The New Covenant: God’s Radical Grace

February 26, 2023
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Luke 22:14-20[1]

Today I want to talk about “Covenant.” A covenant is an agreement between two parties, generally between people and God, stating their relationship and stipulating their future rights and responsibilities. It provides the arrangements within which ordinary life can flourish. It defines the common center of value that holds the community together and creates the conditions for free and responsible interactions.

Remember Noah and the Rainbow Covenant, where God promises to never again destroy the earth with a flood. Remember God’s covenant with Abraham, to make him the father of many nations, the ancestor of the “people of the book” as Jews, Christians, and Muslims are known.

Covenant is a powerful idea. As an arrangement created by God who makes the covenant, it is a gracious gift. God gives us the covenant as a means of providing us with peace, justice, happiness, freedom, and all of the good things in life that are priceless. The covenant stipulates a way of life based on the gift. In order to make the promises of the covenant a reality, we must respond with faith and obedience. We must live up to our obligations, take care of our responsibilities.

The covenant is a gift in the sense that it can be refused. We have to agree to the covenant. We have to choose to let God be our God. But, because it is based on our agreement, on consent rather than coercion or force, it creates a relationship between people and God where we are accountable to one another. We are in this together. For the promises of the covenant to be fulfilled, both God and people have to do their part.

God makes a covenant with us, and we receive the benefits of belonging to the people of God. God is especially concerned with justice and peace as the basis for human flourishing, and God’s promises make peace and justice a reality. We also take on some responsibilities as part of that covenant. God’s covenant with Moses and the Israelites involved a lengthy list of laws and rules about proper behavior. And that seemed to work… for a while.

But promises get broken, agreements are forgotten, and temptation draws us away from the commitments we’ve made. We all know what it is like to break a promise, or to have a promise that was made to us broken. I don’t think any of us is a stranger to that feeling of hurt, disappointment, betrayal. It breaks down our relationships. It ends friendships. It divides families. And it is so hard to build up a trust which has been lost.

All of the historical covenants appear to have been broken. It’s part of human nature, it seems. If we follow the story through the historical books of the Bible – Joshua, Judges, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Samuel, etc. – we see God’s people repeatedly breaking the covenant. God, of course, gets angry with the people and so allows them to be conquered by different nations and even exiled from the “Promised Land.”

And yet… God never gives up. The prophets record the words that God speaks over and over again: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”[2] And the fact that after all we human beings have done to one another and to the world, God still has hope for us, is truly amazing. We hear that hope in the words of Jeremiah: “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.”[3]

The promise, I will be your God and you shall be my people, is fulfilled in the life and destiny of Jesus Christ. The new covenant that Jesus speaks of during the Last Supper is the covenant that God writes on our hearts. It is the covenant of love that goes with us all the way to the grave and beyond. It is the promise of forgiveness, the gift of God’s grace. It is the way of the servant, giving ourselves to others in the name of the one who gave himself for all of us.

Radical grace is a term coined by the 20^th century theologian, Karl Barth. He was trying to respond to the Reformation idea of grace, proposed by John Calvin and others, that there is election or predestination. The Calvinist view of election teaches that in eternity God chose some individuals from the mass of fallen humanity to be saved without regard to any merit or foreseen faith in them, but solely based on God’s choice. Those elected are predestined to go to heaven.

Barth recognized in the church’s language of predestination an attempt to express the sovereignty of God. For him, this is the sum of the gospel—that God elects humanity and that this election is utterly unconditioned by any human merit, preparation, or disposition. But Barth’s reinterpretation of the doctrine of election rejects any form of double-predestination whereby some are elected to salvation and others to damnation.

Christ, has elected humanity for salvation. But Christ is also the one chosen before time to restore the broken covenant between God and humanity. The election of any particular person is always an election “in Christ,” and the election “in Christ” is an election of all persons for salvation and eternity. In this way, Barth removes speculation regarding the eternal destiny of any particular person and transforms it into an affirmation of radical grace. Radical grace means everyone is saved. The covenant is no longer dependent on our choice, but given no matter what.

The reality of salvation can only be fully affirmed if the event is seen to come to humankind as a gift that is already actual and complete. The gift is effective whether or not it is acknowledged by the recipient. The alternative, describing salvation as in some sense dependent on a human response, would imply that salvation is a mere possibility not yet realized in human existence. The gospel would become yet another law by which humanity was condemned.

