First Parish Unitarian UniversalistThus Do We Covenant
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
March 21, 2004
This sermon is the fourth in a series about the Covenant of this congregation, which we recite each Sunday morning. I planned this series in response to a resolve expressed by the First Parish leadership last June to clarify the congregation’s “shared identity,” as a necessary preparation for the significant membership growth we hope to see in the near future.
The Covenant is a good place to begin the quest for a shared identity precisely because we recite it every week. Many of you and many of the children know it by heart. In fact, last week, I observed a newcomer, a young adult I’d not seen here before, reciting the words without reading them. When she greeted me in the line, I learned that she had attended here as a child, and remembered the Covenant even though she had not been here in more than 6 years. As the phrase suggests, when we know something by heart we are more likely to take it to heart.
Another part of this quest for our “shared identity” is the adult religious education class that is currently meeting on alternate Thursday evenings, having good spirited fun testing ways to “articulate our UU Faith” for ourselves and in conversation with others.
In the first sermon in the series, on December 14th, we explored the way in which our Covenant uses very traditional religious language, as in “Doctrine, Sacrament, and Prayer,” in unorthodox, even radical, and certainly thought-provoking ways. Love as a doctrine—how simple! Our quest for truth is what blesses us, not sacrament by priest, rabbi or imam, on altar, bema or prayer rug. And we pray by serving others, though we may pray prayers too.
In the second sermon in the series, on January 25th, called “Love, Truth, Service,” we explored the meaning of the word “truth” as in “the quest for truth is its sacrament.” Looking at the shared etymological roots of the word “truth” and the word “tree,” I talked about how the truth feels solid, like a tree, which will support and shelter you in its branches and under which you may find nourishment in the form of nuts and fruits. But when an old truth feels confining, makes us feel apathetic rather than energetic, our sacramental search for truth would have us question the old truths, and find new ones.
For the third in the series, on February 22nd, called “To What End?” we looked into the second section of the Covenant, where we as a congregation get more specific about what life together as a religious community looks like when our sacrament, our blessing, is a search for truth that is guided by a doctrine of love and a prayer of service. To what end? Harmony!
So, I talked a lot about mindfulness, a spiritual practice in Buddhism which, when applied in human relations helps achieve harmony by helping us know when, and when not, to “let sparks fly.” By cultivating our ability to “mind our own reactions” to people and events, we come to trust ourselves and our intuition about how to respond, even when a spontaneous angry response is required. When we are able to directly communicate our differences, even when we are “sparking,” and not use or imagine we are hearing from the other harsh, hurtful or demeaning words, the sparks can lead to understanding and thus to greater harmony. A practice of mindfulness doesn’t –and shouldn’t—eliminate conflict and disagreement, but it helps people deal with conflict in a way that leads to harmony. This works in many kinds of human relations--filial, parental, spousal, collegial or congregational, I am positive of that from personal experience—and it would be great if it would be applied in international human relations, too!
In this fourth sermon, I want to return to the history of this Covenant, which I introduced in the second sermon. You may remember that at that time I said, “You know, this Covenant, to which I refer every Sunday as “the covenant of this congregation,” isn’t just our covenant. In fact, it’s not original to First Parish at all, I said. It is an adaptation of an adaptation of a covenant credited to the Rev. Charles Gordon Ames, who wrote the original for a Unitarian congregation in Philadelphia in the 1880s.”
Known therefore as the Ames Covenant, it or, more likely, a variation of it, is thought to be the most widely used covenant among UU congregations today.
I told you that our version of it is one of the wordiest of the variations I’ve heard or seen. And then, so you could compare, I read aloud what is probably the most commonly used version, arranged by L. Griswold Williams, originally written for the 1937 Unitarian hymnal and appearing in our present hymnal,
Love is the doctrine of this church
the quest of truth is its sacrament,
and service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
to seek knowledge in freedom,
to serve humanity in fellowship,
to the end that all souls shall grow
into harmony with the Divine –
thus do we covenant with each other and with God.
We listened, together, for the ways in which that differs from the words we recite each Sunday. We say “the quest for truth” whereas that version says “quest of truth.” Ours adds “with respect and understanding” to describe how it is that we shall “dwell together in peace.” Also, we say, “to serve our fellows and humankind” whereas that version says it more simply, “to serve humanity in fellowship.” We add “together” and remove “with the Divine” to make it “all souls shall grow together into harmony” clarifying that the community aspect of our growth is important to us. And, of course, I’m sure many of you noted that we individualize the closing by saying “with our God” and add “by whatsoever name we worship” at the very end, thus allowing for the Goddess, Allah, Yahweh, etc. or possibly even no name at all.
