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.

Covenant: Showing Up for One Another (Mark 3:13-27)

Welcome to Bixby Knolls Christian Church. We are a congregation that is in covenant with 3,600 other Disciples of Christ congregations scattered across the United States and Canada, all called by God to be a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s Table, as God has welcomed us. 

My name is Danny Bradfield. My pronouns are he/him/his, and I’m pastor of Bixby Knolls Christian Church; and I am so glad that you have joined us for worship today. Your presence is a blessing to me and to those worshiping with you this day.

The very act of coming together to worship is a countercultural act. It is an act of resistance. Because, in so many ways, the culture tries to separate us, divide us, even tear us apart. In so many ways, the culture has been telling us: go your own way. Do your own thing. Be… an individual.

This is the message that our culture has been giving us since before I was born - and I’m 50 years old. For over half a century, going back at least to the 60s, our society has encouraged each of us to do things our own way.

And we have become the most individualized society on earth.

When I was studying sociology at Chapman University, I read the influential book Habits of the Heart, a book that was groundbreaking in its time, and which still influences scholars in the field of sociology today. It was published in 1985 and is still in print. It was written by a team of writers that included Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan , Ann Swidler, Steven M. Tipton.

In discussing how Americans have increasingly gone their own way and done their own thing, the authors talked about bowling. Once upon a time, bowling leagues were incredibly popular. But then, the popularity of bowling leagues began to decline. Sharply.

The thing is: people still like to bowl; but now they’re more likely to do it on their own, or with a few close friends. People still want to experience the joy of bowling, but they don’t want to commit themselves to joining a league.

The authors were talking about bowling, but really, they were talking about everything; including religion.

People are still interested in religion and spirituality; but they are less interested in church membership. People want to explore spirituality on their own.

The book describes a young woman named Sheila Larson, and how she was very interested in religion, but wanted to do it on her own. Sheila is quoted as saying: “I believe in God... [but] I can't remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It's Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.”

This trend of doing things your own way took off in the late 60s, and continues today. Membership in all sorts of organizations - including churches - continues to decline. People don’t want to come together in an organized way. They want to do things their own way.

Nevertheless - in 1968, right when this trend of doing things your own way began - the Disciples of Christ chose instead to come together and get organized.

1968 is the year that we solidified the covenant that holds us together - the covenant which shapes our identity even to this day.

For the next five weeks, my sermons will focus on this covenant that holds us together, and how significant it is - and how countercultural it is - that we came together in a significant way at that particular time in history. I’m using a study guide that our denomination put together as a resource - the study guide was designed for small groups, but I’m adapting it into a sermon series. 

Starting today, and continuing for five weeks, we’ll explore the idea of covenant, what it means, and how it guides us.

Later this summer, we will all have the opportunity to actually experience what it means to be in covenant when we gather for the first-ever Disciples Virtual Gathering, joining with thousands of other Disciples from throughout North America, on Saturday, August 7. You can think of it as a sort-of one-day, online, General Assembly.

Each of the five sessions in the study guide resource includes a short video, featuring a Disciples leader talking about covenant. I’ll share these on our church facebook page in case you would like to view them. 

The first video features Sandhya Jha, a Disciples pastor in northern California who I’ve worked with, who has led trainings I’ve attended, and with whom I’ve been in contact to discuss our own situation here at Bixby Knolls Christian Church, especially as we made our way through the New Beginnings program… 

Sandhya was the pastor of a congregation in Oakland, California, which housed a number of nonprofit organizations all working for peace and justice in that community. Eventually those organizations formed the Oakland Peace Center, and the congregation - which was small in number but had a big building - eventually turned their building over to the Peace Center. Sandhya became the director of the Peace Center, which now runs the building; and the congregation continues to meet there for worship… 

I’ve had a few brief conversations with Sandhya, hoping to discover what we might learn that can apply to our own situation here at Bixby Knolls Christian Church, given that we also have a church building where many community groups and organizations gather.

Anyway, Sandhya has done extensive research in the history of our denomination, and in particular, how our denomination has - and has not - worked to bring people of different races and cultures together.

In the video she talks about how the Disciples - like many denominations - was separated by race. There were the white churches, which had their own organization and leadership structure, and the Black churches, which had their own organization and leadership structure.

In the 1960s, we began to see the possibility of bringing the white church and the Black church together.