Jesus didn’t come to condemn people to eternal damnation. In John’s Gospel, we read: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”[4] Who did Jesus condemn? No one. Who did Jesus forgive? The disciples who deserted him, the Roman soldiers who killed him, the Roman and Jewish ruling elite who condemned him to death, yes. Was he forgiving us all forever, for all our sins? This is the gospel.

Don’t give up on each other. Keep forgiving one another. Keep on loving one another, even when it is hard. Keep on serving others, even if they don’t recognize or appreciate what you are doing. Keep building the kingdom, the reality of God’s peace and justice and love that has been promised in the new covenant of Jesus Christ. Let God’s radical grace rain down upon us all.  Amen.

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[1] The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] Jeremiah 31:33.

[3] Jeremiah 31:34.

[4] John 3:17.

Prayer and Repentance

February 21, 2021
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

2 Chronicles 6:36-40; Mark 1:9-15[1]

When I was a kid, we didn’t give anything up for Lent. Now, maybe some people in our church did, but we didn’t make a big deal about it. We celebrated Lent; we had a Shrove Tuesday pancake supper and played some silly games. We didn’t do the ashes on Wednesday, however. I remember saying, naively, to a friend, “You’ve got some dirt on your forehead.”

I do remember being asked by a friend or two, “What are you giving up for Lent?” Was I a bad Christian because, at first, I didn’t understand the question? “Um, nothing?” I felt like I was missing out on something, something important.

What is Lent really about, anyway? “The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer — through prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial — for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.”[2] Prayer serves to direct our attention to God. Penitence is “the condition of being sorrowful and remorseful for sins one has committed.”[3] Almsgiving is charity, giving to those in need and thus showing love for our neighbor. And self-denial is the giving-something-up which is meant to redirect our thoughts and energy from bodily or earthly things to spiritual or divine things. Lent was originally the time when candidates prepared for baptism, which took place during the Easter vigil, the Saturday night before Easter Sunday morning. It was an intense period of fasting and prayer.

As we know from the story of Noah, and as we heard in Solomon’s prayer, God knows that people will be people. We will sin, for “there is no one who does not sin.”[4] We will do wrong. People are weak-willed and short-sighted, and we mess things up. However, God also loves us, and “if [we] repent with all [our] heart and soul,”[5] God will hear our prayer and forgive us. So, what is Lent really about? It’s about coming to our senses. It’s about realizing that we have done wrong, that we have sinned, and repenting. Lent is about focusing on getting right with God.

We celebrate Lent because we need help keeping our focus on God. It’s okay if we stumble, if we fail, if we fall short. We’re not perfect; no one is. God knows that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Lent gives us a chance to try to be better. We should try, because when we do, we store up treasures in heaven, and that treasure can’t be taken from us. When we repent, we hear more clearly the good news, and we get closer to the kingdom of God.

There is something powerful in the act of repentance, really feeling sorry for the wrongs we have done and actively trying to make it right, that can make a difference in the way we live our lives. If we take it seriously, if we take prayer and repentance seriously, maybe something in us can change for good. Maybe something in the world around us can change for good.

We’re familiar with the act of self-denial, even if we don’t practice it as part of a Lenten observance. We diet for our health or to fit into the swimsuit this summer. Some of us even fast, going without food, or sweets, or indulgences for a time.

We’re also familiar with alms-giving. We write our checks weekly to the church for the offering. We donate to the Heifer Project, or One Great Hour of Sharing, to the Lions or the Rotary, and maybe the Salvation Army. We might even volunteer our time to help in a food pantry or soup kitchen.

Another way to look at alms-giving is to think of it as other-sustaining. We know the phrase “love your neighbor.” To love often means to sustain the life of the one who is loved. It’s something we already do, but we can take this moment, these forty days of Lent, to give our other-sustaining efforts a new intensity.

We share our bread with the hungry, and the M.O.R.E. Food Pantry patrons are grateful. We help shelter women who have been abused with our donations to Turning Point. Our rummage sale provided clothing and household items to many in need. But these things just treat the symptoms, they don’t cure the disease. We can do more. We can do more to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, and to satisfy the needs of the afflicted.

