In Covenant (Exodus 20)

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.

"Taking Delight in the Sabbath" Exodus 20:8-11

Mr. Hermans was my high school economics teacher. He was the teacher who, a month before prom, asked every senior if he or she had a date; if the answer was no, he wrote their name on the chalkboard. Over the coming weeks, as students found dates for the prom, they were allowed to go up and erase their name from the list.

At first we were embarrassed; but as prom got closer, some students started drawing boxes around their names, or adding stars or exclamation points after their names. Mr. Hermans’s list helped quite a few of us find dates for the prom.

In addition to helping us find dates, Mr. Hermans also taught us about supply and demand, Adam Smith, the stock market, and principles of economic theory. I’m pretty sure it was in his class that I heard, for the first time, that a company had to be growing in order to be considered successful. This year’s profits had to be greater than last year’s profits.

Having never really paid much attention to economics, this idea surprised me. If a company made a profit, couldn’t that, in itself, be considered successful? Why did the amount of profit have to increase each year? Why did the company have to grow? Why couldn’t it be content with its current level of success? Why did it always have to pursue even greater success as time went on?

I’ve since learned that this is how the economy works. It is always a relentless, neverending pursuit of growth and improvement. No matter how successful you are today, the pressure is on to be an even greater success tomorrow. Production and consumption must increase!

This idea is present in the Bible. It’s nothing new. You see it first, I think, with Pharaoh.

In the time of Moses, Pharaoh was focused on growing Egypt’s wealth and power. This increase in wealth and power was of prime importance.

In order to achieve this, Pharaoh worked his people hard. There was no rest for them. Knowing that slaves could be worked even harder, made to produce even more, he enslaved the Hebrew people. The result is that instead of a society where the economy served the people, Egypt was a society where the people were made to serve the economy.

The people lived under an oppressive economic system, a system focused on money and achievement, not humanity. Pharaoh’s world was governed by what’s best for economic growth and power, not what’s best for people. So it’s no surprise that Pharaoh did not allow the people to rest. Rest meant a halt to production, and a slowdown in growth!

And it is because of this oppressive economic situation that God intervened. God summoned Moses to rescue the enslaved Hebrews from this oppressive economic situation, and start a new society in which the economy would serve the people, rather than people serve the economy.

It may surprise you, but rescuing people from oppressive economic situations is the number one reason why God intervenes in human history. God intervenes because God’s people were forced to work too hard, without rest, without the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of a successful, thriving economy.

In Egypt, driven by Pharaoh’s greed, the people were given no chance to pause, to take a break, to be still; they were given no chance to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Working all the time, enslaved to Pharaoh and an economy that ploughed forward and onward, they were not living the lives God intended for them. Pharaoh, driven by fear and anxiety, demanded more; what he had was never enough; and the people were enslaved to meet Pharaoh’s insatiable demand for growth and power.

Perhaps we should feel sorry for Pharaoh. He was only doing his best to serve the gods he knew; and the gods he knew – the gods of the Egyptians – were themselves slavedrivers and workaholics. Jesus said “You cannot worship both God and wealth.” Those really are two different gods, and you cannot worship both.

Because the God we worship, as you know, is a God who rested on the seventh day. After six days of work, our God took a break. Our God took a day to be still, to be content.

And God insists that God’s people do the same.

But in an economy like Pharaoh’s, there isn’t time to stop and rest. A day without work is a day without growth. The stockpiles of grain grow no bigger. The pyramids grow no taller. Pharaoh’s power grows no greater.

This was not acceptable to Pharoah.

Centuries later, the Roman Empire set out to build an even greater society than that of ancient Egypt. Rome endlessly pursued new lands, new wealth, new power. And because Rome wanted as much wealth and as much power as possible, it did everything it could to milk the economic productivity of its people.

Heavy, burdensome taxes. Strict, oppressive regulations. The wealth of Rome grew and grew, and yet it was impossible for the average person to improve his or her lot in life.

As Marcus Borg wrote: “The economic, political, and social structures were controlled and shaped by elites of power and wealth to serve their own interests. So thorough was the elites’ control that there was no way of countering their self-serving manipulation of the system.”

Once again, we have a situation where the people are serving the economy, but the economy is not serving them.

Before, when this happened, God sent Moses. Later, when it happened again, God sent prophets.  This time, God sent none other than his own son, to save the world from this de-humanizing regime.

Today, growth is still pursued for its own sake; not because it makes life better for humanity, but simply because we have come to believe that growth is good. Doesn’t matter if it’s sustainable or not. Doesn’t matter if it helps us truly enjoy life more or find happiness or wholeness in life. Doesn’t matter if it brings us wholeness or tears us apart… Growth is good. And in pursuit of growth, we need to work harder, with less rest and fewer breaks.

This is not some minor side-topic in scripture. This is a core message. Again, the imbalance between work and rest is what causes God to intervene in human history: when people are made to work without rest, when their labor is exploited for the sake of the economy, God jumps in and puts an end to the dehumanizing forces that oppress.

