Our Sheltering Promise
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
April 27, 2025
“This is no time for a casual faith.”
One of my strongest memories of the protests against the white supremacists who showed up in Charlottesville, Virginia back in the summer of 2017 is the photos of clergy from many different denominations standing facing armed militia members. Among them was the brand-new president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Reverend Susan Frederick-Gray. Writing about the experience a year later, she said these words that have stayed with me ever since:
“Our faith is calling more from us in this time.
And two things are absolutely clear to me right now,” Susan went on. “Number one, this is no time for a casual faith or a casual commitment to your values, your community, your congregation, your soul, and your faith. No time for casual faith. And number two, this is no time to go it alone or to think that we are in this alone.” (https://www.uuworld.org/articles/no-time-casual-faith)
We were shocked, back in 2017, at the sudden emergence from the shadows of torch bearing white men chanting old Nazi slogans and trying to demonstrate their power. We were frightened. And we were shocked and frightened again when we witnessed even more violence on January 6, 2021 as insurrectionists stormed the United States Capitol building. And we hoped, at least I did, during the Biden Administration when so many were tried and convicted of their crimes, that perhaps we would return to the normalcy of earlier times.
And here we are again. It is certainly not time to be casual about much of anything – about our commitment to our democracy, and our commitment to our liberal religious tradition. We are being called to respond and to stand up for what we believe in. And in answering this call, we find that we are being asked to step beyond what feels safe for us. Showing up in public, traveling to rallies in unfamiliar places, takes courage. In doing that, we are moving from our comfort zones into brave space, as we heard in our responsive reading.
Susan Frederick-Gray told us that our faith was calling for more from us. And then she said something else: She reminded us that this is also no time for us to go it alone, or to think that we are in this alone.” (Ibid.)
So often when we think about church, we think of safety. Of safety, and sanctuary.
Sanctuary is a word that gets used a great deal around a church. For starters, we are present in one right now, so we know it as a physical space. And often, in our worship services, we invoke the sense of sanctuary, of shelter, the sense of creating a place of safety and serenity for ourselves and for one another. We want that sense of safety – expressed in so many different ways:
as being welcome.
As belonging.
As being seen for who we really are, and accepted, and loved.
I hope you feel safe here. As our reading mentioned, the reality is that no place can be safe all the time, but here, we try. In these turbulent times we live in, it is very important for all of us to feel safe, so that we can navigate our way through the stories of the floods and wildfires, and the pain and suffering inflicted by our fellow humans, so that we can simply make it from one day to the next. As I wrote this I found myself wondering, how long has it been since we could truly feel secure, feel that everything is basically all right with the world? I don’t have a ready answer.
Safety is critical to our well-being. Creating a safe place for one another at church, creating a sanctuary, feels like one of the most important things we can do for one another. In our reading Victoria Safford wrote, “…we ask you to be each other’s shelter. We ask you to be sanctuary to each other.”
But there is more. What if all we do is create safety? Is that enough?
Religious communities have two roles than can seem to be in conflict. We work hard to establish a safe place for each other, where we can feel nurtured, and thrive, to grow spiritually and emotionally, to emerge into who we are really meant to be. It’s a high calling, perhaps the highest.
A church, if it is doing its job right, also creates brave space. Safety is important, certainly, but it is not enough. Safety is important to help us catch our breath, to rest, to gather the strength and courage we need to face all that life demands of us. Safety is our foundation. But a foundation is not the only part of a building. It’s really only the beginning. It forms the solid ground beneath our feet, the basis for rising up, stretching, growing, reaching toward the sky.
Safety creates our foundation, and our roots. But a church, if it is doing its job right, helps us to grow wings. Wings to soar – to face life’s challenges and surmount them, to grow, to become stronger, and more resilient, and braver.
