This was intended to be last Sunday's sermon, but the weather in Indianapolis didn't cooperate. This is the third (Matt preached previous two) in a series looking at the Jewish influences on Jesus' life.
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
After these things the word of the
Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield;
your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you
give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of
Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born
in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man
shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He
brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you
are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Then he said to him, “I am the Lord
who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.”
But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” He said to
him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram
three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” He brought him all these
and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not
cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram
drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep
sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
. . .
When the sun had gone down and it
was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I
give this land,
According to biblical tradition, Israel became a community by virtue of entering into a
covenant with God. That covenant took
place at Sinai and is found in the book of Exodus.
There are several other covenants mentioned in the Hebrew
Bible --- including the one we just heard which is the promise of the land for
Israel.
In English, the word covenant refers to a binding agreement
between two parties.
The Hebrew word for covenant is b’rit.
It is one of the most frequently used words in Hebrew
Scriptures (close to 300 times) and is one of the Scripture’s most important
concepts.
In English, covenant has connections with contracts,
negotiations, deals and pacts. Typically
to make one of these covenants official it is signed by both parties.
Some of the most popular covenants in our culture involve
real estate ---
most often
stipulating what can be done, or how land can be used.
When the covenant or contract is violated
by one part or the other – courts often get involved.
The other major covenant in our society is the marriage
covenant.
In the bible, the word b’rit also describes a binding
agreement.
It is even
occasionally used in regard to marriage
More commonly, b’rit refers to a treaty, alliance or trade
agreement.
These types of agreements between
people are referred to in the bible dozens of times.
But b’rit is most frequently used to describe the
relationship between God and God’s people.
The idea is that God and the people are bound together in
the closest imaginable ways.
Think of some of the ways covenants were ratified in the
Hebrew bible.
At the end of this covenant section of Genesis in chapter 17
God commands
“As for you, you shall keep my
covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This
is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring
after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the
flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and
you. . . . So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any
uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be
cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
Later in the Hebrew bible this idea will be expanded and the
prophet Jeremiah will talk about a circumcision of the heart.
"Circumcise yourselves to the
Lord,
remove the foreskin of your hearts"
God wants our hearts, our very lives to be different
To have our heart circumcised is to
become vulnerable and sensitive to God’s ways.
Today we would talk about SIGNING a contract
In the biblical story a b’rit was not signed
Instead it
would be cut.
If you were to actually read the original Hebrew --- while
our English translation might talk about someone “making a covenant” --- the
Hebrew would actually say “cutting a b’rit”
These ancient covenants were often made by animal sacrifice.
To “cut a covenant” demonstrated the earnestness of the
parties involved in the agreement.
This is exactly what the passage we listened to this morning
told us:
“Bring me a heifer three years old,
a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young
pigeon.” He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over
against the other
After cutting them in half, those making the covenant would
walk between the bleeding corpses.
Some scholars argue that the reason animal sacrifice was
used was to remind them that to violate the covenant meant that they deserved
to die, just like the animals that were sacrificed to seal the covenant
What is important to understand is that a b’rit was not to
be taken lightly.
It created a powerful bond between God and God’s people.
Our English word covenant just doesn’t carry the same weight
or expectations that is found in the Hebrew b’rit
Richard Rubenstein -- President Emeritus and Distinguished
Professor of Religion at the University of Bridgeport writes:
Of special importance to the
covenant relationship is the conviction that God exercises his power in a
manner that is both ethical and rational. Put differently, there was thought to
be a predictable and dependable relationship between Israel’s conduct and the
manner in which God exercised his power over his people.
For Jewish people at the time of Jesus, obedience to the
terms of the covenant is the path of life; rejection of the covenant is pretty
much a guarantee of the individual’s election of misfortune, unhappiness, and
death.
Jesus and his fellow Jews would have sought ways to restore
or strengthen their relationship with God --- and the way they would have
understood that was through the covenant.
The Covenant was God’s abiding promise.
Jeremiah 31 (31-33) would have been familiar words of hope.
The days are surely coming, says
the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the
house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their
ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a
covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this
is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,
says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
While most Christians hear those words and think they
Jeremiah was referring to the Christian Church which somehow replaced the
Jewish people in God’s plan, that clearly isn’t true
This is a covenant for and with the people of Israel, not
instead of them.
Non-Jewish Christians are made partakers of the covenant
promises given to Israel but they do not replace the Jewish people as the
recipients of God’s covenantal purposes and election
That is the world of Jesus --- and Jesus reminded us over
and over that he did not come to replace the covenant.
If we want to understand Jesus, we must understand what
b’rit meant to him and to his brothers and sisters.
Last Sunday we remembered Martin Luther King by sharing his
Letter From A Birmingham Jail --- one of his most remarkable legacies --- but
throughout his life, Martin Luther King kept trying to remind white America of
the Covenant that they had with their black brothers and sisters.
A covenant
that he felt we had not lived up to
And an
argument that he would continue to make today
One of the hallmarks of being a United Methodist is the
belief that God still calls us into covenant
While we don’t practice sacrificing animals to seal the
covenant, John Wesley and the early Methodists did call us into covenant
relationship.
One of the ways we do this, in many United Methodist
Church’s there is the practice of sharing together in a covenant renewal
service.
We did this the past two years at our Sunday after Christmas
service as a way to begin the new year.
One of the prayers that is used is Wesley’s Covenant prayer
I want to end by sharing a contemporary version of it
I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, place me
with whom you will.
Put me to doing, put me to
suffering.
Let me be put to work for you or
set aside for you,
Praised for you or criticized for
you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have
nothing.
I freely and fully surrender all
things to your glory and service.
And now, O wonderful and holy God,
Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer,
you are mine, and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made
on earth,
Let it also be made in heaven. Amen.
