Morning Prayer: Shannon Cook Choral Amen Hymn of Discipleship *Seek Yes First* Witness of Scripture: Jeremiah 31: 31-34 Anthem *O Sacrum Convivium* James Biery. Chancel Choir Sermon *What Next?* David Spain
Episode Recorded on March 17, 2024
From 1996 to 2005, CBS aired the very popular sit-com Everybody Loves Raymond, a slapstick parody of family life featuring the Barone family—the matriarch and patriarch who live across the street from their son Raymond and daughter-in-law Debra, along with Ray’s older brother Robert, who despite being a New York City police officer, lives in the shadow of Raymond, a sportswriter for a local paper. The parents—Marie and Frank—are in everybody’s business, often in a passive and sometimes in an aggressive way. The show’s writers and actors deliver a very funny show, sometimes painfully funny.Occasionally through the humor, something very deep and true emerges—for example the episode when Ray and Debra celebrate their 10th anniversary. They enjoy a nice dinner out and come home to watch the video of their wedding. The VHS tape begins, and we see Debra start down the aisle until a few seconds in, when squiggly lines appear only to be replaced by a recording of an NFL game.After a confused few seconds, both realize Ray has taped over their wedding video with a football game. The rest of the evening does not go well; and yet by the end of the episode, Ray has planned for and invited close friends to come to a 10th anniversary ceremony in which they repeat their vows. As you might expect, that does not go perfectly either; but the core of their relationship is reaffirmed. Life with the Barone family falls short of Eden—they are no one’s model for the ideal—but they keep on. They renew their vows.
The mythical Barone family—with all their foibles, failures, flukes, and downright dysfunctions, would fit well in the book of Genesis—which is mostly a story about family dysfunction and the power that, in spite of it all, keeps renewing the vows. That is the biblical story we have been hearing during this Lenten season, that for all the human-gone-wrongness that the Bible tells, God is the one who keeps faithful. Like a Bach Chorale weaving its way through each story, the melody that remains as a stunning variation on a theme is that God’s covenant love is offered again and again.No matter what humanity has mindlessly or purposefully taped over, God keeps renewing the covenant vows.
That theme was established early—the first couple hides from God in their shame but God will not accept shame as a way of relating so God the eternal seamstress fashions clothes for the first couple to wear, even east of Eden. The whole world is awash in God’s salty tears, yet without humanity promising to do better, God paints a rainbow in the sky to keep God’s memory fresh going forward. Abraham and Sarah fail to qualify for their picture in the family values hall of fame, yet God commits to them and also to Hagar and Ishmael. At various times along the 40 year sojourn in the wilderness, both God and Moses decided to reup on their commitment to our murmuring ancestors.Nathan reminded King David of what it meant to live God’s covenant life even if he had to whack David over the head with the truth of his abuse of power and people. Jonah, the most reluctant prophet God ever called, had a wall-eyed fit when Israel’s arch enemy repents and God saves them too—Jonah crying out louder against God than Nineveh when, in the best temper tantrum tone ever, he kvetches God’s covenant chorale—“I knew you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to repent from punishing.” The prophet Hosea, in a tone much less strident, declares though God’s heart is broken by humanity’s infidelity, God will not turn away—“How can I give you up, how can I hand you over, my heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender…I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy, for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” (Hosea 11: 8 – 11) God holds out a hand reaffirming the vows that have always been, because even though the romance and the excitement might be less prominent after a few years, God’s covenant remains. The key word, writes Stephen Shoemaker, is ‘hesed’ which he describes as God’s never-giving-up-no-matter-what kind of love. (GodStories, p.3)
All of this serves as backdrop and context for what Jeremiah writes—another variation on the theme of God’s covenant chorale. Jeremiah, who is nobody’s idea of a fun dinner guest, departs from his prophesies of doom and gloom to sing God’s covenant promise. Jeremiah says God is doing a new thing this time—the essence of which is that God no longer needs the covenant to be written on stone and displayed somewhere because God will now inscribe God’s loving way into each person’s heart. It is a touching, intimate portrayal of who God is—love divine all loves excelling entering every human heart. We are no longer only made in God’s image; Jeremiah says the Creator of the galaxies will lodge as our center and soul. The artist Marc Chagall has painted this moment in Jeremiah, as he depicts the prophet tenderly carrying close to his side the scroll of God’s covenant love, gently embracing the covenant like a parent who lovingly holds a child so close that the child and the parent are one.
Well, that is all fine and wonderful, and yet perhaps we might be inclined to ask, ‘so what?’ Isn’t it ill-advised for God to continue offering covenant to a people who keep breaking it? We know the definition of crazy—to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. To a world that has at times sold its soul to cynicism, given its heart to the stone-cold habits of hatred, bigotry, selfishness, superiority, and exclusivity, doesn’t covenant land less like a beautiful melody and more like cymbals crashing to the floor? How about a good smiting or two God—here’s my list in case you need advice on who to take out! Years later, the apostle Paul dealt with the same issue when he wrote to the church in Corinth. There were obviously questions about God’s way, about Jesus, about the cross. After all, we in our sophistication, power, and might know how this world works. So Paul writes, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?... God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”Paul boldly proclaims life outside God’s covenant way may garner a temporary win or a momentary triumph, but ultimately it is a zero-sum game—you get nowhere in an endless repetition of winners and losers, conquering and being conquered, outsiders and insiders.
The gift of covenant is that while it is ancient and historic, it is not the same old thing. Covenant alone is the power to create what is not yet but what can be; covenant engaged is the source of what stirs hope; covenant embraced is the way to healing.Peter Gomes writes, “God’s immediate and ultimate relationship to the world is one not of power or indifference but of affection—God so loved the world. God’s power is subordinate to God’s love…the world is a place beloved of God.Like creation it is good, although terrible things happen for it is not perfect, not without pain…the price of our freedom is to learn to cope with a world of ambiguity and danger, pain, joy and opportunity. Through all of that, God relates to us out of God’s love for us. The action of God, the act that counts, is love. God’s love is a participating love such that God engages with us and in our behalf in the work and labor of the world…the love of God translated into human form and human effort.”(Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, 178)
John Maxwell wrote, “where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present.” Solomon said it even more simply—‘without a vision, a people perish.” It makes all the difference to proclaim God’s covenant love for all God’s people. That notion was stunningly revealed a couple of weeks ago, when Rabbi Vered Harris and Imam Imad Enchassi spoke about the horrific war waging between Israel and Hamas. They were honest about the losses that have impacted members of their families and friends; candid about the complicated history and the multiple claims; sober about the detailed differences separating religion from politics.And yet, these two who come from different sides of the warring factions are not at war with each other. They know each provides safe haven for the other; they know a hard-earned and complicated peace of negotiation and compromise, while not clearly discernable now, is the only way forward; they know the darkness of hatred and violence can never lead to the light of hope and healing.They stood there—honest, vulnerable, heart-broken—yet still embodying to those assembled the possibility of what next when God’s covenant love is embraced for everyone, and not just for a few.
Professor and Preacher Elizabeth Achtemeier tells of an Assembly in her denomination during which communion was served—tables laden with loaves of bread, countless clergy in brilliant robes, hundreds of serving elders. She writes, “As I watched all that enormous spectacle, I happened to notice to the side a small boy of 6 or 7 who was trying to get back into the assembly hall. He had gone out, apparently, to go to the bathroom, but now an usher would not let him back in. As he tried to explain that he had been inside before, I saw another figure hurrying down the steps of an aisle toward him—his mother rushing to rescue him.The usher stepped aside, the mother swept the boy into her arms, stroked the tears from his face, and carried the little boy back with her to their seats. I could not help but think,” concluded Achtemeier, “that for all the spectacle that the church arranged to celebrate the Eucharist, the little boy and his mother best showed what the Lord’s Supper is all about—God rushing down to rescue us from all that would bar us from Christ’s table and presence. ‘I will put my law within them…and write it on their hearts’ wrote Jeremiah.It has been written on our hearts so that we will do what is true and honorable and just; so that we will strive after what is lovely and gracious in the sight of God.” (Pulpit Digest, March/April 1997, 10) Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes sums it up in 14 words--“A gospel shout and a gospel song: life is short, but God is long.” To be sure, covenant requires a partner. And yet, no matter your last name—Barone, whatever—we are called to repeat and reaffirm God’s long mercy. Hold that close and ponder anew, what next?