We Covenant to…

September 15, 2024 —Rev. Rita Capezzi

Friends, we are living into covenant this year, leaning into covenant this month. What on earth does that mean and why are we bothering? These are legitimate questions.

These are legitimate questions, especially since “covenant” might be a bit of a mystery to you. Most of us realize, and are rightly comforted by the notion, that as Unitarian Universalists, we do not gather within a shared religious creed, within a common set of beliefs about the nature of the Holy and how we must worship said divinity, or purposefully ignore the gods of others. It is a comfort, and deeply affirming that, as we like to say sometimes, “We need not think alike to love alike.” We are not creedal sharing a common belief—but rather, we are covenantal. Too often, though, we define this faith tradition, one we come to by choice, in terms of what it is NOT, rather than what it is.

So, let’s understand what we are about here. Let’s lean into being a “covenantal” religion, a people of covenant. Do you know this word “covenant”? Are you familiar with it?

Recently, I learned that some folk think of our covenant of right relations as a set of rules, rules that if you don’t follow them, you’ll be punished or shunned. If that is the only or the dominant understanding circulating in our community, then what it means to covenant needs some significant attention.

Back when I was part of the Catholic faith, I remember these words from the mass—“a new and everlasting covenant so that our sins may be forgiven.” Words something to that effect. I listened to those words, but they held little meaning for me. As I grew older, as I studied, rather than followed, the Judeo-Christian faith that ancestors brought to what became the US and Canada, I understood covenant as a fundamental part of that belief system. This is not to say that other religions don’t have covenants. It is just that I learned about covenants there.

Even if our backgrounds are not Jewish or Christian, most of us know the biblical story of Noah and the Great Flood, when a god saw his creations as so sinful and unworthy, corrupt and despicable that he decided total destruction, a clean slate, was the only way, beginning all over again.

This god flooded the whole world. Only the faithful Noah and his family, and pairs of each animal and bird, were spared. Now, eventually, this destroying god repented, for a time, this god learned that what it had done was a problem, and so this god make a pact, made an agreement, made a covenant with all of creation, NOT to destroy it again. The rainbow was the sign of that pact, that agreement, that covenant. Out of rain and sun, a colorful arch hinting at complexity and implying a circle embracing, holding together, all the world. This god made a pledge, a promise about its behavior toward its creation. And this pledge eventually worked its way into a structure of belief about a creator god and how a human being, a believer in that faith, is to be in relationship with that god. Judaism is a covenantal faith, and so is Christianity. Those Jewish and Christian covenants seem to have solidified into beliefs about practice—in a relationship with a god, behave in such and such a way, or be deemed NOT a believer, not an orthodox believer. A set of rules to follow or be punished. Or expelled. But that is not the kind of covenant we practice here. And it oversimplifies.

Many of you know I moved from Mankato, Minnesota to Buffalo, New York last year. But I moved to Buffalo, New York the first time in 1994 and lived there until 2018. And for a time, I lived in a neighborhood that had a covenant, though I did not know it at the time.

Some of you live in condos, and when you buy into such a neighborhood, you are presented with a covenant, the community rules. If you don’t abide by the community rules, you might get fined. Certainly, you are on the receiving end of the ire of your neighbors if you don’t, for instance, keep your grass cut to the agreed upon length or leave cars up on cinderblocks in the driveway. Back in 2000, I learned that I had bought a house in a neighborhood that had a covenant, but I didn’t know it. Because it was not a condo community, the realtor didn’t show me the agreements in advance. I learned about them in a hard way.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that my grass could not grow beyond a certain height or that a vegetable garden in the front yard was a no-no. I was surprised I could not park a boat or a travel trailer in my own driveway, but I didn’t have either of those so it didn’t matter to me. But I was shocked to learn that one’s front porch had to have a railing. And I learned this when one neighbor turned in another for not having one. One of my neighbors called the housing division and the building inspectors to report another neighbor who was remodeling her home. She had the original architectural drawing and plans, and she was attempting to restore her home to those specifications. And there was no porch railing on her rather low stoop. But someone called in the rules—rules she did not even know existed, called in the rules without talking to her in advance, anonymously. And she was forced to add a railing. That might not seem like a big deal. Here is what seemed the problem to me. We did not know we were living under a set of conditions we had not really agreed to in advance. There was no conversation among neighbors.

The so-called covenant was really just a set of rules that you could be punished for not following. But that is not the kind of covenant we practice here.

