"Milestones Along the
Way "
A sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
April 11, 2010
READINGS: ANCIENT AND MODERN
Our ancient reading this morning is from the Book of Ecclesiastes,
"A Time for Everything:"
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under
heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and
a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to
heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep,
and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time
to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time
to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek,
and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time
to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to
speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a
time for peace. What gain has the worker from their toil?
Our modern reading is from the poem, "The Seven Of Pentacles,"
by Marge Piercy:
Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
SERMON
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a milestone as a stone
or marker set upon a roadside to indicate the distance in miles
from a given point. It's second definition, which I suspect gets
the greater usage, says that a milestone is "…an important
event, as in a person's career, the history of a nation, or the
advancement of knowledge in a field; a turning point." It's
this idea of a turning point that I'd like most to explore with
you this morning.
These three lily plants that are on our chancel table here this
morning represent three very important milestones - turning points
- for me, not just in my career but in my life. Thirty-three years
ago I met Judy Blustein and thirty-two years ago, this last week,
we were married in a lovely ceremony, held on the front porch of
the farmhouse we were renting just outside of Bement, Illinois,
a town so small it almost didn't exist! Our wedding took place on
a splendid spring evening - fresh, warm and clear. You would hardly
believe that exactly one week earlier an ice storm had come through,
wiping out electrical power to 22 counties in a band that ran across
the entire mid-section of the state. Seven days later, the electricity
was still out. And so a tractor-driven generator, along with the
strength of our love of course, provided power for the wedding ceremony.
This particular milestone in my life is not unrelated to one I
experienced five years earlier, when I got divorced, ending an extremely
unhealthy marriage. The anniversary Judy and I celebrated last week
could not have happened except for that earlier milestone, even
though the earlier one had given entry into what would be the most
painful period in my life.
It's hard to say in a few words what my 32 years of marriage to
Judy represents. It has been a lifetime filled with struggles to
be sure, but it has mostly been a great, long season of joy. It
has certainly been an experience in love, and in learning what it
means to love.
More than anything else, though this journey which is my life,
I have been saved and redeemed by Judy more than I know how to say.
That I ever became a father, furthered my education, had the audacity
to become a minister and the chutzpah to come to Montclair are directly
and proportionately related to her faith in me. I could not have,
would not have done these things, accept by her faith. I only hope
that I have been able to give her something of meaning in return.
The second milestone I want to celebrate with you is my ordination
to the Unitarian Universalist ministry. It was bestowed on me by
the Burlington, Iowa UU Congregation - 18 years ago this past week.
I did not know the meaning of a vocational call to the ministry
until I experienced my own. To state it as plainly as I can: a call
to ministry, my call to ministry, occurred when all other options
for a life of meaning evaporated in the focus of a vision so strong
that no approximations or imitations could provide the satisfaction
that this path would hold for me. At the youthful age of 37, all
the arrows pointed in the same direction -> ministry.
My four years of seminary education were essential in my preparation,
but not anywhere near to the extent that my mentor and the congregation
I served as a student were. Alan Egly, my mentor, was just installed
as Minister Emeritus of the Davenport, Iowa UU congregation three
weeks ago today. I had the honor of delivering the sermon at that
ceremony, his milestone event. It was something of a reciprocation
for the sermon he delivered at my ordination service.
One of the things that I said at his service was that, "My
years under his exemplary supervision were overflowing with his
wisdom, reflection, generosity, grace and his uncanny ability -
whenever necessary, which was often enough in those years - his
ability to express the painful truth that I needed to hear, in loving
and disarming ways."
Along with Alan, the folks in the Burlington Congregation loved
me into ministry by inviting me to minister to them and then by
helping me to see how that was best accomplished. By the time we
collectively graduated me on that ordination day, I had somehow
managed to cross over the discreet line from student to minister.
Even though there was considerable sadness for the congregation
at the imminent prospect of my leaving to practice ministry elsewhere,
there was great joy and a sense of shared accomplishment at the
occasion, which marked that milestone.
