I'm delighted to be back. And I hope you had a wonderful summer. Some of you didn't. I know that. And not because of the weather. We make it through tough weather. We have a much harder time making it through both parched and stormy patches in our lives.
If your summer goal was hibernation and you are just now returning to the world, you didn't miss that much while you were gone. Believe me. The most riviting thing that happened this summer was not the political conventions or an international crisis. It was a television series. On principle, I refused to succumb to the lure of this series. That is to say and I say so proudly -- I refused to watch the first five episodes. Then my four children successfully schemed to lure papa bear out of his den. I would only have to watch once. Yet another gracious, self-sacrificing parental act. It was probably the most absurd hour of television I have ever endured. I was completely hooked. I watched all the rest.
This small victory for my children may turn out to be a loss for our nation. For I was far from alone in being sucked into to a brilliantly produced and ultimately mean-spirited game show that mocked life as effectively as it reflected it. Put sixteen people on an island. Let them vote one another off. Leave two people standing, whom none of the others like.
Whom do you vote for? The rat or the snake? One of them wins and gets a million dollars. I absolutely loved it.
So, what else happened this summer? Not much, as far as I can tell.
I watched the conventions, at least part of them. I thought both presidential candidates gave good speeches. I prefer one candidate to the other, but, blessedly it doesn't appear that the fate of Western civilization is hanging in the balance. And that's a good thing. As for the campaign itself, thus far it too has been something worth hibernating through. I don't know about you, but as I watch these two candidates out on the hustings, my Clinton fatigue is actually beginning to turn into Clinton nostalgia.
I'm worried a little about this campaign. It looks like there may only be one or two debates, and that won't help to galvanize the electorate. For competition, we have the olympics and the baseball playoffs. If the Mets and Yankees both make it to the finals, as it appears they will, even I will have a hard time keeping my eye on the presidential sweepstakes. I'm not proud of this. But if I, the last of the old time political junkies, am as interested in the prospects for a subway series as I am in the fate of the free world, this is not a positive sign.
Yet this mess of stuff Survivor, the presidential election, the olympics and the baseball playoffs does conspire to proffer a subject for this morning's sermon, the contrasting attractions of community and individualism. What I've come up with is this. Life is a team sport. When I shared this title with my wife she told me that she thought she'd heard it as the tagline of a commercial. It used to be that when I had a clever idea, I later discovered that someone like Plato had gotten there before me. This I could live with. Now its Madison Avenue. That, my friends, is humbling!
Nonetheless, I do believe this. And I believe in it more every passing year. Life is a team sport. Early in the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin said that either "We all hang together, or we all hang separately." Franklin was a classic American individualist. He celebrated and fought for our personal freedoms. But at the same time he knew that to win as a country we had to play as a team. The same thing goes for our city. For our families. And even for communities like this one. We celebrate freedom here. Freedom is the heart of our religious creed. But bondage is no longer the problem in this country, city or church. The problem is bondlessness. If we are going to make a difference in this world, we have to find ways to bond together in redemptive community.
Many of the commentaries I read on "Survivor" said that it succeeded because it was so realistic. As far as I can tell, that suggests that the keys to success in life are self protection and passive aggression. It was fun to watch. I hate to admit that, but it was. But it was also somewhat creepy. People used one another as long as they were serviceable, and then cast them aside when their utility began to fade. Even though it began with two tribes, the lesson from "Survivor" is not that life is a team sport. Try dog eat dog. Or the devil take the hindmost.
So why did I like it so much. There are several possibilities. A weakness of character. A desire to relate to my children. A recognition that this incredibly boring summer needed something to make it more interesting. Perhaps it was just part of my lifelong search for sermon material that will not put my congregation to sleep.
Finally, I decided it was an all-too-human fascination with the dark side of human nature. I don't exactly know why we find the misbehavior of prominent people interesting even people made prominent almost completely by accident but we do. Maybe it makes us feel just a little bit safer about our own foibles. But most of it is pure and simple voyeurism. The down-side here -- and obviously I am speaking from experience -- is that when you are looking through someone else's windows, your own life is blank, empty, passive. Others are there, often embarrassingly there, but you are not, which in a strange way is actually worse.
I'm not suggesting that you close your curtains. That too can be a kind of hiding, a kind of hibernation. The problem is, mere observers fare little better. Observers may be immune from the behavior they behold, but they are rarely engaged in a life-enhancing way. They are not part of a team.
I love team sports. If you follow baseball, you know that on any given day a new hero emerges. A pinch hitter. An unheralded fielder. A relief pitcher. Even when your team doesn't win, the blame doesn't rest on a single set of shoulders. Players compete, of course they do. They even compete against themselves, to improve their averages or ERAs. But they also cooperate. And at the end of a victory, everyone runs out of the dugout and embraces one another. Heroes and goats, ballboys and coaches, leap into one another's arms. High-five their comrades. Share in the joy together.
Life is filled with necessary competition, but most of what builds us up we don't do by ourselves. We do it with others. We do it in communities like this one.
