Lent I: One More Time
February 22, 2015
BMC- Genesis 9:8-17& I Peter 3:18-22
Lent I, Year B (w/ connection to Through the Bible in a
Year- Lev.)
Introduction: First Aid Training
Last night I asked my family, “What is boring but
in the end has value?” Elam was pretty
emphatic that the answer was school.
Beth answered classical music or the opera. Josiah said that some food is boring but has
value like celery. It has a boring taste
because it tastes like water, but it has value because it is a vegetable. Maggie said little kids shows because they
are boring to watch but they teach valuable lessons.
What about you?
What would you say is boring but has value? {Take Responses}
Well I thought of my days on summer staff at Camp
Friedenswald when I was in college. We
had a week of staff training before the campers came. We spent a lot of time talking about a number
of different things like policies and procedures, but I’m sure that I wasn’t
alone in wishing that we could just get back to the team building activities
and recreation that there would not be time for once the campers came.
One of the things that we did during that week was
to receive first aid training. This
included CPR and how to perform the Heimlich.
As I recall, the instruction of this was not incredibly engaging. On top of this before the campers arrived, it
was difficult to be sure that I would ever really need the training. And to be truthful, I was thankful that I
didn’t actually need the training while I was working at camp.
But when Maggie was about two years old, she had a
life saver that she was sucking on.
Somehow she began choking on it and she couldn’t get it out. That’s when my training in performing the
Heimlich on a little child came in handy.
I was able to dislodge it and allow her to breathe again. The training may have been boring at the
time, but in the end it was incredibly valuable.
Now that’s a bit more dramatic than many of our
experiences of going through something boring but finding value on the other
end, right? But perhaps it serves as a
good reminder for those of us who have spent time reading through the book of
Leviticus this week. Not that I am
suggesting that reading through the book of Leviticus will someday save your
life; but that perhaps there was actually value in reading it.
The Levitical Code
I think that it is fairly
safe to say that most of us would not consider Leviticus to be the most
engaging and exciting section of the Bible, right? It’s not known as the book that
everyone skips ahead to and energizes us to keep on reading, right? I mean it’s not like everyone just longs for
one more time to read through the book of Leviticus, right? In fact, I would venture to guess that many
of us if we are honest, would acknowledge how important all of scripture is but
still not be too upset if this one had have been left out.
I know that Beth is not the biggest fan of the book. She told me that while she has read much of
the New Testament and a lot of the Old Testament, she has never actually read
through the whole Bible from cover to cover before. Much of this is because she was never able to
make it through the book of Leviticus. And
I’m guessing that there are others out there who are the same way. But at least in this Bible reading plan that
we are in, Leviticus is only 11 days’ worth of reading; so if you can power
through it, it can only get better from here, right?
Well, many of us do
struggle with the book of Leviticus and rightly so because it feels so foreign
to us. We struggle to see how it
connects with our modern experience. And
it seems so dry and burdensome, one sacrifice and skin disease diagnosis after
another, right? But it seems to me that
there are a few things of significance here.In the first place, Jesus quoted the book of Leviticus on several occasions. In the Sermon on the Mount he said, “you have heard it said, eye for eye and tooth for tooth, but I say to you do not resist and evil doer.” This came from Leviticus 24:20. And Jesus told us that the greatest commandment is to love the lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment and a second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. The reference to “love your neighbor as yourself” came from Leviticus 19:18. Now if Jesus quoted Leviticus, it seems to me that we should not be too quick to write it off as out dated, irrelevant, and boring.
Second, it seems to me that wading through the book of Leviticus helps to put things into perspective for us. As we read Paul’s letters in the New Testament, we catch a glimpse of the limitations of the law and the need for grace. But in writing this, Paul was speaking out of the experience of one who had been under the law. And at least some of those who read that letter would have identified with this experience.