The milestone, represented by the third lily on the table, is one
that we share. It is a part of my life, a part of your life and
a part of our life together. After a three-year ministry in Fitchburg,
MA, I was called to be your minister here at a great event that
took place 15 years ago, you guessed it, just this last week. Some
of you were there or here on that day in April of 1995. The event
followed an exhaustive, multi-month process with the Search Committee.
That was culminated by an eight-day week in which I preached on
two Sundays, and in between them met every group and person in the
congregation.
After preaching the sermon on that second Sunday, I was escorted
upstairs to where my office is now, and the congregation held a
meeting to vote on calling me to this, your pulpit. Because of the
meeting, only one worship service was held that morning, and so
extra rows of chairs had been put in place. There must have been
about 300 people in this room.
When David Fogg from the Search Committee finally came to get me,
he escorted me in through the packed Narthex and up the very narrow,
center aisle that was formed within the limited space left between
the rows of extra chairs. As we wound our way up here through the
chancel, everyone was standing and applauding. Someone was playing
the piano and everyone was singing a hymn. Everybody was smiling
and cheering, and the air was charged with a great expectation and
a sense of new beginning. It was one of the most magnificent moments
in my life, I can assure you.
That event began, as I had hoped it would, a turning point for
me, in which I knew that I had been called to do the very best work
I was capable of, everyday. And just to keep this all on an even
keel and within some semblance of balance, I believed that you would
work to be the best congregation you were capable of being as well.
Those first couple of years together were challenging ones, as
together we worked to shore up wounds that had been left at the
end of the previous ministry and by the interim ministry that immediately
preceded me. We have much to be proud of in our legacy of that era.
There were also financial difficulties that we met and grew through,
as together we worked to create a sacred community dedicated to
the transformation of lives, homes, communities and the world.
I'm remembering several of the larger events we have participated
in together over the years. We've marched together in Washington,
New York, Newark and here in Montclair on behalf of the rights of
people marginalized by society and the law. We've marched for peace.
We have been at the forefront of anti-racism work and at the very
front of the effort to promote equal marriage rights. There have
been so many issues of justice to which we have responded, and we
have good cause to be proud of our participation.
September 11, 2001 occurred. It was one of the lowest moments in
recent history. But the way we banded together and opened our doors
to the community, the way we kept hold of our religious values and
vision, provided one of the brightest moments in the life of this
congregation. Over these past 15 years together we have met, faced
and overcome whatever obstacles have stood in the way of our mission.
I'd like to say thank you for these years. I deeply appreciate
my life here with you. To those among you for whom my ministry has
easily provided joy and meaning, I'm glad of it. To those among
you for whom my ministry has been something you may have learned
more to abide, well… I'm especially appreciative that you have
hung in there with me, and with your community.
I am here today, my friends, not only to celebrate past milestones
with you though, but to raise the prospect with you of one that
will be coming in the immediate future. It will be another milestone
event that we will share. Even as my own history relates, milestones
are not always joyful ones. They always represent a turning point
though. They are always about change.
The milestone we are about to pass will indeed change us. The question
is how? And we are the only ones who can determine that answer.
In all my time with you, I have never been in the position of having
to say the kinds of things you are about to hear me relate. I want
you to know how sorry I am that I feel the need to share the things
I'm about to say, but I also want to assure you that I believe this
congregation will get passed this milestone. The question is, "In
what fashion?"
Some background. A year and a half ago, as you well know, the bottom
fell out of the banking industry and the stock market. Great fortunes
and meager savings alike were lost. So were jobs by folks in our
congregation as by people across the country. Last year we found
our budget here to have a $90,000 hole in it. Your elected leadership
and I came to you and asked if you could do more than you had already
done in order to repair that hole. You came through, and it really
was another bright shining moment.
Our current pledge drive, under the very able, creative and dedicated
leadership of Ed Boyle and Mike Shapiro, began a little over a month
ago. They set out a pretty clear and compelling message that, if
we want to just maintain the staff and programming we have now,
we'd need to raise about $460,000. If we wanted to try to grow even
further through this challenging fiscal period, it would take even
more.