Think about All Souls. This congregation is the ultimate in team efforts. For instance, most of the things that give me pride about my years here have to do with you, not with me. It's like the opposite of Survivor. When we win, we win together. A new outreach program. A futures project. A congregation-wide effort to help two of our members pay for their seminary education. Even when you give money to our annual or capital campaigns, you are investing in your own spiritual life and the spiritual life of your fellow congregants. You're not giving away something that you no longer have. You are building up something that you share. High-fives all around.
In all the places that matter most, our families, even if we live alone, our work places when we are part of a working group, our voluntary associations, our church, life is so much more profoundly a team sport than it is an individual competition. The winner is not the one who gets all the other players voted out of the house or workplace or congregation. The winner is the one who keeps the most other players working well together in the workplace or getting along in the family or building the congregation. That's how you win in life, because life is a team sport.
To begin with, none of us is good at everything. Most of us are lucky to be really good at even one thing. Really good. Or pretty good at two or three. So add up the points. All by yourself. Five points. Seven. We need one another. Our victories are almost always shared.
My favorite passage in the Bible points this out brilliantly. It's from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. He adapted it from the Stoic school of philosophy. One body, many members. An ear needs an eye, and eye an ear. A hand needs a foot. Admittedly feet smell and noses run, but those are not the two cleverest things about any given body. Even as our bodies team up all our senses and organs, we too, as individuals, gather into communities that complement our weaknesses and which we enhance by our talents. One body, many members.
This same message rang through clearly at the end of the historic UN millennial summit. More than 150 world leaders struggled to mesh the demands for universal democracy the rule of law and human rights, including the equality of women each an important issue throughout the developed world with demands by poor nations for better balance in the world's economy and more benefits from the rise of globalization.
In their closing declaration the leaders affirmed "We will spare no effort to make the United Nation a more effective instrument for pursuing all of these priorities: The fight for development for all the peoples of the world; the fight against ignorance, poverty and disease; the fight against injustice; the fight against violence, terror and crime; and the fight against the degradation and destruction of our common home." One body, many members. A great challenge, but the right vision as we enter a new millennium.
To begin this church year, my twenty-third among you, I have chosen this same image, Paul's body, for a particular purpose. I don't know of any single group, in this city or in this country, where there is more collaborative talent than right here at All Souls. We have more than enough prospective money, ability, spirit and will to transform this congregation from a comfortable and serviceable Upper East Side Congregation into a real dynamo for freedom, justice, love and community.
Think about how it would change your life if your church became one of the most important things in it. You would grow spiritually. You would become a vital part of a vital team. You would enhance your neighborhood, your city, and yes your denomination, in ways that can only be done together, not alone.
Let me pause for a moment to tell you a couple of things about how wonderful it is to be your minister. First, I get to be with you during times of trial. You open your hearts and lives to me. Sometimes I rise to the occasion well, others not as well as I might hope to or as you deserve. But you are a constant challenge. In so many ways you challenge me personally, and those of you who throw your shoulder to the wheel challenge this church institutionally. You make things happen here. Or, and this is just as important, you help others make things happen. If any institution can be defined by team play more than by individual triumph it is a congregation like ours.
We are starting a new year. No one is going to be voted off the island. All of us, each one of you, can choose, right now, whether to make religion a greater part of your life or not. You can choose not to. No one here will punish you for that choice. Or even tell you that you are going to hell because of it. But I am sure of this. If you pitch in, your life will change. If enough of us team together, we can turn this congregation into a major renewal project. We can renew our faith and spiritual lives. We can renew the vision we have had in the past as a flagship congregation for our denomination and for this city. Together, only together, we can blow the roof off this place and let the stars shine.
I feel a personal responsibility here, because we've done it before. It was a long time ago, but institutions live longer than people do and institutional memory is as important as family memory. Henry Whitney Bellows, with the help mostly of the women in our congregation, made this church not only the flagship church of our denomination, but the most important liberal church in the country. We have more members now than he did then, but the way he inspired his people is amazing to me. Out of this congregation came Antioch College, the American Sanitary Commission, that raised 6 million real dollars to aid the wounded during the Civil War, and the Fruit and Flower Mission, one of the first Church based social welfare agencies in the city.
I look out at you, and I know we can rise to a similar occasion. We can be an amazing church once again. How? To begin with, with your money. You will have to invest in this to make it work. And, then, with lots of dedicated time. In a congregation like ours, gifts of service mean as much if not more than gifts of money. Of course, we need both. But we need something else even more. We need team spirit. We need to celebrate one another. We need to bring ourselves to our spiritual work in the same way we bring ourselves to our office work and our family work. Will this church benefit if you do that? Of course it will. But I am sure, really sure, that, if enough of us join together into the team, ou too will benefit as well.
We never will get everybody on board. I know that each of you has times and seasons. Some of you, right now, are receiving so little that you cannot give any more. But the rest of us can. We can give more, for ourselves and others. We can join this religious team as relievers and outfielders and pinch hitters, even (to be fair to the football fans among you), as linebackers and safeties and place kickers. We can give more and be more. We can work as a team.
We've done well in the past. But we can do better. Call me, or Galen or Jan. Come in and talk about your needs, gifts or ideas. Together we can accomplish things that none of us can do on our own. For life is truly a team sport. Amen. I love you. God bless us all. Copyright AllSouls 2000.