Covenant Community
One of the most significant ways the district board has grown in this past year has been through our increased capacity to live as a covenant community with one another. This year has held challenging conversations, deep discernment, and ongoing personal and communal transformation in the pattern of Romans 12:2. Through it all, we have stayed at the table with one another, and our work together has become richer and more fulfilling, as we are maturing into the full stature of Christ together.
Living by a group covenant drawn from Ephesians 2-4 has been an essential factor in that formation. The covenant has changed us, meeting by meeting, calling us beyond our tendency to independence and scarcity, calling us toward practices and postures that enact humility, mutuality, and abundance. I have felt it doing that work in my own spirit through the past year; I have been slowly eased toward trust and release, toward belonging and patience, through persistent engagement with this covenant.
In our covenant, I found one line to be so surprising and difficult that I almost didn’t include it in the initial draft – “don’t leave room for the devil.” I have an uneasy relationship with naming the devil that directly, because I so often see us mapping the devil onto human faces, using that language to strip particular humans of their God-given dignity. But our fight is not with flesh and blood – it is with powers and principalities, spiritual forces. As soon as we scapegoat anyone, in any form, we are playing the devil’s game.
But recently that line and its covenant section has returned to my mind again and again.
Therefore, we covenant with one another to:
Not make room for the devil (Ephesians 4:27, 31)
We actively turn away from evil, starting within ourselves and then within our collective Body.
We do not allow temptation or spiritual darkness to derail, distract, or divide.
Where evil is present, we counter nonviolently, with the power of Christ’s love.
Here’s what drew my attention regarding this phrase in this season: Ephesians 4:27 does not say “fight the devil” or “resist the devil” or “flee from the devil.” This scripture says “don’t make room for the devil.” This implies that our lives are so full with other things that there is no space for evil. We are called to live lives so full of light and love, so full of Christ, so full of all the other qualities and behaviors Ephesians 2-4 calls us to, that evil simply can’t get in – there’s just no room!
Light does not have to battle or resist darkness. Light simply IS, and darkness cannot survive.
This dynamic has also been reminding me of one of my favorite Jesus stories in Luke. Approaching Jerusalem in the last part of his ministry before his death, Jesus is healing, reconciling, and teaching. Some Pharisees come to him and say, “You should run away! Herod is coming to kill you.” Jesus’s response – “Tell that fox I’m busy! I’m doing the work of the kingdom, so he’s just going to have to wait. I’ll be there in three days, and he can get me then. In the meantime, I’ve got healing and restoration to be getting on with.”
I love how unconcerned Jesus is in this story. I get the sense that it’s not because he underestimates the dominating power and cruelty of Herod. Jesus is entirely too familiar with the machinations of empire.
Instead, I think he is unconcerned because he is simply so full of light and love and reconciling power that nothing else can distract or derail him. Nothing empire can do to him is worth his attention, when his whole awareness is filled up with God’s purpose working itself out in the world through him. There simply is no room, in all that kingdom abundance, for evil to find a foothold.
Light does not have to battle or resist darkness. Light simply IS, and darkness dissolves.
Siblings in Christ, can you imagine a church like that?
Could we become a covenant community like that?
So full of light, love, joy, peace, hope, faith, healing, patience, trust,..
that evil simply can’t find room to exist among us.
May it be so among us, beloved ones.
May we know, in our midst, the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Life abundant,
Laura Stone
At the opening worship of District Conference, you will be invited to join together in the covenant the district board has been living into this year. We will use the same process together that the board has used at each of its last several meetings. I invite you to be in prayerful reflection around the covenant as you prepare for Conference. You can find a pdf version attached or linked here.