Doing so, of course, would not be easy. One of the challenges is that we weren’t really all that organized as a church. In fact, we didn’t even consider ourselves a denomination. We were a “fellowship” or “brotherhood” of independent congregations.

Yet, despite these challenges, we did, in fact, come together. We got organized as a denomination, committing ourselves to work with one another as a united movement. And we did this across lines of race, bringing Black Disciples and white Disciples together… 

We understood - as Martin Luther King, Jr. said - that "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be." 

As Disciples, we understood that. So we came together. We decided it was important to show up for each other, to commit ourselves to working together as one body.

And we did this in 1968, when people were starting to go their own way, do their own thing; when racial tensions were high in this country. It was the year Martin Luther King was assassinated for trying to bring people together; a time when many wondered if racial healing was even possible.

But Disciples brought the white church and the Black church together. Disciples organized, and brought independent congregations together. Disciples committed to working together.

When we came together in 1968, our guiding principle was the idea of covenant. We put together a document that described how this covenant would work. That document is called the Design.

And the Design begins with a preamble. 

I have read and studied the preamble to the Design many times over the years. You have, too; We’ll read the preamble together in a few minutes, but we already sang it, since it forms the basis for the words to the second hymn we sang. 

Despite my familiarity with the Design and its preamble, I have gained a new appreciation for just how profoundly significant it is, thanks to the insights shared by Sandhya. In that video, she says this:

“We were committing to unity at a time when our nation was coming apart. We were committing, maybe even more importantly, to radical inclusion at a time people of color had little reason to trust that our white family could include us in the fullness of who we were…

“We were still a number of years from ordaining an openly gay or lesbian clergyperson, but this document, as we turned to it over and over again, would demand of us that we figure out how to show up for each other as siblings in Christ in a very different way than some of our sibling churches chose to.”

Oh, my gosh! What a radical act of resistance it was then - and still is today - to come together in covenant. To “show up for each other,” as Sandhya says. 

It makes me think again about the twelve disciples, who Jesus called to follow him. What a diverse group of people. Some were anti-Roman agitators, while others were Roman collaborators. Some were old school Jewish, while others practiced a Judaism that incorporated elements from Greek culture and religion. We know that there were times when they argued with each other, as their conflicting visions for the Kingdom of God clashed.

How on earth did Jesus ever think that a group of people as diverse and different from one another as these disciples could ever work together, not to mention organize and lead a movement that would carry on long after Jesus was no longer with them?

But I think that was the point. A group as diverse as that could only be brought together by the grace of God and the work of God’s Spirit, to do holy work.

By the way, the lectionary has today’s gospel reading starting at verse 20, where the people say Jesus has gone out of his mind, that he is possessed by Beelzebub, and Jesus responds by saying that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand…

I had us start a little earlier, at verse 13, to hear Jesus name those twelve disciples… and I find it interesting that his comment that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand comes immediately after those twelve are chosen. It’s as if he’s actually putting his own statement to the test, by calling such a diverse group of disciples, a group that - by nature of its very diversity - was countercultural; a group that faced great challenges before it even got going. 

Again, it could only have been by the grace of God and the work of the Spirit that they were able to stay united and stay together.

And so it is with us. It is by God’s grace, and the work of the Spirit among us, that we are what we are: a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world; a movement bound together by covenant. 

I’ll be talking more about covenant in the coming weeks; for now, just know that - unlike a contract, which is an agreement enforced by law - a covenant is an agreement enforced by love.

It is love that binds us together. Our love for God, our love for one another, and our love for the world.

So with this brief history of our coming together in 1968, I’d like to close by having us read together the preamble to the Design. As we read it, remember the history; remember the challenges we faced in 1968, and the challenges the world faced in 1968; remember how profound and radical it was then for us to come together in this way, and how profound and radical it still is today for us to work together in a divided world.

As members of the Christian Church,

We confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world.

In Christ's name and by his grace we accept our mission of witness and service to all people.

We rejoice in God, maker of heaven and earth, and in God’s covenant of love which binds us to God and to one another.

Through baptism into Christ we enter into newness of life and are made one with the whole people of God.

In the communion of the Holy Spirit we are joined together in discipleship and in obedience to Christ.

At the Table of the Lord we celebrate with thanksgiving the saving acts and presence of Christ.

Within the universal church we receive the gift of ministry and the light of scripture.

In the bonds of Christian faith we yield ourselves to God that we may serve the One whose kingdom has no end.

Blessing, glory, and honor be to God forever. Amen.