{"id":774,"date":"2018-02-19T11:02:26","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T16:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=774"},"modified":"2018-02-21T10:37:49","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T15:37:49","slug":"lent-1-b-the-rainbow-path-of-covenant-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2018\/02\/19\/lent-1-b-the-rainbow-path-of-covenant-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent 1 B – The Rainbow Path of Covenant 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rainbow Path of Covenant 1: I Promise<\/h1>\n

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY<\/a><\/p>\n

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by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor<\/p>\n

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First Sunday in Lent\/B \u2022 February 18, 2018<\/p>\n

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Genesis 9:8-17<\/a><\/p>\n

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Mark 1:9-15<\/a><\/p>\n

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Click Below to Listen to the Sermon Preached<\/h3>\nhttps:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/I-Promise.2018.02.18.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Before he goes anywhere, before he preaches anything, before he heals anyone, Jesus goes to the wilderness. <\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019ve gotten ready for the wilderness. I\u2019ve gotten out the REI catalogs and dreamed of palatial tents, shoes that could easily see me up and down Mt. Washington, jackets good enough for freezing temperature which God knows I could have used this winter, tiny, tiny little stoves with gourmet freeze-dried meals. Of course, as I thought about these things, it wasn\u2019t really the wilderness I was preparing for; it was camping. Jacquelyn and I discussed camping once. She explained another vision: a little lodge sort of place where they had cable TV and a microwave and mentioned she wasn\u2019t going camping where you couldn\u2019t take a shower. <\/p>\n

We have lost our sense of the wilderness. We talk about camping in the wilderness\u2014with a boat, camper and RV and a generator to run the microwave and hairdryer. The wilderness is not that place. The wilderness is not anything you can get ready for. It is precisely the point of the wilderness that you cannot get ready for it because you do not know it. The wilderness is where you are lost, where you lose yourself, where you do not know yourself. <\/p>\n

In the last few days, we have been eavesdroppers as the wilderness consumed a community in Florida. In a place labeled one of the safest in the state, a young man bought a semi-automatic rifle, a gun designed for soldiers on the field of battle with no legitimate use off battlefields and shot and killed 17 high school kids and teachers. I can\u2019t imagine the wilderness of the parents and family members of those killed kids and those staff people. All of us who have had high school kids know the drill: you send them off in the morning, sometimes easily, sometimes not; sometimes there has been a fight, sometimes it\u2019s just a fuzzy tired \u201cluv ya see ya tonight oh I\u2019ve got practice, can you pick me up?\u201d. We always assume we will be able to; I can\u2019t imagine how lonely and terrible it must be for those who waited and wondered and finally had terrible news God didn\u2019t make this wilderness. We did. <\/p>\n

\fThe temptation here is to talk about how we can make a path out of it but I want to stay with the wilderness because the wilderness is various and this is only one part. The wilderness comes in many ways, in many places. There is the wilderness of a doctor\u2019s office and a frightening diagnosis; there is the wilderness of grief, there is the wilderness of depression. The wilderness is not geography, it is theology. The wilderness is where we feel abandoned, lost, wandering, in danger. There are so many more wildernesses. The wilderness is where we are alone and overwhelmed. How can we deal with the wilderness? How can we live in the wilderness?<\/p>\n

Jesus is thrown into the wilderness. The text says, \u201c\u2026sent him into the wilderness\u201d but \u2018sent\u2019 is a little word, we speak of having sent someone to the store, the real meaning is that he is thrown into the wilderness. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s leave him there for a moment and look at another wilderness experience: Noah and the flood. Genesis traces a history of violence and human self-seeking that leads God to decide to start over, to recreate the world. It reminds me of my neighbor who loves her lawn. A couple years ago, though, she felt it had gotten so out of control, she took a rototiller and tore it up and then replanted the whole thing. The flood is God recreating and at the center of the story, at the center of all stories about God, is a person who is asked to have faith and do what God says. Noah is told to build a craft to save the world. The instructions are as precise as a set of boat plans ordered online. He builds it; it floats, his family and the animals with him survive. At the end of their voyage, there is a rainbow and the rainbow is a symbol of a promise God makes, a covenant.<\/p>\n

I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.\u201d God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. \u2028[Genesis 9:11-13]<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWe read these stories and argue about whether they are true or not true. We do TV specials about finding the ark as if it\u2019s waiting to be found, as if it\u2019s sitting somewhere just waiting for someone to pay the yard bill. This isn\u2019t an event, this is an experience: the event has been overwhelmed by the experience. The experience is that there are moments when we feel wiped out, there are moments when we feel overwhelmed, drowned by a flood we cannot resist, there are moments when we feel God has given up on us. <\/p>\n

