Let’s Make a Deal
Starting in the early sixties a long-running game show held a place on TV. The stars were Monty Hall and Carol Merrill. Of course, I am referring to “Let’s Make a Deal” It is back on air and featuring new stars. In the show, the whole studio audience comes, with a chance to be picked as contestants. In deals made there, as in deals made out in the world, there are at least two parties. Each party offers something. On the game show, the contestants’ part is to show up in a crazy costume. The producers offer a chance to win prizes.
The overarching story of the Bible unveils a deal between God and the human family. In this long salvation story, the deal is called a covenant. The perpetually unfolding transaction is more aptly called a holy covenant. It is a sacred agreement, deep, spiritual, and rooted in the love between God’s creatures and their Creator. There is no new car behind door number three. Instead, there is the anointed Savior who declares, I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved.” (John 10:9)
Seminal covenants in the early chapters of Genesis introduce the rudimentary mode of relational agreement. The Creator makes a sacred agreement with the first human creatures in the garden. The Almighty Judge makes a holy promise to Noah and his family, sealing it with a bow in the sky. Covenant emerges in full form through the story of the patriarch Abraham: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” Abraham was promised a place to be and a burgeoning family. He was expected to be faithful to God, the Architect of this promise. It is an invitation to faithfulness, to a loving relationship with the Source of all being.
The whole story of the scriptures is the roller coaster of receiving the covenant, failing it, and renewing it again and again. The agonizing drama gives rise to the expectation of an anointed savior, the supreme fulfillment of the hope born in the idealized King David. Jesus, so different from the common expectation, is that promised Savior. His birth, message, healing acts, transfiguration, death, and resurrection reveal him as the Anointed One offering the New Covenant. The transformed lives are signs of his redemptive power. From the first women witnessing his resurrection and the Apostles who carried his message, to your own life as you receive him today, these are the signs of his saving grace.
I love the following Collect coming in the late Sundays after Pentecost (Proper 25, p. 235, BCP). It reveals an agreement, a holy covenant. It shows that God offers gifts indescribably valuable, and looks to us to offer ourselves, obedient to the Savior’s ways.
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The gift of faith allows us to believe something that cannot be proven in the ways we normally look to have things proven. Hope allows us to anticipate a promise of our ultimate rescue and wholeness with no indication of how such a thing is possible. The gift of charity supplies our capacity to love in situations where love is not naturally evoked. The promises of God are sure for us. Our submission to God, indeed, our obedience to God’s commands provides us with keys for obtaining those promises.
Liturgy scholar, Marian Hatchett, points out that the early Latin form of this prayer conveys that we deserve to obtain what God promises only as we love what God commands, rendering cheerful obedience. This theology sings in covenantal tones: God gives and holds us accountable for something too. To be sure, for us fully to experience God’s promises or manifest what God commands we need the divine gifts of faith, hope, and charity. We need them to expand within us by the grace of God. To state the obvious: nothing behind a curtain, nothing in a box Carol Merrill carried down the aisle is a deal that compares with the Covenant promised in Christ.