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Obligation and Obedience: The Third Covenant
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis July 9, 2006, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Deuteronomy 10:12-22; 11:26-27 Acts 3:17-26
We turn to the Mosaic Covenant this morning and are turned, once again, toward God’s promises in the middle of a plot already unfolding…if not unraveling…in the wilderness. I confess that part of the reason for this summer series is to review, by way of God’s promises (in a Cliff’s Notes sort of way), the sweep of the plot we are given in Scripture. "I believe," says John Steinbeck’s Caleb in the midst of narrating the story of his family's life lived East of Eden, "that there is one story in the world, and only one….Humans are caught--in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too--in a net" of one story. That story is what the church calls Scripture and, according to theologian and friend Robert Jenson, "The church reads her Scripture as a single plotted succession of events, stretching from creation to consummation…." "Give me a used Bible," says Caleb's friend Samuel a bit later on, "and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a [person] by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.” We are edging God’s promises with the dirt of our seeking fingers this summer and last marked the page on which God spoke to Abram and Sarai saying: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” I remind you that both this promise and the promise God made with Noah were promises that obligated only God. Modeled on what was known in those days as a suzerainty covenant, a covenant in which the terms are imposed only upon one of the parties, the astounding detail we have come to take for granted is that in these stories “it is the suzerain who is obliged, not the vassal.” That is to say, the maintenance of the relationship, according to the story thus far, does not depend upon our performance but on God’s. We are simply “the beneficiaries of the divine commitment.” To put the matter another way having to do with the covenant before us this morning, “A promise goes: ‘Because I will do such-and-such, you may await such-and-such.’ The pattern is ‘because…therefore…,’ the exact reverse of ‘if…then…’” according to Jenson. “Here a future is opened independent of any prior condition, independent of what the addressee of the promise may do or be beforehand.” At first glance we think, “What a deal!” as regards our license, not our freedom. But upon thinking again, most are led to conclude that this is no way to live, simply because it means giving the future into God’s keeping rather than keeping the future under our control. We want to know the terms…hold up our end of the bargain. So against such a life of radical trust, says Jenson, we try to defend ourselves “by constantly expanding the space of our present, of the time we have and control.” Our ordinary God, therefore, [the God we ordinarily worship] becomes the God who “always already is all that [God] will be, and in whose knowledge and care all our uncertainties are therefore settled in advance. [This God] can both…defend our status quo and provide a refuge when the status quo itself becomes too threatening. The God of religion is pure Present, Presence, Alreadiness…the Rock of Ages, the Sheltering Arms, the transcendent Security Blanket.” What I love about the biblical narrative is that it nails our false worship of this God again and again, even as sometimes the same narrative—especially this morning’s--seems to underwrite such idolatry. No sooner had Abram signed on to the covenant and God’s promised future than he slips into the bed of his wife’s slave to assure himself of an heir. It was a control issue…the woman, of course, taking the blame! Just as Eve offered the forbidden fruit to Adam and he did eat, so Sarai said to Abram, “‘You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.’ And Abram listened [not to God’s voice, the text implies, but] to the voice of Sarai.” Together they attempt to take the future into their own hands. The chapter that follows is dark and disturbing and deserves a Sunday morning all its own. Suffice it to say theologically that the future of God’s chosen people could in no way descend from the offspring of Hagar, for through no fault of Ishmael or Hagar, Ishmael was the issue of human devising. So now, at the age of ninety-nine and hopelessly childless, Abram and Sarai are again addressed by God, given the same promise with the significant addition of one ‘if’. Scholars are clear that the 17th chapter of Genesis represents the story of the covenant made by God with Abraham as rewritten by the Priestly editor. Predictably concerned with institutionalized religion, the promise according to P is vouchsafed not by looking up at the stars but by looking down. “So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant,” says the Lord. “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.” The covenant that was without condition according to the first telling is now made slightly conditional (or painfully conditional, depending on your perspective) by way of the sign of circumcision. From the perspective of religion, it is an identity thing; it is also (I imagine) a control thing! But with the same breath and back to the original promise in this same chapter, God at long last announces the end of Sarah’s barrenness. Isaac soon will be born as the offspring of Abraham’s issue. He is the promised son—no ifs, ands or