I am hunkered down today in the land of April snow and ice. Not much is moving outside. I was to have done a Word/Communion service at Mala Strana, the nursing home and one of the assisted living facilities in New Prague. Because of the weather, I am not going to be able to do that Word/Communion. The following is the homilette I was planning on doing for the residents. Here are the scriptural readings for today.
Genesis 17:3-9
When Abram prostrated himself, God spoke to him:
“My covenant with you is this:
you are to become the father of a host of nations.
No longer shall you be called Abram;
your name shall be Abraham,
for I am making you the father of a host of nations.
I will render you exceedingly fertile;
I will make nations of you;
kings shall stem from you.
I will maintain my covenant with you
and your descendants after you
throughout the ages as an everlasting pact,
to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
I will give to you
and to your descendants after you
the land in which you are now staying,
the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession;
and I will be their God.”
God also said to Abraham:
“On your part, you and your descendants after you
must keep my covenant throughout the ages.”
John 8:51-59
Jesus said to the Jews:
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever keeps my word will never see death.”
So the Jews said to him,
“Now we are sure that you are possessed.
Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say,
‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’
Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died?
Or the prophets, who died?
Who do you make yourself out to be?”
Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is worth nothing;
but it is my Father who glorifies me,
of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’
You do not know him, but I know him.
And if I should say that I do not know him,
I would be like you a liar.
But I do know him and I keep his word.
Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day;
he saw it and was glad.”
So the Jews said to him,
“You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
before Abraham came to be, I AM.”
So they picked up stones to throw at him;
but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.
The central concept upon which our Judeo-Christian faith rests is the Covenant established between God and humanity. A Covenant is different from our notion of a contract. Contracts can be broken and are broken all the time. A Covenant exists forever. God entered into a Covenant with Abram. The sign of Abram’s entering into a Covenant with God was circumcision. Upon entering into a Covenant with God, Abram was utterly changed. He received a new name, Abraham. His wife, Sarai was renamed Sarah.
A Covenant is not a static agreement. Rather, a Covenant is more a fluid relationship between the participants as their understanding of the Covenant grows and changes. I love Sr Joan Chittester’s definition of God. She writes, “God is changing changelessness.” This sounds paradoxical, for how can one be changing and changeless at the same time? However, it makes total sense. God does not change, but our understanding of the mystery of God is always changing as we enter into deeper relationship with the mystery of God’s changeless nature.
We see this at work in Abraham’s relationship with God. At the age of 76 years, God leads Abram away from his father and the city of Haran, into the unknown. Abram places his utter trust, his wealth, his future into the hands of this God who called out to him. The mystery of God gradually unfolds for Abram as he journeys with God. At 86 years, at the urging of his barren wife, Sarai, he enters into a relationship with Hagar, Sarai’s servant. Hagar gives birth to a boy, Ishmael, and her relationship with Sarai deteriorates. Sarai becomes physically abusive toward Hagar, and demands that Abram abandon Hagar and Ishmael in the desert, literally condemning Hagar and Ismael to death. God reassures Hagar that she and her infant son will be taken care of by God and will thrive. Islam will trace the origin of the religion to Ishmael, and consider Abram their father. At the age of 100, Abraham enters formally into the covenant with God, and Sarai, at the age of 90, gives birth to Isaac. Abraham’s understanding of Covenant is not static, but ever changing.
The people of Israel’s understanding of the Covenant they have with God will also continue to change. With Moses, it deepens at the Covenant renewed by Moses with God on Mount Sinai. And, even though the people of Israel drift from the Covenant over history, God remains always faithful to them. The understanding of the Covenant that Abraham cut with God always remaining fluid up to the time of Jesus, who we hear in the Gospel, reveals to the people that he is the embodiment of God’s Covenant with the people of Israel. And, as we hear in the Gospel, the Jewish religious authorities are less than receptive of Jesus’ teaching, calling him possessed by Satan, and seek to execute him for blasphemy.
We can listen to all this and say, “So what’s the big deal? What should this mean to me?” I ask you to ponder this question. “How has my understanding of God changed for me over my lifetime? What in my life’s experience has revealed more deeply the mystery of the God I say I adore and follow? Is my faith static and unchanging, or have my faith different today than when I was 6 years old, 16 years old, 30 years old, 50 years old, 70 years old?” If our faith is vibrant and alive, we will have found that our faith has changed over the years. It is not the faith of our childhood, nor our adolescence, nor the years when we were working and raising a family, nor as we were approaching our retirement.
The years are not cyclical, with us statically going around the same circle wearing a rut in the same ground over the passage of time. Rather the years must be spherical and evolving. With the passing of every year our relationship with God must be evolving, changing. This is what these scriptures speak to us today. Abram went from being Abram to Abraham. Israel’s understanding of God changed over the years until the Covenant established by God with Abraham was born in the person of Jesus, who wedded Divine nature with human nature.
We never “graduate” from God. Our relationship with God must never be a static one in which we foolishly think we know everything we need to know about God. Rather, with the passing of each day we should discover something new about the God who loved us into existence. What is true in our human relationships (Do we ever really know everything about our spouses? Never!), is true about our relationship with God. I am going to conclude with the best scriptural passage I think describes our Covenantal relationship with God.
From Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, he writes, “Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God. Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4: 15-18) God is “changing changelessness.”
