The Meaning of Commitment
(part one)

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The meaning of commitment as a discipline of the spirit must take into account that mind and spirit cannot be separated from the body in any absolute sense. It has been widely said that the time and the place of man’s life on earth is the time and the place of his body, but the meaning of his life is as significant and eternal as he wills to make it. While he is on earth, his mind and spirit are domiciled in his body, bound upon a creature who is at once a child of nature and of God. Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve center of his consent to a purpose or a cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to him than whether he lives or dies. The commitment is a self-conscious act of will by which he affirms his identification with what he is committed to. The character of his commitment is determined by that to which the center or core of his consent is given.

This does not mean, necessarily, that the quality of the depth of a man’s commitment are of the same order as what he is committed to. There is a dynamic inherent in commitment itself which seems to be independent of what the commitment is focused on. This is an important distinction, always to be borne in mind. Here again we encounter the same basic notion discovered above: there seems to be a certain automatic element in commitment, once it is set in motion. There are a mode of procedure and a sense of priority—one might say, an etiquette and a morality—that belong automatically to this kind of experience, once it becomes operative. In other words, once the conditions are met, energy becomes available in accordance with what seems a well-established pattern of behavior. What is true for plants and animals other than man seems to be true for man. There are many complexities introduced as we observe the patterns at the level of mind, but they must not confuse the basic, elemental fact. When the conditions are met, the energy of life is made available.

In the larger sense, something amoral seems to be at work here. It is as if the law of life were deeper than the particular expression of self-consciousness in man. It is clear, for instance, that there is no difference between the basic conditions that cause strawberries to grow and the basic conditions that cause poison ivy to grow. Whatever the prerequisites for each, once they are met, the energy of life begins to flow with creative results. The fact that strawberries are a delight to taste, and nutritious, while poison ivy is irritating and disturbing to many is beside the point. It is rightly observed that life does not take consequences onto account. Each plant meets the conditions for life, and each is supported and sustained.

Serious problems arise when the same principle operates in the conscious activities of man. There is a sense, alas, in which it is true that the wicked do prosper. When a man who has an evil heart gives the nerve center of this consent to evil enterprise, he does receive energy and strength. The most casual observation confirms this in human experience. There is a vitality in the domestic enterprise when it becomes the fundamental commitment of a life. However, the Christian view insists that ultimately the evil enterprise will not be sustained in life, for the simple reason that it is against life. What is against life will be destroyed by life, for what is against life is against God. Nevertheless, there is a time interval when nothing is in evidence that can distinguish the quality or integrity of an evil commitment from a good one. This is at least one of the important insights in the Master’s parable of the wheat and the tares. There is a period in their growth when they cannot be distinguished or separated from each other. Ultimately the wheat bears fruit proper to itself, and the tares are only tares. But meanwhile the issue is not clear, not clear at all. Again, the Master says that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” We seem to be in the presence of a broad and all-comprehending rhythm. There is a logic and an order in the universe in which all living things, at least, are deeply involved.

It remains now to examine the bearing of this fundamental trait of the life process on the meaning of commitment—the act by which the individual gives himself in utter support of a single or particular end. Energy and vitality are apparently not spread around on the basis of a general gratuity; over and above what is given for the mere manifestation of life, there are conditions inherent in the process. When these are met, something happens, energy starts moving, pulsing, becoming manifest in accordance with the form of life that has fulfilled the conditions. In the experience of mankind, the attitude or act that triggers this release of fresh vigor and vitality is singleness of mind. This means surrendering the life at the very core of one’s self-consciousness to a single end, goal, or purpose. When a man is able to bring to bear upon a single purpose all the powers of his being, his whole life is energized and vitalized. This is the same principle we have already seen in operation. It shows itself wherever life is manifest. We may expect to find it at work in man’s religious experience. In fact, it is my view that the general insight becomes profoundly particularized in religious commitment and that the “general law” reaches its apotheosis in man’s religious experience, in the surrender of his life to God. This is the focal point to which all the other manifestations of the insight quietly call attention.

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 12-15
originally published in Disciplines of the Spirit)

I had the good fortune to study homiletics with Rev. Dr. Eddie O’Neal at Andover Newton Theological School. It was a choice that I might call “interesting.” In those days, ANTS offered a course in Thematic Preaching that was taught by Jane Rzepka and Ken Sawyer that most Unitarian Universalists took. But I was preparing to be the ministerial intern at the Church of the United Community, a congregation with a special outreach to people who were formerly incarcerated, including a large number who were living in half-way houses in Roxbury. To me, studying with Dr. O’Neal would provide a tool that would allow me to preach to that specific community with skill.

My supervisor in that location was Rev. Alma Faith Crawford. Alma was a graduate of the Divinity School at Howard University, and had sent a time of her formation in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship where the worship committee set the tone for services and requested the topics about which she would preach. At United Community, she was the person who guided the worship experience for me and with the Parish Council. This seemed coherent with the expectations Dr. O’Neal brought to the “preaching act.” I knew that “Thematic Preaching” would be something I would need to understand (and buy the book for!), but Dr. O’Neal’s approach would give life to a congregation of people emerging from incarceration in a more pointed (and Bible-centered) way.

There is a personal story here. Dr. O’Neal was a voice against the full inclusion of LGBT people in the seminary. When I interviewed with him before taking his course, I told him I feared he would be judging my humans theology and gay sexuality. He responded that if I were willing to “go with him” in a course that would present an approach to understanding the Bible and the historic message of the church, that he was able to respect my position and grade me merely on my work. We shook hands on it.

What I remember so clearly in Dr. O’Neal’s presentation was that preaching is an audacious act. The audacity of the clay out of which we are all made stepping into the pulpit to deliver a word from God—”Audacious! Audacious!” I hear in this something of Thurman where he refers to “surrendering the life at the very core of one’s self-consciousness to a single end, goal, or purpose.” At the moment that the preacher occupies the pulpit, there is an audacious surrendering, and audacious revelation of what is the most important expression, at that very moment, of God’s will. For me, week after week, I hope to find the surrendering to the single question: what does this people need to hear from this preacher at this moment?

One of the assessments Dr. O’Neal made of my work way back then was that he seldom found a student so committed to preaching with specificity to a community. There was something about my work that was not just about “searching the scriptures,” but I was trying to learn about the lives of the people to whom I would be preaching, to know their expectations of a minister, and to walk closely with them in the lives that they actually lived, rather than the lives that media and culture and my own biases assumed. I began to develop my sense that preaching is “an act of public intimacy,” where the congregant-listener may expect to hear something of their very own lives from a minister-listener. The audacity of this (humble) piece of clay speaking a truth from the heart-mind of the (all powerful) universe—which itself is speaking in the lives of so many pieces of clay (my kindred)!

I’m struggling right now about a sermon ten days from today and wondering if the sermon I have prepared for Sunday will distract from that later sermon. Perhaps this will be my struggle until my Saturday practice of deciding the message I have prepared is not fully the sermon I mean to preach, and so the Saturday re-writes will commence! Perhaps this is the way that I follow Thurman in my practice of commitment, in the surrender of my life.