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December 13, 2009 sermon

Today is Bring a Friend Sunday. Some of you are here this morning out of curiosity. Some of you, hopefully, are here because you have seen the fruit of this life-affirming faith in a friend or neighbor and want to get some of  it for yourself. I want to let you in on a little secret. For even the most dedicated of Unitarian Universalists, the hardest part of sharing our faith is  figuring out what to say.

This is just a darn hard religion to explain. First of all, most major religions have a creedal statement that is somewhat self explanatory. “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.” “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet.” “I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth . . .”  We are a non-creedal faith; the core beliefs of the people in these pews this morning represent a rich and varied theological spectrum. We believe many different things. Confusing? Well then, ask us about the source of authority for our faith. For most major religions that will be a book – the Torah, the Koran, the Gospels; or maybe a revered leader blessed with charisma or otherwise called out as being trustworthy and powerful. For us the authoritative source of or faith is actually sources – wells from which we draw the water of revelation in varying degrees depending on our individual inclination. We articulate six sources for our faith which are named in the Statement of Principles and Purposes which is part of the by-laws of the Unitarian Universalist Association. You can find it on the frontispiece of your hymnals. Seven Principles and Six Sources. Ooops, there are only Five Sources. In typical UU fashion, we’ve added one since the hymnal was published. Stay tuned . . .  for more sources of truth. But look, please, at the first source: “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” The idea that direct personal experience could be a legitimate source of faith was first expressed by our courageous forebears in the Radical Reformation. The Radical Reformers, today’s Baptists and Unitarian Universalists, were convinced that religion is something that must be freely chosen by each person. Many died for their adamant defense of that principle. Despite the persecution, the principle of personally chosen faith survived. It more fully flowered in the Transcendentalists, most of whom were Unitarians. People like Emerson, Channing, Fuller, and the vast array of literary lights of the Transcendentalist movement developed this idea of the possibility – or, for them, the obligation -  to seek out encounters with the holy and mysterious in nature, in conversation, and in prayer. “Grow your own soul!” they urged,  words still breathing life into our religious movement today.  ”Religious liberalism depends first on the principle that revelation is continuous. Meaning has not been finally captured. Nothing is complete, and thus nothing is exempt from criticism.” With those words, theologian James Luther Adams introduces one of the core ideas that provide the foundation upon which Unitarian Universalism was built; the foundational idea expressed in that first source. To declare that revelation is continuous is to broadcast some good news, my friends. Mighty good news. It is news that this weary world needs to hear again and again. Because our good news means that there is hope. Hope for better understanding, hope for more effective social structures, hope for all of us to do effectively the work that Jewish tradition calls ‘tikun’ – the repair of the world.

Adams was the pre-eminent UU writer and thinker of the 2nd half of the 20th century. He wrote those words at a time when the world was in chaos and the liberal church was struggling to respond. The great evils of the mid-20th century had caused a huge crisis in faith. The carnage of the first World War, followed by the Great Depression, had taken a serious toll on our ability to hold onto the belief that humanity represented the crown of creation. Fascism, the Holocaust, Stalinism, nuclear weapons – all of these further challenged the optimism of liberal religion. Our confidence in ‘the progress of humankind onward and upward forever’ (as we were fond of saying) seemed, at best, ill-placed. Orthodox theologians predicted the death of religious liberalism. Max Stackhouse, commentator and editor of Adams’ work, opined that “(religious ) liberalism is sometimes at its best when under pressure, for then it must decide what must be fought for, preserved, and renewed, and what must be jettisoned.”

That is exactly what Adams set out to do when he wrote a series of essays that were eventually gathered together under the title The Five Smooth Stones of Liberalism. The title comes from the scriptural story of the shepherd boy David, who prepares himself for his confrontation with Goliath by carefully choosing five smooth stones for his slingshot. Our Five Smooth Stones are five foundational ideas that have created and sustained our free faith, the carefully chosen ideas that we take with us when we stride out into the world to confront evil and injustice.

Adams recognized that the times he lived in demanded that liberal religion return to its roots in order to reinvigorate itself; we face similar challenges in our time. Fundamentalism, terrorism, tribalism, greed on a grand scale, tyranny, poverty. All of these challenge us today to do the work of revitalizing our theology, jettisoning that which is inadequate and articulating and holding on for dear life to that which is of enduring value. That work of revitalizing is not just a job for ministers or academics. It is a job for all of us. Unitarian Universalism is a religion of the people, for the people and by the people. Adams himself was fond of the talking about not just the priesthood of all believers (a phrase coined in the Reformation) but also the prophethood of all believers. That means all of you are prophets, called to speak the truth forcefully and to call your people back to a life aligned with your values. It means all of you are priests, charged with ministering to each other. It means all of you are theologians, privileged with the task of being on the lookout for unfolding truth, for further instructions, for new revelation. We are all prophets, we are all priests, we are all theologians. And one more thing – if we are all people who believe that revelation is continuous, then we are all agnostics. I don’t mean that in the narrow way we sometimes define it – as somebody who has doubts about the existence of God. I mean that we are all agnostic about everything. Agnosticism is often interpreted as  skepticism, or even cynicism about life. But if we believe that meaning has not been finally captured, that nothing is complete and everything is open to criticism – that is a different kind of agnosticism. That is a faith stance that allows us an open-minded approach to the search for truth. It allows us, impels us, to question even our most deeply held and beloved positions. It prods us to be constantly on guard against idolatry. It encourages us to experiment with new ideas, but always with a critical eye. It demands that we pursue our religious path ever conscious of the fact that we just might be wrong.Robert Fulghum’s friend – the one who was into simple ignorance yet dedicated his volunteer time to social justice and was willing to risk his life to save the life of a child – he is a perfect example of the kind of agnostic I’m talking about. Live life and with gusto, without ever believing that you have Arrived – with a capital A – at the truth. Skeptical and realistic, as Fulghum described him. Not cynical and pessimistic.Bring to your explorations a healthy skepticism, tempered with a compassionate and merciful heart. Never, ever believe that you have captured the truth. I guarantee you that truth will turn out to be an illusion every time. The best you can hope for is a glimpse of a small sliver of ultimate truth. Adams warns, “Idolatry occurs when a social movement adopts as the center for loyalty an idol, a segment of reality torn away from the context of universality, an inflated, misplaced abstraction made into an absolute.” All the evils we can catalog  are examples of idolatry. All those ‘isms’ grow out of misplaced loyalty, of mistaking the part for the whole, of separating off a slice of revelation from the great jumble of diverse and colorful ideas that constitute the body of human knowledge.The antidote for idolatry is the continuity of revelation; the good and hopeful news that we have to share with the world. Hopeful because the final chapters in humanity’s story have not yet been written. We are writing them as we speak, and as we act. Our future continues to unfold, and we Unitarian Universalists believe that we can bring about a life imbued with greater wisdom and understanding than we have yet known.”We find ourselves,” wrote Adams “to be historical beings, living in nature and history, and having freedom in nature and history. The forms that nature and history take possess a certain given, fateful character, and yet they are also fraught with meaningful possibilities.” That is also good news. Our lives are fraught with meaningful possibilities. He goes on to say, “We put our faith in a creative reality that is re-creative.” On this Sunday in the midst of holiday madness, we joyfully assert a life fraught with meaningful possibilities. We share that hopeful outlook with our Jewish brothers and sisters, who remind themselves nightly as they kindle their menorah candles that the spirit of justice and freedom is alive and well and at work in our world. We share that hopeful outlook with our Christian brothers and sisters, who assume a spiritual posture of Advent expectancy as they prepare themselves for the incarnation of love. We share that hopeful outlook with all of the friends and neighbors and family who have joined us this morning – whether you came out of curiosity or courtesy or out of a burning desire to find a sanctuary for your unique and individual spiritual quest. And we share that hopeful outlook with each other, we who have made a commitment to this beloved community, this visible and audible expression of the belief that revelation is continuous. We rejoice in the knowledge that as we encounter glimmers of truth and possibility, we can move towards, and become, forces for good, forces that create and uphold the very best of life. That is our good news; that is our reason to celebrate in every season.

