Covenant, Not Creed

Presented to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington

February 25, 2007

Rev. Paul Ratzlaff

How much easier it would be were we Unitarian Universalists to have a defined set of beliefs about God, life-after-death, Jesus, etc. that we all subscribed to!  (Easier, indeed, but how much less stimulating!)  How much easier if we had a creed, which we would memorize, and which would explain us to our non-UU friends. (“UU” is the shortened version of Unitarian Universalist.)  When someone asked us, as they often do, “what do UUs believe?” we could recite the creed.  “Creed,” by the way, comes from the Latin “credo,” which means “I believe.”  Some may remember from childhood the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made….” And so on.  Or, if you were from another form of Christianity, perhaps you memorized the Apostles’ Creed?

But we UUs don’t have a creed.  As an inclusive religion that “respects the varied religious paths that each finds meaningful” – that’s from this Fellowship’s mission statement – we accept that each of us will have our own personal “creed,” each and everyone of us, and that these will differ.  I will ask you to illustrate:  How many among us are atheists?  How many are agnostics?  How many believe in some sense of “God” whether as “higher power,” “creative force in the universe,” “universal consciousness,” “guiding wisdom deep within oneself and all beings,” etc.  How many haven’t figured out what you believe in?  Now, so that you can see the range, would the atheists raise their hands?  The agnostics?  Those who find meaning in some concept of God?  Those who have figured any of this out?  Any question that we are a diverse and motley crew when it comes to creed!  By the way, your answer today may be different next Sunday.  W. Somerset Maugham wrote, “A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn’t quite know what.”

For many Americans, this is very strange – a religion that doesn’t have a creed.  So the next question is “what holds this ‘strange and motley crew’ together?”  This is something we laugh about.

“An arsonist was torching places of worship in the community.  When he set fire to the Catholic Church, the priest rushed in and saved the communion chalice.

“When the arsonist set fire to the synagogue, the rabbi rushed in and saved the Torah.

“When the arsonist set fire to the UU congregation, the minister rushed in and saved the copy machine.”  (A Unitarian Universalist Joke Book, edited by Hinrich Bohn, UU Church of Tucson, 23.)

If you’re puzzled, “Why the copy machine?” I’ll tell you later.

If each person can believe what they find personally meaningful, even if they don’t “quite know what,” why join together?

Ah, that’s it – we are first and foremost about community.  We put a greater premium on relationship in a gathered religious community, than we do on dogma.  We trust that, as Francis David put it centuries ago, “we don’t have to think alike to love alike.”  That’s why I’m calling this sermon “Covenant, Not Creed.”  What unites us are the promises we make – our covenant – to support one another in a religious community, rather than shared beliefs about metaphysical questions that are beyond proof.  What unites us is the confidence that we can care for one another in community, even though we have different personal beliefs.  “We don’t have to think alike to love alike.”

“Covenant” is a word with a long religious heritage.  It begins thousands of years ago when God and Abraham made a covenant together.  Both entered willingly into a commitment to serve one another.  Christians describe Christ as the “new covenant,” a new promise between God and humanity.  The so-called Mayflower Compact was one of the first covenants in the colonies.  It was a social contract in which government depended on the consent of the governed.

Some would speak of a marriage as a covenant between two spouses.  Each “vows” to the other to make their life one, by sharing health and sickness, riches and poverty until death do us part.

In a similar fashion, entering this community is making a promise to the community – though not as solemn as the marriage covenant; we do not ask members to commit themselves to membership till death do us part.  Nevertheless, what unites us is an understanding of covenant and community.  Let me say again, this community is not based on a common set of beliefs, but on shared principles that support being a religious community.

We sang a version of our seven principles earlier: One, each person is important….  You can read the more abstract version of these principles on the back page of your order of service cover. When we live by these principles, we can “love alike” in religious community.  Our covenant is our promise to live these principles in religious community.

What makes us a religious community?  I want to repeat three points from this morning’s reading of the words of UU Minister Roy Phillips:

·        There is more than meets the eye, more than meets even the disciplined, questioning mind.

·        We and all human persons go deeper than we have yet seen, are richer than we yet know.

·        New worlds are coming into being in the midst of the world in which we are living right now.

