LOVE IS THE DOCTRINE OF THIS CHURCH...

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday September 21st, 2003



READING:

“Outwitted” by the Universalist poet Edwin Markham. (I first learned this poem in a slightly different, gender neutral version, but this is the poem as Markham originally wrote it):

He drew a circle that shut me out --
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
*****

I’m just kind of curious, but how many of you, after listening to last week’s bold declaration of the essential importance within the liberal church tradition of a prophetic, free pulpit, have come here this morning expecting to hear an old-fashioned political Jeremiad in the tradition of Theodore Parker (or perhaps even Cotton Mather) in which I bravely speak the truth to power, chastising the wicked and upbraiding the indifferent, calling sinners to repentance and the faithful to vigilant action? Well, I’m glad not to have to disappoint too many of you, because my topic here this morning is actually far more mundane. Two weeks ago I spoke about the work of the ministry, and in particular some of the things I’ve learned about that work from the example of my late mentor, Rhys Williams. Then last week I spoke a little about the work of the church in its five principal areas: Worship, Fellowship, Education, Pastoral Care, and Social Action (or what I called “Evangelical Missionary Outreach” -- a shared ministry which sees its mission as reaching out to others in hospitality and charity as we proclaim our “good news” in word and deed). And now today I want to talk about the thing which holds this all together, which is the notion of Covenant: the promises and agreements we make with one another as individuals which allow us to function together as a “beloved community of memory and hope.”

But first let me tell you a story from my childhood. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first time I heard the word "Covenant" used in a sentence. I must have been about thirteen or fourteen years old, and my family had just moved from California into a rather exclusive, lakefront neighborhood in the suburbs of Seattle, where the Homeowner's Association had all sorts of "covenants" about what colors you could paint your house, and where you could park your boat, and things like that. And one of these covenants happened to say that you couldn't attach a basketball goal to your garage. Well, this was tantamount to heresy in my family. We'd ALWAYS had a basketball goal attached to our garage. In fact, shoveling snow out of the driveway so that I could shoot hoop in the dead of winter is probably the one thing I have in common with Larry Bird.

And I can remember very clearly what my dad did when he learned about this "covenant." First he found a copy of the actual text of the document, and he read it over very carefully several times. That next weekend he went out to a junkyard and picked out about an eighteen-foot length of rusty, six-inch steel pipe, then stopped off at the hardware store on his way home for some brackets and some U-bolts and a couple of bags of Ready-Mix Concrete. Meanwhile, he had me out in the yard digging a four-foot-deep hole in our front lawn right next to our driveway. (You can see where this is going, can't you?) Apparently the covenants prohibited homeowners from attaching basketball goals to their houses or other existing structures, but were silent on the subject of erecting an eighteen-foot length of rusty six-inch steel pipe in the center of your front lawn and attaching a basketball goal to that. I'm not really all that certain about the rest of the details of this story (I think at some point there may have been lawyers involved), but I do know that within a few weeks just about every kid in our neighborhood between the ages of eight and fifteen was out shooting hoop in our driveway after school. That basketball goal stood proudly in our front yard the entire five years that we lived in that house. And I just so happened to be back in my old neighborhood the summer before last, and was kind of sorry to see that one of the subsequent homeowners had removed it. But I was also pleased to notice that probably every fourth or fifth house had a basketball goal in front of it. Some were on wheels, so that you could move them out of the way when you wanted to park your SUV there instead, and one even had an entire half-court constructed around it, complete with a painted foul-lane and a regulation three-point circle. And a few of them were even attached to garages.

I have to admit, although most days I’m awfully proud to be my father’s son, I’m also awfully glad that I’ve never enjoyed the privilege of having him as my parishioner. Because my Dad is precisely the kind of opinionated, outspoken, strong-willed individual whom ministers love to commiserate about whenever we get together at our private clergy meetings. Yet he also provides an excellent sermon illustration regarding some of the tensions and potential conflicts between the rights and privileges we enjoy as individuals, and requirements for living harmoniously in community -- the obligations and responsibilities we owe to one another as neighbors -- which Covenants are intended to protect. Of course, the kinds of covenants we use in churches are very different from those of Homeowners’ Associations. You’ll all recognize ours, of course, since we recite it every Sunday:

Love is the doctrine of this church;
The quest for truth is our sacrament;
And service is our prayer.
To dwell together in peace;
To seek knowledge in freedom;
To serve humanity in friendship;
To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine--
Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.”

