Promises, Promises!

(Scriptures: Genesis 17:1-8, 15-22, Romans 4:1-25, Mark 8:31-38)

Our readings from Genesis and Romans deal with the word covenant. A covenant is a promise from one party to another. Last week’s reading from Genesis included God’s promise to, or covenant with, Noah and his family and with every creature on earth, that God would never again destroy all life on earth in a flood. This is the first covenant mentioned in Scripture.

Covenants often involve a mutual set of promises between two parties or two persons. Some covenants are quite mundane – for example, in my rental agreement, my landlord covenants to let me live in an apartment and to take care of maintenance, and I covenant to pay my rent timely and not trash the place. If I decide to move, after giving my landlord the stipulated notice, I can find another landlord easily enough, and my landlord can find another tenant easily enough. No harm, no foul. But some covenants are defining moments in our lives. One that may quickly come to mind is the set of promises or the covenant that a couple make to one another at a wedding or ceremony of union – promises to to love, honor, and cherish one another for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, so long as both shall live. Having made this covenant, it is understood that the couple has committed to stand by one another not just when it’s convenient, but through all the good and bad that life may throw at them, and even through the hurt and disappointment that they may inadvertently or intentionally inflict on one another. All that the couple does from that time forward is done in the context of that set of promises.

And even this level of commitment is exceeded by the commitment that God offers in God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah. When God first appears to Abraham, we’re told that Abraham is 75 years old, that Abraham and Sarah had no children and indeed that Sarah could not have children. God promised Abraham and Sarah many descendents, and a land for their descendents to inhabit. By the time of today’s reading from Genesis, some 25 years have passed. At various points Abraham has despaired that his servant Eleazar of Damascus would be his heir, and at Sarah’s suggestion tried to sort of help God out by sleeping with his servant Hagar, who gave birth to his son Ishmael. And yet God repeatedly reassures Abraham that he and his wife Sarah will give birth to a son who will have many descendents. In today’s reading, God puts a timeline on his promise: the waiting is almost over. By this time next year, Sarah will have a son. In a section from Genesis that was not read, Abraham’s response to this covenant was that he and his male descendents would be circumcised, in a sense literally writing the covenant indelibly into their flesh. So, like a marriage covenant, God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah and their descendents define who they will be to one another from that time forward. From this time forward they’re stuck with each other. Even though Abraham’s descendents were often unfaithful – the book of Hosea which we studied some months ago compares God’s relationship with God’s people to Hosea’s troubled relationship with a truly awful wife whose behavior he can hardly stand, and yet whom he can’t bring himself to abandon, and as one reads it one wonders “can this marriage be saved” – despite all that, and despite the consequences of the peoples’ unfaithfulness, God didn’t abandon God’s people – God was and is faithful.

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, Paul wrote the early Christian movement, wrote the church – indeed, wrote us - into the covenant as being among those who share the faith of Abraham, among those whom God will not abandon. The future of the early church was at least as precarious as the future of Abraham and Sarah. There were no TV ministries in those days, no megachurches – the early Christian movement consisted of house churches scattered here and there in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean Sea, many of the latter planted by Paul and his followers. As God called an elderly, childless couple to become mother and father of multitudes, God called a tiny number of people, ostracized by synagogue and persecuted by empire – a tiny number of people willing to live by Jesus’ words to take up their cross and follow him, a tiny number of people willing to lose their lives for the sake of Christ and the Gospel - to spread the good news of the Gospel, and in the Book of Acts, even their opponents described them as those who have been turning the world upside down.

As God called Abraham and Sarah, and as God called Paul and the early church, so God calls us, the members of Emanuel United Church of Christ. Like Abraham and Sarah and their descendents, we are defined by God’s covenant with us. Though we inhabit many different identities, wear lots of different hats – parent, child, spouse, partner, employee, customer, citizen, voter, neighbor – our deepest identification is that made at our baptism. By our baptismal covenant with God and the church as we or our sponsors on our behalf vow to renounce the powers of evil, to profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and to be his disciple, through the covenant of baptism we are defined as children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church. In the sacrament of communion in which we will participate in a few minutes, in sharing bread and wine we share in the covenant. Our life together as members of Emanuel United Church of Christ is also defined by covenant – your covenant as members of Emanuel Church to worship and fellowship and minister and do church together, the mutual covenant between us as pastor and congregation, our congregation’s covenant with the United Church of Christ, and the covenant of the United Church of Christ with us.

Paul wrote that God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah was not for them alone, but for the early Christian churches as well. In the same way, God’s covenant with us in baptism, our life together as Emanuel Church, is not for ourselves alone, but for our neighbors near and far. Like those early house churches, there aren’t a whole lot of us – we gathered here today probably have as many folks as those small gatherings did, though our house is a bit larger than theirs would have been. Like Abraham and Sarah, some of us are getting on in years, have been celebrating our 39th birthday for decades now. But God who called Abraham and Sarah to be father and mother of nations, God who called the early disciples to turn the world upside down, also calls us to spread Good News. In a world that proclaims the reign of tanks and bombs, the reign of wealth, the reign of empire; in a country which proclaims the reign of consumer goods, the reign of stuff - we are to spread the Good News of the Reign of God.

God called Abraham to go from his country and his kindred to a land that God would show him. As a congregation, we, too, are on a journey. As a congregation, we may have to leave what is familiar to go to the place God has called us. We won’t be much of a blessing if our identity as Emanuel church is just to huddle here behind closed doors on Fillmore Street. We are called to be a channel for God’s blessings, not a storage tank.

When we leave here, the good news goes with us, and as the good news goes with us, perhaps others will be attracted to join us in proclaiming good news to others. Through our support of the Bridesburg Council of Churches Food Cupboard and our commitment to Our Church’s Wider Mission, we bring good news to folks in our neighborhood and around the world that we may never meet in person.

I’ll close with an old Sunday School song
“Father Abraham had many sons (and daughters)
How many children had Father Abraham
Well, I am one of them, and so are you
And look what we can do.”

Amen.