A Sense of Call: The Priesthood of All Believers
Reverend Darcey Laine
January 21, 2001
Palo Alto, CA

Because you are Unitarian Universalists, you already know that you can trust your own experience, your own reason. But imagine a time when this was a radical idea. Imagine a time when only the clergy could read religious texts, when only the ordained could lead worship.

In the early 16th century, Renaissance scholars began to translate the bible into vernacular languages. The invention and growing use of the printing press enabled the dissemination of scriptures beyond the priestly and noble classes. Suddenly lay people could read and study scriptures for themselves. Now the Catholic Church at this time was inextricably tied to the political and economic powers of Europe. In France it was the king who appointed Bishops, while the Pope retained only veto power. As the saying goes, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It was in this atmosphere where religious leadership was corrupted by economics and politics, that the Augustinian monk Martin Luther challenged the church to reform. In the writings of Luther we find the idea that everyone who believes in Christ is a priest.

This idea was central to the Protestant Reformation. It provided a philosophical basis for the relocation of authority for the personal and communal spiritual life into the hands of the individual. Any Lutheran was suddenly empowered to know that no clergy was needed to mediate his relationship with God, but that his believe in Christ was enough.

Now the Unitarian Universalists have taken this one step further. It is not the belief in Christ or even God which gives us the right to practice religion, but a faith in our humanity. Today we almost take for granted the foundational idea that I have a right to look into my own heart, to trust my own experience, my own reason. Each individual is entrusted with the search for truth and meaning in his or her own life.

Throughout our 400 year history, Unitarians have challenged authority: political, intellectual and religious. Behind such a challenge must lay a sense of personal authority. In our principles we promise to support the individual's free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We promise to support the democratic process. Our faith and practice is rooted in a shared understanding that each individual has the authority and power to know for him or herself what is true. We are grounded in the idea that each individual has the authority to act when called by conscience to create justice and compassion in the world.

One question any candidate for the UU ministry can expect to be asked as she faces the Ministerial Fellowship Committee is "Who are the members of the Unitarian Universalist Association" the answer: the congregations. We are a denomination with congregational polity. The UUA can create curricula, suggest programming, gather resources, dispense funds, but they cannot tell a congregation what to do. Some would say that our insistence on the freedom and independence of individual congregations contributes to the relative smallness of our movement. Anyone who has been to General Assembly, or to a congregational meeting knows that congregational polity is not the most efficient form of governance, but still we obstinately persist, claiming some value to the individual right of self determination.

Let's remember that we are not the only denomination with congregational polity. These are roots we share with the Baptists and other congregational churches in the second wave of the reformation. We are not the only faith to believe in the individual's right to read and interpret scripture; belief in personal authority to relate directly to the sacred texts reaches back to the 15th century. Many of our most fundamentalist neighbors today are grounded in this same idea. The idea that each person may have an unmediated relationship with God is found in the writings of Luther and Calvin, and a principle shared throughout protestant denominations. Some Unitarian Universalists do in fact have a relationship of some kind with the divine; others feel that God is not a useful construct. We may be one of the only denominations where atheists and theists sit side by side on Sunday morning, but I believe that the principle which brings us this diversity, is one of the same principles that lead Luther to break from the Catholic church centuries ago.

Now where we may prove to be distinctive from many of our Protestant neighbors, is that we do not recognize religious scripture as having authority greater than our own, nor do we believe that a relationship with God is necessary to act with truth, compassion and justice. It was mostly secular humanists that were the driving force behind the Fellowship movement. This initiative of the 1950s by the Unitarian Association initiated formally recognized any group of 10 or more Unitarians that so wished as a Fellowship. These fellowships met not in churches but in living rooms and gymnasiums. They preferred to give lectures and discussions rather than sermons or homilies. So perhaps they would be annoyed to hear me use a phrase like "priesthood of all believers" to describe what they did. UU minister Rev. Frank Carpenter translated the phrase to "The leadership of all Seekers" which may be more palatable to some. But I see within the Fellowship movement an integrity to this priestly tradition. Maybe it will require some clarification of what we mean by priesthood.

Throughout history there has often existed a priestly class or caste. These families would pass from generation to generation their inheritance -- the profession of working in the temple or church, of keeping tradition and ritual, of ministering to their community. Luther's point was that neither tradition nor blood nor class made one holy. Any believer had the right to "All the benefits of Christ and the Church" Which I interpret to mean, in the context of Luther's writings, that none of the priestly rights or responsibilities were the privilege of the priestly class alone.

