Promises, Promises

"Promises, promises."  Usually these words are spoken with a voice of resignation and a healthy dose of skepticism.  The expectation is that promises made will not be kept.  "I'll come back and take care of that mess later, I promise."  "I'll never do it again if you just forgive and forget one more time ..."  "I'll clean up after the puppy and feed him EVERY day, you'll never have to do ANYTHING.  I PROMISE." 

Oh yeah.  Promises, promises.

Human beings are notorious for their inadequacies in keeping promises.  But scripture assures us this is not true of the promises of God.  When governments seethe with corruption, neighbors violate covenants, friends vanish in times of trouble, lovers' hearts grow cold, and even a mother's bond with her child fails ... God's promises remain.

At Vespers this last Sunday night our discussion of treasured covenants led to comparisons between the legal standing of dependent and independent covenants. (It is a University congregation ... law professors show up sometimes. What are you going to do?) As it was explained to us, the basic difference is that in a dependent covenant each party has made a promise "if you do this, I am obligated to do that."  In an independent covenant, the responsibilities of each party in the covenant are NOT dependent on the behavior of the other party.  "I said I would do this as landlord, and regardless of the tenants' behavior, I will do as I said."  That sort of thing.  You see where this could get one into trouble, don't you?

We like to have guarantees in writing that everything will be fair and recipricol.  I will pay you rent AS LONG AS you keep this apartment safely heated, and water running, and no rats in the walls.  I don't want to be obligated to pay you when you aren't providing what you promised anymore.  And by the same token, the landlord doesn't want to properly care for a building where tenants regularly ignore their obligations to use the premises properly and pay their rent on time.  The same is true in business relationships, neighborhood zoning regulations, even family dynamics.  At what point do you say, "Enough is enough! This is not what you promised."

God's promises of grace, love and forgiveness, not to mention the gifts of abundance available to us from the good earth God entrusted in our care ... are far beyond what any measure of fairness would allow.  The prophets testify to this again and again.  Our grieving, rejected, taken-for-granted-again God turns toward us continuously with a heart filled with love.  Not because of our promises kept, but because the holy covenant God chooses is of the independent kind.  It is God alone who loves us with a "love that wilt not let us go."  And that's a promise.

Sunday Sermon

Lent 1B                                                                                 Rev. Kristine Light Branaman

Febrauary 26, 2012                                                UniPlace Christian Church (Disciples) 

Mark 1:1-11                                                                                                   Champaign, IL   

Psalm 25                                                                                                      Matthew 6:19-21

Treasure God’s Covenant

When I was a child one of the best things about being home sick was knowing that Monty Hall would keep me company.  "Let’s make a deal," he would enthusiastically call from the living room, inviting me to pull up to the TV and throw myself into the wheeling and dealing.  The first costumed contestant would be called out from the studio audience, and it was on.  “Sweet Adeline, (who, by the way, was dressed up like garbage in an extra large Hefty bag) Sweet Adeline, here’s $400 for the ratty tennis shoes on your feet.”  Would now-shoeless Adeline choose to keep the $400, or trade it in for an unknown prize behind the curtain or maybe the hidden contents of a large box brought to her seat by Monty Hall’s assistant?  Let’s Make a Deal was all about choices made and the opportunity to trade up in life, accumulating more treasure:  A Harvest Gold Amana refrigerator, some Avocado colored Teflon cookware, or maybe even a brand new Datsun station wagon.  Or, just as likely, Let’s Make a Deal was about the mistakes we make trading foolishly and ending up with a donkey carrying baskets of toilet paper on his saddle. Choose unwisely and Monty Hall would be sympathetic, but still, treasure traded was treasure forever lost.

As we begin the Lenten season our scripture texts are filled with references to choices made, treasures desired and covenants kept.  Many of us, when we hear the word covenant think of contracts and we are off and running with Monty Hall or coming on down with Bob Barker hoping the price is right for us to strike an advantageous bargain with God.  We are simple-minded when we consider the covenant of God.  Like the Patriarchs of Genesis we would like to wheel and deal with the Almighty and with one another.  Maybe we can outwit a Pharoah like old Abraham telling lies about his wife Sarah, or snooker brother Esau out of his birthright, like Jacob, or wrestle an angel and come away with a blessing and a better name.  The Patriarchs were shrewd negotiators, quick to turn a deal to their own advantage whenever they could.  They did pretty well with God, it seems, why shouldn’t we follow their example?

But the covenant our God actually has in mind, at least according to the Psalmists and Prophets of the Old Testament, is not a contract where each party shrewdly pursues advantages.  It is not a game where personal power and prosperity are the goal, not a business deal where the lowest cost is negotiated with the highest payout to the purchaser. We have been confused, I suppose, because covenants are typically sealed with an offering.  Foodstuffs and livestock are brought to an altar, the sacrifice is made, stones are piled as reminder of a covenant kept, and we remember that there was a cost involved.  The mistake we make is construing this to mean that God can be bought off.  We confuse the worshipful practice of bringing our offering with paying our dues; we mistake the act of presenting tokens of love for a process of purchasing affection.  In our confusion, we prostitute the very altar of God.  God wants children whose hearts are filled with love and gratitude and who express that love in their overflowing generosity.  God does not desire a sanctuary full of shrewd customers ready to purchase religious services at rock bottom prices.

