"A Covenant People"
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
18th Sunday after Pentecost – September 18, 2005
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[NRSV Texts: Exodus 16:2-15 / Matthew 20:1-16]

“...then you shall know that I am the Lord your God."

“As followers of Jesus Christ we commit ourselves. . .”

            When I was taking Psychology back in college there was a study we discussed that disturbed me greatly and has stayed with me all these years. It seems that back in the 1940s two groups of infants were given identical food and care, save in one area. One group was treated as we would normally treat babies. They were cuddled, talked to, touched and paid attention to in every way. The other group was touched only long enough to feed, or wash, or care for bodily needs. They weren't mistreated, but they weren't shown what we would consider normal human contact. The study showed that the first group developed as one would expect and were healthy, normal children. The second group was sickly, showed signs of developmental problems, and some even died. Why do I remember it? Because it brought home to me very powerfully that human beings were made for relationship. We were made to belong to someone, to a community and when we are alienated from that we are less than what we were destined to be.

            When the people followed Moses into the wilderness they had not yet become a true ‘people,’ a nation. The whole of the Old Testament – the word 'testament' means 'covenant' – is the record of God's establishing the covenant relationship with humanity in general, and Israel in particular. In the Jewish mind God had approached their nation when he called Abraham and had renewed this formally with Moses when he said to them, "I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God" (Exodus 6: 7). The Exodus event continued the process and the Sinai Covenant, what we call the Ten Commandments, brought it into being. This covenant relationship put them in a place of privilege, but also in a place of responsibility. God calls the people into relationship and calls them out to follow a way of life and an approach to the every day that is different from those around them.

            When Jesus says that “the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner” and tells the parable of the workman and the wage he’s doing the same thing, personalizing and extending the call to relationship. What we see in Matthew’s Gospel is what we saw in Exodus, the invitation to relationship and the reminder that that relationship, like the life that animates our bodies, is an entitlement – it’s a gift.

            God offers a gift, relationship, and in the lives we lead and the attitudes we form we demonstrate our response. So the church may, indeed, be a voluntary organization, but ‘voluntary’ only in the root meaning of that word – voluntas, will. God calls upon us to turn our wills to respond to relationship, communicating the Divine will to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We are now called to be a people of the new covenant, called at different times of day and in varying stages of life, to be God’s people, followers of Jesus Christ, to be the Body of Christ.            

            What, then, is a covenant? A covenant is a solemn promise made binding by an oath. The oath may be either verbal or symbolic. The oath demonstrated the actor's obligation in making good the promise. The covenant-concept was quite prevalent in the ancient near East, but there are profound differences between those and the Hebrew idea of covenant. Typically a covenant is a bi-lateral arrangement; this is not the case with that entered into by God and Israel. The covenant is seen as a gift God makes to the people, which takes the covenant-relationship beyond the level of a contract into that of a bond of communion. The Dutch Old Testament scholar, Theodore Vriezen, has said, "the Covenant between God and the people did not bring these two 'partners' into a contract-relation, but into a communion, originating with God, in which Israel was bound to him completely and made dependent upon him."

            While God sacrifices none of God’s holiness, God extends participation in that holiness to God’s people. The people may violate the covenant, may depart from the covenant, but they are forever marked by its effect. The implications of this communion are made even more profound when considered in the light of the Old Testament understanding of humanity made in the "image and likeness of God" (Genesis 1:26ff). Or, in the words of the Psalmist: "what is man that thou art mindful of him? . . . Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:4-5). The covenant brings a dignity to humans called into this relationship that is far more than any mere contractual arrangement could ever bring.

            In the person, the life, and the work of Jesus Christ the covenant-concept is raised to a new level, as is the divine-human relationship. The law of love becomes the definitive standard for the Christian community, since it was by demonstrating this law in his act of absolute self-giving on the cross that the Christ brought salvation. This is Paul's point when he talks about Christ being "our peace" and telling us that he has broken down the walls of hostility and alienation that he "might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end" (Ephesians 2:16).

            When the early Congregationalists looked at the scriptures they saw the covenant as its great theme, God’s desire for relationship is why “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” Christians, Christ-followers, were called from the old "covenant of works" into the new "covenant of grace." The effect of the covenant of grace was to bring about a restored relationship between God and humanity. In the mind of the Federal Theologians (the word 'federal' comes from the Latin word for covenant: foedus), God had always dealt with humanity by means of the covenant. If humanity responds to the gracious invitation to come into covenant relationship with God by faith, they will enjoy all the benefits of a restored relationship. The Federal Theologians understood, like Paul told the church at Ephesus, that we were now a people in relationship with God and with each other. Thus, the 17th century Congregational theologian Richard Sibbes could define the covenant of grace in a manner common to all the writers:

It has pleased the great God to enter into a treaty and covenant of agreement with us his poor creature, the articles of which agreement are here comprised. God, for his part, undertakes to convey all that concerns our happiness, upon our receiving of them, by believing on him. Every one in particular that recites these articles from a spirit of faith makes good this condition.

            What is more, in the covenant of grace God pursued fallen humanity and brought it back to its original situation. Another Congregational theologian, Thomas Shepard, wrote:

Oh the depths of Gods grace herin . . . that when he deserves nothing else but separation from God, and to be driven up and downe the World, as a Vagabond, or as dryed leaves, fallen from our God, that yet the Almighty God cannot be content with it, but must make himself to us, and us to himself more sure and neer than ever before! . . . The Lord can never get neer enough to his people, and thinks he can never get them neer enough unto himselfe, and therefore unites and binds and fastens them close to himself, and himselfe unto them by the bonds of a Covenant.