I am still not sure whether these differences in wording between ours and Griswold Williams’ adaptation of the Ames Covenant are original to us or whether our predecessors here at First Parish in Canton borrowed them from some other congregation. (If there is a history buff in the pews who would like to join me in looking through old records and orders of service to answer this question, please let me know). Original or not, as you know from the hymns we sing, our tradition, especially the Unitarian side of the family, is known for changing the words when the original no longer suits.
For example, last week we sang the upbeat, confident tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers” to words written by a contemporary of Charles Gordon Ames, Unitarian minister, Frederick Lucian Hosmer, “Forward through the ages, in unbroken line, move the faithful spirits at the call divine…” I thought it was a perfect hymn to follow a sermon in which I challenged us to take our liberal religion to the public square even as do evangelical Christians, for whom “Onward Christian Soldiers” may be a battle song, as much about religion as about politics.
On a lighter note, perhaps you’ve heard the joke about why Unitarian congregational singing is not more musically impassioned than it is: because everybody is always reading ahead to see if they agree with the words!
It is that Unitarian Universalist openness to changing the words, or more importantly, being open to changing our understanding of what is right and true, that is the real subject of my sermon today. Because in preparing for the February sermon in which I told you about the Ames Covenant and read versions different from ours, I discovered reference to a much more succinct and traditional-sounding Ames Covenant, which I suspected to be the original, and I was determined to track down the source.
A circuitous on-line search led me to Charles Gordon Ames’ short memoir A Spiritual Autobiography, with an Epilogue by his daughter Alice Ames Winter, first published by her in 1913, the year after he died. I ordered a copy, from a publisher of genealogy and local history reprints, and received a note saying that shipping would take 4-8 weeks, as they don’t keep the item in stock; rather, they just print as needed. That was back in February. I was delighted to receive the volume week before last, with time to read as I prepared for this sermon.
Our Reading this morning came from his memoir. In it Ames tells the story of his religious life. Born in 1828, it began in childhood with “a banquet of horrors about death, judgment, and eternity” (p. 5), which he preached from age fifteen to twenty-eight as an Evangelical frontier pastor, before his questioning mind led him astray and into Unitarianism! He then served, well-regarded, as a Unitarian minister for fifty years, serving congregations in Bloomington, IL; Cincinnati, Albany; Santa Cruz and San Jose, CA; Germantown, PA; Philadelphia; and in Boston where he followed the renowned clergyman James Freeman Clark at Church of the Disciples, which was merged in the 1940’s into the present Arlington Street Church.
It was difficult to choose just one small portion of Ames’ memoir to share with you as the Reading. Should it be from the chapter “Frontier Experiences” in which he begins a lifelong career speaking out on public issues as a religious leader, being a founding officer of Lincoln’s party, the Republican party, in Minnesota and taking a lead in the fight against slavery in the new territories?
Or from the chapter “My Theological Crisis”? His doubts and questions would appeal to those of you who left a religious tradition whose beliefs you found too confining, too unreasonable, too untrue to your own experience. You could identify with how torn he felt,
In solitary hours I held serious dialogue with myself:--
“Young man, how did you come by your ways of thinking about religion, and are they fair conclusions formed from inquiry and evidence?”
“No; I took them blindly as they were taught me before I knew how to examine them, or I picked them up by the way.”
“Have they been verified by personal experience?”
“Only in part. My experience confirms what I may call spiritual realities. It has given me no light on questions of history, literature, or dogma.”
“Can you respect your notions as convictions or principles?”
“No, they are prejudices; that is, pre-judgments, conclusions taken up previous to any judicial inquiry, but they are held by wiser men than myself, and they may be true.”
“Yes, but they may be false, and can you go to teaching others that your prejudices are God’s revelations, and yet call yourself an honest man.?”
“Young man, how came you to take the Bible for God’s Word?”
“I was told so from earliest childhood.”
“Yes, so is the young Mohammedan told about the Koran, the young Hindoo about the Vedas, the young Mormon about Joe Smith’s Golden book. They are all just as innocent, sincere, and simple as you have been. They are not to blame; neither have you been to blame; but now that the question is open, you will be very deeply to blame if you do not mind what you are about.” (p. 86).