This Lenten season let us really try to be constant in prayer, to seek God in every moment, to be prepared to answer when we hear the call. This Lenten season, let us repent; not merely feeling sorry for the wrong things we have said and done, but really making an effort to correct our mistakes. This Lenten season, let us be generous with our money, with our time, and with our love. This Lenten season, let us deny ourselves what we don’t need, and sustain others with all that we can. This Lenten season, may we be heralds and harbingers of the coming kingdom of God.

There is good news to be shared. God loves us, and even if we sin against God we can be forgiven. God hears our prayers and keeps the promises. God maintains our cause as we seek to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. When we walk in the steps of Jesus, we have a firm foundation. Let us go in peace to love and serve the world.  Amen.

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[1] The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lent.

[3] Donald K. McKim, Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996).

[4] 2 Chronicles 6:36.

[5] 2 Chronicles 6:38.

Forgiveness and Mercy

September 13, 2020

St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Romans 14:1, 5-12; Matthew18:21-35, CEB[1]

Forgiveness is one of those defining traits of being a Christian. Like loving your neighbor, forgiveness is part of who we are. Our forgiveness is our response to God’s forgiveness of us, as we pray each week, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”[2] What happens then, when we don’t forgive our debtors? As Peter seems to ask, what happens when we run out of forgiveness?

Here we have a person who has been generous. A fellow servant needed some cash, so our servant loaned out one hundred coins. Now the borrower is asked to pay up, and can’t. So, our servant has him jailed for defaulting on the debt.

I mean, if you can’t pay back what you owe, maybe you shouldn’t borrow money in the first place. My parents were born during the Great Depression. They didn’t borrow money. No car loans; they always saved up and paid cash. No credit cards. My dad was a minister, so they lived in the parsonage – no mortgage. Debt was to be avoided. Debt collectors aren’t known for being overly merciful, after all. Have you ever been on the receiving end of a collection agency phone call? Collecting on debts is just good business, anyway. Economies collapse when loans get defaulted.

So, what’s the problem? Why is Jesus getting involved? The servant, the central figure of this parable, starts out as the manager of a tremendous responsibility. How much is ten thousand bags of gold? Other translations read ten-thousand talents. It is meant to be understood as an unreasonably large amount, the kind of debt a nation-state owes. This servant can’t possibly come up with such a sum. Even though the servant promises to pay it back, with a little more time, that doesn’t seem realistic.

The master, in response to the pleadings of the servant, unexpectedly forgives it all. No extension of the loan, no refinancing or renegotiation. The loan is just cancelled. Poof. Gone. This is where Jesus gets involved. If the king, the master is meant to represent God, the debt that is forgiven, as colossal as it seems, is too small. God, creator of the universe, giver of life, and love, the earth and all it contains, has given everything to wayward sinners, irresponsible stewards, human beings with all our failures and faults. What we owe to God is beyond calculation. And yet, we are forgiven. Our sin, our failures, all of our unmet promises, washed away in a breath of mercy.

Our servant, having just been forgiven an enormous debt, can’t summon the grace to forgive even a small debt owed by a fellow servant. I’m offended. His fellow servants were offended. You were just forgiven so much, and over so little you send a fellow servant to jail? Are you for real? I’m more than offended now; I’m angry. The master is going to hear about this!

The master hears our story, and calls the servant to account. “You wicked servant!”[3] Ooh, this is going to be good, we’re thinking. Revenge is sweet! “Shouldn’t you also have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?”[4] Oh, yeah, that’s right. Throw him in jail, master! Give him what he deserves!

Wait a minute. What just happened? Did we just become the unmerciful servant ourselves? We stop and stare into our memories, all the times we failed to forgive. How many times have I failed to forgive my family for not being who I want them to be? How many times have I failed to forgive a friend for failing me? How often have I relished revenge rather than mercy? And as the servant is handed over to punishment, have I done it again? God, have mercy.

Forgiveness is hard. Revenge feels good. When someone who has hurt us gets hurt in return, we secretly (and sometimes openly) like it. We want payback, we don’t want to forgive without getting something in return, some payment or effort to make up for the wrong. What we forget is that sometimes what is owed is beyond what can be paid back. And what we owe, and have been forgiven, is beyond any payment we could make. What God has forgiven in us is beyond measure, and we are asked to be that merciful in return.

