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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 17, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
As a religion without creed, without a set of beliefs to which we must all adhere, our UU spirituality is rooted in relationship. We create religious community though sacred promises we make with one another about how we will be together in the ways of love. We will examine the ancient tradition of covenant making and how we practice it today at First UU Church of Austin.
Chalice Lighting
This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.
Call to Worship
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST PRINCIPLES
We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:
- The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
- Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
- Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
- A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
- The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
- The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
- Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
- journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
FIRST UU CHURCH OF AUSTIN COVENANT OF HEALTHY RELATIONS
As a religious community, we promise:
To Welcome and Serve
- By being intentionally hospitable to all people of good will
- By being present with one another through life’s transitions
- By encouraging the spiritual growth of people of all ages
To Nurture and Protect
- By communicating with one another directly in a spirit of compassion and good will
- By speaking when silence would inhibit progress
- By disagreeing from a place of curiosity and respect
- By interrupting hurtful interactions when we witness them
- By expressing our appreciation to each other
To Sustain and Build
- By affirming our gratitude with generous gifts of time, talent and money for our beloved community
- By honoring our commitments to ourselves and one another for the sake of our own integrity and that of our congregation
- By forgiving ourselves and others when we fall short of expectations, showing good humor and the optimism required for moving forward
Thus do we covenant with one another.
Sermon
In May of 2009, same sex marriage was only legal in a hand full of states in the US.
My now spouse Wayne and I had already been together for 18 years. We were already spouses in all but the legal sense.
Still, we really wanted to make that commitment to one another. We wanted to speak our promises to one another about making a life together. We’ve been together 32 years now, so I guess that’s going to happen.
But, we wanted to make it legal, even if that had to be in some place other than this, our home state of Texas.
At that time, gay marriage was only legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa. Iowa?
We decided it would be more fun to get married in Vancouver, Canada instead, where it would also be legal.
We boarded a plane, flew to Denver International Airport, where we then board our connecting flight to Vancouver. A short time later, our plane caught on fire. Just a little electrical fire with smoke coming out of the passenger air vents.
After an emergency landing in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where our plane was larger than the terminal, they put us on buses back to Denver, where we would board a new plane to Vancouver very early the next morning, this time minus the onboard smoke and burning smell we hoped.
Now, this was early on a Saturday morning, and our wedding in Vancouver was scheduled for Sunday afternoon.
BUT, to make it legal, we had to fill out a wedding certificate application, which for some reason in Canada at the time you could only do at this drug store chain which closed for the weekend at noon on Saturday. So, we were in a bit of a hurry when our flight finally arrived at the Vancouver airport.
We rushed to customs, only to find ourselves in line behind a large group of heavy set men and women with grey hair, the men with full beards, many of them wearing Harley tee-shirts and one with a shirt that asked, “Have you been naughty or nice?”
They were there to attend a convention for people who play Santa Claus and were in no hurry to move through customs.
We finally made it through, rushed to pick up our luggage and the rental car and screeched our way to the closest drug store we could find. For some reason, the marriage application process was located in the photo department, where we finally arrived at 11 :45 a.m.
The man behind the counter was an elderly immigrant and did not speak English very well, and he was lovely determined to get us legal. He even made another store employee help him get it done. We signed the certificate at 11 :59 a.m.
That would become only the first time we both cried on our trip to Vancouver to get married.
The next day we were married in a beautiful old Victorian home just across from Vancouver Bay by a wonderful woman, who had to have been a Unitarian Universalist, whether she consciously knew it or not.
It was a glorious, sunny cool spring day. Flowers were in bloom everywhere.
Since we had been together 18 years at that point, so we had thought this would be simple – fly into Vancouver, say our vows, spend an afternoon in the mountains outside the city afterwards, and then fly back home all legally wed.
So we were stunned when we got to the part where we would say our vows to one another, and we both got so choked up that neither of us could speak.
Fortunately, our wedding officiant had been dog sitting a full-size Schnauzer named Marley, who she thought she had locked away in another room.
Just at that moment, Marley broke free and came bounding into the wedding, a squeaky toy between his jaws, which he was loudly engagIng.
She apologized profusely, but we urged her to let him stay. OK, we practically begged for Marley to stay. He did.
He sat right between us, our little “best guy”, periodically punctuating our promises to one another with a squeak. That helped us make it through the rest of the ceremony with great humor and joy.
I am still wearing the ring from when we bought each other wedding rings in those mountains outside of Vancouver.
This morning, we are exploring the concept of covenant, sacred promises we make with one another about how we will dwell together in right relationship – in the ways of love.
Covenant making is an ancient tradition within the Abrahamic religions, and, in fact, a concept of sacred promise making is present within most world religions.
So even in a modern, more secular world, this long history of promise making may help explain why covenanting can hold such a powerful place within our psyches.
Like when Wayne and I got so emotional over making our wedding vows to one another. After all, marriage vows are covenants.
Apparently, these sacred vows or so vital to me and Wayne that we have gotten married again twice since that fateful trip to Vancouver.
Once at the Travis County Clerk’s office after the Supreme Court legalized it across the country and again here at this church when we renewed our vows for our 25th anniversary.
Hey, at least if Wayne and I are going to keep getting married over and over again, we’re doing it with each other!
And covenant is a vital part of our Unitarian Universalist tradition also.
We are a religion without a prescribed set of beliefs, so relationship that call us all toward collective liberation through a set of loving promises we make with one another and our world is what binds together our varied theological perspectives.
We can share loving promises even if we do not always share the exact same beliefs.
