He replied, “I just chipped away everything that wasn’t David.”
And I’m doing something similar for this season of Lent
—I’m chipping away ways of understanding the Creator’s relationship with the Creation,
until all that remains is the “New Covenant” that the Prophet Jeremiah writes about,
the New Covenant we Christians describe as God’s relationship with the world,
established by God through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
I’ll be doing this by describing what God’s covenant is not, and what God’s covenant is.
Last week I let you all know that:
1. God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.
Today I’ll be preaching about how:
2. God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.
From there I’ll show you how:
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.
Prayer
God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.
Whenever we read an Epistle of Paul
—one of his letters
—we need to remember who he is, and who he was.
Paul was a Zealot. When it came to questions of “Righteousness” being in continual community with God and God’s people
—Paul had a proof text.
In fact, folk who called themselves Zealots named themselves after this particular verse in the bible.
In Numbers 25 there is an awful scene where one of Aaron’s grandkids, Phineas, sees an Israelite and a non-Israelite together as a couple,
and he rushes them with a spear and stabs them both through,
like a kabab.
This action is commended as being Zealous for the Lord.
For Paul and his fellow Zealots, there was a righteousness to separation. There is what we might call, a church-within-a-church phenomena, going on.
—are you righteous enough?
Separate enough?
Who is abiding by the rules in a way that we know they are insiders?
So, when Paul hears of the People of the Way
—communities of Jews and non-Jews jointly proclaiming that Jesus, who died upon a cross, is Lord, the anointed, the centerpiece of how God is in relationship with the world
—and he is incensed!
It is all wrong.
Messiahs don’t get crucified
—there is literally a proof text in scripture that says those who die upon a tree are accursed…
God certainly doesn’t work outside the rules;
God doesn’t color outside the lines!
Lines of separation,
clear boundaries and impermeable community.
A hard and fast definition of who is in and who is out, and mechanisms to regulate that, are necessary.
And even if there is some permeability, people can come in,
they must do so as second class citizens
—Godfearers in the New Testament,
unless and until they conform in total.
After all, it’s a family, and there are clear lines in family trees
—who is in and who is out is easy to determine!
There ought not be cousins who aren’t ACTUALLY cousins,
surely you wouldn’t dream of calling family friends who care for your kids sometimes, aunts or uncles, unless they’re blood relatives.
Yes, clear lines,
back to Phineas, Aaron, Moses,
Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham
—all the way back, Noah, Adam
—a clear cut line of who is in and who is out.
Except… God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.
If you’ve read your bible,
or just been a human in the world and in community,
you know life is always a kind of holy blend of many things…
For example, Moses’ family is a mixed-race family, and when Aaron condemns him for it,
God responds by giving Aaron leprosy.
Joseph, Jacob, Abraham, Noah, Adam
—all have winding and strange family trees…
not clear cut the way Paul once envisioned in his Zealous simplicity.
Those rules of who is in and who is out
—they are only ever true, until they’re not.
Moabites are abominations before God
—then Ruth comes along.
Samaritans are right out…
until Jesus uplifts them with his holy story.
Eunuchs are uniquely excluded from the community of God…
then Phillip goes and baptizes one of ‘em!
Paul, when he is confronted by the risen Christ on the Road to Damascus,
has to re-think everything
—the curse of the cross being a blessing,
And his understanding of zeal and righteousness is rejected…
He goes back to scripture, and sees that back in chapter 15 of Genesis
God had already formalized his relationship with Abraham…
not after he was circumcised…
Faith preceded the boundary marking rule about of circumcision
and his descendants are of many nations.
Abraham believes God and it is reckoned to him as righteousness…
Not stabbing people through who were of different nationalities, ethnicities, and religions… no!
Paul realizes—before that kind of zeal ever existed,
Abraham was made right with God and in community via faith!
To spell Paul’s whole formula out plainly to you all, here it is:
God covers our sin, not with cultural markers,
but based on trust in God’s promises of life
—we’re included because we trust Christ’s resurrection.
Did you hear that? Trust!
—there are a few ways to translate the Greek word Pisteo
—Faith (which we tend to lodge in our heart)
or Belief (which is firmly a head game)
or Trust (which holds the previous two in tension, and points to the relational nature of what Paul is getting at).
We trust in a hope that is both beyond and upon hope, as we normally would mean it…
Beyond hope… like Abram and Sarai
—barren and sterile, the first and last of a new nation,
a branch upshot and withered,
an inheritance passed on to a nameless servant.
Upon hope… Abraham and Sarah
—new names, for ancestors and multitudes.
A new nation… many of them…
—laugh if you want to, that which is withered will be fruitful!
If you’ve ever read any Charles Dickens you know he’s downright obsessed with inheritance
—there is always some orphan or another utterly abandoned, beyond hope…
only to find, in the most pitiable hopeless moment,
she is the heir,
he has a generous benefactor
—upon hope they can continue in a new and wonderful relationship,
there is “not so much as a shadow of another parting” looming in the future!
Who is the heir of Abraham—only a well curated line, zealously guarded? No!
Those who hope beyond hope,
and that hope is built upon hope
—upon God’s gracious acts for us…
upon the God who creates out of Nothing and Chaos,
the God who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead!
Truly those who trust God with a hope like that…
truly they too are heirs!
God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.
Amen.
