March 7, 2004 - Second Sunday of Lent
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
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Psalm 27
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Luke 13:31-35
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"The Covenant at the Heart of Things"

Abram had done it.  He’d listened to the stirrings in his heart, to this voice that called itself “El Shaddai” – God Almighty – sold the family business, packed up his wife and began the journey to a never before seen or heard of “promised land.”  Along the way he picked up a few more relatives and survived more than a few scrapes.  Now he’s had an experience with a character named Melchizedek, the priest of the most high God, who blessed him and Abram’s given him a tenth of everything he had.  It must have been an absolutely overwhelming experience and then, again, there was the Voice.

Now the Voice tells him, “Fear not, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”  Abram had heard the Voice, had heeded it, followed the directives and still he had his doubts.  “O Lord God, what wilt thou give me, for I continue childless…”  This isn’t the first time that Abram has demanded a sign and, again, God answers with a promise that Abram’s descendents will be like the numberless stars of the heavens.  To make the promise real God enters into a covenant relationship with Abram.

The ceremony that we see unfold reflects the ancient practice of “cutting a covenant,” in other words the divided animals reflect the relationship entered into between the two parties and their agreement.  But the reason that God has entered into this special relationship is because God has seen Abram’s faith and, in a verse that will make a huge difference to the Apostle Paul and tons of theologians – especially Martin Luther – we hear, “And he believed the Lord; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.”  Abram’s faith in God justified him and brought him into this powerful new relationship.

Abram’s journey becomes a metaphor for all of human life.  Our lives are all really faith journeys, aren’t they?  As we go along our ways we are constantly confronting “trust issues.”  We hear about the importance of trust in personal and family relationships.  The scandals in business that have rocked the U.S. of late mostly relate to the eroding of trust in those who manage the funds or the corporations and whether or not we can trust those who oversee the marketplace.  Even Martha Stewart, the guru of good taste, has had her credibility rocked not because she went wrong with her decorating, but because of “insider trading” – which is a violation of trust.  I won’t even touch the importance of trust in government and what that means in an election year – well, I just did, but that’s all I will say!  Trust issues are real, and important, and are also at the core of the Scriptural record – God says again and again, “I am always with you.  I can be trusted. Don’t worry.”

Our Lenten journey is an exercise designed to help us focus on the journey of life.  The forty days that we spend in Lent are supposed to be a microcosm of life.  We enter into the possibility of change by faith or choose not to – just as Abram did.  Whether we grow or not depends on our openness to God’s grace and activity in our lives.  We can put in the effort, open our hearts to God’s promise, or we can close ourselves off and continue as we always have.  Abram had a choice and he opened himself, his life, his heart to God’s promise of covenant relationship.

The covenant is an exercise in trust in the midst of uncertainty.  So the covenant, at least in Abram’s case, is a paradoxical thing.  He is putting his faith, his confidence, into something yet unseen.  The covenant, however, stands as the guarantor of that which is yet to come and says that there is more here; there is something here in which you can place your trust and this is the sign of it.  The covenant, then, stands at the heart of things.  Heinrich Bullinger, perhaps the greatest theologian of the covenant, said that “true religion is none other thing than a friendship, a knitting and a unity with the true, living, and everlasting God.”  This is what we see happening here.  God opens God’s heart to Abram and draws him into the relationship because Abram is willing to place his trust in God and God is worthy of the trust.

Even though Abram found himself in the midst of a wilderness, he now knew that there was more to come, that he was passing through this on his way to something else.  The truth is that where God is there is never a wilderness; it’s simply a question of whether or not we perceive God’s presence or not.  To my mind, this is why we need the Lenten wilderness; wilderness is the place of encounter.  Abram found God in the midst of the wilderness.  Israel discovers what it means to be a nation and to be God’s people in the Sinai desert.  The prophets call Israel back to the wilderness so that they can again know God.  Jesus recreates the forty year wandering in his temptation experience in the wilderness.  In every case, God was there and it was only possible to perceive the Divine Presence when everything else that distracts and holds us back, all of the stuff that calls us to put our trust in the wrong place, is put into perspective, is stripped away.  The heart of God needs the wilderness points of our lives so that our hearts can hear God’s voice.

I experienced wilderness in my journey to Africa.  I saw it in a city of millions of people – Johannesburg.  I experienced the fear of a nation that is only really ten years old and still trying to figure out who it is and what it is going to do with itself.  There are eleven official languages in South Africa and fifty five per cent plus unemployment.  In the township of Mpopobele outside Pietermaritzburg it was eighty-seven per cent. Julie and I and the members of the International Congregational Fellowship’s Theological Commission walked through that township and spoke with its people.  What I saw was a land of contrasts – striking beauty and abundance right alongside the remnants of oppression and very real poverty.  It was a wilderness and, like where Abram was, faith is being born there.

I experienced that faith as I talked with pastors of the United Congregational Churches of South Africa.  I heard it in their voices as we talked about how they were “doing church” there and confronting the real need to bring black and white and ‘coloured’ together.  God is at work in the place and it is exciting to see the kind of work that is being done as people of faith work to transcend not only racial and political, but denominational boundaries in order to touch, heal, and reconcile people who have lived in brokenness and fear.  The words of God to Abram are real for them: “Do not be afraid…I am your shield.”  There is no wilderness where God is.

