In preparing for this sermon, I went to
the website of a Lutheran pastor/scholar who is particularly insightful, one I’ve
gone to in the past, in order to jump-start my thinking, and I was shocked to
read this: “This story of a covenant ritual is about as bloody a sacrificial
affair as there is in the Old Testament. Why is it in the lectionary? I don’t
get the connection at all.” And I
thought: “thanks for nothing, Paul”—a lot of Lutherans name their children
Paul. That and “Martin” . . . Anyway, I
thought “thanks for nothing”: you’ve been a big help. But it did
get me thinking: what did possess the
creators of our lectionary to include this passage, and why now, why here, at
Lent?
Well. To
our Jewish brothers and sisters, this is one of the most important passages in
the Old Testament, and that’s one reason it’s important to read it, because
they are our ancestors in the faith. But
I think it holds something important to Christians on its own terms too, and
I’ll give you a hint as to what it is: it’s contained in the name of a lot of
congregations, including, you might remember, the previous one I served. It’s a covenant. The Abrahamic covenant, to be precise, and
it’s the great grand-daddy of ‘em all.
The first in a long line of compacts made between God and the Hebrew
people. But it’s not the first covenant
in the Bible: that honor goes to the Noahic covenant, the one God made with
Noah, never to drown the whole world like he did in that embarrassing episode
with the ark. But this is the first
covenant God makes in relation to the Hebrew people, but it wouldn’t be the last, not by a long shot.
In fact, “covenant” is such a big topic
in the Bible that a whole branch of theology sprung up centered around the
notion. In that theology, covenants are
in effect over certain time periods within the history of human interactions
with God, and which one is operant at any given time is greatly influential in
how any biblical event or passage is to be interpreted. At one time, Covenant Theology was big in
mainstream Reformed theology, though it has fallen on hard times, and is not
much taught in our denomination’s seminaries, at any rate, though it is still
popular in some of the more theologically conservative places.
But the notion
of covenant is still important, and so maybe we’d better spend a few minutes
figuring out what it means. First of
all, it’s a pact between two parties, in which the covenantor makes a promise
to a covenantee to do or not do some action.
In real property law, the term “real covenants” is used for conditions
tied to the use of land. Homeowners'
covenants fall into this category.
In the Bible,
it is between God and a person, a group of people and/or all of humanity. In it, God promises to do—or not to
do—certain things. After the flood,
we’re told, God promised never to drown everybody on earth again. In the Davidic covenant, God promises to
establish David as a “sure house,” making him and his descendants the rightful
kings of Judah until the end of time.
And of course, in the Mosaic covenant, God handed down the ten
commandments, and promised to be the Israelite’s God so long as they obeyed
them.
One thing that
distinguishes some biblical covenants from others is the notion of
conditionality, that is who has to do what to fulfill it. In the covenant after the flood, the one
transmitted to Noah, God promises to refrain from drowning humanity, but
humanity doesn't have to promise to do anything. It’s an unconditional
or one way covenant. The one received
by Moses, on the other hand, is conditional; the Israelites must do certain
things to fulfill their side of the bargain.
The entire story of God’s interactions between humans in the Hebrew
scriptures, which we call the Old Testament, can be viewed as one of Israel
continually breaking one covenant or another, and God time and time again
forgiving them.
In the case of the covenant in today’s
passage, it’s unconditional: God promises to make Abram’s descendants
many. "Look up and
count the stars, if you can count them,” God says. “So shall your descendants
be." And thus begins the great
dance of the descendants of Abraham and the Divine. For the first time, we can see the shape of a
people, the Hebrew people, and a bit
further along, the Nation of Israel.
This covenant, between God and Abram, calls a people into being.
But
look closer at what does the calling: it’s the same thing that called the world into being, that said “Let there
be light. And there was light.” It’s the Word of the Lord that literally speaks the Hebrew people into existence,
just as it did the world at the beginning of time. And if you’re looking for
connection between this dark, primitive passage, with its bloody, carved up cow
and its floating lights, here it is: that self same Word that separated the
water from the land, that blurted out the Hebrew people in the murky firelight,
that same Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
Or so says John, and who am I to doubt him? There’s continuity between our two faiths, our
two people, that runs from their very
beginnings: from the violent execution of this first covenant right up through
the equally violent birth of our own. At
the institution of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus says “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” And Paul said it after him and we say it
after Paul every time we take
Communion, and what I want to emphasize is that this right here is the Old
covenant. And rather than being the covenant
in Christ’s blood, it’s one in bovine blood, and goat’s blood, and the blood of
pigeons.
Kind of bloody, isn’t it? Kind of dark and violent, and many of us modern
Christians—like the author of the website I read—don’t like to dwell on these
notions. But that is part and parcel of
the season we’re in, the season of Lent, where such things come to the
fore. And that’s not the only point of
continuity between the beginnings of our two faiths. Look at what happens next: even though
everything seems to point against it—he’d just left King Melchizedek with
nothing more than the clothes on his back, he’s childless even after all these
years, and his wife Sarai barren—even though everything seems to belie the
promise of God, Abram believes. He has faith.
And God counts it as righteousness.
It’s one of the
models that Paul would use to describe the Christian faith. He even quotes our passage: “Just as Abraham
‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, so, you see, those
who are believing are the descendants of Abraham.” Here, according to Paul, it was Abraham’s
faith in God that made him right with God, just as it is with those who have
faith in Christ. In this passage, we see
the root of Paul’s—and our—doctrine of justification, of salvation, by faith
alone. In fact, the word he uses for
justification—the Greek word dikiasune—is
the equivalent of the Hebrew word zedekah,
which the author of Genesis uses here for righteousness. Abram believed in God, and it was reckoned to
him by that God as righteousness. We who
are in a relationship with Christ, who are resting in Christ, and he in us, are
in a state of righteous as well.
But there’s one
more point of continuity between this passage and our Christian understanding
of faith, one more reason we should read it at this time of year. It goes back to our earlier discussion of
covenants. We saw that covenants come in
two basic flavors: conditional, where the people promises to do something in
return for the promises of God, and unconditional,
where they have no responsibilities.
That’s the kind of covenant the Abrahamic one is: Abram has to do nothing to maintain it. God will
make the people of Israel out of his ancestors, no matter what Abram does,
and in fact he does some fairly rotten things along the way.
And in the same way,
the new covenant in Christ, the meaning of which we ponder at this season, is
unconditional as well. Nothing we can
do, nothing we have done, or will do, negates it. Nothing we can do, have done, will do merits it. God gives us this covenant—sealed in some way
we do not understand by Christ—no matter what, and it cannot be rescinded. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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