“A Whole ‘Nother Deal”
This is the second week in Lent as we prepare and await Jesus' death on the cross and His resurrection on Easter Day. During this season we reflect on our own brokenness, on our inability to save ourselves, and on our need for rescue from the outside, from outside ourselves.
One of the passages from the Anglican Lectionary this week, Genesis 15, we see God make a covenant with Abram, who is later renamed Abraham. The man that three of the major religions on earth trace their existence back to: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam…the Abrahamic faiths, as they are called. God interrupts Abram’s life out of the blue and starts making promises to him. He makes a covenant with Abram, but to borrow from the singer/songwriter Don Chaffer, this is a “whole ‘nother deal” as we will see. Now, covenants are not something that we think about on an everyday basis in our current world. At least, we don't use the word covenant very often. That word has an especially biblical flavor to it. It brings to mind very weighty ceremonies involving blood and oaths and so on. It makes me think of the movie Robin Hood, the one with Kevin Costner, not Russell Crowe. After he buries his father after returning from the Crusades, he takes his knife, slices the palm of his hand, and says, "I'll not rest until my father is avenged. I swear it by my own blood." Then he squeezes his hand so that his blood drips on his father's grave. I don't know about you, but I always wonder why they cut their palms or their thumbs whenever they do this sort of thing in the movies. It just seems like a bad idea because it's always happening in the Middle Ages or some ancient time when having an open wound on your hand was like a guarantee of infection, which back then was almost a guaranteed death sentence. And the fact that you're gonna have to use your hand a lot for like sword fighting and shooting a bow and arrow and stuff is a real problem. That cut is not going to close up very quickly. It's gonna hurt, but I digress. The point is the idea of covenants seem some what unfamiliar to us. We don’t often do the whole I-swear-on-my-life type of thing any more.
Still, covenants do exist in our day and age. I entered into a covenant with Kate when we got married. Thankfully, I did not have to slice my hand open, but it was a covenant none the less. The truth is that a covenant is an agreement between two parties. That's really romantic isn't it? Imagine that proposal: “I would like to enter into an agreement with you, my love." But it is the basic truth. We make covenants with each other quite a bit today. By definition it is simply an agreement usually between two or more parties to do or not do something. It could be business mergers or your contract with you cell phone provider or just an agreement between friends to hang out once a week. We enter into covenants all the time.
When I think about covenants or on a lesser more everyday level deal making I can't help but think about Downton Abbey. Kate and I were nothing short of obsessed with Downton when it came out, and I have just recently begun rewatching it because it just feels so right. Maybe I’m just looking for some superficial comfort and escapism as our world seems to be sprinting at break-neck speed into greater instability and chaos. A little British gilded age drama fits the bill. We watch Lord Granthum and his household live during a time when the old world life of grand estates and very stark boundaries between the classes existed AND was quickly being replaced by a more modern world of people making their own fortunes and defying class lines and social acceptability. It was chaotic for them then, and they made it through…maybe we will too.
It is completely addictive, so if you haven’t watched it yet consider that fact before you begin. And there will be some spoilers here, but the show’s been around for long enough that I think it’s ok to share a bit. Back to the point, Downton is full of covenants. Characters are constantly making agreements with one another but it is usually based on sharing some secret. For example Bates, Lord Granthum's valet (which is like his personal servant) makes a deal with O'Brien, Lady Granthum's maid (the equivalent to Bates) that if she helps him he would not share her secret about being responsible for causing Lady Granthum's miscarriage. One character knows something about another character and promises not to tell as long as the other agrees to do something for them. The agreements are built upon the threat of being exposed or found out, which insures that they will keep the agreement.
This is the way covenants work in our world. They operate on a tit for tat basis - you keep your end of the agreement, and I will keep mine. As long as you do what you are supposed to do, things will work out. If you do not, then things will go badly, and the deal is off. Covenants depend on both parties keeping up their end of the deal. In this way they are completely law-based…contingent upon performance and fidelity to the agreement.
