Sermon 2/28/21
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Sermon Lent 3 2021 - Sarah West
Sermon Series: Community
Title: Covenant Community
Scripture: Genesis 9:8-17 (Noah)
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. 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.”
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. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
This week I have been thinking a lot about the importance of community. I have heard from some of our church members a desire to gather again in person (in response to vaccinations, and the toll of being apart). I have heard from others who long to be together but urge caution. As we passed a significant milestone in the pandemic this week, a half million deaths in the United States, it was a sober reminder of what is at stake in these decisions - people’s lives, and the lives of everyone they impact. As one member put it to me this week, if a half a million people have died, just think of how many more million people are dealing with loss. - so much grief it is hard to fathom! What these conversations brought home to me is our fundamental human need for community.
UCLA neuroscientist Dr. Matthew Lieberman has spent two decades studying brain activity when people are talking, hugging, solving math problems or just sitting alone. And what he discovered is that our default network is primed for social connection. Whenever we finish some kind of non-social thinking activity, our brain automatically primes itself for a social interaction, his conclusion - “We are built to be social creatures”.
Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek Murthy. p. 34
Just because we are hardwired for social connection and community, doesn’t mean we do a great job of creating healthy, thriving communities. The question I will be exploring today is: How do we make decisions about what is best for the community? How do we come together to create communities that can protect and uplift each other?
We heard the insights of two wise members of our community at the beginning of our worship service today.
Daniel Slife - the director of our local library who continues to seek innovative ways to foster healthy community. He reminded us that when we lift up others in our community we help ourselves.
David Harris - a member of our church who talked about the climate of division and a desire to see leaders and community members come together to have courageous conversations that don’t ignore the problems in our midst, but talk about them openly so we can learn better how to listen and work together for positive change.
I will come back to these important insights later on, for I think they contain important truths about how to come together as community.
Now I want to turn our attention to a few passages in our scriptures that deal with how community is shaped and formed by covenant. What can our sacred stories teach us about how to come together as community?
Last week we began the conversation about community with the beginning of community itself, the creation of the world and humankind. Pastor Shelby reminded us that when God created the world and every living creature, that God created not one human being, but two because it was not good for them to be alone, they needed each other. God looked upon the creation: the birds of the air and the creatures on the land and in the depths of the sea, the green plants, the flowering trees and the humans made in God’s image and declared that all of it was good! It is important to note that God’s plan for community has always been for it to flourish and grow in goodness.
Fast forward to Genesis chapter 6 the beginning of the story of Noah and the ark.
Gen 6:11-13
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.
This beautiful community that God had created to flourish was corrupt and full of violence. And the scriptures tell us that God was deeply grieved, for this is not how God had intended for creation to be. While there is still a lot about this story I don’t understand and wrestle with - when I think about the violence that human beings have wrought on one another and the earth throughout all of human history I think to myself. “How can we not grieve? Who wouldn’t want an end to evil and violence and corruption? Who wouldn’t long for a clean slate? A fresh start?”
For me, the glimmer of hope in this story comes in Genesis 8:1 “And God remembered Noah and all of the animals in the ark.” The good news is that God does not abandon humanity. Despite all of the evil we have done to one another, God refuses to give up on us and on this vision of community. The story of the flood concludes with the creation of the very first covenant between God and the earth.
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.” 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 - Genesis 9:8-11
There are a couple of very striking elements of this first covenant that are different than many of the later covenants.
The first is that the covenant is made not just between God and God’s people, but with all of creation, the entire earth.
The second difference is that this is a one sided covenant. Typically covenant agreements include obligations from both parties. (We see this in the covenant made with Moses and the people of Israel on Mt. Sinai when the 10 Commandments are given. God promises to be with them and bring them to the promised land and they in turn promise to abide by the commandments to love God and their neighbors.) But in this first covenant it is only God who makes the promise. Nothing is asked in return.
To me what is most striking of all is that God makes this promise and enters into covenant despite the fact that God just admitted in verse 21 “the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth”. Even though God knows that humans will still continue to struggle and even at times fail to come together as the beautiful and loving community God intended, God will not desert us.
Noah and his family didn’t waste any time in proving God right. The first thing Noah did after leaving the ark was get drunk and on the same night his son got in trouble for acting shamefully towards his father.
The history of humanity reveals a history of broken covenants
Abraham
Covenant God made with Abraham was to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.
Only Abraham and Sarah became impatient in the fulfilling of God’s covenant to grant them descendants. They were getting up there in years, so they took matters into their own hands. Sarah proposed that Abraham bear children by Hagar, her Egyptian servant. God’s plan was for Sarah to bear children which eventually she did, they had a son Isaac.
Moses and people of Israel at Mt. Sinai
They were even less patient. Moses was still on the mountain with God and hadn’t even had a chance to come down and share the details of the covenant when the people fashioned their own golden calf to worship.
I won’t take time now to review all of the covenants and how long it took before they were broken. But I do want to draw our attention to all of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the prophets (Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, etc.) Essentially it was the job of the prophets to remind the people of the covenant promises they made before God. To point out where they were failing to uphold their end of the bargain and call them to change, to repent, to return to their worship of God. It is interesting to note that much of the time they are being taken to task for the ways in which they have failed to defend the poor, give justice to the needy and crush the oppressor.