Here the individual believer is given a new dignity, like the dignity given to all of Israel. The relationship entered into by God and a "particular man" in the covenant of grace implied a relationship between all those who had entered into the covenant. That gathering of those "called out," which is the church, also takes on a new importance as the place where that covenant relationship is lived out.

            When the people gathered at Salem in 1629 they agreed: "We covenant with the Lord and with one another, and do bind ourselves in the presence of God to walk together in all his ways, according as he is pleased to reveal himself unto us in his blessed Word of Truth." What they declared as they gathered themselves into a church was what had been taught by the learned doctor William Ames in his book The Marrow of Theology six years previously. Ames said that a church can only be a church when it is made up of individuals bound by a particular covenant. What the folks at Salem, Ames, we hear at First Church, and Congregationalists everywhere understood doesn't preclude fellowship with other believers. However, it more accurately expresses the reality of the New Testament concept of a local or a particular church.

            We Congregationalists are people of the new covenant. The Cambridge Platform, an important document of American Congregationalism written in 1648, expresses this very clearly. It defines a Congregational Church in this way:

A Congregational-church, is by the institution of Christ a part of the Militant-visible-church, consisting of a company of Saints by calling, united into one body, by a holy covenant, for the publick worship of God, and the mutuall edification one of another, in the Fellowship of the Lord Jesus.

What calls us together is faith, but what sets us apart as a church is the covenant into which we enter. So the church is a particular assembly made-up of those who have come into communion, first with Christ and then with one another. The covenant, then, takes on almost a sacramental character, as do the gathered people, since both serve as a visible reminder of the presence of Christ.

            For Congregationalists, as people of the new covenant, the church is primarily a communal and relational reality. Our theology of the church does not place emphasis upon the church as institution, hierarchy, or society. Rather, it is the relationship of the believers to Christ and to one another that makes the church what it is. When the body of believers is engaged in the living-out of the covenant, that is through acts of worship ("the Word preached and the sacraments rightly administered") or service, then Christ is present in and to the church. To believe in the "communion of the saints" as a Congregationalist implies a this-worldly faith in the presence of Christ in one's brothers and sisters within reach and not just in the abstract of universal presence or the hereafter. I think how we have described the church is what Paul meant when he told the Ephesians:

So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

            When a Congregationalist talks about 'the church' he or she is talking about the "living stones," the "fellow citizens" that make it up. As people of the new covenant we are people committed to relationship. The goal for us is not how big a meetinghouse we can build, or how many people we can stuff into it, but how well we can make Christ present to each other. Our chief desire, as people of the new covenant, should be to make a loving community of faith where people can come without worrying about what someone will think or whether their ideas, dreams, or beliefs will be belittled. Our unique position of emphasizing the covenant, rather than a uniform creed, provides a wonderful foundation for building that kind of community. Back in 1939 J. S. Griffith wrote something in The Congregational Quarterly that I believe still holds true of Congregational churches to this day:

The glory of our Congregationalism is that we refuse to make the Church of our Lord a theological sect. Our position, which has grown gradually clear through the centuries, has been that the basis of our fellowship is common experience of Christ and not identity of thought about Him . . . That exclusion of fellow-Christians would be schism . . . This is the trust that has come down to us, and a stewardship for which in our day we have responsibility; the stewardship of the Church Universal, to save the Church from becoming a sect . . .

            Back in 1842 a group of believers entered into covenant relationship to ‘gather’ the First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa. That little group, less than a dozen, met in the Gilbert family cabin, not too far from where Mayfair Mall now stands, and that being the days of the Plan of Union with the Presbyterians, they gathered using the covenant of the Frankfort, Illinois Presbyterian Church. In one hundred and sixty-three years there have been ups and downs here, as in any family. I am pretty sure that there have been times when there has been conflict and life has not been pretty. On the other hand, I am equally sure that there have been many more times when the love expressed here has been beyond words. Whether up or down, this has been a place of relationship, of belonging. That belonging is what makes the covenant forever relevant and fresh. People need to know that they belong, regardless of their situation. Belonging, welcoming, generosity, fairness to all is what it means to be people of the new covenant.

            Every year at Easter I am moved by John Chrysostom’s homily and something he says in it so fits that I want to share it with you. Chrysostom, his name mean’s “golden mouthed,” said:

“If any have labored from the first hour, let them receive today their rightful due. If any have come at the third hour, let them feast with thankfulness. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let them in no wise be in doubt, for in no wise shall they suffer loss, If any be delayed even until the ninth hour, let them draw near, doubting nothing, fearing nothing, If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let them not be fearful on account of his lateness: for the master, who is jealous of his honor, receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to him who comes at the eleventh, as well as to the one who has labored form the first hour; and to the last he is merciful, and the first he pleases; to the one he gives, and to the other he bestows; and he receives the works, and welcomes the intention; and the deed he honors, and the offering he praises. Wherefore, then, enter all of us in the joy of your Lord; both the first and the second, receive your reward.” God’s offer of covenant relationship stands and we are welcomed, no matter when we come, but we must come. We have to answer the invitation and declare that we are “followers of Jesus Christ.”

Over one hundred and sixty years have passed since this church was first gathered and people knew that in this community of faith that the Lord is indeed their God and they were “strangers and sojourners no longer.” What they experienced here was the basic and timeless truth that we were made for relationship. It’s no less true today, and we don’t need to do an elaborate experiment to prove it, we are still made for God and for each other and we only thrive in relationship. I invite you to claim your covenant relationship in a renewed and fresh way and to offer to Wauwatosa and all the surrounding communities the witness of people in loving relationship, people of the new covenant, followers of Jesus Christ.