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“The Great Task Remaining”

November 15, 2009 sermon by Rev Roberta Finkelstein

In the fall of 1969 I began my freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania. What a year it was! Opposition to the Vietnam war reached fever pitch with the invasion of Cambodia and the bombing of Laos, Kent State and Jackson State . . . The year began in my girls dorm with parietal rules still in effect – including the infamous ’3 feet on the floor’ rule. By spring, the campus, along with much of the country, was in chaos. Years later by room-mate and I would reminisce; we agreed that there couldn’t have been a more challenging year for two naïve and confused teen-age girls to be living away from home for the first time.

I had become close with another young woman that fall. We enjoyed each other’s company, spent a lot of time studying together and arguing about current events. It was our disagreement about Vietnam that finally ended our friendship. You see, one of Irma’s brothers had been killed in action in Vietnam a few years before, and she and her family fervently believed that to end the war or admit that it was ill-conceived meant that he had died in vain. As the war escalated and I became more active in the anti-war movement, Irma and I inevitably drifted apart. I couldn’t reconcile her support of the war with my passionate opposition, she couldn’t reconcile my opposition to the war with her grief heart over her brother’s death.Looking back, the story of our too brief and much regretted lost friendship captures the essential quandary of that era: how can one both honor the warriors and oppose the war? We didn’t do a very good job of it back then; in fact the treatment of returning Vietnam veterans remains a shameful stain on our history. In the fall of 2001 my son began his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania. He lived in a co-ed dorm, and my story about the ’3 feet on the floor’ rule sounded like a quant anachronism to him. Surely, I thought, he will not experience the upheaval I experienced in my freshman year. Two weeks later as I watched the Twin Towers fall and tried frantically to get through to him on the phone to let him know we were OK (we lived just a few minutes from the Pentagon) I realized that I would have to change my life narrative just a bit. I could no longer say that I had started college in the worst possible year for young impressionable teen-agers to be away from home for the first time. Soon other parallels emerged. Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, I reminded Danny that he should update his conscientious objector file in case the draft was reinstated. He told me he didn’t think he could be a CO anymore. Danny didn’t go to war in Afghanistan, but others did. One famous example: NFL player Pat Tillman who found himself questioning his place in the world after September 11th. Just prior to leaving behind a lucrative career as a professional athlete he wrote, “For much of my life, I’ve tried to follow a path I believed important. Sports embodied many of the qualities I deemed meaningful: courage, toughness, strength, while at the same time the attention I received reinforced its seeming importance. . . However, these last few years, and especially after recent events, I’ve come to appreciate just how shallow and insignificant my role is. I’m no longer satisfied with the path I’ve been following . . . it’s no longer important.”Most of you know the rest of his story. Hailed as a hero for enlisting, he was sent first to Iraq (a war he reportedly declared to be ‘as illegal as hell’) and then to Afghanistan. While in the service he would not allow his celebrity to be used to glamorize the war effort; he resisted all efforts capitalize on his presence. Much to the dismay of the Army, he refused all requests for media contact. In fact he even expressed the hope that in the event of his death he not “be paraded through the streets.” Unfortunately he did not get his wish. He was killed in action, and almost immediately his death was fed into the propaganda machine to try to prop up support for an increasingly unpopular war. The inconvenient truth that he had been killed by friendly fire was initially suppressed. How craven is it to exploit the courage and celebrity of a soldier to silence critics of a foreign policy? His story, and so many others, once again put before us the question: how do we honor the warriors while opposing the war?I am not a serious student of history, but in my personal and professional struggles with this question I had always believed that this was a modern question. Until the advent of television, non-combatants were protected from the realities of how wars are fought. Fiction and movies and government propaganda glamorized war, the silence of returning veterans allowed us civilians to retain our innocence. And then we quite literally started to watch the Vietnam War on television, and our innocence ended. We could no longer dismiss the veterans who came home intact in body but maimed in spirit as the exceptions; battle fatigue became Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We had to recognize the horror of what we had thought of as a noble and patriotic undertaking.

Phyllis Theroux, the editor of The Book of Eulogies, wrote in her introduction, “All wars are acts of bankruptcy; the human beings they do not kill outright they corrupt or maim in spirit. Yet it is considered a cruel, even treasonous, act to speak out against a war in which our own countrymen and countrywomen have been involved. To do so is to dishonor the courage, the self-sacrifice, and the service of the soldiers – and ourselves. The idea that we have lost our children to no good end would be too much to bear. So the war dead are revered, and the acres of slain soldiers expand to accommodate new rows. But until recently the honor attached to the names of those who died in service to their country has always obscured the horror of how the honor was earned.”

Therein lies the conundrum. Vietnam was the first war Americans were able to watch on television. There is no going back, even ‘embedding’ journalists with combat units does not, in the long run, hide the reality from the television camera. We can no longer choose to revere the dead without also acknowledging the horror of the war. The images of carnage make the question even more pressing: how do we, with integrity, press our elected officials to conduct our affairs in such a way that we do not find ourselves mired, generation after generation, in wars that are neither winnable nor justifiable, without falling into the trap we fell into during Vietnam of dishonoring and even despising those who answered the call of duty? How do we hold in creative tension the reality that many of you in this room served honorably in the armed services, and that many more of you have a loved one who is even now serving; how do we hold that in tension with the equally compelling reality that many of you in this room oppose all wars in all circumstances for theological or philosophical reasons and others oppose current US military policy for more practical though no less compelling reasons?