I said that Pharaoh was driven by fear and anxiety, and that his fear and anxiety are what led him to always pursue more and more. It’s the same for us today. Not a day goes by that we aren’t bombarded by messages that instill in us that same fear and anxiety. Corporations, advertisers, propagandists use fear and anxiety to sell you an idea and a product, because if you can be convinced that the product will ease your fear and anxiety, you’ll do anything you can to get it.

Of course, once you do get it, there will always be something else. Because the pursuit of growth is never-ending. And you become a slave to the message of society, which is the same message as the one preached by Pharaoh and by Caesar.

According to Walter Brueggeman, a biblical scholar who wrote a magnificent book on the Sabbath: “The liturgy of consumerism in the service of market theology always offers one more product for purchase, one more car, one more deodorant, one more prescription drug, one more cell phone, one more beer.” What you have now is always “inadequate and incomplete.” Advertisements push you to work harder and earn more, so you can always be ready to buy the next “new and improved” product.

Those ads are today’s slavedrivers, with whips in their hands. They are Pharaoh. They are Caesar. They will not let you rest.

Brueggeman writes: “Into this arena of restlessness comes the God of rest who offers relief from that anxiety-producing system.”

God commands us to observe the Sabbath. God commands us to take a day of rest. The purpose is to stop the mindless pursuit of “more,” turn society around, to have the economy serve humanity as it is supposed to.  According to Brueggeman: “Sabbath is an act of resistance because it insists that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.”

The Sabbath is a day for not seeking what you do not have.

The Sabbath is a day for not making improvements to your house, your income, your wardrobe.

Instead of constantly seeking improvements… instead of always striving for a better, new-and-improved tomorrow… we are commanded to spend one day being content with what is.

Contentment and happiness will never come to you if all you do is worry about tomorrow, if all you do is seek improvements to your life. Seeking to improve your life, to make tomorrow better than today, is good, but only if you are able to pause now and then and appreciate life as it is.

Two verses in Isaiah 58 talk about the Sabbath, and the thing that strikes me here is that the word “delight” appears not once, but twice. Have you ever associated delight with the Sabbath?

Listen to this: “If you stop trampling the Sabbath, stop doing whatever you want on my holy day, and consider the Sabbath a delight, sacred to the Lord, honored, and honor it instead of doing things your way, seeking what you want and doing business as usual, then you will take delight in the Lord. I will let you ride on the heights of the earth; I will sustain you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob.”

What else does Isaiah talk about in that chapter? Isaiah talks about helping the poor, feeding the hungry. The Sabbath, in other words, is not a day to pursue improvements to your own life, but it is a day on which you can help improve the situation of those less fortunate than you. With gratitude and joy, you can work on the Sabbath to lift others up. It is an interruption in growing your own fortune, pursuing things you don’t have.

In thinking about the Sabbath – what one can do and what one can’t do, if one is to follow the Biblical command – the question often comes up: “What is or is not allowed on the Sabbath?”

This is a question that Jesus faced often. He healed on the Sabbath; many of his fellow religious leaders believed that was against the Sabbath laws. But Jesus knew: the Sabbath was created for humans; humans weren’t created for the Sabbath [Mark 2:27]. This is what’s wrong with the economy: it’s supposed to serve humans, but instead, humans end up serving the economy. The Sabbath is a correction to that.

So if I ask myself: am I allowed to do the dishes on the Sabbath? If I can do the dishes without resentment, then sure. If I can do the dishes with gratitude… If I can devote my whole mind to the task and find joy in it…

When Brother Lawrence, a 17^th century monk in France, was assigned chores of cooking and cleaning in the monastery kitchen, he learned over time to find joy in the task, to find God in the washing of dishes. He trained his mind to not long for other activities, but to be content with his present contribution to the monastery in the kitchen.

If I can do the dishes like that, mindfully, fully present, then it can be a holy task worthy of the Sabbath.

But if I am resentful… and if I have the radio on, listening to ads that fill my mind with longing for products I don’t have, and I’m grumbling as I do the dishes, then no.

Can I shop on the Sabbath? That one’s harder, at least for me. When I shop, what is my mind focused on? It’s focused on acquiring something I don’t presently have. There is no gratitude in one’s mind if the focus is on acquiring something one doesn’t have. Plus, even if you are determined to get just one item and leave, you can’t shop for that one item without seeing something else that you want, wishing you could buy that too. A shopping trip always focuses your attention on what you don’t have. It does not allow you to be content with what you do have.

We are slaves to the economy. We are slaves to a society that does not allow us to rest or be still. We are slaves to an endless pursuit of what’s new-and-improved.

It is vital that we take time on a regular basis to stop this endless pursuit. It is vital that we be still. It is vital that we just be.

We should find contentment and happiness with what we have; otherwise, we will never be content or happy no matter how much we have. We should stop worshiping the gods of growth, the gods of the Egyptians, the gods of Rome, and start worshiping the God who rests on the seventh day, the God who takes delight in the Sabbath, the God who takes delight in life itself.

In a world that pushes us to keep going, to not stop in the pursuit of greater prosperity, it really is an act of resistance to stop, and breathe, and be. And maybe even smile a little bit.

Some of you might think I’m crazy for even suggesting such a thing. Mr. Hermans might say that the idea undermines our whole economic system. Yet I know that my God commands it, and my wellbeing depends on it.