Notice how uplifting the language is: it’s a statement of positive aspirations and affirmations, rather than a list of “thou shalt nots.” Not that there isn’t a place for that. But when we promise one another that we will always endeavor to be on our best behavior, even though at times we may disagree, it simply makes it that much easier for us all to get along. Within our larger Unitarian Universalist denomination, we have often historically contrasted this notion of "covenant" to the idea of a "creed." A Creed, of course, is a statement (or confession) of belief, and Unitarianism in particular has explicitly seen and defined itself as a non-creedal faith, since its very beginnings in this country. In fact, one of the tactics that the "Orthodox" Congregationalists used to smoke out the "Liberals" in their midst, nearly 200 years ago now, was to re-write their existing church covenants in order to incorporate very specific statements of theological belief, while the Liberals (who eventually become known as Unitarians) tended to prefer more latitude. "The Letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth Life" the Liberals asserted, while the Orthodox likewise quoted scripture in reply "Can two walk together lest they be agreed?"

This brings me to the main topic that I want to talk about today, which is the nature of this relationship between agreement and belief, and the historical role of the idea of Covenant within our Congregational polity. Because regardless of how you want to understand and construct the formal relationship between "covenant" and "creed," as a practical matter, it is pretty difficult to agree to something, whole-heartedly, if you don't also believe in it whole-heartedly. The decision to enter into a Covenantal relationship suggests certain assumptions about the nature of being in relationship itself, and if we don't see eye-to-eye about what these assumptions are, not only with respect to the covenant that we make as a church, but also within the covenant of marriage, or the covenant of ordination between a minister and the laity ("the people"), or the associational covenant between autonomous congregations that creates the UUA, we are in for a world of hurt down the line, when the honeymoon is over, and the "…for worse, …for poorer, …in sickness, …in sorrow" part of the covenant starts to take effect.

So let me just take a few moments, as both a historian and a professional religious leader, to clear up a few minor points about what congregational polity is and what it isn't. Congregational polity is about autonomous churches. It is NOT about an "Antinomian" church. Let me translate that for you out of the Greek. "Autonomous" means that each congregation is responsible for ruling itself. It does NOT mean that there are no rules. Last week I mentioned how the Cambridge Platform of 1648, the source document upon which all of our subsequent polity is based, mandated that each local church was charged with the duty of performing ALL of the responsibilities of the Church Universal in and for the particular parish or society which it served. This was an un-funded mandate (of course), but it was handed down from the Highest Authority possible. Furthermore, although local congregations enjoyed a high degree of independence, they were not really considered Independent. They were inter-dependent, and were expected to maintain a "sisterly" communion with one another in at least six specific ways: Mutual Care, Consultation, Admonition, Participation, Recommendation, and Relief. Finally, (and this is the part that always seems to surprise people most when they hear it), although they were highly democratic, these local congregations were not intended to be little islands of pure democracy. They were what the Platform called "mixed governments" -- democratic in respect to the "fellowship" of the faithful, but also resembling a monarchy in that they were believed to exist under the sovereign rule and authority of God Almighty (and more specifically, were expected to follow the teachings or "holy ordinances" set down by his "son" The Lord Jesus Christ); and finally, they also resembled aristocracies in regard to the important role played by the ordained ministry: leaders whom the people themselves had elected to that sacred office.

Now I want you all to know that I didn't just make this all up. And yes, things have changed a lot since 1648. But before I get in too much deeper here, let me try to elaborate some of these ideas a little further. This notion of mixed government should not be entirely foreign to us, since we can clearly see vestiges of it in the United States Constitution's idea of checks and balances. Because the Puritans believed that human beings were essentially corrupt, (I believe the actual language from the Synod of Dort is "Totally Depraved"), they followed a system of political philosophy originally articulated by the Roman orator Cicero, who basically taught that the natural state of human beings was one of lawless anarchy -- the war of all against all -- a condition which persists until a strong leader or monarch comes upon the scene to impose order. Yet Monarchy inevitably degenerates into Tyranny, inspiring groups of virtuous individuals -- aristocrats -- to band together to overthrow the tyrant and assume leadership themselves on behalf of the people. But aristocracy likewise degenerates into an oppressive oligarchy, at which point the people themselves rise up to establish democracy, which in due course will itself again revert to anarchy (or something worse) until another strong leader comes along to once more establish order and begins the cycle all over again. Given this supposedly "natural" chain of events, the only stable form of government was thought to be a "mixed" government: one that combined the best elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy within a system of checks-and-balances which corrected the extremes of each.