buts we think--who will give rise to nations. But think again! For this plot twists and turns, our hearts literally writhe before the God whose unconditional promise comes up against the contradictory condition of God’s command. God commands Abraham to sacrifice the son, the only son, the beloved on whom the promise of future generations would seem to rest. Without a word and awash in a trust that defies our comprehension, Abraham does as God commands, rises early to sacrifice the bearer of God’s promise. “We are back to barrenness,” says Walter Brueggemann. “This strange contradiction in the heart of God,” he says, “is another glimpse of the same reality we have seen in the flood narrative. Luther is correct to say that no human reason or philosophy comprehends these two marks of God,” marks that surely prompted another biblical writer to pen the story of Job—a story told to shake the foundations of the apparently conditional covenant with which we are about to do business; told to question the conclusions too reasonably drawn by any who believe the covenant is kept, the human-divine relationship controlled, by way of their better obedience; told to unsettle our friends who are so sure God’s love depends on the ‘if’ more than the ‘because’. The beginnings of such conclusions are surely found in this story of testing and terror. “Now I know” says God staying the knife in Abraham’s hand, “that you fear God.” Apparently an unspoken condition had unintentionally been met, a test passed: “Because you have done this,” God concludes, “have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand on the seashore.” How is it that this story thrusts some back upon the grace of God, knowing there are none who could stand the test, while the same story causes others to ratchet up their own righteous behavior in order to be blessed? The divide runs through us all, runs through God’s people in every age! But clearly because God knows Abraham fears God alone, the fulfillment of God’s promise of progeny may commence. Page after page now is filled with the stories of patriarchs (and matriarchs)—of Isaac and of Rebekah (who was also barren), of Jacob and Esau (combatants even in the womb), of the twelve offspring of Jacob who, in turn, head the twelve tribes of Israel. The offspring of Abraham indeed have become as numerous as the sands on the seashore and, when we next meet these tribes in Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, it is evident that they no longer are simply an extended family. They are, by God’s declaration, “a people”: God’s chosen people. Because God promised Abraham, therefore the tribes have been given this future! But now the story begins to have more and more to do with what constitutes these nomadic tribes as a people, as God’s people. They become the people whom God has delivered from slavery and redeemed as God’s very own. [Hear in that: “Because” God has chosen them, “therefore….”] Already redeemed, they are given the law not as the means to the relationship but as a gift from the God to whom they already belong, as a guide for the life to which they have been called, as a description of the community they are destined to be in God’s steadfast love. That being said, we nevertheless arrive at Sinai to witness the covenant between God and God’s people mediated by Moses and sounding radically different in character to us from the covenant that obligated God alone. Now the chapters are filled with ‘ifs’ and read like catalogues of obligations imposed on the vassal Israel. “Rewards and penalties, in the form of blessings and curses, are attached to the covenant as consequences of obedience and disobedience respectively,” writes David Noel Freedman. “The emphasis is on human obligation and the consequences of human behavior for the maintenance of the covenantal relationship.” The terms of the relationship, in our hearing, sound clear and apparently in our court, under our control, within our ability to do. And were this where the story began, we would be having to do with an ordinary God who always already is what God will be, and in whose knowledge and care all our uncertainties are therefore settled in advance. But this is not the first page edged with the dirt of our seeking fingers. Therefore God’s prior “because” sets every “if” in the context of an electing love that cannot seem to quit this people, no matter how rebellious or idolatrous or cantankerous they [and later we] prove to be. “To love God,” writes Karl Barth commenting on our text, “is to give oneself to [God], to put oneself at [God’s] disposal. And when [a person] does this, that person’s freedom for love becomes and is a freedom for obedience.” That is to say, the parenthesis of God’s “because” enfolds the “if” of our obedience within God’s abiding mercy. You and I do not know this of ourselves but know this in him who alone gave himself to God, put himself at God’s disposal, such that his perfect freedom for love was also his perfect freedom for obedience. What is revealed in the Son, the only Son, the beloved of God is not a relationship laden with obligation on either side, but rather we behold a love freely given that becomes obedience and an obedience returned that can only be received as love. My friends, because of this love we were made and in the future of God’s “therefore” you and I are destined for life in the presence of no ordinary God. Revealed in this plot running from creation to consummation is God’s extraordinary love that will not let us be or abide without Him, now and forever! |