I don’t know if this happens to you, but I have found that some of the most thought-provoking ideas I get here at Sugarloaf come from comments that are made off-hand when, really, the topic of conversation is something else entirely.

 

And that is true for the comment that led to this sermon.  I was sitting in one of those typical SCUU meetings that I’m sure most people in this room have sat in at one time or another.  The conversation was not supposed to have been about our congregational covenant. 

 

Just to remind you, our congregation has created a behavioral covenant to guide our expectations of and behavior with each other.  Parts of the covenant are printed on the back of your order of service each week, but there is more to it than just that section, so I’ve printed the full covenant and placed it in the back of the room so you can take a look at it again if you want to, at the end of the service. 

 

The covenant is not a binding document, but the ideas in it are meant to reflect our aspirations as a community of love and faith, and the covenant can be helpful when conversations aren’t going well between us.  When folks aren’t getting along or conversation becomes difficult or overly heated, we can point to parts of the covenant that aren’t being honored and remind each other, hey, remember, we agreed we would appreciate all efforts, big and small, or whatever it is that we have forgotten to do.

 

Having a covenant is a healthy thing for a congregation, and even better than that is having a covenant that congregants can more or less remember and to which they can refer, as if it is a document that they are actively incorporating into their everyday church experience.  And I have found this to be true here at SCUU.  People here remember that there is a covenant, that we are holding ourselves to a higher standard, that we are working on being loving towards each other even when we disagree, and I’ve found people here even use bits of the covenant that are important to them when they are doing the work of the church.  These are all good things.

 

And so, in that vein, when we were having this meeting a few weeks ago that was not supposed to be about the covenant at all, somehow I happened to mention that one of the parts of the covenant I particularly like is one that is not in the part covered by what you see in the order of service, but comes later on.  In the part I like, the covenant asks us to “settle our differences directly with the person involved, while staying in relationship, assuming good intentions and keeping an open heart”.  I said that I found “assuming good intentions” to be a really nice idea, and useful to mention when I’m helping folks work out differences and so on.

 

Now, the congregant I was speaking to has thinking that I admire a great deal in general, and I particularly value her thinking about our covenant.  I thought she would surely agree with my favorite part of the covenant.  Instead, though, she said something to me that stopped me in my tracks. 

 

Now, granted, I may be remembering this in a different way than she does, but what I remember her saying was something very much like, “Oh, I don’t like that part.”  “Really?” I said, flabbergasted that my favorite part of the covenant was not hers.  “What don’t you like about it?”

 

She said, “I don’t think everyone HAS good intentions.”

 

And then we changed the topic and worked on our business together.  But her comment stayed with me like a burr on a sweater, like a tiny stone that wouldn’t get out of my shoe. 

 

Because she is absolutely right.  Not everyone HAS good intentions.  I had not really thought about that.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong, and don’t start looking sideways at your neighbors there wondering what sordid plans they might really have for you and for the church.  I do believe that most folks have good intentions here at Sugarloaf.  What’s more, in my experience here, when people strongly disagree with each other it is often precisely because they both have good intentions, but they are operating from different angles, or have different priorities.  And when we have those disagreements, reminding each other that we share a desire to do something good for the church can be really helpful in taking the anger out of a disagreement, and making the discussion more productive.

 

But, even so, it is still the case that not everyone always has good intentions.

 

You could say, like another congregant that I respect has said, that everyone has what he calls “life affirming” intentions, even if their intentions are not really good for the church or for the situation at hand.  For example, one could come to a congregational discussion with the desire to accumulate more power and control, either for oneself or for the group with which that person is most affiliated.  A power grab is not a “good” intention with regard to the church, especially when the beneficiary of the power grab is not the entire church but rather one person or group of people.  But you could see, if you were feeling very patient and especially loving that day, that a power grab is a life-affirming intention in that everyone needs some degree of control over their lives and if there have been times in one’s life where one didn’t have that much control, one might try to get more control in other areas where it seemed possible to get it, say here, in church. 

 

If in your patient and loving reflections you decide that this sort of behavior is understandable, that would be nice, but that doesn’t make the behavior have a good intention.  A sympathetic understanding of someone’s bad behavior is always nice to have.  But it is still bad behavior at work, right?  The person who is having a disagreement at church simply because he or she wants more power does not really have good intentions, most of the time.  So we’re back to where we started:  Not everyone has good intentions, even at church.

 

So why would we say in our covenant that we should assume good intentions when we have conflict at SCUU, when we know that good intentions are not always present?  It sounds like the perfect situation for that old saying that makes up the title of this sermon – do you know it?  It goes:  You know what happens when you assume?  You make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”.

 

It would be logical to think that if you go around assuming things that aren’t always true then you’re being naïve and you’re putting yourself at unnecessary risk.  I’m sure the congregant I respect so much who doesn’t like this statement would be the first to suggest that two people in disagreement here at church should take the time to develop the sort of relationship that would tell each of them exactly whether or not they ought to trust each other, or assume anything at all about each other.  And I am certainly in favor of church members getting to know each other at a deep level, and coming to trust one another because they know each other.

 

Furthermore, I am certainly NOT in favor of a worst-case fantasy scenario where people who are in disagreement in a church setting sit there, blindly letting bad behavior happen without saying a word, telling themselves that despite all evidence to the contrary, the other party MUST be operating from good intentions. 

 

The word “assume” could sound like a command, if you read it in a certain light, because that’s the way it’s used in other settings, like “assume the position”.  The word “assume” can even be used to mean to take a responsibility onto yourself, like assuming a debt, right?  There’s a way to use the word that implies that one person is doing all the work and the other person doesn’t have to have any responsibility, and that’s not how I would like to see that word used here in this context. 

 

When we assume good intentions with each other here at SCUU, I don’t want us to enter into that assumption blindly, or uncritically, or with one person doing all the work of patience and trust while the other capitalizes on the opportunity.  I don’t want this little phrase to replace the hard work of really getting to know and relate to people who are different from us.  I don’t want this little phrase to prevent us from speaking up when we see bad behavior, or when we witness situations where people are taking advantage of the good natures of those around them.  If these are the scenarios that arise when we “assume good intentions”, then it is true that the phrase is not doing us much good.

 

But I don’t think that is all there is to this phrase.  There’s a holy angle to this little part of our covenant that I cannot let go of, and Valentine’s Day, the season of love, is as good a time as any to talk about it. 

 

Because to me, to assume good intentions is really about making a choice.  It is about making a loving leap of faith, and when we leap into loving faith with one another, that is a holy act, and one that should be encouraged.

 

In my experience, when I assume other people’s good intentions here at Sugarloaf it is actually much less about the other person and much more about me.  If I’m in an interaction with someone where I could decide to think that the person I’m talking to is being a real pain in the neck – because in fact that is where the evidence is pointing - but instead I choose to believe that the person I’m talking to is operating from a base of good intentions, then the entire interaction has changed for me, even if it is untrue that the other person has good intentions at all.

 

Let me say that again.  If I choose to act as if someone has good intentions then I bring an aspect of holy … communion, really…to that interaction.  I bring faith.  And it doesn’t even really matter if the other person had good intentions or not.  The holy quality still comes. It still happens. 

 

What’s more, when I assume good intentions from the people around me, that act, that assumption, within the context of our covenanted community, that assumption has great power to ensure that those people do in fact develop better intentions. 

 

The power of the covenant lies in the fact that it was created by a community of people who want to be their best selves, not individually, necessarily, but collectively.  When I follow the covenant, it isn’t just me who is acting, but it is me who acts with 97 people behind me, around me, saying we have given this some thought, and this is a picture of the world in which we want to live. If one of us is not living up to this aspiration, then the fact that others are reminds them that they wanted to live in this aspirational way too.  Because, after all, the covenant is for everybody at Sugarloaf, for those who usually follow it and for those who usually forget and for everybody in between.

 

I think to assume good intentions in each other is, at the end of the day, a way of choosing to love the members of a community that has in turn chosen to love each other in an intentional way.  This congregation has taken the time to identify the way a loving community would probably most ideally behave, and has written that vision down into what we call our covenant.  The vision is one where we take the time to treat each other lovingly and respectfully in all situations at church. 

 

And when we choose to follow the covenant, even with people whom we know are not making that same choice, at least in that moment, when we choose to follow the covenant anyway we are loving each other in the most holy of ways.  It is most holy because doing so tells everyone involved, I believe and trust that you can do better than this.

 

Believing in the potential of others is not blind, and it’s not naïve, and really, it’s not even very risky because all of us here are standing together when we do this work.  Believing in the potential, seeing the best possible in others and hoping they do too, is an act of love, and to act in this way is to stand on holy ground.  And our covenant exists to support us when we take these risks, of loving each other when we really don’t know if it’s a worthy love or not.

 

Saint Valentine’s Day is a day for us to think about the many ways in which love intersects with our lives.  In the midst of thinking of your significant others and your family and your friends, I ask that you also spend the time considering the benefits of choosing to love, choosing to think the best of someone, even when you know it might not be deserved. 

 

When you do so, you might just end up creating the very world that for now remains only a wish.

 

Amen.