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A Sermon by Reverend Jeffrey Barz-Snell
Platform Speaking:
This year is the anniversary of something almost as old as this religious community, this church. 350 years ago, in 1648, an agreement, a platform if you will, was completed in the small town of Cambridge in New England. It stipulated and clarified how churches within the Massachusetts Bay Colony should be organized and governed. The final document and its seventeen chapters were the culmination of discussions and negotiations that occurred over the course of 2 years from 1646 to 1648. And you are sitting amongst one of the churches that was present at those proceedings. The agreement reached is commonly referred to as the Cambridge Platform - for the document’s actual title, (read quickly) - "A Platform of Church Discipline, Gathered out of the Word of God: and agreed upon by the Elders: and Messengers of the Churches Assembled in the Synod at Cambridge in New England"- (breath) is a somewhat cumbersome phrase to turn easily. The significance of this document and its legacy for those of us who still adhere to a congregational form of church government is often underestimated. While this church can claim to be the earliest instance of congregational polity in the new world - that is to say of local members voting to determine their direction as a church - the Cambridge Platform formally articulated eighteen years later the assumptions and attitudes prominent in the minds and intentions of those 30 original members of this church who voted to approve the covenant that has been used ever since - the very one used this morning. The Cambridge Platform set out in writing a viewpoint that each church should be self governing and reserve the right to set the requirements for membership and to call its ministers based on a democratic vote of church members. When you voted to call me as your minister on October 4, a blessing for me and I hope one for you, you may not have realized that you were exercising the rights of church members set forth by the Cambridge Platform some 350 years ago. Needless to say, much has changed in the years since its composition and the beliefs and theology of those original churches. What was the creation of New England Puritans with their Calvinist theology, has become the governing assumptions and structure for the member churches of the Unitarian Universalist Association, with all their theological diversity. But we should remember that our Association of member churches and societies are not the only inheritors of this document. Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the 350th Anniversary Celebration and Conference for the Cambridge Platform. It was held jointly by The First Church in Cambridge (currently a member of the United Church of Christ) and The First Parish in Cambridge, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association. There were in attendance a total of four different denominations all of whom base their governing rules and church practices on the Cambridge Platform to some degree. In addition to the UU’s and UCC’s I just mentioned, two other groups were in attendance: the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference and the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. I think it would be safe to describe these two latter groups as more conservative theologically than our fair association. One of them was what we might describe as outright evangelical in outlook. The two days of lectures and discussions were fascinating to observe and to participate in. I came away with a greater appreciation of what we as Unitarians have retained from the Cambridge Platform and what we have discarded. More importantly, I gained a better appreciation of the importance of the history of Cambridge Platform and why it is important for us here in the present as a liberal Christian church. The document itself is fairly short, consisting of approximately forty pages divided up into seventeen small chapters. Each chapter covers a different subject area. The first chapter deals with overall church government. The second deals with the nature of the church. The third with what constitutes membership. Other chapters cover areas such as ordaining ministers, the duties of different elected officials within a church, and the relationship between different churches in a local area. The underlying intent of the authors was to derive from Scripture, from the Bible that is, what the best governing structure for a church is. The authors were very careful to justify what they were asserting with at least one if not several references to Scripture. Their assumption was that all church government and social practices should be biblically based. By doing so, they were continuing on in the spirit which originally gave rise to the Protestant Reformation in the first place - attempting to justify all practices of the church by Scripture and discarding those practices that were not biblically based. For example, in this morning’s second reading, from Paul’s First Letter to Timothy, we hear very specific descriptions concerning both deacons and elders. Any position within a church had to be mentioned and described in detail in the Bible in order for the authors of the Platform to include it within their description of the church. To this day, this church has deacons, though their function today has changed since the writing of the Platform. Originally, the deacons oversaw the financial matters of the church, the role that the trustees currently play in our community here today. The authors of the Cambridge Platform were also responding to their contemporary social and political context. We need to remember that the 1640’s were exciting times for Puritans in England and therefore here in New England. The English king, Charles the First, was deposed and Parliament was running the country and a strong contingent of that Parliament were Puritans themselves. The connection between the Puritans settlers on this side of the Atlantic and those in England was still fairly strong. For example, Hugh Peters, the third minister of this church, left Salem to return to England and become General Oliver Cromwell’s chaplain. Cromwell was the Puritan military officer who finally deposed Charles the First and ruled as a dictator over England between 1653 and 1659. The Puritans were on the rise socially and politically. This both worried and excited the Puritan Settlers here in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On one hand, Puritanism was prevailing. But on the other hand, it was the wrong kind of Puritanism for our church ancestors. For example in 1648, the English Puritans put forth The Westminster Confession, a document that favored a national Church of England organized with a Presbyterian system. The word Presbyterian, for any who don’t know, refers to a type of governing structure for churches. Instead of each church being autonomous and able to elect its own leaders and ministers, some of the decision making power for such issues was placed in the hands of the Presbytery, a word from the Greek which literally means "elders." Churches in this type of governing structure are led by an elected body with responsibilities over several churches. As a result of the Puritans