You Can’t Take It With You
Rev. Holly Baylies
UU Church of Wakefield MA
January 22, 2006

My first teaching job, right out of college, was as a roving Physical Education instructor in the Beverly elementary school system. In the course of a week I conducted classes in six different schools. The hitch was none of the schools had storage for equipment. I had to load my station wagon each day with the appropriate supplies for each class I was teaching. That was no easy task when dealing with traffic cones, bags of balls, portable nets and standards, fanny scooters, wiffle bats and a mixed variety of other necessary stuff that my profession required.

The last straw revealed itself the day I was given a canvas cage ball. When fully inflated it grew to a staggering 8 feet in diameter. I knew there was no time between classes to blow it up before class and deflate it each day for storage, so in my infinite wisdom I took it home fully packaged, dragged it up the stairs and made one fatal novice error. I blew it up in my room. The whole process took exactly 6 hours, two episodes of nearly passing out from endlessly huffing and puffing, as, you, see a standard bicycle pump didn’t fit and I was too self conscious to blow the thing up at a gas station, so there it sat all 8 feet of it in the middle of my 9x 12 study, and I’ll bet you know exactly what happened next…

Right. I couldn’t get it out of my room. It was too large. I could not believe my own stupidity. The only way was to let out half of the air, which I really did not want to do. I had spent so much time and energy blowing it up and secondly, I had eaten a garlic bread sub between the marathon inflation episodes and was not really keen on polluting my whole house with garlic breath! Needless to say that morning I knew I could not take it with me in its functional form. I left it there, to be dealt with later, ditched my lesson plan and headed for school with no idea what I was going to do.

  My first class was my favorite. 

It was attended by 15 severely physically handicapped children. These kids were very physically challenged and had little previous experience with a Physical Education Class that had even remotely attempted to meet their needs, but what they did have was a spirit of community that rivaled any I had ever seen in kids before. When we first met they braced themselves for an impossible situation, as their understanding of traditional exercise, from past experience, was a lesson in torture for them both emotionally and physically. But we had hit it off and together had created an activity plan for each child that was adaptive and fun. As we gathered for the class I confessed my faux pas with the cage ball, and my lack of a plan for that day. 

It was agreed that the ball was an unnecessary prop, and really wasn’t needed, so we spent the time, with their teachers permission, just talking. It became apparent that all the supplies and equipment that had been brought in an attempt to meet their needs in fact rarely had, because those who thrust it upon them, never took the time to get to know them as people. People who were smart and funny, and whole, in ways that many of the more fortunate, would never know in their lifetime. The members of this very special class were a bonded community above all else, each of whom shared something different about themselves. They were dearly loved and respected by their remarkable teacher, who gave them encouragement and hope, and provided many opportunities for them all to feel that they mattered and had an important purpose to their living, even when it was apparent that  for some of them, their lives would be cut short very prematurely.

The government mandated the care of these children in school through 766, and these kids were the exception to most similar programs, mostly geared toward maintenance rather than self worth. They were fortunate to have come together in an environment that fostered their individuality and their worthiness as viable members of society. Others are not so lucky. We see them lined up in nursing homes, and care facilities, slumped in their wheel chairs, sullen vacantly staring into space, calling out to deaf ears, or sitting in front of televisions that run on the same channel all day.

We see them in institutions, or left to the mandates of the welfare system, or the streets, drifting, and alone without the love and care they need to survive. Some have lots of stuff, all around them others have nothing, but in the end none of us can take it along when the judgment day comes! 

That is with the exception of the man who was buried, propped in front of the steering wheel of his beloved antique Bentley, as were his wishes. His estranged wife filed for a court order to have her husband exhumed so she could have the car! How interesting that the props and things we acquire in life somehow seem to grown in societal value, like the classic t-shirt that reads, “Whoever has the most stuff when he dies, wins!”

How is it that we seem to have acquired more affection for our possessions, than we have for those around us. A perfect gage is the pressure our children are under, especially when their credibility as people depends more on what they are wearing, how they look and what they own, rather than their ability to make good choices. 

It is true, today, that we have become more and more disconnected from one another, more isolated and busier, more conscious of time passing and less able to do the things we want too. Sometimes we do stop and ask ourselves what are we doing with all this stuff we have worked so hard to accumulate?

Ironically, most of what we have we cannot take with us. In the end we will have to give it away, to someone, either by our own wishes, or if families disagree it will be up to the courts to decide. In the meantime in the here and now, as we ponder what is important to us at every transition of our living, we also need to ask ourselves what is it we do wish give while we are here or to leave behind when we go? Our stuff? Or a permanent marker for our deepest convictions. A bonded community for good, to lay the foundation for future generations to uphold? 

Or a pile of stuff to be sorted out and fought over?

The life and future of this church can be such a place, not only to fill that void, of the isolation we all feel at times, but a place where this spiritual community can indeed leave a legacy of family of values and principles that are so badly needed in today’s world, for our children and our predecessors.

There is a short story I would like to share with you. 
A pastor in a country parish heard that one of his parishioners was going about announcing that he would no longer attend church services. His rebellious parishioner was advancing the familiar argument that he could communicate just as easily with God out in the fields with the natural setting as his place of worship. 

One winter evening the pastor called on this reluctant member of his flock for a friendly visit. The two men sat before the fireplace making small talk, but studiously avoiding the issue of church attendance. After some time, the pastor took the tongs from the rack next to the fireplace and pulled a single coal from the fire. He placed the glowing ember on the hearth. 

The two men watched as the coal quickly ceased burning and turned an ashen gray while the other coals in the fire continued to burn brightly. The pastor remained silent. "I'll be at services next Sunday," said the parishioner. 

As we come together each Sunday to worship, to share our joys and concerns, to hear the choir, to remain alert or to snooze through the sermon, we are a bonded community, whose gift to each other is our love and caring for one another. We own this church. It is our only possession. We can’t take it with us when we go. It must be left behind.

To remain it must be attended too, for as there will be a time when we must leave it to the future, to be filled with those who share a dream we have inherited and kept alive for 193 years. 

We are a family with reunions, and happiness, with disagreements and idiosyncrasies. We are a bonded community, which like my handicapped class believes deeply in our value to this life and its future, no matter how long we have together.

This church is an oasis in the midst of our fragmented world, and a place to conquer injustice, to welcome diversity, to stand up for the common good when our values are threatened, to speak out for change where it need be. To gather to meditate, to pray, to worship God, to honor the natural world, to value human kind, to summon our spiritual selves, to embrace science, to explore the supernatural, or hear the music. To tell our stories. To dedicate our children, join our couples and bid farewell to those who have left us.

In the days to come as we kick off our annual Pledge Drive, we will be examining our goals and our needs, looking at our programs our worship, our budgets, our problems, our successes and our needs. Explore what we wish to keep and decide what must go.  Each one of us needs to ask ourselves, what is it we do wish to leave behind, what must we do and give to make that happen… to thrive joyfully in the here and now, and to leave for those to come an indelible legacy to pass on.

  Nope, we can’t take it with us, but we can decide how we wish to invest in the quality of this life in the here and now, and to whom we wish to leave the results of our decisions, our commitment and our love.

So be it Amen