Covenant Relationships

 

1 Samuel 17:55-18:9

Matthew 5:33-37

10/9/22

 

               Both of the passages that we read today have to do with commitments, with promises, or with, as I would say Covenants.  So to start, what exactly ARE covenants?

               Well, what is a contract?  A contract is generally between equals, or is about offering one thing in exchange for something else that is considered of equal value.  I exchange my house for this amount of money in a sale: that’s a contract.  We agree that the house is worth this much and we exchange it.  I contract to hire you to build something: we agree that your work is worth this amount of money.  Those are contracts.  And they are usually created based on what is generally considered fair.

               Covenants, as we saw in the Samuel passage are very different.  For example, the covenant relationship that is entered into between David and Jonathan is anything but equal.  Jonathan was the son of a king: a prince.  David was the son of one of the king’s servants.  As such, he had nothing to give that could possibly be of the same worth to what was being offered.  Jonathan gave to David his robe, tunic, sword, bow and belt and in “exchange” David stayed with him.  It was a covenant that in many ways mirrors the covenant relationship that God has with us:  God as the creator has everything.  Everything and all things belong to God, were brought into being by God.  We are called to be God’s  people, in our covenant.  And God’s part in the covenant is everything that we are given from God: life, family, friends, food, a beautiful planet on which to live, bodies that can eat, sing, dance, play, stretch.  We are given everything in this covenant and asked, for our part, to simply love God and one another in return.  It, too, is an extremely unequal, uneven, some might say ‘unfair’ CONTRACT.  So much so that it is no longer a contract, but a covenant. 

               And then we come to the Matthew passage.  And it says that we must not pledge or promise or swear to do something.  As Jesus says “Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no.”  Be true to your commitments without needing to make promises or oaths that say that you will keep them.  Why would this be important?  First of all, if you need to promise something or swear something in order to keep the covenant, it cheapens all the rest of your words when you don’t.  It implies that without that promise, without that solemn oath, you are somehow less likely to keep to your commitments and your agreements.  Secondly, sometimes things happen, sometimes things do pop up that make our promises impossible.  And there is no room in an oath for life to interfere, for life to happen, for the unexpected to be taken into account when we judge someone else’s actions.  But once again, this comes down to relationships.  We trust those closest to us, without their needing to “promise” or “swear” things because of the relationships, the covenant relationships with have with them.  And so this, passage, too, is calling us to go deeper in our relationships, to not need those promises, or oaths, but instead to live in trust and understanding. 

               You all have heard the story of the beheading of John the Baptist.  Herod valued John very much.  But when his daughter pleased him he made an oath to her to give her whatever she wanted.  And when she said she wanted John the Baptist’s head on a platter, he gave it to her because he had made an oath.  It was the wrong thing to do, but he felt bound to the oath he had made to do it.  If he had just asked, “what do you want?  I would like to give you something you desire,” there probably would have been more room to talk through what that should look like.  They would have been more closely connected because they would have had to discuss and connect to reach an agreement. 

               But what I want us to do today is to look at several modern situations that occur in the church in which we seem to ignore this mandate not to make oaths, not to make pledges, and discuss with you how this mandate might apply.

               The first situation is the constitutional questions we ask of people when they become ordained in various capacities in the church.  We ask similar questions when people become members.  Here are the constitutional questions:

1.      Do you trust in Jesus Christ your Savior, acknowledge him Lord of all and Head of the Church and through him believe in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

2.      Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal and God’s Word to you?

3.      Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God!

4.      Will you fulfill your ministry in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of Scripture, and be continually guided by our confessions?

5.      Will you be governed by our church’s polity, and will you abide by its discipline?  Will you be a friend among your colleagues in ministry, working with them, subject to the ordering of God’s Word and Spirit?

6.      Will you in your own life seek to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, love your neighbors, and work for the reconciliation of the world?

7.      Do you promise to further the peace, unity and purity of the church?

8.      Will you pray for and seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination and love? 

And then there is always a specific question for those being ordained to the different areas of ministry: deacon, elder, pastor, commissioned lay pastor, certified Christian educator.

               In addition there are questions asked of the congregation:

Do we, the members of the church, accept whomever as our pastor, chosen by God through the voice of this congregation to guide us in the way of Jesus Christ? Do we agree to pray for them, to encourage them, to respect their decisions and to follow as they guide us, serving Jesus Christ, who alone is Head of the Church? Do we promise to pay them fairly, and provide for their welfare as they work among us: to stand by them in trouble and share their joys?  Will we listen to the Word they preach, welcome, their pastoral care and honor their authority as they seek to honor and obey Jesus Christ our Lord?