The plan for God’s good community, the goal of the covenant is always the same. To establish “shalom” - wholeness and peace - in which all members of the community can contribute to the common good.
I realize this can start to sound abstract and divorced from reality, even pie in the sky fantasy. Given the reality of human brokenness, is it really possible to come together to bring about healing and growth, beauty and flourishing?
A documentary came out recently about communities all over the country who are seeking to do exactly that called “Antidote”. One of the communities featured in the film is called Bridge Meadows.
Bridge Meadows is a foster community made up of foster children, adoptive families and older adults. An article published by the Portland Tribune interviewed some of the seniors who live there and receive reduced rent in exchange for giving volunteer hours to support the foster children and the adoptive families that live in the complex.
Article: https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/364482-243907-is-90-th
The cookie lady is in the house. That's how Estelle Winicki is referred to by the kids at Bridge Meadows apartment complex in North Portland. They know they can knock on her door and there will always be cookies available to them at Winicki's kitchen table.
One ten-year-old girl just likes to come over and sit, sometimes eating cookies, sometimes not, sometimes talking, sometimes not. The kids at Bridge Meadows are all children being adopted out of the foster care system, so they've experienced trauma of one kind or another, and Winicki is happy to provide them a place to just decompress, if that's what they need.
Columbia Pool is two blocks away, and Winicki has been taking two of the Bridge Meadows children there and teaching them to swim. What's especially nice about that, Winicki says, is that the swim lessons don't feel like a volunteer effort, but "just a normal part of the day."
Winicki says she's found more than an affordable retirement home at Bridge Meadows (her rent is $550 a month), she's found the very thing that might help her live longer and with more vitality.
"It gives me purpose," Winicki says. "Every time I walk out the door and I talk with somebody, it's like, what can I give them that will help them?"
Pretty much every afternoon Bridge Meadows resident Mary J. tutors 12-year-old Reba and ten-year-old Lydia, who live with their mom, Reba Chainey, a few doors down. Sometimes Mary J. babysits as well. Last week the four of them drove to Cannon Beach for the day.
Mary J. once taught at John Ball Elementary School, which stood on the full block which now hosts Bridge Meadows. After retirement Mary J. needed a way to feel useful, but she never thought she'd find it right in her own apartment complex.
Juanita Rivera Laush is convinced that living at Bridge Meadows will help her live longer, or at least better. At 93, Laush is the community's oldest resident. A one-time teacher, she now hosts writing groups where she makes adult residents try their hand at poetry, and she teaches Spanish to some of the children who share her Hispanic background. Which is a far cry from the isolated retirement she faced in a Lake Oswego apartment a few years ago.
But what most convinces Laush that the seniors at Bridge Meadows will live longer and healthier is the change she sees when new residents arrive. "You see them kind of bloom," Laush says.
If Oregon Health & Science geriatrician Dr. Elizabeth Eckstrom is right, Winicki, Mary J. and Laush are likely to live longer and more vigorously because of their residence at Bridge Meadows, a unique, inter-generational living experiment. Yes, says Eckstrom, who is on a world tour studying the best places for aging, diet is important, as are exercise, good health care and social connections.
But ask Eckstrom what she's found to be the single most important factor in keeping seniors robust into their nineties and beyond, and she says it's feeling needed and useful. That's what astonished Eckstrom in places such as Sardinia, where men in their eighties and nineties are responsible for pruning the town olive trees. And it's precisely what Eckstrom says she has seen at Bridge Meadows.
Bridge Meadows was conceived as a place to provide inexpensive housing for low-income families (often grandparents) in the process of adopting foster children. Those adoptive families inhabit nine of the Bridge Meadows apartments. The other 36 apartments are reserved for low-income seniors who pledge to volunteer at least 100 hours each quarter helping out the community.
Some Bridge Meadows seniors report that their physicians are telling them their blood pressure has dropped since they arrived, and others are coping better with chronic illnesses such as diabetes. [end article]
Bridge Meadows is just one example of how out of the brokenness of humanity (children who have been victims of abuse and neglect, seniors who don’t have enough money for decent housing and whose health and well being suffer from being isolated and undervalued) can come together and build a healthier, stronger, more loving community for all. It is a great example of what Daniel Slife said, how in helping someone else we are helped. This is covenant community as it was meant to be.
There is one more model of covenant community that I want to explore with you today. It is the type of community Dave Harris talked about in our opening segment. A community that has the courage to reach across differences and divisions to listen to one another. To learn to take what is broken in our lives and in the lives of our community and find ways to come together for healing and wholeness. This is what we are called to do as followers of Jesus, as disciples of Christ. The identity statement of our denomination The Christian Church Disciples of Christ states this quite clearly:
We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.
As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s Table as God has welcomed us.
For us, as disciples of Jesus, these two are inseparable. The covenant we make each Sunday as we gather at the Lord’s table is our pledge to build God’s beloved community. Jesus extends the cup of new covenant which is sealed by the sacrifice of his own life, the shedding of his own blood for the reconciliation of all. As we take and eat of the broken bread and drink from the covenant cup, we once again seal our promise before God.
We will welcome all just as Christ has welcomed us
We will forgive, just as we have been forgiven
We will welcome the stranger because while we were still strangers God welcomed us.
We will love because God first loved us