The Light of the Faith

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Imagine stepping into the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, Illinois. With narrow rows of wooden pews and the bright glow of stained glass along each side of the meetinghouse, you might think you had gone back in time.

In this gathering place, it is easy to get a sense of the generations taught, married and memorialized; the countless songs, prayers and words that have rung through the air. Gathered in 1842, the presence of the Society’s “cloud of witnesses” is almost palpable, even when the sanctuary stands empty.

With its classic architecture, this sanctuary could be a museum, a home for artifacts from a distant era. But it is, instead, home to a congregation—a living community in this historic structure. Their chalice at the front of the sanctuary rests on a glass pillar that tells this story.

The pillar is a column of thick circles of translucent glass. Between each circle of glass, like a leaf pressed in a book, rests a page from the Society’s membership register. Each year, church members make an archival copy of the most recent page from the membership book, place it at the top of the pillar and add a new circle of glass. With such a pillar supporting the flaming chalice, its members—literally and figuratively—hold the light of the faith.

This pillar affirms a truth that transcends this particular place and congregation. No matter what town or what denomination, the spiritual strength of the religious community is just that, its community. To the government, a church is a non-profit organization. To an architect, a church is a building with pews and stained glass and sometimes a steeple. But to those seeking a people to sustain their lives and to remember them when life is done, a church or a congregation is a community.

The community is the church because, through seeking and finding, through mutual giving and receiving, its members hold the light of the faith.

We in religious leadership often share the observation: “No one joins a congregation to join a committee.” While the work of serving a faith community can be spiritually fulfilling, most often newcomers find their way to our congregations because they are hungry for connection. Seekers want what they cannot find in the secular world, a world often so obsessed with consuming that even our integrity and humanity are easily spent. They want what they cannot find on Facebook or in a book group or the local chapter of the ACLU: a community gathered by shared values and purpose, with practices born of a unique faith tradition and understanding of the sacred. They want a place where they come to know others deeply and where they can become known, where they become part of something greater than themselves—greater joy and greater pain. A minister from the United Church of Christ, the Rev. Lillian Daniel, created a stir when she posted an open letter in affirmation of religious community. She writes:

On airplanes, I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is spiritual but not religious.” Such a person will always share this as if it is some kind of daring insight, unique to him, bold in its rebellion against the religious status quo.Next thing you know, he’s telling me that he finds God in the sunsets. These people always find God in the sunsets…Like people who go to church don’t see God in the sunset! Like we are these monastic little hermits who never leave the church building…. As if we don’t hear that in the psalms, the creation stories and throughout our deep tradition.Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn’t interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.

Or, put another way, it is in the joy and challenge of living deeply among one another that we hold the light of the faith.

Doing spiritual work in community is, in itself, a spiritual practice. When we engage in spiritual practices we invite change and growth. We meditate to become more present; we pray to name our fear and our gratitude and live our lives with greater acceptance. In the same way, with intention and with commitment to stay engaged even when we feel hurt, angry or afraid, living in community becomes a spiritual practice, a vehicle for our own transformation. In the simplest terms, this transformation is the light of the faith.

A member of my church once asked me, “You believe that congregational life changes us. Are you trying to change us?”

While every religious leader, lay and ordained, has a responsibility to guide the congregation in the direction of the community’s mission, the goal is not to change people. Yet the understanding is that, in service to our mission, people will be changed. Changes rarely come in those who just pass through community life. Changes do not come at our command or in ways we can control. Whether one is humanist or theist or agnostic, however we understand their origins, these changes come through moments of grace, moments when we are invited into a broader understanding of who is at the open table and what it takes to be in right relationship with one another.

When I think of people who engage in congregational life as a spiritual practice, I often turn to a man celebrated in a meditation by the Rev. Victoria Safford. She writes:

I knew a man once who came to church every Sunday…. Busier than any of us still holding full-time jobs, he was committed, effective, clear about what he could and would…contribute to the causes that he cared for…. But what set him apart from all of us was that he came every single Sunday, and (because of hearing loss…more than any sense of his own importance), he sat in the front row.“Why do you come, John? In all kinds of weather, when you’re well and when you’re not, when you like the guest speaker and when you know you won’t, why do you come every Sunday?” I asked him not long before he died. His answer was straightforward… “I come,” he said, “because somebody might miss me if I didn’t.”…He worked hard on Sunday mornings, he got up on Sundays expecting to work hard to make others feel at home…. And he was right – after he died, we missed him when he didn’t come.And do you know what happened? The Sunday after his memorial, someone new…walked right in and sat down in his empty place in that front row…. They came hoping there was room, and John himself would have been delighted.

Perhaps the greatest lesson from John’s story is that whatever sustenance we receive from spiritual community is guaranteed to be temporary. The truth of our mortality reminds us that, one day, we too will join the “cloud of witnesses” that inspires, counsels and challenges the next generations. In the end, all we give to our faith community will one day serve everyone but ourselves.

People come to sanctuaries week after week, historic sanctuaries like the UU Society of Geneva, sanctuaries like the place where John worked hard every Sabbath, online sanctuaries where people gather in community without ever seeing one another’s faces.

Why do we come? I ask the question Victoria Safford asked her faithful congregant. Why do you come? We gather for inspiration, for solace in times of trouble, to celebrate our joys—personal and collective. We gather to expand our thinking, to build meaningful relationships, to engage in ministries of justice, to deepen our connection to all that is greater than ourselves. We gather to worship. We gather to mourn. We gather to give thanks for one more day.

If we gather for our needs alone, our souls will be left hungry, as strange as that may seem. But if we can look across our open table and find sincere joy in the happiness of someone we disagree with, maybe even someone who “calls us on stuff,” someone who has needs different than our own, then we are truly in spiritual community. And if we can enter deeply into the gift and challenge of congregational life, open to the changes that come through our intention and the mysterious hand of grace, we will grow.

I give thanks that you come, that I come, that people gather week after week. For, in our gathering and our shared life together, we hold the light of the faith.