Take Your Place: An Ecosystem Has No Spare Parts and Why Your Worth Is Not What You Do by Eric Hepburn
Updated: Sep 15
Before the service, the Fellowship House fills with tables — every team, committee, and working group that makes this congregation run. Come see what happens here, and who makes it happen. Then a short service on why this matters: not because we need volunteers, but because a congregation is an ecosystem, and an ecosystem has no spare parts. Every role is real. None outranks another. Take your place.
"Your contribution to the work does not define your worth."
A shorter service than usual — homily length. Before the service we held a teams fair, where congregants could visit every team that makes this church function internally and do justice work in the wider community. This is the message that followed.
"Take your place" is not the theatre's places, everyone. It is not a performance, and it is not a way to earn prestige or credits toward the chosen afterlife. It is an invitation: to claim your place if you know it, and to find it if you're still searching.
Along the way I say something I have been working toward for a while. Maybe the simplest, most reductionist account of a life — a meaningless stew of atoms and chemistry that we happened to emerge from — is the simplest explanation without being the truest. Maybe there is something that called you into being and calls you forward into meaning. I spent more of my life believing the reductionist view than I have believing what I believe now, so I'm comfortable with the skeptical eyes in the room.
Then the paradox at the center: an ecosystem has no spare parts because an ecosystem is all spare parts. Health and resilience depend on redundancy and abundance — but redundant and abundant are not spare, because spare is the language of scarcity. Three other people can step up when you're away, and your contribution is undiminished.
And a near enemy worth naming: the expectation that work which feeds you should be easy.
Our Great World House marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th, and why I did not participate in our town's day of service. Kris Verdeyen reads Lynn Ungar's "Camas Lilies." Recorded live at San Gabriel Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Georgetown, Texas.
Full Podcast Transcript (9/13/2026)
Eric Hepburn: Welcome to the eighth episode of the third season of The Pulpiteer. I'm your host, Eric Hepburn, and I'm glad to have you join us for today's episode.
Today's episode is called "Take Your Place." It is a shorter episode than usual — you might call it homily length. Before the service, we had a teams fair, where congregants got to visit all the different teams that make our church function internally and do justice work in our broader community.
So without further ado, we'll begin with our Great World House segment, and then have our Voice of Wisdom read by Kris Verdeyen.
Great World House
Eric Hepburn: We now pause to honor the Great World House of which we are a part, lifting up the needs, the hopes, and the voices beyond these doors.
Sometimes there's an event or an anniversary that I simply can't ignore.
On Friday of this week, Georgetown celebrated its annual 9/11 Day of Service. I'm going to be honest with you: I didn't participate, and I didn't help promote it.
Not because 9/11 wasn't a tragedy. It was. I mourn the many killed, and I am grateful to the first responders and everyday citizens who stepped up to care for one another on that day.
My abstention — my absence — was not a refusal to remember those who died in the attack, or those who died and suffered trying to help their neighbors. Nor is it an indictment of the many who chose, and choose, to participate.
My abstention is because of the line of American cultural influence that burns most deeply and brightly from that day to this day, and its names are Islamophobia and xenophobia — the kinds that we see today in the anti-Muslim politics and legislation active right now here in Texas and across the nation.
"Remember 9/11" has become a rallying cry for white Christian nationalism, instead of a day of mourning.
But I suspect you'll hear more about that next week from Lou Snead, Keith Hutchinson, and our special guest Necip Orhan from the Dialogue Institute, in our Social Justice Service on Siding with Our Muslim Neighbors.
So today, in deep remembrance of those who died and those who risked everything to help, I offer you this story.
Twenty-five years ago, the bridges and tunnels out of Manhattan were closed, and hundreds of thousands of people walked to the water's edge because there was nowhere else to go.
At ten forty-five in the morning, the Coast Guard put out a call on the radio. All available boats.
And the harbor came. Tugboats. Ferries. Sightseeing cruises with the tour narration still loaded. Private boats. Around eight hundred mariners, one hundred and fifty vessels. Some could carry a few hundred people. Some could carry six.
Nobody asked whether their boat was big enough to matter. Nobody was assigned a place. They heard the call and they went.
In under nine hours they carried nearly half a million people off the island of Manhattan. It remains the largest evacuation by water in human history — larger even than Dunkirk.
There was no plan. There was only a harbor full of people who already knew how to do the thing that was needed, and did it.
Amen.
Voice of Wisdom
Kris Verdeyen: After the words are spoken, we will breathe together in silence until the ringing of the bell calls us onward, into the space where the Word unfolds among us.
We welcome this Voice of Wisdom, carried through Lynn Ungar's poem "Camas Lilies."
Unfolding in Word: Take Your Place
Eric Hepburn: The title of this sermon, "Take Your Place," makes me think of that moment in the theater right before the curtain rises. Places. Everyone, places. Take your place.
But this isn't that. It isn't a performance. It isn't a show for your neighbors or yourself. It isn't a way to earn prestige, or to get yourself credits toward the chosen afterlife.
