SERMON: "Living in Covenant"

Rev. Paul Beedle

November 4, 2007 at First Unitarian Universalist Church, Houston TX

I had occasion recently to re-read Reza Aslan's book about Islam, called No god but God. At the beginning of that book, he makes an important point that applies far beyond the scope of what he was writing about. This is what he wrote: “Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith.” In other words, faith is a way of moving and being in the world; religion is a body of traditions and practices and institutions that preserve stories about how to move and be in the world that way. In order to speak to new generations, traditions adapt, but faith is eternal. That is why we call ours a living tradition: it adapts.

What's so good about Aslan's book is that he spends most of it telling the stories of Islam. How did it get started? Where did it come from? How did it develop? What are the core values that guided its development? How do the values it professes hang together? How are they lived? What does Islam expect of Muslims? And guess what? There are different ways of interpreting the story of Islam. Muslims have agreed and disagreed – sometimes because they've taken sides, other times just because people are diverse. Aslan's perspective on it all seems to be that, as Islam got started about 600 years after Christianity, it's having its great Reformation about 600 years after the Christian one. Islam's traditions and texts are coming directly into the hands of a more literate general population – that's what happened in the Christian Reformation – and there's a lot of confusion and conflict as a result. And often it's violent. The Christian Reformation was no different in that regard. And what that says to me is, what are we going to choose? Are we going to choose the violence as our Christian ancestors did 600 years ago? Can we afford to? Or are we going to find another way?

And on that topic – the topic is world peace now, not Islam – I think we Unitarian Universalists hold a key in our heritage. My colleague Alice Blair Wesley has given a lot of thought to this. She was invited about six years ago to give the Minns Lectures – that's a pretigious lecture series sponsored by First and Second Church in Boston – and in her lectures (later pubilshed as Our Covenant) she talked about our heritage and tradition and how it's supposed to work, much as Reza Aslan, in his book, reviewed the heritage and tradition of Islam and how it's supposed to work. She said, “More than any other single reality, what redeems and enhances human life is the spirit of mutual love. The good news is: We can learn from experience – our own and others' – what the spirit of mutual love feels like and when it is present among us. And we can, in response to that learning, organize ourselves into a free church: a group religiously dedicated to giving the spirit of love a fine chance of working, among us, for our own sakes and also for the sake of the world around us.” And what she talked about most is the tradition in our faith of making and following covenants.

I think we all know that “covenant” is one of those words that some of us struggle with, like “worship” and “ministry” and “God.” That's appropriate. These words come from our heritage, they were preserved and given to us by our religious ancestors who created this liberal religious institution called the free church, that we may learn and grow in the ways of faith. From generation to generation, one hands down and the other takes up the heritage, words and all. Without the old words we are rootless. Without them we cut ourselves off from an adequate understanding of what liberal religion is and what the free church is and how to hand it on to our children. We cannot do without the old words, even when we prefer other words, because they connect us to those good souls who struggled over these words and sacrificed to build these institutions so that their children, whom they loved – us – would know a better way than they inherited. And there is so much in faith that is the same from age to age. Our ancestors and we, to borrow Maya Angelou's phrase, are more alike than unalike.

Please turn to reading #649 in the hymnal [“From Generation to Generation,” by Antoine de St.-Exupéry], and let's read it responsively:

“In a house which becomes a home, one hands down and another takes up the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds.

Love, like a carefully loaded ship, crosses the gulf between the generations.

Therefore we do not neglect the ceremonies of our passage: when we wed, when we die, and when we are blessed with a child;

When we depart and when we return; when we plant and when we harvest.

Let us bring up our children. It is not the place of some official to hand to them their heritage.

If others impart to our children our knowledge and ideals, they will lose all of us that is wordless and full of wonder.

Let us build memories in our children, lest they drag out joyless lives, lest they allow treasures to be lost because they have not been given the keys.

We live, not by things, but by the meanings of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.”

