Covenant

From the Inside Out

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Scripture Passage:  Jeremiah 31: 31-34 (Lent 5B)

31The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Most of us know this passage well.  It is telling of a new covenant, a covenant that is different from any that came before.  It is not a covenant that you can see; it is a covenant that you become.  The days are surely coming when that will come to be.  When would that be that the new covenant will come to be?  We Christians like to put on our post-Resurrection lens and read this with the view of Jesus, the Cross, and the empty tomb in our mind.  Ah…we think, Jesus, Jesus is the new covenant.  Jesus is the covenant that is written on our hearts.  Jesus is the one. Isn’t he?  So are the days surely here?

OK, be honest, have you looked around?  Have you listened to the news today?  BUT, “the days are surely coming!”  But I’m not sure they’re here yet.  I think we’re still wandering a little in the wilderness.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I DO believe that Jesus is an embodiment of the New Covenant, the embodiment of God’s Promise, the embodiment of The Way.  And yet, the idea of this being “written on our hearts”, of this New Covenant becoming not just something to which we aspire, not just something by which we try to abide, but something that is part of us just downright eludes most of us.  If it is written on our hearts, then this covenant is something that should be part of our body, our soul, our heart, our mind, our very being.  The promise is certain, but it doesn’t end there and we have to be open to seeing beyond ourselves to embrace it.

In his book, The Naked Now:  Learning to See as the Mystics See, Catholic priest and writer Fr. Richard Rohr tells of the experiences of three men who stand at the edge of the ocean, looking at the same sunset.  One man saw the immense physical beauty and enjoyed the event in itself.  This man…deals with what he can see, feel, touch, move, and fix.  This was enough reality for him, for he had little interest in larger ideas, intuitions, or the grand scheme of things.

A second man saw the sunset.  He enjoyed all the beauty that the first man did.  Like all lovers of coherent thought, technology, and science, he also enjoyed his power to make sense of the universe and explain what he discovered.  He thought about the cyclical rotations of planets and stars.  Through imagination, intuition, and reason, he saw…even [more].

The third man saw the sunset, knowing and enjoying all that the first and the second men did.  But in his ability to progress from seeing to explaining to “tasting,” he also remained in awe before an underlying mystery, coherence, and spaciousness that connected him with everything else.  He [saw] the full goal of all seeing and all knowing.  This was the best.  It was seeing with full understanding.  It was seeing beyond the obvious.  It was seeing not just with his eyes, but with all that he was.  It was seeing beyond himself and beyond what he was capable of seeing, beyond even what he was capable of understanding.  In essence, he was open not to just the sunset but what it meant to embrace it as part of who he was.

So, then, what does it mean for a covenant to be “written on our hearts”?  That means it’s part of who we are.  No longer are we looking at rainbows or holding tablets.  God’s vision is written on our hearts, permanently tattooed into our very being.  For us followers of Christ, the new covenant, then, is not just a vision of Christ; it is rather a vision of us as we live through Christ, as we FINALLY see Jesus in the light of who Jesus is.  What that tells us is that, yes, we are to be change agents, being a part of bringing God’s Kingdom into being.  But more than that, we are to BE the change.  The change happens in us as well as through us.

It is as if God is remaking us from the inside out.  The vision of that new covenant that God has is a vision of a new us.  That’s what Jesus was trying to show us, trying to lead us toward understanding.  That’s what following Jesus through life’s wilderness means.  But in order to do that, we need to become willing to let go—to let go of our lives, to let go of our things, to let go even of the images that we have God that get in the way of our following and being this Way of Christ.  We have to clear our lenses of those things that are clouding the vision that God has for us.

Think about it.  Read the words.  This is not about God just tossing some words out there in the hopes that someone will be curious enough or scared enough or ready enough to pick them up.  God is much more nuanced than that.  Rather, God’s vision is that they are written on our hearts, permanently tattooed, part of our very being.  It is as if God is remaking us from the inside out.  Maybe that’s our whole problem.  Maybe we’re trying to make ourselves and maybe, just maybe, we’re doing it backwards.  Maybe we’re trying to do the right things and say the right things and fast and pray and live our lives with the hopes that our hearts will be made right.  Maybe we’re trying so desperately to find our way out of the wilderness that we have missed what is happening to our very heart.  Because while we’re wandering, while we’re trying desperately to make everything right, God is inside, with heart-wrenching fervor, remaking us from the inside out and waiting patiently for us to stop and notice.  Amazingly, our hearts do not need to be made right; rather, we need to listen to what God has already written into them.

