A Vowed Life
Suggested scriptures: Joshua 24: 1,14-15 John 6:60-68
“Choose this day whom you will serve,
but as for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)
I was used to thinking about faithfulness.
I’d even preached on that.
But a recent conversation with my spiritual director
took my reflections to a whole new level.
“You have chosen to live a vowed life,” she said to me.
A vowed life?
But that’s what nuns or monks or priests do.
What has that to do with me?
Years ago Susan and I exchanged vows as life partners.
I shape my life around that vow.
It isn’t Susan who is the center of my life, it is the vow. There are days when Susan is the last person on earth I
want to build my life around, or even speak to.
But on those days, there is that vow, holding me.
When I offered that vow,
that meant that in order to say yes to some things,
I was choosing, and promising always to choose,
to say no to some other things.
Indeed, that is a vowed life.
My spiritual director pressed me to go a little deeper.
She helped me see that in my ministry, too,
I have chosen to live a vowed life.
Protestants do not always view ministry that way,
but at least for me my ordination was about taking a vow.
It was not just a promise to do certain tasks, like preaching. It was about something much deeper than that.
I agreed to live a certain kind of life,
and to allow that life to stand as a public witness.
That vow meant I was offering not just what I do,
but who I am.
It meant that I would allow my faithfulness and my
fickleness to be visible to others.
It meant there are options that I will say no to.
So as an ordained person, I have chosen to live a vowed life.
Long after that conversation was over,
I came to another insight.
I live a vowed life because I am in a covenant relationship;
I live a vowed life as a pastor;
but first of all I live a vowed life because I am baptized.
I was baptized as a child,
and of course I had a simpler understanding then.
But as an adult,
I recognize that in reaffirming my baptism,
I am saying yes to a vowed life.
I am committing my life to God, to the way of Jesus,
way of justice, prayer and compassion that Jesus modeled.
My baptism means that I agree to live my life one way
and not another way,
and that I’ll live it that way whether I, at any given moment, feel like it or not.
Indeed, I am baptized into a vowed life.
Vow is a very good word. It is a strong word.
Our tradition has a similar word: we talk about covenant.
We make many covenants in our lives.
Like a deep spiritual life,
keeping covenant requires discipline.
Perhaps that is why we often have a poor track record at
living out the promises we make.
We are not always encouraged to accept discipline.
But you see, discipline is very connected to hope:
when we practice discipline in our lives,
we are expressing hope in a future, in growth, in
possibilities for something better.
Practicing discipline is about making room and time for the
Spirit to work.
This is the stuff of covenant, of vows.
It is also the stuff of justice work.
Keeping covenant is a spiritual practice.
It is also an act of justice-making.
When we keep our vows,
we are offering a radical witness to fidelity in covenant and
non-violence in relationship
in a world that thinks both are beyond our capacity.
Our faithfulness is a witness against the prevailing gloom of
the times. It says that much is possible:
non-violence and forgiveness and fidelity and love.
Some ask how it is possible to bind oneself to another,
as in a marriage, but also in other relationships,
even like our relationship with God.
How can we agree to that when we don’t know how our
feelings might change over time?
This is a false idea of what covenanted relationships are about.
A vowed life is not about feelings.
In Thorton Wilder’s play, “The Skin of Our Teeth”,
one character says to her husband,
“I married you because you gave me a promise.
That promise made up for your faults.
And the promise I gave you made up for mine.
Two imperfect people got married
and it was the promise made the marriage…
And when our children were growing up,
it wasn’t a house that protected them;
and it wasn’t our love that protected them—
it was that promise.”
If you’ve been faithful to your covenant in marriage/union,
you are offering a radical witness to God’s Realm in a world that tells us people are expendable
and our own desires come first.
You deserve our praise and thanks for the justice work you
are doing that inspires us all.
If you have been caring faithfully day after day for a child,
maybe a child with special needs,
giving more than you ever expected—or wanted—to,
you are offering a radical witness to God’s Realm in a world
that determines worth by what we .produce.
You deserve our praise and thanks for modeling for us
self-giving love.
If you have been putting your own plans on hold while you
care for an elderly parent,
or if you’ve stayed connected to your nephew when it
would have been easier not to bother,
or if you’ve stood by your troubled friend when everyone
else gave up,
you deserve our praise and thanks for standing as a witness
to faithfulness.
Even if you have stayed with your spiritual practice
when you’d rather spend that time eating chocolate and
watching a racy movie,
that too is a keeping of covenant which benefits all of us, which stands as a witness to what is essential.
“Keeping commitment involves making the choice to give
up some choices.
