COVENANT, PART II: QUESTIONABLE BLESSING John M. Buchanan
Genesis 17:1-8 Broad St. Presbyterian Cherch
March 3, 1985 Columbus, Ghio

in Joseph Heller's irreverent novel, God Knows, an old and very human King
David locks back over hie life which hes been a kind of running argument with
God, ever since hia child died in infancy. Reflecting on what it has meant to
be God’s Covenant people, he complains:

"Some promised land. The honey was there, but the milk we brought

in with our goats. To people in California, God gives a

magnificent coastline, a movie industry and Beverly Hills. To ua

He gives send. To Cannes He gives a plush film festival. We get

the PLO. Our winters are rainy. Gur susmera are hot. To people

whe don’t lmow how to wind a wristwatch He gives underground

oceans of oi1. fo us He gives hernia, heartburn, and anti-semitism...

"Don't ever get the idea He made things easy for me. Life as one
of God's chosen haa never been a bed of roses."

Being part of God's chosen people has not always been much of a privilege.
In fact, sometimes it has seemed like a burden. “Why, if God loves us, sre we
being defeatd in battle, enslaved in Egypt, exiled in Babylon, scccupied by the
Romans, driven from our heme and chased, hounded, persecuted through the
centuries, crowded into ghettos, blawed for everything that goes wrong, pushed
into concentration cempa and gas chambers by self-proclaimed savior of
Christian German culture, the brant of innecent~sounding but vicious ethnic
Jokes accaptsble at avery polite cocktail party and still umweleome in the
most exclusive clubs in town?"

To be God’s chosen people has been «a questionable blessing. Christians
Shere ~ should share ~ all of that, particularly the questionable part. We
are brothers and sisters with Jews: pert of one family and when anti-sewitisn
appears in our midst, we need te be very clear thet it tarnishes us and it is
for us, There is mo such thing as Christian anti-semitism. Abrahem is our
father, Sarah our mother. The Covenant is ours; the questionable blessing,
our theological preblem too.

The story is at the beginning of the book. Genesis eete cut to tell about
one God, Jahweh, and hia relationship with the creation - through a nation, a
people, chosen for that purpose. God establishes a covenant, an arrangement,
& contract. The material in Genesis was compiled in the sixth century B.C.
when the people were in Babylonian euile. It waa written to tell them who
they were and to help them maintain their identity in an elien culture.

Firet creation: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and creation gone dispoiled,
broken. Then Nosh, first recipient of the promise, first to know that God
cares, suffers, grieves, and loves his people like a parant. Then that
wonderful Tower of Babel, symptomatic of the continuing fault within creation
between God’s intent and the way things are going. And then, interspersed
with column after coluan of “begats" to remind the reader that we are talking
about human hAlistery here and nct some mystical eastern mythology, the saga
pregeates Abrahas and Sarah.

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With Abraham and Sarah, relatives of Noah, Ged is going to try again. Old
Testament scholar Walter Bruggeman writes:

“The purpose of the call is te faghion an alternative copmunity
in creation gone awry...It ie the hope of God that in this new
family all human history can be brought into the unity and harmony
of the one who calla."

(interpretation, Vol. I, Genesis, bp. 103}

The God of creation addresses old Abraham and Sarah and repeats the
promise: there will be a covenant between them. Abrahem and Sarah will have
an heir - a prospect so unlikely Sarah laughed out loud when she heard it.
they will have the land, also an isprobebie prospect for mm elderly couple
with a few tents and several goats to their nage. And most mysterious and
tantalizing of all ~ they will have a God.

"I will establish sy covenant between me and you
te be God te you and your descendents after you."