Even if you are not familiar with that story of Noah and the Flood, even if you don’t live in a neighborhood with a covenant, you have likely heard the word “covenant” in another context. Most marriage ceremonies use the word “covenant”: a couple of people enter together, willingly and knowingly, “the covenant of marriage.” The word is used even in the most secular, the least religious, sense of marriage. And I think that most of us understand that, although marriage is a covenant, marriage is not a set of rules to follow but a set of agreements about how you will be in relationship together: for better and worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, the two shall abide together, help each other, support each other, care for each other, love each other. But “As long as they both shall live”? No, our cultures allow for divorce now, when the agreed-upon behaviors are not fulfilled, when the pledges and promises are broken and irreparable, when the love turns sour and the union is more hurtful than healing for all involved. That’s a good thing, sad and sorrowful as it may also be. Ending relationship is hard, every bit as challenging as living in relationship can be.

As we heard in the first reading this morning, "‘Covenant’ is our word for the solemn promises that counteract the randomness of a future in which anything and everything is possible, by committing us in advance to certain relationships and values.”

A covenant is a thing, a noun, a set of agreements. But the real matter is hearing the word as an action. When we covenant, we promise. As in “We, the member congregations of the Canadian Unitarian Council, covenant to affirm and promote” eight principles, the values by which we try to live our lives. As congregations in relationship with the CUC, we are in relationship because we agree, in advance, to the values, the guiding principles, of this faith tradition. And as individuals, as we come seeking something more, we each, individually, decide to take on membership in this particular faith community. “We, the members of the Unitarian Congregation of Mississauga, affirm a Covenant of Right Relations,” which means for us that “As Unitarian Universalists, we come freely into community, guided by our eight principles and nourished by the six sources.”

We come freely into community, here and now. Yet “Community doesn’t only include the people who agree with you or those with whom you want to be friends.” Because we are not married to each other—not most of us!—we might not always agree with how to enact those principles and values, we are obligated to work at relationship, to work as staying connected, to work on communicating with compassion and conviction, with love and vigor. We are not married to Unitarian Universalism—probably, maybe some of us are—but we enter into relationship with the faith and with each other in a covenant LIKE marriage, with good intentions and the mature knowledge that all between us will not always be sweetness and light, much as we might wish it to be so.

“Everything comes back to our congregations and covenanted communities. That is where the faith starts and ends.” We do not practice a religion alone, and all who choose to be here, on any day of the week, for worship, for companionship, for commitment, we must decide consciously and conscientiously to belong, to support, to find a good path among our differences. And “We do [this] because what we build with intention, and even with difficulty, is more satisfying in the long run than the pleasures that we happen to encounter.” By living in and through covenant, we choose to make a way through this life that offers something more and different from what we encounter in the everyday—strife that leads to hatred and violence. Not that we don’t have strife—oh, we do!—but to live by covenant, our particular covenants, is to say we will find a way forward together, with respect and compassion, with reason and evidence, with justice as our guided. Not an empty set of rules to follow, but an animating way of being together.

And “We do it in time-consuming rituals, invoking powers that we scarcely know how to name, because we are seeking some way to give our lives the density, and dignity, and depth that we suspect, with longing, might yet be possible.”

Like the covenant of marriage, living in covenant with each other, within this congregation and within the larger CUC and UUA world, relationship does not just happen. We remind ourselves, over and over in multiple ways familiar and new and sometimes unsettling, that we are always making a choice, that our choices have meaning as well as consequences. May we make meaning and may we make relationship consciously, conscientiously, and compassionately. May we lovingly accept the challenge and the beauty of covenant to give our lives density, dignity, and depth.

“Today, we celebrate our Living Tradition, which invites us to take deep breaths of fresh air into the newness of every day so our minds, hearts, and spirits will be continually nourished.” Today, we make promised and work together as a team. Today, “May I be filled with loving kindness.” Today, “We forgive ourselves and each other, and begin again in love.” Today, and everyday, for “We are in a quest for transformation,” a quest “to remember our promises and vow to live by them once again.” We promise to enter this quest through and in our Unitarian Universalist faith.

“May ours be a faith that is more than just beautiful words and high ideals. May ours be a faith of vitality and commitment, a faith that burns in our hearts and blazes in our minds. May ours be a faith that shines to the world as the light of deeds and the witness of actions.”

May we commit, together, to that faith. May it always be so.