Sunday, July 24 – “Covenant: Part 1”

View this recorded version of Sunday Worship from July 24, 2022.

Readings

Excerpts from ‘Ladder to the Light’ by Steven Charleston

Reflection: Covenant – Part 1: “Climbing the Ladder to the Light”

Excerpts from the sermon by Rev. Dr. Susan Alloway:

“Telling the truth is not easy. It requires a social contract that is based on spiritual commitment to something bigger than ourselves. It means taking the idea of community to the level of kinship, a bond of trust that cannot be broken.

We are a family. we are a family of faith, and when we regard each other as members in the family–if we can’t accept that we share kinship, that we embody kinship–then somehow, that moves us off center from having to be right in our particular version of what happened, having to be right in our particular debate with someone else who disagrees with us.

If we can say, having to be right, is not the governing principle here–supporting the kinship of the family, that the family, the Church may move forward in its service to each other, and to the community–that is the guiding principle.

So it requires that we make a shift. When all around us is darkness, we tend to go inward. We tend to cling even more strongly to those things which are our opinions, our experience, our view of the world. and sometimes it feels that we are so beset that we need to even build a little invisible wall of protection around us.

But, telling the truth as we go forward in mediation and in meetings, and getting with each other and trying to forge the future of this Church, requires a social contract based on a spiritual commitment to something bigger than ourselves.

It means taking the idea of community to the level of kinship; a bond of trust that cannot be broken. So, as we step out of the darkness into the light, we step into a trust where that which we believe unites us and is oh so much more powerful than anything that separates us. This spiritual commitment to something bigger than ourselves is a covenant.”