The answer may be found in what I consider to be the single greatest sermon ever written. It was written before television, which may put the lie to my theory that our quandary is a modern one. If you are of a certain age I’m pretty sure you still know it by heart. It begins, “Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” And it ends, only a few sentences later (it’s very brevity is part of what makes it the best sermon ever!) . . . it ends with these words, “But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

A great task indeed. Lincoln’s idea was that by preserving the union, the dead and maimed of the civil war would be suitably honored. His thesis was that the civil war was fought to preserve the union. Historians will argue that point; the more cynical or perhaps realistic among us could argue that the civil war was fought over money and resources and power rather than over an ideal – that ideal being a nation determined to embody a new and radical understanding of equality and freedom; a nation filled with empowered citizens who can live in peace.So what would Lincoln say today about this war on several fronts in which we find ourselves embroiled? Would he say that we are fighting once again to secure the blessings of freedom and peace and security? What would he say to the cynics, or perhaps the realists, who say that this war too is about less lofty things: like oil and money and power? On this Veteran’s Sunday I propose to you that it does not matter. Oh, it matters in many ways and on many days, and we would all do well to understand the basis of our foreign policy and to advocate for a policy built on the normative ideals of our democracy. But today, in a longer and far less inspirational sermon, what I want to say to you is that the answer to the question before us, the question of how to best honor the sacrifice of those killed and wounded, the best way to honor the veterans of our modern day wars, is to take seriously the ideals for which they gave their full measure of devotion. Pat Tillman didn’t walk away from football and into harm’s way for oil; he believed he was doing something important. He was right. He and our many sons and daughters who fight to better secure the blessings of freedom and peace for us deserve our full measure of devotion to those blessings.  No matter how craven the powers that be. No matter how flawed the logic of our foreign policy. We must, in honor of our veterans, take  more seriously this lofty ideal: we in this nation live in freedom, and it is possible to live in peace. Several years ago, close to Memorial Day, a full page ad in the Washington Post caught my eye. The banner read, “Janis Joplin was wrong.” Janis Joplin, of “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” fame. We sometimes use words like freedom and peace in casual and careless ways. We sometimes take the exercise of freedom and the practice of peace too lightly. Freedom is a lot more than a word, it is a lot more than the absence of fetters. It is a something to be practiced, worked at, defended fiercely even when we are not at war. And peace . . .  something to be lived, to be practiced, to be taught and encouraged. Freedom and peace are ideals, to be sure, to be invoked on serious national occasions. But they are also practical realities to be lived.  We can, in our own lives, live peace proactively. We can practice peace in small ways, in our families and in our communities. We can encourage and support peer mediation programs in the public schools, we can pay serious attention to teaching our children how to respond to bullying. We could lobby for the inclusion of peace education in public school curriculum.  History doesn’t have to be the story of one war after another. Retired Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy asked himself a question years ago. “If peace is what every government says it seeks, and peace is the yearning of every heart, why aren’t we studying it and teaching it in the schools?” To answer his own question, he created a curriculum called Alternatives to Violence. One of many peace based resources that we could offer our children and each other.The aftermath of the shootings at Fort Hood earlier this month paints in stark relief the quandary of our mandate to cherish freedom and peace. My heart ached for all those who experienced the terror of that event. But as soon as I heard the name of the alleged shooter, I knew that we would once again have to confront our deepest fears. Would Muslims all over the country once again be subjected to random violence and suspicion? Will we struggle through another round of agonized debate about the cost of security vs. civil liberties? It is hard work, this great task that Lincoln set before us. The great task of living out the ideals of our nation in the face of fear and greed. But how else can we possibly keep the promise he made in our name, “That these dead shall not have died in vain.” That the courage of those who serve in arenas of unspeakable horror and return home to this nation of unspeakable beauty and prosperity shall not have served in vain. The only way to keep the promise is to live courageously ourselves, to live in freedom that we cherish rather than taking for granted. And to live in peace.

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Your Mission, Should You Chooose to Accept It
November 1 sermon by Rev. Roberta Finkelstein

“Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” Those words, from the Gathering Call back in August, capture the essence of the question before you in this in-between year. They were the first words I heard and sang with you when we began our year of interim ministry together; a year that is already one-quarter finished. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? In order to thrive, or even just to survive, you will need to know the answers to those questions, the bid idea questions.

Every religion across the globe began, in some sense, with a big idea. it may have come from a charismatic leader like Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed; it may have been expressed first in written form or in oratory. It takes a big idea, or a set of big ideas, to capture the imagination of a group of people who then set out to structure their lives in faith around it. In other words, the mark of a successful, thriving community of faith, in any denomination, is that they in some tangible way incarnate those ideas that looked and sounded so compelling that they transformed the lives of the people who heard them. The incarnation was not a onetime event in one religious tradition. Incarnation is simply the embodiment, in any faith and at any time, of the Big Ideas.

Organizational development experts call these the governing ideas of an organization. Governing ideas answer three basic questions. The first is “What?” As in, “What is the big picture of the future we are trying to arrive at together, what is our vision?” One a meta-level Unitarian Universalists have always had a vision of a radically inclusive, radically free religious community. That vision first emerged during the Radical Reformation and it has carried liberal religion forward and across the globe ever since. Like our theological ancestors, we Unitarian Universalists today structure our lives in faith around what is called a realized vision; that is, instead of projecting our aspirations onto what we hope will happen in the after-life, in another “better” place, we build our faith on the assumption that IT – salvation, ultimacy, call-it-what-you-will – is happening right here and now. In formal theological terms – realized eschatology. Eschatology deals with the end times. A realized eschatology says that the end-time is already here. We are living it. So make the best of it, and live it as rightly as you can.

The second question in our set of governing ideas is “Why?” As in, “Why does this congregation exist? Why bother? What is our reason for being, what larger sense of purpose do we bring to even the most mundane tasks of creating and sustaining our church? What is our mission?” Mission is outward looking; as a people who have affirmed that we believe it is a tenet of our faith to bring about heaven here on earth, we are required to think beyond our own immediate needs and embrace the needs of a hurting world, of people hungry for the good news that right here and right now we can create communities that allow us to find our better selves. What better definition of salvation? A realized eschatology leads inevitably to a sense of mission that impels us to find ways to contribute to the world in a unique way, to make a difference, to bring value to the lives of others. I will come back to mission in a moment.

The third question is “How?” “How do we want to be, to act, what qualities of community do we wish to embody, day to day, as we live out our mission and reach towards our vision? What is our covenant?” Years ago a staffer in the Extension Department of the Unitarian Universalist Association wrote, “Covenant is the central unifying promise or commitment that binds a religious community together in voluntary loyalty. It grows from an affirmation of shared needs, values, purposes, and principles. As such it is rooted in the past, in the tradition of the congregation, and reflects the embodiment of the promise through history. It is a promise made in the present, with implications for the future.”Vision, mission, and covenant, taken together, confer identity. A congregation with a clearly understood and articulated identity is one that enjoys communal health, is able to grow and change and adapt to new circumstances. A well-differentiated identity inoculates a congregation against toxic behavior that might otherwise threaten it. A well-differentiated identity allows the leaders and members of a congregation to articulate expectations of membership, it evokes a sense of commitment rather than entitlement, it is the foundation upon which a healthy path to the future can be built. ”The congregation of the future is one that will recognize the unique ability of the church to radically alter a person’s worldview, and help people realize they are no longer the people they had once been.

