May 2006 - Page 1

Allen’s Neck Friends Meeting
739 Horseneck Road
Dartmouth, MA 02748
Meeting House Phone: 508-636-8910

Pastor: Peter Crysdale
Parsonage: 643 Horseneck Rd.
Dartmouth, MA 02748
Parsonage Phone: 508-636-2756

Clerk of the Meeting : Stanley Stopka

May 2006

Quakers and the New Covenant

Notes from a Recent Message

In religious terms covenant means to "Come together". In marriage and relationships, covenant involves two people promising to love and care for one another. For early Friends covenant in a deep spiritual sense was the way they understood their spirituality.

Hear the words of Margaret Fell as she writes to Cromwell, the Protector of England in 1653.

" I am moved of the Lord to write and send thee a warning."

For now the time has come and is coming wherein the Lord is fulfilling his promise. And making manifest the new covenant in his people. He is teaching his people himself by his own light and power. He is writing His law in their hearts. And putting it in their inward parts."

Jeremiah 31:31

For Friends, covenant was not just a verbal agreement, it was a spiritual practice. Richard Mather, the Puritan, wrote in 1644:

"Covenant may be implied by...constant and frequent acts of communion performed by a company of saints joined together by cohabitation in towns and villages."

THE FALLING IN OF THEIR SPIRITS INTO COMMUNION IN THINGS SPIRITUAL.

What a lovely phrase! This is the dimension of the Quaker new covenant, that we recover. As we worship in silence, we fall into communion in things spiritual and the Divine is writing His law in our hearts and putting it in our inward parts. We have fallen into communion with those early Quakers of 350 years ago who resisted the oppression of Church and State and said, "We will, to full human status for women." Said, "We will not, to war." Said, "No more, to slavery." And said, "I will, to living in the full practice and power of God’s universal love. "

We have fallen into communion with a people who still believe that revelation is not sealed and there is more light and still more.

We have fallen into communion with folks who insist that religion cannot be found in the dry bones of the past, but must be discovered first hand by you and me.

Our spirits have fallen into communion with a band of peculiar and rugged Friends who settled here and set the pace by insisting that women learn to read and write.

We have fallen into communion with each other, a communion that calls us to seek unity and practice forgiveness.

A communion that has a wide open heart and celebrates welcome and breathes gratitude.

Peter

It is not in differing from one another that disunity arises–

It is in not listening to God and each other.

Kenneth Sutton, 1989