Now you don't have to agree with everything Cicero thought in order to appreciate the wisdom of checks and balances. You don't even need to think that "Mankind" (and I use that word deliberately) is totally depraved in order to acknowledge that human beings are often selfish and make mistakes, or that even the most democratic societies need some sort of "law" to protect unpopular minorities from the "Tyranny of the Majority," and that someone fair and impartial needs to be empowered to enforce the rule of law, and that someone else -- a virtuous, independent authority accountable to principle and the welfare of the community rather than merely pursuing their own self-interest, is required to keep an eye on any over-zealous prosecutors.

But in our current context, this notion of "mixed government" means that we need to remember always to think about our Church Covenant in more than just one dimension. A Covenant is not merely an agreement between two or more individuals to walk together, it also embodies a certain kind of relationship between a group of people and their designated leaders (leaders whom they have elected to serve the community as a whole), and includes as well accountability to the sovereign creative Force which gives us life, and gives life its meaning. “Thus do we covenant with one another and with God” -- however one may choose to understand that word -- as the source of Ultimate Truth, or a supernatural "Higher Power," or maybe just our psychological "Super-ego," or perhaps even some combination of them all.

Covenants can be used to liberate, and they can also be used to control. Finding the balance of "mutual accountability and support" is a tricky enterprise -- it is much easier to consult, recommend and admonish than it is to listen to the recommendations of your consultant, much less to sit still and be admonished. Even the duty of participation seems simple enough, yet how many of us really participate as fully as we could? Likewise, the duties of mutual care and relief, although they seem the most burdensome, often allow us opportunities to be at our best when confronting circumstances that are absolutely at their worst. Yet the principle of Covenant insists that we remain in relationship, participating in one another's lives, both for better and for worse -- respecting the freedom of those who depend upon us, while at the same time controlling our own temptation to take over everything and be “in charge," even when we think we know all the answers. Covenant binds us together, as individuals, into a disciplined community of "disciples" -- of seekers and learners who are accountable not only to one another, but to the teachers and the pastors whom they have selected themselves to instruct and encourage them, and ultimately to the demands of Truth itself, however they may come to understand it.

Two CAN walk together, provided they agree to walk, together. Everything else (and most especially, the destination) is open to discussion. And sometimes, let's face it, it's the spirit that killeth, and the letter that giveth life; and courageous, broad-minded individuals are called upon to stand up for their rights under the Letter of the Covenant, in order to protect the True Spirit of the Covenant from the short-sighted and the narrow-minded, who are simply too focused on the road ahead, or their own fears and desires, and have forgotten what the world looks like from the mountaintop.

Thirty years ago, when my Dad and I mixed up two bags of concrete with a shovel in a wheelbarrow, and got that rusty eighteen-foot length of six-inch steel pipe standing up plumb in that four-foot-deep hole, and attached the backboard, and leveled the rim exactly ten feet above the driveway, and hung the cotton net which over the years would swish so many times (well, a few times anyway) with jump shots and hook shots and driving lay-ups taken by myself and my brothers and our friends and neighbors, we were certainly violating the narrow spirit of that covenant, even if we were within the letter of our rights. But we had a different vision of what that community ought to look like, and we that felt we owed it to our neighbors to help them learn to see eye-to-eye with us.

And sixty years ago, when my Dad was still a little boy, Homeowners Associations made covenants that restricted who you could or could not sell you house to, or even who was allowed on the streets after dark, and it took a lot of courageous individuals standing up and standing firm, and saying "this is wrong, and violates every fundamental standard of truth and justice and human decency" to change those covenants once and for all. And I'm not saying that my Dad's decision to put up a basketball hoop in our front yard is somehow the functional equivalent of Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus, any more than I would suggest that the mere existence of that 10-foot rim in our front yard somehow inspired my baby brother to grow to six-foot-five (although it certainly has been suggested by some). But I do know that sometimes it's important to have someone to stand beside, and something that we can look up to, rather than constantly looking over our shoulder, or down on the world and everything in it. Because without a strong sense of the real range of possibilities open to us, how can we possibly make a promise to anyone that we will work together to achieve our full potential?

I want to return to that Edwin Markham poem I read earlier this morning (this is the version I originally learned): “They drew a circle to keep us out--/Heretics, rebels, a thing to flout./But Love and I had the wit to win:/We drew a circle that took them in!” The Doctrine of Love is a doctrine of Inclusion. It says: you and I don’t have to be exactly alike for us to be friends, for us to learn from one another, for us to care for one another, for us to walk, and work, together to create a world in which real Peace and real Freedom and real Friendship are not just empty words, but living realities, and All Souls have grown into greater harmony with the Divine....