We Have This Covenant

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005) - 2005-05-29

“…The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.” Thus Robert Frost wrote in his famous poem, Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening. And so it is with us. We too have promises to keep.

“Human beings become human by making commitments, by making promises,” writes Ethics Professor James Luther Adams, who then adds that “a covenant includes a rule of law, but it is not fundamentally a legal [contract]. It depends on faithfulness, and faithfulness is served by loyalty, by love…Ultimately the ground of faithfulness is the divine and human love that will not let us go.”1

A covenant is a binding of oneself through promises that create relationships of mutual responsibility. They do so not by nature, but by voluntary decision. “We may violate our covenants,” writes Unitarian Universalist George Beach, “but we cannot escape ‘covenanting,’ itself…for it constitutes our very humanity.”

It may be as Martin Buber suggests that human beings are the promising animal. It is something we cannot not do and remain human. Imagine, if you can, a society in which there was no covenanting between individuals or groups. Only moral chaos would result.

With this in mind, I invite us to consider the importance of a covenant as we reflect on the life of Theresa Schiavo, who the world watched as nourishment was terminated and as she died some 13 days later in a Florida hospice. Terri Schiavo was, by some accounts, in a “permanent vegetative state.” However some, including Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader, suggested that there was still life within her and she deserved to be kept alive by any means necessary.

The question before us is what does our promise, our covenant, with another call us to do?

There are few of us who want to end our lives while we are well and surrounded by friends and loved ones we still know and recognize. But after the chemotherapy and surgeries, and the progressions of the disease, some of us become less than ourselves. We are still alive, but without any semblance of the self we once were. What then?

Death and dying are not easy topics to discuss, but the more we understand death the better we will understand life. One obvious question that the death of Terri Schiavo raises for all of us is whether individuals have the right to take their own lives, particularly in face of suffering and the loss of any quality of life. Even more complex, does the court, or family member or spouse have the right to terminate another’s life. Do we have the right, ultimately, to choose to die when we want to, or to choose for someone else when they should die?

Some say yes. We have the right to control much of the rest of our lives, so we should have the right for this most basic form of control, whether we live or die, and that our wishes to die should be respected by those who are left to care for us.

Others argue that those who say they want to die are not in a competent state of mind to decide, for that decision goes against our deep instinctive sense to stay alive.

What has added complexity to the debate is the ability of the medical system to keep us alive. Fetuses only 26 weeks old can survive outside the womb, as never before. Now more of us can grow older than ever due to modern medical miracles. When we are ill we want all the technology possible at our disposal. We ask physicians to make us well again.

Ironically, we have now put doctors in a reverse position when we ask them to assist us in our dying. On the one hand we ask for all means necessary to sustain life, on the other we want to decide if and when it is time to die. While we want to make this decision, we must also consider the dilemmas that choice puts not only upon our families and loved ones, but also upon the health care providers who we ask to treat us, and the society at large which is often asked to pay for the costs of such medical treatment.

Modern health care is moving us to define the boundaries of human life. More and more we are beginning to seriously ask who will get what level of health care, who will define the nature of care, and what is the obligation we have for one another. Who decides if Terri Schiavo’s life ought to continue? Should she be the soul judge of that, or should her husband, her next of kin, or the state? Should someone who has a debilitating disease or brain injury be considered competent to decide whether to end his or her life? Ultimately, what remains is whether any of us can justify the ability or the right to judge the value of any other being’s life.

While these issues are far more complex than we can possibly resolve here this morning, I suggest we begin with the notion that life should be determined in terms of meaning not in terms of longevity.

I do not advocate that life be ended when health remains and the possibilities are present to offer love and gentleness and goodness to the world. Sadly, the one who wants to die is at times led to believe such a decision is best by a society that puts so much value on productivity and monetary success. There are so many subtle messages we receive that say we don't have worth that encouraging the right to die may be a reflection of the stigmas attached to illness or job loss or poverty.

