Covenant in the Wilderness

When God makes an agreement with people, it is no ordinary contract.  Covenants play an important part in our life as a church, and here’s what I had to say about them …

Covenant in the Wilderness

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 119:9-16

It is a good day to preach about covenants, because we have already spoken our congregation’s covenant together once this morning, and we will do it again

as our closing words at the end of the service. They are good and important words, and they very much define who we are as a community of faith.

Covenants are central in the life of the wider United Church of Christ, too. If you were to attend the ordination examination or the Ecclesiastical Council for a person seeking ordination in the UCC, it is very likely that you would hear a question about the meaning of covenant.

If the candidate is well prepared, s/he will answer the question in two ways. The first answer would be a report of the ways that covenant is part of the Bible – more dramatically in the Hebrew Scriptures than in the New Testament. Time and again God makes extravagant promises to the people. In the time of Noah, God makes a covenant with all of creation never to destroy the earth again. To Abraham and Sarah, God promises offspring – as many as stars in the sky – and the making of a great nation. To Moses and the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, God promises a new land, a land of milk and honey, a land to be theirs forever. God keeps these promises – even in the face of disobedience, selfishness, and betrayal by human beings.

The second part of the candidate’s answer would be about the United Church of Christ, and about the ways that the various parts of the church are connected to one another by covenant, rather than by hierarchical authority. Individuals covenant together (as we do) to form congregations; congregations covenant together to form Conferences (and Associations); Conferences are in covenant with the bodies at the national setting of the church. Our whole church is held together by these covenants: mutual agreements to work together in various ways to worship God, nurture faith, care for each other, and work for justice in the world.

We have an Inquirers’ Class today for people who want to learn more about our congregation. One of the things I will be explaining to them is that these covenantal relationships are always in tension with the independence and autonomy of congregations in the UCC. According to our denomination’s constitution, the basic unit of the UCC is the local church. We own our own property, write our own constitution, manage our own finances, plan our own worship and programs, and call our own ministers. No other entity in the UCC can interfere with those activities. At the same time, we do have obligations to our sister congregations, and to the regional and national bodies that support our ministries and extend them in ways that no single local church could do on its own.

People who come to our Inquirers’ Groups have often had difficult experiences in other faith communities. They are glad to learn that we are not a creedal church – that is, that they do not have to attest to particular articles of faith in order to become members. They are, I think, often relieved to hear that what holds us together as a congregation is not a set of doctrines, but rather the commitment to be companions to one another on our spiritual journeys. Think about the verbs in our congregational covenant: covenant, trusting, seeking, exploring, and witnessing. Our lives are woven together by what we do together.

One of the virtues of this covenant structure is that it invites us to find the commonalities in our faith journeys. When we are committed to walking with one another – seeking, exploring, witnessing – then the ways that we are different from one another are instructive and helpful. If, on the other hand, our commitment was to be uniform in our beliefs, then the ways that we are different from one another would be grounds for correction or exclusion. This is similar to the contrast between decision making processes that are based on consensus and those that are based on majority rule. The search for consensus focuses attention on the values that are shared and the ways we can work together; the search for majority focuses attention on values that differ and ways that one value can prevail.

While I, too, am glad that our church is a covenantal community rather than a creedal one, it is not because being covenantal is easier. On the contrary, I believe it is far more challenging and time consuming to live in covenant than to live under a dogmatic or hierarchical or competitive structure. At the very least, it takes more time to listen to one another and work together to shape a common life than it is for one person or group to dictate how things are going to be done. That is true whether the community in question is as small as two people in a relationship or as large as the entire globe.

Further, living together in covenant successfully requires that we develop certain virtues – which not at all coincidentally are part of the Christian life. So, for example, we must learn patience and forbearance, because it does take longer to work together than to give or receive orders. We learn humility, because other people have gifts, experience, and ideas that are valuable and must be considered in our common life. We develop compassion, because living together requires us to feel with each other as well as to work with each other. We learn to receive as well as to give the self-giving love that is at the center of our faith.

As we grow in those Christian virtues, we come closer and closer to the wish of God that we heard this morning in the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” [Jeremiah 31:33] The covenants that bind us together become more than words, more even than agreements; they become part of who we are and how we move about in the world.

An Hassidic story tells of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, “Why ON our hearts, and not IN them?” The rabbi answered, “Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.” [From Seasons of the Spirit, Lent-Easter 2009, p. 67]

And that is what we really want, after all: to have holy words inside of our hearts. We want to live in a way that keeps us close to God and to all that is holy: love and compassion, forgiveness and healing, mercy and grace. Living together as a covenant community – a community that includes people we disagree with, people we don’t like, people who frighten us – living together as a covenant community writes those words on our hearts.

And when our hearts do break, when we find ourselves in the wilderness – because we lose someone or something we love, or because we are disappointed or betrayed, or because we fail to be the people we hope to be – when our hearts break, there are holy words ready to fall into them. That is God’s covenant with us, and God is faithful to that covenant.

I wonder sometimes, as I listen to candidates for ordination talk about the Biblical examples of covenant, and hear them describe the covenants in the polity of the United Church of Christ, I wonder whether they realize that in covenants we find both the costs and the joys of discipleship.

Prayer for March 29, 2009

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

Amen

During Lent our prayer time has been shaped by a series of images …

[Slide 1] The image we shared the first Sunday of Lent was “Velocity,” by Brendon Purdy. This picture of a lone cyclist led us into the wilderness of the Lenten season.

[Slide 2] The image for the second Sunday was “Spirit Alive” by Frère Sylvain (from the Taize community)

[Slide 3] The third week Cathy explored “Carmanah” by Renee Poisson with you.

[Slide 4] Last Sunday we turned our attention to “The Song of Hannah,” a work of fabric art (batik) by Sarah Hall.

[Slide 5] And today we reflect on Nancy Earle’s “Beyond Silence.”

Let us prayerfully reflect on this image …

God of history, be present with us as we continue our Lenten sojourn in the wilderness. Open our eyes and hearts this morning to hear your word of promise through the work of this artist. Amen.

Let us begin our prayer by drinking in the whole image. If some detail of the image draws your, let your attention go to that detail.

[Slide 6] That might be the center – a sunburst … or the iris of a great eye …or an explosion.

[Slide 7] That might be the head of a bird …

[Slide 8] It might be the tail of the bird …

[Slide 9] The bird might be flying towards us …

[Slide 10] or towards the heavens, like a dove …

Let us rest for a moment in the prayer this image offers … And then gently return to the sanctuary where we are gathered this morning …

Holy One, we thank you for this image and for the artist who brought it to us. May its vision and voice travel with us this week, as we continue our journey into the wilderness of Lent. Amen.