making.
Why do you go where you taste the salt breeze? Why at evening time do you climb a hillside to see the sunlight on Mount Hood? Why do you care to know that this earth is not a stagnant, self-centered thing, as the nations once believed, and rejoice rather to know that it rolls in restless obedience, a creature moving through immensity, a sparkle of dust in the midst of the universe? People are not made to grovel, but to soar. We gather here to remember that. We take one solemn hour, one blessed day, to open our minds.”
On this day of new beginnings may all of us together here find the space to dream together, sometimes to struggle together but most fundamentally to be together. Sometimes, we know, the world is anything but easy. We need the church right now. We need one another right now. May love guide us in all that we do and from that place may we know hope and joy, and, most of all, possibility. Amen.
Prayer:
Great spirit, hear our prayers this day. We give thanks for this church and its long history, for all those who have gone before us, ministers and congregants, those remembered, those forgotten. Hold us as we enter this new chapter. Help us when we falter. Remind us always that we are together and that from there anything is possible. For this we pray this day. Amen.
Benediction:
Go into the world mindful that you are not alone. Live in courage. Live in love and hope. Amen.
[1] “Toward the Beloved Community: The First Unitarian Church of Portland, Oregon, 1865-2015, by Cindy Cumfer, Chapter 1, pp 1-35.
[2] “Toward the Beloved Community,” Cumfer, pp27.
[3] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Pantheon Books 1999, pp 55.
Topics: Calling