What threatened your very existence? That is the flood. You don\u2019t have to go look for it in Turkey, it\u2019s here, it\u2019s in your memory. What threatened to wipe you out? Maybe it was a death or divorce, maybe it was a disaster, maybe it was an illness. My grandfather was wiped out by the failure of a bank in the 1930s and he never trusted a bank again. My whole generation grew up with stories of the flood, only it was called a depression. Sometimes the flood is a divorce, especially if it comes upon you unexpectedly. Your whole life is changed, your home is gone, you can never go back to who you were, what you were. And you can never go back. The whole community reminds you. Every time you fill out a form there are those boxes: Married-Single-Widowed-Divorced. Which are you? I\u2019m married\u2014but I\u2019ve been divorced\u2014which one should I check? <\/p>\n

Whatever experience, whatever flood, brings you to the wilderness, eventually, we are all confronted with how to live there. <\/p>\n

Now the whole point of these stories is to give us tools to live right now, not to argue about what happened long ago. The whole purpose of these stories is to teach us to live God\u2019s way. After the flood, in the wilderness, there is a promise. And this is God\u2019s promise: I am never going to give up on you\u2014I am NEVER going to give up on you. <\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter what you do, it doesn\u2019t matter how bad you are, it doesn\u2019t matter how bad things get, I am never going to give up on you: I promise. You may give up on your lawn; you may give up on yourself; I am never giving up on you. I promise.<\/p>\n

\fNow we\u2019re ready to go back and look at Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus has three encounters there. He is tempted by the Satan, he is with the wild animals, he is waited on by angels. That sounds to me like a description of many of the experiences of life in which we suddenly find ourselves, places where we are brought without preparation, without experience, without signposts, places where we are afraid. Temptation is always present: it is the possibility of choosing to live on our own, to believe we can be enough ourselves, that we can live apart from God\u2019s purpose and blessing. But what sustains Jesus in the wilderness isn\u2019t his own power, it is the natural web of life\u2014the wild animals\u2014and the angels who wait on him. It\u2019s worth noting that the word used for \u2018waiting\u2019 is the same used later in the gospel for those who minister to others. <\/p>\n

This is how God is arching over the world, this is how God is giving us a foundation for our future. It begins with a promise and a covenant. The rainbow is a symbol of that covenant. Out there in the wilderness there are terrors but there are angels too. They are people who remind us that God has made a covenant, a promise, and God\u2019s hope is that we will have the faith to recognize them and wait for them, that we will know they are there because God has not given up on us.<\/p>\n

Lent\u2019s often a time for doing deals. I\u2019ve sometimes quoted Anne Lamott who says one of three main forms of prayer is, \u201cHelp me help me help me.\u201d Lent prayers are often help me prayers. If I give up M&M\u2019s, will you help me? If I give up Hershey kisses, will you help me? If I give up bacon\u2014no, I\u2019m not giving up bacon. You see what I mean. Lent is often thought of as a time for giving things up. It really is a time not for giving something up but simply for giving. Giving God some space and time to act, giving God some space and time to live in your heart.<\/p>\n

The promise is a gift and a covenant. A good response is to make the promise we can make. In this church, when we join we make a covenant. We say, in part,
\nSincerely repentant for your sins, in humble reliance upon divine grace, you promise that you will endeavor to be the disciple and follower of Jesus in doing the heavenly Father\u2019s will.<\/p>\n

It continues but I hope you see the point. Covenant is how God makes a path from the wilderness to the promised land, from the loneliness of the wilderness to the community of Christ. This year, thought the season of Lent, I want to walk with you through some of the promises of God the Covenants God makes. I call these collectively \u201cthe Rainbow Path,\u201d for this first covenant.<\/p>\n

This week, this season, as we wander through the wilderness together, God hopes for us we will walk simply believing God is there, taking God\u2019s promise seriously, leaning on God\u2019s promise instead of doing a deal with the darkness. This week, whether you walk familiar paths or places in a strange wilderness, remember what God has said: I will never give up on you. I promise. And if you remember, your steps will be steps along the rainbow path.<\/p>\n

Amen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rainbow Path of Covenant 1: I Promise A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor First Sunday in Lent\/B \u2022 February 18, 2018 Genesis 9:8-17 Mark 1:9-15 Click Below to Listen to the Sermon Preached Before he goes anywhere, before he preaches anything, before he heals anyone, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,146,108,3,13,2,130],"tags":[148,151,82,147,153,150,149,152],"class_list":["post-774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent","category-mark","category-scripture","category-sermon","category-theology","category-worship","category-year-b","tag-covenant","tag-depression","tag-lent","tag-noah","tag-rainbow","tag-school-shooting","tag-violence","tag-wilderness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}