Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, June 8, 2025.
In my first year here, I attended a retirement party for the priest at the Episcopal church, where a community leader came up to me and said, “Haverhill needs the UU church to be strong.” I took that to mean that people in this city need a progressive faith community with the values we uphold; also an acknowledgment that churches go though ups and downs, but it’s important for folks outside these walls that this congregation to be healthy and vital. When I got here, there was some work to be done. But if you saw our presence at Haverhill’s first Pride Parade yesterday (we were the largest contingent there), or if you heard what city and state leaders said to me at the Pride Flag raising before the parade, you’d know that this church is in strong shape indeed. People rightfully see us as a positive force in this city, which needs what we have to offer. And you’re just getting started!
I used to understand the local congregation, which I’ve always loved, in a somewhat limited way. I thought it was the people who come regularly, are engaged in tangible ways like giving their time and money, or have longtime connections. But over the years I’ve come to see that belonging takes many forms, and my limited and more literal view has been replaced by a wider sense of what church is and can be. There are people who only show up sometimes, but think of this as their church. So they come when they need to. There are some who hardly ever come, but they want and need this church to survive and thrive, so they regularly send money to help make it so. There are folks who almost always come on Zoom. And others who tell me, “If I ever do decide to go to church, it would be there!”
I’ve come to imagine this congregation as everyone who sees this as their spiritual home, as their community. People in different stages of life and with varied gifts and needs, but people on the way together. Gathered around our simple statement of faith: “Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is its sacrament, and service is its prayer…” Who doesn’t need companions who want to dwell together in peace, seek the truth in love, and help one another? What city or country couldn’t use more of that?
You heard this kind of broader sense view in our reading today from the novel Jayber Crow, by the farmer and poet Wendell Berry: “My vision of the gathered church that had come to me… had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community.”
When I came here we had a church sexton named Charlie Jardine, who was like our own Jayber Crow. A Scots Presbyterian, Charlie was getting on in years, and as frugal as can be. If I put some old, falling apart piece of furniture out for the trash, Charlie would rescue it and take it across town to First Presbyterian, where he was a longtime member. I ran into his pastor at the Temple once, and she said, “Can you please stop throwing things out—you’re killing me with all that Charlie’s bringing over here!” And I said, “Sorry, I can’t help you with that!”
Every week Charlie would put my sermon title on the sign out front, and often ask me about it. We’d have these conversations about the Bible and theology, that might help me to think about the sermon in a deeper or different way. Now and then I’d fantasize about someday being like Charlie, or Jayber Crow; working behind the scenes in a church, a mostly unnoticed observer and on-the-ground theologian. Let’s hear again Jayber’s vision of the gathered community that he lived in:
“What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on... It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill.”
Doesn’t he tell the truth about our human experience: our flaws, our messy lives and relationships, our disappointments? It’s good and important to be real about things that matter. To tell the truth about what we see. And remember that there is also, in us, and in our midst, love and care, forgiveness and redemption and grace. This is what our Universalist theology is built on—the trust that we are part of a great and abiding Love that will not let us go, which impels us to reach out in care and concern for others.
And this is one of the things about being part of a community. After experiencing hurt or disappointment, if you can resist the urge to run away, if you can hang in there with those very human companions, and do your own work, keeping your own side of the street clean, as one of my teachers puts it, you’ll get to experience reconciliation, and redemption, and grace.
While looking at the news this week, in particular the ongoing tragedy in Gaza; the human rights violations, cruelty and carnage being exacted people there, particularly the children, by the Israeli government, I found myself wondering, “What’s happened to simple human decency? How have we gotten to the point where there are no boundaries between what is right and wrong? Where people with power act with impunity, do whatever they want: commit atrocities and disregard human rights and feel no shame?”
I can only hope and pray that this inhumanity, at home and abroad, will not last forever, and will not become the norm. I have to trust that the human spirit is strong enough; that enough of us will hold on to our decency, and kindness and care; that in our lives and in our communities we will continue to believe and act like there are consequences, that what we say and what we do still matters. So that we will act with care, for for justice; and speak kindly to those we meet, and share joy whenever we can; that we will try to love our neighbors, and even our enemies, and do what we can to make things a little better while we are here.
Throughout our lives we make promises, both explicit and implicit. We take vows to uphold the Constitution and live by the rules; to be faithful to our spouse and do right by our children. In this church we make promises to one another too. We say together those words of affirmation and we have a covenant of how we intend to be in relationship with one another.
These things are important to me. Because I’ve seen in my own life the blessing of keeping the promises that you make, and the pain and problems that come when you don’t. We need places that call us to our better selves and hold us in relation with one another. Which is one of the reasons I love the church, and you all in particular. Because you are doing this, day in and day out, with love and care. And I hope you see that in each other.
We know that the church is not the building; it’s you, the people. The gathered congregation. “A membership,” as Jayber Crow puts it, “of this place… and no other place on earth.”
And yet, there is something about the place where the community gathers, and lives out its life. There is a spirit in and of a place, and this place, isn’t there? Have you felt it? There is a presence that abides in a place where things have happened between people, especially when that’s been over a long stretch of time.
There’s a song I’ve been singing in the car for months now, that moves me because it makes me think of you and of this place. Listen to the last line:
For the common life that binds us, through days that soar of plod:
for this place and for these people, we give you thanks, O God.
That’s what I’m feeling these days. So grateful for you people and for this place. This hymn was written for an academic setting, so I adapted the words to fit our life here, and wrote an additional verse, to lift up what I’ve seen and love about you. And so—
Whether you are new here, or have been around a long time; whether you are a leader and at the center of things, or someone who come and goes, whether you feel at home here or are wondering if you will ever find your way in, whether on this day you find yourself feeling hopeful or disappointed,
I hope your time here, in this place, with these people, and the Spirit all around us, will help you open a little wider to what is possible;will help you take heart and have faith that there is a goodness that we can’t always see in the present moment, but that always is, and will be revealed in the fullness of time.
As Jayber Crow put it, “perfected… by one another's love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace.” For this place, and for you people; for what we’ve shared, and the possibilities that lie ahead, thanks be to God.
Amen.