Too often we view Unitarian Universalist churches as safe havens, places of comfort that are perceived as a final destination rather than a port of embarkation.” Those words come from Michael Durall’s book – The Almost Church. And they express exactly what I believe the church should be – a place where you come to experience transformation, to grow in mind and spirit, to be challenged. Not to stay the same, not to find ‘like minded people’ who will never disagree with you, not to be complacent. ”Unitarian Universalism has a proud history and tradition,” Durall goes on to say. “One with its saints and martyrs. But what are our churches called to do in this place and time? The primary purpose of the church is to create a community of compassion. All else flows from this. Unitarian Universalist churches should call their members to lead lives of dedication and commitment – lives not just of success, but also of service, and when called upon, sacrifice.” I want to repeat that last phrase. Unitarian Universalist churches should call their members to lead lives of dedication and commitment – lives not just of success, but also of service, and when called upon, sacrifice. And on the very next page, Michael Durall says, Unitarian Universalism should be creating churches that make the world a more just, safe, and equitable place. This goal will not be accomplished if church leaders believe that their primary role is to accommodate the people who are already there. I have made the recommendation to numerous congregations that they discontinue the annual ‘satisfaction’ surveys. Our churches should not be in the satisfaction business. More important issues are at stake.” Preach it brother!

So the real identity question then, is not “What can we do for you?” The real question you should be asking yourselves is, “What claim does membership in this church make on each of us? How do we call each other to lives of commitment, dedication, generosity, service, and sacrifice?” (Barry starts theme song from Mission Impossible) Remember Mission Impossible? Not the recent movie, but the old TV show? Every episode started with a taped message from the Director. “Good morning Mr. Phelps. We live in world torn asunder by greed and fear. Every morning in this very community, children go to school hungry because parents working for minimum wage cannot afford to care for their families. Young adolescents recognizing their emerging sexual orientations take their own lives because they cannot bear the scorn of their peers. Men and women lead lives of quiet desperation because they don’t think that there is a faith community that will offer them a place to question the truths that they were told were unquestionable. Creative voices are stilled because they haven’t found a place where their diverse musical or artistic passions can find free expression. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to incarnate the yearnings of all those hurting people. It is to create a community of faith that provides inspiration by empowering our children and youth, honoring mother earth, embracing the music, and sharing our good news. Should any member of your congregation be caught, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”

Here’s what I want you to know about your mission. Last month you saw the culmination of a year long process of discernment when you voted on your mission priorities. That vote, though the end of one process, was not, or at least it should not be, the end but the beginning. In a sense you could say that vote was akin to Mr. Phelps receiving a new tape. Only the tape, in your case, didn’t come from some mysterious Directorate. It came from you. You sent yourselves the tape that lays out your mission. But you still have to do what Mr. Phelps and his merry band did after they listened. Your mission, it started out, should you choose to accept it. You now have to accept it, you have to take it on as a mandate. Those mission priorities will now make demands on your time and talent and treasure. They will, if you take them seriously enough, shake up your life, drain your coffers, change the way you live your faith lives. If those mission priorities become one more pretty document gathering dust on a shelf, if you choose not to accept the opportunity and the inconvenience and the possible danger they represent, then the Secretary will be very disappointed.

Last week Dick Gilbert posed the oft asked question, “If Unitarian Universalism were against the law, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” You laughed, but behind the laughter lie some very serious questions. “Am I really and truly living out my faith, do I incarnate the principles of UUism? Have I done anything this week that the Secretary would have to avow? Could they throw me to the lions?”  In July of 1847 Henry David Thoreau was arrested for refusing to pay a poll tax, expressing both his opposition to slavery and the Mexican American war. He spent one night in jail. His friend Ralph Waldo Emerson thought he was being silly and when he visited him in jail asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” to which Thoreau is reported to have replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”Even more pressing from this interim minister’s point of view than the individual question is the corporate question. “Does this congregation really and truly live out your shared faith, do you, together, incarnate those principles? Does central Florida recognize you for the radically inclusive and radically engaged congregation that you envision yourselves to be? And if not, what are you waiting for?”

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“Building the World We Dream About . . . Together” by Rev. Roberta Finkelstein

In 1648 the Puritans of Massachusetts wrote The Cambridge Platform, a document designed to settle differences among the local congregations in the New World.  This document established the principle of congregationalism, the belief that the best and most biblically faithful form of church governance recognizes the sovereignty and importance of the local congregation. It also reaffirmed the importance of the relationship between local congregations. UU historian Conrad Wright, in his book Walking Together, pointed out that “congregationalism meant, and should still mean, not the autonomy of the local church, but the community of autonomous churches.”

The Cambridge Platform named six ways that autonomous congregations could and should be in right relationship to each other.The first is care. As congregations in covenant with each other, we are called to care about each other. What does this mean? When a congregation builds and dedicates a new building others join them in celebration. If a congregation has a need for outside ministerial intervention, you willingly loan your minister without begrudging the time. Care could be as simple an act as reading another church’s newsletter.  It is being aware that other UU congregations are on the path with us – struggling as we sometimes struggle, succeeding as we sometimes succeed, failing as we sometimes fail. Care is inviting the closest UU congregation down the road to a special Thanksgiving Seder, and considering the very sensible proposal that our two congregations could jointly sponsor a Youth Con.

Second on the Puritan list is consultation; an easier concept for us moderns to understand. When one of your leaders posts a question to the UUA leaders list asking for advice or offering suggestions, that is consultation. Consultation simply means sharing experience, good or bad. Of course the Puritans didn’t have the internet, so their consultation was likely to be by horseback. But the process and the results are the same: instead of reinventing wheels, local congregations learn from each other, benefit from sometimes painful lessons learned rather than having to feel the pain themselves, and build on the strengths of others.

Next comes admonition. Here’s a tough one. Back in the 1600′s this was a form of church discipline. If a congregation drifted away from the mutual covenant or found itself embroiled in a conflict, members of a neighboring congregation would get on their horses, ride over, and try to sort things out.  Sometimes they read the erring folks the riot act. They would say, in effect, “What you are doing makes us all look bad. Cut it out!”  I would be so bold as to say that we could benefit from reviving this aspect of the old covenant on occasion. When a UU congregation engages in unhealthy behavior, it does damage to all of us. In the name of congregational polity, we have decreed that every congregation is free to do whatever it wishes – nobody can tell any local congregation what to do. But every once in a while, somebody ought to tell a particular congregation that what they are doing is unhealthy, unwise, and unwelcome. If we got into the habit of admonishing each other in love, if we recognized the need for mutual accountability, we could call each other to order when our internal processes became disorderly.  Years ago at a retreat a former District Executive, Rev. Pat Carol, reminded those gathered colleagues that this admonition function died with the advent of paved roads. Once travel became easy and affordable, a troubled church could bring in an outside expert from far away, rather than depending on a nearby neighbor to hold up the mirror. I think we lost something in that innovation – something in the realm of mutuality and courage and a willingness to remind each other what we really stand for and what really matters to all of us together.

Fourth is participation – which is all about showing up. Showing up at District and Cluster meetings, showing up at ordinations and installations, showing up at fund raisers, at public events such as one congregation sponsoring an outside speaker, a workshop, or some other educational forum. We are certainly hoping for the participation of UU’s other than our own members in the Dick Gilbert workshop on Saturday. Participation is the way we demonstrate our understanding that the UU world is larger than the walls of our beloved local congregation, and that it is beneficial, and even fun, to get out there and sample what other have to offer.

