“To Keep Alive the Covenant”
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday, September 18, 2005
All
I recall an event years
ago when I was leading a congregation in an evening workshop on church
organization. There were two moments in
that evening that I will never forget.
Our first task was to
draw up an organizational chart to illustrate how the church was actually run. I put up a sheet of newsprint where I began
drawing a chart of the organization they were describing. They suggested that the minister and Board
President were at the top, and should have lines drawn the Board of Trustees,
the governing body of the church and a Council, the programming body of the
church. Below that we put the various
committees and program groups of the church.
Finally, at the bottom of the chart was the congregation itself, the
membership that made up the church.
During all this, I
noticed one of the elder statesmen of the church was sitting in the back with a
troubled look on his face. When I asked
him what he was thinking, he replied that there was something bothering him
about that organizational chart. After
some moments of silence, he finally said, “I know what the problem is!” He left his seat, walked up to the front,
grabbed the newsprint that had been taped to the wall and, with some
understated drama, rotated it upside down and taped it back up again.
“The problem I was having is that when it
comes to authority in this church, the congregation is at the top, and every
other part of the church serves the congregation.”
I looked at what he
did and realized he was absolutely right.
Though the words on the paper were now upside down, the chart was in its
right order. The congregation was now
where it belonged – at the top.
This was one of those
moments that shifts the way you look at your world, and you’ll never think
about things the same way.
This is, in fact, one
way to look not just our
The confirmation of a
Supreme Court Justice is, I believe, one of the healthiest moments that this
country experiences. In many ways, it is
more valuable to our body politic than an election. Its value lies in the fact that, in reviewing
what we want in a Justice, we are obliged to look more closely at the U.S.
Constitution than at any other time. The
primary purpose of the U.S. Supreme Court is to interpret the meaning of that
document, and in the hearings to confirm a nominee, we re-visit our
relationship to that which defines how our society is to be shaped.
In many ways, the U.S.
Constitution in general, and its Bill of Rights in particular, is our national
Covenant. A Covenant is a statement of
relationship, of expectations about those who subscribe to Covenant. The Constitution was written to declare the
purpose of our nation, and tell how we, the people, shall relate to each
other. The purpose of this Constitutional
Covenant is, in the words of its Preamble, to “establish justice, insure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity.”
The rest of the
document outlines in some detail the ways in which these purposes shall be
achieved – through elected government, through a federal system of governance,
and through legislative, executive, and judicial authority, for example.
But after more than
two centuries, it is all too easy to take our National Covenant for
granted. It is easy to forget that it
places the people at the top of the organizational chart. It is easy to forget that for most of human
history, the principles it promotes were non-existent. Today, we can sit with friends in a
restaurant or bar and criticize our elected officials without fear of being
arrested for what we say. We often take
such freedom for granted, unmindful of how free speech is something rare in
human society, and it would not exist without our National Covenant. The right to vote is so broadly taken for
granted these that only a minority of eligible voters make the effort to
exercise that right.
During the time when
we consider a new Supreme Court Justice, we are drawn back to the document, and
consider anew what it means for our society.
That is not necessarily the case during an election. Elections draw us to the candidates far more
than the underlying principles of this nation, and we tend to evaluate not so
much what this country is all about, but rather the issues of the day. Our so-called “First Principles,” our
national Covenant, seems to take a back seat to marketing of candidates at
election time.
I am not speaking
today about the Supreme Court confirmation process that we are following this
week. I am not going to speak much more
about the Constitution itself. But I
wish us to consider what it means, as a community, to have a Covenant by which
we define who we are, and how we are going to treat each other. To do this I want to focus not so much on the
U.S. Constitution, but rather on our Covenant relationship in churches.
Just as it is easy to
take for granted our rights as American citizens, it is also easy to take for
granted our legacy from what is called the “free church” tradition. Something revolutionary happened to the
churches in the founding of this country, in some ways just as revolutionary as
what happened to politics.
From almost the
beginning of Christianity, churches were hierarchical in structure, with
authority imposed from top down. For
over a thousand years, the church was also the political power of the nations. And the relationship of the church to the
people was, of course, coercive. In the
Catholic Church there were Popes and Bishops.
In
In the 1600s, there
arose in
The Cambridge Platform
of 1648 declared that individual churches would not be subject to bishops or
any other ecclesiastical hierarchy. And
while it didn’t entirely separate the church from political authority, it challenged
the marriage of religion and state power by making each church independent of
the others. This declaration established
a tradition, essential to American Unitarianism, known as “congregational
polity.” Each congregation governs
itself by a vote of the membership. The
members run the church, they are at the top of the organizational chart.
