The Covenant of Circumcision
17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”
Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”
Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you, and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
Genesis 17:1-14
The New International Version (https://ref.ly/res/LLS:NIV2011/2024-03-22T14:15:08Z/1241836?len=1934)
. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Freedom in Christ
5 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Galatians 5:1-6
The New International Version (https://ref.ly/res/LLS:NIV2011/2024-03-22T14:15:08Z/5150284?len=750)
. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
"The covenant of grace and living in the wreckage of the future…”
wreckage
/rĕk′ĭj/
noun
The debris or remains of something wrecked.
"the wreckage of a plane crash; flood wreckage."
The act of wrecking, or state of being wrecked.
That which has been wrecked; remains of a wreck.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition • More at Wordnik (https://www.wordnik.com/words/wreckage)
A young pastor was preaching in a in his first church assignment He felt felt the Holy Spirit move him so powerful that he preached for two hours. Some of the members of the congregation got up and left, but the majority stayed. As the pastor greeted the congregation in the receiving line following the service. Everyone complemented his theological discourse. The last person to come through the line was a farmer in coveralls and muddy boots. The farmer said to the pastor. “You know when I feed the cows, I don’t give them the whole bale of hay all at once.”
Sometimes when pastors preach longer than usual, it is because they are either really moved by the Holy Spirit or compensating for something else.
Returning to the pulpit after all that has transpired, this summer has been a challenge. I have to admit that I have been giving you the whole bale of ‘theological hay’ in what should have been two or three servings. I have not trusted my ability to preach without notes or to step away from the pulpit, I am learning all over again how to do this. I ask your grace and patience.
One of my best friends Sister does contractual law for living I cannot imagine what it is like to spend your days pouring through contracts with legalese, clauses, and indemnifications, that have lasting repercussions for the client. To me it sounds like there are too many opportunities for malpractice.
There are times that we can treat our relationship with God as contractual. God if you do this then I will do that. We treat God as if God were spiritual vending machine. Dollar in blessing out. I do not know how many times in my life that I have prayed God if you will just Get Me Out of this jam; I will never do it again. That is the biggest lie that I have ever prayed. Even still today I can slip into that lie and the only thing it does is soothe my guilty conscience.
The relationship that God has with humanity is one of covenant and grace. When we encounter Abraham on this journey to the promised land God is speaking to him. At ninety-nine years old God asks Abraham to circumcise himself as a sign of a blood covenant with God. Now I understand every man in this room just cringed in terror. In abraham's time there were no surgeons or hospitals to go to to have this procedure done and I can only imagine the instrument that he had to use to complete this task.
When God enters a covenant relationship with us it is impossible for God not to keep God's end of the covenant. Oh yes, we may break that covenant repeatedly, but God never will. The story of God in the Old Testament is God in pursuit of the people of Israel. God desires to be their God and demands fidelity from them. Israel many times will walk away. They will see the miracles of God but not believe them. They will engage in all kinds of idolatry and debaucherous behavior despite the instructions that God gives for them to be faithful. This is not only Israel’s story, but it is my story.
This morning, I am not going to go into the wreckage of my past or make any deep dark confessions to impress you with how God has delivered me. The fact of the matter is is that the covenant that I have with God is a work in progress; it is progress not perfection. My best friend asked me this week if I could run up all the stairs of the Empire State Building without training? I paused and said no. He replied, to me, “then why are you trying to be perfect and do everything right only being three months out from almost dying.”
I did not have an answer but have been thinking about that question all week. Doctor Albert Einstein was teaching an advanced physics class at Harvard University. He had fifty of the top minds in the country in that class. It came time for the final exam, and he handed them out. One student raised his hand and said Doctor Einstein is not this the physics exam from last term. Einstein replied, “yes but this term the answers are different.”
In our life we will wrestle with the same questions repeatedly. And every time we engage the same questions the answer is different because we are different. We are different from we were a week ago or ten or twenty years ago. Our experiences change us sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. They take time to process and reflect on... I am reminded continually that there are times when these questions need to be answered with God and sometimes that they need to be answered with therapists or professionals.
