|
A Doctrine of Love A Worship Service by The Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone Presented to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday February 6, 2005
Reading Things Commonly Believed Among Us (adapted) Proposed by William Channing Gannett to the Western Unitarian Conference, 1887
We believe that to love the Good and to live the Good is the supreme thing in religion; We hold reason and conscience to be final authorities in matters of religious belief; We honor the Bible and all inspiring scripture, old and new; We revere Jesus, and all holy souls that have taught men truth and righteousness and love, as prophets of religion; We believe in the growing nobility of (Humanity); We trust the unfolding Universe as beautiful, beneficent, unchanging Order; to know this order is truth; to obey it is right and liberty and stronger life; We believe that good and evil invariably carry their own recompense, no good thing being failure and no evil thing success; that heaven and hell are states of being; that no evil can befall the good man (or woman) in either life or death; that all things work together for the victory of the Good; We believe that we ought to join hands and work to make the good things better and the worst good, counting nothing good for self that is not good for all; We believe that this self-forgetting, loyal life awakes in (us) the sense of union here and now with things eternal - the sense of deathlessness; and this sense is to us an earnest of the life to come; We worship One-in All -- that life whence suns and starts derive their orbits and the soul of (all) its Ought, -- that Light which lighteth every man (and woman) that cometh into the world, giving us power to become the sons (and daughters) of God, -- that Love with which ours souls commune.
Prayer and Meditation “Courage, Compassion, Commitment” The Rev. Beth Graham [adapted]
From different places [we] have arrived this morning… both women and men…with disparate life paths, vocations, and avocations … Different though [we] might be, [we] join together as one, each and every time [we] convene [in this holy place] … Might [we] begin [our] time together by invoking – by inviting in – three essential guides: courage; compassion; commitment. It is by the will of God, it is from the hand of that which is Most Holy (by whatever name we call this) that these three impulses dwell and grow within us. In the name of all that is in [us] that has the courage to dream a healthier, less fragmented society – In the name of all that … has the compassion to notice the needs and vulnerabilities of many in our community, and all that … moves [our] hearts and [our] hands to help soothe that distress— In the name of all… that has the commitment to believe that every single effort made on behalf of what-could-be matters – In the name of all this and more, [we] come together. We begin this day, then, by bringing to the fore – by inviting in—by invoking—all the courage, compassion and commitment that Creation has given … May these three impulses thrive within [us], assisting [us] to build a sense of community one with another ... and one with another out there in the wider [world] that holds us all. May the spirit of courage, the spirit of compassion, the spirit of commitment, sustain [us], [our] families, and [our] church, through all that today and tomorrow will bring. So may it be. Shalom. Amen.
A Doctrine of Love First in a Series of Seven Sermons on Our Affirmation by The Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday February 6, 2005
Before last week’s Membership Sunday, Jonalu and I conducted a series of Roots classes. These courses help people understand the Roots—that is the history—of this church and this faith tradition. The sessions also help individuals understand how they can best begin to put down roots among us—how they can begin to claim this place and make it part of their spiritual landscape. I have, over the years, facilitated 60 or 70 of these kind of courses. Our institutional root that is hardest to comprehend is that ours is a non-creedal church. We organize around covenant above creed. This is a basic part of our DNA but many people—those who come out of other traditions and those who come in from the “unchurched” world—often find this a tough idea to understand. During these recent sessions—this aspect of our faith came to the surface right off the bat. Someone in the class asked: “Do we really NOT have a creed?” Well… The response to that query and the arc of today’s sermon actually begins a bit earlier. About 18 months ago, Jonalu and I were preparing for the beginning of the church year. Among the things we were pondering was how to add something more explicitly theological and distinctively Unitarian Universalist to our worship experience. Over the years, I have worshipped in a several dozen Unitarian Universalist settings—in communities ranging from less than a dozen to more than a thousand with services ranging from episcopal to a slightly ritualized coffee hour. It is hard to identify a common thread running through this diversity—save that each congregation was, or aspired to be, a member of our association—the UUA. That’s not quite true. In about half of these communities—part of their worship included a unison reading of a covenant or an affirmation. Most often this is a variation of the covenant found in the hymnal by L. Griswold Williams. The covenant (which you will no doubt recognize), as published, reads— Love is the doctrine of this church, The quest for truth is its sacrament, And service is its prayer. To dwell together in peace; To seek knowledge in freedom; To serve human need; To the end that all souls shall grow in harmony with the divine. Thus do we covenant together and with God. Although I have read this covenant in dozens of congregations—I have never known it to be recited exactly as written. Maybe one of those elusive commonalties is that we adapt everything. At any rate, Jonalu and I weighed the alternatives and decided that the Williams covenant, with a couple of modifications, would add something theological and institutional to our worship experience—so here we are. We added this piece to our Worship service in August of 2003. It’s interesting when you lead worship over time to see how things go from novel to established and nearly invisible in a very short time. I often joke that if you do something twice it’s a tradition—do it three times it’s a ritual—and do it forty times and many will believe it has always been that way. There is a power to something becoming second nature in worship—it gets internalized into the heart and mind in a valuable way. In my pervious ministerial settlement, the children and youth were in the service every week. One of the things I experienced was watching 4 and 5 year-olds, early readers at best, who would mimic the words of our call