Genesis 15; Hebrew 11:8-12
February 13, 2022
- Being a Covenant People
I feel pretty confident that if you have ever had to sign a contract or make an official agreement, you probably did not bring a sword, a machete, or a cleaver to the occasion. We can certainly well imagine how awkward that might be, bringing such an instrument to something that may already be pretty stressful. “Well, obviously that is the case, Pastor Pete. Why would we bring such an thing to something as ordinary as say… a house signing?”
Thank you for asking. The simple reason is that the English in your Bible is technically wrong. There are lots of ways through the ages that people have settled on terms to an agreement or a contract. Everything from peace pipes to doweries to drinking tea to the drawing of one’s own blood. Someone, thankfully, also figured out that pen and paper was OK, too. At the heart of any ratified contract, though, has to be the confidence that both parties will keep their end of the deal. All the signers must believe that the contract will be fulfilled. That brings us back to Abram and when he CUT a covenant with God. That’s right. Every time in your English Bible when it says “so-and-so” MADE a covenant, it actually says in the Hebrew “so-and-so” CUT a covenant. Let me explain why.
The process is laid out right here for us all to see. Abram had serious doubts about this agreement that God had made with him. You might remember that Abram had been asked by God to leave his family and his land and journey to a far-away place to begin a whole new people who would all be descended from him and Sarai. The only problem was that years later, when they were even more impossibly older to have children, they STILL had not had the promised children God predicted, not a single one. Abram wanted more assurance that this was not all some great trick or that God would actually live up to the fantastic promise. Abram wanted to know that he could trust God, so God told him to do this disturbing, strange ritual. He was to take a series of animals and cut them in half and lay them out in two rows so that there was a path between them. Yes, it is not a pleasant picture to our 21st century sensibilities. I am sorry. No, your meat is not magically created at the grocery story. The world is a harder and more bloody place that we want to admit sometimes. It has been that way forever. Back in ancient Genesis days, God instructed Abram to do something dramatic and horrific to make a point.
When you take the animals that were cut and line them up in two rows, it makes a bloody path between them. God is doing something completely radical and unheard of here. Never before in human history has God done something like this. Through this dream with Abram, God expresses the future. You heard God describe the Exodus and the Israelites escape from Egypt, but you also heard that strange business about the burning pot and the torch passing between the animal carcasses.
The picture that God is showing to Abram is that if God does NOT uphold God’s end of the bargain, then Abram has every right to do to God what Abram did to those animals. The burning objects represent God’s presence. That God was walking through the blood of the animals, with the blood being the seal of this covenant. In this moment, God is saying, “If I fail you, I will be like these animals.”
This is SO strange, SO novel, SO unheard of. The Almighty Creator and Maker of the Universe is entering into a covenant with a lowly creature and giving that creature authority over God, in a sense.
Well, you might say that God certainly knows there is no real risk. God will come through. It is certain. God knows what will happen, but Abram does not. Abram is scared and worried and doubtful. He and Sarai are only getting older. It was many years from when they left home to when Isaac was born. In the middle of those years, doubt and fear crept in, but God does not tell Abram to just get over it. God does not just dismiss Abram’s worries. Instead, God assures Abram in this dramatic way and gives Abram power and a say in all of this. He is becoming Abram’s strength, his faith, and his trust. He is building Abram’s confidence and showing him how seriously God is taking this responsibility. “Wait for me a little while longer, Abram,” God says. “Trust me for a little while longer.”
This is one of the great struggles of life. We know with our heads that God is supposed to be with us, but our hearts can feel differently. We can know that God is truly God, but we can feel alone and weak and small. Life is overwhelming for the best of us. There is no one here who has escaped these feelings. We have all needed a covenant moment, not for God to come pat us on the head, but for God to show up and prove that God means it. This is God walking through the mess with us.
Of course, biblically, this is the story of Jesus. He is God walking through the middle of the human mess with the proof of God’s redeeming love. He is that guarantee that God will always be our God, and we will always be God’s people. It is in the day to day, however, when we struggle a little more. It is a little harder to remember the gift of Jesus so far after the fact. That is one reason why you are here today, though. You are here to be reminded that God is the God of promises. This is the God of Covenants, and God does not take them lightly. In fact, God even died in one to give us a new one that is eternal. Jesus laid it out just like Abram when he celebrated the Last Supper, only instead of animals cut in two and a path of blood, Jesus gave them his own body broken and his own blood to follow. Jesus cut that covenant with his disciples and us all so that we might live in him. Jesus symbolically laid out his own body and poured his blood as proof of his commitment, a commitment he lived out the next day on a cross.
I wonder how God is holding our brokenness today as evidence of God’s commitment. What are the covenant moments for us today? What’s being cut?
There are two places where I need to see God’s covenantal work especially. On a global scale, I am worried about the environment. At some point, changes to our climate will be more severe and irreversible. Where is God in this? I don’t want my great grandchildren to worry about superstorms every few months. I am deeply worried that people will not take the needed action to care for God’s creation until it is too late. We have that tendency.
Locally, I need a covenant moment in working more with our African-American sisters and brothers. My vision of the Kingdom of God is where skin color is exactly and only that. It is not that people are color blind. You can notice colors, but they just don’t mean anything. I wish this were the case in Farmville. Again, where is God in this? I wish that we were all working in the field of Jesus with greater openness and equity. This must be God’s heart. I know it, but I don’t know where the opportunity is. I could use some help, family of God. I want to see God showing us that promise.
You may have other covenant concerns, something you need to come help you walk into tomorrow with more confidence. Do you remember in the third Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade, when Indiana Jones had to take the step or leap of faith as a test before getting the Holy Grail? He had to walk forward into what looked like a great chasm, but it was really a camouflaged bridge. It was right there the whole time, but he just couldn’t see it until he stepped. Faith is really where all of this passage takes us. The Hebrews passage is part of a larger section dedicated to people of faith and their stories. You heard how Abram managed to believe, even when he was struggling to believe.
When we feel like maybe God has forgotten about us, that is when faith is most important. You never seem to need faith with things are going well. That’s a strange thing, if you think about it. Faith in God means more to us when things are off the chain, out of control, completely bonkers. Somehow, in spite of what is going on right in front of us, we are supposed to look through it to the One who is always with us. God has already made the promise and lived it out through Jesus. It is just our part to believe God is with us and for us. Abram’s story is about this crucial point – trusting in God’s promise, no matter what.
It is amusing to me that no one is holding their breath out there. At least, I assume that is the case with these masks on. No one out there is so worried that the air is going to run out in here that they are holding their breath, just in case. And yet, I have never seen any air in here. How do we know that there is enough air in this room? That’s faith. Like the air, it is always around us, always filling us, always enabling us to live, always giving us what we need. If we can be so certain about the air, we should be even more certain about the one who made the air and gave us the air and the lungs and desire to breathe.
When we are willing to live in that kind of faith, we will find ourselves in God’s covenant. The Presbyterian Church has prided itself on being a covenant church. This is important to us. We all agree to live and work together, but we also claim that God is genuinely working in the hard spaces, the hardest of spaces. It is God’s promise to take us through all of life, especially the times that make us tremble, and bring us through with greater faith. It is not easy. You can bet Abram was scared a good bit, but he also placed his trust in God in this seemingly impossible promise.
The fact is that God is more serious about these promises than we are. God is more sincere about our care and love and support than we are about our concerns or our needs. The covenant has always been a show that God is invested in our lives and will never let us go. We will never be lost. We will never fail to be God’s children in the end. Jesus is our victory and God’s eternal promise to us. We are a people of the body and blood; let us believe – now and forever. To God be the glory. Amen.