Contracts and Covenants

Many years ago I knew a woman called Anna. She attended the church I was an intern at in Ohio. She would come to church most Sundays, but the thing that she was committed to being at the most was the once a month there would be a coffee shop style event with various things like music happening. She loved to come to this event and I swear she would come and seek me out to talk to me. I don’t think it started out that way, but once Anna shared with me that she felt God was punishing her mom for her behavior and I engaged with her and talked with her about it, I feel like she felt she could engage with me about it every time we met at the coffee shop. You see, Anna had, in her words, lived loosely for a long time. She got into drugs and alcohol and had many different relationships with men. It was during this time in her life that her mom became incredibly sick.

It was at some point during this way of living and her mom getting sick, that Anna remembered growing up going to church with her mom. I don’t know what kind of theology she grew up with, but when she remembered her faith and connected that to her then current way of life with to her mom, she came to the conclusion that God was punishing her mom for the sins that Anna was living in. I don’t know how long it took, but Anna eventually removed that loose living from her life and came back to faith, and found her way to the church I was ended up serving at. I honestly cannot tell you how many times Anna and I talked about God in terms of God’s love, God’s wrath, God’s forgiveness and grace. I tried to explain to her how God’s love isn’t conditional. God doesn’t love us because we are good and faithful people. God’s love is unconditional and loves us even when we fail and mess up. I don’t know if I ever changed Anna’s mind, but I do know that she still felt that she had to continue to “do” better in life and with her faith in order for her mom to get better. She was essentially treating her faith like a court case. Courts like to use terms like “on the condition of A…then B will happen. For Anna it was this: on the condition that Anna gives up her loose living and return to her faith then at some point in the future God will stop punishing her mom with her illness and all will be well again.

The problem with that becomes that Anna will spend her whole life paranoid that if she were to ever slip up again, then that conditional clause will be reevaluated and God will then see the conditional love that was placed upon her and her mom and make her mom sick again. One of the problems with this idea and formula is that it doesn’t allow for the reverse to be true, which is especially troubling in a faith that affirms grace and the unconditional love of God. That may be how some people view and see God, but that’s not the God I know and it’s not the God I’m going to be talking about today.

I appreciate the passages that we heard together today because they talk about the love and the care that God has for us like we heard in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians…what we commonly call the love chapter. Where we learn the greatest thing from God and for one another is love. From Psalm 118 we learn about God knowing every aspect of us from our innermost parts and that there is nowhere we can go where God does not know us. If God’s love was conditional why would it seek us out wherever we go and why would it be the greatest gift from God, above faith and hope? But I’d like to take us on a quick journey through the Bible to not just hear passages that say God’s love is unconditional but to see ways that God lived out that unconditional love.

In Genesis God promises to be with Abraham and his descendants from generation to generation. Right after God makes that covenantal promise Abraham then goes on to pretend his wife Sarah is his sister, not once but twice. God overlooks these and continues to be faithful to Abraham and his descendants. In fact, when we get to Abraham’s grandson Jacob, we would have every right to assume that God would break God’s covenant with the family. Even his name Jacob, the supplanter, tells us everything we need to know about this man. Jacob cheats his brother Esau out of both his blessing and his inheritance. He then cheats his uncle Laban out of sheep. This man has no right to actually get God’s blessing. If we were to think of God’s covenant as a contract, or a will in modern society, you would expect God to write Jacob out of the will. God had promised Rebekah that the older would serve the younger, but she and Jacob didn’t trust God too carry that out, so they took it into their own hands. Despite all the scheming, lying, and cheating God’s love and God’s promise remained not just with Abraham’s family but with who God said God would give it to specifically. God’s unconditional promise and love. The same goes for Israel, if God’s love for Israel and election for them as a holy nation was conditional then why didn’t God give up on them and move to a new people, a more willing or faithful group? Because God’s love isn’t transactional, it doesn’t hinge on us.

Fast forward to Jesus who the gospel writer John tells us that when God became flesh and lived among us, the one attribute of God that was personified through the life of Jesus was grace. Grace being a free gift of God. Of all that God is and is known for God chose grace to be the way that Jesus lived his life for us and for our sake. Grace is not earned, it is not conditional, it is for us, from God. So reflect on that for a moment…of all the attributes associated with God including things like omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, God chose grace to be the driving force through Jesus. We even see Jesus reject the devil in the desert in order to make sure that the only thing Jesus gives to the world is grace.

This is where our two gospel stories come into play. The first is that of Mary and Martha. Martha is so worried about the meal that she is preparing. In a society that stresses honor and shame she wants to honor Jesus by her hospitality. The problem with the honor and shame system is that it is essentially like a contract that we talked about with Anna and modern society. If I do A for you then you will do B for me. Now I don’t know that Martha was necessarily thinking in those terms, but she felt there was a specific way of at least earning favor with Jesus through her actions where Mary felt that simply being with Jesus was enough. Knowing that God’s grace and love was present with everyone who was there in whatever role they took.

Then we come to the reading from John’s gospel where Jesus is literally confronted with a woman who the Pharisees say was caught in adultery. The law of Moses commanded that she be stoned and they want to know what Jesus wants done with her. They had the law which was a conditional law…if A then B. Jesus acted the exact same way we see God act throughout the Bible. If Jesus, who is grace personified, placed conditions on his grace then perhaps they would have stoned the woman, but Jesus points out that we have all made mistakes, we have all sinned. None of us is actually deserving of God’s love and grace based on merits, based on a conditional clause. We just can’t do it. Heck I know it because I have tried. I am sure we have all tried at least once in our lives. We have all been like Anna we have all been like Jacob and Mary, and this woman. We have all failed our side of the conditional clause. If A then B.

God, for whatever reason, isn’t interested in contracts. God isn’t interested in if we do A then God will do B..or to be more specific, if we are good and righteous, then we will receive God’s love, grace, and mercy. God freely gives our that love and grace and mercy to us each and every day. In a world where there are all sorts of contracts, wills and conditional clauses thrown at us all the time we are tricked into thinking this is how it must be with God. Especially when we experience unhealthy love in our lives that can be treated as conditional or even contractual. But that is not how it is with God, God’s love and grace are a gift poured out upon us. Paul who knew what his life was like before he encountered Jesus was the least deserving of this grace. That is why Paul writes so passionately about the unconditional love of God as found in Christ Jesus. Paul is yet another living example of God’s love poured out to an underserving world. In a world that tries to restrict love, know that the one who formed you, who sees you when you wake up and when you lie down to bed, when you run away and when you come home God is like the prodigal father welcoming you home. Welcome to grace, welcome to the unconditional love of God. Amen.