Covenants

7 September 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

We give thanks for life and truth, and are grateful when they find us. The kind of light that can heal comes in so many forms, from so many directions. It may be that the best way to live is with the kind of openness and trust that seems so much easier for children than for adults.

When the man Jesus pointed to small children and said we must be like them if we are to enter the kingdom of God, it was a deep truth that transcended even him, and was rooted in the deepest nature of life itself.

Let us not think that religion is about swooning to the sound of heavenly words or music. It’s about coming alive in a deep and fulfilling way. Living well is more than “the best revenge” – it’s also the best religion. And it’s what generates the heavenly music, not the other way around.

Let us give thanks when we are found by the kind of truth that can set us free and make us feel more whole.

And let us try to be vehicles of that kind of truth and healing for the parts of our world that touch our heads and hearts. Those in our larger world need us, just as we need them, for we really are all in this together. And for that too we give thanks. Amen.

SERMON: Covenants

“Covenant” is a weird word. In 22 years, I’ve never preached on it, seldom used it, and get suspicious of people who throw it around like it’s something of which all really cool people should have one.

So after deciding to bring it to you as a Sunday theme, I had to try and understand it well enough to know why I think it’s worth your time to hear about it in a sermon. For me, that meant trying to learn a wide variety of covenants, both from religion and from real life, because I think the more ways we can say something, the better the chances are that we actually know what we’re talking about.

So let me start with you the way I started with myself – by talking about a lot of different kinds of covenants, so the pattern and feel of what this weird word means might come alive from several different directions. It’s actually about something pretty important, and not at all confined to religion.

One of the classic statements is from the Bible, from the book of Joshua, where the writer says that you can serve any god you choose, then ends with the famous line, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:15)

Another is the famous statement of Martin Luther’s, when he decided he had to serve a different definition and style of God than the Roman Catholic Church had served for almost 1500 years, when he said, “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” As I said last week, this wasn’t long before he had to hide out for a year and a half because the Church wanted to kill him. But he was sustained in his hiding out by the new faith to which he had given himself heart, mind and soul.

Probably the most detailed and demanding example is in the religion of Islam. We are in their most sacred month, the month of Ramadan, when Muslims are expected to fast during the day for a whole month, as an exercise in spiritual purification. But in addition, there are four other Pillars of Islam, expected of all. They are required to profess their faith, do the ritual prayers that occur five times a day, pay a percentage of their income each year to benefit the poor – the poor can demand this! – and at some time in their life, make a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Those are all pretty dramatic. But the idea of being possessed by an idea or a cause that gives you life is not just something that happens in organized religions.

I’m a member of a local group of former military officers. It was started by a retired Air Force general I know, and most of the officers were Colonels or generals. I’m the token former Lieutenant, and the token minister. What I like most about it is the deep and powerful covenant these men made with the oath they took as officers, and how much that oath still empowers them. For the past few years, they have been mailing letters to the very highest level military commanders, some of whom they know personally, reminding them that this oath was to uphold the Constitution, not support a President who has violated his office by launching an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, and systematically destroying the freedoms and civil liberties at home that these soldiers had once believed they were fighting to protect. “We have a sacred duty to uphold the Constitution,” they will say, “and we have all devoted our lives to that duty.” That’s a covenant, a very powerful one. At one time or other, most of these men have risked their lives on behalf of that covenant.

It doesn’t have to be that dramatic. The three banners we have hanging up on the front wall are inviting a kind of covenant (TO COME ALIVE, TO SEEK TRUTH, TO HEAL OUR WORLD). It is the covenant of people in almost every religion I know of, anywhere on earth. Is there a religion anywhere whose people don’t believe they are there to seek the kind of truth that can set them free, help them come move alive, and help heal themselves, their relationships with others, and whatever parts of their world they can touch? It’s very close to the definition of what it means to be religious, or just to be serious about life. And taking it seriously, giving ourselves to it, is a covenant that can be as binding as a General’s oath to uphold the Constitution, or Martin Luther’s saying “Here I stand. I can do no other.”

The banners and liturgical candles beneath them are reminders. Banners point to the lights because those ideals can each open us to kinds of light we need. The lights point to the banners, because we need to be lit up by plugging into only the highest ideals, and letting them take possession of us like the angels of our better nature.

The story of Androcles and the Lion also shows a kind of covenant. (I told this as the children’s Storytime at the beginning of this service.) It’s a very old story. Ancient sources insist that it is a true story, told by someone who witnessed the scene in the arena. It comes from Aesop’s Fables, and Aesop lived 2500 years ago, about the same time the Buddha lived. Androcles’ covenant was with Life. The lion was just the form of life that needed his help. It could have been a dog, a cat or a child, it happened to be a lion. The lion’s covenant was simpler. It was just with Androcles, who had probably saved his life.

And that wonderful ten-word statement of the spirit of liberal religion in the Bible that I read you last week is also inviting you into a covenant: “Examine everything carefully. Hold fast to what is good.” (I Thessalonians 5:21).

I don’t want to push the examples and metaphors for this too far, but I’ll try another. If life were an automobile, the covenant would be the transmission. It is how we get the power transferred to us, how we assimilate, incarnate, the promised power of religion. Every commitment with consequences comes from a covenant.

