Sacred promises

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 17, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As a religion without creed, one of the cornerstones of UU spirituality arises from the covenantal nature of how we gather our religious communities. The covenant, a set of promises we make with one another about how we will be together, comes out of an ancient tradition.

Sermon

Our preeminent Unitarian Universalist theologian of the 20th century, James Luther Adams said the following, “Human beings, individually and collectively, become human by making commitment, by making promises. The human being as such is the promise making, promise keeping, promise-renewing creature.

Another way to put that is that we are covenant-making creatures. A covenant is an ancient concept that described most simply contains a set of promises concerning how we will be together. For Unitarian Universalists, this ancient concept becomes particularly vital. Because we do not have a creed, a prescribed set of beliefs to which we must all adhere, our ecclesiology, the way in which we structure ourselves as a religious people, is rooted in the covenantal. Our theological perspectives are necessarily grounded in relationship.

I have great admiration for James Luther Adams and his work, but I think he left one important thing out.

As human beings, we are also promise breaking creatures. We are imperfect and we fail each other sometimes.

That does not make our covenants less important. It makes them more so. Our covenants, like this church’s covenant that we read together earlier, provide us with the ways in which we may get back into right relationship with one another when we have failed – they provide the standard we can call ourselves back to.

The concept of covenant goes back to even before the times described in the Hebrew Scriptures and was likely borrowed from ancient civilizations that predated that of the Israelites or even their ancestors. We humans have been making and breaking promises for a very, very long time.

And we have through the ages also been making covenants with our Gods, and they with us.

Early in the Hebrew Scriptures, in Genesis 9, God makes a covenant with Noah to never again flood the earth, killing everything on it, save that which was on the ark with Noah.

“Whoops. I may have overreacted a bit there. You know me. Temper. Temper. Here’s a lovely rainbow so that every time you see one, it will remind you that I promise never to flood the entire earth ever again. We good?”

Next comes God’s covenant with Abraham, which seems to have two versions, one in Genesis 15 and one in Genesis 17. God promises Abraham a grant of land upon which God will raise up a new nation from Abraham’s descendants.

Never mind that there are folks already living on said land – God will take care of everything, and all Abraham has to do is wander aimlessly on faith for an unspecified distance and time.

Never mind that Abraham’s wife is barren.

Never mind that Abraham does not know where exactly this land is or when exactly the new nation will get raised up. Oh, and also circumcise himself and all of his male descendants and them their descendants and so on and so on in perpetuity.

And also all of the male slaves in any of his family’s households.

Bummer.

And then, of course, there is the whole thing where God allows Abraham’s elderly wife, Sarah to bear a son, Isaac, only to later demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac, which Abraham prepares to do until God sends an angel to say pretty much, “Dude, we didn’t think you would actually do it. Here’s a ram, sacrifice that instead. It’ll do.”

Continuing the fun in the book of Exodus, God next made a covenant with the entire ancient Israelite people, Abraham’s decedents. This is the famous story of Moses going up to the top ofMt. Sinai, where God gives him the ten commandments and binds the Israelites to obey them, as well as the other laws laid out in the Torah – the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

Often called the Mosaic Covenant, it was similar to the treaties, contracts or oaths that sovereign rulers of the time made with their subjects, and it stipulated the really good things God would do for the chosen people if they were obedient to the oath and the really dreadful, horrible things God would do to them if they violated it.

Which they did and which God did. Temper. Temper.

Finally, in Samuel 2, God makes a covenant with David that he and his lineage will be the kings, the royal line of Israel. Unlike the Mosaic covenant, God made this covenant unconditional. Even if David and his descendants misbehaved, while God might punish them in other ways, he would never take their royalty away from them.

And once again, misbehave they did, and punish them severely God did.

David even had a very special “friend” named Jonathan, who upon meeting David, and I am quoting scripture here, “made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David … “

Later, when the two “friends” learned that they must be separated from each other to save David’s life, the scriptures say, “They kissed each other and wept with each other.”

And after Jonathan was killed in battle, David wrote a song in which he says of Jonathan, “Greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”

Apparently, some of those so called abominations God supposedly spelled out in Leviticus have been getting ignored for a very, very long time, and by some of God’s favorites.

I’m just sayin’.

Finally, I’d like to talk a bit about one more of the times the concept of covenant comes up in the Hebrew Scriptures. You may have heard the story of Job, a good and righteous man who fears God and shuns evil. Job is living the good life – he’s healthy, has a successful business, a wonderful wife and family.

One day God is bragging on his faithful servant Job, when one of his angels says, “Well, you know, maybe Job is only so righteous and pious because you have blessed him with so much cool stuff. Take it all away and let’s see how pious he is then.”

And so they kill Job’s children and destroy his business, and property. When that’s not enough, they also inflict his entire body with terrible, painful sores.

Long story short, Job clings to his righteousness and, after some arguing back and forth with some rather unhelpful friends, he basically brings a serious breach of covenant lawsuit against God. He sues God for God having failed to uphold his end of the contract even though Job has remained righteous even after all these terrible things God has allowed the angel to do to him.

So, God answers Job’s lawsuit out of a whirlwind, saying, “Who is this who darkens counsel, speaking without knowledge.”

Sounds a little testy and defensive already if you ask me.