(By the way, the next
paragraph is especially for the ears of the Board members who are present this
morning. . . . )
I’d like to refer back
to that evening when I was leading a workshop on church organization, and I
learned far more than I taught. I said
there were two moments from that night that I’d never forget. The first moment was when the distinguished
older member turned the organizational chart upside down so that the
congregation was at the top. The second
moment was a later comment from the same church elder statesman. We were discussing the role of the Board in
the church, and spoke about their fiduciary responsibility over finances and their
policy-making roles. In the middle of
this discussion, the elder spoke up saying, “The role of the Board is to make
those decisions which are not important enough to be made by the congregation
itself.”
Again, this voiced an
observation that is as true as it is overlooked. It is the members whom are trusted with the
ultimate authority for decision making.
They are at the top of the organizational chart.
What the Cambridge
Platform did for churches, just as the American Revolution did for secular
government, was to turn the organizational chart upside down and put the people
on the top, as the authority. In no
other country were churches organized this way.
Other church traditions came to our shores with traditions of bishops
and other hierarchies. But the principle
of congregational polity in churches is a purely American system.
In fact, it may be
fair to say that there is a seamless thread tying together the earliest
religious settlements with the American democratic system. The original Church of the Pilgrims, in
"Theirs was
the faith in the rights of the individual.
In religion, it was expressed as the rights of 'the priesthood of each
person.' In ecclesiastical matters, it
was expressed as the principle of independency, that a church is formed by
those seekers who join together in covenant... (and are) bound by no other
authority. In the socio‑political
world, these principles resulted in democracy.
They underlay the philosophy of the Pilgrim Separatists. It is this that makes Pilgrim Plymouth so
perfect a symbol of the American republic, and their church, a national
church."
I review this history of
church governance with some hesitation.
I know that issues of congregational polity aren’t the most exciting of
concerns today, even if they have been crucial to the kind of life and society
we now live in. If you want something a
little more contemporary, I’ll be speaking in a couple of weeks on “Evolution
and Intelligent Design.” But today I
look at a concern at the foundation of who we are.
Just as it is easy for
us to take for granted the freedoms granted by our Constitution, it is easy to
take for granted the tradition that guides our church tradition that vests
authority in the membership.
I’ve brought us down
this historical path this morning, though, to lead us to a rather specific
destination. That destination is the idea
of “Covenant.” It is this idea, above
all else, that identifies religious authority in this and all Unitarian
Universalist churches.
Many church
communities even today are bonded through their allegiance to a hierarchical
authority – whether it be synods or bishops or other denominational
offices. It is that mutual loyalty to
church authority in these traditions that creates a church community.
This is not so with
us. By design we have no bishops, and in
fact no denominational official has any authority to tell this church what it
can do, let alone tell our members what they must believe. This church community is not bound together
by a common loyalty to any church hierarchy.
Our organizational chart, since at least 1648, has been turned upside down,
putting the people on top.
And for many church
traditions, religious authority derives from creeds. What binds the people as a community is their
common assent to creed – whether stated explicitly or implicitly. You can categorize much of Christendom by
identifying their allegiance to a specific creed: the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian
Creed, or the Westminster Confession.
This is not so with
us. We are proudly and uncompromisingly
non-creedal – one might even say anti-creedal.
It is a matter of principle to us that we protect freedom of belief,
that we encourage each individual to seek their own answers to life’s deep
questions, to follow the path they feel they must follow. For us, creeds
are antithetical to freedom, and freedom comes first.
So we, as a church,
are not bound together by loyalty to an ecclesiastical hierarchy, and we are
not bound together by loyalty to a common creed. Then what is there left to hold us together
as a community? If not church leadership
or tradition, and if not commonly shared creedal beliefs, then what makes us a
church community?
The only possible
answer, it seems to me, and the answer that traces back centuries to the
earliest days of our religious heritage, is the tradition and practice of
covenant.
Covenant is an
agreement, not about what we shall believe, nor about whom we shall obey, but
rather a voluntary agreement about how we shall honor our relationship
together. It is a statement defining a
relationship. The Covenant on the wall
behind me is simply one example, a covenantal statement that has been used in
this congregation, Sunday after Sunday, for over a hundred years. This is how we agree, voluntarily, to be
together as a community. There are
plenty of other examples of covenants as well.