Now not all covenants are good. Not all gods are good, and not all gods give life to us. Some drain it from us in the name of lower and more selfish aims. After all, Mafia members also have a covenant. So do those conspiring to commit a crime. Corporations that punish whistle-blowers are saying that the whistle-blowers violated an implied covenant to put the corporation above all other considerations, including truth, justice and safety. But one of the most hopeful facts of life is that most of us can tell the difference between coming alive and selling out, and we know it very early in life.

I’ve been reading some fantasy series written for young people this summer, and It’s interesting how often this idea of serving high ideals with your life comes up, and kids understand it almost intuitively, I think. One series of books was by Rick Riordan (Ryer-den, rhymes with “fire”), four volumes on Percy Jackson and the Olympians, all based in the ancient Greek myths, and a wonderful retelling of them. The children are called half-bloods, meaning half human, but also the sons and daughters of the Greek gods, and so they have the nature of their divine parents, and you can predict how they’ll act and what they’ll be passionate about.

I know you’re getting what this is about. It is really about a fundamental concept in religion and life: the question of what are we serving, and whether it gives us life, whether it and we are a blessing to ourselves and others.

Here’s another example that may not sound at all like a covenant. My undergraduate degree was in music theory from the University of Michigan, and I still remember a remark from a lecture in composition, about the French Impressionist composer Maurice Ravel, who wrote “Bolero” but also a lot of more complex stuff, and was regarded as perhaps the greatest orchestrator of the 20th Century. The line that stayed with me came when the professor said the most remarkable thing about Ravel was that he never published a bad piece of music. He wrote some, of course – even the best composers write some bad music. But he destroyed it before he died. He never published a bad piece of music because the idea of it violated something that seemed sacred to Ravel: only to serve the muses at the highest level possible to him, nothing less.

As I’ve reflected on it over the years, I’ve thought this really makes Ravel a lot like a saint, one of those people way more perfect than we’d ever aspire to be. We don’t hear stories of saints being really nasty, rude, cruel, or selling out to a lobbyist. I don’t know how they were in real life, but the image created of them by those who told and edited their stories was an image of someone living a nearly perfect life. That’s how Ravel was like a saint. Living the live of a perfect composer who never published a bad piece of music, no matter what the market demanded of him – and you know the market clamored for more pieces like “Bolero” (which Ravel once described as eight minutes of orchestration without music).

When you come here on Sunday, you know that I, Brian Ferguson our ministerial intern, all of our paid and unpaid musicians, our lay leaders, greeters and ushers will always be trying to serve the highest ideals we can. If you’ve been coming here for awhile, you know this, but It’s worth saying out loud from time to time. we’re serious about the time we all spend together here, because we have made a covenant with high religious ideals, high musical ideals, a covenant to serve the truths that can make us more whole, help us come more alive, help us heal ourselves and those others in our world whose lives we touch. That is as sacred as it gets, and that’s what we’re here to serve, every week.

Every week, you know this is a room where you can come to hear inspiring and challenging words. If theyre more challenging than inspiring, they may not always be comfortable. But if we’re doing our job, they will always be about coming alive, seeking truth and healing our world rather than hearing about outsourcing, downsizing, maximizing profit for stockholders, winning through intimidation or learning how to swim with the sharks, as though that wouldn’t just turn us into sharks, while outsourcing our souls.

This church, like all sanctuaries, is committed to being a nourishing place to dream of making better music with our lives, and protecting the dreamers. It is a place, and these worship services are homes, where we can dream in peace together – dreams of finding and being converted by the kinds of truths that can help us become more free and whole, filled to overflowing with life, so the world around us might be nourished by the overflow.

The goal of all this seems to be to live as Ravel did his music, only publishing the best. To the extent that we can pull it off, It’s pretty admirable.

What if the children’s author Rick Riordan and the composer Ravel are right? What if we are all half-divine, called to find that higher voice, those angels of our better nature, the healing kind of harmony, let it get inside our souls and shape us in its image? What if all the works we published in our lives had the mark of that kind of excellent spirit? We’d be eligible for sainthood, for one thing.

Here’s another way of putting this. you’re going through your life, wandering around a bit. You see this church, but you think, “Oh, that’s religion, and I don’t trust it. It isn’t honest. I know religion, and it isn’t honest.” Then you come in, hang around and listen for a bit, and you think, Oh well, I get this. It’s just ideas, abstract ideals and values, like reading philosophy books. I get it. Well, that was interesting. Ho hum.” Then one day – it can happen at any time – you become aware of a large sort of animal near you who is suffering. It’s a thorn of some kind stuck into it, a big painful thing. The animal needs your help. You’ve learned about suffering, and truth, and life, and know that even you can help alleviate suffering. It’s a little scary, but you find some courage – maybe it comes from realizing that after all you are half divine, and you call on the power and courage of that god or goddess who’s always been with you as part of your soul. So you do it. In spite of some fear, you pull out the thorn in this animal’s foot. You do it perhaps not because you cared so much for this one suffering animal, but you have learned to care for life, and this potentially powerful creature is very much alive. You heal it. It is only afterwards, when you begin to notice how much more easily and lightly you are walking, that you realize the animal, all along, was really you.

And this life-changing little drama has a sound track. It’s accompanied by a choir of the better angels of our nature, singing some of the most beautiful music ever published.