"One Church"

There is a perverse little game I sometimes play while I'm reading the newspaper. I see those daunting headlines over stories of global war and personal tragedy, gloomy predictions about the economy, and new revelations about our toxic environment, and I dare myself to read them.

Can I take it? I ask myself. And then I wait and see. Sometimes I can, as my eyes settle on the text and I dutifully apply myself to what I need to know as a voter or a consumer or a neighbor; but sometimes I can't. Some days I just read the Food section and the editorials.

This behavior reminds me of mind-games I used to play as a child with things that scared me. A favorite was taking home from the library picture books about reptiles and daring myself to touch the glossy prints of venomous cottonmouths and rattlers. But that was just a cheap thrill. Today the pictures show us something much more frightening. For you cannot follow current events without registering the grim fact that our world is a broken and painful place.

This week we cannot pretend that it is otherwise: Children held hostage on their first day back to school. One thousand Americans now dead in Iraq; ten times that many Iraqis. Apocalypse descending on Sudan. Another anniversary of September 11 come and gone.

Closer to home, we move towards another election. Our country appears to be deeply divided. Tension mounts over the probability of another terrorist attack. Cynicism and panic simmer away in our beleaguered psyches, grinding down our motivation and our ideals.

There aren't many places you can turn for reassurance. But one of those places is our church. And on this day, this "ingathering" Sunday, we turn to our faith and to our tradition, and most of all to our community, to restore our hope and our souls.

The world suffers under the strain of division, inequality, and hate. We gather to remind ourselves that unity is possible. We come together to remember our common humanity, and the simple bond that connects all life. We need each other to renew our faith.

We are one church, but we are also a collection of individuals. We agree on many things, but not always. We know what it feels like to fall apart. But most of us stay long enough to know what it feels like to come back together.

The sense of community is so intrinsic here that we rarely analyze what makes it strong. Why talkabout faith when we all agree it is better toacton it? Why talk about ourselves at all when there are so many more important things to do?

Because we need to remember, in this dark time, what holds us together. We need to remind ourselves that unity and mutual respect are achievable, that differences do not lead inevitably to hate, and that the humanity we share - even with those who hate us- is still the thing we cherish most. We need to remind ourselves because some days nobody else will. Certainly you won't find it in the newspaper.

We are a people of faith. We covenant - to use that quaint term that echoes our Yankee origins - with each other to dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, and to serve humankind in fellowship.

The covenant we read at the beginning of the service, however, is only one expression of our common purpose. Catherine Farmer, our Director of Religious Education, also spoke to us about covenants this morning. A covenant is an agreement about how we will be together - how we will live according to our principles. We make a conscious choice to demonstrate mutual respect, grounded in our faith that all are worthy of it.

This may sound strange to you, but I often ask myself why I need our community. I'm a rather introverted person. I'm more at home with people one on one than in big waves or even small groups. And I know I'm not the only one.

Yet there is a powerful force that keeps me connected. I know that I can't make a covenant all by myself. For that, I must join with others.

Covenant is what holds our community together, whatever our individual strengths or weaknesses or personal styles or opinions. Whoever you are, if you keep the covenant, you will always belong. And that is why I am here too.

These differences we all note - among ourselves, in a mild form, and in a harsher way, what we witness in the world - do not have to drive us apart. The covenant keeps us whole. It's not so much what the covenant says, though our words are good enough; it is that we agree to be together, whatever it takes, because we have faith in what makes us human.

The covenant teaches us that we are not here to agree with each other. We are not even here to like each other - though we often do. We are here to witness to the humanity in each other and to gather together in affirmation of that truth. We are here to take that truth, to live it deeply in our religious community, and then to live it even more deeply in the world.

Remembering that gives us strength. That is why I speak of it today. We are here to draw from the truth of our faith tradition for the courage to live in these times.

James Finley's meditative reading on the river gives us a good image for our faith. What I like about it best is that it could be anybody's faith. For Unitarian Universalists understand that faith has a universal quality that goes beyond any one tradition or ideology, even our own.

The river is that source of awareness, the truth that can be approached on many different paths. As soon as you enter it, as James Finley says, you get completely wet. Whoever you are, whatever way you got there, you're in the river just like everybody else. You can try another way, and you'll still get completely wet. The river is there no matter how you find it.

The river equalizes everyone who steps into it. The river makes everyone wet, rich or poor, accomplished or struggling. The river sees no difference. And the river will cool off anyone on a scorching hot day.

This is what our faith tradition teaches us too. All people can come to the river, for the river is there for everyone. You don't have to be one of us, although we welcome you to come along so we can follow our path together.

Our path is the covenant, the living affirmation that community brings out our humanity and our hope. We come together because we sense that community life makes us better people. We are willing to take risks with each other. Community life exposes us; makes us vulnerable. The covenant holds us together, even when we're not feeling very good about ourselves.

Keeping the covenant heals us too. For it asks us to forgive each other. It lets time and the unfolding of life knit us together in a pattern too large to see all at once. It leads us to the river, where we can renew ourselves in the water that is there for everyone.

James Finley writes that as you venture on your path "still farther down the shore, you eventually come to the point at which the river empties to the sea. As you wade out into the water, there is only water as far as you can see. Silenced by the vastness of it all, you realize that you and the river have come to rest in the vast depths toward which all reality and all of life ceaselessly flows."

Though life in our church is rarely the contemplative experience James Finley describes in his book, the path we take can lead us to vast depths too. We all know that, even if only in an intuitive way, or else we wouldn't be here. Everyone needs the river.

The world may deliver some news that is hard to take. And people will do anything to prove they are not worthy of our faith. And we ourselves will not always behave well, or use our potential for its highest purpose. And there will be times of doubt and despair, when we forget what brings us together and makes us whole.

And we will look for the river, as people do when they need it. When we look for it, we will find it on the path we have made together. It will be here for us, as it is for everyone. We will find it in the covenant we have kept, the community we have built, and the vast depths we have approached whenever we have gathered together.