Last week I went to Owensboro, Kentucky to do a training. The organization I was working for put me up in a lovely hotel on the Ohio River. I was fascinated to watch little tugboats push great barges up and down the river. The image of tugboats and barges helps me pray with today’s readings which center around the theme of God’s great gift of covenant with us.
God’s Covenant with Abraham
The first reading from Genesis tells of God’s covenant with Abram. Abram is 99 years old. God appears to him and begins, “I am God the Almighty. Walk in my ways and be blameless. Between you and me I will establish my covenant, and I will multiply you exceedingly.” (Gen 17: 1-2) Then comes today’s passage. God changes Abram’s name to Abraham. He promises to make of Abraham a father of a host of nations. God includes in what he says, “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.” The covenant is then sealed by God’s command for circumcision of all males. (This was surely a painful way for Abraham to sign onto the covenant with his blood, but contemporary science shows it was likely what made Abraham “exceedingly fertile.”
The Church leaves out the circumcision part (Gen 17:9-14) from today’s reading, because that action is not the focus of this familiar passage today. The focus today is on God’s action, God’s place in this covenant.
Jesus and God’s Covenant
We see that in today’s Gospel. Chapter 8 of the Gospel of John is another high theology chapter. Chapter 8 begins with the Pharisees bringing the woman caught in adultery to Jesus to see how they could trick them. This is the scene that ends with the accusers stealing away while Jesus wrote on the ground with his finger. Then in verse 12 Jesus begins a discussion with the Pharisees about who he is and why he is here on earth. We read some of that dialogue on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Today’s Gospel continues with Jesus telling the Pharisees that when God the Father made the covenant with Abraham, God was anticipating Jesus and the very scenes they are witnessing. The Pharisees (and probably the disciples) are NOT understanding what he means. They are incredulous. While the Gospels portray the Pharisees as someone I don’t want to be, I can understand their lack of acceptance here. The resurrection has not yet happened. While many of them believed in resurrection, they have no idea that very soon it is going to happen in THEIR LIFETIMES, in their world.
Jesus says, “Whoever keeps my word will never see death.” That makes no sense to his listeners. They challenge Jesus, “Now we are sure 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?” Then hear the sarcastic, accusing tone in their voice, “Who do you make yourself out to be?”
Then Jesus speaks the deepest truth, “Amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.”
That is too much for them. They pick up stones to throw at him for blasphemy—which would have been justified if Jesus had not been speaking Truth, if he were not God. This message was perhaps more significant for the readers of John’s Gospel than for those who heard Jesus say it. When John wrote his Gospel Christians were still wrestling with who Jesus was–prophet, “Son of God, but not God,” or “Son of God who is God.” We forget today that it took a couple of centuries for Christians to understand Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are Three Persons, One God. John is recalling events in Jesus’ life to show Jesus and the Father were (and will always be) ONE GOD.
Covenant on the River
How does all this apply to me today? I accept the Trinity. I accept the resurrection. What message does God’s covenant with Abraham and Jesus’ logic to the Pharisees have for me, for you?
Back to the barges. They give me an image for the great power and worth of God’s covenant with Abraham which is given to us through Baptism. A covenant is not a contract. Even though there are terms of agreement for both parties in a covenant, failure to keep the terms by one party does NOT release the other party from keeping his terms.
That God made that covenant with Abraham and later ratified it with his own blood on the cross comes clear to me today along with images in my mind of the barges. In both church and therapy work this week I have encountered stories of troubles, troubles, troubles. Lives so filled with wound, sin, very bad choices, illness, addiction, despair—contemporary evil in multiple lives.
An Adventure
Yet God has sent me on a fascinating adventure. It started on Sunday when I visited a mental health unit with Eucharist for someone there. His mind was deep in dementia. He was having horrible visions of evil. I prayed, “Lord, how can I help?” I had the thought to say, “Let’s pray together.” I held his hand and started praying about God’s great love for him, a love that is stronger than any awful vision, a love which intends goodness. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I prayed from God’s covenant. At first the man gripped my hand as if he was falling off a cliff and I was holding him up. But then the grip grew simply firm. And finally relaxed to an ordinary clasp. There was some peace in him, enough I could give him Eucharist.
The next day in my office I encountered a story of family crisis. It, too, was beyond anything I knew to say or do to help. I remembered what had happened on Sunday and gave the same message: God created you in his image. You have the capacity for goodness in your mind, heart, and life. You are baptized and have the gift of God living in you. (I knew this to be true.) You have a free will. You can choose to act from this goodness within you, no matter what is going on around you.
This woman responded, “You are right. I forget that.” Then she thought of a very simple action she can take to keep her wits and fidelity to God in the midst of her great trouble. She left my office with a visibly lighter heart.
I write this on Wednesday morning. THREE more times when someone has relayed stories of great trouble or evil this week I have listened, empathized, and then replied with some piece of the story of God’s covenant lived out as capacity for goodness, imprint of God on the soul. All three times there has been a visible response of hope in the person. Something sparked.
Kerygma: The Good News of Salvation
While this has surprised me (maybe I’m not so very far from the Pharisees and disciples in today’s Gospel), this morning it makes sense: this story of the Covenant is the foundation message of the great kerygma, the Gospel story of salvation. OF COURSE, it fosters hope. Because it IS the foundation of hope. God’s intention is always to lead us to goodness–which is to lead us to living in the way God directs us. His commandments are for our benefit.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is TRYING to help the religious leaders of his day and his own disciples tie that original great gift of God to Abraham to his current teaching and his coming-very-soon Passion, Death, and Resurrection. He is trying to build readiness for the great Good News of Holy Week.
Perhaps barges on a river are a helpful image for you—or perhaps not. For me, I see the waters of the river as God’s great covenant all the way back in the 17th chapter of the Bible—maybe even in God’s original creation of humanity in his likeness. I see Jesus as the tugboat that lets us travel steadily with our heaviness of troubles, sin, illness, and even death, on that river.
The image isn’t perfect. But, irrespective of the image, God’s fidelity to his covenant remains for each of us, all of us, as capacity to access or reclaim goodness, no matter what the waters of our river of life give us.
Prayer:
Lord, help me to remember that the river of my life and the lives of all I encounter can give us a safe journey to eternal life. Help me to remember that I and all I encounter need your help to travel safely—and that you readily give that help when we let you drive the boat. Let me be a willing barge today, Lord. Carry me, take me where and how you want me to go.
