I’m bringing back out one of my camp pictures to start, because you know I love camp…
When our summer youth camps take place at Loch Leven Camp and Retreat Center, one of the first things that happens is that the campers work together to create a camp covenant. It doesn’t matter what age the campers are; I’ve led camps for 6 and 7 year-olds, and I’ve led camps for high schoolers. At the beginning of camp, we create a camp covenant.
The covenant you all created as part of the New Beginnings process is very similar.
There are a few necessary parts of the camp covenant, to ensure that the campers stay safe. Campers are told to always stay within the camp boundaries, and to never go off by themselves.
But mostly, the items on the covenant come from the campers themselves.
Campers like to include in their covenant statements about how they will treat each other. Depending on the age of the campers, they may suggest things like:
Be nice.
Listen before responding.
Use “I” statements.
Take turns.
At camp, the covenant we create is how we begin to form a community together. Generally speaking, the campers like making a covenant. It reassures them that camp is a physically and emotionally safe place for them to be.
For younger campers especially, there can be a lot of anxiety coming to camp. Some have never spent a night away from home before. They arrive, and are thrown into a community that mostly has people they’ve never met before. That can be scary.
For older campers, there can also be a lot of anxiety. They may have been to camp before and are happy to be back with friends they haven’t seen in a long time, but they are also dealing with difficult, emotional issues in their lives, and they know that camp is a place where they will be invited to process some of that, and to share some of that, and to perhaps explore new ways of dealing with the challenges of life, and new ways of expressing their identity in the world.
Creating a covenant together is the first step to creating a community where campers feel safe, despite the anxiety they feel.
It makes me wonder how much anxiety the Hebrew people felt as they journeyed through the wilderness, and prepared to start a new life together in the new land God promised them. The nation they were about to form was something completely new to them. Like camp, it had the promise and potential of being something amazingly wonderful, but at the same time it was all so new, so unfamiliar, that there was bound to be a lot of anxiety.
There was no roadmap to what they were doing. There were so many unknowns.
In the past, back in Egypt, everything they did was dictated to them by Pharaoh. They had no choice, they had no freedom, and they didn’t need to think about how to form a community, because the very structure of their society was determined for them.
And, to be honest, there was some comfort in that. Several times on their journey to the Promised Land, they expressed their longing to return to Egypt, back to where things were familiar, because familiar felt safe, even if they were living as slaves.
I can think of times in my life when a new decision held so much potential, when a life change was filled with such great promise, and yet I found myself wishing things could stay the same, or that I could return to what was familiar. I didn’t want to move into this new, hope-filled future, no matter how good or promising it was, because it was filled with so much uncertainty and so many unknowns.
The Hebrew people had left behind everything that was familiar to them, and were about to enter a new land and start a new nation. But they were in covenant with God, and God knew that they were anxious, and so God gave them some guidelines to give their about-to-be-formed nation some structure. And even though the Ten Commandments sounds to us like a restrictive, constraining list of rules, for the Hebrews, it gave them the freedom to feel a little more secure, to feel a little more safe, in the land they were about to enter. It allowed them to feel a little safer, a little more reassured, as they embarked into this new unknown.
Maybe you never thought of the Ten Commandments as a liberating, freeing set of rules. Maybe you’ve only thought of them as restrictions, limiting freedom, even if for the common good.
So let’s take a look at these commandments, and see if we can’t get a new perspective.
“You shall have no other Gods before me;” “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.” The first two commands are about how we show love to God. They remind us that this covenant we are in is a holy covenant, and that God is at the center of it.
If God is not at the center of our life, then whatever is at the center of our life has become our idol. Keep God at the center, and the covenant can move forward, and the community can thrive.
“Remember the sabbath day; keep it holy.” Keeping one day a week as holy, as sacred, as set-apart, provides a weekly reminder to us of the covenant we are in. Without that weekly sabbath, we forget about the covenant that guides us.