rising to political power in England and the implications of the Westminster Confession, there was clearly some pressure on the puritan churches in New England to consider reforming their congregational polity. This was compounded by the fact that there were apparently Englishmen returning to England from the Massachusetts Bay Colony complaining that only church members could have their children baptized or vote in civil elections - an unacceptable state of affairs for English citizens who were not members of churches. And so, in response to the concern that a church structure contrary to their convictions might be forced upon them if they did not organize and explicitly set forth the principles by which their churches were governed, a call was issued by the General Court of Massachusetts in May 1646 for a synod of Congregational Churches to consider questions of church government. After three sessions over the next two years, a platform of church discipline was completed and presented to the Massachusetts General Court. While approval by all of the churches involved took several years, the Cambridge Platform gradually became the defining document for New England congregational church polity and the American Free Church tradition of which we are a part. While our theology and outlook may have changed radically from our puritan forbears, our governing structure retains a remarkable similarity to those original settlers who founded this church and authored the Platform. Still there are some key lessons, indeed insights from them and this document that are helpful for us today. The first is the recognition of the special nature of congregational polity. Each local church is autonomous and free. Each congregation can admit members and elect leaders and ministers as it deems fit. There are no higher authorities on these matters. There are no bishops or presbyteries that can unilaterally instruct what is to happen here. We as a local church rise and fall on our own decisions and vision. This is the aspect of the Cambridge Platform that is usually highlighted and praised to no end. However, with this first recognition should come a second less acknowledged one. The original framers of the Cambridge Platform never intended the local church to be wholly independent from the other churches in its locale. The autonomy of the local church is an inadequate definition of congregationalism. For congregationalism should be viewed today as not the autonomy of the local church, but the community of local churches. It is interesting to note that of the seventeen chapters of the Cambridge Platform, the longest deals with the relationship between local churches. Church autonomy for them then and for us now is always qualified. Today, we seem to focus on the autonomy of our local churches to the neglect of the community of churches in which we find ourselves. This state of affairs has not always been the case. Conrad Wright, the former professor of American Church History at Harvard Divinity School and widely acclaimed Unitarian scholar, points out in one his essays the amount of pulpit exchanges that used to occur in the nineteenth century Unitarian churches. Wright documents this with the intent of showing how much more congregational churches saw themselves as a community of churches as opposed to single solitary religious entities. For example, Wright points out that from October, 1822 through April, 1823, John Brazer, one of my distinguished predecessors and the minister of the North Church in Salem in whose building we are currently sitting, preached to his own congregation 28 times out of 53. A total of eleven different ministers occupied his pulpit during that seven-month period. While that sounds excessive, that was how most liberal congregational churches operated. We have in some ways then moved too far in the direction of independence and overlooked our interdependence - our tacit ties and responsibilities to the community of churches of which we find ourselves a part. Several years ago, however, this church voted to join the Council of Christian Churches within the Unitarian Universalist Association. I think that is a step in the right direction. It is a way of reaffirming our ties and connections to the larger tradition and chorus of voices to which we belong. And make no mistake; we need to reaffirm these ties both to strengthen our community and to share the legacy that is this church with those in our larger association. This brings me to the last key insight we can draw from reflecting upon the Cambridge Platform and in some ways it is the most important, for it is what defines us as a church. While many Christian traditions gather based on a set of beliefs - a creed, we gather based on a covenant - an agreement we make with one another and with God. What makes this a church as opposed to a collection of somewhat like-minded individuals is the covenant we make with one another and with the Ancient of Days. There is no rigid set of beliefs to which we must adhere in order to become a member of this church. We don’t collectively embrace a creed to form our church. We covenant. The writer of the Psalm read this morning seems to understand this when he or she declares: "The Lord summons the heavens above and the earth, that he may judge his people: Gather to me my consecrated ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice." To make a covenant is as old as the Jewish and Christian traditions. In some ways it is the defining activity for the Western religions and even human beings in general. After all think of the other times in your life when you make a covenant, a solemn agreement if you will, in front of other people. We covenant of sorts when we enter into marriage. We covenant of sorts when we become a citizen of a country. We covenant of sorts when we must testify in a court of law. We covenant of sorts when we borrow money and sign a promissory note. We can look at our lives in one way as a series of binding commitments we make to one another, to our country, to our selves and to our God. It is fitting that a church in the liberal Christian tradition such as ours define our church according to the agreement we make with one another and with God. It also is a powerful reminder to those of us who are the beneficiaries of such a rich legacy as this community of what a church really is. This building may fall into a heap of ruble, but as long as we have the covenant we are a church. The Paul Revere silver used during communion may melt in a fire and the beautiful Tiffany and Parker windows may be blown into shards of glass, but as long as we bind ourselves in the presence of God and walk together in all His ways, we still have a church. The antiques may fall apart and the archives may further crumble, but the heart of the legacy of this church will not perish so long as we hold this ancient covenant dear to ourselves and breath the life of our lives into it through its recitation and observance. This then is the ultimate legacy of the Cambridge Platform: we form churches when we covenant with one another and with God, committed to the cultivation of ourselves and the redemption of the world; and open to the ongoing revelation of the Divine Spirit in our lives.
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