We who have not lived under that experience of the
law might miss the depth of the significance of what Paul was really saying
here. We have not had the experience of
living under the law, at least not in the same way that they did. And it seems to me that reading through
Leviticus gives us more of a feel of what they had been under and therefore a
better understanding of how important the grace of Jesus Christ is when we
contrast these two realities.
Third, you may have noticed
as you read through Leviticus that most if not all of the law here was a
covenant in which God promised to do God’s part. But in this covenant, God’s part was
contingent on the people also doing their part.
If the people did not hold up their end of the bargain, there were
consequences and God said that God would not protect them in the same way. There was not much of a feeling of grace or
second chances throughout the book of Leviticus, was there? And it seems to me that this is in stark
contrast to our passage for this morning from Genesis 9.The Post-Flood Covenant
You’ll remember from our reading of Genesis that in chapter 6, God was very frustrated and disappointed with the way things were going for the human race. “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”
Noah was righteous and blameless. He walked with the LORD. God told Noah that because of the wickedness and violence of the people of the earth that God was going to wipe out the human race except for Noah and his family. Noah was to build an ark, bring animals and food onto it, and board it with his family. He was 600 years old when the flood waters came.
The waters came for forty days and forty nights. The water covered the tops of the mountains and remained for 150 days. The waters gradually receded and somewhere around a year later, they departed from the ark in Noah’s 601st year. Noah then built an altar and sacrificed to the LORD. “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”
The LORD instructed them to be fruitful and to multiply. And then God established the covenant that we heard read this morning. “Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
“And God said, “This is the sign
of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with
you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set
my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me
and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth
and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember
my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never
again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and
remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every
kind on the earth.” So God said to Noah,
“This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on
the earth.”
This covenant has a very different
feel than that of the Levitical code, doesn’t it? In the first place, this covenant is
completely one sided. Regardless of what
humanity does in the years to come, God will never again use a flood to destroy
all life on earth. Second, it is a
covenant not only with Noah but with all of his descendants and in fact with
all of the earth, even with all of the animals.
Third, this covenant used the symbol of the rainbow as a reminder of the
covenant, but notice who the reminder was actually for. We think of the rainbow as a reminder to us,
but God said that it would actually serve as a reminder to God.
This is not to say that God is
forgetful. Obviously we are the ones who
are forgetful. Perhaps instead it is
another indication of how one sided this covenant is. It is a symbol that God will see and remember;
think back on, the covenant that God made and that God is responsible for.
Upside Down and Inside Out
In this covenant,
God turned things upside down and inside out.
God took what was a tremendous act of judgment in the flood and turned
it into an expression of God’s on going grace.
It was the beginning of God’s ongoing plan of redemption. It acknowledged that we will always need that
grace one more time. This reality of
course became most fully realized and tangible in the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I Peter 3:18-22
tells us, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the
unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made
alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to
the imprisoned spirits— to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited
patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few
people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes
baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the
pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels,
authorities and powers in submission to him.”
In the post
flood covenant, God began to turn things upside down and inside out. God began a direction of offering grace and
forgiveness. And this became most fully
realized and fulfilled in Jesus Christ, in His resurrection. It became most fully realized in the new
covenant.
Current Implications
So in this,
we see a God of covenant. God made a
covenant after the flood. God made a
covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
God made a covenant with the people of Israel at Sinai much of which is
flushed out in the book of Leviticus.
And God made a covenant with David to name a few. We serve a God of covenant who is faithful,
even when we are not.
But what
does this mean for our modern context? What
are we to do with this understanding our God and these multiple covenants? Well at the very least, it seems to me that
this invites us to consider the types of covenants that we are a part of,
especially when covenant is broken.
It is
interesting to me, that the majority of us would say that we find little or no
use for the book of Leviticus, that it is boring and we would rather not read
it, that it is out dated and doesn’t connect to our modern context. Or at the very least, we say; praise be to
God that we are no longer under the covenant of the law; but rather that we are
under a new covenant that is based on the love, forgiveness and grace of Jesus
Christ. Am I right?