Forgiveness is not simply wishing away the loss, the harm, or the pain. It isn’t forgetting what has been done. Forgiveness takes hard work, acknowledging and understanding the negative impact of another person’s actions and attitude on our lives. We can’t forgive by denying we have been hurt, or minimizing how we have been affected. And we must not forget or dismiss the harm done by the abuse or betrayal of another.

To forgive is to choose to let go, to release the other from whatever punishment we think they deserve, however justified. Forgiveness is choosing to leave behind our desire for retribution, to release our resentment. Forgiveness is choosing to set ourselves free from the hold that the other has on our minds and on our hearts. It is denying the other person the power to live in our heads and keep us angry, bitter, and resentful. It is refusing to allow what has happened to keep us prisoner.

God forgives us. As we live each day in the grace of God’s mercy, we are called to show that same measure of forgiveness toward one another. As often as we forgive, we are always forgiven. As we forgive our debtors, the ones who owe us, who have sinned against us, who have trespassed on our hearts and minds, we are forgiven all that we owe to God, and blessed by God’s grace. “We all will stand in front of the judgment seat of God.”[5] It is there we shall be judged on the mercy we have shown by the God who showed us mercy.  Amen.

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[1] Scripture quotations noted CEB are taken from the Common English Bible, copyright 2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

[2] Matthew 6:12.

[3] Matthew 18:32.

[4] Matthew 18:33.

[5] Romans 14:10.

Down the Road

April 26, 2020

St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Luke 24:13-35

How did we get here? I have been reading a lot about what has brought us to this crisis, the breakdown of systems that has left us vulnerable to this disease. I have also been reading about the dedication and sacrifice of those who are doing their best to save lives and provide for the needs of others. I am grateful for those who are helping me understand how all that is happening connects to the larger story of who we are. And this story of an encounter on the road to Emmaus draws similar connections between the intense events of that week in Jerusalem so long ago, and the long history of God’s work of salvation.

This passage from Luke would actually fit chronologically before the story from last week. In Luke’s telling, the women who go to the tomb in the early morning see only two men in dazzling clothes; they do not encounter the risen Jesus. This journey to Emmaus reflects the ambiguous time between the empty tomb and the appearance of Jesus to the disciples and Thomas behind locked doors.

As they travel, the two disciples converse about the dramatic events of the past few days. When the stranger joins them, the recount the mission of Jesus and the events of the passion, but without fully understanding their meaning.

Luke’s Gospel sets the entire story in the context of journey, the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and in the following story of Acts, the journey of the early community from Jerusalem “to the ends of the earth.”[1] The early Christians were known as the people of the Way, or people of the journey. As one scholar describes it, “For Luke the journey of Jesus and of the church itself expresses the unfolding history of salvation that finds its origin In Israel and through the Spirit extends salvation to the ‘ends of the earth.’”[2]

What Jesus interpreted to them from the scriptures, from Moses and all the prophets, is the story of God’s saving work revealed through the people and history of Israel. God’s story is one of life emerging from death, of the journey of renewal, reconciliation, and transformation. As Jesus reveals the connections between the story they know and the story they have just witnessed, they begin to understand the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is some of what they might have heard.

The story of the Exodus from Egypt is a story of bondage, liberation, a journey, and a destination. It begins with the Hebrews as slaves in Egypt. Daily life was hard labor with perhaps enough food to survive on, but not much more. By means of the plagues, God liberates the people from Pharaoh. They are led into the wilderness by Moses. There they journey for forty years toward the Promised Land.

This story suggests that the human condition is slavery or bondage. You and I are in bondage to many things, such as cultural messages about what we should be like, what it means to be successful, attractive, and to live the good life. We can also be enslaved to fears, addictions, or other kinds of oppression. We might be trapped by debt, or the fear of losing employer-supplied health insurance. The story of Moses and the people seeking freedom remains a particularly poignant one for the descendants of African slaves in America.

God’s salvation comes as the people are led from bondage to liberation, leaving Egypt and Pharaoh. It also involves a journey through the wilderness. It is in the wilderness where God is encountered and known. It can also be a place of fear and anxiety where we sometimes find ourselves longing for the security of Egypt, of the familiar things of the past. But the wilderness is also a place where we are nourished by God and where God journeys with us. The destination is life in the presence of God.

