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:
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.
