The Insecurity of Covenants

The Insecurity of Covenants

 

Exodus 19:2-8a

The covenant with Israel at Sinai 

 

19:2 They journeyed from Rephidim, entered the wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness; Israel camped there in front of the mountain.

 

19:3 Then Moses went up to God; the LORD called to him from the mountain, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites:

 

19:4 'You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.

 

19:5 Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine,

 

19:6 but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. 'These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites."

 

19:7 So Moses went, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the LORD had commanded him.

 

19:8a The people all answered as one, "Everything that the LORD has spoken we will do."

 

The thing about covenants is that they are great…until they aren’t. Think about it. Marriage covenants are broken all the time, whether it is by alienation of affection and infidelity, or just reneging on all the promises we make when we “solemnize” them. I promised to “love, honor, and cherish” my partner, but that reminds me of the old Stephen Wright joke: A guy goes to a store advertising “Open 24 Hours,” and finds the door locked; he bangs on the door until the owner comes out, and he says, “I thought this store was open 24 hours,” to which the owner answers, “Well, not in a ROW!” “Love, honor, and cherish”…but not all at ONCE! Thankfully our 49-plus marriage covenant has not had to weather any storms beyond my occasional breaching of one of these “Honey, I love you” elements. True confessions? It’s usually the “cherish” one, when we are arguing. 

 

There are all kinds of covenants: some are like legal contracts; others are more akin to “handshake agreements.” All of them are some kind of “promise” to either do or DON’T do something. One of the things that may derail a covenant happens when both covenanting parties have divergent views of what the covenant means. Go back to our marriage covenant: when one partner thinks it just means not openly dating another person, while the other takes seriously the whole “love, honor, and cherish” part, bad things happen. Two parties can MAKE a covenant, but if there are varying understandings about how the covenant is kept, even a well-constructed covenant isn’t worth the paper (or “handshake”) it’s printed on. Of course, this reminds me of another joke from Seinfeld: Jerry makes a rental car reservation (a covenant, as he sees it), but when his flight lands, the rental desk has no cars available. He argues with the reservation clerk regarding just what a “reservation” means. He “explains” that a reservation should mean that they will hold a car for him. The indignant clerk protests by saying she knows what a “reservation” is, to which Jerry responds, “I don’t think you do! You know how to “take” the reservation, you just don’t know how to “keep” the reservation!” This goes to our understanding of covenants, doesn’t it? We know how to MAKE the covenant, we may just not agree on how to KEEP the covenant. One only needs to read the Old Testament to see that God and Israel had this problem much of the time.

 

Pastors spend much time “sermonizing” about covenants: reminding members of the “membership vows” (covenant) they took when they joined the church; of the baptismal vows they took (covenant) to raise their children in the life of the church; or of their “commitment to Jesus Christ” (covenant) they made, urging them to be faithful to it. Hopefully we preachers of grace ALSO remind them that in Christ, God made a covenant with humanity that will never be breached. If a “disconnect” occurs, guess who is at fault? This gets at the heart of my own practice of covenant-keeping, by the way. I FIRST assume that if there is a problem with a particular covenant, I am the one at fault. If I start there, it keeps me from immediately blaming the other party. You’d be amazed how many times it never gets beyond that, as I AM usually the party that is having a “promise problem.”

 

In their title song from David Merrick’s musical of the same name, Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote:

 

Oh, promises
Those kind of promises
Take all the joy from life

Oh, promises, promises

My kind of promises
Can lead to joy
And hope and love
Yes, love!

 

These lyrics illustrate the sometimes fickle nature of the covenants and promises we make. Some covenants lead to freedom, while others are designed to create boundaries or restrict. Human beings need both to have happiness and security. But when we bump up against covenantal walls when we’re looking for freedom, we get upset, and when we feel “too free” while needing a fence to rein in our inappropriate wanderlust, it is just as disconcerting. All this well summarizes my opening statement: covenants are great…until they’re not.

 

Covenants that are too constraining are most inconvenient, and while designed to give us boundaries, they may actually make us feel even more insecure. It’s kind of like the Dutch reclaiming land from the sea using dikes. Having the land is nice, but the more the sea strains against our “covenantal” dikes, there is always the chance that one of them will let loose. Now THAT’S an insecurity! Dara and I just signed a binding covenant with a retirement community where we will be moving to next month. And while this has been our plan for some time, and while this is a wonderful retirement community that has fantastic independent living options like the one we’ve taken, there is both a “finality” and a fear about permanently aligning ourselves with both a set of agreed upon rules and standards, and committing so much of our retirement resources to it. You know what is performing a “healing” on my initial apprehensions about this major “covenantal” leap? Beginning to sort and pack our “stuff” to both prepare for the move, and to “stage” our home for sale, as directed by our realtor! Fatiguing myself beyond reason in the process is fully convincing me we made a wise choice. Had we stayed where we are, none of this “weeding out” would have occurred, and our two adult children would have been left with a mess, when we “shuffle off this mortal coil.” At least in the retirement community, they know how to guide survivors as to how to deal with the remaining stupid “stuff” accumulated, may even have others in the community who would like to pick through it like scavengers.

