Prayer for stillness

Let us open our hearts to prayer.

In prayer we offer pleas from the depth of our hearts.  We reach for the comfort of peace.   Peace that is in the stillness of the soul.  Such peace is hard to find.  We know the peace that is but the lull between storms, the anxious peace unsure of what is coming next, the peace that is the relief after worry.  The peace that is no action.

Let us seek the peace that is deeper.  That is the deep stillness of the soul.   The peace beyond all worries, the peace of gentle breath and no thoughts, a peace that brings close the presence of holiness, where angels seem to be, seeming to wait and comfort and enfold us in a love that is only of this peaceful place.

From this we see the world anew.  Those we love, we love more.  Forgiveness is an act of understanding and love, a gift for which no reward is sought.   There is a calm strength to accept the uncertainty of change.  

Wherever we go we take with us the calm strength of our inner selves.  We are who we are.   We take with us the strength of our holiness.

So let our prayers begin with the search for that deep stillness within, to seek that connection to the holiness of God.  Let us walk in the light of that inner stillness.  This is our prayer.

The way not followed

What would have happened if that early Christian church had decided that the life and teaching of Jesus was the beginning of a new religion, with God in a different nature.   Christianity might have been quite different and become more mystical.   It would have been a religion of peace, equality and tolerance.   

Jesus was a religious revolutionary who said that God is gentle and within you, you don't need to obey the rules of sabbath, food and gender to be at one with God.

Christianity took all that away and restored the Old Testament with headquarters set up in Rome because the gospels also claimed Jesus as the Jewish messiah and used quotations from the Hebrew bible as proof.     

This was a second and quite different nature of God but it was the one that the early church adopted, along with a priestly class.  Christianity became the very type of religious organisation that Jesus had challenged.

I think that Christianity lost its way when it chose the Old Testament God.  This was the God who was more like a distant emperor than a loving father;  a God who ruled the world and would punish wrongdoing severely; whose wrath should be feared; whose subjects should be humble before him.  

When we have our debates about Unitarian Christianity, perhaps we should bear this in mind.  It is the spark of the spiritual revolutionary we should retain,one that points towards a God of love and a community of all people -  not the king in the sky.

tony mcneile

Empowering the present age for Unitarians.

I am a member of the Bolton Socialist Club.   It is one of the oldest in the country and is still active, supporting and campaigning on issues for the 'common man' - but it is not a church.  Unitarians most often also support and campaign on issues for the 'common man', they are a church.  What is the difference?

Many years ago one of my colleagues suggested our Unitarian churches were more like social clubs, that they were meeting places for middle class like minded people who met up on a Sunday morning for an unchallenged hour of singing and listening.   It was also suggested we were the irrelevant last hurrah of a great reforming religious movement when the name itself identified a person as an influential game changer.

It is indeed a great legacy but visit many of our congregations where there is only a handful of members and it does seem to be a legacy which is almost spent. It makes me ask what we Unitarians can offer in today's world that others do not.  Do we still have a unique selling point.

I learnt a lesson many years ago when the congregation decided to have a flower festival in the Chapel.  Someone suggested that as well as the main theme we invited displays to represent the interests of our members.  To my surprise these filled a very large section.   The Bolton Equality Council, the Women's Refuge, Save the Children, United Nations Association, all founded by present day Unitarians and there were about fifteen other organisations in the display that people supported.

But no one said, 'I do this work because I am a Unitarian'.  They simply did it from the goodness of their hearts and they also happened to be Unitarians but never said so.   After that I gave everyone a chalice lapel badge to wear.
It made me realise that we are still more than the legacy of our past.

 It is just that help is given in an unsung modest Unitarian way.   It is not our unique selling point either, charity shop workers and interfaith supporters don't just come from the Unitarians.  They come from all walks of life, all faiths and no faiths.

I am not sure whether the worship we offer, even the rights of passage we offer can be claimed as a unique selling point either.   I have been to other churches just as happy as ours.  I have been to non religious funerals just as sensitive as ours, and weddings too.

There are two things we need to do to continue our existence as a church that matters in the world
 First we need to transform ourselves into a living tradition and secondly we need focus on meeting the spiritual needs of the modern individual.

The Living Tradition is about modifying our worship, using our space and extending our ministry.
Worship should be a joyful happy experience open to participation and with a message that can be discussed openly.  We don't need to be tied to the wheel that is the hymn sandwich.

Our space should be an open space where other than worship groups can meet - meditation, yoga, fringe faith groups, support groups and discussion groups.   We shouldn't be afraid of collaborating with other faith groups for the mutual advantage of the wider communities we seek to serve.

Our ministry should be about leadership, not just spiritual leadership, but groups leadership, community leadership.  We should not expect to find all these leadership skills invested in one person but be prepared to facilitate training of our own members and to work collaboratively with other churches and organisations.

