Conversion & Covenant: Thought, Word, and Deed (Sermon for 2 Lent, 2019)

 Thought, word, and deed. When Episcopalians hear these three words together, our minds likely go straight to sin, as in, “Most merciful Father, we confess that we have sinned against thee, in thought, word, and deed…”. This opening line to our prayer of confession names three ways that we embody sin. But thankfully, thought, word, and deed are not just criteria for sin…they are also criteria for conversion and covenant.

Our lesson from Genesis today is a remarkable story of conversion and covenant. When Abram has a dream in which God tells him his reward will be great, Abram pushes back and asks God rather incredulously, “What will you give me, for I remain childless?!" Based on Abram and Sarai’s current situation, he has a hard time believing God’s promise.

So God invites Abram to look up at the stars in the night sky, and likens that to how many descendants he will bless Abram and Sarai with. And at that point, something changed with Abram. His hardened heart softened, and he believed. There, in the midst of this dream, Abram experienced a life-changing conversion. But God’s promises didn’t stop there. He went on to promise Abram not only countless descendants, but also land…and lots of it.

Then, it appears that  doubt was beginning to find its way back into Abram’s heart – after all, old habits are hard to break – when he  asked God how he was to know that he would possess the land that God promised him.

And as God is apt to do, rather than answering the question directly, he gave Abram a very specific and elaborate to-do list. It’s almost like God believed that the best way to answer Abram’s question would be to ask Abram to make this very elaborate sacrifice to God. But the sacrifice would actually be as much for Abram as it would be for God. After all, God doesn’t have to have sacrifices made to him to maintain his God-ness. But for Abram, the task of locating, corralling, and slaughtering a three year old heifer, goat, and ram, with a turtle dove and pigeon thrown in for good measure would certainly have given him ample time ponder his relationship with God. By that point, he might have even been irritated with God for requiring such a sacrifice. One thing we do know is that after all of that corralling and butchering, Abram was exhausted, as any of us would be. So he fell into a deep sleep. And it was in then that God sealed the covenant with Abram with the smoking pot and flaming torch passing in between all of the butchered animals. Once again, Abram believed.

As is always the case, this covenant was initiated by God, but in order to be a covenant, it required Abram’s consent and participation. And for this to be true for Abram, he had to have a conversion of heart. Remember, back in those days, it was believed that thoughts generated from one’s heart, not their brain. So conversion was more of a heart thing than a mind thing.

The covenant also involved word and deed on behalf of both God and Abram. God initiated by speaking to Abram in a dream. But Abram continued the conversation. And when God told Abram to make a very specific type of sacrifice, Abram responded by doing so, even if while he was doing it, he was wondering what the point was, or if all of this was really necessary. And through the mutual thought, word, and deeds of both God and Abram, the covenant was sealed.

Jon Levinson asserts that “God’s offer of covenant is a mysterious, unmotivated decision of God, without regard to the merit or sins of Abram.” Michaela Bruzzese points out that God and Abram “trusted one another for no obvious reason, and their mutual faith has formed the blueprint for the Judeo-Christian understanding of covenant to this day.”

Psalm 27 is a poetic example of what the covenant between God and God’s people looks and feels like when embodied:

  For in the day of trouble he shall keep me safe 
in his shelter; *
he shall hide me in the secrecy of his dwelling
and set me high upon a rock.

Even now he lifts up my head *
above my enemies round about me.

Therefore I will offer in his dwelling an oblation
with sounds of great gladness; *
I will sing and make music to the Lord.

But as we all know, God’s people have always struggled to uphold their end  of their covenant with God. This lapse of fidelity is what St. Paul was constantly wrestling with in his various congregations. In his letter to the Philippians, which we hear from today, he is calling some of them out for apparently upholding the “word” part of the covenant, but not the thought and deed part. In other words, they were claiming to be followers of Christ, but their actions proved otherwise. Their lives were not an embodiment of the covenant of which they were a part.

In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus is calling out the Pharisees as well as the religious leaders of Jerusalem for their skewed understanding of covenant. By their strict adherence to the law, they claimed to be righteous. But their actions said otherwise – namely, killing all the prophets who publicly condemned them for their neglect of the sick, the poor, and the widows. So once again, we have a covenant that is only partially being honored. The Pharisees and the ruling elite in Jerusalem were big on words, and maybe even their thoughts, but they came up short when it came to their deeds.

So what might we glean from these lessons today? It seems to me that the reason we might have been given the story of the covenant between God and Abram is so that when we read about or encounter situations where God’s people have sinned – like in our New Testament lessons for today - we can frame sin within the broader context of covenant. That gets us out of the petty obsession some people have with sin for the sake of sin. What makes sin a sin is the way in which it damages the covenantal relationship we have with God and one another.

Both sin and covenant are embodied through thought, word, and deed. But I don’t believe that the season of Lent is about sin. I believe that it is primarily about covenant. It is about remembering the covenant that God made with God’s people, and the renewal of that covenant in Jesus Christ. And during the season of Lent, we are invited to faithfully and honestly re-commit ourselves to embody the covenants of which we a part, and to embody them in thought, word, and deed. This faithful embodiment includes our baptismal covenants, but also our marriage covenants for those of us who are married. If we are able to faithfully engage the call of re-examining our lives this holy season through the lens of holy covenant, the reward won't be that we will become less sinful. The reward will be the steadfast love, joy, and peace that comes from faithfully living in covenantal relationship with God and our neighbors.