As we have said many times, wandering in this wilderness is hard.  It’s full of change.  But this passage points not to changes around us but changes within us.  Change comes at us usually unexpectedly.  Change comes when we’re not prepared for it at all.  But change is indeed part of the wilderness.  Change is indeed part of life.  Change is the way we grow.  Change softens us, like sandpaper on a piece of rough-hewed wood, making us touchable and real.  Change reminds us that we need to look beyond where we’re accustomed to looking.  Change makes us who God envisions we can be.  Look in your heart.  It’s written right there.

Deep within us all there is an amazing sanctuary of the soul,, a holy place…to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us…calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions…utterly and completely, to the Light within, is the beginning of true life. (Thomas R. Kelly)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Holy Laughter

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Scripture Passage:  Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16 (Lent 2B)

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. 2And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” 3Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, 4“As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you…15God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

What does the notion of “covenant” mean to you?  I guess the broadest definition is promise (or if you want to get more legalistic, a “contract”).  When I was little, I remember talking about what a covenant was in Sunday School.  It was actually pretty scary to me. It was presented as a bilateral contract.  So, I wondered, if I mess up, if I don’t keep up with my end of the deal, does God just cut me off?  (Why do we do that to kids?  For that matter, why do we do that to anyone?)

So, I think we probably read this passage wrong sometimes, perhaps too legalistically.  It is the story that establishes Abram’s identity and, with it, his relationship with God.  He would become Abraham, the “father of many people”.  And Sarai, his (sort of) doting and laughing wife, would become Sarah, the “princess of many.”  Abraham and Sarah now have a new identity, an identity that comes from this established relationship with God.  This is what it means to be a covenant people.  In the Jewish tradition, this is the establishment of the identity of a people, the establishment of a covenant people.  God has done a new thing.  Nothing would ever be the same again.  It’s not just a flat bilateral contract; it’s a mutual relationship.  It’s a becoming.  Don’t think of it as two parties signing a deal; think of it as two (or in this case, three) parties holding hands and jumping together into the unknown pool of grace.  With this jump, Abram and Sarai changed.  But you know what?  God did too!

Now before you go all never-changing God thing on me, think about it.  God came to Abram.  (God waited until Abram was 99 years old.  I don’t really get that one but maybe I can add it to my “questions” list for later!) God moved, offering a piece of the Godself to Abram, a piece of newness, a new identity.  God didn’t just sit on some throne in the sky waiting for Abram to show up and bow in reverence.  Rather, God appeared to Abram, came to him, and offered grace and re-creation.  God is all about re-creation.  God is all about change.

So, yes, the idea of a covenant connotes an agreement.  But, more than that, it implies a relationship.  This was not some sort of holy “to do” list that was given to Abraham.  God never told him what he had to do to be accepted, to be part of the covenant, to be part of the people, to be “godly” (oh, I hate that word!…”like God”…are any of us really “like God”?)   God never gave him a list of beliefs to which he had to adhere to be part of the covenant community.  (Hmmm!)  Once again, the covenant was not about right living; it was about relationship.  God claimed Abram and Sarai as children of God and their life was never the same.  And then God renames them.  Their names mean something–father and princess.  The new names are symbolic of the new relationship into which they enter.

I looked up the meaning of my name.  “Shelli” (not spelled that way–it is NEVER spelled that way!) is actually a derivative of the Hebrew, Rachel–“ewe, female sheep, little rock, rest, sloped meadow.”  (So, Sarai becomes a princess and I am a sheep that rolls down a small hill and goes to sleep!)  Like I said, identity is a funny thing.  We hold tightly to the way we envision ourselves, to the image that we’ve created.  And then God comes up with the most ludicrous thing, like being the father or the princess of many (or maybe a sheep that follows down a gently sloping meadow!)  It IS laughable.

