2 LENT, YEAR B
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY
8 MARCH 2009
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Genesis 17:1-7; 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans4: 13-25; mark 8: 31-38
Last week, we heard God’s first covenant; today it’s the second. The second in a string of covenants established by God. Remember, a covenant sets up relationships. Covenants are not contracts, enforced by law and attested by witnesses. Covenants establish relationships.
We can trace God’s developing relationship with us, recorded in scripture, in the series of covenants that God has made over time, beginning with the covenant announced to Noah after the flood. Never again will I try to destroy the earth. A huge and generous promise which sets up forever a relationship created by God between God and everything God had made. A covenant with no strings attached. A covenant with a sign, the bow in the clouds, a sign for God and for us to look at in memory of the promise. A generous covenant given by a generous God. A covenant God has remembered, by the way, to this day!
And now there is a new covenant, announced this time to ancient Father Abraham. This second covenant doesn’t replace the first one; it merely fleshes it out a bit. Once again, it is God who initiates the covenant. “I am God Almighty,” declared God. “I will make my covenant…”
But notice that this covenant is slightly narrower than the first one. In fact, each covenant, as we go through these Hebrew Scripture readings in Lent, each covenant is a little narrower than the one before. A bit more focused.
This time, for example, God names the people in the covenant promise. “I will make my covenant between me and you,” said God. A very personal covenant begun by God with Abram and Abram’s wife Sarai.
God announces God’s plan. “I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.” This seems to be God’s way of fulfilling the earlier promise never to destroy the earth. To perpetuate the earth, God will make sure this ancient couple will have a son AND that they will be the ancestors of a multitude of nations to come after them.
And the clincher, of course, is God’s ultimate promise. “I will be God to you and to your offspring after you.” God is God of all. There it is. “I will be your God, and you shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 7:23) Everlastingly. And forever.
We don’t know how Noah reacted, when God said that never again would God destroy the earth. Abraham’s reaction was to fall on his face laughing, the story says a few verses later. But we are not told how Noah reacted. And God never told Noah to respond in any particular way. There were no strings attached in the no-flood covenant.
But in this second covenant, God does lay down some expectations. Abram and Sarai will be transformed by God’s stunning promise to them. As a sign of their transformation, they will no longer be Abram and Sarai but now shall be called Abraham and Sarah. A name change as a sign of the covenant. And a further response is required. “Walk before me,” said God. “Walk before me and be blameless.” A little later in this story, God adds circumcision to the requirements, as a sign of the covenant. Abraham picks himself up off the ground where he had fallen and goes about this new task with dispatch. God clearly expects something back. The relationship is active and mutual. God doesn’t say what will happen if Abraham disobeys. It’s as if, with such a huge promise, a son to a pair of decrepit old folks, for heaven’ sake, who wouldn’t respond whole-heartedly?
So there you have it. Covenant #2. God is our God and we are God’s people.
A promise we are reminded of in Lent.
Abraham’s reaction was to fall on his face. Laughing. For joy? In jittery awe? How would we have reacted? How do we respond when we suddenly realize that God’s covenants include us? These promises are not mere ancient landmarks for us to look at as if we are tourists passing by on our way to Easter. Or as if we are watching a movie with actors who aren’t us. “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you, for an everlasting covenant,” said God. That’s us, too! This is our story. And we are in it.
Abraham responded by falling to the ground. He was no casual observer. And when he clambered to his feet, finally, he began living as if he trusted what God had said. He bought into it. That’s what belief is, what faith is: trust and response. Living as if we trust that it is so.
Even when the promise is mysterious. Even when we can’t explain it. Even when the outcome is not fully described. God didn’t give Abraham all the details. You will have a son from whom whole nations will emerge. I am your God and the God of all who will be born after you. That was it.
God has promised never to destroy us or the earth. God has further promised to bring life from the dead (or, as Paul says, from people who were so old they were “as good as dead!”). God brings into existence things that have not previously existed. God lets us live in hope: “Hoping against hope, he (Abraham) believed that he (actually) would become the father of many nations…”
And so Abraham carried on with his life, not entirely sure how it all would work but trusting that somehow it would.
Jesus wended his way to Jerusalem, not sure, either. But Jesus trusted in God’s age-old promises in spite of what would surely end up happening to him if he continued to say and do the things he was saying and doing out of trust in God. Jesus carried on anyway. And look what happened!
You, too, Jesus told his disciples and the crowds, you, too must be willing to trust. Pick up your cross in response to the faith you profess. This is the Good News of the Gospel, for Lent and forever: that we not try to control our own destinies by ourselves alone but trust in the Word of God, by walking before and with God, who somehow, ultimately, makes all things new, who somehow, ultimately gives life where there seems to be no life. Who makes hope when none seems possible. Hope, even in our times these days, even in the bleakest economic realities, even in the near daily new evidence of climate change and the terrible things that happen to the best of people—even then, God’s fundamental promises, established in the covenants ‘way back when, can give us the hope we need to follow where God calls, in spite of how weird or mysterious or strange or difficult or counter-cultural the call may be. For hope, it has been said, is not the expectation that everything will turn out perfectly or according to our own human plans. Rather, the hope that God gives us, beginning with the ancient covenants, allows us to trust, as Abraham and Sarah did, that no matter how things turn out, it will all make sense.