               Most of these, one could argue, are not oaths made.  Most are just statements of commitment.  But this isn’t true of all of them.  There are a couple in each that are “do you promise…?”  Additionally, if we are taking seriously the “let your yes be yes and your no be no” do we really need to make these statements?  After all, we would not have signed up to do take these jobs or positions if we were not people of faith committing to care for and serve God’s people in these ways.  And finally, perhaps most importantly, I know that some of you have said you have a hard time making some of these promises, and yet we as a church have traditionally insisted that they be made anyway.  We are setting people up to make statements that lack integrity.  For example, the question I have the most trouble with: “Do you promise to further the peace, unity and purity of the church?”  Because while I am all for peace and unity, I know what those who wrote these words meant when they originally put into these promises that we need to work for the “purity” of the church and I struggle deeply with that.  Originally it was a statement of exclusion: making sure that those who did not fit into the writer’s ideas of “purity” were not allowed to be equal participants of the family of faith without changing, conforming, or denying themselves.  But while that has changed, I still struggle with this.  We are not “pure” people: we are children of God with all of our flaws, all of our concerns, all of our doubts and issues.  And to me, the church has to be a place that embraces and accepts all of us with all our parts and pieces.  It has to be a place where the “unrighteous”, to use Jesus’ word, are still at home.  How can we be a place of healing if we only have room for the pure?  If we only have space for those who are reflections of someone’s ideas of what is “right” and good and decent?  I hate this question every time it is asked, every time it is answered.  And yet, how do we stand with integrity and say, “well, actually, I’m all for the peace and unity, but not such a fan of the purity part of that!”  So I find I have to reinterpret what that question is asking every time I promise to “further” that purity.  In my mind I have changed it to “health” or “well-being”.  I want this to be a place of health, wholeness and wellbeing, so I can work for that.  I want us to help each other become more whole, healthy and well.  But, that “twisting” is uncomfortable.

               And then to go deeper into another situation: our marriage vows are exactly that: oaths that we take, promises that we make in front of the church and one another and God.  When we consider the fact that over 50% of all marriages end in divorce in this country, what do these vows mean?  How can we make these promises to one another to love, cherish and honor ‘til death do we part, knowing that over half of those marriages will not last until death?  Are we confident that we can beat the odds?  Is good intention enough? 

               I also think that it causes problems for those whose marriages become abusive.  There is the discomfort with breaking a vow, even when the other has broken theirs in unjust and unfair behavior.  But sometimes, the healthiest thing we can do for ALL involved is to step out.  Do our vows prevent some from doing that?  Yes.  And then with marriages that do end there are problems too.  Just like when Herod felt he had to go through with his promise to Herodias just because it had been a promise, when people’s marriages end, there is an unusual amount of folk who feel they have failed.  I actually don’t see that.  I’ve seen too many marriages where people feel they are living up to their vows by staying married when this is the worst choice that could be made by either partner.  We end up with people saying “yes” and then being resentful and angry about those commitments.  I’ve also seen many divorces that are not failures at all, but are a step into life for both persons in the relationship.  But they often carry a feeling of guilt for those who make that decision because they represent these broken promises, broken “vows”, broken oaths. 

               In contrast to all of this, then, we have covenants.  And Covenants are not promises, or oaths.  Instead, they are commitments to God, to life, and to love.  They are intentional bonds of caring, of love, and of grace.  By love here, I am using Scott Peck’s definition of “working towards the highest good for the other”.  Covenants are the commitments that we make as people of God to being people of God: to loving our neighbors as ourselves and to caring for each person as the child of God that they are. 

I think about Tolstoy’s three questions.  Those questions are: who is the most important one, what is the most important thing to do, and when is the most important time to do it.  And the answers are always: the most important one is the one right in front of you.  The most important thing to do is what needs to be done for that person right in front of you.  And the most important time to do it is now.  When we can honor and act on these things, we are living our covenant life.  We are living THE covenant life. 

