Eternity

This morning's service was touching, vibrant and Spirit-filled. It was also long. Thus, I have decided to reproduce some of the denser sections of my sermon below. I welcome your feedback and invite conversation through blog comments, as you are moved.

“Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” - 1 Timothy 6:12

Where is this eternal life to which we were called? What is it? If you, like me, consume a daily glass of skepticism to guard against spiritual heart attacks, you may not be entirely sure that you even want to wash up on eternity’s distant shore. Eternity can feel infinitely removed from the tangled temporal mess of our present situation. And truth be told, there is something compelling, something beautiful, about hacking through the thicket of time with the people we love.

How, then, are we to understand the eternity that has called us and that eagerly awaits our arrival?

The late Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church insists that eternity is not a length of time but instead a depth in time. It is a quality of time, measured not by the instruments of physics but by the instruments of our souls – when a single moment holds the meaning of a lifetime: the first cry of a newborn child; the unrolling of a high school diploma; the soft whisper of a lifelong friend, ‘I love you.’ These are the moments in time, large and small, predictably momentous and unexpectedly touching, when the clouds of the everyday tear open to reveal the limitless skies of the eternal. We experience eternity on rare occasion and yet it beckons us with every breath.

The depth of eternity cannot be represented, bounded or defined.

Rather, eternity must be experienced, enacted. It must bare your soul.

Over the past decade, I have come to realize that my story is small, that it is only one. But still it is one. And it is not mine alone. The story that I live, or rather, the story that lives me, has its origin in the greatness of that pulsating cosmos. It hinges on the stories of my ancestors; it turns on the stories of my family; it binds up the stories of all those individuals and traditions that have shaped me long before I could ever shape them. My story, of course, is not yet finished. And some day, death will demand my pen halfway through, leaving it to others to finish writing the meaning of my life.

This is true of your small story as well.

Ministry, for me, is about sanctifying these stories: helping us to render these stories sacred, while reminding us that they already are.

***

Last Sunday, Rev. Parsa introduced confession as a form of speaking together. And then, after worship service, this congregation spoke. We spoke our story: we adopted a new covenant.

Although I joined you towards its conclusion, I want to believe that the process in which you engaged to create this document opened space for the eternal. In the listening circles, in your coffee hour conversations, in committee meetings and draft revisions, I suspect that you experienced a different quality of time together: a newfound depth of relationship.

I do not need to tell you that First Parish is old; its founding predates the founding of this nation by almost a century. But perhaps I would do well to stress how young our new covenantal story still remains. You might say we have only written its preface. It is the way in which we live out these words that will fill the remaining pages of our shared story.

I quite like the musical analogy: We have the score, now we must make the music. For without sound, the notes of our covenant amount to little more than symbolic notation. This also explains why we don’t allow ourselves to get lost in the words. They are guideposts on our journey to eternal life, but they are not eternity itself.

If confession calls us to speak these words together, my prayer as your Intern Minister is that I may join you in living them out.

Let us not forget, though, the other meaning of confession.

At the beginning of this service, we welcomed two young souls into our care. The truth, of course, is that we will never be able to fully protect the children we just dedicated. We simply cannot guard them from the trapdoors of life; we simply cannot stave off the uninvited shadows of life. Yet, we pledge wholeheartedly and in good faith, to care for them, precisely because we know that they are deserving of our love and that love is real.

I want to suggest that our covenant rests on this same confessional logic. The ideals of our covenant are real, even if unrealizable. They point to the eternal.

Unitarian Universalism has exhibited a tendency of late to nudge eternity out of covenant. In so doing, covenant becomes little more than a promise to walk together. This is important, no doubt, but insufficient. And this reduction of covenant to a pinky-swear undermines the concept’s scriptural precedent. Where is the Holy? Is covenant not so much more than consensus? Is it not an invitation to sacred living, a path to the eternal life, a celebration of all that is Holy in this world?

Confession serves as a lens through which we may regain this holy purpose.

When we confess our covenant, we acknowledge both the frailties of the mortal and the splendor of the eternal. Our limitation comes into sharp relief only against the backdrop of the unlimited. Every shadow necessitates the flood of greater light.

***

My religious companions, we are building beloved community as we go. We are glimpsing eternity as we learn to see. And First Parish is where we practice. Church is where we improve our eyesight. In communal worship, in committee work, in our Small Group Ministries, these are the venues for learning how to live out our covenant.

Ask yourself: where am I practicing? How am I preparing myself for eternity?

Part of our building a new way is the recognition that we will fall short. That we will have to ask for forgiveness. And that such love will be granted. This is the meaning of living out our covenant confessionally.