On the last weekend of 2007 I was given the opportunity to preach at Argyle United Methodist Church, where I am serving as the associate pastor/minister of music, worship, and the arts. I took the opportunity to lead a Wesley Covenant Renewal Service. Below you will find a manuscript of my sermon.
A New Day is Coming…Are You Ready?
Good morning! My name is Joe Stobaugh and I am the associate pastor/minister of music here at Argyle UMC. I am thrilled to be with you today for several reasons: First, I love this time of year, the week between Christmas and New Year’s and the opportunities it presents us to reflect on the year past to look forward to the year to come. Secondly, it’s National Associate Pastor Sunday! This is one of two weekends a year where senior pastors from across the country take a well-deserved break and give their associate pastors a chance to preach! Oh I do love this weekend! Our senior pastor, Kory Knott is taking such a break after having led us in two excellent Christmas Eve services but will be back with us next week. So for today, you are stuck with me! Let us pray:
God wants to be our God if we will be God’s people…
So yesterday, my wife Sarah and I took our two-year-old daughter, Eleanor Grace, to meet her new pediatrician. The visit was going really well and we were all grooving in nicely with the pediatrician, that is, until the doctor wanted to get some blood samples from Ellie to test her for allergies. Now, pediatricians are smart people: they know that when it’s time to actually draw the blood from the kids, they don’t want to be within a mile of them! So after ordering the tests and finishing up with us, our pediatrician vanished into the midst that is her office and in came two ladies whom I will lovingly refer to as “the baby goon squad!” If you are a parent, you know whom I mean: in our case it was two very kind nurses who came brandishing their weapons, I mean, needles and the little blue rubber tourniquet. They asked me if I would help to help hold Ellie so that they could extract the blood from her arm. I was a bit reluctant to do this because this wasn’t my first rodeo with the whole needle and baby thing and, if the pediatrician, who went to med school didn’t want to participate in this process, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to participate either!!! But, out of love for Ellie, I agreed and helped to hold her down so they could do their work.
We laid Ellie down on the table and I had to put my hand on her chest and hold down one of her arms. Needless to say, two-year-old Eleanor Grace was not a fan of this process. From the screaming and the crying you would have thought that she was being murdered. The worst part of it, for me, anyway, was when her beautiful, tear-stained blue eyes met mine and she gave me the look that said, “Daddy, you are supposed to protect me from these people, not help them!” Of course, my heart broke a little, like it does every time I get that look in the doctor’s office.
To make matters worse, the vein in her left elbow was too small to get all that they needed for her tests, so after a break and a flu vaccination, we had to repeat the process all over again with her other arm. All I can tell you about that was it was a “rinse and repeat” moment!
During the course of the rest of the day yesterday, I tried to be extra loving with her, but I felt like there was a bit of distance between us that hadn’t been there in the morning.
Then, last night, at 3:30 a.m., she woke up screaming that “I’ve had a real bad dream” scream; if you’re a parent you know that scream. So I went into her room and held her, and calmed her down. But, honestly, I wasn’t convinced that she was glad to see me when I came in. I think at that moment she would have rather seen her mom. I am sure her bad dream was related to her doctor’s appointment.
After she had calmed down and I got her back to sleep, I tried to go back to bed myself. But I couldn’t. I was thinking about our relationship and how, even though it was the right and loving thing for me to do, to help the nurses get the tests done, I wondered about the state of our relationship…did my holding her create some sort of weird distance between us.
I found myself wondering if it’s sometimes like that with God and us.
I helped the nurses with my daughter and got up at 3:30 in the morning to love on her because Ellie and I are in a covenant relationship. I have covenanted with her and with God to be her daddy, to be in a deeply committed relationship with her. And, though she hasn’t made the conscious choice to claim me as her father yet, I know that when middle-school roles around, she will start to make that decision. (It’s sad, but I already know that I am not near cool enough!) I will be her daddy, always and everywhere, until my dying day. And she, I pray, will choose to consider me as her dad.
You know, anytime God puts people together in a relationship that relationship can become covenantal.
What kind of covenantal relationships are you in your life? You will notice in your bulletin that there is a place for you to write down those relationships to help you enter into this idea.
If we look around in our lives a bit, we can find all manner of covenants, can’t we? (business, environmental, etc.) Where are some of the covenantal relationships in your life?
For our purposes today, let’s take a moment to define the word covenant from a theological perspective. Used in this way the word covenant is defined as an agreement that brings about a relationship of commitment between God and God’s people. So any relationship that has God at its center can be covenantal.