“Honor your father and mother.” For the Hebrew people, their fathers and mothers, their grandfathers and their grandmothers, these are the ones who made the decision to leave Egypt and follow God into the wilderness. Maybe a part of the reason for this command is that, as we contemplate following God into our own unknown future, we may find reassurance and courage for making bold decisions that allow us to enter into whatever new land God is calling us to.
“You shall not murder.” I don’t know about you, but I like the comfort of knowing that my neighbor isn’t going to kill me. And I like the comfort of knowing that my neighbor isn’t going to steal from me. I like that my neighbor is going to honor the sacred relationship I have with my spouse. I like that my neighbor isn’t going to say false things about me that tarnish my reputation. I like that we can live peaceably together.
That’s what covenant is all about.
And knowing that this is how we are going to live together, how we are going to honor God together, and how we are going to respect one another, is reassuring to me. It calms my anxiety. It allows decisions to be based on love, and not fear.
Which is exactly what a covenant should do.
At camp, once the covenant is created, and everyone agrees on it, it is common for all the campers in the group to sign their name on the covenant, as a way of affirming their commitment to live by the covenant.
The Hebrew people also affirmed their covenant, in various ways, including verbal affirmation, various liturgies and acts of worship, and circumcision.
Many generations later, Jesus would talk about a “new covenant,” but the covenant he talked about was actually more of a renewal of the old covenant, or a restating, or maybe even a correction, not of the original covenant, but of how it was being lived out in his time.
After all, the covenant Jesus talked about is a covenant of love, and love is what the original covenant is also about: love of God, love of neighbor. That’s really what the Ten Commandments and all the rest of the Torah are really all about.
And we renew our part in the covenant each week, when we participate in the Lord’s Supper. At the Table, we accept the love of God we know through Jesus Christ, and we recommit ourselves to loving God and loving our neighbor, doing all Christ taught us to do, sharing in the work of making God’s reign of shalom real on earth, as it is in heaven.
In addition to being in covenant with God, we are in covenant with each other. And there are several ways we affirm that covenant.
Each Sunday in worship, we state that this is a safe space for all God’s children.
We agree to abide by that as we worship together, in an effort to make everyone feel safe and welcome, in the same way that our covenants at camp help campers feel safe and welcome. This statement, and the other “rules” we live by, free us as individuals to be who we feel God is calling us to be in this space, and it frees us to be the church we believe God is calling us to be.
As a denomination, we have a “Design” that guides and structures our life together. The Design is an agreement rooted in our love for one another and our love for God. It frees us to be who we feel God is calling us to be. It’s a document that we came up with, that basically outlines how we are going to live and work together as a community of Disciples.
The Design was adopted in 1969. A lot has changed in the world since then! And, in some ways, the Design has become restrictive in what it allows us as a church to do.
So, we are in the process of revising the Design. At the General Assembly this past summer, several changes were made to the Design, affecting things like how future General Assemblies will meet, and how congregations will be represented at the General Assembly and on the General Board.
Some events will be online-only, while others will be hybrid, with in-person and online participation. This will allow more people to attend, will reduce costs, and will allow a more streamlined process, strengthening our covenant with one another across the denomination.
Being in covenant is hard work. It requires commitment, sacrifice, and agreeing to abide by the rules we’ve agreed upon. We forego some of our rights, and agree to live by a set of rules, because we value being part of a community.
Being in covenant frees us to join together in ministry, to form a community grounded in the love and hope of God, and to do far more than any one of us could do by ourselves, or any single congregation can do by itself.
Being in covenant is a commitment to unity. Uniting our hearts with God, we agree to follow the rules God has given us. Uniting our hearts with one another, we agree to abide by the rules we have set for our life together.
And, in the end, this allows us to be and to do far more than otherwise would be the case. It allows us to be a part of something big, something wonderful, something sacred: God’s holy church, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world…
I guess I can’t end without reminding you that we have, coming up next weekend, our Regional Gathering, which is a one-day coming together of our congregations here in the Pacific Southwest Region. It is one way we strengthen and affirm the covenant we have with each other…
It takes place next Saturday in Fullerton; check your bulletin or your weekly email for more info.
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