In our denomination, what does a minister do? We perform rites- Weddings, Memorials, Dedications, we lead worship, we minister to the people in our congregation. Well, in the contemporary Fellowships of the Central Valley, the members of the congregations take turns leading worship, visiting people in the hospital, and their Board of Trustees votes to authorize one or two members to perform weddings. Unless the members of these small congregations understood ministry to be practiced by the laity as well as the clergy, their fellowships could not exist. Throughout our Unitarian Universalist movement, in lay-lead fellowships and in large churches with ordained professional ministers we embody this "leadership of all seekers" this "priesthood of all believers"

One of the most important elements of my own sense of ministry is that of call. It was kind of like an itch that wouldn't go away. There was some part of me that wanted to be used, but had not yet been given an opportunity. It was like following a sound through the woods, not sure what it was or where it might lead. I followed the sound of the person I wanted to become, I followed my own sense of integrity, I followed my talents, my skills, my natural tendencies and inclinations. It was a desire to serve, a need to feel that my particular gifts could be used to bless the world. I followed it across the continent to Berkeley so that I could study at the Starr King School for the Ministry, where I assumed I would finally be able to scratch my itch once and for all. But I am still following it. Even after being ordained to our ministry, I have found that I must continually discern my path. There are as many kinds of ministry as there are ministers. Our UU association has begun to acknowledge this by designating tracks: Community Ministry, Parish Ministry, and Ministry of Religious Education. This is a difficult concept for some to accept- those who believe that only the person who gives sermons and performs rites of passage is a minister. But there are other ministers who are called by their highest self to be ministers to children and youth, to be prison ministers, to be hospice chaplains, or to confront injustice in the political sphere.

Because I believe very strongly in the Priesthood of All Believers, I also believe that each of us has a calling. Each has gifts with which he can serve humanity, can serve her highest principles. Have you ever felt this itch? Have you ever heard this call meant for you alone? I find a wonderful rendering of this moment in the poem by Mary Oliver I read during our meditation:

"One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,"

We are all called to the priesthood. But this does not mean we are called to renounce life. Nor does a calling necessarily require a massive transcontinental re-location, or even a change of jobs. We are called instead to a life of integrity; we are called to use our gifts. As Howard Thurman has written "Do not ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, because the world needs people who have come alive." We can hear our calling in the choices we have already made, in the life we have already made. We are all serving our community in some way, whether or not we have ever felt a sense of call.

Consider the story of Moses: a story of a struggle for freedom embraced by those seeking liberation in all parts of the world. Moses sees the injustice of the way Hebrew slaves are treated in Egypt and is so outraged that he kills a man he witnesses beating a slave. According to Hebrew Scriptures Yahweh speaks to Moses saying "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings… Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?" God replies "But I will be with you; and this shall be a sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon his mountain."

If we interpret this passage literally, we imagine the voice of God speaking words to Moses. But if we allow for the possibility that this passage contains the language of poetry and myth, perhaps the Hebrew Scriptures are describing a moment not unlike that described in Mary Oliver's poem "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began." Now one thing you will notice in the story of every prophet in the Old Testament is that when the call comes they say something like "Who am I? Send someone else!" Because the moment we hear the suggestion of a life of greater integrity, we realize there is something in our current life we will have to let go of in order to follow this new path, at a minimum something of our self-understanding. But if we believe in a priesthood of all believers, then there is no one else to go. There is no one else who has your gifts, your connections, your passion. W are afraid that this call asks us to renounce what we love about life. I was afraid that any call to service would involve tasks I found tedious or depressing. Instead I found a way to serve that makes me come more alive than I have ever been before. A theist might say that if you answer your call, God will be with you. A humanist might say that by living a life of integrity, being fully alive, there is a power and an authority that gives each of us the strength and the confidence to do what we never imagined we could.

"and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world"

At its best, a church is a place where we help each other to hear our calling and to support us as we try to heed our own inner voice. Again the role of the laity and the professional overlap. Only a congregation has the power to ordain Unitarian Universalist ministers. My authority as an ordained minister comes not from John Burens, President of the UUA, nor Bev Smrha one of our District Executives. The Congregation of the Mt. Diablo UU Church voted to ordain me. Though at least a dozen ordained ministers were there to celebrate with us that day, it was the president of the congregation, a layperson, who lead the congregation and the ordinand through the act of ordination. Let us extend this role of the congregation further. Let us ordain not only our clergy but also one another.

Imagine a congregation where we are constantly looking for one another's gifts. As Johanna shared in her reflections today, the call of our own voice is often hard to hear as we struggle to balance compassion with our family, ethics in our work, and integrity to our person. Each of us has such a story of looking for the path that is ours alone. The CEO who makes a good product and treats her employees with fairness and respect acts as fully out of her own integrity as the hospice volunteer who supports the grief of an ending life. Imagine a community where we listened to each other's stories, where we looked with open hearts for one another's shining light. Because you are here today in a Unitarian Universalist church, I know you believe that each of us has such a light, a spark that may at times seem dim, that may at times lack kindling that it needs to become a fire. Let this church be a place where we search vigilantly for this light in ourselves and one another. When you find this light for the first time in yourself or catch a glimpse of it in someone else, it is more beautiful than starlight in the desert.

The Priesthood of All Believers is an integral part of our self-understanding as a denomination, but if we don't embody that priesthood in our lives we miss something of who we are. Each of is called to act with integrity and with passion, to seek truth, to carry tradition, and to bring compassion and justice into the world. Listen for this call. Watch for and nurture this spark in others. It will lead you to life itself.

What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Darcey Laine

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