"Honoring Excellence"

I want to speak this morning on ministry, particularly the ministry of Judith Meyer, who served this congregation from 1993 through a year and a half ago. The church voted before she left to honor Judith by naming her Minister Emerita. Today a formal portrait of Reverend Meyer will be unveiled, to be hung along with a new picture of Ernie Pipes, Minister Emeritus, Judith’s predecessor. This occasion takes on a new poignancy with news that unlike Ernie and Maggie Pipes, Judith and her husband David have made a decision to relocate out of Southern California—meaning that she will not be reintegrating into the membership as the Pipes have, but—in fact—is today saying good-bye to her many dear and well-loved friends among our membership. Let us begin.

The practice of ministry, by everyone’s admission, asks a lot. Teacher, administrator, program coordinator, cheer leader, counselor, confidant, advocate, spokesperson, role model, inspirer, trouper, innovator (while ever remaining sensitive to tradition), nurturer, liturgist, scholar—there are many hats to wear, and many skills to refine for anyone who wants to truly excel at this ancient, multi-dimensional craft. Success in the ministry does not require excellence in all of its aspects; but it does require being pretty good at a few of them.

Honor that it is, it’s ironic that I, another minister, am the one leading this service and not one of you. We ministers get to know one another very differently from the way members of a congregation get to know them. We meet colleagues at denominational events, interact with them, perhaps, on a panel or committee somewhere along our vocational/professional trajectory, and either like them or not. But we don’t often get to know what they’re like at their workplaces—just as we don’t get to know what particular congregations are like until we become a part of one. I happened to meet Judith Meyer well before most of you: in the winter of 1983 when I come to serve a congregation in metropolitan New York…just as she was finishing up there. Our connection was brief, but warmly agreeable. Meanwhile you didn’t meet her until ten years later—but you have gotten to know her intimately over the many years since.

Another thing about collegial among relationships among UU ministers: they have changed (and changed a lot) over the twenty-seven years since the freshly minted Reverends Meyer and Furrer met and—this is something you probably don’t know—Judith and her female colleagues have a lot to do with the many positive ways that change has occurred. I vividly recall the meeting where she and I met in New York City, dominated as it was by several senior men—all of them good old boys—with their standard dialogue of bragging and bitching, each one trying to outdo the last. Minister’s retreats in those years were often lubricated with heavy drinking and laced with the telling of tales, some quite ribald, out of school. Judith and her cohort of young, hard-working, sensitive and creative women changed all of that—and in a remarkably short time. Our meetings now are kinder, far more supportive, and less competitive; in short, they’re fun to go to. So, you see: colleagues in the Pacific Southwest District of the UU Minister’s Association will miss Judith every bit as much as all of you, me among them.

As noted above, success in the ministry does not require being exceptional at all of its aspects; only a few of them. And the minister is free to find for her- or himself what those skills will be. The key, it seems to me, is the minister’s willingness to really work at refining certain aspects of the profession and of letting them to blossom and come to fruition through them; through their hearts and hands and words and most of all through their everyday presence in the lives of the men and women and families they’re lucky enough to serve. And to keep at it.

Great achievement in ministry requires learning how to neutralize or deftly avoid or somehow otherwise sidestep those demands of the job that one’s not good at or doesn’t enjoy or that saps their chi. The best ministers, however, do more than avoid looking bad; the best ministers find a way—a few ways—to be good.

In so far as I can tell, the Reverend Judith Meyer did three things well, really well. She was a very good program director, an inspired pastor, and a uniquely styled—and uniquely gifted—preacher.

As the congregation’s Program Director, Judith envisioned, brought into being, nurtured, supported, and—once they’d run their course, gently retired many covenant groups, dozens of adult religious education classes, numerous task forces and outreach efforts, and a variety of support groups week after week, season after season, year after year. Typically she would sidle up to someone in the congregation and suggest an idea—something the church could use that this particular person would be really good at helping make happen. Soon enough that person would be agreeing to get a few others together—Judith often had an additional name or two to suggest—to see if something could be done. Before long a new program had started and, more often than not, begun to thrive. Some ideas took time to germinate; the right layperson couldn’t be found to head it up, or the timing was wrong. In such circumstances Judith would patiently wait until conditions were right and try again. Her success in this area, it seems to me, was the result of some subtle combination of research (knowing what other congregations were doing that was working to nurture community and good will), imagination (knowing who to ask, and when), and persistence (keeping at it until by some mysterious mixture of grace and hard work it all clicked). At which point she would start focusing on a new program that would help the congregation grow in newer ways still.

Judith was also a great pastor. The root of that word—pastor—is person. Coming out of the Reformation, Protestant ministers were schooled in the value of getting beyond the impersonal role of priest and embracing the completely concrete personal role of the parson. The parson—unlike the priest—was and is called upon to be themselves, their own person, as completely and unguardedly as they can; in other words, to be always (or almost always) more real than role. Many of our members have told me about some crisis in their lives—a trip to the hospital, to juvenile hall, to court, or to the mortuary—only to find Judith waiting there when they arrived. I’ve heard again and again of what a great listener she was, how easily and naturally she reflected back what a person was saying to her, helping them clarify their thoughts and feelings in the midst of crisis. How she was a calm presence who provided reassurance and comfort, and unswerving support. At any hour of the day or night.