When I look at my life I find that I am that I am in several of these relationships: my life as a parent to Ellie, (and, I’m pleased to announce, Sarah and I will be new parents again in August of 2008! I tell you what, between Christina and Nathan, and Jennifer and Kory, there must be something in the water at this church!!! But our covenantal relationship has a family has already been renewed and enlarged) my marriage with Sarah is a covenantal relationship, my baptism is a covenantal relationship, my ordination is a covenantal relationship, and I can think of three deep friendships that are covenantal in nature. When I was going through the ordination process I was in a covenant group that met at First Denton every month for three years to talk about ministry. You know, being confirmed is a kind of covenantal relationship. What kind of covenantal relationships do you have in your life?
If we look to the Bible we can find many examples of covenantal relationships. Covenants are found all over the Hebrew Scriptures (or what we sometimes refer to as the Old Testament as Christians).
The concept of the covenant is essential to understanding the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jewish identity, which, of course, is the root of Christianity. The reason the concept of covenant is so important for us to understand is that the covenants that God has made, both with the Israelites, and later, through Jesus with us, are essential to who we understand ourselves to be.
Let’s take a moment and check out some of the major covenants that we find in the Bible. I would invite you to look for some of the patterns we will find in the establishment of these covenants.
Early in Genesis, chapter 9, verses 9-17 to be exact, we come across the Covenant with Noah. You remember this story, right? Noah and the Ark and the flood? Do you remember what God does after the flood? What does God do?... God initiates a covenant not only with Noah and his family but also with all of Creation to protect them from destruction. And God gives them a sign of God’s covenant: a rainbow. God says that whenever God sees a rainbow, than God will remember the covenant and keep it. Whenever we see a rainbow, we should do likewise. For you see God is offering to be the God of all Creation, if we will be God’s people.
As we move forward to Genesis 17:1-22 we find the Abrahamic Covenant. In this passage, God covenants with Abram that God will make Abram ‘exceedingly numerous’ and will make from Abram a ‘multitude of nations.’ God also promises the ancestors of Abram all the land of Canaan and that God will be their God. As for Abram’s and the male members of his houses part of the covenant, they must become circumcised as a sign of the covenant between them and God. It probably goes without saying, but, for this first generation of adult males in this covenant, circumcision was a pretty serious sign of commitment!!!!
Again, in this covenant, we find God offering to be God for Abram and his descendents if they will but respond and be God’s people. You see the pattern? God, in an attempt to restore relationships that are broken, initiates a covenant; God offers to be our God if we will be God’s people.
The third covenant we’ll look at is the Mosaic Covenant found in the Book of Exodus, chapters 19-24. In this covenant story, we find that the Israelites have escaped their slavery in Egypt with God’s help and, after wandering in the desert for approximately three months they come to Mr. Sinai, where God proposes to enter into covenant with the Israelites as God’s chosen people. God gives the Israelites the Law, including the Ten Commandments and offers to be Israel’s God, if they will be God’s people. We see this pattern unfolding again, right? God will be our God if we will be God’s people!
Later in the Hebrew Scriptures, we come across the Davidic Covenant in 2nd Samuel. In this covenant, God tells David that God will establish a royal lineage from David that includes Solomon and, as Kory taught us three weeks ago in his sermon on Joseph, that David’s royal line has it’s fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Though the word covenant is not specifically mentioned in the Hebrew, this story has all the markings of a covenant. God will do wonderful things through David and his descendants if David will be a man of God. As we know, David, like the rest of us, had his good moments and his not so good moments, but in the end, David’s first loyalty was to his God and it was from David that Jesus of Nazareth descended.
Here it is again, right? We find God initiating this covenant: God will be our God, if we will be God’s people.
Finally, in the Book of Jeremiah, we get to the covenant that is our text today. Let me read it to you. Here now what the Spirit of the Lord is saying to the church today:
Read Jeremiah 31:31-34
I will be their God and they will be my people.
This particular covenant, what is often called The New Covenant, is one of the most famous and most misunderstood passages of Scripture among Christians. This passage is a very important one: Paul quotes it in its entirety in his letter to the Hebrews, chapter 8, versus 8-13.
In order for us to get a good grip on it, we need to have some context for the Scripture itself.