Recommendation is the next on the list; an odd one that perhaps represents an historical artifact. At one time, before there was such a thing as the Ministerial Fellowship Committee and other such gate keepers, the only way for a congregation to know the qualifications of a potential minister was to depend upon the recommendation of another church. Most ministers were sons or daughters of a local congregation, received their call out of their home church, then set off to get whatever education and experience they needed before seeking a settlement. One of their most important credentials was the recommendation of the church that gave them birth. The process required that congregations speak the truth in love.  I wonder if our current system leaves the local congregation too much out of the loop. When somebody feels called to the ministry, who better to recognize and affirm that call than the congregation that has nurtured them?  Congregations need to get back into the business of recommendation – by which I mean paying attention to the people in your ranks who might make good ministers, encouraging them, supporting them in various ways including financial assistance for seminary, and then sending them off to serve. I offered my first sermon in a summer service at the UU Church of Arlington, VA. It was the tradition that in the summertime, committee chairs be given the opportunity to fill the pulpit. I was, at the time, co-chairing along with Barry the Social Concerns committee. My sermon was not about the work of our committee; it was about the theology of caring from the perspective of a nurse, mother, and activist. Afterwards one of the church elders sought me out and said, “Have you ever considered seminary?” It had been a secret thought in the back of my mind, always dismissed as absurd. But when that man asked me about it, he gave me permission to consider it seriously. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The final item from the Cambridge Platform is relief.  Again, this harkens back to a time when churches took their responsibility to each other seriously. But we still have opportunities to offer each other relief. Among ministers, there is an agreement to fill the pulpit of a colleague on sabbatical, on the assumption that when your turn comes, colleagues will do the same for you, thus sparing the church the expense of paying for guest speakers.  When a congregation is in search, nearby churches offer their pulpits on a Sunday morning for a neutral try-out for potential candidates. All of us have received the requests to assist the UU churches in New Orleans still struggling to overcome the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Although some of the language of the Cambridge Platform sounds quaint and outdated, it was still a very wise document, recognizing something that some of us in modern times have lost sight of – that the way of the rugged individualist is not the richest or deepest or healthiest way to carve a religious path. We might use different words – instead of participation or admonishment we might talk about renewal of energy, affirmation, synergy. Those of us who venture out into the larger UU world know that the benefits of these lateral relationships among our local congregations are many. One contemporary benefit to being laterally connected, one that the Puritans probably didn’t think of, came to mind as I read a book by George Rupp. Rupp, a sociologist of religion, says in Commitment and Community, that “the process of interaction among communities may be especially influential as it serves to intensify the self-consciousness of minority or even submerged tendencies in a tradition.” In other words, getting outside your comfort zone may enhance your ability to create a truly diverse and multicultural faith community.

Today is Association Sunday; a day when we celebrate our lateral relationships. You have heard about our partner church in Massachusetts, another congregation experiencing interim ministry after a long and successful settlement. You have heard about our children’s participation with other UU children across Florida in the Florida UU Service Committee Human Rights project. In a few moments I will be asking you to make a tangible contribution to Association Sunday in the form of a financial donation to the special Association Sunday fund.  According to the Unitarian Universalist Association, “The programs that Association Sunday 2009 will fund were determined through a historic collaboration between over 1,000 Unitarian Universalists who responded to an online survey, the Rev. Bill Sinkford, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), and the two then-candidates for the UUA presidency, Rev. Laurel Hallman and Rev. Peter Morales.

As a result, your contributions this morning will help develop spiritual communities that are more effective and welcoming to ALL people by: (1)expanding the Building the World We Dream About curriculum, which enables us to effectively examine and address racism; (2)supporting congregations that are working to create a Unitarian Universalism that is racially, culturally, and economically diverse by providing a DVD of the Multiculturalism track at UU University at GA09 for congregational use, assisting congregations that call a minister or intern of color, offering an annual retreat for religious professionals of color and a monthly supportive conference call for seminarians of color; and (3) enabling UU congregations and districts to minister effectively to youth and young adults who identify as people of color or multiracial, and to their families, in the areas of spiritual development, racial/cultural identity development, and leadership development through organizing regional gatherings for youth of color and chaplaincy training for young adults of color for ministry to youth of color.

“By participating in Association Sunday we make ourselves one with other UU congregations who have made the decision to walk together into a more diverse and multicultural future. In other words, by pooling our resources with those of so many other UU congregations, we are exercising more power than any one congregation could have working alone. James Luther Adams says that congregational polity is a radical dispersion of power. And let’s face it – religious institutions can be powerful shapers of culture and social policy. The Emperor Constantine knew that when he converted to Christianity and created the Holy Roman Empire, a tactical move that worked out quite well for quite a while. Our religious forebears in the left-wing of the Protestant Reformation knew about power also. The Anabaptists developed a radical doctrine of the church, and a radical concept of the relationship of church to state. They proposed a believers church made up of adults gathered voluntarily by their like-minded approach to religion. They insisted that only those who had carefully considered their faith and been touched by their personal and unmediated relationship to God could be part of a pure church. Not only did this threaten the common assumption that the religion of the ruler should be the religion of the ruled, it threatened the assumption that the religion of the father should be the religion of the children.  Radical freedom indeed!

Understand that the freedom all of you enjoy – the right to choose your own faith, to practice it without fear, to be part of an open conversation about a budget, to go to General Assembly and vote for the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, to ordain or call or dismiss a minister – all of this freedom comes from that one simple principle called congregational polity that dispersed the power of Unitarian Universalism so widely. And understand further that people for centuries died in defense of that principle so that we could enjoy it unencumbered.

It is sometimes hard to appreciate what it is you have when you have never done without it. Remember the wonderful picture in Life magazine taken at the first free election in South Africa? A picture of a line four miles long of black South Africans standing and waiting patiently to vote?  Those people understood the cost of that radical exercise of power – and they expressed their gratitude by exercising it, no matter how long it took or how inconvenient it was. Sometimes we forget. We take congregational polity for granted. We forget that it is an act of faith to send delegates to General Assembly and to District meetings. This past year you made a painful decision not to be Fair Share contributors to the UUA and the District. This special Association Sunday collection is an opportunity to redeem yourselves in part. How will we build the world we dream about? By working together, walking together, developing and nurturing lateral relationships among our UU congregations we can come closer to fulfilling our fondest hopes for our movement. We can intentionally create the kinds of relationships that allow us to realize the ideal that was first articulated centuries ago in the Cambridge Platform:  the community of autonomous congregations.

How are we going to take Unitarian Universalism into the new millennium, make us a religious force to be reckoned with, bring ourselves into the mainstream and allow ourselves to reach our full potential?   By walking together – finding strength and wisdom and nourishment in the sharing of our journey.  In order to fulfill our promise in the future, we need only look back to the wisdom of our Puritan forebears, and learn to be what we were meant to be – a community in which each congregation retains its autonomy, but becomes so much more just by being neighborly.

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“On Turning: The Spiritual Discipline of the High Holy Days” by Rev. Roberta Finkelstein

October 4, 2009

The Days of Awe have just ended. Those are the days in the Jewish liturgical calendar book-marked by Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, marks the day when the scrolls of fate roll open before God. On the scrolls Yahweh finds every life as it has been written by every individual – choices made, words said and unsaid, deeds done and left undone. The rabbis tell us that God reads every entry and passes judgment on everybody for the year to come.

