The Promises We Share
Sermon by William Sasso
December 2, 2001

Text

Our reading this morning comes from the first letter of Paul to the
Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 14 to 26. As I read this, let me ask you
to consider the metaphor of the religious community as a human body, and
to ask yourself how you would fit into it, in terms of your role and
contributions in this Fellowship. Would you be a foot, or an eye, or a
liver, or what?

A body is not one single organ, but many. Suppose the foot should say,
"Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body;" it does belong to
the body nonetheless. Suppose the ear were to say, "Because I am not an
eye, I do not belong to the body;" [yet] it does still belong to the
body. If the body were all eye, how could it hear? If the body were all
ear, how could it smell? But in fact, God appointed each limb and organ
to its own place in the body, as he chose. If the whole were one single
organ, there would not be a body at all; in fact there are many different
organs, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I do not need
you," nor the head to the feet "I do not need you." Quite the contrary, .
. . God has combined the various parts of the body, giving special honor
to the humbler parts, so that there might be no sense of division in the
body, but that all of its parts might feel the same concern for one
another. If one organ suffers, they all suffer together. If one
flourishes, they all rejoice together.

Introduction

Later in our service today we will welcome those who have most recently
joined our congregation in a ceremony listed in your order of service as
a "recognition of new members." On such a day, it makes sense to
consider, or perhaps re-consider, what it means to be a member of this
Fellowship. This meaning may often be taken for granted, so let us
explore this topic for a few minutes this morning. And perhaps I should
make it clear that I don’t mean to review or analyze the formal
conditions of membership, as expressed in our By-Laws, but rather, I hope
to capture some of the flavors of membership as we experience it over
time.

1. The Body Image

What might we learn from Paul’s image of the religious community as like
a human body? Well, there is obviously some degree of respect for
diversity, some sense that religious community is incomplete, or even
incapable of being a religious community, if it is composed of people
exactly like one another, if it is composed only of eyes, or hearts, or
brains, or feet. There is, in this image, a sense that the religious
community needs many different people, each one with unique capabilities,
and it has to respect each one of them, even those people whose
capabilities may be hard to appreciate. For at some unforeseen future
time, perhaps in the most unexpected circumstance, each one of those
elements may have an important capability to offer. So one of the
meanings of membership is that we offer each other the unique set of
capabilities -- of thoughts and feelings, of skills and interests, of
desires and resources that we, as different individuals possess. Take a
moment, look around this room, and appreciate all the capabilities
present in it beyond what you yourself have brought!

There is another truth present in Paul’s image, captured most clearly for
me in the closing lines: "If one organ suffers, they all suffer together.
If one flourishes, they all rejoice together." In our sharing of Joys and
Sorrows, and in the many ways in which we care for each other, we see the
truth of this meaning. In joining this Fellowship, one opens oneself to
care for others, to suffer with them as they suffer and to rejoice with
them in their happiness. And most of us have, I suspect, sensed that
collective sense of happiness or sadness as members of this congregation
have shared with us stories of important events in their lives.
But beyond this, we open ourselves not only to care for others, but also
to allow others to care for and about us. The parts of the body cannot
fool each other the way we humans sometimes can; they cannot "put on a
brave face" and deny that they are sick or hungry or elated. Likewise, in
joining this Fellowship, we undertake some degree of responsibility to
let others know how we are doing -- "for better, for worse" as the
familiar phrase puts it -- and to allow them to accompany us in both the
best of times and the worst of them.

2. Membership as a Voluntary Act

But there are several important ways in which this Fellowship differs
from the human body. The human hand does not, of its own free will,
choose to join the body. The hand has no higher consciousness, enabling
it to ask, "Should I join to form this body, or that one, or this other
one?" But even if the hand did have its own "hand-brain" of some type, it
does not make a voluntary decision to commit itself to membership in the
body. The hand is part of the body, and the body includes the hand.

We, on the other hand, those of us who are members of this Fellowship,
have become members by our own free choice. Unlike the human body, this
Fellowship is a voluntary association. We are here, each one of us,
because we have freely chosen to be here this morning. We are members,
each one of us, because we have freely chosen to join this community in
the formal sense.