That is
until covenant is broken with us. When
we are the recipients of someone breaking covenant with us, it is interesting
to me how quick we can be to fall back to the Levitical code and say, “See it
says it right there. You have broken
covenant and you should be punished for that.”
So when
Mountain States made the decision to license Theda Good, many of us felt that
they broke covenant with us. And I would
agree with this, but my question is what kind of covenant are we a part
of? Are we a part of the Levitical
covenant, or are we a part of the covenant of Jesus Christ? This is not to say that wrong does not exist
and it is not to say that we should turn a blind eye and pretend that nothing
has happened. It has and we need to work
this out; but what kind of covenant are we under?
Some of you
who keep up with Mennonite press have come and asked me about the churches who
have chosen to leave Ohio Conference.
And to be honest, I don’t fully understand what all goes into those
choices and those dynamics, so I do not stand in judgment of their choice, but
I do struggle to reconcile our multiple definitions of covenant and the lack of
clarity that we have about the type of covenant that we are in with one
another.
I
understand what took place in Mountain States and you all know that I disagree
with that decision. I wrote a letter to
Mountain States over a year ago now. And
I know that we are in one denomination and that their decision matters and that
it affects us. But I personally struggle
with churches that choose to leave Ohio Conference because of what happened in
Mountain States, when no one in Ohio Conference has broken covenant. In fact, if you have been reading the Ohio
Evangel, we as Ohio Conference have been clear that we have no intention of
breaking similar covenants.
Perhaps an
illustration may help. This is what it
feels like to me, and this is not a perfect analogy; but I hope it can help you
to understand where I am coming from here.
It feels to me like the churches that are choosing to leave Ohio
Conference because of what happened in Mountain States are like a husband who
comes to his wife and says, “I need to divorce you because of what your cousin
in Colorado did and your uncle’s choice to support the decision even though
your grandpa has said that he does not support the decision. I know that you haven’t done anything wrong
or broken covenant with me, but I just can’t be a part of a family that would
allow such a thing.”
I struggle
with that. It doesn’t make sense to
me. Now I understand that there are
family dynamics and issues that need to be worked at and addressed. And I am not questioning the truth of
scripture in Leviticus or the letter of Paul or elsewhere, but I am questioning
what is the nature of the covenant of which we are a part?
I am hopeful that our time at Ohio
Conference Annual Assembly in March and at Kansas City in July will be a time
in which the Holy Spirit moves in our midst and guides us through these
troubled waters. But I will just name
that I am personally disappointed and troubled by those pastors and churches,
my brothers and sisters whom I care deeply about, who are saying, depending on
what happens at Kansas City, we may no longer be a part of Ohio Conference. What does the mean about our shared covenant?
Conclusion: A God of Covenant
We serve a
God who judges our wrong doing, but also abounds in grace and forgiveness. God did not need to make that one sided
covenant after the flood. God could have
left that option of another flood open, but God didn’t. God could have left us under the death
sentence of the covenant of the law of Leviticus, but God didn’t. Instead, God has gone above and beyond what
we deserve to offer to us unwarranted grace and opportunity for salvation.
We serve a
feeling God who is touched by our efforts to reach out and offer honor and
praise. It was after Noah came out of
the ark, built an altar, and offered a sacrifice to God, that God said first in
God’s heart and then to Noah and us that he would never flood the whole earth
again. Noah’s action affected the heart
of God. It’s not that we are saved by
our actions, but it is that we serve a compassionate and caring God who is
affected by our love of God as a parent is affected by the love of a child.
As we enter into this season of
Lent, of our journey to the Palm Sunday, Passion Week, and Easter morning I
would invite us to consider deeply the nature of the covenant that we are a
part of. God has modeled for us a
covenant of grace and forgiveness. Is
there room in our hearts to extend a similar covenant to our brothers and
sisters that we are in fellowship with?
May we
faithfully serve our covenant God of grace.
May we live in ways that affect God’s heart. And may the Holy Spirit guide us as we travel
these turbulent waters.
Amen.
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