We actually didn’t read the part where Abraham laughed.  He laughed because it was far-fetched and downright ludicrous.  But then, when you think about it, most of God’s promises are.  And then when he told Sarai the whole preposterous scenario, she also laughed.  So, do you think it was disbelief or nervousness or something else that brought laughter?  We in our 21st century boxes probably think it a little irreverent. After all, would you dare laugh at God? Well, good grief, don’t you think God is laughing at us sometimes? Perhaps laughter is what brings perspective. It brings humility; it brings a different way of looking at oneself. Laughter is about relationship, which, when you think about it, make it holy.  Funny…  

Abraham laughed. Sarah laughed. And I’m betting God laughed. (You can just imagine the inside joke between the three: “This is going to be good. No one will ever believe this could happen.” You?  Sarai?  LOL!!!–for those who don’t text or tweet or still use proper English, it means “laugh out loud”!) Maybe laughter is our grace-filled way of getting out of our self and realizing that, as ludicrous and unbelievable as it may be, God’s promise holds something and, more than that, holds something for us–a new identity. Maybe it’s our way of admitting once and for all that we don’t have it all figured out, that, in all honesty, we don’t even have ourselves figured out, that there’s a whole new identity just waiting for us to claim. In this Season of Lent, we are called to get out of our self, to open ourselves to possibilities and ways of being that we cannot even fathom. Go ahead and laugh. It’s probably incredibly ludicrous…and it’s only the beginning.  Because somewhere beneath that façade you have so carefully built is the real “you”, the “you” that God envisions you can be.  And someday you and God are going to have a really good laugh about this whole remarkable journey into this covenant creation that is you.

Humor is the beginning of faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer. (Reinhold Niebuhr)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Turned Inside Out

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Inside OutScripture Text: Jeremiah 31: 31-34

 31The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

 

Most of us know this passage well. It speaks of a new covenant, one that is written not on tablets or in rainbows but woven into the very being of the people. The context in which this was written is probably following the exile. The cities have been breached, the temple has been totally destroyed, nothing is left of the people’s lives. They have become subjects of the Persian king and have lost everything that they had before. But God through the Prophet Jeremiah gives a vision of reconstruction and renewal. But this time things will be different…

 

We Christians like to read this with our Easter-colored lenses on. We Christians like to put on our post-Resurrection lens and read this with the view of Jesus, the Cross, and the empty tomb in our mind.  Ah…we think, Jesus, Jesus is the new covenant.  Jesus is the covenant that is written on our hearts.  Jesus is the one. Is he?  I mean, yes, Jesus IS the embodiment of the New Covenant. So we try our best to follow, to do what Jesus would do, to act like Jesus would act. We profess that we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. And then we sort of wait…we wait until Jesus comes or we go or whatever our belief system tells us is going to happen sometime up ahead. But, in the meantime, this covenant sort of eludes us. What happened to it being written on our hearts? What happened to it being part of us?

 

You know, when you think about it, did Jesus come as Emmanuel, God-With-Us, as one among us who took himself all the way to the Cross out of love for us just so that our belief system would change? Or did Jesus come to show us the Way to God, the way to write the covenant into our very being and become the embodiment of it ourselves? In other words, perhaps this life of faith, this way of being Covenant People, with hearts tattooed and all, is not just a life of profession of belief but one of following and living this Way to God so intently that we become it. Maybe it’s a way of living inside out.

 

So in this Lenten wilderness, we find our beliefs. They are there, time-tested and comfortable. We can memorize them; we can recite them; we can even talk about them on a good day when we think it’s appropriate and the audience is receptive. But the wilderness shows us that there is more. The wilderness exposes our heart. And there’s that covenant written into it. The wilderness shows us how to turn ourselves inside out and become the Way to God. So, the days are surely coming…maybe when that begins to be is up to us.  Maybe, as we’ve said, we are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.