And there is a reason that we have made that decision. As individuals,
each one of us is complete. Each one of us is a whole human being. But we
humans are social animals, and there is a sense in which we, as
individuals, are "socially" incomplete. We discover ourselves through
our interactions with others, and the others whom we choose to interact
with will have a great deal to do with the self we discover. Again, think
about your own experiences as a member of different groups or
organizations. Think about how the people around you influenced your
perception of yourself. Think about the how the values that those
organizations stood for have influenced your own values and actions. In
choosing to be here, we affirm a set of values, and the values we choose
to affirm will have an impact on our lives.

3. Creedal and Covenantal Communities

In many religious movements, the process of becoming a member includes
formal affirmation of some theological doctrine, some statement about the
nature of God and the ultimate manner in which humans can come to
understand God. In many cases, that formal affirmation is either
preparation for (or part of) a sacramental experience, such as baptism.
In these religious movements, the theological doctrine or "creed" is
central to the act of joining the community. And the sacramental form
through which the new person joins the community, baptism for example, is
believed to change or even transform the person. One is sometimes said to
be "born again" or "saved."

But we are not a "creedal" community; we are a "covenantal" community. In
order to become a member here, one cannot affirm a creed, because we do
not have a theological creed. Our seven Unitarian Universalist principles
are not a creed; they are not a statement about the nature and existence
of God or about how we can best come to know such information. They are a
set of ethical principles, describing how we believe human life is best
lived, and they are fifteen years old, and can be changed by our General
Assembly. We do not have a creed, but we do have a covenantal
relationship. That means that this Fellowship exists because we come
together as body and promise each other that we will work together.

In a creedal community, the act of joining is thought to change the
person who joins. But in a covenantal community like ours, the act of
joining changes not the person, but the community! Take a moment, look
around this room, and think about how different this Fellowship would be
if any one of us were not here. Each one of us has an impact on what it
feels like to be a part of this community, and each new member literally
re-creates this Fellowship. Of course, this re-creation doesn’t happen
entirely from scratch each time someone joins, which is good because that
would not be community -- that would be chaos!

Well, you might ask, if joining the Fellowship changes the Fellowship,
doesn’t it change the individual at all? I don’t know that joining
changes the individual, but I can guarantee you that, over time,
participating in this community will change almost anyone. Perhaps some
of us would say that we have been -- in some Unitarian Universalist sense
-- "born again" or even "saved." But this usually doesn’t happen in the
time it takes to immerse someone in a pool of water; it happens over
time, gradually, sometimes so gradually that it is almost imperceptible.
Again, I invite you to take a moment, and think about your life, and
about the people here in this room, and about how you are different
because of your interactions with them. How would you be different, if
you had never encountered this Fellowship or these people? And how might
they be different if they had never gotten to know you?

Conclusion: The Promises We Share

In becoming a member of this Fellowship, we make promises to each other.
In a sense, these promises are like the vows made when two people choose
to join their lives in marriage or holy union. For it is never the words
of the vows that create a lasting relationship -- rather, it is the
strength of their commitment to each other that creates that
relationship. The words of the vows can never create the commitment; they
can only express it! And so it is with becoming a member of this
Fellowship.

What are these promises we share? If I gave each of you pen and paper,
and asked you to write out your sense of what we promise in becoming
members, you would probably give me a hundred different versions, but I
believe that, as we looked at them and compared them, they would cover
much of the same ground, and fit together surprisingly well. So let me
offer you my sense of the promises we share, and you can let me know
after the service is over if I left anything important out.

We promise to show up, and to participate.

We promise to invest ourselves and our resources in this community, so
that it will be here for others, perhaps long after we are gone.

We promise to care for and about each other, and to allow others to care
for and about us.

We promise to accompany each other on the journey of personal
development, helping each other become deeper and more truly human.

We promise not to leave each other behind, even when we disagree about
issues dear to us and it is hard to see the common ground.

We promise to trust each other enough to speak what is truly in our
hearts, even when we know that others may feel differently.

We promise to hear each other out in love, and to treat each other with
respect even when we disagree.

And, finally, we promise to forgive each other when we fall short of
achieving these promises, and to begin anew, continuing to value each
other and this Fellowship. These, in my view, are the promises we share.