First Parish Unitarian UniversalistBy Whatsoever Name We Worship
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
June 20, 2004
This sermon is the fifth 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.
(And, in fact, maybe it’s working.Thirteen people signed the Membership Book since last June!Welcome!)
Regardless, 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. 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” was the adult religious education class which did, I thought, a fantastic job conveying what they had learned about ways to “articulate our UU Faith” in the worship service on May 4th.
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 very simple, but not easy to live by!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 we know the truth.Not by being told it, but by how it feels.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 our intuition about how to respond.When we are able to directly communicate our differences, and not use harsh, hurtful or demeaning words, the sparks can lead to understanding and thus to greater harmony.
In preparation for the fourth sermon, I read the privately published memoir of the Rev. Charles Gordon Ames, who wrote the original version of our Covenant for a Unitarian congregation in Philadelphia in the 1880s.You may recall that the original version was briefer and more traditional-sounding than ours is today,
“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).The spirit of Jesus Christ, that would be love, as in “love is the doctrine of this church.”Truth.Service.The essence of the Ames covenant remains in what we recite today, I think.
Just as Ames’ covenant evolved over time to our present version, so had his personal theology evolved over the course of his life.From a very rigid, Bible-based, fear and guilt laced evangelical Christianity to one that may sound traditional to our ears but was, in his time, a liberal, open-minded faith bound with reason and motivated very much by love.
I quoted Ames who once said at the ordination of a young minister,
“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.” Ames’ daughter, Alice Ames Winter, comments in her Epilogue to his memoir, “speaking of truth in love was a habit of my father’s. (p. 204).
Speaking the truth in love.That’s a good phrase.It’s easy to speak the truth with love when the truth is a positive judgment, isn’t it?
But when the truth is a negative judgment, the anger that too easily is delivered with it is often more readily remembered than the constructive criticism.I’ve certainly been on both the giving and receiving end of that kind of unconstructive criticism, the kind that destructs.
If you imagine the truth as an arrow, when it is delivered with love it is as if the shaft is smooth and it makes its mark cleanly, to the point (pardon the pun!).But, when the truth is conveyed with anger it is as if it is on a barbed shaft, which tears you ragged as it goes in.Getting one such nasty arrow from someone is enough to make us withdraw from further contact with the person, so as to protect ourselves from future angry criticism.
How much more successful we are if we speak the truth in love.I would like for it be said someday of me, “speaking of truth in love became her habit.”
It reminds me of another such phrase, one suggested by Kitty’s list of ways in which we at First Parish “incarnate” our Principles and Purposes, in the world around us.The phrase is “speak truth to power.”
In her list of ways in which we embody our Principles and Purposes were many that involved challenging the way things are, getting physically involved, speaking our truth to the powerful.Not just talking, but doing.
It’s like the difference between saying to ourselves “we welcome gays and lesbians” and hanging the rainbow flag as a symbol of inclusion for all to see.The first is fine but the second is better.
It’s like the difference between sending a post card in favor of gay marriage and meeting in person with an elected representative.The first is fine, but the second is better.
Combining both phrases, if we can speak truth to power in love, we can be most effective.Even the powerful don’t receive well “truth arrows” with barbs.
I remember meeting with a state representative in the week before the second Constitutional Convention.A group of First Parish folks had met with him earlier, but this time I went by myself.That’s what clergy members of the Religious Coalition for the Right to Marry were being asked to do.The representative told me that the issue was a killer, politically.No matter how he voted, half his constituency would be against him.So, you might as well just vote your conscience, I said.And some will be nasty about it, he added.I felt for him.As I was leaving I told him, no matter how you vote, we won’t beat up on you.I meant it.
In that meeting, I felt I’d spoken a bit of the truth as I know it to power (if a state rep can be called powerful) in love.
How to increase our ability to be so intentional, I believe might be what the ending of our Covenant is about.Where we say “thus do we covenant…with our God, by whatsoever name we worship.”
That conclusion, however un-poetic, alludes to the divine, the holy, the sacred—something, a power, if you will, maybe the power of love or the Spirit of Life—something that is deeper or higher than, or beyond, ourselves—animating us, interconnecting us with one another.
If we cultivate an awareness that we are in covenantal relationship with an ideal, a motivating and inspiring ideal, that one might call God (or might not), I believe we nourish within ourselves an increased ability to know the truth, to speak it in love, even to power.
As you know, one need not profess a belief in God-- or a disbelief--to join a Unitarian Universalist congregation. Instead, as it says on the back of your order of worship, "[t]he living tradition we share draws from many sources…" and the first named source is our personal "[d]irect 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 which create and uphold life."(adopted by the UUA General Assembly in 1984 and 85).
Such a source of faith presumes no particular theology, only that you can draw on your own particular experience, whatever it is.You can believe in God or the Goddess, Yahweh, Jesus or Allah, be an atheist or an agnostic, you can be of any or no childhood religious background or engage in one of many spiritual practices…and have what you would call "direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life."
How do you experience a transcending mystery and wonder, one that renews you and opens you to feel newly re-created, newly alive?
That direct experience of the transcending mystery and wonder, however it is for you and by whatever words you use to describe it, is empowering.
Without it, we may struggle to honor our covenant.
With it, we may—we hope—increasingly know the truth, speak it in love, even to power.Amen, so may it be.