Will
you pray with me?
Lord, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all
our hearts
be
acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen.
<>Today is Reformation Sunday, the day on which Protestant
churches around the world remember and observe the courage and
faithfulness of
the great European Reformers. It
memorializes Martin Luther’s action in nailing his famous 95 Theses to
the door
of the Castle Church
in Wittenburg, Germany, on 31 October,
1517. On it, we celebrate and give thanks
for all
the brave men and women who heard God’s call to reform Christ’s church
and who,
some intentionally, some not, ended up forming new churches in the
process—including
the churches of our own tradition, the Congregational Way.
<>And it is a day of new beginnings for us here at
Old South. We have baptized two new
members into
Christ’s church this morning, and will shortly be joined in membership
by
another 21. After we do so, we, too,
will be a new church, re-formed and renewed by the presence of these
members in
our midst.
So as we celebrate the growth of our
church and the
Reformation of the wider church, it seems fitting that we pause for a
moment to
look at the first formation of our Old South Church, the first time God
gathered us together. Many of you
already know that it happened 337 years ago, when God called 28 brave
men to
leave their former church home, and then formed them into a new church. What many of you may not know is exactly how,
exactly what the mechanism was by which God and those men went about
creating
of themselves a new church where none had been before.
<>Well, in your bulletin, you will find a copy of the way they
did it: with the Covenant made by the third Church in Boston on the 12th
day of the 3rd
month, 1669. It goes like this:
We,
whose names are underwritten, being called of God to joine together
into a
Church, in heart-sense of our unworthinesse thereof, disability
thereunto, and
aptness to forsake the Lord, cast off his government and neglect our
duety one
to another; Do in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, trusting only in
his grace
and help, sollemnely bind ourselves together as in the presence of God,
Constantly
to walk together as a Church
of Christ,
according to all those holy rules of God’s word given to a church body
rightly
established, so far as we already know them, or they shal be hereafter
farther
made known unto us.
And
particularly, -- We do first of all according to the tenor of the
everlasting Covenant give us ourselves and our offspring unto God our
chief yea
onely good; unto our Lord Jesus Christ as the onely mediator our onely
spirituall head and Lord, receiving and relying on him not only as our
high
preist for satisfaction and Intercession, but also as our prophet to
teach, and
King to reigne over us; and into the holy Spirit to be a temple to him
that by
his dwelling and working in us, we may have, and be established in
fellowship
with God in Christ and one with another.
And
for the furtherance of this blessed fellowship we do likewise promise
to
indeavour to establish among ourselves and conveigh down to our
posterity, all
the holy trueths and ordinances of the gospel, committed to the
churches in
faith and observance, opposing to the utmost of our church power,
whatsoever is
diverse therefrom or contrary thereunto.—
Also
we do give up ourselves one unto another in the Lord, and by the
will of God; hereby promising to cleave one to another as fellow
members of the
same body in brotherly love and holy watchfulnesse unto mutuall
aedification in
Christ Jesus, and to be subject in and for the Lord to all the
administrations
and censuers of the congregation, so far as the same shall be ordered
according
to the rules of God’s most holy word.
And
finally we do hereby Covenant and promise through the help of the same
grace, to hold promote and maintain sisterly fellowship and communion
with all
the churches of Saints in all those holy ways of order appointed
between them
by our Lord Jesus to the utmost—especially with those among whome the
Lord hath
set us, that the Lord may be one and his name one, in all these
Churches
throughout all generations, to his aeternall glory in Christ Jesus.—
And
now the good Lord be mercifull unto us, Pardoning according to the
greatness
of his grace, as all our past sins, so especially our church sins in
negligence
and unfruitfulnesse of former injoyments;
and
accept, as a sweet savour in Christ Jesus, this our offering up
ourselves unto him in this work; filling this his house with his own
glory;
making us faithful to himself and one unto another, according to
himself, for
his holy names sake, Amen.
With the recitation of those words, and
the eventual signing
of the names of the first twenty-eight members under them, the Third Church
in Boston, later Old South
Church, was
formed. That’s it.
All it took to turn this group of mere humans into the very
body of
Christ on earth was—a contract.
It would hardly seem enough, would almost
seem profane, to
claim that the agreeing and signing of a contract of behavior among a
bunch of
laymen is enough to create a new church and bring God to life in the
world. One expects a little more pomp: a
cardinal, perhaps, or maybe just a regular bishop, or at least a
grave-looking
minister in black robes. But they had no
clergy there, no church hierarchy to bless them. Just
28 faithful laymen.
But, there was a priest there to mediate
in the making of
their contract, they believed. There was
a priest there to bridge the gap between God and they.
For you see, those men believed that when
they put their names to that document, Jesus Christ was in the room
with them. And I don’t mean the memory of
Christ or the story
of Christ or the teachings of Christ. I
mean
they believed that Jesus Christ himself, the one whom both the author
of
Hebrews and the author of the covenant calls our great high priest, was
there,
in the room with them, telling them to sign that contract, and what’s
more,
signing it himself. They believed it
because
he had said he would be.
<>
People often ask me just what we in the
United Church of
Christ believe. Without creeds to test
our faith, without a church hierarchy making decisions about belief and
organization and practice, with our freedom and wide diversity of
proclamation
and belief across our denomination, what can we say we believe, they
ask. I tell them that we believe in
contracts.
<>Of course, the founders of our church didn’t call it a
contract. They called it a
covenant. As in Jesus’ words, “This is
my blood of the new covenant.” And as in
the name we give to the Christian Scriptures: The New Testament, which
is another
way of saying the same thing.
For Christians, the final and deepest
expression of God’s
love for us is the new covenant we have in Jesus Christ, the new and
better
covenant we heard about in today’s scripture reading.
Through it, signed and sealed by God in the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to which we agree through
our
belief in the same, God promises that we will never be alone, that God
will never
abandon us, that wherever two or three are gathered, Jesus himself will
enter
in and make of them God’s body on earth, the church.
In it, God promises Godself.
<>It’s God’s contract with us, that God will not leave us
alone, not when we’re alive, not when we die.
Our founders believed that through our brother Christ, our
high priest,
we are all of us priests, all of us able to discern and know the mind
of God
just as God promised, to access the love and will and direction even of
the
very creator of heaven and earth, and more, to join together separate
lives to
become God’s best home on earth, God’s very body in the world, the
church. Which is why here in the United
Church of
Christ, we believe in contracts.
Each time new members join our church, we
make our covenant
anew. These days, Old South’s church
covenant is shorter, and plainer, and easier to follow than it used to
be. But it is still the same, for it
proceeds
from the same great and everlasting and divine Covenant, and, like our
founders, we believe that the God that was there 337 years ago to form
those
men into a church will show up with us again today.
So here’s my challenge to you: as we say
together the words
of our modern Old South Church Covenant, expect
God. Don’t hope for God, don’t look
for God, don’t wonder if God’ll show.
Expect God. Expect that God
will
be here, witnessing the covenant we will make with one another, and
entering
into it Godself. Expect God to show to
re-form us into the Church of Jesus Christ, to set before us God’s
vision, to
save us from being alone. Expect it,
because God contracted that God would, and God’s word is good. Amen.
