Prepared to Serve

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

September 22 & 23, 2007

“I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” —Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

 

Meditation

“Back-Scratcher” by David Bumbaugh

The fall from grace

         the great disruption of primordial order,

                  the original sin, had nothing to do

                          with eating apples or talking with snakes.

The instrument of our fall was a wooden back-scratcher,

         that piece of wood, bent at the end

                  so one can reach the unreachable spot—

                          there, between the shoulder blades,

                                   down just a little bit lower,

                                   now up a little bit,

                          there where the most persistent itch

                                   always takes up residence.

Before the back-scratcher,
before that simple, infernal device,
we, like all our primate kin, depended on others to do for us

What we could not do for ourselves:

“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

Before the back-scratcher,
before that simple, infernal tool,
we needed each other to scratch the unreachable itch.

The wooden back-scratcher dissolved the bonds of reciprocity,
         unloosed the ties of community,
and tempted us to believe in our own godlike self-sufficiency.

 

And God walked in the cool of the garden,
and saw a primate standing alone.

 

“What have you done,” God asked, “that you stand alone?”

“I have found a back-scratcher,” said the beast,

“and now I need no one.”

“Poor beast,” said God, “Now you must leave this garden:

“In Eden, no one stands alone; each depends on the others.”

 

And thus began our wandering, our pacing up and down the earth,
scratching our own itches, pretending self-sufficiency,
trying to ignore the persistent sense of loss,
the vague yearning for a primordial order,
a world where you scratched my back and I scratched yours.

 

A wooden back-scratcher is poor compensation
for the gentle touch of a living hand.[1]

 

Readings

Our first reading today is a meditation by UU minister Meg Barnhouse

 

I love for a waitress to call me “Hon.”  It’s comforting.  She doesn’t know me and I don’t know her, but we fit into well worn, ancient categories: I am the Hungry One and she is the One Who Brings Nourishment From the Unseen Source.

 

When I was younger, I worked as a waitress in Philadelphia and New Jersey.  I learned useful things while serving food to strangers.  I know how to rush around with my hands full, thinking about six things at the same time, which has stood me in good stead as the working mother of two small sons.  I know that people are not at their best when they’re hungry.  That knowledge helps me to understand world events.  If the citizens of the world were well fed, we’d have fewer wars and less mayhem.

 

The most helpful thing I grasped while waitressing was that some tables are my responsibility and some are not.  A waitress gets overwhelmed if she has too many tables, and no one gets good service.  In my life, I have certain things to take care of:  my children, my relationships, my work, myself, and one or two causes.  That’s it.  Other things are not my table.  I would go nuts if I tried to take care of everyone, if I tried to make everybody do the right thing.  If I went through my life without ever learning to say, “Sorry, that’s not my table, Hon,” I would burn out and be no good to anybody.  I need to have a surly waitress inside myself that I can call on when it seems everyone in the world is waving an empty coffee cup in my direction.  My Inner Waitress looks over at them, keeping her six plates balanced and her feet moving, and says, “Sorry, Hon, not my table.”[2]

 

Our second reading is an excerpt from the minister’s column in the October newsletter of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Exeter, New Hampshire

 

This week I had a chance to catch up with one of my friends from seminary; he started at a church in Des Moines Iowa at the same time I started here.  We exchanged stories about church life and summer and eventually he said, “Have you heard?”  I could tell that something big had happened but couldn’t recall anything that I had heard.  “Well, did you hear that Iowa legalized…[same-sex] marriage?”  Yes, I had heard that and I had been thinking about my friend, thinking he must be busy.  In fact only one same-sex marriage was performed in Iowa before a challenge was put up in the courts.  And my friend had the honor and joy of being the minister to perform that ceremony.  You may have seen his picture in the Globe or the New York Times.  A few days later, talking to me, he kept saying, “This is really fun!”  Word smith that I am, I had to think about what he meant by “fun.”  I think he meant that he was in one of those moments when he was totally clear about what was the right thing to do and he was just doing it.  The energy and joy that come with that are really fun.

            I think we’re all at a moment in the world when we could step into that kind of profound fun.  … This is the work of the world.  It’s really fun when you step into the stream with a group of people.  [Our congregation] is at a point when we can welcome a lot of people into this joyful work of engaging the most essential work of the world.  Let’s do this work with as many people as we can find. 