When I was serving my first church, I went to a clergy meeting that was to be led by the District Superintendent. The District Superintendent did not show up. There was a pastor there from the next town over who objected to something that I said. He began to scream and yell and pound his fist on the table. I heard words come out of his mouth that I'm not even sure God had heard. He got up from the table and stormed out. We were all in shock. And I was righteously angry as I felt the grievance against me. Later that day I called the Superintendent and expressed my anger and frustration. His words of wisdom to me were this: “sometimes people are going to throw up all over you and the only thing you can do is get cleaned up and move on with your life remembering that it is their stuff not yours.”
As human beings we spend a lot of time digging through other people's manure piles looking for gold coins of forgiveness and reconciliation. I am continually aware that there are relationships this side of heaven that will never be healed. As human beings we have hard hearts.
One of my favorite trilogies of all time is The Godfather; it is the story of Michael Corleone to protect one's family and in doing so becoming corrupt. When we first meet Michael, he is a war hero that wants nothing to do with the family business. His father almost dies in an assassination attempt, and then his brother Sonny is murdered by the Barzini crime family.
as we watch Michael rise to power and take control of the family, we see him do despicable things murder, corruption, and even the murder of his own brother Fredo. Not to mention his sister Connie’s husband who he just godfather to her baby was baptized that same day.
The most haunting line that Michael delivers is, “It’s not personal, it’s business.” Sin is always personal. Roy Libby, a devout Christian said, “Sin never looks the same as it did before you did it.”
By the time we get to God Father part three we see a different Michael. he is still corrupt, but he is trying to legitimize the family business The price of his sins is weighing on him and his health is not good Michael suffers a diabetic stroke and it is clear that he must step down. Michael goes to the Vatican to try and influence a multi billion-dollar deal that would make him and his family very wealthy beyond imagination. he meets with cardinal Lamberto—this is the conversation that he has in this moment.
We are all like Michael. We start out with the best of intentions and somewhere along the lines we step over them. We become corrupt perhaps not to the extreme with the physical murder of an individual or family member, however, our words actions and deeds we destroy individuals that are the closest to us. So many times, it is our own stuff inside of ourselves that we are throwing up. Unless God intervenes in our life, we will continue to do the same thing and expect different results
Albert Einstein called this the the definition of insanity. Many years after Einstein took part in creating the atomic bomb. He regretted ever doing so. I can only imagine it was after seeing Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed. If we can see the outcome of our actions before we did them, we might think twice. They might even turn us to God and ask God to keep us from sinning.
The Apostle Paul tells us that circumcision is useless. in the Galatian church they were forcing gentiles to be circumcised. Paul goes on to tell us that we are now under the lordship of Jesus Christ and a covenant of grace. The old covenant of law Is dead and buried on the cross. The covenant of grace that was ushered in place when Jesus was raised from the dead. it is that covenant of grace that we are now under. Paul will write in his letter to the Romans, “there is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus for the old has passed the new has come.”
So why do we still live like we are under condemnation by the law of God?
Why are we still trying to climb the Empire State Building without training?
Everything that I know about God can be summed up in this statement: “God loves us regardless of the sins that we have committed, and it is not possible to get farther from God then your hand is your face. God will always in God's grace continually push you and pull you towards a relationship with the risen Christ. what we do with those opportunities to receive Christ matters not just in this world but for all eternity” Jesus in his conversation with Nicodemus said, “God did not come into this world to condemn the world but to save the world from sin.” Reconciliation in this covenant of grace are not our ideas they are God’s and when we stop trying to use God as a spiritual vending machine and simply rest in God's presence is when our lives begin to come into order.
I would like to close this sermon with the simplest of prayers that I learned from a Greek Orthodox monk in college. “God have mercy Christ have mercy on me a Sinner in need of salvation.” It is my hope that you will pray that prayer before you leave this sanctuary or when you go home and examine your life. I promise you that have Michael Corleone’s life could be redeemed so can yours. and it is not us by God who does it through us, because of us, and sometimes despite us. Amen
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