Covenants Old and New
Maundy Thursday
April 5, 2007
Christopher H. Edmonston – HMPC
1 Corinthians 11: 23 - 26
I.
Last year on this occasion I wondered with you what part do we play? In the drama of our lives as our lives evolve – what parts do we play? In the last year, for example, I have gotten the part “father of a daughter.” Soon I will get the part of “father of a kindergartener.” Life always gives us new parts to play: some of us will learn to live alone as we say goodbye to a spouse; some of us will assume leadership in our families as we say goodbye to a parent; some of us have gotten married in the past year; some of us will become grandparents; some of us will say goodbye to a child as he or she leaves for college.
We also play parts in our relationship with God: sometimes we play the reluctant disciple; sometimes the eager-Beaver Bible student is our part; maybe we are the willing prayer partner to a friend in need or sometimes we play the angry malcontent feeling as though God has abandoned us; sometimes we are lost in awe and wonder and praise as we play the part of the penitent. Our faith often ebbs and flows like the seasons and God is, as the psalmist confesses, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God knows us well – we fickle humans – and God knows that we play different parts with Him.
Last year I wondered specifically what parts we play during Holy Week – on this night of Maundy Thursday – this night of the last supper. Part of the call of Holy Week is to discover how and where we walk with Jesus. Are we like Judas the betrayer; or like Peter the denier; or like Mary and the women who paid the longest and most faithful witness; or do we play the part of someone else in the story – like a bystander along the road paralyzed by the events taking place all around us? Are we drawn to Jesus during Holy Week, horrified by what he had to endure, or just overwhelmed by the magnitude of grace God is offering us on that cross as compared with how badly we really need it?
II.
In studying for my sermons this week it struck me that no matter what specific part we play in our lives, in our relationships with God, or during Holy Week, we all play our parts because of the covenants old and new that God keeps with the earth and with women and men.
You all learned the children songs, I hope, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” The song teaches children about covenants – covenants both galactic and cosmic and personal and individual. “He got the whole world, the mommies, the daddies, you and me – in His hands.”
Strictly speaking, covenants are formal agreements between two parties in which both parties agree to do something. And our God, the God of Israel, the God of Jesus, the God of the Bible is a covenant maker and a covenant keeper. The first covenant is with creation – God makes a world that works with the stars and moon and sun and plants and the creatures that walk upon the earth. This is the cosmic covenant that God makes with the earth. Adam and Eve get some covenants – to be fruitful and multiply; and that they might stay in the garden so long as they avoid the tree of knowledge. The multiplying part they did well; the tree and the fruit and the serpent – that did not turn out so well. God makes a covenant with Noah sealed with the rainbow – a promise to not flood the earth again. Abraham is told that the number of his descendants will rival the number of the stars, so long as he keeps the covenants that God has given him. God makes the covenant of the law with the Israelites through Moses – God will bless the nation and keep them strong as long as they remember the law and worship him as God. David is told that his descendants will be Kings so long as he keeps the law and preserves the nations.
Indeed, it is from these early covenants, these covenants which you might call the old covenants that our text from Exodus comes from this evening. The covenant with Abraham is kept by God through the miracle of the Passover – God keeps promises. God keeps the covenant so completely that not even the Pharaoh with his legions, magicians, pyramids, guards, and gold can keep God’s work at bay or restrict the purposes of God once God has begun them.
III.
God’s covenants endure, because it is, after all, God who is seeing them to fruition. Indeed, it is one of the unique aspects of covenants made with God. Unlike marriage, which is a covenant of equals made between a man and a woman, covenants with God are not covenants, or agreements, made between equals. Technically speaking, they are called covenants of Suzeranity – taken from the word Suzeran which means in some dialects Lord or ruler. This reveals something of the nature of God – because God has all the chips, all the marbles. One of the mistakes that we make is that we think that we can negotiate with God. Technically, we cannot. We have nothing to offer in exchange – our negotiations are not with an equal. Perhaps the Psalmist says it best when he writes in Psalm 144: “O Lord what are human beings, what are mortals, that you regard them or even think of them – for to you they are like breath and their days are like a passing shadow.”
And yet, in spite of our smallness compared to God’s greatnessGod still makes promises to us, and covenants with us. Promises and agreements that God keeps.
That is what this supper is about. Jesus Christ, God incarnate, gives us a new covenant. “This is the new covenant” Jesus says, and it might best be described as a covenant of grace. In this supper, God who is immense and great becomes close to we who are small in this bread and this cup. And the peculiar genius of this sacrament, of this ceremony commemorating Jesus Christ, his death, his resurrection, and his last supper is that God, who has all the negotiating power, could have chosen anything as the symbols through which he is proclaimed. But he chose bread and cup. He chose simplicity as the signs of his grace, his gift of forgiveness and eternal life.
And this new covenant of Jesus requires nothing of us save our proclamation – our trust and our faith in it as it represents our trust and faith in Him. It asks nothing except that we love God and neighbor with the fullness of our hearts. It is a covenant of grace sealed by Jesus’ act of love that calls us to love even as it sanctifies us through love.
IV.
Let me say that again, because I think it is really important – this supper, this Maundy Thursday, this communion is a covenant of grace sealed by Jesus’ act of love that calls us to love even as it sanctifies us through love.
And this covenant in its turn reveals something about the nature of Jesus Christ. For on a night, in a moment, at a supper which he knew would be his last, in the very presence of the one who would betray him, Jesus is offering his love to them. When Jesus says it is more blessed to give than it is to receive, he is serious, and here he is seriously embodying that principle.
Usually
when we think of final moments, or a final meal we think about receiving. Jesus knows that he is an innocent man on
death row. He should be getting a kings
meal. Lobster. Caviar.
Kobi beef filet. A bottle of fine
V.
But that is not what Jesus does. No, to be sure instead of receiving in this new covenant, Jesus Christ is giving. He is sharing. Literally pouring himself out, giving away his complete grace in order that our incomplete lives should be, and could be, and would be made whole. The proof of God’s amazing love is indeed this – while we were yet sinners, while we didn’t even know we were hungry, God fed us. In the new covenant of Jesus Christ, given in this last supper, confirmed on the cross, God made us a promise that once again revealed his life giving nature.
I wish I possessed the verbs or the nouns or the adjectives or the expressions or the metaphors or the allusions or the colloquial ability to describe the enormous and overwhelming scope of the gift that Jesus Christ gave us. But I cannot describe it adequately and I do not possess the vocabulary to do it justice. All I may do is speak of it, and proclaim it, even while knowing my limitations.
Despite the limitations I do yet know this: that in this supper and in this sacrament are contained the fullness of the promises of the new covenant of God. That is a promise and a covenant God made in Jesus Christ on this night more than two thousand years ago. And it is, by the grace of Christ, a promise which God is still keeping today.
Amen.