If you are new to Unitarian Universalism and/or this church, our call to worship earlier was a set of principles that our UU congregations covenant to affirm and promote together.
The covenant that we all read together is the current version of the promises that participants in this religious community make to one another.
So, this ancient tradition of covenant is what instills it so deeply within our collective unconscious and makes the idea of promise making so holy to us.
And yet, I also think that tradition may contain warnings for us about how we construct our covenants and live them out.
For instance, the Hebrew scriptures are filled with covenants made between God and God’s people.
One of them is a covenant God makes with Noah, after deciding the people of the world had been very wicked and therefore the only choice was to flood the entire planet, drowning all life except for those that Noah had brought aboard a huge floating ark.
After the flood though, God sends a giant rainbow as a symbol of God’s promise never to flood the entire planet again, though God does go on to do a lot of other terrible things to humans.
All of which raises the question: is covenant possible when one side is all powerful and a tad bit temperamental?
This may be best illustrated by the story of Job, a pious and goodfearing man. God makes a bet with one of the angels that Job will remain faithful no matter what happens to him. So, they send many plagues upon Job, killing his entire family and destroying everything he has.
Eventually, Job accuses God of a serious breach of covenant, to which God essentially replies, “Yeah, well, I’m God, so too bad.”
Now God does eventually restore Job to his prior status, and I am having a bit of fun with an overly literal interpretation of these biblical stories, but still, there is a warning here for us about approaching covenant making within relationships of unequal power.
So, for instance, when white culture is dominant, we must be exceedingly careful that our covenants do not just enshrine the mores of that white culture.
In the Movie, History of the World Part 1, Mel Brooks retells the biblical story of when Moses went up to the mountain top and heard the voice of God.
God burned onto stone tablets commandments that the Israelites were to obey as their part of their covenant with God. In Mel Brooks telling, Moses comes down from the mountain top with three such stone tablets of five commandments each.
“My people”, Moses declares, “Hear me. The Lord has given unto you these 15 …” At which point he drops one of the tablets and it shatters into pieces. “Ten. Ten commandments for all to obey.”
Now, that is a humorous take on it, yet I think it also contains a kernel of truth about our promises we make with one another. They must be sacred. They cannot be frivolous to us. They cannot be just words on paper – or stone tablets.
And, again, they are more likely to seem that way if dictated by one person or group to another.
Our promises must be mutually held and encompass that which is most vital to us for living out love together.
They must inspire us to hold ourselves to these promises, and when we inevitably fall short of them because we are human, provide us guideposts for how to come back into covenant, get back into right relationship – like in our Pinkalicious story earlier.
I’ll close with one more story.
When my grandmother was in the last days of her life, she went to my mom’s house after she left the hospital for the last time. My grandmother had end stage congestive heart failure and had decided to go on hospice care. They could only come by my mom’s house periodically though, so the vast majority of caring for grandma fell to my mom.
And that became more and more difficult as my grandmother grew closer and closer to death. She became unable to dress herself, bathe herself or go to the restroom alone.
If you have ever been with someone who is in the final stages of life, they can sometimes seem to be existing between this reality and some other.
My grandmother began speaking the language of her childhood Czech – even though she had not spoken it for many years before that.
She became disoriented and confused and begin crying out of what seemed like frustration. She would sometimes show up in my mom’s living room only partially dressed. She at times became non-responsive and would not eat.
Not knowing how difficult things had become, I called my mom one day during this time just to check on them. As soon as she answered, I could tell things were not good. I asked her how she was. She told me all of the things that were going on with trying to care. After a long silence, she told me that she had been lying on her bed cryIng for my grandmother.
She didn’t know how to keep going. She didn’t know how to keep doing it. I hesitated and then asked, “Do you have to be the one to do it?” After another silence she said, “I promised her I would take care of her.”
My beloveds, that’s a powerful promise made out of the deepest sense of love. Taking care of each other is profoundly bound up within the very heart and soul of our covenants. And so we had to find a way for my mom to both fulfill that promise and reimagine it in a way that was humanly possible. She got help. She came to realize that she did not have to take care of my grandmother alone.
We moved my grandmother back into her own home, where she was immediately more comfortable and less confused. We hired people to stay with her overnight so that my mother could go home to her own house sometimes.
I truly believe reimagining and renewing that promise both saved my mom and brought my grandmother much greater peace during her final days.
And we renew our religious covenants like this too. They are living promises.
We learn. We change. We evolve. And so too then must our covenants.
That covenant among our churches is currently undergoing a review, which our faith does periodically to make sure we are still living into love in the best ways we know how.
Our healthy relations team here at the church is reviewing the church covenant, based upon feedback they have received from some of you and at least in part to address some of the potential issues discussed today. We want you to participate.
It is your covenant and has helped this church remain healthy through so many challenging times.
Tomas Medina from the healthy relations team will be at a table in Howson Hall after the service today.
Please feel free to visit with him and discuss how to keep this set of promises we share alive – how together we can continue to bring the ways of love into full and magnificent being.
Our great Unitarian Universalist Theologian, James Luther Adams wrote, “Human beings, individually and collectively, become human by making commitment, by making promise. The human being as such … is the promise-making, promise- keeping, promise-breaking, promise renewing creature.”
And so our religious vocation as Unitarian Universalists becomes continually renewing the promise of unity and universal love.
What a glorious promise we keep. Amen.
Benediction
Now, as we go out into our world;
May the mission that we share inspire your thoughts and light your way,
May the covenant that binds us together dwell in your heart and nourish your days,
May the spirit of this beloved community go with you until next we are gathered again.
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