Second Sunday in Lent
5:30 p.m. Saturday, March 3, 2012
The Reverend John H. Brock
Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church
Camp Hill, Pennsylvania
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Romans 4:13-25
Grace to you and peace from God who is, who was,
and who is to come. Amen.
According to Dictionary.com, a covenant is an
agreement, usually formal, between two or more
parties to do or not do something specific, or in the
case of law, it is an incidental clause in such
agreement, or in the Ecclesiastical setting, a solemn
agreement between the members of a church to act
together in harmony with the precepts of the gospel
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(like we know what that means). I think that it is
fairly safe to say that all of us here in this room at
some time have made a covenant, a promise, an
agreement, with someone else. Maybe it’s been in a
business
between
partners:
‘I’ll
be
legally
responsible for this part, you’ll be legally responsible
for that part and together we’re going to be legally
responsible for this other stuff.’ Maybe it’s been in
friendship: ‘I will help you through this (fill in the
blank) this illness, this divorce, this bad haircut,
whatever, and I will do this because I am your
friend.’ For those of us who have children we
covenant with them: ‘You are my child and I will
always love you.
You might disappoint me, but I
will still always love you.’
We covenant with a
spouse or a significant other as well. From a human
standpoint I think that’s the one that is probably a
bit more difficult of all of those covenants that I
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have just spoken of, because, at least in my
experience, it’s my spouse whom I appear to let
down most often. But those are all, let’s call them,
personal or people oriented covenants.
Last week we heard the first scriptural covenant
between the Lord God and all of creation. If you
remember from Genesis 9, God says, “Never again
shall all flesh be cut off from waters of a flood,
never again shall there be a flood to destroy the
earth.”
Tonight we heard the second covenant,
“You shall be the ancestor of nations, an ancestor of
a multitude of nations. I will establish my covenant
between me and you and your offspring after you
throughout
their
generations
for
everlasting
covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring
after you.” That covenant, that’s the promise made
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between Abram and Sarai. Let’s take a quick look at
that.
The story of Abram and Sarai starts way back in
chapter 12 of Genesis. What we heard tonight came
from chapter 17.
Last week we had the story of
Noah and the flood, back in chapter 9. Chapter 10
is full of genealogy of Noah’s descendants. Chapter
11 fills us in with the story of the Tower of Babel,
and finishes with another genealogical lesson. Then
right there at the beginning of Chapter 12, we get
this;
“1Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from
your country, and your kindred and your
father’s house to the land that I will show
you. 2“I will make of you a great nation, and
I will bless you; and I will make your name
great, so that you will be a blessing.”
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We spend the next several chapters in Genesis
learning about the Abram and Sarai story:
How
they leave their home country of Ur; how they go to
Egypt and they scam the Pharaoh there; how their
nephew Lot gets himself into some trouble.
Lot
ends up getting kidnaped, and he’s rescued by Uncle
Abram. Abram in turn is blessed by the priestly King
of Salem, a guy called Melchizedek (please don’t
name your children that). The Lord God reiterates
to Abram that whole ‘you shall have a child’ thing.
Sarai in the meantime, she’s having fits about not
having yet conceived that child that God promised
them, so she forces her handmaiden Hagar off onto
her husband. I’ve got to say, I’ve often wondered
how that conversation went. ‘You know,’ Sarai says
to Abram, ‘I want a child and if you’re not going to
give me a child, then I want you to impregnate my
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handmaiden, Hagar.’ And Abram, being the upright
kind of a guy that he is, I am sure said, ‘You want
me to go get another woman pregnant so that you
can have a child? Yes, dear.’ So anyway, Abram
impregnates Hagar and Ismael is born.
When
Ishmael is born, an angel prophesies while the Lord
God shall indeed bless this child, “he shall live at
odds with all of his kin.” (Genesis 16:12d) By the
way, which religious faith claims Ishmael as their
sacred ancestor?
Anybody know?
That’s right,
Muslims claim Ishmael as their ancestor. “He shall
live at odds with all his kin.”
All that is the prolog, that’s the setup, to our reading
from Genesis tonight. All of the baggage that comes
with that, until we get in our reading tonight, a
reiteration of that very first promise.
That first
covenant that God made with Abram and Sarai that
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the Lord God will be with them always. And to show
God’s power, to show God’s authority as proof that
the Lord meant business, God changed their names.
Such radical change happens several times in
scripture. Their grandson Jacob will get his name
changed
to
Testament.
Israel.
It
happens
in
the
New
A guy named Saul on the road to
Damascus ends up getting his name changed to
Paul. Speaking of Paul, we heard about Paul. We
heard from one of his letters tonight from the
second reading. The letter to the Romans, where
Paul’s writing to the church in Rome trying to give
them some basic understanding of what it means to
be a Christian and how to live your life as a believer.
And he brings in the story of Abraham and Sarah.
He zeros in on the reason why they were called,
which goes all the way back to Genesis.
back to Genesis 15.
It goes
We didn’t get that specific
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reading tonight, but in Genesis 15:6 “And Abram
believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him
as righteousness.”
That’s what Paul talks about.
That it is not anything that Abram has done. He did
not make the right sacrifices, he did not build the
right temples, he did not do the right things. It was
his faith that reckoned with him as being righteous.
Belief, faith, righteousness - for Paul, they all tie
together. They all remind Paul, all of those things, of
the covenant. Paul in turn then reminds the church
in Rome of that covenant. All of those things Paul
reminds us nearly 2000 years later of the promise,
the agreement, the covenant that God made
between God and Abram and Sarai. But, that God
continues to make with us today.
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Because you know, in that list of promises of
covenants that I started off with a few minutes ago,
there’s at least another covenant that I am sure just
about everybody in this room has made.
That
covenant that is made in our baptism.
That
covenant that we affirm at some point in our life
when we take those promises that were made on
our behalf and claim them as our own, The
Affirmation of Baptism. Some of our young people
will be doing that this June.
I am reminded of those promises last week when we
present a child for baptism, or when we bring
ourselves forward in the affirmation of our baptism,
after saying the words of the Creed, after publicly
proclaiming our faith, we will be asked;
“You have made this public confession of
your faith. Do you intend to continue in the
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covenant that God made with you in Holy
Baptism, to live among God’s faithful people,
to hear the word of God and share in the
Lord’s supper, to proclaim the good news of
God in Christ through word and deed, to
serve all people, following the example of
Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in
all the earth?”
In other words, when we’re baptized, someone
makes a promise on our behalf, or when we affirm
our baptism, we are asked, “Are you willing to live
for God?” Because, God has been willing to die for
us. These are the promises that the Lord will be our
God. We indeed are God’s people. That God will go
with us where ever we go, wherever we are, forever
and always.
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So this Lent, may we hold those promises always in
our hearts.
Amen.
Copyright © 2011, John H. Brock. All rights
reserved.
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