A few years ago I gave a sermon that's based on that reading, called “Passwords of Our Faith.” I explored part of the unison affirmation we said this morning, and some of the old words it contains: “church,” “doctrine,” “sacrament” and “prayer.” If you'd like to look at that sermon, you can find it on my congregation's website, tuuc.org. To find it, you have to click on my name at the top of the page, and that link takes you to a short bio of me; at the end of the bio there's a link to my personal website, and when that comes up you click on “A Sampling of Sermons.” Then you'll see the title, “Passwords of Our Faith,” and you can click on that to see the sermon. Piece of cake! Or you can Google the title, “Passwords of Our Faith,” and my name. I mention this because: if you struggle with the old religious words, you might find that sermon helpful.We all struggle with the old words, and it's appropriate that we do so. Tradition gives them to us to struggle with. That's how we grow.

I could say more about that, but I'd rather you struggled. Because after we struggle, after we reflect, after we formulate our considered thoughts, we arrive at a place where rich conversation can happen. And I hope you're having rich conversations here at First Church about our heritage and what it asks of us. The conversation about what a liberal church is and should be and how it ought to operate and how its members ought to behave is centuries old. It has been going on for a long, long time and it's a thing that keeps liberal faith alive. How can we pass this faith on to our children if we don't know deeply what it is and strive to live it deep in our bones?

“Covenant” is simply the word – the one important old word – in our Unitarian Universalist heritage. Not “truth,” not “freedom,” not even “love.” These, to be sure, are values we live by. But the means by which we live them in a liberal church – our way of being religious, of embedding these values deep into ourselves and into our lives – is, traditionally, by living in covenant with one another, faithful to one another and to the values we strive to embody and live by: faithful to truth and freedom and love. So we need to struggle with that word "covenant" and what it means.

A covenant is a promise. The promise at the core of our faith is to walk and live together in the spirit of mutual love. “Love is the doctrine of this church.” I like to say that as Unitarian Universalists we are called to live as love demands, because that phrase conveys the sense of obligation on our part to learn and grow and develop and change and hopefully mature into embodiments of the spirit of mutual love. At least some of the time. At our best. We have to know how to do that when love demands it of us. And we need each other to learn about what love demands of us: we can't do it alone. And so we promise to help each other with that – we create a congregation and strive to live in that covenant.

And as we strive, we struggle, and more things come up than just the words we use. For some people, what comes up when they think about living in covenant is: “oh gee, I might have to alter my behavior.” And that's possible. It rather depends on what your accustomed behavior has been and how it affects other people. For me, the starting place for thinking about it is the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or “love for others what you love for yourself.” But of course that's only a starting place, because we're all different, aren't we? We have different histories and tastes and sensitivities and temperaments, and as we get to know each other we find out about that and discover that: here's a way I would like to be treated, but guess what? That makes Susie all buggy! Or here's something I love for myself, but Bob hates that. Or Dave's allergic. Or whatever it is. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about diversity. But what did Maya Angelou say? “We're more alike than unalike.” So we're back to the Golden Rule. But wait: we learn and grow and develop and change and hopefully mature our whole lives long! There are things I used to like that I don't any more, and ways I used to treat others that I wouldn't any more. And everybody experiences that, it's one of the ways we're all alike. Gosh, there's more to this Golden Rule than meets the eye! Part of doing unto others as I would have them do unto me is to put myself in the other person's place, but to really put myself there I have to take into account all that I know about that person. And try not to assume too much about what I don't know. Golly, that's a lot to keep track of! I'm not sure I want to do that all by myself. Maybe it's a good idea to talk about it, just put it out on the table from the get-go. How do we want to treat each other? And how will we allow for our differences? What do we want to achieve together? And what will we do if we disagree?

