Send My Roots Rain

Rev. Tony Lorenzen

First Parish Church in Billerica, MA

Sunday, September 9, 2007

My name is the Reverend Tony Lorenzen and I have water to bring. Let those who have roots here receive my humble offering.

I want to thank the search committee for meeting with me and offering me this ministerial position. I want to thank our Clara Barton District Executive Lynn Thomas for making me aware that you were looking for a minister. I want to thank all of you for extending such a warm welcome to my family and me. Before I stepped into this pulpit this morning I have been welcomed and made to feel at home by all of you who came to hear me preach in Weston. I have been welcomed into this minister’s office and role here by Nancy Merrill and Lil Ralston and Barbara Bourdon and John Luke and Sarah Mills and Kim Reef and Jim Learned and Sunshine Gayle and (Dee Halzack) and Bill Chaff and Martha Drost. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You’ve refreshed me and energized me by bringing me here. I’ve brought my watering can. I hope to return the favor. Allow me to get to work.

I won’t make a grandiose messianic claim to bring living water like Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman at the well. I don’t have a messiah complex and I don’t claim to be a savior. I’ll save you the suspense - I’m not perfect. I don’t claim to be. I do, however, claim to be a gardener and I know a little something about roots and their need for rain, for water and the need for a garden and other living things to be loved, cared for and tended.

I know that all the vegetables in my garden need water, and sunlight and good soil. Yet each vegetable in the garden needs slightly different care to flourish. One might need slightly more acidic soil and another full sunlight while another needs a little more shade. Other plants may need to be watered more generously than others. A congregation is by definition a gathering of different people of different races and ethnic backgrounds; people who are young and older, male and female, gay and straight, introverted and extroverted, involved in congregational life and not so involved. All people need love and care and to be welcomed and treated with dignity and respect. Each person is also unique, so everyone that makes up a congregation, especially a Unitarian Universalist congregation, has needs that are slightly different and particular to their individual personalities, life circumstances, theology and spirituality.

I have some confessions to make as a gardener. I talk to my plants. Come on tomatoes, you can turn red; I know you can do it. Nice beans, please let yourselves be pollinated – I know you like your purple and white flowers, but it’s really okay to make some beans now. I also sing to them, especially the asparagus plant. It embarrasses Zackary to no end so I’ll refrain from giving you a rousing chorus of “It’s the dawning of the age of asparagus.” My neighbors must think I’m a bit off, but I talk and sing to my vegetable garden.

I also practice organic and sustainable gardening. I compost. I collect rainwater for use during times when water is low; I use beneficial organisms and other non-chemical means of pest control. I never knowingly put any poisons or toxins on my plants or in my soil. It’s the way I “do gardening.” I have certain beliefs about how a garden should work and I try to stick to them.

I also have some beliefs about how to “do church.” Over the coming year, I’ll be sharing most of them with you and over the next several weeks addressing some of these ideas in more detail in sermons and newsletters and meetings with the board and various groups.

First and foremost I believe a minister should be accessible. I’ve arranged a schedule that puts me here at the church during a variety of hours - during the day on Tuesday, but in the late afternoon and early evening on Wednesdays and Thursdays. My phone number and email have gone out in the newsletter, are in today’s order of service and are on our Website. Please do not hesitate to be in contact. I want to know what’s going on with you, but I can’t read minds. If something’s happening in your life, chances are you will need to tell me.

Let me tell you some other things I believe about “doing church”:

o Church is not just for Sundays.

o I don’t like the term Sunday School

o I prefer not to have anything to do with committees

o Churches should be welcoming places for everyone, period.

o Churches should have a mission that resonates beyond the sanctuary walls.

o You have to love and respect your history.

o To be a successful church in 2007 you have to take advantage of the 21^st century.

Church is not just for Sundays. That’s the reason I’ve scheduled a weekly Tea for the late afternoon on Wednesdays and weekly Vespers service for the early evening on Thursday. One social event and one spiritual event. I’ll be adding an adult education series come October that will be offered on Sundays or Wednesday, possibly both, depending on the availability of those interested in the program.

I can’t stand the term Sunday School. Young people go to school Monday through Friday. That’s enough. Just the word School evokes desks and being judged and graded. I believe in removing school and classes and teachers from our RE program. What I love is lifespan faith development. It’s not just for young people. It’s for people of all ages because all of us can always improve our spiritual lives, each one of us always has more to discover about life, the universe and everything. Lifespan faith development for both youth and adults explores our faith, meets in meeting rooms, is led by facilitators, engages in sessions or activities and children’s chapel. It really isn’t school, there aren’t grades and there isn’t a principal, although there are UU principles and purposes.

