Your Personal Covenant with God

Your personal covenant with God in Jesus Christ. What does that sound like? What does it feel like? What actions exactly are you committing to in your new covenant? What do you pledge as one of God's people? How will you witness in your own personal story of faith? What is God's protection in your life? Will the personal covenant you make to see Jesus more? Will it help you to see Jesus more clearly? As the song says, "Know him more dearly." The hour is here and that's the charge.

• Audio Transcript

  [00:00:00] In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, Amen.
  Please be, uh, I would like to know if you can all hear me. You can't. Okay. Now. Okay. I can hear me too.

  
  Well, um, good morning everyone. And, um, I invite you to take a brief walk with me this morning, uh, to reflect on the whole idea of covenant, because that is what it's about. And we have scriptures today that will give us a lens [00:01:00] that we don't usually see, and warning: in the end, I will give you a charge about covenant.
  So this day we all had the wonderful experience of God's creation as we walked from our cars to the church, right? Some of us even drove along the beach or in from the mountains to join our community of faith here at St. Peter's. We enjoyed God's gift.

  Magnificent gift of infinity as we entered, and as we will depart a full view of that space where the sea or the mountains meet the sky, drawing us well beyond the present moment.
  And that in each [00:02:00] case of covenant is what will happen. We, will see God's never failing faithfulness, faithfulness in searching after us covenant history years and years and years. We have the lenses of Jeremiah and John to look through. And as you all know, good biblical students as you are, Jeremiah is not known as a prophet of hope and good news until, until, this is why his words here seem to carry so much joy when he gets finally in the little book of consolation to verses 30 and 31.

  
  Most of the [00:03:00] time for 29 verses, as prophets often are, he is lamenting and carrying on about the faithfulness of Israel as they broke covenant with community, covenants can be individual and with communities.) until he speaks of a new covenant that is a foreshadowing of a covenant that will be available to all believers as it turns out.
  

  All believers, that is within us. In today's language, portable, written on our hearts, beyond, and in addition to the boundaries of bricks and mortar, cultures, and sovereign spaces. For John, the good news in his gospel, the new covenant of course we can count on, is a new relationship with God. The new relationship with God.

  
  [00:04:00] And that is personal in many ways. Jesus Christ, God's son, the Messiah, to the apostles and through them to all that believe in him. So I learned at five o'clock last night that I don't need to mention all the covenants, all of them. So I will cut out. You will get you will get the idea.
  

  The first, as we know, goes back to Sinai, even before the commandments were given in Exodus 19, when God tells Moses to say the following to the people, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites, you have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant. You shall be my treasured possession out of [00:05:00] all the people's. Indeed, the whole earth is fine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation." To which the people respond, "Everything the Lord has spoken, we will do." But we know they don't.

  
  The words are rarely out when their promises are broken, or at least not lived up to perfectly. We're not even out of the book of Exodus before the Sinai covenant is ruptured. And then there'll be another one in Exodus, and the people will complain against Moses and God.

  
  The prophets speak of how the people have broken covenants. They also speak about how God continues to restore and how God continues [00:06:00] over and over again to search after people and to build a new covenant. To be clear, nothing is new about what God is doing here. God has done it over and over and over again. God's self asked, "Remember, how can I give up? How can I give up on my people? Even if it's painful, how can I give up? I am God."

  
  So God continues to make a covenant with the same old people, and that includes us. Just a little caveat, though. This idea of a covenant written in our hearts does not mean that I give up. The other covenant, the Ten Commandments, remember, is not in force.

  
  [00:07:00] Both are covenants. God's people needed, maybe, a portable covenant because the temple had been destroyed and they did not have a place to worship in the Holy of Holies.

  
  So what is the point? The point? The point of this week's text in Jeremiah, I think is appropriate for everybody. The wilderness generation, the exiled generation, all other generations from Sinai until today till now, because God is faithful.

  
  God will continue to make new ways when we break our promises, even. We're still the same people. We're God's people. And we encounter the bible. And God is the same God. And God continues to forgive over and [00:08:00] over again. The new covenant, of course, is the new relationship that God gives us in Jesus Christ, Messiah to the apostles and through them to us.

