The sermon and story below delivered by Rev. Dan Harper to First Unitarian in New Bedford. As usual, the texts below are reading texts. The actual sermon and story as delievered contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon and story copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.
Story
This is a story from the Islamic tradition. You probably already know that in order to be considered a Muslim — that is, someone who follows the religion of Islam — you must do five things. First, you must confess that there is no God but Allah whose prophet is Mohammed; second, you must pray five times a day; third, you must fast during the month of Ramadan; fourth, if you possibly can, you must make the journey to Mecca, the center of Islam; and fifth, you must give money to the poor. Our story today is about giving money to the poor. The Sufi master and dervish, Sheik Nasir el-Din Shah, told this story.
*****
Once there was a man who was very troubled in his mind. He faced such great troubles in his life that he could see no way out — oh, his problems were so great that I dare not tell you what they were. If you heard all his problems, you would be desperately sad for a month.
And yet his troubles kept growing worse. It got so bad, his friends gave up on him, his servants moved out, he had no one to talk to but his cat. In desperation, the man swore that if he ever found a way out of his troubles, he would sell his house, and give all the money he gained from selling his house to the poor people who lived in his city.
Soon thereafter, his troubles miraculously came to an end! Within two or three days, everything was fine once again. He sighed with relief. Once again, he could enjoy living in his beautiful house — and then he remembered. He had sworn that if he ever got out of his troubles, he would sell his beautiful house, and give all the money to the poor.
He realized he did not want to sell his house. Why, if he sold his house, and gave away all that money, he would have so little money left, he would have to live in a much smaller house. That would be most unpleasant! But he swore he would sell his house. But there was no reason for him to give away so much money; far better that he keep the money for himself.
So he told people they could buy his house for one piece of silver. However, his cat must continue to live in the house — everyone knows that cats don’t like to move — and the cat was such a valuable cat, he must sell it for no less than ten thousand pieces of silver.
A rich merchant bought the house for one piece of silver, and also bought the cat for ten thousand pieces of silver. The man gave all the money he gained from the sale of his house to the poor — which was only one piece of silver. But the money from the sale of the cat — ten thousand pieces of silver — that money, the man kept.
*****
Sheik Nasir el-Din Shah did not say what happened to the man afterwards. But Sheik Nasir el-Din Shah did say that many people are just like the man who sold his house for one piece of silver. Many people resolve to do the right thing, but then they change things around in their minds to make it easier, and make it be to their advantage. Nasir el-Din Shah said that until we can stop doing this, we will not learn anything at all.
This is a hard story to listen to. Even today, we know we should give money away, but instead we go and spend that money at the mall. I know this is something I have a problem with — how about you?
Source: Tales of the Dervishes, Idries Shah, Dutton, 1967.
Readings
from the final chapter of “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau
“…if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
from the Koran, 49.11-12
“Believers, avoid immoderate suspicion, for in some cases suspicion is a crime. Do not spy on one another, nor backbite one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Surely you would loathe it….”
Sermon
Earlier, we heard a story about a man who sold his house — and who also sold his cat. I was trying to figure out how many dollars that cat was worth. The man sold the cat for ten thousand pieces of silver, and if each piece of silver weighed one ounce, at recent market prices for silver that cat was worth seventy thousand three hundred and fifty dollars. The house, on the other hand, was worth seven dollars and four cents (rounding up to the nearest dollar) — which also means the man’s promise was worth essentially nothing.
What are promises worth? What does it mean to make a promise? I’ve been thinking about promises this week, because right after this worship service the voting members of this congregation will decide whether or not to call me as the settled minister here. If this congregation — if you — decide to call me, we will be making promises to each other. So we have to figure out what our promises are worth, and what it means to make promises to each other, and how to live up to our promises.
We start by recognizing that Unitarian Universalist congregations are based on promises. We do not have a creed or a doctrine — you do not have to believe certain things in order to be a part of this congregation, as is true with many Christian congregations. We do not have a set of laws or religious rules that you have to follow to be a part of this congregation — as is the case with many Jewish congregations. Instead, Unitarian Universalist congregations make promises. The technical term for the promises we make to each other is “covenant.”
Rebecca Parker, currently the president of one our Unitarian Universalist theological schools, traces our modern idea of covenants goes back more than four hundred and fifty years. She writes:
“In 1550, Robert Browne, inspired by the Reformation, drew on the Biblical image of promise making between God and people to propose a revolution in church life. Churches should come into being, he said, as a covenant among persons. Not through common assent to a doctrine, or through sacraments administered by priests hierarchically arrayed and apostolically descended. Instead, people should join themselves by a mutual agreement to walk together, to keep [Jesus’s] commandments, to choose their ministers and teachers, to put forth and debate questions to learn the truth, and to welcome the voice of protest, complaint, and dissent.”
That’s where we get our idea of covenant. You may have noticed that we still like to ask questions and debate the answers. And we still join ourselves together by mutual agreement to walk together, to choose our ministers and teachers, and to keep the commandments to love others as we love ourselves.
A good number of Unitarian Universalist congregations have written covenants explicitly stating the promises the people of the congregation make to one another. The first church covenant written here in New England was written in Salem in 1629, the oldest church founded on the soil of New England, which is still a Unitarian church (and coincidentally, the church where my parents got married). The original covenant of the Salem church said this:
“We Covenant with the Lord and one with an other; and doe bynd our selves in the presence of God, to walke together in all his waies, according as he is pleased to reveale himself unto us in his Blessed word of truth.”
The Salem church still uses a version of this covenant today, and they say it together each week during their worship service. In this covenant, the congregation makes promises about how they will treat each other: they promise to bind themselves together, and walk together in the “ways of God”; they make promises about searching for truth by figuring out together how God is pleased to reveal Godsself. This may not be a covenant you would like to be a part of, but that’s part of the point — you know exactly what the Salem Unitarian church stands for.
Not every Unitarian Universalist congregation has such a clear covenant that everyone says together each week during the worship service. As you probably noticed, we have an affirmation and a doxology, but we do not say a covenant together.
Yet if you read the Annual Report of this congregation, you will see that on page 6, your Board Chair, Evelyn Gifun, writes, “We need to have… a congregational covenant that will express how we will interact with each other so that we can all feel valued and respected.” Thus at least one person in this congregation senses the need for an explicit covenant.
I have discovered over the years that most Unitarian Universalist congregations do have covenants, either explicit or implicit. You just have to poke around and generally you will uncover one. I went poking around in the church office, and found a card titled “Application for membership,” which says this:
“The First Unitarian Church in New Bedford:
“– Assumes that members will strive toward high ethical and moral standards in their personal lives and in the community;
“– Leaves members free to formulate their religious beliefs according to their individual needs, conscience, and degree of maturity;
“– Works for the understanding and promotion of a religion of love, assuming a spirit of cooperation and tolerance toward other religious groups;
“– Cooperates and contributes to the Unitarian Universalist Association, but is not controlled by any denominational authority nor committed to any system of theological belief;
“I hereby make application for membership, promising to make a reasonable effort to attend and support this church and the ideals for which it stands.”
This may be an application for membership, but to me it sounds like a covenant. This little card tells us what the church stands for, and asks us if we are willing to promise to uphold what the church stands for. Like most covenants, it asks us to stand by the other people in the church, and at the same time it asks us to align ourselves with something higher than ourselves. It tells us that there is no creed or doctrine we have to believe in, and it tells us that there is no higher authority than ourselves. It tells us that we are free to question and debate religion over the course of our lives. Perhaps most importantly, it tells us ours is a religion which grows out of love, flowering in a spirit of cooperation.
Because it is an application for membership, it perhaps doesn’t quite sound like a covenant. But if I said this —
“We, the members and friends of First Untiarian of New Bedford, strive toward high ethical and moral standards in our personal lives and in the community;
“We leave ourselves free to formulate our religious beliefs according to our individual needs, conscience, and degree of maturity;
“We work for the understanding and promotion of a religion of love, assuming a spirit of cooperation and tolerance towards other religious groups;
“We cooperate with and contribute to the Unitarian Universalist Association, but we are not controlled by any denominational authority; nor are we committed to any system of theological belief;
“And we promise to attend and support this church and this ideals for which it stands.”
If I put it that way, it begins to sound more like a covenant. You may disagree that this represents a covenant. Yet even so, I still believe this congregation already has some kind of a covenant — covenants are a part of who we are as religious liberals, as Unitarian Universalists — and that we need to let the light of day shine on that covenant, whatever it may be, so that it may grow, and blossom, and set fruit.
Covenants are crucially important: Evelyn Gifun says so in her annual report; and the second reading this morning tells what can happen if we don’t make covenantal promises to value and respect one anotehr. The author of the Koran says to “avoid immoderate suspicion… do not spy on one another, nor backbite one another.” That is what we try to avoid with a covenant — we make promises to one another so we don’t have to always suspect one another, so we don’t have to waste time spying on one another, so we can stop backbiting.
Fazlur Rahman, a liberal Islamic theologian, says this passage of the Koran grows out of the firm belief that all human beings are essentially equal. And — this passage tells us that we human beings all too often forget value and respect each other — all too often, we treat each other badly, we are suspicious of each other, we engage in backbiting.
Backbiting destroys the promises we make to each other, just as the man in the story destroyed his promise by selling his cat for far too much money. Did you ever think of the literal meaning of “backbiting”? I love how the Koran puts it: “Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Surely you would loathe it.” Yuck! Cannibalism! You bet I would loathe it! And, boy, does that image help remind me to keep the covenantal promise of radical human equality.
If you call me as your settled minister, we will be making such promises to one another. Above all, we will promise to value each other and respect each other. Above all, we will promise to devote ourselves to something larger than ourselves, devote ourselves to this and other ideals.
Furthermore, in this congregation we will promise to strive towards high ethical and moral standards in our personal lives, and in the community — that’s all of us, you and me. We will promise to leave each other free to develop our religious beliefs according to need, conscience, and level of maturity. We will promise to work for the understanding and promotion of a religion of love. We will promise to contribute to and cooperate with the larger Unitarian Universalist movement, but we will assume primary authority over ourselves. We will promise to avoid the limits of any one system of theological belief; and to attend church; and to support this church, and support the ideals for which this church stands.
If we advance confidently in the direction of this, our dream, we will meet with success as yet undreamed of — we will put old things behind us, to find that our old covenant will be expanded, interpreted in our favor with yet more liberality. There will be the universal in what we do; with our covenant, with our promises to each other, we grow, and touch the eternal oneness of all life, and it yields to our touch, itself changing and growing. If we keep our promises truly, the universe changes for the better.