Walking Together

"And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendents after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendents after you."

--Genesis 17: 7

"We covenant with the Lord, and one with another, and do bind ourselves in the presence of God, to walk together, in all His ways, according as He is pleased to reveal Himself unto us in His blessed word of truth."

--Salem Church Covenant, 1629

"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 humankind 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."

When the Puritans came to these shores in the early 1600's, they brought a radical new form of church government with them. They called it "congregationalism," and they believed that it was the earliest form of church government practiced in the Christian community as described in the Bible. Congregationalism vested all of the powers of the church in the local congregation. It admitted no hierarchies of power, no episcopates and no presbyteries. Each congregation was autonomous and independent. It was an early form of "power to the people." The local congregation could elect its own officers and choose its own ministers. It could baptize and confirm its young, and admit to membership whomever it chose. Though other congregations might advise or reprove them, they had no other powers to control or influence. The local congregation was all in all.

In Europe, the Puritans had learned their lessons well, and they wanted no interference in their churches here in the New World. There they had been persecuted for their beliefs, here they and their churches would be free.

Taking their cue from the Bible, the Puritans chose the idea of covenant around which to gather their churches. A covenant is a "solemn promise." Literally, it means "to come together by making a promise." Originally an agreement between a worldly king and his vassals, the ancient Israelites did something radically new by entering into a covenant with a particular God, Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.

The covenant implied mutual obligations. As George Kimmel Beach writes, "The word covenant implies a framework within which intentionality takes effect." God would do certain things, provide certain protections, insure the Israelite's continuance through the generations, if the people would meet their end of the deal: as the prophet Micah succinctly put it, "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [their] God." The covenant placed God and the chosen people in a special--even a privileged--relationship, one that we know in retrospect both parties would find difficult to maintain.

It was this idea of covenant which formed the basis around which the Puritans formed their churches. The earliest covenants, like that of the First Church in Salem (on your orders of service), were simple and non-doctrinal. William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, paraphrased the Plymouth church covenant as follows: "The Lord's free people joined themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate, in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all His ways made known, or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them." The people signified their agreement by "owning" the covenant, that is, by making it their own, and ascribing their names to it.

In the earliest days of the colony, theological uniformity was taken for granted. Therefore, the earliest covenants were broad and non-creedal. But within a very few years theological differences had begun to appear, and the earlier covenants began to be supplanted by covenants which were much more creedal in nature. The difference is clearly indicated by the first covenant of our own congregation, gathered in 1725:

Whereas it has pleased Almighty God, of his free grace to call and accept us sinful creatures into covenant with His Majesty in Christ, we do therefore, in a deep sense of our unworthiness, and with an humble dependence on Divine grace for assistance, solemnly professing our firm belief in the Christian faith according to the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, avouch the God whose name is Jehovah, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to be our God, and the God of our seed; and so make a firm covenant with His Majesty in Christ, and one with another, promising, through His grace to give ourselves to God in Christ,--acknowledging him to be our Prophet, Priest and King,--to submit to his government, to all his holy laws and ordinances, to shun all errors with all ungodliness and unrighteousness, and to walk together, as a church, in the faith and fellowship of the gospel, in mutual love and watchfulness, for the carrying of the worship of God, and promoting our mutual edification in faith and holiness.

The idea of love as the very center of things is taken from the earliest understanding of covenant in New England. Indeed, at the very heart of the free church is the spirit of love. Not only the people in the individual churches, but the churches in relation to one another, were understood to be joined in a covenant of love: of "walking together." The people were bound to each other in a mutual relationship to teach, to uphold, and, if necessary, to correct, one another.

When Tom Stites asked me to speak on the subject of covenant, he mentioned that he had been especially moved by the covenant we recited together at our Building Dedication ceremony last fall: ". . .we do here covenant anew to walk in ways of truth and love, according to our best endeavors, whatever it may cost us. Here let no person be a stranger, nor lack a friend, but let the love of all abound in the greater service of God and Humanity." As Tom wrote to me, "These are serious words of deep commitment to a liberal religious life ('whatever it may cost us'!), as all good covenants are, and it would be great to get the congregation engaged in these words, or whatever words of covenant are appropriate for us, in a serious way."

