Rev.
Ann C. Fox
(508) 992-7081
UFairhaven@aol.com
Unitarian Universalist
Society of Fairhaven
Covenant, the Center and “Glue” of Our Faith
a sermon by Rev. Ann C. Fox
February 25, 2007
Note: A reading is attached, which you might like to read first.
When you think of the word “covenant,” what do you think of first? I think of Abraham and Moses’ covenant, or agreement, with God. Some of you might think of wedding vows, which are certainly a covenant. Many years ago, when I lived in a condominium, I found it confusing that we had to abide by a document called Covenant, Conditions, and Restrictions. No doubt the word “covenant” had at some point in history made a leap from biblical language to English common law and then American law. This adoption into law would have been like those of ancient Middle Eastern treaties that kings made with their conquered peoples. But the covenant of ancient Hebrews with Yah Weh was like no other for it had another dimension to it—a sacred one.
Permit me to remind us that the purpose of the covenant, including the Ten Commandments and the hundreds of other laws, was to provide a way for the people to live a more happy and holy or wholesome life together. Even with all their laws, some people had to be challenged to do the right thing that was not necessarily defined in law. Sometimes there was a tendency to be too literal with the laws. We might recall that Jesus asked that when a lamb falls down a well on the Sabbath, is it right for the Shepherd to wait until the next day to rescue the lamb because of the commandment not to work on the Sabbath? Thus we have the challenge of Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan. In those days, it would have been normal for someone to inquire as to who was considered worthy to be his neighbor. In the parable, there were two neighbors: the wounded neighbor in need and the one who attended him. Jesus was broadening the covenant of old to include caring for any neighbor in need. The despised Samaritan neighbor who didn’t have the benefit of the full Jewish law nevertheless did the right thing.
We could create our own more modern parable. We could say, “There was once a black people who had been freed from slavery but they were still without rights and they cried out for justice. Many saw that these were their “neighbors” in need so they joined a Civil Rights Movement for the sake of their black neighbors. The good neighbors helped to win justice for their black neighbors although it was still a long journey to address prejudice. In the last 25 years, we have responded to the plea of another oppressed group: gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, and that is why we have Andy Pollack here after the service to talk to us further about Massachusetts Marriage Equality and how we may be in danger of losing it.
We are all under an implied covenant to help our neighbors. I assure you that when you have felt deeply let down—betrayed—it is always because an implied covenant (an expectation) has not been met. It can even be the withholding of affection.
In a more recent example, you might remember the New York City construction worker who did not hesitate to jump before a subway train to help save the life of a man who had fallen on the tracks. In a news program, he said, “If everyone would help someone who needed it, New York City would be a very different place.” (Everywhere would be a better place if we acted as this brave man had done.) This man was operating out of the broad covenant of helping one’s neighbor.
It is amazing to think that the beginnings of this consciousness came to us in the concrete image of Moses the Patriarch holding the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone three millennia ago. Perhaps you have heard this little bit different story of the Ten Commandments (time for a bit of humor!):
An angry God was standing at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses had just descended. At the foot of the mountain lay the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, shattered in a thousand pieces. "What have you done?" demanded God. "Didn't I tell you to deliver the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel?"
"Yes, Lord," said Moses. "But a man dressed in a brown robe and a flying brown chariot with gold letters on the side appeared to me at the top of the mountain. He told me he would deliver the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel. I thought you sent him."
"I most certainly did not," said God. "What were the letters on the side of this chariot?"
Moses stooped and wrote three letters in the sand. Pointing at them, he pronounced them, "Oops" (UPS).
Today, I hope we can understand that covenant is the foundation of our religion and it has been this way since our religious ancestors came here from England more than 350 years ago. They had practically tricked the English King into letting them come to the New World ostensibly to do business but really to find religious freedom. They had fled the hierarchical society filled with the whims of kings and bishops and priests. These freedom seekers didn’t do everything right but they did some things extremely well and that is the organizing of their churches that would become a prototype for the soon to be democratic society.
Now, one of you asked me in the question box sermon last Sunday, “What is the difference between a lecture and a sermon?” Since I had to come up with something quickly, I responded that a lecture is informational and a sermon is inspirational. Today I add to this that preaching also has a teaching component in churches and I remind us that not everyone has the same body of knowledge. Today, I share something with you that I have come to understand about our spiritual ancestors and so I ask you to bear with me though many of you may know parts of this already.
Note: Dear Reader, I am indebted to the research and writing of The Reverend Alice Blair Wesley as recorded in her 2000-01 Minns Lecture Series. All of the quotes and some of the phrases are from her book. Please see the reference at the end of this sermon for exact specification of her work. Ann Fox
Following the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Bibles were printed and people began reading Scripture, this new ability to interpret scripture for themselves changed and inspired a lot of people. The law required that every person had to go to church on a Sunday. (Yes it is true and you could be thrown into prison if you did not do it!) At this time University professors in Oxford and Cambridge, particularly Cambridge, began interpreting the Bible and speaking their understandings of scripture from pulpits. This was very interesting to people used to hearing very dull services in the English church. (And I can testify to that! Dear Reader, I am British and Church of England bred!).
