March 12, 2000
Water plays a very important part in the story of God and his people — from the water from which all life comes (in the opening verses of Genesis), to the water of this flood of which we read today, the water of the Red Sea, the water of Meribah and the water of baptism. Water is central to the imagery of who we are and how God works with us.
Of course, the water of the flood is the terrible water destroying almost everything on the face of the earth. But what happens next? As Noah and his family and the animals come out of the ark, God makes a covenant with all of creation — the covenant that never again shall any living creature be destroyed by the water of the flood. God says to Noah that never again shall there be a flood to lay waste to the whole earth. Notice that this is a promise, a covenant of God with his creation. It has no strings attached, no conditions applied, no requirements that Noah and his family must meet. He doesn't say, " Now Noah, you saw what happened. Next time it could be you. Make sure your children behave." No strings attached, no conditions, God simply promises, "I have made my covenant with you that never again will I destroy the earth and all that lives on it."
Many years later, Peter in his old age is writing a letter which we read today as a remembrance of Jesus' baptism, as well as his death, resurrection and ascension. He further writes that Christ died for sins once for all. Christ is the perfect offering, not you. Your death for your sins is no longer required — it wouldn't be enough anyway. Christ's death was enough and continues to be enough.
Peter goes on to say that it is baptism that saves you through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of the resurrection of Jesus, when you go into the water of baptism, you die and are born again to Christ. When you go into the water of baptism and come out, it is as if being born in the water of the womb. In baptism, God adopts you as his own child and makes you his heir, his son or daughter. That saving relationship is worked by God in your baptism. There are no conditions to it and it is irrevocable. Nothing can ever remove the mark of God's adoption — no strings attached, no conditions. We make promises to strive to live a life that is honorable before God, but we also acknowledge that we will sin and we will fail in perfection. God places no conditions on us when he brings us into his household.
But alas, we do have trouble with that concept. We have a terrible time dealing with unconditional love. We have trouble with it in our friendships. Every time we have a close friend, we wonder how long it will last and we put conditions on it: that person will return our tools at the end of the day cleaned and oiled; that person will not borrow money from us; that our friends will stand by us in our time of need and hold us up in our need of prayer. If that doesn't happen, the friend is gone.
We put the same conditions on our marriages: I will be faithful to you as long as you remain healthy; you don't over spend the credit cards; you balance your checkbook at the end of the day; you show up when meals are on the table, not an hour later; you don't come home late without calling — all kinds of conditions. We forget that love is not just a feeling for our spouse, love is a decision we make every morning to care for our partner.
We put conditions on our committment to Christ's church: I will stay loyal to the church as long as I do not read unpleasant headlines about it; as long as the Protestant hour lasts no more than sixty minutes (less is okay, but more is not). We stay loyal to the church as long as we do not have to hear about money more than once a year — preferably a Sunday when we are out of town, all the bills are paid and God provides with someone else's wallet. We put on all kinds of conditions.
We put strings on almost everything, but God does not. He bids us to go around snipping all those strings, so that we may truly embrace each other, that we may truly embrace God as he reaches out his arms in love to us. We lament the fractures of our friendships, the breakups of our marriages and the schisms in the church as though they are unavoidable, but I believe they are not. Instead, they are the natural result of our loss of the sense of what a covenant is and our settling for second place, our settling for the concept that is much, much less — the concept of contract.
A contract has all those conditions in fine print: whereases and wherewiths, this is what happens when you do that and this is what happens when you don't. It is all spelled out and neatly packaged - that none of us ever read, we just sign on the bottom line anyway and only use it against each other when we get irritated. Nevertheless, that contract mentality damages us and certainly upsets our understanding of who we are as the children of God.
It is covenant, no strings attached committment that is the foundation of God's committment to us when he places the rainbow in the sky after the rain. It is covenant that Jesus exemplifies in his life, death and resurrection, and calls us to participate in our baptism, unconditional, no strings attached.
It is contract that has all the conditions. It is covenant that accepts us as we are and loves us to distraction. In the rainbow covenant, God says to us, "Never again will I destroy you, no matter what you do or fail to do." In the Easter covenant, the resurrection covenant, Jesus says to us, "Forevermore will I intercede for you and forevermore I will send my Spirit to guide you; I will bring you into my presence, no matter what." The rainbow covenant, the covenant of Christ. God gave his best to us out of love, no strings attached.
As we enter upon our Lenten journey this year, let us take the risk to stretch out our arms in love the way Christ did. Let us risk to seek and to restore the covenant idea in our lives, the covenant idea in our church. Let us, as the people of God, seek the serenity of Christ in our lives by putting the principle of covenant above the personalities around us, the personalities that are all too frail. If we look for problems, those personalities will always let us down. But if we look for committment, the committment will last.
Let us make our relationships more valuable than our sins. Let us make our salvation more valuable than our brokeness. Let us look through the insults, let us look through the irritations, let us look through the troubles to find Christ at work in the world around us so that we may forgive each other's failures and have our own failures forgiven. Let us look through those things — that we may find reconciliation from estrangements, whether those estrangements are among our friends, within our families, or within our church; that our Lenten journey, well taken, will bring us to the Paschal feast, to the celebration of our Lord's resurrection on Easter Day with a glorious, excited new spirit of purpose and unity; that we may come to Easter Day resolved never again to allow sin to separate us from each other and the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, so that the promise of the rainbow, the promise of our Lord's resurrection may sound in our ears as passing good news — no strings attached.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Robert Certain
rgcertain@stmargarets.org
12 March 2000