I’d rather not have anything to do with Committees. When I think about being on a committee I think about sitting in a lot of meetings being bored off my keester. Committees are for boardrooms and businesses and corporations. Churches have ministries. Ministry is about service, about helping and giving of your time and talent to further the mission of the church both within the congregation and in the greater community. It’s not just semantics and playing with words; it’s about how we approach our work and service for each other within and beyond the church walls.

Churches should be welcoming places for everyone, period. You shouldn’t have to wonder if you’ll be accepted at church. I’m proud First Parish Church is a Welcoming congregation. If it were not, I wouldn’t be here. Being a Welcoming Congregation is something to celebrate. The fact that we’re a welcoming congregation should be on our letterhead, our Website, and the sign in front of our church.

I also believe that being welcoming doesn’t end with GLBT issues. I applaud the decision to make this building accessible. My best friend, Zackary’s godfather, Andy, had muscular dystrophy and spent almost all of his 41 years in a wheelchair until he passed away in 2004. If Andy were still with us, I would want him to be able to enter this beautiful sanctuary.

As Unitarian Universalists we also have the challenge to be a theologically welcoming church. You will hear me use the word God. I will even preach on the teachings of Jesus once in a while. There will also be times when a Christian perspective will be absent. I practice Zen meditation and Buddhism as part of my personal spirituality. It will influence my preaching. I also value creation spirituality, theologies of liberation, process theology and of course, traditional Unitarian and Universalist perspectives such as Transcendentalism and Humanism. I love exploring our UU history. We have among us those who express their UU identity through nature-based traditions and paganism. Somehow we will endeavor to include all these perspectives at times in word, worship, music and preaching.

Our liberal faith tradition is a creedless one. We have no dogma and draw our inspiration from many sources. Liberal religion replaces creed and dogma with method and principles. Our method and principles can be reduced to three items: reason, freedom, and tolerance. I believe in a way of doing church that embodies and practices all three.

Churches should have a mission that resonates beyond the sanctuary walls. Churches are unique voluntary associations. Church communities deal with the spiritual, the emotional, the intellectual, and the social and cultural elements of human life. As the great UU theologian James Luther Adams said, “Church is a place you go to practice being human.” Church needs to be a place where we can gather in community to seek rest and respite from the everyday world outside the church doors. And yet church also needs to be a place where we gather as a community to combine our spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and financial resources to combat the social and economic injustices of our world. One two-part question for people to ponder this morning and this church year: Collectively, as a congregation: who are we and what do we want to do in the world? If we all can’t answer this right away and with similar responses, we have thinking to do and conversations to have because having a mission statement doesn’t always mean we have a mission.

You have to love and respect your history. This church, like Unitarian Universalism has a long, proud history. Our roots here are deep. That’s a good thing. Only plants with deep roots can weather the changes that come with the turning of the seasons and the passage of time. This congregation has marked the time of this place. This congregation dates back to the days when in order to be recognized as a town in Massachusetts a community needed to have a meeting house, a gathered church and a settled minister. There would be no Billerica without First Parish Church. It is time to reclaim our place as the town church. To announce to everyone looking for a spiritual home free from dogma, creedalsim and sectarianism, “whoever you are, wherever you find yourself on your journey of faith and your journey through life, you are welcome here at First Parish Church.”

As important as it is to know our history, we can’t be a successful congregation in 2007 without stepping with confidence into the 21^st century, making full use of technology, media, and new ideas in promoting the congregation and increasing membership as well as in worship and managing the church’s day-to-day business and fund-raising.

I don’t believe in change just for the sake of change. However, I also don’t believe in doing things a certain way just because that’s the way they’ve always been done. I sent out letters to all the members of this congregation last week. 51 envelopes. I know that as difficult as change can be, our future together will hold many changes. It is a truism that if “you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you always got.” Last week, I got to send out 51 envelopes. Next year at this time I want to send out many more.

In her poem “At Blackwater Pond” Mary Oliver writes:

the tossed waters have settled

after a night of rain.

I dip my cupped hands. I drink

a long time. It tastes

like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold

into my body, waking the bones. I hear them

deep inside me, whispering

oh what is that beautiful thing

that just happened?

I have watched plants revive after a watering, springing back to life so vividly and quickly that I could almost see the water coursing through them from the roots up through to the tips of the leaves. I know that my own faith journey to Unitarian Universalism has been a cool drink like fire waking my bones and my arrival here at First Parish Church is that beautiful thing that just happened to me, for you have welcomed me, you have sent my roots rain. As we continue our journey, my hope, my dream, my prayer, my mission is that as we find ourselves further down the road together you can look upon my ministry as having sent your roots rain, asking each other, “what is that beautiful thing that just happened?”