The U.S. Constitution
is a form of Covenant. It describes our
relationship as citizens to government, and places the people at the top of the
organizational chart. Wedding vows are
Covenants, and agreement about a relationship that is entirely voluntary.
When I spoke of the
Pilgrim tradition, and the formation of their church in
“A church is formed by those seekers who join
together in covenant... (and are) bound by no other authority.”
Our
church community is not a consequence of common belief – we are rich in our
diversity of religious belief, welcoming atheist and theist, Christian and
Buddhist, humanist and mystic. Our
church community is not a consequence of shared loyalty to some outside
authority – we are free to run this church however we see fit. Our church community exists only to the extent
that we, as a group, affirm a sense of “covenant,” an agreement about how and
why we share the religious journey together.
The 16th century Unitarian leader of
There
is nothing particularly mystical or magical about the Covenant on the wall
behind me. They are human words, crafted
by humans, and they can be altered by us at our choosing. But the nouns in this specific covenant
describe the nature of our relationship – love, service, peace, truth,
help.
People
are attracted to this church because of the values it espouses – values of
freedom, reason, and tolerance, for example.
But they will stay with us, I believe, only to the extent that they
agree to subscribe to a human relationship, a covenantal relationship.
When a new member,
who is so excited over the discovery of a religion which is rooted in freedom
and reason, becomes active in our church, that person discovers that we are
what all organizations are -- a collection of human beings. Church activities, designed for fun and for
personal growth, are filled with people, personalities, and problems. There are disagreements over the right way
decisions are to be made, and there are issues which are interwoven with
personalities. Given that we are an
organization of human beings, it can be easy, over time, for someone to lose
sight of our original vision, of the covenantal promise, which is not about
what to believe, but about how to be part of a community of seekers.
It is good that we
are a community of human beings, though – I wouldn’t have it any other
way. After all, the values we celebrate
can work only if they can work for people.
As a religious community, however our lives are intertwined with each other
– whether our children play together, whether we meet
together on Boards and Committees, whether we disagree on what church
priorities should be, whether we claim different theological positions, whether
we live in different lifestyles, whether we listen to different music, vote for
different candidates, hold different opinions about public policy, or have
different ideas about life goals – in a deliberate community of covenant, we
practice our values in an environment of respect. Here are some behaviors that are implicit in
the covenant of our community:
Ø Religion is to be
inclusive, tolerant, and open, rather than restrictive narrow and closed. It can be liberating when we don’t constrict
it with required beliefs.
Ø All people deserve
respect for their inherent worth and dignity, regardless of their circumstances
in life, regardless of race, politics, gender, sexual orientation, or
class. Yes, all people deserve respect for
their inherent worth and dignity, regardless, even, of their religious
opinions, for no one, not you and not me, has the corner on truth.
Ø Each one of us is
ultimately responsible for our life journey, for our beliefs and faith. We cannot claim Bibles or church doctrine or
science or anything as a final authority, for we ourselves must make our own
choices.
Ø All beliefs and
opinions, even about how the church is to be run, are subject to doubt and to
discussion in the open forum of community conversation. No one has the ability to trump the opinion
of another, whether the subject is religious belief or church policy.
Ø No one has the
right to coerce another in matters of belief.
At this summer’s retreat for our Board and
Council, an exciting idea was raised.
Over the last few years, in many Unitarian Universalist churches, there
has been developed a program of small groups, usually meeting in members’
homes, that would explore together many of the religious and life issues that
all of us confront as individuals. These
groups are sometimes called “Small Group Ministry,” and sometimes called
“Covenant Groups,” and sometimes take another name, but in all cases the idea
is for people to join together as small groups to probe deeper into life’s
issues, within a safe and supportive covenantal relationship. A planning committee is now working to
develop such a voluntary program, and it should be up and running after January. I have to say that I am more excited about
this than almost anything I can think of in the last ten years of my ministry
here.
A Covenant in the context of religious
community is an agreement among the members of how we shall treat one another
in the context of this community.
Sometimes we fail. Whether
through misunderstanding or through miscommunication, or through
well-intentioned mistakes, or through a lapse in commitment to that covenant,
sometimes we fail to live up to our promise.
I like the way this was stated by the Rev.
Diane Finkelstein, a Unitarian Universalist minister in
“I am asked every once in a while if I always
practice what I preach. ‘Of course I
do,’ I always reply, ‘Except when I don’t.’
