June 13, 2016

Like faith groups everywhere, we at Watershed are bound by God's covenant with us. Every year in November, we take another look at why we're together. Here, Watershed's teacher/pastor Paul Patterson shares his reflections.

When I think of covenant, the first thing I think of is food. Not just because I like to eat but primarily because of what eating together reminds me of. Because you don't eat together with enemies, you eat with friends. With morning snack beforehand and a potluck afterwards, our meetings together are bracketed by eating together.

In Scripture, eating together was about the Lord's supper. And it wasn't just a tiny cup of grape juice and a little cube of bread, like some of us remember from childhood churches. That was not the Lord's supper. It was a feast, and at the end they had a cup of wine and a loaf of bread that they would rip pieces off of and give to one another. That was the covenant Jesus performed. It was in the context of table fellowship and being together as friends. There was a sense of intimacy and it encouraged communication.

Do you notice that people gather around a meal? Unless you have a really uptight group, people commune together. You talk to one another about things, and it gives us an opportunity to serve and be served by others. Some get an opportunity to serve the food that they prepared, but we also take the food, so we have this reciprocal thing going on. Covenant doesn't have to be this big deal which is radically formal all the time. We have little covenants in meals, in friendships, in marriages, and even in our current day political circumstances. So it's nice to know that the snack we start with and the potluck we end with brings us closer together during this covenant service.

Do you ever eat because you're scared? I found a scripture passage that talks about that. When the covenant was given at Sinai, the leaders saw a vision of God on the mountain, and under God's feet was a floor of tiles dazzling pure like the sky. It was like they were looking at God's very face and they were terrified, but God did not harm the Israelite leaders. Instead of being terrified, they had a feast! "Although they looked at God, they ate and drank." (Exodus 24:11)

The covenant in the Old Testament was connected to terror, but with the covenant, we don't come to God with fear. We come to God being invited to the table and that table is the table of fellowship.

So what's the purpose of the entire idea of covenant? For one thing, it maintains integrity in a group of people, and results in intimacy with God and one another. When you have a covenant, you are affirming something that is similar between you. You're saying, this is what we expect from one another. Often in normal relationships, there is no real agreement about what we expect from each other. When you're first going together in a romantic relationship and don't know where you stand, you start spending a lot of time talking about what to expect from one another. You ask, where are we in this? In the old days, we called it being pinned, or going steady. So you have this broad spectrum of meaning.

In covenant, we attempt to nail down a few things and say, "I'm depending on you and you're depending on me to do them." Then if something comes up, we hold one another to it. Not in a real rigid sense, but to ask one another, to inquire, is it working? That's how the covenant maintains both intimacy and integrity.

Some of the main covenant situations that took place in scripture began with Adam, Noah, David, Moses, and they all had some common elements. In all of them (and in the New Testament covenant as well), there are certain attitudes and emphases that pop up.

We are called

First, there's a sense of call to it. It's not something that you trip over because you have been in a group long enough that you think you're part of it. But it is something that is an intentional calling. You hear, you are called there, you are to be there. And the way that God expresses this is that you are elect. What God means is, "I have known your soul since birth (and maybe even before). Since I envisioned you, I have intended something for you." And he intends us to be called to be his people. That's what the idea of election is. We are elected and called to be his chosen ones, but we can get that wrong. Sometimes we think we are called to be chosen, but we are called to serve. The reason we are chosen is for the world. It's not for ourselves.

So we are called, we are chosen, and we also hear something from God. Over 40 years ago I sensed a strong call to do what we are doing now. To step out of institutional church structures and attempt to pattern our fellowship on original discipleship patterns of the early Jesus followers: a non-hierarchical, non-credal, but scripturally accountable model. I heard that very early. At one time, I was sitting in the drop-in center that was the pre-cursor to Watershed, and I heard this phrase, "This is for good." I wondered, what do you mean this is for good? It was a definite and specific calling that my life was to be directed towards this kind of thing all the rest of my life. I accepted that call.

Sometimes we hear God's call specifically like that, and sometimes we hear more through our attractions. We think that's the right place for us and we check it out and find if we want to be here or not.

We are promised God's presence

The other deal with the covenant is we are promised that we will have the presence of God. God says I will be with you. It's not just that we'll be together. Some people have said Watershed is a group of good friends, but this is more than a group of good friends. This is a group of people where the presence of God has been manifest. That is a tremendously different thing than just having a cordial relationship. There is something very specific about having a life with God and actually experiencing that. The experiences of God are very subtle at times, and sometimes they're very dramatic, but we always have this promise of the abiding presence of God. Every covenant says, "I will be with you, and you will be my people."

We belong to and know God

In the covenant, we have this mutual belonging where we belong to one another and we belong to God. We also have knowledge of God. God says, "If you know me, you will obey me." Knowledge doesn't mean you are saved by knowledge, and it is not the kind of knowledge you get by looking at books. This is an intimate knowledge of God. "You will know me and you will come to know me."

We are accepted

It isn't a tit for tat relationship, where you do the covenant in order to get into God's good graces. You do the covenant because you are already in God's good graces. You are already established in Christ. He has died for the entire world and what we're doing is just acknowledging that and being grateful for that. And as a result of being grateful, we act on the basis of that.

God's enabling promises

The covenant with Noah was unilateral, meaning it was a promise of God, not a contractual agreement. Noah didn't have to do anything, he just looked up and saw a rainbow. He had no covenant obligations. But when you get to Mount Sinai, the covenant became bilateral and you have some pretty big obligations. The people had to obey and meet these obligations or they broke the covenant. There were 613 laws. With that hanging over you, no wonder you would go crazy trying to get into God's good graces! And over thousands of years, the people realized they couldn't live up to that. They needed something in order to ever approach that.

When we try to get into God's good graces by our own efforts, we often feel like that, like we have a burden on top of us. But what is different in the Covenant is that God promises we will be given the Holy Spirit in order to be empowered to do those commandments, and when you don't obey, then God will provide forgiveness, acceptance and grace. So we do the commandments because we are grateful and that's a far better open-hearted way than because we are afraid.

So today as we enter into covenant, we are entering without fear, we are entering to a table fellowship and we are entering on the basis of these promises and a reciprocal relationship with one another. God enables us to do any of it. That's why we do the covenant.

Note: If you'd like to read Watershed's covenant, click this link.