Jeremiah lived and worked and prophesied in the time of the Babylonian Exile, which occurred from 597-582 B.C.E. This time was a terrible one for Israel. The nation of Babylon had invaded Israel three times and destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the temple. Everything that was central to Jewish life, identity, and worship was in upheaval. It was a moment in their history when it appeared that all was lost and that God had abandoned them because of their sinfulness.
Jeremiah, in addition to calling the people to repentance and explaining to the people why events were unfolding the way they were, was also offering the nation of Israel hope through the promise of the new covenant. Jeremiah tells the people of Israel that a new covenant is coming and that their relationship with God will be renewed by it. This covenant, while having the same content would differ from the Mosaic Covenant in that the law would be in people’s hearts, and not on stone tablets, like they were when Moses was given them. The idea behind the new covenant was that by God’s love and grace everyone would know the LORD and that God would, by God’s grace, forgive Israel’s sinfulness and its relationship with God would be restored.
Can you imagine what great news this must have been to a conquered people: their God had not abandoned them! Their God was so filled with grace that God would forgive them even their worst transgressions! God would save them! And, even better, God would do all of this not out of a sense of obligation but out of love.
What a glorious word of hope! As people of faith these covenants should be a beautiful reminder to us of how deeply God loves God’s Creation and that God has always been actively engaged in restoring the relationship between God and God’s people.
Now, as Christians, where we have run into trouble when we apply a limited and self-centered world-view to this ancient text. Many of our brothers and sisters interpret this scripture as being for Christians only, thus isolating God’s chosen people, the people of Israel, and, be extension of their worldview, consigning Jews who don’t believe in Jesus to hell. Nothing could be more wrong, or more ignorant. Make no mistake about it: this word was originally intended for the Israelites, not for the Gentiles, like most of us.
As Christians, most us can and do, interpret Jesus as being the fulfillment of the new covenant and the offering of it to all of God’s people. In fact, Jesus speaks of himself as being the renewal of the new covenant in Luke 22:20 when he institutes The Sacrament of Holy Communion. God, through Jesus, graciously expands God’s offer of a covenantal relationship to the entire world. Jesus’ ministry, when viewed in its totality, was a ministry of inclusion, not exclusion.
In all of these covenants we find a similar pattern, don’t we? God initiates the covenant and tells God’s people that He will be there God if they will be His people. God is faithful: God will not turn away from the covenants that God has made. It’s important for us to note, that, unlike a contract, a new covenant never nullifies an old covenant, unless both parties agree to its nullification. The covenant that God has with Creation, the covenant that God made with the descendants of Abram, and the covenants that God has with the Jewish people are still valid. This shows us that YAHWEH has been at work trying to reconcile Godself with God’s creation from very near its beginning.
You might be saying to yourself, thanks for the history lesson on covenants in the Bible Joe, but how are we to be God’s people, here, in Argyle, Texas, on December 29th, 2007?
I think the answer is quite simple, really: we are to observe the two great commandments that Jesus gave us: the first being the Shema and the second one being that you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The Shema comes from the Book of Deuteronomy and is the first prayer that a Jewish person, such as Jesus, learns. It goes like this: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and, Jesus added, with all your strength”.
Seems straight ahead, right? Think about the implications of this prayer for a moment. To understand that the Lord our God is one, is no small thing, given all of the competing claims that we have in our own time for what we should put our trust in, right? Some of these idols include money, or fame, or security, or fanatical nationalism, or sex, or fashion, or music, or sports: the list goes on and on. It is hard to not be an idolater in the 21st century. To recognize and live as if the Lord is our God and the Lord alone is quite a difficult thing to do. In fact, without a living relationship with God, a healthy dose of God’s grace and a sense of our own humility, it is impossible.
The commandment continues that we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The implication is clear, isn’t it: God wants all of us! Just having a portion of us does not satisfy God, God wants it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. God desires for us to live an integrated life!
I was blessed in my previous appointment to be in ministry with many addicts who were in the early stages of recovery. Over and over again they told me that one of the biggest relief’s that came from being in recovery was that they were finally living an integrated life: nothing was hidden from God anymore. They were finally living an integrated life! That is what God wants for us!
God wants our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strength to be employed in loving God and doing what God would have us to do, which transitions, by the genius of Jesus, into the second great commandment that Jesus gives us: to love our neighbors as ourselves.
