Grace to you and peace from God who makes and never breaks the covenant with us. AMEN.
I’m looking this morning at our first lesson from Genesis.
Abraham and Sarah are given new names in the covenant that God makes and never breaks with them.
And we too are given new names in the covenant that God makes with us in holy baptism. Share with the person in the room with you, or if you’re joining with us, share those special names we were given, no titles, no last names – just our naked and blessed first and middle original names. For many of us that was the name spoken when we were baptized.
God makes a covenant with us. And there are always two sides to a covenant.
What is God’s side of the covenant?
God’s side of the covenant: to do the impossible –
giving Abraham and Sarah a child. (Can you believe it?)
making this insignificant Iraqi couple the mother and father of today’s 3 major world religions. Muslims, Christians and Jews all share the same ancestors: Abraham and Sarah! (Can you believe it?)
God’s side of the covenant: to do the impossible –
to forgive you all your sins and grant you newness of life.
At the beginning of our worship every Sunday: we confess and receive this forgiveness of sins.
(Can you believe it?)
Beloved, God’s word never fails.
The promise rests on grace:
by the saving love of Jesus Christ,
the wisdom and power of God,
your sins are forgiven and God remembers them no more. Journey in the way of Jesus. Amen.
Siblings in Christ, God always makes the first move. Yesterday in confirmation: diagramming sentences...
But what about our side of the covenant? Wrote a song about it..
“take up our cross and follow Jesus.”
-live among God’s faithful people
-hear the Word, celebrate the Meal
-proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed
-serve all people following Jesus’ example
-strive for Justice and peace in all the earth.
“take up our cross and follow Jesus.”
The cross we bear is the one that was streaked across our foreheads in our baptisms, on Ash Wednesday, whenever we touch water...
The key to both sides of the covenant: faith and trust.
God’s faithfulness. And our trusting in God’s goodness.
With Luther, and for us as Lutherans, faith is a gift…so the key is really accepting faith/trust in God, which God gives us in baptism.
I can’t think of a better image of trusting in God than the image of offering our money…back to God. Please, please don’t hear this as a fundraising drive. I could care less about money-raising right now. This is a deeply spiritual practice to take our income and lift a percentage of it up to God. The offering was the original point of worship for the ancient Hebrews. Abraham will learn this as the story in Genesis continues. Worship is taking the best of what you have, what God has given you, and offering it up. In his day, it was his best sheep. In our day, it’s our money. The offering is a symbol of trust, at the heart of our worship service, right in the middle, between the Word and the Meal. Because our money is so important to us.
A little while back I met with a group of pastors and we sat around and simply shared our own giving stories. Basically, how do we practice offering our money.
Where did we get our ideas about that.
And I was inspired and a little shocked, to be honest –
…shocked because the stories I heard about faithful giving did not come off as pious or pompous they came off as inspiring – our bishop talks about how she kept tithing during a season of her life that was the most difficult, financially. And she can move us to tears as she reflects on how...it was all about trust in God.
You too are examples of a people who have accepted the gift of faith, Bethlehem friends! God gives us faith in our baptism. It’s not something we have to earn or grow or manage. It’s just offered freely to us. And we turn and offer back to God, in so many ways.
Lent is a time to reflect again on our tithes and offerings. It’s one of the pillars of Lent: giving praying fasting.
You are examples of a people who have accepted the gift of faith! Every time you open your hands and receive the bread and wine, you are opening yourselves to God’s guidance in your lives. And that is inspiring and shocking too. It is a symbol of that covenant made new in Christ Jesus who promises us forgiveness and ever-presence.
And here’s the thing: God never breaks that covenant. We might fall short, but God never breaks the covenant. We might change, but God never breaks the covenant. God always keeps God’s promises.
God always keeps God’s promises. And here’s the promise God makes to us on our Lenten journeys: “I will be with you. As you seek ways to live more faithfully, I will be with you. As you continue to struggle to be honest about some wrong directions and decisions you’ve made in your life, I will be with you. As you struggle to offer back to me,” God says, “what I have first given you, I will be with you. As you struggle to receive this gift of faith, as you struggle to trust, I will be with you. As you live out, struggle to live out, the covenant I made with you in your baptism, I will be with you.”
These Lenten days can be very difficult, if we take them seriously, if we take up our crosses and follow. To the rest of the world these days are just more busy days, routine days, nothing-special days in our lives (oblivious to the fact that all of this is a gift from God — all of this: the paint on the wall, the raindrop from heaven, the air in my lungs — is a gift from God). To the rest of the world these days are just more busy days, shaped by the news headlines and the retail sales. But to us who struggle to follow Christ, to us who gather to be together and recognize that everything is a gift of God, to us who have opened our hands and received the gift of faith, we have a promise. “Never will I leave you. Never will that change.” Jesus assures, “Come, pick up your cross, lose your life today…and find it in me forever.” AMEN.
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