The Bishops became alarmed at all the different ideas coming from the universities and forbade professors to speak in the churches. Businessmen and tradesmen banded together and on market day rented a hall where the professors could deliver lectures, which were very well attended indeed. The bishops stopped this also under threat of imprisonment. People began meeting in one another’s houses to consider and talk about these new ideas. They found they loved to inquire and discuss scripture for themselves. They were labeled “dissenters” or “Puritans.” And the authorities tried to stop the secret house meetings. Now this was very like the way the early Christian church began. In the late 1500’s and early 1600’s, you may be aware than these house meetings led to imprisonment of many Puritan leaders. Hundreds of these free religious inquirers fled to Holland where there was great tolerance for differing views of religion. Later, some business people got the idea that they could get a charter from the king to form a company to conduct business in the New World under the name The Massachusetts Bay Company. Under the guise of entrepreneurs, many families left for the New World and you know the rest. They established churches and these were based on not a charter but the Holy Spirit of Love, their guiding document being a covenant.
In 1637, one person in our Dedham church was conscious that people in future generations would be interested in the process they went through to establish their church and how it was organized and so he left detailed records of how they formed their church, in 1637-38. (You can read this document in the Dedham library today.) This is the process they followed.
They first considered what conditions they must create for “justice, peace and reasonable laws—‘comfortable proceedings,’ they called them. But also, even when the Dedham laypeople began to talk about the covenant, the basic document of the church, they would later compose and sign, they first cited a natural-law argument for such a covenant” (Wesley, p.39) which specified that there must be mutual consent amongst them. There is mention in this document of how “strangely love worked in their conversations,” which went on for many weeks. They would form an agenda for each meeting. Each time, a few people of this diverse community of many trades and educational levels were selected to speak their minds on certain questions that they had pondered for a week. Those people were heard in a disciplined, loving way without judgment in the quest to gain mutual consent through mutually loving discourse. The weeks went on with all people speaking their thoughts on how they would conduct their church business. There was no arguing but much discussion and listening. These good people finally formed their covenant. This process was to inform the democratic manner of later times.
The Dedham Church’s covenant turned out to be very long. The Pilgrim church’s covenant is typical of those formed at the time. This is it:
“We pledge to walk together in the ways of truth and affection as best we understand them now or may learn them in days to come that we and our children might be fulfilled and that we might speak to the world in words and actions of peace and good will.”
Another example is the covenant of the Salem church written in 1629: “We Covenant with the Lord and one with another; and doe bynd our selves in the presence of God, to walke together in all his waies, according as he is pleased to reveale himself unto us in his Blessed word of truth.”
In March of 2005, members of our congregation met in a workshop to brainstorm a vision, mission, and covenant. A few “wordsmiths” amongst us formed this brainstorming into statements. We met in small groups to revise and “dot I’s and cross T’s” and these statements hang today in the hallway of our Parish House. A few months ago, we made a yellow bookmark out of our Vision and Mission and today we offer you our covenant on a blue bookmark. Let us read it together:
“The people of Unitarian Universalist Society of Fairhaven covenant together to be guided by love in all our words and actions. Therefore, within the congregation we endeavor to:
v Speak the truth with love
v Listen deeply without interruption
v Trust in good faith and intention, and speak well of one another
v Take responsibility to create a community of encouragement, compassion and hospitality
v Respect differences in belief, age, race, gender, sexual orientation, and personality
v Support the congregation, its activities, and the care-taking of the church with our time, talent and treasure
v Make decisions democratically
v Include spiritual practices in all church meetings”
What do you think of it? I hope you will ponder it in the days and weeks ahead. Do you see what can happen when people share their thoughts together in an open-hearted manner? This is what we did the day we brainstormed these ideas, something like the Dedham church’s process, except much speeded up with a workshop leader and with email communication!
We have lofty Vision and Mission statements but this statement of covenant is the one that we have said we want to live by. This is how we want to walk together in our religious journey. Our early Puritan churches would have made the signing of a covenant a condition of membership. We do not require this of you but you might ask yourself, “Would I like to live by this Covenant with these people?” It is a very fine thing to consider.
For a very long time, our denomination forgot its foundation of covenant but we began to reclaim it when we formed our Principles. These are printed on the back of the Covenant bookmark. Notice that our Principles begin with, “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote… I suspect you would like to ponder these as well for this Covenant and Principles make us a covenanted people if we so choose to think of ourselves in this way.
I hope you will put this bookmark in a safe place so that you can find it when you want to remind yourself of our covenant. Perhaps you will put it in your family Bible or a favorite book. The concept of covenant is deep in our culture and our bones, whether it is the implied covenant of being called to love our neighbor by helping as best we can or helping and honoring those closest to us or the more official one of binding us to the institutions we love and wanting to strengthen these institutions by our support. What a great and deep concept is covenant. It is good that it is once more at the center of our faith.
Reference:
I am very grateful to Alice Blair Wesley for her document called Our Covenant: The 2000-01 Minns Lectures: Chicago, Ill: Meadville Lombard Theological School Press, 2002 as well as other talks and lectures over the years and messages on our UUMA-Chat Internet newsgroup that have inspired and informed this sermon. If any exact quotes are taken from Rev. Wesley’s words, a sincere attempt has been made to put them in quotations.
Reading from Our Covenant:
The 2000-01 Minns Lectures
by Alice Blair Wesley (p. 82)
An appendix to Lecture 4:
(One version of a liberal covenant
Suggested by Rev. Alice Blair Wesley)
Though our knowledge is incomplete,
our truth partial and our love uneven,
From our own experience and from
the witness of our faith tradition
We believe
that new light is ever waiting to break
through individual hearts and minds
to illumine the ways of humankind,
that there is mutual strength
in willing cooperation,
and that the bonds of love keep open
the gates of freedom.
Therefore we pledge
To walk together in the ways
Of truth and affection
As best we know them now
Or may learn them in days to come
That we and our children may be fulfilled
And that we may speak to the world
With words and actions
Of peace and goodwill.
© The Rev. Ann C. Fox