Anyway, God continues, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Speak if you have understanding. Do you know who fixed its dimensions … Have you ever commanded the day to break, Assigned the dawn its place, … Have you penetrated to the sources of the sea, Or walked in the recesses of the deep?”

In other words, basically saying, “I don’t have to adhere to any stinkin’ covenant, because, well, I’m God.”

To which Job pretty much replies, “Well, you do kind of have a point there,” which pleases God, so God restores Job to his old life but even better than before.

Now, I’ve been having a bit of fun with these ancient covenant stories by providing one possible interpretation of each of them that is far too literal. They have to be read as poetry or allegory, not as being literally true. For instance, a more poetic reading of the story of Job would get at the idea that the world does not operate on a system of retributive justice, wherein if we only live decent, ethical lives then we will somehow be rewarded with lives that are carefree and without tragedy.

It is much more complicated than that.

And, even though this ancient concept of covenant is an important one for us, I think these stories, especially the story of Job get at another potential warning about covenants. It can be problematic when the parties to a covenant have a highly unequal balance of power. Can the less powerful party truly consent? How does a human hold a God accountable to a covenant?

I think of our current struggles with our criminal justice system which promises “to protect and to serve” – a covenant by which in return we cede to that system many powers and resources. Now that we’re seeing that system disproportionately arresting, convicting, imprisoning and even taking the lives of people who are not white, we are witnessing a great struggle to hold the justice system accountable to its promises, its side of the covenant.

But the system has been militarized and monetized and has over time been granted almost God-like powers by law makers and court rulings, so we face a mighty struggle indeed to bring about such accountability.

But engage in this struggle we must because to be fully human we must become promise-fulfilling creatures.

Another potential problem with a belief that a God made a covenant with a select group of people is that it can foster a sense of what scholars have called “chosenness” within that people. And scholars have found that this sense of chosenness can become woven into the very symbols and language of a culture, so that, even as the culture may become more secular, that sense of chosenness can still remain deeply imbedded within it.

Some scholars have claimed that this was at least a part of the Zionist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century that was otherwise often progressive and secular.

Other scholars have pointed to the lineage of Jesus that is detailed in the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, establishing Jesus as being in the linage of both David and Abraham, as providing Christians with a similar sense of chosenness. It creates a kind of ultimate fulfillment of the covenants from the Hebrew Scriptures – or a new covenant with Jesus as the ultimate savior and King, and Christians the chosen people. Such scholars attribute Western Europe’s and the U.S.’s historical tendencies toward imperialism at least partially to this sense of chosenness.

And I think we have to be careful not to fall prey to a similar way of thinking and being if we were to focus only on our internal church covenant that we read together earlier – if we were to forget that our principles that we also read together earlier are expressed in the form of a covenant with our fellow Unitarian Universalist congregations – a covenant to affirm and promote those principles together out in our wider world. And even our mission is in its own way a promise we make to each other to work together in shared purpose both within these walls and beyond them.

If we were to forget these things, our covenant, the promises that we make can become too narrow and internally focused, we could be in danger of becoming a social club of the self-chosen.

I am pleased to be able to say that currently I do not see that happening here at this church.

And I am thrilled that there is a movement afoot within our wider Unitarian Universalist denomination to live out a greater sense of covenant among and beyond Unitarian Universalists more widely.

We can trace the way that we organize our churches and the covenantal heritage of what would become Unitarian Universalism in the U.S. all the way back to the Cambridge Platform of 1648. The Cambridge Platform was an agreement among our Puritan ancestors that among other things said that independent churches should be organized among members who covenant to walk together in the ways of love. Each of these churches, like we still do today, would choose its own officials, call its own minister, govern itself and own its own property. And since it is a stewardship testimonial days, I should also mention that all this means we get to provide the contributions to pay our own bills also.

But, the Cambridge platform did not stop there. It also called for churches to work together for each other’s welfare and to promote the greater good.

What if we take that part of our heritage truly to heart?

What if we promised to walk together in the ways of love not just within our church, but also with our other local Unitarian Universalist churches?

What if we covenanted to walk together in the ways of love with our fellow Unitarian Universalists in our Southern region?

What if we did so even at the national and worldwide level?

And what if we expand this idea about promising to walk together in the ways of love beyond Unitarian Universalism, finding interfaith partnerships and secular friends that would join us in an ever-growing covenant of mutual love and support?

What more might become possible? How much more power might we all have to bring about beneficial change in our communities, our country and our world?

These are the questions that are being asked within Unitarian Universalism as a whole. These are the efforts in which our denomination will be engaging as we move into the future. I hope our church will be an active part of the discussions and the effort. I know I plan to do so, and I promise to keep you informed as I learn more. And, yes, you can take that as a covenant.

We humans are promise making, promise keeping, promise breaking and promise-renewing creatures, and if we expand this idea of covenant-making to a much broader level, further and further beyond our own tribe and maybe even to this entire planet on which live and depend, as well as all of the creatures upon it, almost anything becomes possible.

Suddenly, God’s rainbows become abundant.

As we move in that direction, I look forward to continuing to walk with you in the ways of love.

Benediction

As we go forth into our world now, we hold in our hearts our covenant.

We carry with us the sacred promises we have made among ourselves and with our larger world.

We walk together in the ways of love not just today but through all of our days.

Until next we gather again, be blessed.

May the congregation say, “Amen” and, blessed be.”

Go in peace.

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