Another thing that can come up for folks when they think about living in covenant goes something like this: “I want to be able to be myself, not what somebody else expects me to be or thinks I should be.” But wait: expectations are exactly what covenants are meant to express. And it is part of the deal that, if you freely enter the covenant of the community, you are accountable – not only to keep the covenant yourself but also to support others who have freely entered it to keep it. The same sort of allowance for differences needs to operate when we set our common expectations. Your minister Gail has a mantra about that, that I like: “There are many ways to do it right.” And “acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth” is an affirmation all our congregations strive to uphold. Each of us wants to be valued for who we are, who we were, and who we are becoming. At the same time, when we make the decision freely to enter a covenant, we need to be able to rely on that covenant: that is, we need to be able to rely on one another. When we live in covenant, there are expectations – because that's what a covenant sets out – and we are bound, in a bond freely chosen. We have promised; promises do entail obligation. I might have to change my behavior to meet the expectations of the covenant – not to conform to somebody else's idea of who or how I should be, but to do my part toward creating the beloved community we strive to be together. I might have to change my behavior to do my part toward creating the beloved community we strive to be together. We all have expectations about what a beloved community would look like and feel like, and we will have expectations of each other based on that. All of these sorts of expectations should be openly addressed, I feel, if we are to live in covenant together effectively and authentically and happily.

“But why do we have to write it down?” That's another thing that comes up. Well, why do you write down your grocery list? Because you want to get it done, right? And we write down covenants because then they can be something we reflect upon together. It can't be a touchstone if you can't touch the stone. So we have the right conversations, we hope, and we write it down, and we keep the conversation going and strive to be the beloved community we want to be by living in covenant.

Some of our deepest Unitarian Universalist thinkers these days and in the recent past have said a lot about following our heritage by living in covenant:

Rebecca Parker, until lately the President of Starr King School for the Ministry, said, “We must find ways to access knowledge that is in danger of being lost. ... We're living in an age when our daily life is dominated by the marketplace. ... The awareness that our intimate relationships are filled with meaning, that we are connected to and depend on the earth, that we have interests transcending our own personal lives – these dimensions are not factored into the values of the marketplace. ... We must act in accordance to what we know: that we have received abundantly in our lives and that our presence matters. We are people who are a blessing.” I would say that's a pastoral argument for living in covenant.

My colleague Tim Jensen has said, “...when we allow our spiritual forebears to speak to us authentically in their own voices, we will discover in their experience potential mentors for our own religious pilgrimage. The great truths of religion are eternal. Yet in every generation each individual must discover and embrace those truths in his or her own way if they are to evoke the power to transform a person's life. This is the miracle of a `living tradition' – the ability to create anew the wisdom of ... those who have come before us ... that can guide us as we encounter our own future.” I would say that's an argument for living in covenant from the point of view of faith development or religious education – that we are in conversation with our faith tradition.

Conrad Wright, one of the most respected historians of our tradition, said, “...a covenant might be implicit, expressed by silent consent as people walk together and show concern for one another. But an explicit covenant is far better...for reminding the members of their mutual duty and stirring them up to it. ...there is something to be said for the word covenant, ... It emphasizes that the church is a community of mutual obligation, which involves a sense of commitment. Even the freest of free churches needs that much discipline if it is to last long enough to accomplish anything of value in this world.” I would say that's an argument from the perspective of organizational and leadership development, or that of social justice, for living in covenant.

James Luther Adams, the Unitarian theologian, said, “Human beings, individually and collectively, become human by making commitment, by making promises. ... The covenant is a covenant of being. ...We are responsible not only for individual behavior but also for the character of the society and the love and perservation of nature. ... Ultimately the ground of faithfulness is the divine or human love that will not let us go. Here we see the theological basis for accountability, by persons and by the church.” That's a moral argument for it.

This is a vital and ongoing and centuries-old conversation that keeps our living tradition alive. You have many opportunities to continue the great free church conversation about living in covenant: Sunday morning is not your only venue. It would be a great topic for a committee to spend half an hour on, or even set aside a whole meeting for: how does our committee embody in its work the spirit of mutual love, and how are we in covenant and right relationship with other leadership groups in the church? It would be a great topic for an adult faith development class – there are some good books you might read together: Alice Blair Wesley's Our Covenant is one; Walter Herz's Redeeming Time is another. Think about it: I'm sure you will discover other venues – even the parking lot – where this great conversation of our heritage can continue among you.

I hope you will talk about it again and again in many settings, and I hope you will live this ideal more fully and deeply at church and in your personal lives. It's a good ideal. It can be transformative. It can change your life, and it can deepen your life together as a congregation. May you continue to seek ways to give the spirit of love a fine chance of working among you, for your own sakes and also for the sake of the world around you. So may it be. Amen.