Covenant Relationship

Last week, we journeyed with Abram and Sarai from Canaan, the place of synchronized unison with God, to Shechem, the place of responsibility resting on your own shoulders into the Negeb, a land of hollow emptiness. From there, they start managing things on their own. They decide to go to Egypt. They tell everyone that they are brother and sister. Pharoah takes Sarai as a wife and repays Abram well. God intervenes with an affliction on Pharoah and his household so that he turns to God for direction. So, Pharoah packs up Abram and Sarai and Lot and sends them on their way with all their livestock and riches. But, everything that Abram gained for himself causes him nothing but grief. They have amassed great wealth. They have so many animals that he and his nephew Lot, who were so close that Lot left his father and his family’s land with his uncle, have to separate. He has lots of stuff, but no heir.

Genesis 15:1-21

And the Word of the Lord comes to him in a vision. Dr. Celia Brewer Marshall compares the exchange to a school dance with boys-on-one-side and girls-on-the-other-side. Eventually that gap is traversed and the question is asked, “Do you want to dance?”

God is the one who comes across the room to Abram and asks him to dance, “Do not be afraid. I am your strength and shield; your reward shall be great.” To which Abram protests, “In this old thing?” He shares his frustration. He is honest in his despair. What reward will God give Abram that will be worth anything? He has no heir. In Old Testament times, there was no belief in an afterlife except that you lived on in your descendants. Abraham has no future. When he dies, everything he has will pass to his head servant, Eliezer.

And God responds, “Let me lead. This man won’t be your heir. You will have a child who will be your heir. Look at the sky, can you count the stars? Your descendants will be as plentiful. Your future is bright.

Abram’s response is the turning point of the entire Abram story: “And he believed the Lord.”

Abram accepted the invitation.

What changed? Abram let go of the present reality and the futures that could be derived from it, and he trusted God.

He trusted that God could do a completely new thing – he believed that the future didn’t have to be determined by his present barrenness.

OT Scholar Walter Bruggemann writes, “[Abram] did not move from protest (vv.2-3) to confession (v.6) by knowledge or by persuasion [he didn’t reason his way into believing; he didn’t choose to believe] but by the power of God who reveals and causes his revelation to be accepted. The new pilgrimage of Abraham is not grounded in the old flesh of Sarah nor the tired bones of Abraham, but in the…Word of God.”

Abraham believed the Lord. He accepted God’s invitation to dance and Genesis tells us that God reckoned him righteous. Righteousness in Hebrew means you are ok. God reckoned it was ok for Abram to come into God’s presence. “You are OK, take my hand, let’s dance,” says God.

And as a sign of his promise, God has Abram prepare a sacrifice, a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon cut in two, laid with space between the halves on the altar.

Then, as the sun was setting, Abram fall into a deep sleep. And when it was dark and the sun completely set, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces of animal flesh. This is an unusual covenant. God had Abram prepare a sacrifice, not for Abram to offer to God, not for them to enter a mutual covenant, but for God to bind Godself to Abram and his descendants in covenant relationship.

Rather than a bilateral covenant between God and Abram, this is an unconditional covenant. Nothing that Abram or his descendants do will ever shake God’s promise of blessing, of living in right relationship with God.

We are heirs of this covenant, and this dance doesn’t depend on us learning the steps. This dance doesn’t depend on our grace.

There is only one other covenant like this one. It is the one that Jeremiah prophesied. The one that Sandy read about from Hebrews this morning. In Jesus, God again offers the sacrifice as a sign of the covenant. God comes across the gap again and binds himself to us in covenant relationship. It is not a covenant that is written on stone or on paper, but on our minds and hearts.
I will be their God, and they will be My people.
In those days, they won’t need to teach each other My ways or to say to each other, ‘Know the Eternal.’ In those days, all will know Me, from the least to the greatest.
I will be merciful when they fail, and I will erase their sins and wicked acts out of My memory as though they had never existed.”

I will ask them to dance, and they will say “Yes!” They won’t go to dance classes or practice in their living rooms with each other. They will take my hand and I’ll lead. They will all glide blithely across the dance floor. They may make some missteps, but those won’t be remembered. It will be like they were born to dance.

Scottish theologian, John Baille, said, “I just cannot read the Gospel story without knowing that I am being sought out in love, being called to life’s most sacred task, being offered life’s highest prize…”

God has seen you from across the way and has come to ask you to dance.

Will you take his hand and let him lead? Will you, like Abram, believe? Will you let go of the present barrenness and struggles and believe that your future doesn’t have to be determined by them? If we are honest with ourselves, we want to dance. We want to let go.

John Ortberg writes in his book Faith and Doubt, “There is no way to God that bypasses the call to let go. You may have intellectual doubts, and it is really important to be honest about those, to talk about them and study. However, thinking and studying alone never remove the need to choose. The question of faith is never just an intellectual decision.”

At the 2012 General Assembly, in one of the worship services, they showed a video of a guy named Matt Harding dancing to a song called, “Trip the Light.” The lyrics say we hold the burning rhythm in our hearts, we hold the flame. We are going to trip the light, meaning turn the light on, and break the night. And we’ll see with new eyes when we trip the light. In fact, let’s watch the video:

Don’t you want to dance? To feel that joy? That is faith. It was the great dance teacher and choreographer Martha Graham, who said, “Dance is the hidden language of the soul.” When we dance, something deep is revealed, something deep is released, something deep is set free, something deep that can only be discovered in the dance.

Abram believed and he accepted God’s invitation: Dance, then wherever you may be; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he, and I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be and I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.