Unitarian Universalism is a covenantal religion. From the time of the pilgrims, we have covenanted to travel together in search of the spirit and of a just community. While other religions may be defined by specific creeds, we, like the Baptists and the Congregationalists, are bound together by covenant. When other denominations disagree, they tend to split apart, but we have agreed to disagree in order to carry on together: “to dwell together in peace, to seek truth in love, and to help one another.”
It could be said that civilization is founded on covenant. Nearly every aspect of our lives is affected by the promises we make and break. The most obvious covenant is our marriage vows. We promise to love, comfort, honor and keep one another, in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy, for richer or poorer, forsaking all others. Families are built and destroyed on the strength of that covenant. Another unspoken covenant is the promise we make to our children: to love them, protect them, guide them, and to prepare them for their lives ahead as responsible adults able to make and honor covenants of their own.
We also live in covenant with our employers and employees. As we work we are bound by legal contracts and social expectations. When these contracts are broken and expectations are not met our lives begin to unravel.
We are also in a covenantal relationship with the government. The relationship between our government and its citizens is defined by the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and a multitude of laws, forever changing as the needs of our country change. We have expectations that our government will protect and defend us, provide some kind of safety-net in times of crisis, and ensure our basic freedoms. In return, we promise to be law abiding, and to contribute to the well-being of our country and our fellow citizens.
Every relationship is defined by expectations and promises both spoken and unspoken.
In this congregation, we have worked together to create our own mission and vision of who we are and can become.. We understand ourselves to be a religious community of unlimited opportunities for personal and collective growth. We have promised one another to inspire responsibility in achieving social justice and to care for one another, the larger community, our environment and the interdependent web of life. We have promised to serve our children, youth and our adults through creative, stimulating programs and activities that reflect and promote the principles of our faith. We have also promised to encourage laughter and joy. We know ourselves to be caretakers of this church, and agents of change. This is our covenant. This is how we have chosen to walk together in the world.
Covenants of all kinds are both permanent and ever-changing. In our religion, the basic promise to walk together, to seek truth in love, and to help one another remains immutable. But how we choose to live out this covenant on a daily basis may change as we grow and change overtime.
While Dennis and I were on Sabbatical. UUCR learned many things as a congregation. The congregational leadership discovered how much the professional ministry acts as a communication link and as the glue that binds the many activities of this church together. They also learned how much time and effort goes into creating worship services, coordinating administrative details, and caring for individual members and groups. And, you, the congregation, stepped up to the plate and discovered your many talents and abilities to find creative solutions, to fulfill your own ministries, to explore new avenues, to mediate disagreements and to help one another. In the process this congregation has changed.
Dennis and I have also changed. We have had time to reflect on the parts of Ministry that give us the most pleasure and those that challenge us and make us grow. We have had time to reflect on the aspects of congregational life that we find most irritating, and to discover again how very much we love you as individuals, families, and as a church. We have had the opportunity to learn new techniques and to observe different ways of being in the ministry. We have had time to reflect on what we would like to accomplish in the remaining years of our ministry. And, we have returned to discover an energized congregation with a new set of expectations.
It is time to re-covenant.
Recently we received a note from some old friends, who asked us to work with them to write new vows for a re-commitment service celebrating 50 years of marriage. Re-commitment celebrations can be wonderful events. Often, they reaffirm many years of give and take, pleasure and companionship. Sometimes they are a statement of new promises following a period of difficulty and hard work. All relationships require fine-tuning from time to time, and the ritual of re-covenanting, marks the recognition of new promises and expectations. Re-covenanting is the symbol of new beginnings and of good things yet to come. We asked our friends to begin their re-covenanting process in the same way we ask couples to write their wedding vows: Each is to go into a separate room and make two lists. The first list is all the things they expect from the marriage. The second list is what they are willing to give to the marriage. We ask them to delve deep, because so many expectations and so many gifts (and lapses in responsible giving) are unconscious. Then we ask them to come together and have a long heart to heart discussion about their respective lists. I would suggest that if it is too easy, it isn’t real. Finally, the expectations, the gifts and the responsibilities that the couple agree upon are their real vows. These are the promises that they will make to one another. This is the real covenant which will guide their partnership into the future.
After the second service today, there will be an all church workshop designed to show us where we, as a religious community, have been, where we are now, and in which direction we want to go. In order to prepare yourselves for this workshop, I would like everyone to take some time right now to reflect on your expectations of this church and also to reflect on what you are willing to give to make those expectations come true. There should be an insert in your order of service; on one side, it says expectations, on the other, it asks, what are you willing to give. Please take some time now to reflect on those expectations and on the gifts, physical, emotional and monetary, which you are willing to give, and write them on the insert. If you need something to write with, raise your hand, and the ushers will come around with a basket of pencils.
Summing It All Up:
Dennis and I hope you will bring your reflections to the workshop at 12:30pm, today, as we begin that heart to heart conversation that will lead us into the future. If you cannot make the workshop, please leave your inserts in the basket at the back of the room or hand them to Dennis or me so that they will not be lost to the conversation.
Dennis – Shameless commercial announcement
One part of our covenant with each other as members of this congregation is that when we come together we are pulled into greater connection with ourselves, with each other and with the knitted world around us. Implication: we need to be deliberate about making those connections, all of us. We need to take time to share our thoughts, experiences and feelings, and have in mind always the question, “Where is our growing edge here; are we growing in trust; are we growing in generosity; are we growing in engagement with one another?” My long term goal for this church is that it be a place of spiritual nurture that offers care and support to its members, and where we each discover and explore our personal ministries to the larger world. We grow into service at deeper and deeper levels, with the result that we deepen ourselves. A lot of that happens already, so I’m not talking changes so much as enhancement.
We start with strengthening our connections to the people in this room, most of whom we know only superficially; then we can aspire to extend our concern to the people we meet as we move about in town, to the passengers of the cars we share the highway with; and to the complicated people we work amongst. Every one of those lives has a story; every one of them is trying to get by in her own way; every one of them experiences the same life passages we each go through, and every one of them has a secret life she never shares and a combination of genes and experiences that makes her unlike everyone else. Spiritual awareness encourages us to approach with awe and holy curiosity every individual we encounter throughout our day.
Our Covenant Groups help train us for that open, aware, spacious, and appreciative way of living. The groups make a specific covenant with each other to meet regularly for a full year. And they also help us strengthen our covenant with each other to be a supportive community. We already have several small groups in place, whose main purpose is to strengthen the connections between people in the congregation and to invite exploration of our own processes of spiritual growth. Groups meet once or twice each month for two to three hours. They provide an opportunity to know and be known. They are not book discussion clubs; instead they focus on who we are, what is happening in our lives, what sense we make of it, who we feel called to be, and how we move through the world. They enliven the spiritual life of this congregation. Please speak to me or Marj Lane after the service if you would be interested in participating. We have immediate openings in some groups as well as the possibility of starting new groups if there is enough interest.
Rebecca Parker Reading:
Let us covenant with one another to keep faith with the source of life knowing that we are not our own, earth made us.
Let us covenant with one another to keep faith with the community of resistance never to forget that life can be saved from that which threatens it by even small bands of people choosing to put into practice an alternative way of life.
And, let us covenant with one another to seek for an ever deeper awareness of that which springs up inwardly in us. Even when our hearts are broken by our own failure or the failure of others cutting into our lives,
Even when we have done all we can and life is still broken, there is a Universal Love that has never broken faith with us and never will.
This is the ground of our hope, and the reason we can be bold in seeking to fulfill the promise.