Finally, Judith was an exceptionally gifted preacher. She had her own inimitable style, one that almost reminds me Annie Dillard of Marcel Proust, hybrids of philosophical essay and story, laced with unexpected epiphanies throughout. Judith’s sermons are all extremely personal: in them the essential truth of her unique individuality shines through again and again. Her mastery of paradoxically touching the universal through the sharing of very private thoughts, doubts, anxieties, and wonders—it’s marvelous. Time and again, clearly, it was also healing and uplifting and helpful to those of you here in the pews.

She wrote, for instance, about how hard it was to deal with a broken arm, and how doing so brought her insight and compassion for those struggling with disability. A sermon on becoming a member led to a whole series of insights on the nature of ambivalence, longing, exile, and homecoming. A sermon on living in Los Angeles entered into areas of grief and loneliness rarely broached anywhere, let alone from the pulpit. She reflected regularly on relationships, not only with family members and friends, but with Unitarian Universalist lights like Ralph Waldo Emerson. We all read Emerson, but Judith Meyer actually talks to him, asks for his advice, and even—once or twice—gives him a piece of her mind.

That, indeed, is the essence of Judith’s preaching: regularly revealing to those lucky enough to have been various facets of her mind—beautiful facets of a beautiful, intricately unfolding mind; and, equally important, eye and conscience-opening glimpses into her beautiful, gentle, and very courageous heart. There’s an astonishing vulnerability running throughout her work. She never leads with her chin, however, only with her heart—thereby drawing the listener in, safely in. Self-disclosure that somehow helps the listener feel more comfortable in their skin again, in all their humanness, uncertainty, and complexity AND in their capacity for great bravery, goodness, hope, and nobility. More than enough to help a person keep on keepin’ on for another week. And then back for the following Sunday’s installment, and another series of marvelous epiphanies woven through a sermon about dog walking, or camping, or the underrated values to be found in maladjustment. Or who knows what….

The serious mourning that this congregation went through last year is not all that typical and you should know it. Not all of our faith communities are led by a minister who boldly takes church as her spiritual path and then asks her congregants to come along too, to learn together how to get beyond others’ hard edges and foibles and defenses in order to experience the power—the healing, redemptive power—of genuine community. But not many of our faith communities have ministers like Judith E, Meyer, who in meetings, counseling, and social occasions, taped into the souls of James and Sandra, Harry and Marjorie, Jane and Daniel, Bill and George, Laura and Millie—as well as those of little Tommy and Maria and the staff members, too. For each of them Judith noted their joy as well as their pain and wove it into her work. Out of your knowledge of each other—preacher and congregant—something happens between the pew and the pulpit which does not occur between strangers, or among those less well-known to each other. In probing the deepest levels of faith and desire, her observations were both vivid and discreet. You see, good preaching—preaching that heals and binds and reconnects—always comes out of deep intimacy. Wow! No wonder you went into mourning! Who wouldn’t?

It is a custom in our liberal churches, on the retirement of a particularly well loved and admired spiritual leader, that the congregation can—if it chooses to—designate their now retired minister with the honorific “Minister Emerita” or “Minister Emeritus.” It’s not really that big a deal in the narrow sense—you get your name on a business card and on the church stationary and automatic delegate status to any General Assembly you want to attend. What is of value is the way doing so honors for all time the vibrancy and vitality of a very special relationship that grew and changed and made a lot of difference in many people’s lives—and in this community’s life—over a long time; in this case, fifteen years.

Thus it is my very high honor to ask Susan Bickford, our church president to step forward at this time and unveil these two portraits. As select group—one that I was in on—decided that Ernie’s old Portrait was two big; we could get one more of that size in there, but then we’d have to redesign. So we decided to redesign now, while Ernie and Judith are still both among us. As Ernie has always supportively behind Judith throughout her years in this church, his picture, too, is so stationed. Let’s see how it looks….

And now, let’s see how our Emerita Minister’s memorial portrait looks, too.

Ernie and Judith. Thank you for sharing your wonderful, successful, hard-working ministries with us for all these many last years. We are the greater for you, as is our beloved Santa Monica. As you have made us proud to know you and introduce you to friends and neighbors as our minister, we will now take pride in hanging your elegant and complementary pictures on the east wall of our sanctuary alcove. We will also take pride for decades to come sharing with newcomers the stories of faith and admiration inspired by our knowledge of you both. And now, Nameste. And Farewell. May you both be blessed in all you do. Judith and David: May your new life in the Piedmont Atlantic Region of east Tennessee be one of constant discover and rediscovery, of many new friends, meaningful community connections, wonderful living quarters, and lots of fun. May your memories of Santa Monica and of this church be happy, and peppered with dozens upon dozens of wistful smiles and good belly laughs as you recall moments of wonderful happiness here among the congregants who so deeply loved you…and always will.

Amen. Namaste. Shalom.