Or should it be from “My New Departure” in which he describes how becoming a father himself contributed to his new ”way of thinking and feeling about God and the kind of moral government which is over the universe.” “All my life I had called God our heavenly Father, yet I had thought and talked of him as a king of terrors.” (p. 107). He could only infer that God would love his children no less than Ames did his new baby. These changes seemed as a second conversion experience…”If in my first conversion I had learned to love God with all my heart, I now learned to love Him with all my mind, and to put the two together.” (p. 115).
Or, should I read the new creed that he then devised for himself?
First: there is a right way of life.
Second: There is light to show the way.
Third: That light must be in the mind of man.
Fourth: It may; enter the mind as instruction from some wise teacher or as a result of experience.
Fifth: To follow the light is safety; to turn from it is danger.
Sixth: No man is saved by correct beliefs, or damned for incorrect beliefs; he is saved or damned by his faithfulness or unfaithfulness to the light.
Seventh: The true religion is simply the Good Life, man’s share in the life of God. It is to the spirit what health is to the body.
Eighth: As health is helped by knowing and obeying the laws of health, so spiritual life is helped by learning and obeying spiritual laws.
Ninth: Hence all truth that bears upon life, whether learned from book, church, experience, or insight, has commanding authority. Perceived truth is divine guidance.
Tenth: But as human faculties are imperfect, truth is imperfectly taught, imperfectly perceived, and imperfectly practiced. On the human side, there are no infallibilities (p. 119).
Or, should I read from the Epilogue, where his daughter told how she and others saw him, and filled in some of the empty spaces Ames humbly left in his own story, about what he actually did in his life, which was not just pastoring and public advocacy on the social issues of his day but also, often with his wife, the establishment of organizations to aid the poor?
After telling us that at the ordination of a young minister Ames once said,
Take heed to your spirit and temper, that you speak the truth only in love. The time cometh when, looking in the Master’s eye of tender, awful goodness, you shall judge it better to have spoken three words in charity than three thousand in disdainful sharpness of wit,” his daughter she comments, “speaking of truth in love was a habit of my father’s. (p. 204). Speaking of truth in love.
Finally, I chose the Reading I did for its similarity to the song we would prior sing, “I know this rose will open.” In Ames’ words, “For that there is a right way I am sure as that this is a real universe.” (p. 98) and “If we walk in the light, if we advance at all in wisdom, new and deeper meanings will constantly disclose themselves and the old will be left behind and forgotten.” (p. 128).
But, wait now, you are wondering—or are you? Have I completely lost the train of thought in this sermon?!—you thought the whole point of reading this memoir was to discover the original words of the Ames Covenant, precedent for our own?
So, let me read from the Epilogues’ closing paragraphs, written by his daughter in 1913,
[Charles Gordon Ames] had such a broad grasp of religion as a working program of all life that out of his heart he gave to the world what is probably the most widely accepted of church covenants by churches of every faith. It is not inconceivable that sometime under its banner [all] the… churches of the world might rally.
This simple sentence crystallizes the religion by which he lived and worked and died: “In the freedom of the Truth, and the spirit of Jesus Christ, we unite for the worship of God and the service of Man.” (p. 229).
There it is, folks, the Ames Covenant. “In the freedom of the Truth, and the spirit of Jesus Christ, we unite for the worship of God and the service of Man.”
And so we see that just as Ames’ own theology and faith evolved over the years of his life, so has the Covenant that he originally penned in the 1880’s, precedent for our own today, evolved into:
“Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is its sacrament, and service is its prayer… thus do we covenant…”
And so, too, may each of us, this congregation and its covenant, and the Unitarian Universalist movement of which we are a part evolve and grow and deepen… following the light, trusting in it even when it has gone dim, rejoicing in it when we see it brightly and beaming it on the path of others who might otherwise go astray.
Amen. So May It Be.
(A Spiritual Autobiography, Charles Gordon Ames, Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1913—reprinted by Higginson Book Company, Salem MA; www.higginsonbooks.com).
Benediction
“For that there is a right way I am sure…as that this is a real universe.”
For that the way is found step by step we know…as that we belong in this universe.
For that there is an inner light we must trust… as that our steps will be lit by that light. Let us be on that way.
The worship is over, let the service begin and may the truth be spoken in love.