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.