Historically - theologically the text is defining 4 fundamental rela-
tionship between God and the world and at the same tine defining the source of
identity, hope, meaning and purpose for God’s people ~ which includes us.
Notice that God promises — essentially and fundementally to be God. And the
appropriate response for Abraham and Sarah is, first, to trust thet God will
be ag good as his word on the descendents and land promises, aml then to
respond by moving, by letting go of all they have, by abandoning «all the
certainties, and comforts they have accumulated, and literally casting their
lot with their God. Abraham and Serah reapond in faith to God, and from that
point on being Ged’s covenant partner has bsen, at best exciting, demanding ~
at worst # very questionsble blessing in any terms the world understands.

fhe iseues in Genesis are astonishingly contemporary. Tt is not easy fer
us to Leto of the idea, the hope, that there are tangible rewards which come
with being religious. As a matter of fact there was a time not long ago in
this country that economic success in the marketplace was defined as a reward
for godliness and piety. ‘The iden is not dead. A feature in the business
supplement of the Citizen Journal leat weelt quoted a highly successful RV
dealer to the effect that religion is the secret to his success. There ig
enormous popularity to religion that promises tangible, rewards for piety,
preferably financial, although paychological or physical rewards are
acceptable ag well. A new phenowenon in the entertainment industry is
something called Christian Seft Reck: according to one music critie, "Tt
often sounds like an endless cycle of television advertisements that extol the
virtues of religion as if it were same kind of trendy merchandise: ‘Leave all
your cares behind,’ she sings.” (see Context, Martin Marty, 3/1/85, pg. 4)

A recent news release covered the announcment by Jim Bakker, evangelist
and president of the PTL Television Network, that his organization is building
a multi-million dollar luxury hotel...te lure people to beccae Christians. He
explains: ‘Tesus said thet we were to be fishers of man. And with some of
the bait that we have used in the church - I call it ‘dill pickle religion’ ~
I’ve never seen anyone catch a fish with a» dill pickle and gourpuss religion.

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We’re using better beit to win people to Jesus Christ.” Included in the
"world class" hotel will be a swimwing pool, sauna, and hot water spa just off
the lobby, and four floors of $70 a night rooms which feature remote control
television and custom-made furniture." (The Christian Century, 2/20/86, p.
178}

The matter of what blessings we should be receiving as a reward for being
God’s people ig never very far away. And throughout history there have alwaya
been many willing to treat religious commitment as an investment in one's
future security. The trouble with that is that it rune head-on into the
Witness of the Bible. in the Bible, belonging to God can be very risky
business. it has ebselutely nothing to do with one’s successes in the world.
It can be dangerous for rich and poor, powerful and weak alile. Now it is
also mistaken to deduce that one cannot be faithful to Ged and succeseaful in
whetever one is doing. Integrity, fairness, compession, I believe, are wise,
long term virtues. But to equate faithfulness with succeeding in real estate,
or winning basketball games, simply ignores the Biblical witness, popular as
it is. The crucified Christ whe is the Christian model of faithfulness will
not make it as a metaphor for success in the world.

At an even more serious level theologians have forever pondered the
relationship of suffering to the promises of Ged’s loving cevensnt. if Gad
loves us, why is there auffering? Why premature death, birth defects, and
famine in Ethiopia? Why did Savid and Batheshaba's child die? Why, in God’s
name, Dachau, Buchenwaid? Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, in a powerful series of
essays published in 1970 under the title, after Auschwitz, suggested that the
God_is Dead answer was the only one that made genze. He put into words what
every thoughtful ond honest person thinks coucasicnally: “A God who tolerates
the suffering of even one inmecent child is either infinitely cruel or
hopalessly indifferent." (p. 87}

What the Genesis stories are proclisiming of course is the preciae
opposite. What the Covenant means te the cevenant people, and through them to
the whole wide world, is that there is a living ded who, in spite of the evil
in history, the tragic mistakes along the way, is a dynamic part of the story.
The Covenant promise is that in apite of the suffering through which you and I
may be called te walk - in fact right in the midst of it - there ia one who
will be God ta us.