               In covenants, then, there is room for change.  There is a recognition that the most loving thing we can do for the other, and the highest good for the other sometimes, and might I say through the course of our lives, often, change.  That means that the covenant might look different from one day to another.  In a covenant, what you need today may be more of our attention and care, and what I need tomorrow may be more of our attention and care.  There is movement, flexibility, and a recognition of our call, our movements towards growth.  In covenants, we can make commitments that recognize the true diversity and differences between us that therefore call for each commitment to be made in a slightly different way for each person.  Are covenants more complex then?  Of course.  They are much more nuanced, and they require really knowing each other and each part of the covenant in order to be genuine.  But that is our call.  To see one another, hear one another, love one another and care for one another.  I invite you to let your yes be yes and your no be no, and to celebrate the changes, movements, and diversities that we share, without legalizing or concretizing them into unmoving, unchanging contracts.  We are a covenant people, called into relationship with God and each other through those covenants.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

 

Are We Our Stories?

         About a month ago I was able to attend a conference for pastors and church leaders.  The theme of the retreat was story-telling: the importance of hearing and sharing the stories that make us who we are.  I found myself troubled by some of what was said, but I tried to stay in the positive of what we learned concerning the importance of telling our stories and hearing other people's stories.  The conference ended with lunch, and as I sat with a new friend I had made at the conference, she turned to me and asked what my biggest take-away had been.  I told her that I needed time to think on that, but that obviously she had been thinking about it already, so I wondered what her biggest take-away was.  She said it was a negative take-away.  She is the pastor of an older congregation, many of whom have Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.  She said, "If our stories define who we are, what happens when we can no longer remember those stories? If we are our stories, when those stories are lost, are we lost too?"  And in her words, I realized exactly what had been troubling me throughout the conference.  

          My mother has Alzheimer's.  In her case, it is not so much that she has lost her stories, as that her stories have changed, dramatically.  She is at the place in her illness where she tells outrageous stories of mistreatment (in particular), some that she claims happened years ago, some that she believes to be happening in the moment.  None of them are accurate.  For example, when my father went outside to get something from the car, she informed me that "that man has left me and I don't know what I did!"  I explained that Dad had just gone to the car to get something and she insisted that "No.  He's left me.  He's not coming back."  When he came back in and I said, "See, here he is!" she gave me that look of an abandoned, mistreated child and turned away.  That same afternoon as I made her a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, she told us that when she was a kid she was not allowed to have sandwiches.  Again, I have enough stories of her childhood, shared with me both by herself and her siblings, to know that this is not in fact true.  Still, in that moment these stories were true for her.  

          The stories that might once have defined her, that might once have made her into the person she is are gone.  Nonetheless in so many ways, my mother is still the person she has always been. Her personality is the same in many ways.  There is consistency in who she has become, even with the Alzheimer's.  And while that, too, may change (after all Alzheimer's does take us away from ourselves  and our loved ones, one painful step at a time), she is more than all of that.  She is more than her face and her body (which are changing for all of us all the time).  She is more than her memories, or her lack of memories.  She is more, even, than her personality.  She is more than what she has done and what she has left undone.  The conference answer to the question of who we ultimately are seemed to center completely on stories. And while the conference solution to the fading of memories was that "We therefore need to be intentional about sharing our own and each other's stories" and "In the end, God will remember our stories even when we cannot," I have to say that I found both these answers unsatisfactory in many ways.  

         I agree with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin when he says, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience."  As humans, we are given the experiences of this life: all of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and stories are a part of that.  What our brain does, with its gifts and its limitations, and yes, its stories, is a part of that experience.  Frankly, the experience of Alzheimer's and other dementia is often also a part of our human experience, a part of living.  It is not an easy part, but it is still a part, still an experience that we have here on this human journey.  And as a person grounded in the deep belief that we are more than our experiences here, more than this human journey, I have to believe that our identity, our meaning, our grounding goes beyond our stories.  

        For me, then, ultimately who each of us is, is a deeply loved, seen, understood and valued child of God.  And, big picture, each of us is part of a whole: deeply, intricately connected to every other part of creation. When we lose our stories, when we lose our memories, when we lose our abilities, and our functionality, and even our personalities, we are still valued, loved, deeply important pieces of a bigger picture that is a wondrous creation.  Each of us are a unique and beautiful drop in the ocean of life.  We are still children of God.  And we are still spiritual beings experiencing that painful and difficult part of the human journey as well.  Again, it is not an easy part of the journey.  But with every breath we take, the Spirit remains with us, accompanying us in our human journey, and being present with us even when that journey ends.  Ultimately, then, we return to being simply the spiritual beings that have had a human experience.  That is who we are, even when the stories are gone.