            Our Universalist heritage is one of going out into the world, meeting the world as it is, and proclaiming that there is a loving embrace that takes in everyone.  Our 19^th century brethren [maybe] couldn’t conceive of the issues we confront today but their motivation, an embracing love, still carries a great force.  This is one of our great gifts to the world – let’s give it![3] 

 

Sermon

I was driving home from my job waiting tables about eight years ago when I experienced one of the more poignant moments in my journey to understanding ministry.

 

I had been a waiter off and on for many years before and during my theological school studies, with nearly all of my time as a server spent in a bustling, family-owned eatery in Wilmette, one of the wealthy North Shore suburbs of Chicago. 

 

Waiting tables can be revealing in and of itself, as it can offer so much wisdom about human nature.  As a waiter you get to interact with humanity up close, humanity at its most generous and kind, and at its most petty and rude…sometimes at the same table.  And I’m not just talking about the customers.  I’m talking about the self-reflection opportunities that can come with waiting tables.   For example, in my time as a waiter, I was given frequent reason to consider my preoccupation with money, the way a simple gift of an extra dollar added to the tip could lighten my spirits one minute, even as a particularly stingy gratuity could fill me with contempt the next.  

 

I was not always proud of my behavior as a waiter.  There were times when I allowed the stress of working in the high-turnover bistro on behalf of high-maintenance customers to infect my heart.  I think about all the regular, sometimes quirky, customers and the ways the waitstaff and I could objectify them, usually via nicknames muttered to each other at the dessert case or the soda gun.  Most of the troublesome regulars had them.  “Grumpy Man” for the older fellow who never seemed happy with his order.  “Salmon-Weigher” for the guy who actually brought a scale in one day to check if the fish on his sandwich was the advertised size.  “Crying Man” for the over-bearing father who had a breakdown in one of our booths when his marriage hit a rough spot.  “Smiley” for the woman whose big crime was to be exceedingly cheerful. 

 

Ugh!  Like I said, I’m not proud of everything we did, but griping about things did seem to relieve some of the monotony and stress...at least, it felt that way at the time.  [By the way, you might want to consider your own behavior at the restaurants you frequent.  What nickname might the waitstaff have for you?]

 

As I already shared, I waited tables throughout my time in theological school, including during my 10-month stint as an intern minister at the Unitarian Church of Evanston just a few miles down the road from the restaurant.   Most of the time, the restaurant provided what felt like a clean break from my work in the church.  I got to eat some good food, put some money in my pocket, and interact with people who knew me long before ministry had ever been on my horizon.  

 

But the clean break would get a little blurry from time to time when one of the Evanston church members, we’ll call her Shelby, would sit down at one of my tables.  Was I Shelby’s minister or her waiter?  Somewhere inside, I knew that the real answer was “both.”  But I was discouraged to realize that, for her, it seemed, the answer was “waiter” and only waiter.  Why I should have expected anything different is unclear to me.  I just knew that our interactions just didn’t feel right.

 

And here’s where the poignant moment comes in. 

 

After one particularly unsatisfying encounter with Shelby, during which she had ordered me around like the servant I was paid to be rather than the delightful person I knew I was, I was driving home from the restaurant, replaying the exchange we had had that night over and over again in my mind, when I admitted to myself the following:

 

I appreciated and respected Shelby more as a minister than I did as a waiter. At the church, Shelby was someone whose company I enjoyed.  At the restaurant, I admit, I didn’t care for her much at all. 

 

What’s so poignant about that?

 

Well, I had to acknowledge that the lens through which I viewed Shelby had a lot to do with how I perceived her behavior.  Was she a different person in the church versus how she was at the restaurant?  Probably not.  But how I interpreted her behavior was definitely different, depending on the setting.

 

As her waiter, I was focused on exchanging my time with her for my 15% gratuity; in other words, I was motivated by what I would receive.  But as her minister, I was prepared to receive nothing from our time together beyond the gift of our shared presence and interaction, which of course was everything that really mattered.

 

As her waiter, I was quick to be offended.  As her minister, I was quick to forgive.

 

As her waiter, we could say, I was open to objectification, expecting to loathe and prepared to make money.  As her minister, I was open to life, expecting to love and prepared to serve.

 

One of my favorite rituals that we share from week to week is our closing responsive reading.  It is the same one that we used to close services in Evanston during this time when I discovered what ministry is truly all about.  Not just my ministry.  But the ministry of each person who accepts the opportunities that arise when the invitation of that reading is followed…when we can be open to life, expecting to love, prepared to serve.