What difference does it meke? What does it mean to have a Ged? For
Abrahem and Sarah it meant cutting themselves loese froz the sccumtleted
certainties of their old age and trusting Gad, not all those crtainties - the
goats and cattie and tants and gold under the matiresa, and their reputation
in the community - not atl thal, but Ged - to give them a future. Sea,
Professor Hans Kung, suggests in his monumental, HLoes God Exiat?, the first
demand on the believer is to say "no" to all the other gods. "“Gne-god faith,"
he wrote, “dethrones the divine world powers in faver of the one, true God..."
Ali the gods before whom woderns how,...the great God Meemon, the great God
Sex, the great Gal Power, the great God Sclance, the great God Nation, the
freat God Parity. The one-goed faith ia utterly apposed to eny quasi-religion.
It throws down all false goede.” {p. 619}

alte ne ol

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The difference it makes is that you and I, to be in covenamtewith God,
must say “no” to oth ces of meaning, hope, identity, and salvation, and
that is very tough going. It means, at a very deep and personal level, where
we feel more than we think, that the essence of my life, the most profound
life in me, is not tied to winning, preaching great sermons, selling real
estate, building great skyscrapers, writing best sellers, or even raising

wonderful children, but in loving God and being ss honestly faithful as I can
to the God who created me.

Jesus po amerenenie from the etrength of that. “If amyone would come
after me, take up a cross and follow...Whoever loses life for my sake will
save it." That “Lordly call" is precisely what Abrahaw and Sarah heard back
on the edge of history: a call to radical sbandoment and radical truet ina
God. It is what stunned the disciples of Jeaus: stunned them as they heard
it and argued it through: and stunned them as they discovered that to trust,
to follow, to allow life to be lived for Jesus Christ was suddenly and
beautifully to know what God intended for human life. They called it their
salvation.

What does it mean to have a God? In terms of worldly succees it may be a
questionable blessing, but to have this one, who will be "God to you" ie to
have a partner, a companion, a participant through every day of your pil-
grimage. The remarkable thing about the old story about the covenant, is that
its author, the one God, begins to emerge, in contrast to the jealous, angry,
punishing, tyrant gods of the day, as a loving, patiently caring parent. This
God ejects Adam and Eve from their enrden paradise, but knits them clothes to
keep them warm. This God senda aire tn the earth, and then regembers and
tucks Noah and his family inte the ark, Amd here, with Abraham and Sarah,
this loving God comes to an old couple who had given up on the future, which
is what barrenness means, and promises a beby. To have this God, to trust
this God, is to know that particulerly when the going is tough, when all the
doors seem to be closing, when the future appears bleak, and the cnly meaning
left to one is in the long gone past, God mey_be_counted-on—to_bepreaent with
dynamic and creative possibilities. To be in covenant with this God is to
“row that there is no darkness, ne alonences, no failure, no hopelessness so
utter that it cuts us off from the source of new life.

I would submit that at a level in us fer more profound than that place
where we need te win and succeed and excel, we need that. Voltaire, certainly
no friend of religion, as a cynical explanation of humankind’s notorious
religiosity, once said, “If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent
him." That is closer to essential truth than Yoltaire intended. We are
created with an emptiness, a loneliness, end incompleteness satisfied only by
the living God. The fact of our need always suggests, prior to our philo-
sophizing, the existence of the one to whom the need points.

A veteran newspaper man commented recently: “Even people who say they are
agnostics seem to spend a lot of emotional energy trying to satisfy themselves
why they shouldn’t believe." (Joe Berger, in Context, 3/1/85, p. 5)

Near the end of Heller’s book, David is approaching the end of his life.
The closest he ever comes to an affirmation of faith occurs in the middle of
another argument. It is the best he cam do. It is, perhaps, the best meny of
us can do. But, because of the grace and goodness of God’s covenant, with us,
it is enough.

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David says:

"A Great nation, God promised. To me he would not five the time

of day. He made my baby die. How could I ever forget?

Nathan told me He would. I still have not forgiven Him for

that, although I...need my God now more than ever before, and misa
Him wore than I would care to let Him know... do not believe He has
forgotten me." (p. 286)

Tt is the oldest and deepest and best of all news: that we are children

of a covenant: that God will be God to us: that God has not forgotten and
Will not forget us — ever.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more
abundantly than all we ask or think, to God be giory in the church and in
Chriat Jesus, to all generations forever and ever. Amen.