Something you need to realize is that there is no bureaucratic
waste here. As the senior staff supervisor, I can assure you that
every staff member carries their weight and several of our staff
members do far more than what we might expect, given the hours that
they are paid. Supplies are bought and used sparingly.
Something else you need to know is that as of today we have managed
to secure pledges of only $218,000. We are not even quite halfway
to the milestone that would tell us we have secured another year
of the kind of services, programs and staffing that have been the
hallmark of our congregational life here at UUCM, for at least these
last 15 years and I daresay, longer.
In order to meet bylaw requirements and the moral obligations of
their positions, your Board of Trustees will be pushed to create
a balanced budget in two weeks time that will have to be based on
the promises of pledges they will have received from you by that
time.
I don't want to be melodramatic or overdramatic, but I do want
you to understand what is at stake. It really is the UUCM, as we
know it. Our Sundays are shaped by two professional ministers and
a professional music director. I honestly do not know how much of
any of these three positions can survive the kind of outcome it
looks like we may be heading towards. I don't know what this says
about the future relationship between you - the congregation, and
me - your senior minister. I find that insecurity in the future
of our relationship to be heartbreaking.
I don't know what this means in terms of our capacity to maintain
the best staff that I can imagine gathering. I don't know what it
means for our presence in the community and for the many other organizations
and projects that are supported by our participation in them. I
only know that if we don't manage to do much better than it looks
like we're doing, we are going to look and feel a lot different
after passing through this milestone.
Two weeks from today your Board will provide you with the scenarios
that it will look like we can afford. They will present to you the
expected assets for next year and what will be the likely outcome
of those assets on the shaping of expenditures. They will be sending
materials out regarding these prognoses in the next few days. I
hope you will spend some time with them. We are about to pass this
milestone, and at this moment I do not know what course that milestone
will set us on.
A couple of disclaimers that I feel are compulsory. If you are
facing financial hardships personally, please do not take this call
for financial support to heart. You have the best wishes of your
ministers and fellow congregants just to get through these times.
If you have already made your generous pledge for next year, please
know that your ministers and fellow congregants appreciate your
contribution. If you have not made your pledge, if you have not
reached out to others and encouraged them to do the same, I implore
you: the shape of our future could not be more at stake than it
appears to be at this moment.
For all of you, if you think my sermon to you this morning is about
money, you are exactly right. It sure is. But it's about a lot more,
a whole lot more than that. It's about our history; it's about our
shared ministry, and it's about our future. It's about our collective
congregational life and it's about our common hope.
Two weeks ago many of us shared a Passover Seder and celebrated,
among other things, the passage of the Hebrew people through the
Mitzraem, the narrow place, out of Egypt and into freedom. Life
is always about making it through narrow places and finding new
freedoms. The passages through those narrow places are what mark
the milestones of our lives.
We join together in religious community to support and celebrate
those milestones with and for one another. In the formation of our
community we create a whole new set of narrow passages. Today we
come to yet a new one. The waters around us are high and threatening.
In our community we know, or at least believe that God will not
step in to remove us from our challenges. We believe that to be
transformed we must be transformative; we must participate in the
transformation.
We have so much to be grateful for. I have so much to be grateful
for. Our future is uncertain though. As we say in our new member
ceremony, "We are our future." It is ours to make certain
what is uncertain. This is the turning point we have come to. Whether
we pass this point as another bright and shining moment, or as one
that gives entry to a more painful period in our history, is yet
to be determined.
I trust that we will have and merit faith in one another, so that
we might do what we can, to be the most that we can.
I trust that we will act in wisdom, reflection, generosity, grace
and determination to express the painful truth that needs to be
articulated, in loving and disarming ways.
I pray that we pass this milestone with cheering, and an air charged
with a great expectation and a sense of new beginning.
I still believe, and I invite you to believe with me, that this
congregation will work to be the best congregation we are capable
of being.
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