We talk a lot in the church these days about what it means to take worship outside the walls of the church and into everyday life. How do we put phrases like “to pray without ceasing,” “to live a worshipful life,” to “be the hands and feet of Christ” into practice. I submit to you that the first way that we live a worshipful life is that we make it our business and our passion to love other people. Mother Theresa was often heard to say, “if I judge someone I have no time to love them.” How true is that? One of the most important acts of worship that we can give to God is to love others. Loving God’s Creation is one of the best ways of loving God.
So, friends, a new day is coming. On Monday night and Tuesday we will celebrate the beginnings of a New Year. Are you ready? Are you ready to be God’s people and to have God be your God? Are you ready to put aside whatever idols may be in your life and to worship God alone and to love your neighbor as you love yourself? Are you ready for God to be your God and for you to be God’s people? Are you ready? Let all of God’s children say: Amen!
You are now invited to participate in a brief service of Covenant Renewal from the Wesleyan tradition. Methodists and others have participated in a service like this one since the 1750’s. There will be a bit of spoken liturgy by the pastor, a time of meditation and then you will be invited to say the prayer that you have in your bulletin insert and, if you choose, you may sign the covenant prayer as a sign of your commitment. Here now the proclamation and the invitation to the Covenant Renewal Service:
Liturgy for the Covenant Renewal Service
PROCLAMATION
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Christian life is redeemed from sin and consecrated to God. Through baptism, we have entered this life and have been admitted into the new covenant of which Jesus Christ is the Mediator. He sealed it with his love that it might last forever. On the one side, God promises to give us new life in Christ, the Source and Perfector of our faith. On the other side, we are pledged to live no more for ourselves but only for Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us. From time to time we renew our covenant with God, especially when we reaffirm the Baptismal Covenant and gather at the Lord’s Table.
This morning, however, we meet, as the generations before us have met, to renew the covenant that binds us to God. Let us make this covenant of God our own.
INVITATION
Commit yourselves to Christ as his servants. Give yourselves to him, that you may belong to him. Christ has many services to be done. Some are more easy and honorable; others are more difficult and disgraceful. Some are suitable to our inclinations and interests, others are contrary to both. In some we may please Christ and please ourselves. But then there are other works where we cannot please Christ expect by denying ourselves.
Friends, Christ will be the Savior of none but his servants. He is the source of all salvation to those who obey. Christ will have no servants except by consent; Christ will not accept anything except full consent to all that he requires. Christ will be all in all, or he will be nothing.
So let us remember that God grants forgiveness of sins if we but repent and ask for God’s grace and seek to follow God. God requires us to put away all of our idols and to worship God and God alone with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. God has given the Lord Jesus Christ as the way and means of coming to God and Christ reminds us that we must suffer with him. Let us not forget God’s holy laws as the rule of our lives. Finally, let us remember that the almighty God searches and knows our hearts.
Confirm this by a holy covenant.
Church, to make this covenant a reality in your life, listen to these admonitions:
First, set apart some time, more than once, to be spent alone before the Lord; in seeking earnestly God’s special assistance and gracious acceptance of you; in carefully thinking through all the conditions of the covenant; in searching your hearts whether you have already freely given your life to Christ. Consider what your sins are. Consider the laws of Christ, how holy, strict, and spiritual they are, and whether you, after having carefully considered them, are willing to choose them all. Be sure you are clear in these matters, see that you do not lie to God.
Second, be serious and in a spirit of holy awe and reverence.
Third, claim God’s covenant, rely upon God’s promise of giving grace and strength, so you can keep your promise. Trust not your own strength and power.
Fourth, resolve to be faithful. You have given to the Lord your hearts, you have opened your mouths to the Lord, and you have dedicated yourself to God. With God’s power, never go back.
And last, be then prepared to renew your covenant with the Lord. I invite you to read the covenant prayer that is on the insert in your bulletin while Ashley plays a piece by Massenet, and to carefully consider if you are prepared to make a covenant with God for the first time, or to renew your covenant with God again. I covenant with you that I will be here to help you sustain your covenant during this year. Following our time of reflection, you will be invited to pray the prayer aloud, together, as a community, for we cannot keep this covenant without help. There is no pressure here, you may choose to sign it and pray it or not, there is no judgment, for God never coerces, God loves. Let the Spirit guide you in these next few moment. Let us be in a time of reflection.
Let us pray:
I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by you or laid aside for you,
Exalted for you or brought low by you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
To your pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
You art mine, and I am yours. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
Please strongly consider taking this covenant home with you, and putting it in a place where you will see if every day this year, to serve as a reminder of the covenant between you and God.
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