I now know that those particular words "whatever it may cost us" go back to the very earliest days of the church here in America [William Bradford, above], and we might well consider how much it did cost those who came here in search of the freedom to practice their religion as they believed it should be practiced, and how those words were not just throw-aways to them.

In the course of its history, the First Religious Society has used a number of covenants, which reflect its theological journey from Calvinism to Unitarianism and finally to Unitarian Universalism. Thankfully, that original one which I shared with you earlier has receded onto the pages of history! But others bear consideration as we think upon what it is that we gather for in this beloved community.

Besides the Affirmation of Faith which we repeat every week (and which as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago actually comes from the Universalist side of our heritage), there is the statement of Purpose found in Article II of the "Constitution and Bylaws" of the First Religious Society, a version of the so-called "Ames Covenant" [1880] for its author Charles C. Ames. It is a very common late 19th and early 20th century "affirmation" or "bond of fellowship" in Unitarian Churches: "In the love of Truth and in the spirit of Jesus we unite for worship of God and service of humanity." Notice, again, that there is nothing doctrinal or creedal or prescriptive about this statement, though we might consider that it too narrowly describes the purpose of our congregation as we understand it in the year 2004. One thing, however, is obvious from it: the Unitarians and the Universalists both returned to the broader, non-doctrinal and non-creedal understanding of covenant which existed in the earliest days of the colonies.

There is also the covenant we repeat when we welcome new members of this congregation: "Reverently we covenant together to seek the vision of a better world; beginning with ourselves as we are, in the spirit of love and fellowship; to establish and maintain a free religious community, based on democratic principles, where we can minister to one another, and together learn how to minister to the wider human community." Or the one we repeat when a child is dedicated during a worship service: "As we contemplate the miracle of birth, as we renew in our hearts a sense of wonder and joy, may we be inspired to a new awareness of the sacredness of life and of the divine promise of childhood. May we pass on the light of courage and compassion and the questing spirit to this child, and to all our children."

Like our Affirmation of Faith, like the covenant we shared at the building dedication ceremony, these are profound statements of faith and solemn promises, promises which we need to take seriously if we truly are to further our progress toward that better world of which we dream. As Tom Stites wrote to me, "My sense is that the stronger the understanding of an intentional and well-wrought covenant that a congregation has, the stronger the congregation is."

A number of years ago, perhaps the first year I was here as your minister, a group of us spent a day together working on a "mission statement." It was a covenant by any other name, and it represented the best effort of that particular gathering of members on that particular day to describe what our church is all about: "In the spirit of acceptance and fellowship, the First Religious Society of Newburyport, Unitarian Universalist, seeks to create a tolerant religious community. We promote spiritual growth and social advocacy in the individual, our congregation, and the greater community, upholding the purposes and principles of Unitarian Universalism."

Though I find nothing in particular with which to disagree in that statement as an ideal toward which we strive, it lacks for me the poetry of the L. Griswold Williams Affirmation of Faith [the so-called "Covenant of a Free Faith"] that we recite each Sunday: "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 humankind 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." Like the earliest New England Church covenants, our Affirmation places love at the very center of our reason for being. It makes truth-seeking a sacrament, a thing of deepest worth, and it reminds us that we are not here for our self-satisfaction only, but that we are here to serve others. It reminds us that we must be in right relation to one another ["to dwell together in peace"], and it reminds us of our great heritage of religious freedom and the right to conscience ["to seek knowledge in freedom"]. Finally, it reminds us that our highest purpose is what William Ellery Channing called "Likeness to God" ["grow into harmony with the Divine"], and that the words we are speaking are not just any words, but a solemn promise of our mutual responsibility to one another and to the highest that we know ["thus do we covenant with each other and with God"].

I started this sermon with a question: what if we took these words seriously? What if we really tried to live them out in our daily lives?

What I would like to suggest to you this morning is that we begin an intentional process of looking at those words, and, as our religious ancestors would have said, of owning them. I would like to suggest that we don't need new words, or a new affirmation of faith: we need only to begin to take seriously the words that we already have, the words that we share together every Sunday, the words that, I believe, already tell us what work we need to be about, but to which we might consider adding the unspoken words, "whatever it may cost us."

Truly, I believe that we have not yet become all that we still can be. May we go forth with a new commitment to live out our highest ideals and our fondest dreams, walking together in faith, hope, and love. The world cries out for what we have to offer. May we go forth in truth, and return with light.

Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock