Can two walk together except they be agreed?

… very early in our [Unitarian Universalist] history … we insisted that creedal statements are not the proper basis for religious fellowship; more than that, that theological diversity is not only to be tolerated, but to be embraced as a good thing. This attitude, deeply rooted in our past, is part of our definition of what we stand for and hence who we are. We assert the right and duty of each one of us to adhere to his or her understanding of religious truth, and we accept the obligation to respect one another, even if we do not always agree… We believe deeply in the capacity of men and women of good will to walk together in religious fellowship, despite such doctrinal differences. It is a deeply held conviction that it is possible to respect and even love our companions despite theological disagreements.

And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,

And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;

And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:

And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

 

In a time not so far away, in a place not so far away, there lived a village of men and women and children. These were good men, and good women, and good children. The parents loved their kids, and their kids did their very, very best to obey their parents and grow upright and righteous. In fact, the parents loved the children so much that they endeavored to preserve and protect the children and themselves from the horrible and terrible, capricious and undeserved tragedies that can befall human beings. This was their way of life. They loved and cherished their children, and wanted to protect the new generation above all other things. And so they made a pact, an agreement with the bloodthirsty creatures that inhabited the woods surrounding the village, separating that village from all other human contact. Out of love it was, that the parents, the adults made a "gentle agreement" with the creatures of the woods. The villagers would stay in the village and not breach the fence and venture into the creatures’ forest, if the creatures would restrain their capricious wrath and blood lust. Thus would the villagers preserve for themselves and their children their innocence from capricious events and, with the creatures’ woods as a buffer, from the unpredictability of the world of human affairs. That was their agreement.

The movie, "The Village," is a horror story, a psychological thriller, a changing of the guard from one generation of actors to another, and a period piece. But for those who read the world primarily through relationships, that is with eyes for the agreements human beings make and in so making, knit the world together, this movie is a fascinating study of the way we use explicit and implicit agreements to try and fence in and control a wild, wild world.

In the midst of our lives there are countless numbers of agreements we make with other human beings, some of which we are aware and some of which remain hidden. Last Tuesday was the 35th anniversary of the end of the Woodstock Music Festival, where a half million people gathered at Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York, more than who currently reside in our city, for a music and art festival where two people died and two babies were born.  It was a three-day village. And though I was not there I remember how my parents and their generation marveled at how that many people could gather together in the conditions in which they endured, and not destroy one another. There was an implicit agreement that all who attended somehow understood and abided by, a fence and boundary of protection, a fact made clear when more recent revivals of Woodstock ended in violent anarchy.

We are the promise-making, promise-breaking, promise-remaking creatures said 20^th century theologian Martin Buber. Vows join two peoples’ lives together. An athletic "code" of some sort keeps Olympic competitors from killing one another during the heat of competition, an agreement not shared by the first Olympians millennia ago. Even in our mundane lives there is an implicit agreement to walk on the right side of a sidewalk so that we don’t continually bump into one another! These all are agreements we enter into, promises we make, break, and remake with one another, overtly reflected upon or implicitly held, operating upon us, motivating us, and giving us reasons why and how we are live together in a civil agreement, a civilization that keeps anarchy and human self-destruction at bay. Agreements become shapers of the meanings of our lives.

Every religious community of whatever faith or tradition has an agreement. One can distinguish between religious communities by the explicit and implicit agreements that form their fellowship and shape their theological beliefs. Some communities are formed by the explicit declaration of common theological belief. "We all believe the same thing here," is echoed from their agreements, as is the need conform to that theological belief to live that way of "religious" life. It is a commentary on the nature of God to say that God cannot encompass or tolerate diversity of belief, and represents truth only as that community conceives it to be. Other communities are formed by implicit agreements that are more difficult to discern. Oftentimes these communities will hide their agreement behind declarations like, "You can believe anything, say anything, or do anything here," a declaration that hides a secret boundary of what is appropriate and allowed. It is a commentary on the nature of God to say that ultimate and important things are hidden and the knowledge of them is possessed by only a few.

This community is formed by an agreement and promise that each member makes to the church itself. In fact, our whole communal life and our understanding of religious fellowship and theological belief flow from the idea that a covenant is central to our identity as a religious people. A covenant is an agreement based upon individual consent, which we hold as sacred because it is the product of a free conscience and an individual’s direct connection with God unobstructed even by religion itself. A covenant limits and divides the use of human power, so that we cannot use religion to persecute others in the name of truth. A covenant, strangely enough, binds the community together in a common purpose that insures our individuality and integrity.

We agree to walk together as the form of the spiritual life characteristic of this community. We agree that on this walk we will have no theological test for membership in this church or for enjoying its fellowship and responding to its responsibilities. This does not mean one can believe anything one wants. While there is no theological belief required for membership, there are all other kinds of beliefs that are prohibited. A member cannot believe it is her prerogative to speak during worship. By agreement this church has lent its pulpit and the responsibility of leading worship to its minister. So this is my hour to do with as I see fit as spiritual leader; to preach the truth as I understand it in love. Likewise, by agreement, every other hour of the week is the membership’s to do with as they see fit. In other words, no minister can deny "hearing out" the concerns of any individual member or spend the week in neglect of the church.

Our life together in this community is formed and shaped by countless numbers of these agreements, symbolically represented by the idea that covenant forms this community into a spiritual one and expressed each Sunday in the covenant we recite together at the beginning of worship. Our agreements form us into a spiritual community because they all aim us in a common direction. We agree that the aim of community religious fellowship is the individual free to pursue and encounter God as he or she sees fit, to free the mind to exercise its creative religiosity without fetters, to expand the heart towards a love for all the human family, and to unfetter the Spirit that upholds and strengthens life. It is a commentary on the nature of God to say that the ultimate aim of human fellowship and life is freedom, to liberate and cultivate the human spirit that we might love all souls.

Because of the nature of human social life agreements that bind individuals into religious communities really are commentaries on the structure of existence and the nature of God. In other words, it is more than an agreement between human beings. Religious agreements are between human beings and the structure of creation itself, its author, God!

Take the village, for example. The aim of the agreement is to retain and preserve innocence within the fenced boundary of the village. The head elder declares the ultimate value of innocence. To be innocent is to be free from the capricious events of tragedy. To be innocent is to go back to a time when every event had an explanation, even those events that seemed most inexplicable. To be innocent is to be like a child in a particular way. To a child, there are the "small" events that I produce, create, initiate, engender, and control the outcome, and the "large, ultimate" events that mom and dad produce, create, initiate, engender and control. It’s why the first step towards an adult theology doesn’t concern the nature of God at all, but the realization that mom or dad themselves cannot control events any more than we can. It is a commentary on the nature of human finitude that, eventually, is reasoned into a commentary on the nature of God. We do not possess enough self-control, or skill, or talent, or luck, or self-will to avoid events that "happen" to us. And when those events that "happen" to us are terrible, tragic, capricious, and unforeseen, horribly so, the prospect that there is no suitable original or explanation for them can engender an understandable and uncontrollable and unceasing fear. Sometimes life is a tornado and we just happen to be in the way. And the inability to understand why becomes more terrible than the tornado itself. So, often the why is ascribed to God’s immutable and unknowable purposes; the wrathful creature in the woods!

I’ve been in a tornado, literally. After it passed in the middle of the afternoon, and there was unfathomable destruction and loss of life all around, it occurred to me when I lay myself down for a night of fitful sleep, in a room with a tree limb through the window and glass strewn all over my bed, waking every time the wind picked up the least little bit, that there was nothing protecting me from another tornado hitting that same night! The odds were too great, I assured myself, but I was unconvinced. I knew, and no longer held a child’s innocence that at that moment was the only valuable aid to sleep. So I made an agreement with God to protect me that night. I have held that agreement in secret to this day.

That’s the nature of an agreement aimed at a protective innocence. It is the agreement that holds "The Village" together. It is based in fear; not faith. It is a covenant based in the fear of horrible and terrible destruction. It is an agreement that is protected by a small group of elders, who themselves have freely consented to it, but others did not. It is an agreement that gives birth to secrecy as the primary characteristic of human relationships, as one is not certain what is appropriate to think or believe or do that would incite the wrath of the creatures. There is just the fence that cannot be breached and is said to protect. It is an agreement that depends upon what we think we can control, rather than new knowledge and creativity. It is an agreement that portrays God as the wrathful, capricious, punishing "creature in the woods" just beyond the fence and manifested in the terrible events we cannot elude or understand. It is an agreement that protects innocence and the past by sacrificing freedom and the future. Thus, it is an agreement that in reality protects nothing at all. Horrible tragedy happens and we don’t know why.

In other words, all religious communities have agreements, and these can either be aimed towards innocence and the past, or freedom and the future, but never both in the same degree. Here, our covenant with one another and with God is aimed towards freedom and the future. It abhors power in the hands of the few, a small group of elites. It despises secrecy. It scorns the fear that human beings so willing inflict upon one another in the name of religion and holy explanation. It even recognizes how the virtue of love can also become distorted into the vice of hate. It knows tragedy and the deep uncertainties and apprehensions that makeup life as real and sometimes immovable origins of disquiet and incertitude. That’s why our agreement is not to provide one another with answers, protect one another’s innocence, or measure one another’s adherence to the right ways. Our agreement is simply to walk with one another.

The covenant that forms this religious community, and that is the center of our religious understanding, sees freedom to be the central value and quality in existence, and our aim is to make it as manifest as possible. Freedom means that sometimes the events that befall us cannot be explained by saying, "It’s God’s Will or part of God’s plan," because we never know enough to say that, and it sometimes ransoms our freedom for innocence and the unbearable contradiction of God as the "creature in the woods." Seeing freedom as the center of existence means yielding control such that the mind can creatively engage all possible meanings of events, and the heart can finally begin to expand towards a love for all souls. The covenant that forms this community enlists the holiest of spirits to aid us in becoming individual men and women of integrity, endeavoring to fulfill the aim of all creation: freedom

Because try as you may, you can’t fence time.

You can’t fence death.

You can’t fence the prospect of pain and failure.

But then, you can’t fence forgiveness either.

You can’t fence love.

And you can’t fence grace.

You cannot fence the power of God, that Creative Spirit infused in human beings and existence at the moment of creation, symbolized in the reminder of the rainbow in the sky, ever waiting to break through individual hearts and minds to enlighten the ways of all.

AMEN.