Sermon Title: "An Everlasting Covenant"
Date: March 8, 2009
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

It is safe to say that I would not be preaching on the lesson from Genesis or the topic of covenant today were it not for Susie Bjork.  A few weeks ago, when she sent me her scripture text and topic for her sermon last Sunday, I looked ahead at the Genesis passage for this Sunday.  And it seemed that after she introduced the topic of God’s covenant with Moses, expressed in the rainbow, it was natural to follow with God’s covenant with Abraham several centuries later.

It is not probable that the Bible’s genealogical line is precisely correct, yet to indicate the passage of time, Genesis records ten generations from Adam and Eve to Noah, and another ten generations from Noah to Abraham.  About the childhood of Abraham, we know nothing.  The exact years of his life are unknown.  Yet one figure in the Hebrew scriptures holds the breadth of the past—and perhaps the dimensions of the future—in his life story:  Abraham.

Bruce Feiler in his New York Times bestselling book Abraham (Harper Collins Publishers, New York.  2002) recognizes his place both in Biblical history, and as the father of three major world religions:

“The great patriarch of the Hebrew Bible is also the spiritual forefather of the New Testament and the grand holy architect of the Koran.  Abraham is the shared ancestor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  He is the linchpin of the Arab-Israeli conflict.  He is the centerpiece of the battle between the West and Islamic extremists.  He is the father—in many cases, the purported biological father—of 12 million Jews, 2 billion Christians, and 1 billion Muslims around the world.  He is history’s first monotheist [that is, believer in one God].” (p. 9)

“…Abraham, far from the complete monotheist Moses, still retains echoes of the polytheism [many gods] of his ancestors.  He is a transitional figure, with a foot in both worlds.  If anything, this position makes his trusting Yahweh even more remarkable.  Abraham, rooted in a polytheistic society—a world where gods had form and physicality and were identified with tangible facets of daily life, like rocks and trees—is prepared to put his trust in a [non]-physical, indiscernible, unprovable god.  Abraham is a visionary.”  (p. 41)

Today’s passage is that stellar moment when the Lord God Almighty “appears”—most likely vocally—to Abram, a man 99 years old with no offspring.  God, in the surprising way only God can declare, promised that if Abram were to follow God and walk blamelessly before him, God would make him the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  This everlasting covenant was to extend to all his yet-unborn descendants throughout their generations, begetting nations and kings from among them.  As a symbol of this covenant, Abram’s name was henceforth to be Abraham.

It is, of course, God who is at work in this story.  It’s God's initiative, and God’s plan in motion.  God is shaping a family, and commits to be at the heart of that family’s story, to travel with that family when they wander and dwell with them when they reach their home.  This covenant and its blessings aren’t just for the sake of Israel, however, because God intends, through Israel, to restore all of humanity.  But it starts here, with a man and woman who leave home and all that is familiar, including its security and its gods, to set out in response to the irresistible call of this “God Almighty.”  Thus begins a relationship, at times beautiful and at times troubled, between the children of Israel and their one God, whom they trust to be with them always.  “Israel’s commitment to absolute monotheism did not come about from philosophical reflection upon the being of God.  Rather, it arose out of a vital and personal experience of God’s presence and faithfulness.” (Mark Husbands, Feasting on the Word)

Remember, last week, Susie defined covenant as being different than a contract.  I like to use the car lease as an example of a contact.  The lease agent meets with you and tries to entice you by focusing solely on the reasonable monthly payments.  There’s talk of capitalization reduction, what’s due at lease signing, residual value—what’s it’s worth when the lease is over—and your options at that time, and something about excess mileage.  But it always seems to me the car lease contract favors one party over the other:  the car dealer, or lease agent.  The lessee—you or me—gets to drive the car for the next 36 months, but we never own it.  And we never quite walk away scot-free.  It doesn’t quite seem like an equal arrangement.

A covenant, however, seems coached in the mutual interests of both parties.  Webster’s defines covenant as “a written agreement or promise usually under seal between two or more parties especially for the performance of some action.”  Some of my choices for wedding services refer to the new relationship as a covenant, in that case, a dual covenant, first between two persons, and then between that couple and God.

God says, in effect, to Abraham:  you and Sarah faithfully follow me as your one true God, and I will make your descendants multiply to the ends of the earth.  That’s the terms of the covenant.

And so it has come to be.  Last Thursday night, Glenn Moeller and I attended the Annual Assembly of the South Coast Interfaith Council.  Since we voted several years ago, after deliberate study, to go from ecumenical—Protestant and Catholic, to interfaith, we have been blessed to interact with people from a variety of religious backgrounds here in Long Beach and the South Bay.  At the dinner, Glenn and I sat at a table with five Muslims.  I spoke with one of the women about youth activities.  Another woman was a family doctor who donates her time among the homeless in Los Angeles.  Her father is the religious leader of the Islamic Center of the South Bay. 

Later that evening, the Muslim doctor was recognized as Laywoman of the Year.  Then the offering appeal was made by a local rabbi.  Thinking of God’s covenant with Abraham, it was not lost on me that Glenn and I, two Christians, broke bread with five Muslims and later responded to a Jewish rabbi’s appeal for contributions to the Interfaith Council to which we all belonged!  Here embodied were the three branches that came from the covenant, still everlasting, that God made so long ago with Abraham.

Both during my six years on the Interfaith Council Board of Directors, during which time we made the deliberate move from Ecumenical to Interfaith, and to this day, I have been impressed that board members, delegates and members from all Abraham’s descendants and the other faith groups—Buddhists, Baha’i, Hindu, Unitarians, Mormons, Religious Science—recognize the value of our religious faiths as unifying us with a common purpose of peace in our community and world, respect and justice for all persons, food and shelter for the downtrodden, and the freedom to worship God as each group understands God to be for them.

Today’s lesson from the Book of Genesis is a family story, and it is poignant that the families descended from Abraham have struggled for centuries with each other, like so many family stories today.  Still, the story of Abraham and Sarah can inspire hope in every family, every congregation, no matter what appearances may insist to the contrary.  What unseen possibilities, beneath those appearances, can God use to produce marvelous and amazing results, a multitude of blessings for the entire human family?  How do these descendants today—Jews, Christians, Muslims—find ways to work together to live out with love, mercy and justice what God intended when he established that everlasting covenant with Abraham?  It’s still in effect, and it belongs to you and me.