The novelist Herman Wouk, an observant orthodox Jew, describes it this way: “Who shall die and who shall live, who shall be rich, who shall be poor, who shall rise in the world, who shall fall, who shall live in peace, and who shall stumble in misery.” Do not despair, though, for this Yahweh is both a merciful judge. Everybody has ten days – the Days of Awe – in which to search their hearts and lives, repent, do good deeds, and promise to learn from their mistakes. The end of this grace period is Yom Kippur. On that day, the scrolls roll shut again for another year, destiny sealed.

You have heard Jay and Barry share their memories of the High Holy Days from their Jewish childhoods. Although I shared some of the Jewish holidays with my father’s family, my most distinct memory of this time of year is more recent. In 2001, Rosh Hashanah fell just after the events of September 11. I remember reading about a Jewish congregation struggling to celebrate the New Year – a celebration usually marked by joy, baking honey cake, dipping apple slices into honey and offering the blessing “May God grant us a sweet life in the New Year.” One participant commented that their prayer, in that terrible time, was only for safety, not sweetness. Reading that broke my heart. The saddest and scariest times are the times when it is most important to pray for gladness. That’s why a liturgical calendar is so important. Rosh Hashanah comes every year, no matter what has happened in the world, and its coming reminds us that joy does indeed come even to those who mourn.

The Jewish High Holy Days also remind us of the importance of a regular practice of self-examination, an honest assessment of the quality of our lives – words spoken and unspoken, deeds done and undone, choices made. And that process does not come easy. This discipline of repentance, which is so important to our emotional and spiritual well-being, is particularly difficult for folks like us – Unitarian Universalists – children of the enlightenment, dedicated to the use of reason in religion. But even for us, some form of regular ethical and moral housekeeping is needed. For it is only by turning, ever so slightly, that we are able to find and reclaim our higher selves.

Here’s another description of how Jews understand the High Holy Days. “We pause in reverence before the gift of self; the vessel shatters, the divine spark shines through. And our solitary self becomes a link in Israel’s golden chain. For what we are, we are by sharing. And as we share we move toward the light.” That is a powerful spiritual expression of the movement from the individual to the communal. The ancient Israelite understanding of the importance of community is one of their enduring gifts to Western culture. Herman Wouk wrote about that sense of the communal in relation to Yom Kippur. “There is no machinery in Judaism for confession to a human being or for release from sin through an agency on earth. Confession in Judaism is a whisper of the entire congregation at once. It is confession in formal unison, no outpouring of one’s own misdeeds . . . The wording throughout is plural: we . . . us . . . our . . . Such usage in a piece of liturgy at the heart of a holy day cannot be an accident of rhetoric. It means something.”

What it means, to me, is that ultimate religious and spiritual meaning is found not in solitude, not in self-reliance, but in right relationships as a people. If you look at the Seven Principles that encompass the ethical boundaries of Unitarian Universalism, you see that same movement from the individual to the universal. First we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Then we move to affirmations of the ways we will be in community: justice, equity, compassion, acceptance, encouragement, the use of the democratic process. And then we are asked to cast our eyes upward and outward, to a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. Finally, we recognize as a tenet of our faith our interconnectedness to all of life.

Similarly, the Prophets of the Hebrew scriptures did not address themselves to men and women one by one, offering personal salvation. They addressed themselves to the entire nation, insisting that as a group the Israelites had to reform, to turn, to remember what made them a people. They reminded their fellow citizens that when they were frightened of powerful enemies they could not depend on military might or wealth to provide safety and security. Only be keeping covenant with each other and their creator would they be safe. When those ancient people longed for an end to war their prophets told them that peace could not be found in political compromise or military might. Peace comes, they said, in the act of creating a just and compassionate society. Salvation – wholeness – shalom – is not the result of the recitation of prayers or the repetition of rituals; salvation is found in living together by the terms of that ancient covenant defined by the teachings of the Torah.

So often, those ancient Israelites strayed from the foundations of their faith. As do we. So often they were tempted by the riches and glories of the world – more powerful weapons, bigger armies, taller buildings, gold and silver. As are we. And so often they remembered that when they turned from their covenant with Yahweh, grief befell them. They would ask, in despair, what God could possibly want with them. “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” And the answer, in the words of the prophet Micah, is so clear and simple. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah6:6-8) The message is powerful but simple: remember the covenant that bestows your identity, remember the principles upon which your community was established. Do not let them become lofty words carved in stone. Instead let your lives be the embodiment of those principles. We share with Judaism a common understanding of salvation as something that happens in the here and now; deeds not creeds. What we don’t have in common with our Jewish brothers and sisters is a liturgical calendar that regularly calls us to account for our deeds. I hope they won’t mind if we borrow a bit of their wisdom to assure our salvation. So, my friends, now is the time for turning. Your participation in this intentional interim ministry means that the scroll of fate has rolled open here at the First Unitarian Church of Orlando. Take this opportunity to do the work of the Days of Awe: to acknowledge what has not worked, to heal hurts, to let go of resentments, and to make things new. The good news is you get more than ten days to do the spiritual work that needs doing. You can take as much time as you need, within reason. And the really good news is that I’m not Yahweh! I am merely a guide, a companion for a while on your journey.In that role I ask you to reflect on the way you have lived your life in faith together over the past years. For some of you that will mean thinking back over many decades. For some it may mean thinking back to when you walked in the door this morning. No matter how long you have been a part of this congregation, you are a part, now, of this journey of repentance.Maybe you have been hurt or disappointed or even afraid. Or you may know somebody who has felt that way. Have you said or done things you regret, or left unsaid or undone things you wish you hadn’t? Some of you are carrying grudges, nursing resentments, hanging back, reining in your passion and compassion. Maybe you are waiting out the interim, wondering if this will ever be, for you, a safe place to be a Unitarian Universalist. I want the answer to be ‘yes’ for all of you. That is one of the reasons we take on that task of coming to terms with your history. Last year you started a process with Rev. Jay and the Transition Team. You created together a history wall. On it you recorded the significant events in the life of the congregation. You were asked to speak for yourself and respect that fact that others might remember the same event differently than you did. You were asked to use civil and responsible language, but most of all, you were asked for your truths as you remembered them. I have read all of your contributions, and I will use them to write a sermon in which I tell you back the story of your communal life next Sunday morning.  This is an opportunity  to recognize and turn from unhealthy patterns, and to move towards communal health. Shalom.There will be other such opportunities. On November 22 the Transition Team and I are sponsoring a Thanksgiving Seder, a ritual re-telling of the Thanksgiving story in the manner of a Passover Seder. We will incorporate some of the history of Unitarian Universalism in central Florida into the ceremony. And, we are inviting to be our guests the members of the University Unitarian Universalists (the Triple U’s), our sister congregation in Orlando. I hope many of you will attend this family friendly event. Sounds like a pretty easy and pleasant way to achieve salvation, doesn’t it? Here’s another. At the Congregational Meeting after church today you will hear the first news from this year’s Stewardship Campaign. You may be surprised to hear me name stewardship as path to salvation. I do so because t in our culture and in this congregation money has been used as a vehicle for dealing with conflict. You withhold your treasure when you are angry or disappointed or scared; you share it generously when you are hopeful and confident. I firmly believe that one way you can move confidently into your future is to engage in the stewardship process in a new way – to come together and talk about money honestly and openly, with a view towards turning back towards your beloved community and re-investing in your shared future. We, like the ancient Israelites, need prophets to remind us of who we are. Prophets to shout from the mountain tops clear those foundational principles out of which our faith has evolved and upon which this church was built. In our radically free faith, we all can and should be prophets to each other. James Luther Adams wrote frequently about the prophethood of all believers. Every Unitarian Universalist congregation is, or could be, the embodiment of that proud vision – a people gathered in voluntary association who share equally in the work of casting a vision and calling each other back to the ideals of that vision.   Now is the time for turning. If you have been hurt or angered by past events, it is time to speak that anger honestly and listen respectfully to those with differing views. If you have been lying low, waiting out the transition,  it is time to stand up reclaim your place at the table. If you have said or done things that caused harm, it is time to acknowledge and repair the damage where possible, and get back to the business of building and sustaining a healthy liberal religious community.Now is the time for turning. Turn away from easy answers towards the full engagement of mind and heart. Turn away from diffidence towards the responsible exercise of church membership. Turn away from resistance towards the embrace of our human ability to change, to be transformed, to be better than you have been in the past. For as Jack Reimer reminds us, if you fail to turn, you will be forever trapped in yesterday’s ways. And I know that you do not want to belong to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of yesterday.

