HomeOPENING SERVICE: Our annual celebration of return and renewal of commitment and community.
READINGS
Purposes and Principles
Congregational Purpose (Bylaws)
SERMON
Good morning!
Welcome back.
I hope you all had a good summer and that it was refreshing and restful—or refreshing and exciting, if that is what you prefer.
Although we operate year round, today’s service is a time to celebrate our “return” from summer and the annual renewal of our community. Today we touch base with our core and remind ourselves who we are and what we are about.
In religious terms, we Unitarian Universalists are the direct lineal descendants of the Puritan Churches. Many of the original Puritan congregations founded in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds became Unitarian in the early eighteen hundreds.
This is remarkable when one considers how literalist and fundamentalist the Puritans were about their Bible.
The Puritans stood on the radical wing of the Protestant Reformation that swept northern Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Unlike Luther and other reformers, the Puritans were Calvinist and Protestants. They were convinced that the Catholic Church was too corrupt to reform and that it needed instead to be abandoned.
What they did share with some of the Reformers was a belief that the individual did not need a mediator between themselves and God, that instead a direct relationship was possible and in fact necessary. As they saw it, God spoke within every human heart and it was the responsibility of each individual to read the Bible for themselves and to interpret it for themselves. One person’s interpretation might differ from another’s and they could discuss that, but no Priest or Bishop could decide for anyone just what the Bible said.
Note that they limited themselves to the Bible.
They also dismissed the ideas of the mystery of the communion, the mystery of transubstantiation, the literal changing of the wine and bread into the blood and flesh of Jesus. So they dismissed notions of a Priesthood, and changed to the use of Ministers.
And they chose a modest approach to their buildings and their services; their God was not impressed by golden trappings.
They also came to believe that free individuals gather together to worship God in community, never losing their individual status. And so they created congregations where each had a full say in the running of the congregation, in the budget process in the calling of a minister in all of the major details of congregational life. And they added to that the other side of the coin: each was responsible for the congregation’s functioning and financial health. And so in contrast to the old Catholic tradition, within the Puritan congregations the people of the congregation were in charge and decided upon the future. The individual congregation was not dependent upon any greater institutional structure for decision making.
So they bequeathed to us what today is called congregational polity; the congregation is independent and makes its own decisions.
There was one practice, however, one important detail where the Puritan congregations differed from ours: they recognized a mutual responsibility between congregations. We make reference to this in the Purposes and Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association, but do little to actually enact it. So, while there was no formal institutional structure, if the members of neighboring congregations felt that a gathering had “gone wrong” in its practices or its theology, they would send a delegation to say so, to admonish their fellows and to call them back to right practice.
They did this because they believed that not only were members of individual congregations in covenant with one another, but congregations were also in covenant with one another.
We have left behind much of the Puritan religion, but there are pieces of it that we have kept.
The notion that I determine my own religious path based upon my “reading” if you will of sacred texts or of life experiences is inherited from them. We have expanded our vision so that we each get to determine whether there is a God. We have expanded that vision so that we may move beyond the Bible and each of us may use the sacred texts of any of the worlds great religions, or may use poetry or song, or our own writings or feelings or thoughts to lead us towards religious growth, but the sense that this path is mine and belongs to me and that only I can interpret these things for myself remains.
And in or congregational life it is the people who decide, the people gathered in covenant with one another. As the Puritans saw it, the voice of the community was the voice of God speaking in and to the community. And so, if the community voted to call a minister, the hands raised in affirmation were not just the hands of the individual congregants, they were the hand of God descending upon the head of the minister ordaining him to the service of the congregation.
But again, that power of the people brought with it responsibility. The individual was bound to give what he or she could in money and time to the congregation.
Now, I want to briefly talk about four different terms, all of them important.
Any congregation has or ought to have Bylaws, a Mission, a Vision, and a Covenant.
Bylaws first: they are the formal document that describes the operations of the congregation: who is a member, who controls the property, who calls the minister, who is responsible to whom within the congregation, etc. Think of it as similar to the Constitution of the United States.
The Mission of the congregation is its Purpose for being, like the Purpose that I read this morning from our Bylaws. It is the statement of why a congregation exists. Think of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.
The Vision is a statement or shared view of where people want to be in the future, the sense of where the congregation is going. Think of that as the competing visions of the various candidates for President of the United States. The Vision must be in keeping with the Mission and the Bylaws, and states things like: we want to be a beacon of liberal religion in Westchester County.
The Covenant is how we intend to be with one another. This is not the technical relationships which are usually spelled out in the Bylaws, but is the intent of mutual treatment. When the current candidates for President of the two major parties state their intent to put past campaign practices of personal smears, innuendo and implicit lies behind us and to respect each others patriotism and to assume that the other is an honorable person, that is a covenantal statement. It is not required by the constitution; it is about how they agree to be with one another even as they express differing visions for the future.
We have an implicit covenant based in part upon our liberal religious values as embodied in the Principles and Purposes of the Unitarian Universalist Association. We recognize the right of each individual to search their own religious path and that implies that we will not mock or belittle one another; that we will not deride those who follow a path different than ours or express contempt for their path as long as that path also shows respect for individuals. And when the path of others does show disrespect, we still have an explicit covenant at the denominational level and an implicit covenant at the congregational level that we will disagree but will do so in a manner that respects those with whom we disagree, that we will still treat them as people worthy of respect and dignity.
Let this covenant, the covenant of treating all human beings as people worthy of respect and as having inherent dignity, let this be our guide for all of our relationships and interactions with others; let this covenant be the living means by which we express our faith.
To all who come with joy in their hearts for returning together, for all who come with joy for new beginnings, for all who come with smiles and stories and love to share, welcome.
For all who come with sadness or pain, whose lives are filled with fear or despair, whose minds race with turmoil or feel dead with numbness, to all whose lives feel small and shrunken, welcome.
For all who feel a mixture of these or other emotions, welcome.
We come together for mutual support, for sharing, for community. We come together to give to and to receive from each other. We come together to share the wellsprings of human caring and faith. We come together to build each others spirits and to build a better tomorrow.
Welcome to this house of hope and promise.
Welcome to this place of strength and nurture.
Welcome home.
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