Do we not regularly experience subtle messages that suggest we are of a lesser worth. I regularly retrieve my newspaper in the middle of the front yard or the bushes. The man who has promised to fix my furnace never shows, and after repeated calls, finally only fixes it half right. Regularly drivers maneuver their bumpers almost up to mine, urging me to go even more over the speed limit than I am already. I don't need to take these things personally. These are busy people with many things on their mind, and they don't intend to injure me with their thoughtlessness. But by not caring or ignoring my feelings and my busy life, they send the message, I'm not worth it. What if I am gay, or African-American, and regularly receive messages that I am of less worth than heterosexual white males, would I not be in a condition to value my life less, and then be less willing to want to live. For society to then allow me to die may only be reinforcing those negative messages of my worth.

What if I am seriously ill, and not fully productive? Would I not be made to feel better off not using up dollars that might be spent for someone who is productive? I share the concern discussed by the medical ethicist Daniel Callahan who writes that those who are ill will feel that the only way they can regain self-respect or control over their lives is to have available the possibility of suicide.

Nowhere are these messages more evident than as we grow older. Old age is the last phase of life, and to live in this phase successfully, requires recognition of decline and loss, that life is coming to an end and this is the time to make sense of oneself and one's place in relation to those who will come after. It is a time to allow the young to accept responsibility and leadership. However, in our youth-obsessed culture, ageism can creep in and devalue the worth of the elderly. We risk subjecting the elderly, or anyone not productively capable, to question their worth by suggesting that it is possible for them to legally end their life by other than natural means. In this they hear that they are no longer of value and medically assisted suicide is a ready option.

There is also the very practical question of who pays? More than 80 percent of health care dollars are spent in the last 30 days of a person’s life. For 11 percent of the population we spend thirty percent of health care dollars. As Bishop John Spong notes, "When the choice is made that a society will provide basic quality health care to all its citizens, then that society must also set the limits beyond which that health care cannot go."

If we are to provide for the young as well as the old, then there are limits to how much medical care we ought to provide. There must be a time when the medical profession will say "no" to a heart transplant when that will only extend life for a few months. Or it may say no to a kidney transplant for someone over 65. The issue is, in part, what do we mean by a normal life span? How do we determine when a life is complete?

Let me suggest that a natural life span means one whose life opportunities have, to some degree at least, been fulfilled. I realize there is, for most of us, never completion of those things we would like to do, and the most interesting and creative lives will always have more to do. Death will always cut short what is out there waiting to be done. It is, however, a question of what has been done that matters, and if one has lived long enough to fulfill a time of loving, and useful work, a life with others, the
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pursuit of moral ideals, the experience of beauty and travel then perhaps he or she has lived a natural life span.

The time of dying should be after one has accomplished the possibilities life holds, after the moral obligations to those for whom one has responsibility are completed, and when one's death will not seem to others an offense to sense or sensibility. It may seem harsh to suggest that modern medicine should not be mandated in every case to prolong life, but such a mandate compels us to come to terms with our finitude and is part of what helps us give meaning to our life.

Medicine should be used to help us realize our natural and fitting life span and thereafter for the relief of suffering. That means not just more life as such, but a life free of whatever pain and suffering might impede our goals of a rewarding life.

Even if there were unlimited resources to sustain life forever, there are ample reasons why a life that is without meaning should not be prolonged. There can come a time when no more should be done to sustain life. That was the question facing Terri Schiavo’s husband and parents.

As James Luther Adams put it, “[Our covenant] depends on faithfulness, and faithfulness is served by loyalty, by love…Ultimately the ground of faithfulness is the divine and human love that will not let us go.” How we are to be faithful remains the question of the ages.

We cannot know what was in Michael Schiavo’s mind and heart those 15 years following his wife’s seven minutes of cardiac arrest which disabled her. We can only suggest that faithfulness led him to decide that Terri’s life was no longer full. He saw her without strength of heart or mind. He chose for her a gentle death.

A covenant we make with those we love may lead us to a different choice than his. I argue that both Terri Schiavo’s parents and her husband were right in their choices regarding her life and death. Hers is a heart-wrenching case of great legal and ethical proportions. Memorial Day reminds us that what remains is to honor her life and all those we love, to recall all she and they have brought to us in their dying and to appreciate the covenant of faithfulness by which all of us are bound.