to worship and who could recite the affirmation word for word despite never having “read” it themselves. Those sentiments, those truths, I believe are deeply ingrained in their soul—they will be there in 20 or 40 or 60 years when something happens in life and they need a life line. That is the power of ritual. There is a power to this familiarity but there is also a sense of invisibility—which is why it is now time to consider the phrases to the covenant we share each week. Now that we are used to them it is time to ask what they really mean. First, despite the sentence “Thus do we covenant together,” I am not so sure it is a covenant. Furthermore, we call it an Affirmation in the Order of Service and (this is where we pick up our thread from the Roots sessions) the whole thing begins my asserting that “Love is the doctrine of this church.” Well… Do we or don’t we have a creed? How can I maintain that we are a non-creedal church when we affirm a doctrine every week? Well…it all goes back to Constantine and the Council of Nicea in 325. I can’t seem to talk about much without invoking Constantine and Nicea—this fact was pointed out to me recently when Jock Campbell—one of our members—sent me a cartoon that asserted the very same fact as its punch line. It always goes back to Constantine and Nicea because that is where the idea of hard and impenetrable lines around belief gained footing. In the Christian tradition, before Nicea, there existed a wide variety of beliefs. People, no doubt, were convinced that their beliefs were true and other’s misguided. There was lively debate, discussion and I suspect even brawls over who got “It” just right. Until Nicea, though, there was no “orthodoxy” against which to measure a belief—and as a result beliefs were varied. Probably not unlike the diverse beliefs we hold today. It is the wiggle-room we leave in our doctrine that makes it useful in a non-creedal tradition. We don’t define “Love” for our members and we don’t say that if you don’t find Love to be compelling doctrine that there is something wrong with you spiritually. Until Nicea, though, uniformity of belief was not the norm. Today doctrines and creeds often measure conformity to a theological norm. Those outside the “norm,” those who fail to measure up, those who won’t toe the line, are labeled “Heretic.” The word heretic simply means “One who chooses.” A heretic is one who chooses their belief instead of affirming orthodox (meaning “Right Belief”) contours of faith. Historically Heretics have been hounded and harassed, castigated, chastened, confined and sometime killed. Today it doesn’t seem that bad but in truth creeds and doctrines are still put to inhumane ends. Edwin Markham, a poet and Universalist who died in the 1940’s, captured this sense of creedal exclusion and gives us a glimpse of what A Doctrine of Love might mean. These words adorn the walls of many of our sibling congregations. He drew a circle that shut me out Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout But love and I had the wit to win; We drew a circle that took him in. It was Love, according to Markham that powered our circle drawing. It is that kind of Love, that inclusive, aspiring, affirming sense of Love, that I mean when I affirm that Love is the Doctrine of this church. (They) drew a circle that shut me out Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout But love and I had the wit to win; We drew a circle that took him in. Love, though, is a wistful thing. It is fleeting. Who among us has not heard words of love and wondered if they were real? Who among us hasn’t whispered words of love that hastened down the wind? Can we really hold something so transcendent as the core of our faith? The answer: How can we not? There is no doubt in my mind that many people, many among us, would be hard pressed to affirm that the world loves them. I will admit to finding that a difficult discernment many times in my life. If the world loves me, why do I hurt so? If the world loves me, why is it so unkind? If the world loves me, why doesn’t it help me? How can the world love me and scare me so? How can the world love me and let THAT happen? Are there any among us who don’t know the echoes of those pain-filled pleas? And that is what comes from Love? Well…yes and no. Love is the thing that makes you aware of the pain—because something in you tells you that this shouldn’t be. To live without the Love that draws others in, to live without the kind of Love that is the doctrine of this church, is not to live in despair. To live without this love is to live a benumbed existence. Existential pain and despair, far from being indictments of Love, are signs that the love filled world is so deeply ingrained into us that we ache when we are separated from it. A part of us we may not even know is there hurts when we separate ourselves from the sustaining power of love. We ache when we draw lines that sever others from the love that is part of the “Peace that passes all understanding.” This is something of what it means to affirm A Doctrine of Love. So what are we to do? There is so much suffering still. There is suffering in our heart and in our lives. There is suffering in the world. What are we to do? At the risk of sounding flippant, I say go out and make love. Take that as a commandment and take it in any and every way you can. Make love in the world and make the world loving. Make love in your life and make your life and instrument for love. Make love in your heart and soul and share it. It’s a bit like Karma until we express love we rarely recognize the love that surrounds us. Love begets love. Until we see another’s pain and love calls us to respond from a depth we never knew we had, we don’t know the depth of that love surrounds us. Until love exudes from our heads and hands and hearts and hearths and pockets and pores we tend to think it is a scarce commodity. Don’t confuse this abundance with the notion that living with Love means you won’t hurt, won’t be hurt or won’t hurt others. A Doctrine of Love doesn’t mean you won’t be a victim of love. It means that we are never very far from the love that offers hope and healing. It means that we should never be very far from offering that love to the world. A Doctrine of Love means that, like the hymn we sang earlier, there is More Love Somewhere. We have to keep on ‘til we find it—but there is more love, somewhere. So are we Non-Creedal or do subscribe to A Doctrine of Love? Are we without a theological center or is there a hub around which our diversity spins and rotates and permutates? Well…I don’t really know. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Another of our theological ancestors, Francis David, understood about 500 years ago that we need not think alike to love alike. I don’t know if that qualifies as A Doctrine of Love, but I suspect it is all we really need to know. AMEN
|