What I preach, and what we promise to each other at various times in our
lives – these are statements of the ideal we would like to live towards. It is true of marriage vows, of ordination
vows, of covenants of all kinds. We make
the promise knowing that at times we will fall short of the ideal. When we do fall short, it is the existence of
covenant that helps us to recognize our stumbling, and helps us to figure out
how to make amends for our broken promises.”
I have been a minister
of Unitarian Universalist churches now for over twenty years. I can say without reservation, that in
observing congregations over that time, my deepest respect is held for members
who, when facing controversial issues before them, put the sense of covenant
above their own opinion. These are the
people who lose a vote on some matter before a committee or a Board or the
congregation itself, and are able to honor the sense of covenant more than
their own opinion. These are the people
who know that the value of the community is worth affirming. When all is said and done, these are the ones
that make a covenantal relationship work.
At the heart of our
religious tradition is, curiously enough, an organizational chart. At the top is not a creed, not a bishop, not
any ecclesiastical authority. We have
flipped the chart upside down, and put the people at the top.
The only way this can
work is by common affirmation of some sort of covenant that unites the people
together. It is that sense of covenant
that makes our churches alive and free.
I close with this
observation from John Buehrens, former President of the UUA, who expresses, I
think, an insight into the way Covenant defines our religious community.
AAt its very core,
the important thing about religious living is not what we profess with our
lips, but how we witness with our lives.
...Your mother was right: Deeds
do speak louder than words.... Not that
we need to live alike, much less think alike, in order to love alike. Community does not mean sameness. Your calling is not quite the same as
mine. Not in practical work, not in
spiritual practice. We often say that
ours is a non-creedal community. That is
not because we have no beliefs. It is
because we will not make words the test of faith, only deeds.
AReligious lives
are lived when we open the mind to greater truth, the heart to greater
compassion, and the conscience to the demand of justice. Most religious groups ask the question, ‘What
do we all believe in common’? That is
the creedal question. The question we
ask instead is the covenantal question, ‘What are we willing to promise to one
another, and to the world?’
AA non-creedal
church is not called to substitute a political orthodoxy for a theological
one. It isn’t even called upon to
provide must-be-believed answers, either metaphysical or political. It is simply called to live in the deep
questions. To keep faith with our
non-creedal, covenantal approach to religion, all we need to do is keep living
in the big and enduring questions: ...
What are we doing to demonstrate our faith in human unity and our love for the
world?@
From A. Powell Davies,
Minister of
From 1944-1957
Let me tell you why I
come to church. I come to church – and
would whether I was a preacher or not – because I fall below my own standards
and need to be constantly brought back to them.
I am afraid of becoming selfish and indulgent, and my church – my church
of the free spirit – brings me back to what I want to be. I could easily despair; doubt and dismay
could overwhelm me. My church renews my
courage and my hope. It is not enough
that I should think about the world and its problems at the level of a
newspaper report or a magazine discussion.
I could too soon become too low a level.
I must have my conscience sharpened – sharpened until it goads me to the
most thorough and responsible thinking of which I am capable. I must feel again the love I owe to
others. I must not only hear about it
but feel it. In church, I do. I am brought toward my best, in every way
toward my best.
It may not be so for
everybody, but for me, this alone would make me seek a church. I need to be reminded that there are things
for me to do in the world – unselfish things, things undertaken at the level of
idealism. Workday enthusiasms are not
enough. They wear out too soon. I want to experience human nature at its
best, and be reminded of its highest possibilities – and this happens to me in
church.
It may seem as though
the same things could be found in solitude, but it does not easily happen
so. In a congregation, we share each
other’s spiritual needs and reinforce each other. In some ways, the soul is never lonelier than
during a church service – that is certainly true of a pulpit, for a pulpit is
the most intimately lonely place in the world – yet it is a loneliness that has
strength in it. Perhaps it is because
the innermost solitude of the human heart is in some paradoxical way a thing
that can be shared – that must be shared.
We
must meet each other as friends and neighbors anywhere and everywhere, but we
seldom do so in the consciousness of our souls’ deepest yearnings. But in church, we do – in a way that protects
us from all that is intrusive, yet leaves us knowing that we all have the same
yearning, the same spiritual loneliness, the same need of assurance and faith
and hope. . . . We are not merely an
audience, we are a congregation, and we unite – unite in quest of truth and
(the divine) and life’s own loveliest hopes and visions and for the
reinforcement of our dedication to the service of our fellow human beings.