  
  It's Jesus' last discourse today that we have on this fifth Sunday in Lent. So we're in a special place too. One more week, one more week of Lent. And then we go into Palm Sunday and Holy Week. So it's time. It's time to think. How has it been for us? We're the beneficiaries of the new covenant of Jesus Christ and who Jesus Christ is.
  And [00:09:00] we believe in his promise of renewed life. So we have that. We know that that's there for us. That's there for us this week. We know that God will be reaching out.

  
  We can take a look, as we've done briefly here, at the long look of God's grace and forgiveness is as sure as spring follows winter. So, to paraphrase God, he, uh, to paraphrase John, he's saying, "Dear early Christians, Look beyond where you are now and what you understand at this moment to God's gift of God's son and the new covenant Jesus inaugurates in his death, resurrection and finally even [00:10:00] his ascension."

  
  "My hour has come to glorify God's name."

  
  In John, a colleague reminded me, and you can read it this morning, Jesus would never ask for his cup to pass over, but he willingly goes forward to lay down his life. He knows who he is. He knows where he's from and he knows his relationship with God. And we're going to begin to walk the journey now. And we're going to look for ways to know and hear and see Jesus.

  
  Because John tells us when we do that, we will have abundant life. A life that is beyond. So quickly, why does this mean something to us? Why do they matter? Why do the [00:11:00] verses matter? It's different from synoptic gospelers, John's twist. There's something else beyond. We're assured of that. Even though we're going to go through Holy Week, we're assured of that.

  
  There's something else going on. We're assured of God's overwhelming love in the actions of his son, Jesus, bringing unlimited grace that we have access to always. If, of course, when we've made a wrong choice, we turn back and ask for it. So finally, here's the charge. Here's the charge. One week to go. Now I feel qualified to talk about this because I've done it already.

  
  I've done it myself. Do not do this. I'm saying do not fret and fuss and berate yourselves about all the ways you have fallen short in Lent [00:12:00] and try to do-- I've even done this, believe it or not-- double the discipline to make up for what you didn't do in the first five weeks. Don't do that. Don't do that.

  
  We're going to welcome Aaron Weatherly this morning in the next service into our community of Christ in this place and we'll walk through the commitments that he's making for his life in Christ and we will renew our baptismal promises in question and answer form. But we've been doing that question and answer for so long, maybe we forget that that too is a covenant.

  
  That's a covenant and we're making it. So what I'm suggesting instead of fretting is that you listen and use these words as a prompt for your very own new covenant, new covenant, no fretting, new covenant. [00:13:00] Your personal covenant with God in Jesus Christ. What does that sound like? What does it feel like?
  What actions exactly are you committing to in your new covenant? What do you pledge as one of God's people? How will you witness in your own personal story of faith? What is God's protection in your life? Will the personal covenant you make to see Jesus more? Will it help you to see Jesus more clearly?

  
  As the song says, "Know him more dearly." The hour is here and that's the charge. And if you need assistance-- you knew I was going to get to [00:14:00] St. Patrick's sometime, right? Now I have your attention. Let's look at St. Patrick and what you may not know about him.

  
  He was ministering in the 5th century, well before religious differences led to violence and division, well before green and orange were a thing, well before the great list we know about snakes, which I'm told by scholars are not in Ireland at all or shamrocks, which apparently scholars say he didn't teach from. But one of the emblems of St. Patrick is the baptismal font, the baptismal font. Why? because after he'd been a slave and survived near death and [00:15:00] finally been converted, he found his voice and he began to preach and teach.

  
  He found this gift as an evangelizer, one of the great ones of all time. It's said he was a great preacher and he drew crowds of people, especially the Picts, explaining baptism first to them, telling them that baptism is the first of seven sacraments that God gave as a sign of God's love. And he always asked his crowds-- now scholars really know this. How? I don't know. They found out. But he asked his crowds if anyone wants to be baptized and most all of them said yes.

  
  So what did he do? I love this. He moved to the nearest body of water and began to do the work [00:16:00] to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So when you begin your work on a personal covenant, use this prayer, which apparently is anonymous and not attributed to St. Patrick-- it's attributed to St. Patrick.

  
  Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger...Amen..[00:17:00]