 

As we read those words together each week I am reminded of the call to ministry that I believe is right there for all of us to hear and to heed.  The call to view this life as the gift it is, to not get caught up in expectations that lead us away from the best that is possible, to be prepared to serve that which is most life-affirming and most life-renewing: the understanding that we are each other’s keeper and what we give (and forgive) are far more important than what we receive.

 

I appreciate the suggestion offered in our first reading today, that even as we are called to be prepared to serve, we should also be prepared to say “Not my table, Hon.”  This can be a difficult distinction to make, to know when a table is ours and when it is not.   If we are truly open to our lives as ministry, we will undoubtedly be faced with more tables than we could possibly manage. In waiter lingo, we call that being “slammed.”  The needs of the world are simply too great for us not to feel slammed now and then, if not most of the time.  So how can we know which tables should get priority and which can be left behind for someone else?

 

I admire how Meg Barnhouse prioritizes her tables—her children, her relationships, her work, herself and a couple of causes—even as I acknowledge that for some of us, just one or two of those tables may be all that we can handle.  Indeed, there may be times of family challenge or crisis when we can’t keep up with a single one.  We have to be ok with that, and look forward to when circumstances may change.  After all, what other choice to do we have?

 

Meanwhile, some of us who have gotten used to juggling several tables at once, can struggle all the same.  When people mention to me their concern about being slammed by the abundance of tables in their lives, I offer them the same advice I received from Paul Turner, the lead organizer of AMOS.  When I was trying to balance the various causes to which I felt compelled to give time and attention, Paul said, “Mark, go to the places where you feel most energized and step away from the places where you feel depleted.” 

 

But, even as I share his advice with others, I also suggest that they think carefully about it, just as I tried to do.  I didn’t want to assume that something depleting me is necessarily worthy of being avoided. I think that assumption could be a mistake.  A particular table might be depleting me because of how I am choosing to serve it.  To use the primary metaphor of this sermon, I need to carefully consider if I am approaching a table more as a “minister” or as a “waiter.”  Am I being thoughtfully engaged or emotionally trapped? Am I willing to try to work with the circumstances of the table as they are, complete with life’s inherent limitations and disappointments, or are my expectations of the people at that table or my service to them too great?  None of us, I think, are called to be, as one overly committed minister was described, “a quivering mass of availability.”[4] No matter which tables we have in our life at any given time, we do have a responsibility to care for ourselves, even as we are called to care for others.  If any table is so dominating our time that we cannot care for ourselves, we have to realize that we are probably not offering good service to anyone.

 

I enjoyed how Kendra Ford described for her congregation the delight she heard in my story of being “totally clear about…the right thing to do and…just doing it.”  She’s right. Those opportunities to be totally clear and to act are fun.  Profoundly fun, in fact.  But we all know that those opportunities are not always so evident or possible, even.  Life is usually far more complicated than that.  What feels like a certainty today may be a conundrum tomorrow.  Easy answers and sure things are typically hard to come by…and rightly so, considering the diversity of our world and the people in it.  And that’s why I think it matters, even when we feel most slammed by life, most disappointed, confused, and/or over-burdened by all the tables waving their empty coffee cups at us, that we try to keep ourselves in community with others as best we can,

that we leave some space in our own lives for being present to the lives and stories of others, even if all we can manage is to just show up once in a while and listen,

 
and that we ourselves be motivated and sustained by that same encompassing love that grounded our Universalist and Unitarian predecessors and challenged them to the ministries of their lives…each different…each imperfect…but all ministries, nonetheless.

 

Ministry, I believe, will not be well-grounded in an expectation of saving the world, as if any of us by ourselves could do that.  Ministry, I have learned, is about being present to the world as it is, doing the best we can with what we know and who we are, and reaching, reaching with all the courage and hope we can muster, for who we might become, trusting that as we change and grow, so may the world.

 

My colleague Gordon McKeeman summed it up well, I think, when he wrote a piece called “Anyone’s Ministry”:

 

 “Ministry is…

a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities.

 

Inviting people into deeper, more constant,
more reverent relationship with the world
and with one another….

 

speaking and living the highest we know
and living with the knowledge that it is
         never as deep, or as wide
         or as high as we wish.”

 

 

So, even as some of us may need to find our inner surly waitress to say “Sorry Hon, not my table,” from time to time, my hope is that we might also find our inner ministers, the ministers who realize that some of our tables might be better served (and so would we) if we would just sit down, break some bread with our companions, and begin, slowly and surely, one piece at a time, to satisfy the hunger we all share.