I find it interesting that the Hebrew for “shield” comes from the same root as the word for “garden” or “enclosure.”  We may travel through all kinds of wildernesses in our lives, but as long as we are in God we have a safe place, we have a garden in which our roots can go deep and flourish.  We hear echoes of this in the Psalmist’s assurance in the Lord who is “light and salvation” and again and again that one who “waits for the Lord” has no reason to be afraid.  How do we come to this position of trust?  The Psalmist has the heart reminding us to seek God’s face, to have faith that we “will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  The heart knows and longs for the One who made it and in whose presence it knows peace and joy.  Richard Sibbes, the English Puritan theologian, commented on this Psalm and noted that the conscience and heart of humans is “partly human and partly divine.”  There is this “heart root” that is connected to God and only knows peace in union with the Divine, in “waiting for the Lord.”

In another place Sibbes likens the life of a Christian to a garden, which goes right along with trust in God being our ‘shield,’ our enclosure.  He said, “The heart of a Christian is Christ’s garden, and his graces are so many sweet spices and flowers, which his Spirit blowing upon makes them to send forth a sweet savor.  Therefore keep the soul open for entertainment of the Holy Ghost, for he will bring in continually fresh forces to subdue corruption.”  [quoted in Norman Petit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life, p. 68-9] Whatever wildernesses in life we may travel through – and there will be many and in multiple forms – if the heart is in contact with God’s heart, then the desert blooms before us with every step.

Nowhere do we see this better portrayed than in Jesus’ final journey up to Jerusalem.  Like that of Abram and of Lent, Jesus’ journey is a microcosm of life.  It’s a test of the trust relationship.  What we see unfolding here in Luke’s account is that trust leads to freedom.  The heart that loves and is focused on the Other and others is truly free because of trust.  The confidence we have in God, and in those around us, gives us that freedom to act and, indeed, to be the people we’re called to be.  With that kind of freedom also comes freedom from fear.  I need not worry, be afraid of what someone will say, or think, or do to me because I know that in this relationship I am safe – even in the presence of danger.

Jesus confronts the danger of Herod and a hostile group of authorities out of the confidence he has in his Heavenly Father.  The image Jesus uses of Herod as fox and himself as hen made me think of the duels between Wiley Coyote and the Road Runner.  The fox may think he’s so smart, powerful, and in control, but it is the hen who wins the day.  One author said that Jesus’ language is almost like the hen daring the fox to come into the chicken coop and do his dirty work.  The hen may die, but the chicks live on and continue to tell the story.  Ultimately, the fox’s victory is shown to be a defeat.  Why is it a defeat? Because the trust in God is greater; trust in God triumphs through the cross and in the resurrection, and we’re still telling the story – aren’t we?

The difference trust make is in the way we deal with the reality around us.  Do we seek to control (as did Herod and the authorities) or do we seek God’s reign in our lives (as Jesus did)? Agendas are subtle and dangerous things.  Sometimes even those who are zealous for God can be caught up in them.  We worshipped with the school of theology community in Pietermaritzburg and heard a superb sermon by a visiting professor from Ghana.  He talked about Lent and the temptations of Jesus.  And as he got to the last temptation he talked about how those zealous for the Lord can become distracted by their own agendas, wanting to do what they want, rather than what God wants.  Oh, how right he is, and how dangerous this is for the church in every part of the world.  If the church is to be the safe place, the place where God’s shield, is known it means that it must be a free place, a place of trust, a place of the heart.

The covenant relationship that God enters into with us and that we, in our turn, enter into with one another is at the heart things, at the heart of our life together.  We walk through the Lenten wilderness together to strip ourselves of those agendas, those false gods that would keep us from truly being the “Lord’s free people.”  Trust and confidence are both patient and inclusive.  The signs of the new covenant certainly reflect this in so many ways.  The new covenant takes the cross and transforms an instrument of suffering, humiliation, and death into a sign of hope, love, and trust.  I so like what G. K. Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy when he describes the difference between a circle and the cross.  He wrote: “For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed forever in size; it can never be larger or smaller.  But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape.  Because it has a paradox in its centre in can grow without changing.  The circle returns upon itself and is bound.  The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.”  It is the paradox at its heart that makes the difference and that still holds true.  Just as it holds true for the other signs of the new covenant – water, bread and wine.  Simple things, part of ordinary life which take on wholly new meaning because they symbolize our being cleansed and incorporated into God’s life.  The best sign of the new covenant, however, is us – God’s gathered people.  We become the living reminders of the difference trust can make.

All of these are signs of the open heart, of God’s affection for those God has made in God’s own image and likeness, reflected in us.  The covenant is at the heart of things, because God says again and again, “I am always with you” and then makes the Divine Presence felt in so many ways.  The covenant calls us to be, like Abram and Jesus, a people of the journey, a pilgrim people, always traveling onward toward a destination that we can’t quite yet see and drawn into a relationship that is as new as it is old.  That destination is always both near and far, because it’s as close as the heart.