A Relationship of Promises

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

September 16, 2012

In this first in a series of sermons on the First UU Convenant of Healthy Relations, Rev. Barnhouse talks about being a “covenant community,” and how to nuture one another’s spiritual growth.

Sermon:

I’m going to talk to you today about the covenant of healthy relations that you all put together and voted on a couple of years ago. There is a Healthy Relations Team this year that is going to be asking you what you think of what’s included, whether it’s something you feel is reasonable, or whether it’s just too hard, whether it could be something we could take home with us and try on as a spiritual discipline. First, though, there is that word “covenant.” I want to talk a little about what covenant is all about. Unitarian Universalism is a denomination with deep historical roots, and we are going back to the 1600’s today as we explore the concept of covenant. We could go all the way back to Abraham and the covenant or promises God made to him and his family, but I think going back almost 500 years is enough for today. You may know that UUs, along with Quakers, do not have a creed. A creed is a series of statements of belief that the people recite together to affirm their faith. We do not have a statement of belief. We, instead, rely on covenant to be the center that holds us together. “Covenant” is a word that means something we promise, something we agree to do, rather than believe.

In the 1630’s, around 20,000 English Puritans had immigrated to New England. In 1637-38, a group of them began meeting in order to create a different kind of church. They did not want a hierarchy of bishops telling members what to do, as was the Anglican arrangement. They wanted a freer church, where the members could vote on the minister they got, and have a say in the way things were done. As they met in one another’s homes on Thursday evenings, they would talk about a topic chosen at the previous meeting. The host would speak first, and then everyone else could speak by turns. They wrote down how they wanted to speak within the group. Each one could, as they chose, speak to the question, or raise a closely related question and speak to that, or state any objections or doubts concerning what any others had said, “so it were humbly & with a teachable hart not with any mind of cavilling or contradicting.” The record reports that all their “reasonings” were “very peaceable, loving, & tender, much to edification.”

We are standing in the same tradition, almost 500 years later, holding as our ideal those same “peacable reasonings.”

(The quotations and history are from Alice Blair Wesley’s 6 part 2001 Minns Lectures. )

One question for the group in 1637 was: if we can meet like this, just as neighbors, just to talk, isn’t this enough? Maybe we don’t need a church. Their answer: This is not structured enough. The less structure you have, the more it can be easily taken over by noisy and dominant personalities, and then it’s not fair for everyone. If we really want to walk in the ways of the spirit of love, then we must intentionally form a much deeper community where the spirit of love is what guides us and demands our strongest loyalties. In addition to this, we need to speak out for and support a just and “civill society,” and that will take a concentration of care and visibility that we will have as a church. I am quoting Rev. Wesley’s lecture now:

“Free churches are made up of people who have covenanted to “walk together” – live together or meet often – in patterned ways, or “in order,” in the spirit of mutual love. People have covenanted to do this, over a great stretch of time, in the Hebrew Scriptures God makes a covenant with families, beginning with Sarah and Abraham; then with the nation of ancient Israel, beginning with Moses. This organizational pattern is the one element of our ancestors’ doctrine we liberals have most consistently kept in our liberal free churches

Historically, we religious liberals forget and then we remember again that no free church organization can work very well if it is not consciously, explicitly grounded in the spirit of love. We are now in a period of remembering. The Covenant you all voted on begins like this:

A Covenant of Healthy Relations

As a religious community, we promise:

To nurture the spiritual growth of people of all ages in our church.
To keep communications with one another direct, honest, and respectful in a spirit of compassion, love, and trust.
To support our church with generous gifts of time, talent, and money in gratitude for the fellowship, joy, and inspiration we receive.
To be present with others through life’s inevitable transitions.
To make our church a safe place to express our deepest fears and our greatest joys.
To forgive ourselves and others when we fall short of expectations, showing good humor and the optimism required for moving forward and calling ourselves back into covenant.
To engage with the larger world to promote justice and peace.
We acknowledge and commit ourselves to the work of sustaining our beloved community, welcoming all in good faith, and ministering to each other.
Thus do we covenant with one another.

It starts with a promise and ends with “thus do we covenant with one another” What we are after with our covenant is the exposition, the “unpacking” of the question “What does it look like to ground our community in the spirit of love, and what might it mean to influence the world, not with shouting at the world about how wrong it is, but with the love we can show it, our families and one another? Along with brilliant, clear, loving and well-reasoned conversation with the world too, I would add.

The first thing you all put into your covenant is :

To nurture the spiritual growth of people of all ages in our church.

Spiritual growth is what makes you a more loving person, more kind, patient, compassionate, joyful, peaceful, self-aware and self-controlled. A spiritual person (this is my take on it – you are welcome to your own) is able to be open to awe, able to be grateful, have perspective, concerned for others. A spiritual person eventually will know when to speak and when to be quiet, they will hear wisdom coming out of them from an unknown place, they will be fun to be around, not self-righteous, curious and interested in others more than in themselves.

We promise to nurture one another’s spiritual growth, and that of the children of our church. My friends, it’s not the parents of young children alone who are responsible for teaching. It’s all of us. You are the ones who carry the identity and traditions from generation to generation, who listen to the kids and learn their names and talk to them as if they were interesting humans and learn what they are interested in. You will be enriched and challenged and supported by the staff. We still have openings for teacher helpers, and you can find Mari, our Interim DLRE, in the Gallery to answer your questions about it.

Another way we invite spiritual development is with small group ministry. Being in a small group is one of the ways members get deeper conversations and experiences of connection and growth. Here is how they work. If you would like to sign up for one, they are in the Gallery.

The Gallery not only has interesting art to look at, it has gateways into experiences of connection and fun in the life of this congregation.

Ours is a covenantal church. We join by promising one another that we will be a beloved community, meeting together often to find the ways of love, as best we can see to do. We have found there’s always more to learn about how love really works, and could work, in our lives and in the world. It’s a hard path, but it’s a good one, and we’ve been following it for nearly 500 years.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776