There is an apocryphal story about the Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo; when he first presented the statue of David to a group, they asked him, “How did you ever sculpt such a magnificent masterpiece?”
To which he replied, “All I did was chip away everything that didn’t look like David.”
And our lessons this Lent having to do with Covenants, do something of the same
—they chip away at everything that has to do with God’s relationship with Humanity, the Earth, and all of Creation
—until all that remains is that famed “New Covenant” that the Prophet Jeremiah writes about, that we Christians describe as the magnificent relationship between Creator and Creature,
established by God through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
For these five Sundays in Lent, we’ll be chipping away at assumptions and affirming right imaginings,
until we can see this Good News of God from many angles,
see what our Relationship with God is, and isn’t.
What God’s Covenant is not… and is…
(So here’s what we’re going to be doing for the next five Sundays)
1. God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.
2. God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.
3. God’s Covenant is not Diktats to the Enslaved, but Freedom in Community.
4. God’s Covenant is not Wages for Human Work, but Our Whole Life, a Gift from God.
5. God’s Covenant is not a fragile, scattered, shattered relationship, but continually being drawn into internalized, intentional, renewed relationship.
Let us pray
God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.
A surface level reading of Genesis points us to an awful story, echoing Pagan Myths (Gilgamesh and the like) that this story is told in order to neutralize and relativize—stories of a war against humanity—an attempt to kill us all.
It is a war like any war—Regional, worldwide, cold, civil, or otherwise, fought not daintily, but viciously.
A war in which Divinity drowns all of creation.
It is the massacre of the wicked to smother the spread of wickedness
—a war against humankind.
Not only that, it is a culling of “the sons of god” from three chapters earlier, who brought corruption to these befuddled humans
—a containment operation to save creation from contamination by evil angels.
I know I once encouraged our Sunday School to make Origami Ark animals,
but Genesis 9 isn’t really a story for kids
—it’s almost a horror story!
Imagine Noah, terrified, body unbearably clenched, holding his breath after the first storm after THE STORM—The Flood.
He wonders, was it just a truce? a Cease Fire? Is the DMZ between Divinity and us about to explode?
He looks in the air and sees the bow! The awful bow! A weapon of war.
If you’ve seen any coverage of the Super Bowl Parade shooting, you’ve heard the interview with the guy that tackled one of the shooters, he was shocked when he saw the gun sort of tumble out into the air.
And I think we were all shocked when we found that the two shooters were kids with guns!
21 shot, 11 of them children, 1 person dead
—because of two kids with guns.
That’s the kind of horror Noah feel when the bow appears in the sky…
but he looks up and sees that this bow is not taught,
it is not strung,
it isn’t at the ready to kill and to slaughter
—no! Remember! It’s a sign of peace.
When I was a little guy living in Brussels, we’d travel all over Europe
—I’ve been to every continental country that wasn’t communist before the fall of the Berlin Wall, save Greece.
But of all the things I saw, I remember best this giant statue of a Lion. It was made out of cannonballs, and it commemorated the end of the Napoleonic Wars
—these wars, it is argued, were the first experiences of total war in Europe
—not just professional soldiers skirmishing in fields,
but everyone was part of these wars.
Cannonballs transformed into a sign of peace—the wars are done!
God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.
Peace between God and God’s Good Creation!
Peace an eternal promise—not a temporary cease fire.
Peace an unconditional offer—never again shall I flood the earth.
Peace between God and every living thing that resides upon the earth. The earth itself at peace with God.
And not only the earth itself, we see, the whole world and beyond! All flesh, and all spirit as well! That’s 1st Peter’s message.
If the author is thinking of the Genesis 6 crew—rebel angels turned rebel spirits
—Christ is then in process of redeeming the powers and the principalities,
taming and transforming them…
(Because we are in the year of Mark, and Mark is all about Exorcisms,
and we just finished up a Bible Study on Revelation, and Revelation is all about worship in little congregations scattered here and there echoing in Heaven and impacting every power on earth
—we’ve talked about this type of stuff before)
Everything that is bigger than an individual:
be it an addiction, a corporation, a nation, social structures like Apartheid or Segregation
—they have a Spiritual impact…
and need to be opened to the love of God,
they need to be ministered to,
and the primary way the Church does this, is by our witness to collective possibility and love.
Our Spiritual heft as the Body of Christ is to be a role model for their redemption.
When “angels, authorities, and powers” know that we are Christians by our Love, they can find themselves joining in the song of all of creation!
If the author is thinking these spirits in prison are all those who died in the flood
—then we are seeing God’s unconditional promise to all the earth overflowing!
The seeming Human O’ so Human impulse to wiping everything out in disgust
—severing every relationship to reboot, to start again…
that too is redeemed.
Even Divine violence, is vanquished by the compassion of the God we find in Christ.
Christ’s appeal to God for all flesh and all spirit proclaimed to us all!
Truly, there is an unimaginable wideness to God’s mercy!
So there you have it, the first hammer blow as we chip away at this marble block,
and eventually find the statue within
—the New Covenant,
the way God is in relationship with us.
God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace. Amen.
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