In other words, we live in mystery.  Last Sunday’s service used the words of Thoreau to inspire us to “live deliberately.”  As Thoreau said, “I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not lived.  I do not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear…”  We each face the mystery of having been born, and knowing that we will die.  We “know” that our present knowledge is limited, that in its unending creativity, life will unfold into worlds we cannot imagine, even in our wildest science fiction imagination.  We respect that each of us will try to contain this mystery in our own spiritual framework, drawing on the many religions that humans have created in the past. We will attempt to capture the ineffable.

We gather to celebrate the mysterious in our lives, confident that the particular words and images that one person uses to capture the mysterious may differ from words and images that make sense to me, yet that we share our search to make meaning, each in our own way. We trust that our spiritual life will be enriched by encountering those who have very different ways of framing their spiritual lives.  That difference is not something to be feared, but to be welcomed.  As Phillips puts it, “The human spirit does not benefit from unyielding dogmatism, but rather must be free if it is fully to flower.”

I often urge people to sink deeply into a spiritual practice as a way of exploring profoundly the mystery in which we live and die.

Recently I had a long conversation with a visitor trying to figure us out, and to see if this was the religious community for himself and his family.  As I mentioned the rich resources that we draw on spiritually, Humanism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Earth-based, Hinduism, etc., he queried, “But what’s Unitarian Universalism?  If you’re referencing all those religions, aren’t you just appropriating them?”  I took him to mean, “Why try to deepen your spirituality by being a ‘UU Buddhist’?  Why not go for it and be a Buddhist plain and simple?  What does being a UU add in value?” 

I would put my answer this way.  What being UU adds is the confidence that we humans are enriched by embracing differences.  To repeat this morning’s mantra, “we don’t have to think alike to love alike.”  We trust that we, all of us, grow when we truly encounter someone with a different perspective, a different story, a different set of experiences that shape her or his life.  We willingly put ourselves into a committed community that embraces difference in order to dialogue with, and grow from, these differences.

And we know that certain ground rules will facilitate our embracing differences.  These ground rules are our UU principles.

In addition to these ground rules that enable a community of difference, there are certain life attitudes, as Phillips puts it, that we stand together to affirm:

“The sacred is in this world, in this life, dwelling here, now, within, around, among us.”  As another put it, “UUs believe in life before death.”  I love the T-shirt that proclaims, “Life is not a dress rehearsal.”  What we do in this life matters.  In fact, how we live matters more than what we say we believe.  An old catch phrase to describe UUs puts it this way: we are about deeds not creeds.

This life-attitude leads to a second: we commit ourselves to make this world a better place.  If each person is important and we tend the web of life, then we will do what we can to make this world reflect those principles.

Remember the joke about the UU minister rushing into the burning congregation to rescue what?  The copy machine.  That’s because the copier is critical in organizing for social justice, for peace, for environmental sustainability.  Take a look at our social justice table in the social hall after our service, and you will see the primacy of the copier. 

There’s a light bulb joke about this life attitude.  “How many UUs does it take to change a light bulb?  100. One to hold the bulb and 99 to turn the world around.”

For us as UUs, community doesn’t finally thrive until it is the beloved community prophesied by ancients like Isaiah and moderns like Martin Luther King and Woody Guthrie.  (In a minute we’ll hear Guthrie’s song “heaven” about the beloved community.)  Our covenant doesn’t afford us the comfort of settling into the status quo, but continually working toward the beloved community in which all living beings, and earth itself thrives.  All two-legged beings without regard to age, sexual orientation or gender expression, skin color, national origin, social-economic class, ability, etc. – all two-legged beings, and four-legged beings, flying and swimming creatures, and the very earth itself, this precious planet with its intricately balanced self-correcting system of currents, clouds, atmosphere and inner tectonics – all of this beloved and enjoyed, alive and thriving!

The peace-making forum following this service contributes to this effort to create beloved community.  It’s how we live our covenant.

David Fersh is singing two Pat Humphries songs today.  She’s a contemporary folksong writer who captures the spirit of which I’m speaking today, “Covenant, Not Creed,” and “we don’t need to think alike to love alike.”  She sings of the unity we share.  In the song “Common Thread,” she writes, “From our children to our elders, from all nations we will rise/… May respect for all our differences enhance our common ties/… We will rise like the ocean, we will rise like the sun/… We will build a global family strengthened by our common threads….”

I invite you to consider casting your spiritual lot with this local branch of the global family.  Enter with us into a community based not on a shared creed – thinking alike - but on the covenant we willingly make with one another – on loving alike.