Really sticking with your commitment will require a person
to protect the choice they have made in the context
of life’s demands (and temptations.)
Keeping commitment s requires us to recognize that some
paths are no longer available to us.”
(Stephen R. Covey, First Things First)
Yes, some covenants need to be ended.
Some should never have been made in the first place.
But many of the covenants we end—
covenants with a partner or a church community or God—would continue to be life-giving
if we were better trained in sustaining covenant,
in accepting the ebb and flow of feelings that are a
normal part of any vowed life,
including our covenant with God.
I wonder how you look at your life.
Does it speak to you,
to say that you live a vowed life,
because of your marriage
or because of your baptism?
Or maybe you feel that way about your work as a
teacher or doctor or artist or whatever.
Or you feel that way because of some other profound
commitment you have made,
and make over again day after day?
I was talking with some folks I knew about a mutual friend
who was suicidal.
We were all trying to help him, of course.
What was jarring to me was what one of his friends said.
“Well, if he really wants to, it’s his choice.
After all, it’s his life.”
I was jarred because I realized the vast chasm
between that statement and my own belief.
I don’t think my life is my own.
It belongs to my children and grandchildren,
who are watching me to see how to live.
It belongs to my parents and grandparents
who sacrificed much for my well-being.
It belongs to the churches I served,
who have put their trust in me.
It belongs to the wider Earth community,
which is impacted by every choice I make.
That, I suppose, is what it means to live a vowed life.
We are willing to say that our life does not belong to us.
Sustaining covenant is not one of the stronger convictions
of our culture.
The message we get most often is about
doing what feels good,
moving on to the next titillating thing,
claiming our freedom.
Living a vowed life, keeping covenant,
is sometimes the hardest thing we do.
Remember that scene in the film Sister Act:
the Mother Superior agrees to house in her convent
a woman who has witnessed a crime,
and therefore is in danger.
But when she opens the door and sees Whoopi Godlberg
in her fullest nightclub singer street self,
she slams the door on Whoopie’s face.
The Monseignor whispers to the Mother Superior,
“You have taken a vow of hospitality to all in need!”
And Mother Superior says, “I lied.”
Living up to and into our vows
can be one of the hardest things we do.
But I have also, and more often,
found the covenants of my life to be life-giving.
They have been containers protecting what is essential,
preserving what I really care about.
Because of the vows, the covenants I make,
I am forced into the deeper places of my soul.
Do you think I would do the hard ego work
if I could think of any way to get out of it?
like who I become when limits and boundaries
throw me back onto the self God calls me to be.
I also like the spaciousness that I experience when I live
within a vow.
When I am in covenant with a community,
and I preach a poor sermon,
I always have next week to try again.
When I say an angry word to Susan,
She’s still there; she doesn’t leave.
I have the space to go back to her and say,
“I didn’t really mean that. I’m sorry.”
I am grateful for the spaciousness that a vowed life offers. There is room to make mistakes,
room to grow,
room to heal,
room to try once more to get it right.
And when I am keeping covenant,
I like that I am working for the Reign of God.
I am doing justice work.
I am living into a vision that is more than just a vision; whenever one of us is true to our vows,
in that moment, the vision is a lived reality:
the world in which community flourishes,
community filled with honesty and forgiveness and mutual
respect.
Perhaps you are living a vowed life,
but never thought of it in those terms.
It might help you to do so.
Keeping covenant is not the norm today.
Remaining faithful to your promises is not expected.
When we keep covenant,
we offer a radical witness of what the world could be;
we serve as a light to others
who are trying to find their way through the darkness.
So Jesus asked, “What about you?
Do you also wish to go away?”
And Simon Peter answered,
“Lord, to whom can we go?
You have the words to eternal life.” (John 6:67-68)
Jesus lived a vowed life,
and his companions experienced him as life-giving.
There is a poem by William Ayot
that offers a modern version of Peter’s words.
It is about the covenant between leaders and people,
but I think it is about any who live a vowed life.
And in the end we follow them—
not because we are paid,
not because we might see some advantage,
not because of the things they have accomplished,
not even because of the dreams they dream,
but simply because of who they are:
the man, the woman, the leader, the boss
standing up there when the wave hits the rock,
passing out faith and confidence like life jackets,
knowing the currents, holding the doubts,
imagining the delights and the terrors of every landfall:
captain, pirate and parent by turns,
the bearer of our countless hopes and expectations.
We give them our trust. We give them our effort.
What we ask in return is that they stay true.
(found on p.45 of Leading from Within by Intrator/Scribner)
©2009 Janice Jean Springer.
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