In this context, "Take Your Place" is an invitation.
It's an invitation to claim your place, if you already know what that is.
And for those of you who are still searching, it's an invitation to find that place.
...not only outside, in your community, whether that's in this room or beyond, but also within yourself.
In July, we talked about how you might find your place in social justice work by learning what to attend to in your own reactions to things like the news. This is like that.
We set up these tables to make the often invisible work of this church visible, as an invitation to you. What kinds of work feed you? Are the right opportunities to do that work right here in this community?
Maybe, and maybe not. What I care about is that you begin to find your life's work.
Maybe the simplest isn't the truest
For those of you who have lost, or never had, faith in such a thing as your life's work — this is an invitation to rediscover that maybe Occam's razor isn't right about everything.
Maybe the simplest, most reductionist answer is that life is a meaningless stew of engines and atoms and chemistry and physics, and we just happened to emerge out of that. Maybe that's the simplest explanation. But maybe it's also not the truest.
Because in our materialist reductionism, one of the things we threw out was the idea that a purposeful life was something other than a fabrication. The idea that maybe there's something deeper that not only called you into being, but that calls you forward into meaning in your own life.
I see lots of skeptical eyes, and I'm super cool with that. I spent more of my life believing the reductionist view than I have believing what I believe now. So I'm cool with that. No matter where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here.
But I have to preach what's in my heart and my experience. And as much as it grates against the reasons why I left evangelical Christianity forty years ago, I'm working to reclaim the insight that bubbles up within me — that I am called to a greater purpose that's not of my own fabrication. That it's not reducible to that.
The snowflake paradox
And here's the other magic thing. I don't think I'm special. I mean, I am — but not more special than anybody else in this room.
This is one of those beautiful paradoxes. You are irreplaceable and amazing and beautiful, like a snowflake. And if you die tomorrow, life will go on.
Damn, I hate that. Deep truths, though.
Those are both deeply true things that sound like they couldn't coexist in the same universe. But they do. And this is that universe, where those two beautiful things are true — deeply true — at the same time.
You are the most amazing, unique, beautiful thing that has ever existed. And you are just one of many.
So: you are an amazing, beautiful snowflake, that is still one of many.
You may have discovered that there are things in your life that you're good at, and things that you're not so good at. Things that are easy. Things that are hard. If you're willing to attend to that, you might start to discover that there were things you were put here to do.
No spare parts
When we did the social justice work, we talked about how those roles made an ecosystem. No role is more important, or better. They're all just part of the life that an ecosystem is.
And one of the taglines for today's service and team fair was "no spare parts." An ecosystem has no spare parts.
It's not going to surprise you — this is another paradox. Which is to say, a lie hidden in plain sight.
An ecosystem has no spare parts because an ecosystem is all spare parts. An ecosystem is a master of redundancy. Ecosystems exist because of diversity and redundancy. A healthy ecosystem has an unlimited supply of spare parts. Their health and resilience and flexibility depend on redundancy and abundance.
But redundant and abundant are not spare.
Spare is the language of deficit. Spare is the language of not-enoughness. Spare is the language of scarcity. You got one? No, I only got one. Oh — you don't have a spare. You only have you.
What I mean is that the redundant and the abundant are not spare in spirit, because they aren't extra. They're not disposable, and they're not dismissible.
So even if you have three people who can and will and do step up to get the job done when you aren't around, that doesn't diminish your contribution to the work.
And your contribution to the work does not define your worth.
Now, this runs counter to a cultural teaching that is deep within many of us — me included.
Your contribution to the work doesn't define your worth. Your worth is not what you do.
That is not why I want you to find it. By "it," I mean your life's work. I want you to find your life's work because it is the gateway to fully living this life that you have been gifted. And you deserve that. And you are worth that — just for being. Not because of whatever you have done, or failed to do.
The near enemy
There is another near enemy that's worth naming: the expectation that the work that feeds you should be easy.
Friends, the work that calls you in this life is often the hardest you can imagine. It can feel like more than you are capable of. After real called work, we are usually both tired and grateful — just as we are after good play.
Most of us here have day jobs, or have had day jobs that turned into retirement as a day job. That's not what I'm talking about either. It is as rare as hen's teeth to get paid for doing your life's work.
But life without it? Well — I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
When you find work that feeds you, that leaves you more grateful than the day before, that fills you with energy and enthusiasm and even with quiet satisfaction — lean in.
Take your place in that work.
Let it feed you, because you are worth it. Let it feed the world we serve, because all of us are worth it.
Take your place.
Amen.
Eric Hepburn: Until next time. Thank you for joining us on The Pulpiteer.
If you enjoyed the podcast, you can help others find it by liking and subscribing. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a donation at sangabrieluu.org/give.
The Pulpiteer podcast is a production of the San Gabriel Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Georgetown, Texas. The podcast is hosted by Spotify, and theme music is by John Faber. Our live recording tech crew is Frank Sanders, Keith Hutchinson, and Lance McCollum. The podcast is produced and performed by Eric Hepburn.
See you next time.
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