I remember how I began to grow in my home church. The time the minister asked me to read a poem in a summer service. I was terrified. The first time I agreed to light the chalice. I burned my fingers. And the first time I led a Time for All Ages. I was the worship associate that morning, and the intern minister received a call just before the service was about to start to tell her that her grandfather had died suddenly. She had to leave. And I had to lead the Time for All Ages. I did not die. More importantly, no one laughed. After the service, a friend came up and asked me, “Did you know you could do that?” “No,” I said. “I had no idea.” But unbeknownst to me, the safe foundation had been laid. The roots were spreading.
“Roots hold us close,” we love to sing. “Wings set us free.” Free to find our voices, to reach deep within ourselves to find courage we may not have known we possessed. Free to grow, to reach our potential as human beings, to not be held back by old fears or old voices telling us we are not good enough, or brave enough, to make a difference.
We are living in unprecedented times. I think of all we’ve navigated together since I arrived in 2015: two presidential administrations determined to dismantle our very way of life, that bookended a global pandemic. Through it all this church, together with progressive churches everywhere, has worked to provide safe space as well as brave space: sanctuary, certainly, a place where we can gather and know that we are among kindred spirits. I remember our vespers service the evening after the election back in November, lighting candles together and singing.
I’ve seen your courage over the years: your willingness to adapt, to keep going during hard times. During these last 10 years we have not just provided safe space, but also brave space: room for new advocacy groups to come together and connect with one another as they find a way forward; room for new performers; new theater. We have offered space for people to find their voices, and find ways to resist what has felt like the dismantling of so much of what Americans have come to expect from our government.
I have seen you showing up, sometimes grief-stricken, sometimes afraid, always caring. And you never stop creating the safe space we all need as well: the care for one another, the companionship, day in and day out walking one another home.
It’s possible that we have never needed church more than we need it right now. “We are each other’s shelter. We are each other’s sanctuary.” We offer everyone who joins with us roots and wings. We offer community, a safe place where we can feel that the fabric of our lives is still whole, still knit together, and wrapped around us like a prayer shawl. And simultaneously, a brave place where we engage the hard work of caring for the marginalized, and encouraging each other to learn and grow and step up to help our neighbors, our city, and our country.
A church, if it is doing its job right, has to create safe space and brave space at the same time. And a church also, while offering support and help, and services, at the same time, has to accept support from all of those who care about it.
Our community, our sanctuary, this place where we can learn and grow and become more resilient, cannot exist without us. The reality is that it takes a great deal of money to create and hold the spaces we are talking about this morning. We love our beautiful, old building. We need our devoted staff to provide wonderful music, and administrative support, and care for our children, and a clean, safe environment in which to gather. We need heat and lights, coffee and copy paper, computers and a website, an organ and pianos, water for the new trees, and even mousetraps. And the reality of being a Unitarian Universalist congregation is that no one is going to provide these things for us. We must do it for ourselves.
I’m going to pause for a moment and invite you to look around at your neighbors. Wave or shake hands. Maybe say, “I see you!” to one another. Here you are: our sanctuary. Our promise of shelter. Our brave space. Our roots and our wings.
Let’s come back together again now.
Each year, as Holly and Roger reminded us a little while ago, we recommit to the financial health of our congregation. We have to do this for ourselves. There is no one else. We ask you to pledge your financial support to make our church all that it can be, so that we may both take our place in the community outside our walls, and sustain ourselves so that we can continue to care for one another.
I pledge to this church every year, because I believe in what we do; in that critical blending of compassion and support, and of encouragement to reach up higher. Nowhere else do we find this type of environment. Progressive churches everywhere are critically important right now. We speak truth to power, as we saw the Episcopal bishop, Marian Budde, do after the inauguration. Our voices are needed and welcome. And if we allow our voices to be stilled, either from lack of courage or lack of resources, the world will be a lesser place.
I hope you will join me in pledging your financial support for this unique, historic, and important institution that we all love so much.
“This is no time for a casual faith… This is no time to go it alone or to think that we are in this alone.”
If not us, then who? If not now, when?
Amen.
