Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Ordination of Jacqueline Kay Kelly
by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, CA

 

Reverend Amy Zucker Morgenstern
July 16, 2006
Palo Alto, CA

I have about ten minutes this afternoon to tell you what ministry is. Fortunately, I can give you the gist in under ten seconds: Ministry is love. The work of a minister — your job, Jackie, and all of our jobs, as sharers of the ministry — is to bring more love into the world: abundant love, overflowing love, unconditional love in a world that needs it so much. This week we see how desperately it is needed, how dire the consequences when it falters; we see it in the holy land in which a great rabbi was asked, two thousand years ago, what is required of us, and answered simply: that we love our God with all our strength, and our neighbors as ourselves.

And what we need from our neighbors, and need to give to our neighbors, is not the abstract love of the world, or love for humanity, an ideal that can never be tested, but the real, nitty-gritty, dirt-under-the-fingernails, hard-won love that is action. Nowhere is this more clear than in a hospital, where the body cries out in pain and fear. Nowhere other than a hospice is it more obvious that there are no simple answers; there is no one God who will serve everyone’s need. Why do we suffer? What gives life meaning, and what does death bring? — The big questions are very concrete in a hospital, and glib answers will echo hollowly off those hard, clean surfaces. All an honest chaplain can do is say, with soothing voice and calm, listening face, “I am here. You are not alone in this uncertain place.” “She comes with mother’s kindnesses and bends to touch and heal … She gives her body with her heart to make her passion real.” ¹ 

This whole world is a hospital ward, where pain and death are never far away, and the loving touch of a cool hand on our hot forehead can bring us back to light and life. And so we ordain one woman today, but her calling, the call to love, calls to each one of us.

This lesson could not be clearer than in the ordination of a minister in this tradition; and a community minister at that; and to go even further, a community minister serving people who have many faiths or none, but seldom her own. When we ordain a minister, it is not so that she, or he, may serve this particular congregation. That may happen, as we hope Jackie will continue her affiliation with us, but it is not the purpose of ordination, which, in our congregational polity, is meant for all time and for any setting. The minister, the ministry, that we send forth today, is our gift of love and service to the whole world. We serve not only ourselves, but everyone. This point is all the more clear when we ordain a community minister, who is explicitly called to serve not a congregation but a broader constituency, in what our tradition calls “the larger ministry.” Likewise, we recognize our responsibility to serve beyond these walls: to build shelters for the homeless, heal the hurting earth, bring justice to the oppressed, teach peace to the war-wounded. And finally, ordaining a minister whose call is to people of many faiths reminds us that the purpose of Unitarian Universalism is not to affirm and promote Unitarian Universalism, but those principles, those living values, that everyone needs, no matter who they are or what they believe.

What Jackie does when she walks into a stranger’s room, a stranger who may be UU but is more likely to be Roman Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, or None of the Above, is what all of us are called to do. The specific religious language varies, but the universal language is love. The squeeze of his hand; the quiet presence at the side of her sickbed. The comfort that only another person, a warm, living human, can bring to a man who walks over unsure ground “to sure death.” ²  “A lover’s tenderness to answer love’s appeal,” ³  as we sang earlier. When we bring others that love, and only when we do, we receive more love ourselves.

A story. This is an old Jewish tale, updated, and made a little anachronistic, by me in the interest of gender equality.

A brother and sister had been left two plots of land by their parents. The brother’s farmhouse was on one side of a rocky hill, the sister’s on the other, and the dividing line between their farms ran over the top of the hill. It was not the most fertile land; they each worked hard, from before sunup to after sundown, to bring forth enough to eat. And like many brothers and sisters, they didn’t get along all that well. Each toiled on his or her own side of the fence, and they seldom so much as spoke to each other.

But in bed, one night at harvest time, the brother tossed and turned. “My sister lives all alone on that farm. She has as much land to tend as I do, but she does it all alone, while I have the help of my wife and my children. In these tough times, I need to help her out.” Suddenly he decided: he would bring her some of the grain he had just harvested. So as not to insult her pride, he would do it secretly. So he sneaked out of bed and hoisted a bushel bag of grain onto his back, and carried it over the hill and down into his sister’s barn. “I can do this again tomorrow,” he thought. And, very happy with his plan, he went back to bed.

The same night, the sister was unable to sleep. She had just brought in a harvest that had filled her barn, and she had all of the fruit of her labor to eat herself. In the meantime, she thought, “My brother has three children and a wife — five people living off the same amount of land that I eat from all by myself! I have so much and he has so little. In these tough times, I need to help him out.” She knew how proud he was, though — he would hate to receive charity from her. So she crept out of bed right then, in the middle of the night, and hauled a bushel of grain on her back to her brother’s barn. She could do it again until the amounts were more fair.

And so it went for the next few nights. On the fourth night, as the sister went to her barn, she looked around and thought, “Hmm … I could’ve sworn I didn’t have this many bushels! Oh well, more to give my brother.” And she hoisted one onto her back and headed up the hill. That same night, her brother went to his barn to get another bushel of grain and was puzzled that his supply didn’t seem to be diminished at all. “Did my wife harvest more grain that I had somehow missed? Oh well, it means there’s more to give my sister.” And he went up the hill with another bag on his back. And when he approached the fence at the top of the hill, he was startled to see another dark figure heading his way. It stopped too, as alarmed to see him as he was to see it — or her — it was his sister! “What are you doing?” he began to ask, but she had dropped her bushel and was laughing, running towards him with her arms out. And then he also realized what had been happening all week, and laughing and crying, went to embrace his sister.

Legend adds a footnote to this tale: that it was that ground, that farmland where love overflowed, that God chose for God’s holy temple. This is the love to which we are all called, the love that is ministry, our ministry. A love that asks not, “How much can I afford to give of myself?” but “How much do others need?” A love that does not empty our resources, but refills them as abundantly as we pour it out. As our children often sing, “[Love is] just like a magic penny … something, if you give it away / You end up having more.” ⁴ 

Jackie has been called to love her people. We ordain her today because she heard that call and heeded it. But the ritual we will enact a few minutes from now will not be complete until we, too, each of us, hear and heed the call. May we have the ears to hear the voices of “both stranger and friend.” ⁵  May we have the hearts and hands to give and receive that abundant love.

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