 

Today’s text is about the Sinai Covenant between God and Israel, as brokered by Moses. God, after reminding Israel of all God had already done for them by liberating them from slavery in Egypt, promises to care for them and hold them as a “treasured possession” before all other peoples, if Israel promises to keep the covenant and obey God’s voice. In short: “If you will be my people, I will be your God.” Sounds simple; sounds like a good idea, having such a close relationship with the God of the universe, especially when their “blessings” look so tempting to other “peoples” surrounding them. Here’s the thing that caught my preacher’s eye, though—the last verse of the pericope: “The people all answered as one, ‘Everything that the LORD has spoken we will do.’” Knowing human beings, THAT sounds too good to be true. Everything that the LORD has spoken? They will “do” it? It sounds like the teenage boy whose father is gifting him a car. The father says, “I’ll give you this car on the condition that you keep it in good condition, pay for the necessary auto insurance, and drive it safely and obey the traffic laws,” to which the teen hurriedly answers, “Yeah, yeah, I will! GIVE ME the keys!” You know where that one is headed. In this text, God is giving Israel the keys. Oh, and we Christians should remember the parable Jesus told about the father and two sons (no, the OTHER father and two sons), one of whom said he would go work in the vineyard and the other, who said he wouldn’t. The one who “covenanted” to go, didn’t show up, but the one who didn’t commit, DID show up. Jesus praised the latter. Covenants may sound good on paper, but if there is no actual action proposed by them, what are they?

 

I don’t want to get overly negative here. Dara and I were blessed with two wonderful and generally compliant children. We really trusted them, and they rarely gave us any reason to NOT trust them. When they said they would do something, they did it (at least to the best of our knowledge). Similarly, Israel DID often obey God and keep the various covenants they had with the Divine. When they did things went well with them. When they didn’t, the old “What you sow, you will also reap” thing applied. (With Israel’s herky-jerky track record, it’s no wonder that Jesus brought this little chestnut back into prominence through his teachings and parables.) Our experience with our two children reminds us that people CAN keep covenants, and occasionally DO what they say they will DO. However, too anxiously saying “Yeah, yeah, give me the keys” and driving off can sow seeds of impending doom, when it comes to covenants. 

 

Ultimately, it comes down to the integrity of those making the covenant in the first place. Then, have the two (or more) parties also hammered out at least a boilerplate shared agreement on what it means to KEEP the promises of the covenant in question? And what about accountability? Are there “penalties” for breaking the covenant, or is it truly just a “What you sow you will reap” system? In the case of God’s covenant with Israel—and with humanity through the Christ Event—the integrity of God is not really in question. Oh, there were those times when Moses had to argue with God and “remind” God of God’s culpability in creating humans with “free will,” n’at, but still, God is not one to be trifled with in covenantal matters. Humans, on the other hand, can have our issues with them. God can go out of God’s way to offer all kinds of blessings and rewards, but when God asks simply that Israel be a “royal priesthood” and be respectful of the Divine, Israel be like, “Oh, do we really have to have the car back by MIDNIGHT?” 

 

And finally, going full circle, we would be well to be reminded that covenants—if only made to offer security of the “lesser” party—may breed INSECURITY more than safety. The best covenants are between two respectful, faithful, and “loving” parties—more like a marriage than a legal contract. When covenants spell out positive actions, describe and “codify” a respectful relationship, and create an environment of mutuality, not dominance. Some naysayers of the Christ Event have suggested that God could have “fixed” the human sin problem by snapping God’s fingers instead of making the kind of sojourn among us that Jesus advanced. But not if you understand what I just said about the nature of a true covenant. Jesus came to “be” with humanity, to fully understand us, our temptations, our fears, and our need for healing at multiple levels. It didn’t matter that these may be “consequences” of our own choices. The fact is, we were separated and suffering, and this is not the life God created us to have. Jesus himself said it: “I came that you might have life, and life abundantly.” In this covenant, there is NO insecurity! Amen.