We might think our current situation is bondage, trapped in our homes by fear of the virus and the need to slow the spread so that our hospitals are not overwhelmed. But maybe we are really in the wilderness, a journey of the mind and the spirit, experiencing anxiety and a longing for what we had before. But in the wilderness, we might find ourselves sustained by the manna of God, the efforts of our family and friends to reach out over the phone and the internet to support one another. And the end of this journey may reveal a new way of living more carefully with one another, more grateful for the opportunity to gather, and more blessed by the touch of a hand or a hug.

Through the prophets we learn of the exile. The exile began in 587 BCE, when, after Jerusalem and its temple were conquered and destroyed by the Babylonians, some of the survivors were marched into exile in Babylon some 800 miles away. There they lived as refugees, far from home and oppressed. Fifty years later, the Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Persians, who allowed the Jews to return to their homeland.

We live in a time when millions of exiles and refugees know this experience firsthand. It is an experience of separation from all that is familiar. People contend with powerlessness and often oppression and victimization. There is sadness, loneliness, and grief. It is a yearning for home and a place where we belong. It can also mean the loss of meaning or a sense of purpose. These feelings may be familiar to us in this time, when familiar ways of working, learning, gathering, and traveling have changed.

God’s salvation from exile leads the people on a journey of return. The religious life is a journey to the place where God is present, a homecoming, and God assists those who undertake the journey. We may not be able to return from our exile yet. But there will be a return, a time to gather once again in familiar places with friends and family. As God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”[3] As the days of our quarantine stretch into weeks and months, we may ask, like the exiles, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”[4] Perhaps in the days ahead we will sing a new song, a song of joy as we gather together again.

Another way in which we understand salvation comes from the days of the temple, the priesthood, and sacrifice. It is a story of sin, guilt, sacrifice, and forgiveness. When we people turn away from God, we are in a state of sin and brokenness. When we are lost from the ways of God we need to return to God, to repent, to be cleansed, washed, or covering over. When we have done wrong, we need forgiveness. We need to sacrifice to God to make up for what we have done wrong. Since the early Middle Ages, some Christians have understood Jesus as the dying savior whose death is a sacrifice for our sins, thereby making our forgiveness by God possible. “Jesus died for our sins.”

This image of Jesus is powerful, and can be a sign of God’s great love for us, as we know from John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The message is simple, direct, and radical: we are accepted, just as we are. Our own sense of sin, impurity, and guilt need not stand between us and God. New beginnings are possible.

Each of these stories is part of the grand story of God’s work of salvation. For some of us, the need is liberation; for others, the need is homecoming; and for still others, the need is acceptance. Each of these stories helps us to understand what it means to be Christian, living life as a journey whose central quality is a deepening and transforming relationship with God.

Where do we go from here? The story doesn’t end with supper that night in Emmaus. That was a moment of revelation, a vision of the living Christ in the breaking of the bread. It was also a moment of understanding that their journey was not ended, but just beginning.

The story of Jesus is the story of discipleship. The word disciple means “a follower after somebody.” Discipleship is a following after Jesus, a journeying with Jesus. It is a journey, not alone, but in a company of fellow disciples. The Christian life is about being in relationship with God, which transforms us into more and more compassionate beings, changing into the likeness of Christ.

Our journey also continues, and though we can’t yet leave our homes, we can think about what is coming down the road. Things won’t be the “normal” we had before. The disciples didn’t just go back to fishing. We will make changes in our lives. If nothing else, we will begin to see and appreciate more of the people who make the world work, the grocery clerks, truck drivers, farmers and field hands, janitors, meat packers, mail carriers, and others who are more essential than we realized. We’ll have a greater appreciation for doctors and nurses, lab techs and EMTs.

I hope that down the road we will realize our interconnectedness in new ways, and be more grateful for all the people in our lives. I hope that when we break bread together, the living Christ will be made known to us. And I pray that we will continue on in the Way, the journey which takes us ever-closer to the One who saves us.  Amen.

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[1] Acts 1:8. The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] Donald Senior, Exegetical Perspective on Luke 24:13-35 in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Vol. 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, General Editors (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p. 421.

[3] Jeremiah 29:14.

[4] Psalm 137:4.