Cornerstones Sticky with Grape Jelly

Rev. Robin L. Zucker

First Religious Society of Carlisle

October 8, 2006

Maybe you've heard? That is, unless you're new to our community or you've been living under a rock since Homecoming Sunday! On Saturday, October 14, FRS is having a big party and everybody is invited to bring something special.

New and shiny things for Potpourri, gooey baked goodies, sweet jams and tart pickles, soup and samplers and baubles and bric-a-brac and grape jelly.

It's the annual Harvest Fair and it is just around the proverbial corner. As Alison Saylor expressed in her message earlier this morning, the Fair is fun and its hard work, too, for all ages. It involves dozens of church members devoting dozens of hours in order to raise a chunk of the money we need to pay our bills and support our mission.

The way we come together specifically around this annual extravaganza is a stunning metaphor for how we come together generally as a Unitarian Universalist congregation. It all has to do with our "polity," an odd little word that defines how we are organized and how we govern ourselves.

Understanding our UU polity is important, especially for come-outers from religions where there is central authority and financial support from a diocese or a district or a presbytery.

Here's a brief synopsis (very brief...I promise!) In the newly formed Mass Bay Colony, the Puritan settlers laid the groundwork for how we govern ourselves with a document called the Cambridge Platform of 1648.

It was a revolutionary document that provided for an entirely new form of religious organization. Rather than looking to a single individual or an ecclesiastical body to govern its churches, the Cambridge Platform planted the authority in the individual congregations.

From the very beginning of the Puritan colonization, each church was granted the autonomy and responsibility to organize and govern itself, to call its own ministers, to conduct its affairs in a democratic manner, to pay its own bills and own its own buildings. It wasn't always easy going, but the Platform charged congregations to find power, not in uniformity or in central authority, but in relationship.

A natural consequence of our congregational polity here, today, at FRS, is that we are brought together by covenant, rather than by creed. Some early examples of covenant can be found in the Bible -- Moses on Mt. Sinai, for instance, receiving God's covenant with the Israelites. Later on, early Christians saw God as offering a "new covenant" through Christ.

And, we recited a “covenant” together this morning – a  regular piece of FRS weekly worship. However, as my colleague Alan Taylor has astutely noted,  " A covenant is more than words uttered in community on a Sunday morning. It draws upon the sacredness within each individual who shares the covenant. It is more than an intellectual agreement, for it calls upon us to make commitments. Our Puritan forebears understood that there can be no covenant without relationship and mutual obligations. Yet, the demands of the covenant are small compared to the deeper rewards which flow from the covenantal bond."

The Harvest Fair absolutely epitomizes a covenantal relationship. We make promises to one another -- I'll make thirteen needlepoint ornaments or 5 dozen brownies. I'll clean up, I'll price treasures, or handle publicity, or gather items for the Silent Auction or locate a cool car for the green. We make commitments and we make spice balls and we sink and swim on the efforts of the whole.

If you are a brand spanking new newcomer, I don't mean to scare you off! On the contrary, I think its best that you know the score. We come together in covenant and in congregational polity. We are the church and the church is us. It's a two way street. Self governance equals self-sustenance equals sleeves rolled up and hands ready to serve.

Naturally, if you are really, really new to FRS I don't expect that you’ll be required to join a committee at your first coffee hour...unless you want to! The ushers will not issue you a time card or a pledge card as you enter the Sanctuary. You can bring your perfectly imperfect self, and nothing else, and we'll love you and welcome you all the same.

I'm remembering a funny cartoon brought to my attention by the Rev. Roy Phillips. In this cartoon, entitled "New Member's Worst Nightmare" an elderly man is explaining the workings of the church to a young couple. The old man tells them: "Most people are on nine or ten committees, but since you're new I'm sure people will understand if you only join six or seven to start."

The committees have amusing names like: Plant watering committee, Thermostat control committee; committee for more comfortable pews, and committee for the promotion of committees. You won't be surprised to learn that the young couple was aghast!

Not to worry! I can assure you new and seasoned members alike, assembled here this morning, that we understand that you did not beat a path to our church door in order to be on committees!

We suspect that, instead, you came here yearning for, hoping for, a sense of roots and wings, and a sense of belonging, sharing and caring. That you've taken this path to FRS because you yearn for a place to have hope, to laugh and cry; a community in which you can be an individual, a place where you will be welcomed at the Fair.

Indeed, there's plenty of time ahead to discover your teaching talent and your organizational skills. Plenty of time for you to show us your dance steps and your recipes for apple muffins and chowder

Even so, the need for volunteers and leaders in all areas of church life is an ongoing reality. There is no diocese or bishop to bail us out. The up side is that we can relish the freedom we have -- freedom of the pulpit, the pew, the governing process, the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning."

The challenge (but still an upside in my view!) is that we need to preserve and nurture that freedom with personal and communal responsibility for the survival of the congregation. It's only us. The free church is not a free ride. The staff can only carry so much of the load. Remember, in a covenantal relationship, the giving is reciprocal. The benefits of membership are balanced with the responsibility.

The Rev. Robbie Walsh, our minister in Duxbury, calls this mutuality and reciprocity "Potholder Ministry." He writes:

"Walking around the church in the evening, when no one else is around I see things that bring to mind the contributions that people make to constitute the religious community. There are so many gifts we bring, and they combine in so many creative ways.

Among the many images, none carries more meaning to me than the humble potholder, which I think of every time I look into the Ruby Graves Parlor. Every Thursday morning, a group of women gather in that Parlor, and they sew and knit and make things for the Fair. They make many items, but the quintessential product is the potholder."

"There is a Potholder Ministry going on in that parlor," Walsh tells us. "For one thing, the potholders keep people's fingers from being burned -- that's pretty important. And the potholders are often used as gifts, so they become an expression of peoples' caring for each other.

The potholders make money for the support of the church and its ministries. The potholders use cast off materials that might otherwise be thrown into landfills, and so the potholders are a ministry to the environment. "

"But the Potholder Ministry I like best," says Walsh, " is what happens between the members of the group: the neighborliness, the mutual support, the companionship. I see them as they sew and talk, and talk and sew, and occasionally have a few moments of silent sewing, delivering to each other a powerful message -- you are a person of worth and dignity. I care about you and about our relationship. That may be the heart of potholder ministry."

Through Walsh’s keen description, I can envision that circle of sewing hands and warm smiles, can’t you? Church really is, essentially, the work of our hands, or as the shakers put it, "Hands to work and hearts to God."

I’m thinking now about one memorable Peanuts comic strip in which Charlie Brown is eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He looks admiringly at his hands and says:

"Hands are fascinating things. I like my hands...I think I have nice hands. My hands seem to have a lot of character. These are hands that may someday accomplish great things. These are hands that may someday do marvelous works. They may build mighty bridges or heal the sick, or hit home runs, or write soul-stirring novels. These are hands that may someday change the course of destiny."

Lucy looks down at Charlie's hands and says, "They've got jelly on them!"

Lucy's comment, although characteristically insensitive, is right on target. And so is Charlie's assessment of his amazing, potential-laden hands. As my colleague, Tom Owen-Towle notes: "We start by recognizing that our hands are covered with jelly, and they always will be. But they are all we have. They are who we are. Messy to be sure, we keep using our hands in acts of justice and kindness that life may be less evil."

Take a moment to look, really look at your hands, the way Charlie Brown did. Whether yours are arthritic or limber, wrinkled or smooth, graceful or stubby, jelly-covered or pristine, aren't they a marvel?

For us, here at FRS, some of our strong, eager hands have become sticky with jelly – REAL  sticky,  REAL grape jelly, as Fair Day approaches. We have a “Grape Jelly Ministry”  here and again, this is a microcosm of all we are and can be, regardless of the season.

I asked Susan Emmons, a long-time member here, a stalwart volunteer, and the grape jelly doyenne, about this church’s jelly tradition, and she told me:

"It was a family and neighborhood tradition to make jelly from wild Concord grapes found in our neighborhood. And when this group started including my twin granddaughters and her friends from Sunday School, it became a tradition to sell the jelly at the Fall Harvest Fair to raise money - usually for the Heifer Project.”

Susan continues: "Some years the kids came to my house and we picked grapes together and then came to my kitchen and squashed the grapes and the kids actually watched while the adults boiled the juice to make jelly. More recently, we prepared the grapes (pick them clean, weigh and wash then and then squash) in the FRS kitchen, either during Sunday school or as this year, with a big crowd, on an early School release Tuesday. And this year, the group went picking at Fox Hill, a local conservation area with LOTs of grapes."

“I always end up with purple hands,” Susan tells me, "and purple counters in my kitchen, purple dish cloths, too, and purple wooden spoons!, a cheery reminds of the fun we having making jelly together."

I have loved listening to your stories like  Susan’s about the sense of community that happens around the annual Harvest Fair, your obvious pride and delight in it. Perhaps you're thinking that it's unsporting of me to talk about the work that will be there for us on October 15th, when there is still so much work to do to get ready for the Fair on October 14th.

One of my favorite anthems asks: What will we promise, what will we give? Right now, it may be most prudent to ask yourself that question in relation to the Fair. However, I'd also like to encourage you to ask yourself this question: "Over the long haul, how will I share my gifts here at FRS?" On November 19th, the church will still need your energy and your commitment, and the work of your hands, pristine or jelly-stained.

We will still be self-governing and self-sustaining, and volunteers will still be the locomotive on the train. Mind your self-care by choosing one thing, one area where you feel your gifts will flourish: music, finance, social events, adult enrichment, building maintenance, fundraising, and help this wonderful institution to thrive.

As we dig our hands deep into ripe wild grapes, the act of volunteering dips down into our inner resources, our commitment as well as our skill, our love as well as our knowledge, to help accomplish something worth accomplishing. And with our hands, sticky with grape jelly, we lay and sustain the very cornerstones that support this religious society we cherish, and we teach our children that to be a UU , this religion with a polity of eager hands, is to do nothing less.

By all means, come to the Fair on October 14th. Work hard, laugh, feel the warm camaraderie of this community, do your holiday shopping. Think about how the Harvest Fair is a powerful metaphor of who we are and all we can be as a congregation. Then, come to the fair again on November 19th and January 6th and April 21st, any odd Tuesday, during a Leap Year, or when the moon is full or new. Bring your old dance steps, your funny hats, your perfectly imperfect special selves.

Bring your brokenness and your joy; your spare change and your vision; your need for a Sunday Sabbath and your garden gloves. Bring with purple stained fingers and your open hearts.

And, in the meantime, if you have any nifty old whizzbanger things for Attic Treasures, please give Barbara Ritz a call. She'd love to hear from you!    Amen.