I remember when my oldest 3 children were small and it seemed half of my life was spent driving the van with my back to them, listening to their pleas for one thing or another and trying to seize any opportunity to teach them about the treasure that matters while we were all locked in a vehicle together.  One day Matthew was whiney and demanding, complaining about not getting what he felt he deserved and listing my failures to meet his needs as he saw them.  He then went on to list several new things he wanted … a toy he had seen on television, a drive thru meal from his favorite restaurant, a trip to a pizza parlor with a ball pit, the list seemed endless. Recognizing the teachable moment I launched in to a sermon, “Matthew, you have spent the last twenty minutes telling me how much you dislike me and naming all the things you want but don’t have.  You have blamed me for every unhappy feeling you have and now you expect me to be motivated to go buy you more things and take you fun places? You don’t seem to remember any of the things I’ve done for you just today and last night, much less this year, or come to think of it, every day since the day you were born!  Before you ask for one more thing, maybe you should sit quietly, and stop to think about everything you already have, and all your parents do to care for you.  Before you decide to ask for something, stop and think, and show a little more gratitude.”

(Sidenote here:  There is a magnet on my refrigerator at home, a gift from my oldest daughter,

which reads,“My mother doesn’t just take us on guilt trips, she runs the travel agency”)

In any case, the sermon struck some kind of chord.  Complete silence enveloped the van as I drove toward home (without driving through McDonalds).  The silence lasted about five minutes and was finally broken when a soft, sweet little voice eventually spoke.  It was Lara, 3½  years old, who had been strapped into her car seat and staring out the window through most of the ride. Typically, she had said little during the drive, as her 2 older siblings usually dominated conversations.  Here, in the long silence, she finally found her voice.  “Mommy,” she said, “I love you.  You’re pretty.  I like the peas and hot dogs you put in the macaroni last night.  You're such a good cook. Thank you for this shirt with the rainbow on it.”      (Pause.)       “Can I have a pony?”

God help us.  The poet proclaims in Psalm 25: “Make me to know your ways, teach me your paths… do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!”  The Psalmist is on to something important here.  What we need to ask God to remember is not our own good deeds or any little gifty we brought to God along the way.  We need to ask God to remember God’s own steadfast love, God’s own goodness.  That is our only hope.

The Gospel of Mark, which we have heard so much from already this year, actually begins with the passage which was just today finally brought to us in worship.  Mark begins by heralding Jesus’ ministry on earth with the scene of his baptism.  A lot of sermons have been written raising the question of why the sinless son of God needed to be baptized in the first place. It’s an interesting question …but one for another day.  For today, I want us to pay attention to the action and words which accompany Jesus’ baptism.  Mark says the heavens were ripped open as Jesus emerged from the water.  It is exactly the same verb that Mark will use at the end of this Lenten season when Jesus is crucified and we hear that the curtain in the Temple was ripped in two.  In both cases Mark is making a vital point: a barrier we could never penetrate on our own (the barrier between self-centered, grasping, plotting, insecure, fearful humankind and our steadfast, loving, generous Heavenly Parent) is torn asunder when Jesus submits himself to John in the Jordon and seals the covenant which launches his earthly ministry. A friend of mine, Dr. Stan Saunders says,

“Jesus’ baptism marks for him the end of the old world and the beginning of a new one … made clear as soon as he arises from the Jordan and sees the heavens themselves being torn apart. The image is both violent and hope-filled… God is doing the ripping.. [a high apocalyptic moment] when the boundaries between earth and heaven are disordered and dissolved.”

The words which accompany this tearing asunder of the heavens are simply these: “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.”

I’m guessing Jesus didn’t look up to the sky and ask for a pony after that.

“Teach me your ways, O Lord, show me your paths.”  It is no coincidence that early Christians called the life of discipleship The Way.  It is not in adhering to a set of beliefs, or performing a series of rituals, or contributing a prescribed amount of material resources to the cause that we become Disciples of Christ.  It is in following the Way shown to us by the Son of God, in whom the Spirit was pleased to dwell in its fullness as he arose from the waters of baptism.  The life he showed us is the life God called beloved and proclaimed pleasing in God’s sight.

In the coming weeks we will continue to consider what kind of treasure we might “trade up” for in life.  I’ll tell you straight, Sweet Adeline was all about that Harvest Gold refrigerator.  When I showed my 13 year old son Lucas a You Tube clip of that deal, he just laughed to think anyone ever wanted that stuff.  “What an ugly refrigerator,” he mocked.  It’s amazing how different the treasures we choose can look just a few decades down the road. Just imagine what they’ll be saying about our granite countertops and stainless steel appliances in 2035!

Jesus taught that the treasure which matters most is the kind that rust and moths cannot consume and thieves cannot break in and steal.  One such treasure is this holy covenant which is a loving relationship with God, based not on what we can get through our wheeling and dealing in prayer or by trying to buy God’s affection, but based on those moments of wonder when we consider the love outpoured for us already.  “The friendship of the Lord is for those who stand in awe before God, and God makes God’s covenant known to them.”

May we all be such friends of God.