 

We live like ill-taught piano students. We are so afraid of the flub that will get us in dutch, we don’t hear the music, we only play the right notes. (Robert Capon)

 

FOR TODAY: Imagine the covenant written on your heart. Imagine BEING the embodiment of the Way to God. Now dance to the music.

 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Falling Down Laughing

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Falling down laughingScripture Text:  Genesis 17: 4-8

4“As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.  7I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.”

You know the story.  Abram and Sarai have longed for a child, an offspring, a descendent.  But it had never happened.  And now, with more years behind them than ahead, they have resolved that the longing will never come to be.  The first ones to hear this story were more than likely in the midst of exile, living in the wilderness of darkness and looking at the bare remains of a city and temple that once was.  The story comes as a reminder of who they are as the people of God.  It is a reminder that God does not always act within the limits that we have established and the plans that we have formulated in our small minds; rather, God continually jaunts out into the wilderness, into what cannot be, and creates.  It’s ludicrous; it’s incredulous; it’s enough to make you fall down laughing.  But God’s promise remains true.

First, God appears to Abram and announces God’s presence.  Abram falls on his face, downright shocked at who is actually speaking to him.  And with the covenant, Abram becomes Abraham and Sarai becomes Sarah.  The covenant signifies a shift in who they are.  God promises that Abram will have descendents.  And they laughed.  Well, of course they laughed.  It was ridiculous.  Abram and Sarai were old–really, really, really old.  All logic told them that their childbearing years were not just running out but were way behind them.  It just didn’t make sense.  But surprisingly, God often doesn’t make sense in this world that we have figured out.  God continually tends to sort of blow the boundaries and the limits that we have drawn out of the water.

Our lectionary (even the full passage that I didn’t put up at the front of this) doesn’t really include the part where Abram fell down laughing.  Perhaps those who put the lectionary together thought that a bit too irreverent of the mighty God.  After all, would you dare laugh at God?  Well, good grief, don’t you think God is laughing at us sometimes?  Perhaps laughter is what brings perspective.

Abraham laughed.  Sarah laughed.  And I’m betting God laughed.  (You can just imagine the inside joke between the three:  “This is going to be good.  No one will ever believe this could happen.  We’ll just shake them up a bit.”)  Maybe laughter is our grace-filled way of getting out of our self and realizing that, as ludicrous and unbelievable as it may be, God’s promise holds.  Maybe it’s our way of admitting once and for all that we don’t have it all figured out, that, in all honesty, we don’t even have ourselves figured out, that there’s a whole new identity just waiting for us to claim.  In this Season of Lent, we are called to get out of our self, to open ourselves to possibilities and ways of being that we cannot even fathom. Go ahead and laugh.  It is only the beginning.  The promise holds.

You know, I don’t think God really expects us to stay buttoned-up and well-behaved.  God doesn’t want anything that we are not.  God doesn’t want us on our best behavior; God wants us real; God wants us to just flat fall down laughing sometimes at the ludicrousness of it all.  If sometimes tells you not to cry, if someone tells you not to laugh, they are telling you not to be you.  God gave you those expressions of emotion as a wonderful, wonderful gift to get you through it all.  Don’t you think God enjoys a good joke once in a awhile?  After all, this is the God that promised offspring to someone not just past their prime, but downright looking at the tail end of life!  And THEN came through with the promise.  Pretty funny…pretty sneaky…pretty amazing.

I hope that at my funeral, there will be both tears and laughter because then I will know that I have lived the fullness of life.  And then I hope that everyone will leave the church and go dancing because then I will know that they have joy.  The wilderness is known for tears but sometimes you just have to laugh at the ludicrousness of it all.  I don’t know if we laugh our way through the wilderness or out of it, but Abram embraced it and became someone else.  Abraham and Sarah never got to the Promised Land.  It was enough to live with God’s Promise of what it held; it was enough for it to make one fall down laughing in praise to the God who chooses not to live within our rules, who chooses instead to love our laughter and feel our tears and offer grace through it all.

Humor is the beginning of faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer. (Reinhold Niebuhr)

FOR TODAY:  Laugh…laugh…laugh…laugh enough that you fall down in prayer.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli