Terms of Engagement

I.        Vows of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God”

6. I will daily read the Scriptures and meditate on the witness of Jesus Christ.

Why this messy holy book? So many different voices, so many different genres, so many different pictures of God. For Christian people who believe Jesus calls us to a peacemaking discipleship that is always nonviolent, the Bible doesn’t always seem to yield a message in line with that calling. So why search for God in this messy book (anthology, really)?

Pastor Barbara Brown Taylor describes untidy scripture,  “God’s story has its own twists and turns, its own chapters of rage and repentance along with some magnificent cruelties, but it is above all the story of a God who does not break promises, a God who entered into covenant with humankind and who remains loyal to that bond, no matter what we may think of its terms…That is the God who walks toward me in the Bible…The Bible is the book in which the terms of that relationship are explored” (The Preaching Life, 53)

Our central confession is that Jesus—not anyone or anything else—is our Lord, our ruling authority. And when we see that Jesus himself was profoundly shaped by the Hebrew scriptures and that the earliest Christians searched those same texts trying to figure out what God had done through Jesus and how to order their lives accordingly, we are compelled to do likewise. In their example we see the pages of the Bible as the best way to discover God’s reconciling ways shown in Jesus. 

In the Same Way

I.        Vows of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God”

("Holy Trinity" Andrej Rublev via Wikimedia Commons)

2. I will seek the image of God in each and every person; I will treat them as fully worthy of the good I desire for myself.

The foundation for loving our neighbor (not to mention our enemy) is the conviction that they bear the very image of God and even have a calling from this God who loves them unceasingly. Trappist monk Thomas Merton writes clearly, “[A person] cannot be at peace with himself or with God unless he is trying to love others with a love that is not merely his but God’s own love.” Merton offers great insight into today’s vow in the following two paragraphs from, No Man Is an Island:

 “It is clear, then, that to love others well we must first love the truth. And since love is a matter of practical and concrete human relations, the truth we must love when we love our [sisters and] brothers is not mere abstract speculation: it is the moral truth that is to be embodied and given life in our own destiny and theirs. This truth is more than the cold perception of an obligation, flowing from moral precepts. The truth we must love in loving our brothers is the concrete destiny and sanctity that are willed for them by the love of God. One who really loves another is not merely moved by the desire to see him contented and healthy and prosperous in this world. Love cannot be satisfied with anything so incomplete. If I am to love my [sister], I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God’s love for [her]. I must be moved not only by human sympathy but by that divine sympathy that is revealed to us in Jesus and which enriches our own lives by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.”

In Christ Alone

I.        Vows of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God” 

("Agnus Dei" by Trish Steel, CC)

   
1. I will daily offer my life to God with reverence and a living faith; I will daily pray to be used as a servant by God for the good of my neighbors near and far. 

Making—and keeping—a discipleship covenant is no easy thing, especially one with twenty different vows! But this Covenant of Christian Nonviolence  is not mostly about individual moral heroics and rigid perfectionism. We will follow it incompletely (the Covenant itself is incomplete), we will miss the mark. Yet the main focus is not simply on our getting it exactly right, but in serving God and neighbor with as much of our being as possible. Love of God and neighbor is at the true center of our peacemaking, not some outside ethical principle of pacifism.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer says much the same in the following paragraph from The Cost of Discipleship:

The Words and Witness

 I.        Vows of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God”

6. I will daily read the Scriptures and meditate on the witness of Jesus Christ.

(by Luz Bratcher via Flickr)

There are many ways by which we seek to discover new things and model new habits. We peruse books and talk shows and magazine articles drawing on social science and psychology and economics and health sciences and counseling and trade guilds and sports or political analysis. We reflect on our own experience or draw on conventional wisdom and tradition. Sometimes we watch or read maestros and imitate their work. When it comes to being the church as a community of disciples, though, these sources of knowledge and formation and practice take at least a secondary role. We trust—even though we sometimes doubt—that God’s way of peace in the world is shown in the full life of Jesus, depicted in Christian scriptures.

In our hyper-modern world where nonviolence and conflict can be studied from so many helpful  and necessary angles beyond the apparent treatment of the Bible, what makes it important for you to ground your discipleship-peacemaking in Christian scripture? [No, today’s reflections are not meant to be easy!]

An Elemental Offering

 I.        Vow of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God:”

1. I will daily offer my life to God with reverence and a living faith; I will daily pray to be used as a servant by God for the good of my neighbors near and far.

(Photo by justin tippins via Flickr)

During the opening to Lent, we may sound like a recording from the first week of the New Year: “I resolve to eat less and healthier, to be a nicer person, to turn this resolution into a new habit.” How many of us really make it through more than a few weeks of our resolutions? But the commitments we make at the beginning of Lent are of a different nature. Unlike most New Year’s resolutions, Lenten vows are made as a covenant between us and our God (and hopefully our faith community). The focus shifts toward serving God and others more than just our own self-improvement.  And rightly focused, God—more than our human initiative and willpower—becomes the source of our resolve and strength to carry out our Lenten vows.