I close with an adaptation of the final lines from another prayer for the Days of Awe. “We pause in terror before the human deed: the cloud of annihilation, the concentrations for death, the cruelly casual way of each to each. But in the stillness of this hour we find our way from darkness into light. May we find our life so precious that we cannot but share it with the other, that light may shine brighter than a thousand suns, with the presence among us of the (Spirit of Life). Amen”

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“Sacred Promises: A sermon” by Rev. Roberta 9/20/2009

On September 14,1974 a couple of 22 year olds walked into a Justice of the Peace in upstate New York and got married. It was very low key; just us and our parents and my somewhat confused grandmother and my brother. We didn’t want an elaborate ceremony and we held the reception in a nearby park.

Thirty five years ago we didn’t know much about what it meant to make a sacred vow. We were in love, head over heels. We made some promises to each other, but we had no idea what the real measure of those promises would be. Today, we have a much clearer idea of what it means to say ‘for better or for worse.’ Terrible things happen in the course of every life time. They happen to everybody. The living through those things is what makes us real. Remember the passage in The Velveteen Rabbit when the Skin Horse explains to the rabbit about being real? “When you are real you don’t mind being hurt. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Once you are real, you can’t become unreal again.” We have, over the last 3+ decades, become real. We don’t break easily; neither of us require careful keeping. There are places where the loving has worn away the gloss, but we don’t mind.

We don’t mind because we have also learned that in the keeping of sacred vows, wonderful things happen. Things that surprise and delight, things that invite us into awe. Barry and I have been together now for well more than half our lives – several generations of cats have come and gone, baseball dynasties have risen and fallen. When we got married telephones were large things attached to the wall, computers took up a whole room, and America was reeling from the after affects of an ill advised military incursion on the other side of the world. We have cleaned up wet basements after numerous hurricanes, taken uncountable vacations, watched a bald eagle soar over Squam lake. The changes that have happened around us have strengthened our relationship. In spite of all the change we still have much in common – little things mostly that make it easy to be together. We laugh together, we listen to old Beatles songs. We are somewhat awed by the passage of time. I am not old enough to have been married for 35 years! What is most awesome, though, is the ways in which we have managed to remain true to those promises we made in ignorant bliss back in 1974.

As we have walked together through the terrible and the wonderful, we have learned a great deal about freedom and about making intentional choices. There is no such thing as a relationship made in heaven. It doesn’t fit with Unitarian Universalist theology. Free will, whether you believe it to be a natural state or a gift from God, is something that needs to be carefully exercised in order to be meaningful. Good relationships are made in the free exercise of the human mind and heart. For relationships to work long term, you have to want to make them work. And you have to work to make them work.

Along the way Barry and I discovered that we sometimes respond very differently to things – both the terrible and the wonderful. Learning to respect those differences instead of resent them has at times been a challenge. Too often we assume that in order to be compatible we need to associate with what we call ‘likeminded’ individuals. Sometimes what is best for us is to associate with people who see the world dramatically differently than we do. But then you have to be willing to learn from each other. Barry and I have done this over the years by talking to each other and listening to each other. Listening not for the notes of agreement, but for the discordant notes that could either threaten our well-being or merge together into a more complex harmony. We have also talked to and listened to other people – friends and family, ministers and marriage counselors – whatever it has taken to make it work.

We have kept our relationship fresh by being intentional about spending time together – we pencil each other into our calendars, have lunches together. On my day off we try to do something special together. We have always made our marriage a priority even in the face of the demands of jobs and kid and other important matters.

There is a lovely reading by Anne Morrow Lindbergh that is often used at weddings. “A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free like a country dance of Mozart’s. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back – it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.”

We didn’t have the reading at our wedding, because we didn’t know enough to choose it. But we have lived it in the years since. We have learned to hold on to each other, but not too tightly. We have learned to move to the same rhythm even when we are going in different directions. We have learned to create a pattern for our lives that accepts fate, welcomes grace, and allows us each to the freedom to grow and change and still have a safe home base. All of this has happened because of the sacred vow, the covenant, we established years ago.

I wasn’t a theologian back then, so I didn’t realize how important covenant would become to my professional life. Unitarian Universalism is a covenantal faith. We are not bound by a creed, but we are bound, my friends. We are bound by a covenant, a sacred vow, a promise that we make and remake to each other every time we come together. We are bound by that covenant even when we are not paying attention to it; in fact we are most bound by that covenant when we have broken it. Covenants call us to our better selves. They are ethical boundaries, reminding us that though we are imperfect, though we sometimes fail to honor the promises we have made, those promises are worthy of our best effort, and they are worthy of our return when we stray from them. Covenants are most powerful when we have broken them, recognized our brokenness, and reaffirmed them. Our covenants call us to our best selves.

But more important than that, covenants call us out of ourselves and into relationship. They remind every one of us that it really, really isn’t all about me. I’ll be honest with you. Neither Barry nor I remembers the actual words of our marriage vows. But the strength of that covenantal promise bound us together, two young people who had no real idea of what they were getting themselves into, and held us together even after we found out in the most challenging ways what it meant to say, “we intend this, for better or for worse.” Our covenants call us into relationship because every covenant is a sacred promise made in love.

Love is, of course, the basis of a successful long term partnership of any kind. It is also the basis of a successful faith community. Love is the compelling core of our free faith; it unites us even in the absence of a set of shared beliefs. Both historically and presently, we know ourselves by our doctrine of radical love. If a covenant is based on love, then the relationships that emerge out of that covenant will reflect that love. The community that is built on that basis will embody that love. A covenanted community is the incarnation of love. The covenant of the free church calls us to our better selves, then calls us out of ourselves and into a loving and beloved community. For as long as free thinkers, heretics, those who yearn for a liberating religion that affirms human dignity and recognizes the interdependence of all creation – for as long as people like that, people like us – have practiced this radically free religion, our covenant has been a voluntary affirmation of our willingness to walk together in the ways of love.