In the communities around our churches there are many many individuals who feel lost and isolated.   Loneliness is an issue, meeting and socialising with other people is an issue, age is an issue, mind, body and spirit are issues.   We have to ask ourselves as a church if we provide space and comfort for people to address those simple questions of, 'Who am I?', 'How can I feel better about myself as an individual and a participator in life?'

I often hear people say, 'But that is about counselling!'   I say this is different.  It is about spiritual development, finding the confidence and the place to explore those questions of identity and relate them to an overarching reason to belong in the world.   Add to that a sense of being in a community where you feel you belong and yet you are still an individual.

How are we to achieve all this?   It requires a change of direction, moving away from being just a worshipping community based on a Unitarian tradition.
It requires developing a web of interdependence between individual Unitarians, congregations, districts and Essex Hall.  We need to share experiences of what works and what doesn't.  We need to financially support the training of leaders and the delivery of courses and resources.

We need to share templates for worship and personal spiritual development.  
We need to promote ourselves - wear the badge and the fly the flag that says who we are and what we stand for.

Above all we need to share a new vision for the future that meets the spiritual and emotional needs of the searching individual.   We need to support, enable and empower our own generation to do great deeds because they have found a faith that speaks the truth of life to them?  This is how I believe we can best serve the present age as Unitarians.

Tony McNeile

 A sermon :

What does it take to be a leader? What is it that makes a leader?

Some are leaders by consent, called to lead. Some have become leaders through intimidation ­ the dictators who have seized power and who have littered our history over the centuries.

Cometh the hour, cometh the leader sometimes, Winston Churchill is the best example for us. Lincoln and Roosevelt for the United States.

Good leaders are inspirational, they become role models, people follow them and like to imitate them. They are loved by those they lead.

Dictators lead by force and fear.
I suppose for Greece it has been the arrival of Alexis Tsipras to represent the mood of the people under the economy of austerity. The popular will has rejected the established leaders.

It doesn't happen in religious societies. The king of Saudi Arabia owes his power to the religious state. The religious leadership of the country endorse his rule so each one supports the power of the other, and they both survive.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, it is said that many of the psalms were more than just songs of worship and praise. They were ceremonial anthems sung at annual festivals when the relationship between king and people and God was reaffirmed.

The king was supported by the priests, the priests were supported by the king, the people were reassured of their religious contract.

The people had their history and their prophets to remind them what happened when this three way contract was broken. The prophets continually reminded them that God had saved them from the Egyptians.
God had given them this land they had settled in.Reminded them of their obligation to worship and obey. Whatever was going wrong or had gone wrong in the past was always said to be the result of God’s response to their actions ­ Blessing or punishing what they had done.

If the king had erred, they said it was God who punished by bringing disaster. The fortunes and misfortunes of the people were also attributed to acts of God. God either saved them from their enemies or handed them over to be conquered. The Philistines, the Hittites and the Amorites were all said to be acting out God’s plan.
But if you read the stories of the Patriarchs and the Kings, their personal relationship with their God seems different, not quite so devout or obedient.

Abraham is given the promised land but doesn't go there. He goes to Egypt instead.
The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote a long essay about the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. What was happening when Abraham raised the knife over his son? Was Abraham challenging God, calling his bluff ? Did his God expect him to plead for his son's life. Did Abraham know the knife would not fall?
There are other reasons, that it was a story of human sacrifice, and human sacrifice was common in some of those societies.

I like those stories of the Patriarchs. Jacob is my favourite of course. Jacob always does exactly what he wants to do. God rarely comes into his story and when he does, it doesn't seem to change Jacob at all.
How does the stairway from Heaven change Jacob ? How often does he pray to his God? How often does he acknowledge his God? Not often!

He treats all his family in an ungodly and unfair way, his brother, his wives, his children.
The same theme is repeated time and time again. God is the creator and Lord but in the distance. The main characters to do what they like. Their stories and adventures are stories without their God, the shadow of their God is written in the background,hidden behind a cloud.

God was still seen by the people as a God who punished and rewarded. Like a distant king or Emperor he ruled from afar, and all should live in awe and dread of his intervention in their lives.

That aspect of God was carried over into the Christian religion. That God controls everything. If you don't eat your greens, God will ....., if you don't go to church, God will send you to hell on judgement day. Powerful stuff, until you realise that if you don't eat your greens nothing happens.

The prophets of the Old Testament retold the past more than foretold the future. You fell off your bike because you didn't eat your greens.

The Old Testament people though obeyed all the rules ­ as laid down in the book of Leviticus. When they didn't then the prophets railed against them. Obeying the law kept the religion alive. The priests punished the breakers of the law.

There were stories of devout men, Joseph and Daniel. Their faith gave them leadership and high office in the land ­ though it was not in their own land. They worked for their conquerors.
At the time of the New Testament Israel was ruled by a foreign power, the Romans, there were religious sects like the Essenes and the strange community at Qumran, and there were sects of Mystics who

found secret interpretations of the scriptures, the priesthood was divided into conservative Sadducees and liberal Pharisees.

Judaism had become a fashion religion with rich young foreigners converting and becoming part of a temple aristocracy.

The rules of the religion were strictly enforced on the ordinary people.
Into this scenario comes the figure of Jesus. Immediately displaying those qualities of leadership that created a following. Follow me he said, and they did.

His mission, not to restore the king, and not to restore the religion. He deliberately breaks the religious rules ­ those rules about the sabbath and not eating unclean food.

He ignored the hierarchy of the given social order and shared the table with all and anyone and helped all and anyone who asked for help. Render to Caesar what is Caesars. So he was not a revolution wanting the Romans out.
His mission was to restore God, nothing more, nothing less. But not the distant ruler whose wrath was threatened and whose vengeance was promised, who dealt only in reward and punishment.

Jesus presented himself as the son of God differently. A God of compassion, a God of personal relationship, and more than that, the light of this new God shone within you ­ not at you from afar.

What sort of leader was he? Was he gentle Jesus meek and mild, or a character who had a presence, a quiet authority. One whose strength was in that presence and in the way he spoke. He was a leader. He was a spiritual leader.

He taught a personal religion and he said you could take it or leave it. But if you took it, then you would see and then you would understand

what he preached. You would be like the blind man whose sight was restored or like the lame man who was cured and able to walk. The world would be different.

It was a leadership that inspired action, the spiritually enlightened saw the world differently and lived in it differently. You became the spiritual leader of your own life. You were part of God, you acted for God.
He spoke with authority but did not demand obedience.

It was only afterwards that his followers turned him into a different type of leader. They and the church they built fused him back into the Old Testament.

They brought back the Old Testament God who punished and rewarded. You had to fear the wrath of God again and they made Jesus into his agent, watching your life closely and reporting back to the God of wrath.
Christians were then in the same position as the people of the Old Testament. The Kings and priests and rules were there again too, but as popes and priests, and Kings claiming the divine right to act as they pleased.
Christianity was an Old Testament religion. The Kings and priests bowed before teachings of Jesus but did not practice them. They still went to war, they still made slaves, they never turned the other cheek.

Gentle Jesus was set into the historical New Testament and all have to wait for his second coming with Angels bearing judgement swords and pots of fire to destroy all life.
It was a leadership of fear.

But it seems there was no historical Jesus. No physical evidence of his existence, only rumour about what happened to him and his followers.

The Gnostic Gospels suggest that Jesus came as a manifestation from the cosmic God. He was a spiritual being and his teaching is universal, found in all the great religious literature of the world.

His gift was to empower every person who listened to him. To give them leadership of themselves as human beings; to give them an inner spiritual strength and a sense of union with God.
His leadership was to change the social order, no longer to be a hierarchy but a place where everyone supported and helped one another in this pilgrimage of life.
It is the simplest of truths and yet the most difficult to follow.

Today we wrestle with those very same problems. Many people feel no connection with religion; many seek meaning and purpose in their lives and it can be a spiritual hunger.
If our church does not follow that simplest of truths, How can it lead? How can those who seek find leadership and authority in their own lives?

The challenges of today seem no different to the challenges of so long ago.

Prayer

Let us open our hearts to prayer.

In prayer we offer pleas from the depth of our hearts.  We reach for the comfort of peace.   Peace that is in the stillness of the soul.  Such peace is hard to find.  We know the peace that is the lull between storms, the anxious peace unsure of what is coming next, the peace that is the relief after worry.  The peace that is no action.

Let us seek the peace that is deeper.  That is the deep stillness of the soul.   The peace beyond all worries, the peace of gentle breath and no thoughts, a peace that brings close the presence of holiness, where angels seem to be, seeming to wait and comfort and enfold us in a love that is only of this peaceful place.

From this we see the world anew.  Those we love, we love more.  Forgiveness is an act of understanding and love, a gift for which no reward is sought.   There is a calm strength to accept the uncertainty of change.  Wherever we go we take with us the calm strength of our inner selves.  We are who we are.   We take with us the strength of our holiness.

So let our prayers begin with the search for that deep stillness within, to seek that connection to the holiness of God.  Let us walk in the light of that inner stillness.  This is our prayer.

Benediction

Let us go in peace.  Let us care for one another, help one another, be proud of our community of faith.  Let us carry the blessing of God in our hearts and may it touch with care all who seek help on the pathways of their life.