Do We Have a Deal?

Humans are social. From the moment of birth, there is at least one other person on the scene. To survive at all, there had to be someone or a collection of folk pulling for your well-being. Later in life, it is not one-sided, we are coming into agreements, arrangements, transactions, relations, and covenants with others. Humans are deal-makers, and it is always a risk and a matter of faith for the party of the first part to enter into a contract with the party of the second part.

Wherever there is law there are contracts. What we learn from the Bible is wherever there are people of faith, there is a covenant. It is a contract, but not a mechanically transactional one, rather it is personally relational. In a relationship springing from love, God freely enters into a covenant with a people, promising something and receiving a promise from the people stepping out in faith. I was noticing in the Sundays of Lent this year, the Old Testament lessons point to aspects of the people of God, in covenant with their God. The two from Genesis, the first and second Sundays in Lent hold up God’s covenant with Noah, never to destroy all flesh by flood, and the covenant with Abram, promising he will be an ancestor to a multitude of nations.

The third Sunday in Lent will ask us to consider God’s agreement with the children of Israel freshly delivered from slavery through Moses the liberator, to make them holy, God-guided people, utilizing the gift of the commandments. The fourth, we recall the agreement of God to see them through the wilderness, where survival is so tenuous. The fifth Sunday in Lent holds up the new covenant with the house of Israel revealed through the prophet Jeremiah. In this covenant, God will put the law into their hearts; they will all know Yahweh “from the least to the greatest.” What they will know in particular, is forgiveness—the loving, perpetual divine action of forgiveness.

Let’s look closer into the covenant with Abram, whose name is changed to Abraham with the reassertion of the promise. The relational foundation of the Abrahamic promise is loaded with risk. This man from a nomadic people was to take his wife, Sarah originally called Sarai, and together leave their family, their security for survival and go to a place he would later be shown. God promised them, children, though they were barren. They were promised a home, though they were from a people who had no one place to call home. They had no GPS, map, or even a name for their destination. They tried to wire around the promise of a child through Hagar, the Egyptian servant of Sarah. That was not God’s intended fulfillment.

A built-in lesson is that covenant relationship is difficult; it is back and forth; it is strained within interpretations. When we say or hear, “Do we have a deal?” it is the beginning of sacrifice, clarification, and re-commitment. This Abraham story (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16) is paired with the story of the disciples hearing from Jesus that following him is to follow the Son of Man who “must undergo great suffering…be killed, and after three days rise again.” To go with him is to agree to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow. The Abraham story is also set alongside Paul’s sense of Abraham as the paragon of faith-centered relation to God. The connection is based not on adherence to the law, but on trusting and following. Let’s think some more about these things throughout the week. Look now to the wonder of God, love beyond comprehension, and hear the question put to you: “I am offering covenantal relationship here…do we have a deal?” To say yes is to know the struggle; it is also to know. from hardship to hardship, God’s strength, reassurance, guidance, forgiveness, and through it all, God’s love.