There was another time when I took a sacred vow. That was on the day of my ordination. At that time I said to you, even though I didn’t yet know you, “I am aware of the privileges and obligations that this ordination confers on me. I enter into this ministry with a deep sense of commitment, with gratitude to you who have ordained me, and with a sense of joy and excitement. In humility I promise to try always to live my life in unity with the principles by which this act of ordination takes place.” Just as I didn’t know much about marriage when I took my marriage vow, I didn’t know a whole lot about ministry when I took my ordination vows a little over 17years ago. But there were things I did know about our free faith then that I still know now.

I knew that Unitarian Universalism is a religion that is worthy of the very best we have to give. I knew that the great strength of Unitarian Universalism is our radical inclusionary principle; we are committed to creating communities where people with different theologies and philosophies can come together to explore the nature of life and love. More importantly, we come together to find answers to the question of how we can live out our faith in tangible ways. After 17 years I still take delight in being a professional facilitator of that process – insuring that our congregation does the great magic trick of holding in creative tension all of those ideas and hopes and dreams and experiences in such a way that all who are willing can experience spiritual growth and transformation, and can better prepare themselves to offer their gifts of spirit to a hurting world.

What I know now, after all these years of ministry, is that the covenant that calls us into community is an ideal that is all too often broken. I am no longer surprised that Unitarian Universalists are so quick to endanger the health of their beloved communities by allowing gossip and rumor and resentment and narcissism to have free rein. I am not surprised by how often we have to hold each other accountable, to acknowledge our failings, to ask for and offer forgiveness, to begin again in love. A former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association once said that his biggest surprise after becoming president was not how often UU congregations shoot themselves in the foot, but how quickly we seem to reload. But we keep coming back, we keep trying to live up to the ideals of our covenant, we keep trying to be the people who reflect the ideals that we enshrine in our sacred promises.

We live by covenants that call us to our better selves, that call us into relationship, that call us into community. There is one more dimension to our covenants. They call us into awareness of whatever is of ultimate worth to us. That is why I chose to read the Miriam Williamson poem, words often mistakenly attributed to Mandela himself. At a time when his nation needed a bold vision of what a free South Africa could be, what better way to address individual South Africans than to remind them that each and every one of them “was born to make manifest the divine within?” You don’t have to believe in a traditional God to know that there is something noble that resides in our souls and is constantly seeking expression. Finding the divine, within yourself and within your covenanted community, is the essence of Unitarian Universalism. Our other reading, from UU minister Brent Smith, refereed to the gift of our faith as “the freedom to explore and understand one’s own unique and direct relationship with God (or the Ultimate)”. This, he said, “is the purpose and aim of spiritual community, of giving one’s consent to walk with others.” We enter into covenant in order to have the freedom to explore our relationship with the ultimate. We enter into covenant in order to have others to walk with us in our exploration.

So what is the covenant of the First Unitarian Church of Orlando? Or more accurately, what are the covenants? You do have an explicit covenant, voted upon 9 years ago. It is called the Seven Virtues Covenant. It says, “In order to do my part in creating the Beloved Community at First Unitarian Church of Orlando, I agree to cultivate the following virtues: GRATITUDE: An embracing response of the heart to the richness and abundance life offers daily; thankfulness for the natural, rhythmic cycling of it all; the heart of a generous prayer cast wide. GOODWILL: The intention to look at one another with living, rather than accusing, eyes and hearts. MORAL COURAGE: Standing fast in support of religious or social convictions, particularly when doing so may result in ostracism, censure, threats, or harm; the soul work of learning to act in spite of fear. CREATIVE FIDELITY: Walking together without a map, always acknowledging each other’s freedom to change. HUMILITY: Being grounded in what is most essential, speaking gently, transcending self-will, and being honest about who we are. CIVILITY: A voluntary way of living and relating that respects others and reasonable societal norms, listens carefully, and may ask sacrifice and trust for the sake of the larger good. COMPASSION: Being in union with others in their passion and suffering; the spiritual discipline of opening our hearts and deepening our awareness of the interrelatedness of all things and expressing that awareness in the work of healing and service.

Those are good things to cultivate. And I’d like to find ways to bring that covenant back into the day to day and week to week consciousness of your congregational life. The Seven Virtues stands as your official, explicit covenant.

Every organization also has implicit covenants, those things that go without saying but ‘everybody’ knows them. The First Unitarian Church of Orlando is no exception. The problem with implicit covenants is that only the insiders know them. Newcomers may sense that they exist and feel anxious about violating them; they might even try to guess at what they are. But that is hard work when you are trying to enter deeply into the life of a religious community. Implicit covenants make your community more insular; they divide us from them. As an outsider, I don’t know what all the implicit covenants are, but I have guessed at some of them. And it doesn’t surprise me that these implicit covenants do not always reflect the best or healthiest ways of being together. They seem to be about indirect communication – in order to avoid potential conflict you covenant to be extremely reticent about expressing concerns or fears or disagreements directly. I’m all for civil discourse, but there are ways to engage in disagreements directly without being hurtful or getting hurt. You can disagree in love. But your implicit covenant nudges you towards indirect communication, towards talking about rather than to those with whom you disagree. Third party communication almost always degenerates into gossip and rumor and people end up getting hurt anyway. In fact some of the most painful wounds inflicted by UU’s on each other these days seem to come from anonymous email, the very worst form of indirect communication.

I would love to see you renounce the implicit covenants that do not serve you well. And I’d like to see you embrace your most explicit covenant of all – the covenant captured in the song of dedication that you sing every Sunday in worship. That, more than a document that you almost never look at, captures the true spirit of how you intend to walk together. Love is the spirit of this church. Love of self, love of other, love of the gathered community. The quest for truth its sacrament. A sacrament is external evidence of internal grace; to seek truth is to make manifest what is of ultimate worth. And service is its prayer. When we serve others, we are in direct communication with the ultimate.

To dwell together in peace, to seek truth in freedom. This is a promise that you make to each other: that you will practice peaceful means, even in disagreement; that you will insure for each other the freedom to explore without fear or without intimidation; that you will create a safe environment here, filled with mutual respect and affirmation. That is the only kind of freedom that has religious meaning. Not the freedom to do whatever I want and to heck with everybody else. Covenantal freedom assumes mutuality, it assumes that you have the maturity to understand how your words and actions affect others, it assumes that you will make room, in your freedom, for the free search of others.

As you walk together through the years there will be many times when you will need to invoke your covenants in order to recreate and sustain your beloved community. Sometimes it will be easy and joyful. Sometimes it will be more challenging. Remember always that a covenant is not a onetime thing that is said and then promptly forgotten. A covenant grows deeper as your souls grow deeper. A covenant grows more compelling as you mature together and grow in your appreciation of what intentional community can become. When it gets tough, that is when it is most important for you to once again join hands and sing, thus do we covenant with each other. Thus do we covenant with each other.