As usual, God turns this on its head. The way he makes a covenant with Abram breaks the tit for tat pattern. He promises Abram that his descendants will be like the stars in the sky and that they will inherit a good land. Abram questions God and says, “How will I know that this is going to happen?” So, God tells Abram He is going to make a covenant with him. He tells him to get a bunch of animals and cut them in half. Remember Robin Hood’s bloody hand? This is the way covenants were made…the stakes needed to be serious enough that each party would be well motivated…ergo blood was involved. The two parties agree on something and then cut the animals half and then both walk in between them symbolizing the fact that if either of them breaks the deal then their fate will be the same as the animals. You certainly don't enter into that kind of covenant lightly. Imagine if your contract with AT&T was like that. You will use us as your provider for two years or we will cut you in half!
It does look like the headquarters of an evil empire, like something out of Lord of the Rings:)
Well, as we said before, in covenants both sides have the security that the other is very motivated to keep up their end of the bargain because otherwise they will pay dearly. But here God does not cover His back at all. He knows that Abram is NOT going to keep his end. He knows that he will not be faithful to obey His commands, and He knows that none of Abram's descendants will be faithful either. AND he willingly enters into this covenant with Abram (and us) anyway. Now, I’m not much a business man, but if I were God’s lawyer or advisor or even a concerned bystander, I’d tell him needs to reconsider this deal. But God doesn’t give a rip about best business practices here. In fact, the Lord doesn't even let Abram participate in the process. He puts Abram to sleep, so that he can't even take part in the ratification of this covenant. God makes this agreement with Abram and then takes the entire penalty of breaking it upon himself. Saying that if either party breaks our agreement then I alone will pay for it. This is radical!
Before we unpack that more, I think it’s helpful to understand the imagery of the fire pot and the torch. God passes between the cut animals alone in the form of a smoking fire pot and a burning torch. The torch is the easier of the two symbols to understand. It is a firey light symbolizing God’s presence. Fire was often used by the Lord to display his presence. Consider the burning bush, the pillar of fire guiding and protecting the Israelites out of Egypt, and the prophets repeatedly referring to God’s refining and purifying fire (Exodus, Zechariah, Malachi, etc.). All of it points to his holiness, him being the light of the world, the guide and protector of his people. Then there is the smoking fire pot. There are varying opinions amongst scholars on what exactly this represents, but the one that seems to make the most sense to me is that it is foreshadowing what will happen to the Israelites in the process of God fulfilling this convenant to Abraham to make him a great nation and give him this promised land. Deuteronomy 4:20 says, “ But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.” The smoking fire pot was basically a portable oven that alluded to Israel’s slavery in Egypt. the fact that it is portable is important because it is pointing to the fact that Yahweh would bring them out of Egypt to the Promised Land. There’s a little more here though. The prophet Zecharich also refers to Judah (the tribe from which Jesus would come) as “a blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves” (12:6) foreshadowing that God would unilaterally defeat all of his people’s enemies: the wood and the sheaves…things that will be burned up because of God’s presence with Judah. Most importantly our greatest enemy of sin. Jesus is the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy.
In all of this God turns our idea of a covenant on its head. He places all of the weight of this covenant upon himself. He hangs the responsibility on himself, the risk upon himself, the penalty (which he knew was coming) upon himself. The reason for this is clearcut. It is because God “desires mercy, not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6). He relates to us through grace and not law. God has made his covenant with Abram and us completely grace-based where he is the actor and subject and we are the passive recipient and object of his work on our behalf. He is in the business of saving his people. He was giving Abram a promise. A promise that would require nothing of Abram…that would defy logic. One that could only be miraculously kept. Just like a 100 year old man and a 90 year old woman having a baby. In fact, God doubles down on his promises to Abram in this covenant. It’s like he’s turning the volume on his promise up to 11. He is saying, “"I told you I was going to do this for you, and I am dead serious about it.” God’s covenant presupposed Abram’s unfaithfulness and disobedience just as it presupposed yours and mine as well. He doesn’t hang any of it on you. He has taken it all upon himself. And just as the firepot and torch point our eyes forward, we know that He would come in the flesh to make good on his promise to Abram and to you and me. He came in Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our unfaithfulness to him, to suffer the fate of those animals to save us from our sin. He poured out his blood for you and for me. He swore it on his own blood. And then he rose from the dead for you and for me to save us from our slavery to sin. This is the great news for you today in Jesus Christ. You are free! Your sin has been defeated, put to death in him. You are forgiven.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…” (Ephesians 2:1-8).
Amen.
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