Genesis 9 and Jeremiah 31
Introduction to the Scripture
One of the most daring assertions made by the three Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - is that the God who made all things - the earth and all of its myriad of creatures, the sun and all stars, the planets in our solar system and the millions of solar systems aeons of light years away - this Creator God infinite in power and wisdom cares about us. That is, we - you and me, the person down the row, the person across the oceans, friends and enemies - everyone, they all matter to God, deeply. There is something about us that God likes, so much so that God has made certain promises to humankind - the Bible calls them covenant promises. And by these covenant God has entered into relationship with creation, with humankind, and with us as individual members of the human race. The covenant promises connect us with God. That is an astounding statement of faith!

There are a number of "covenants" in the Bible. One of the most intriguing is the one at the end of the story of Noah and the Ark and the Great Flood. You know the whole story - and animals "two by two," the great rain, the terrible destruction of life, the ark adrift, the landing, the starting over for the human race. It is of course a primitive story - one that if you take literally puts God in a less-than-inviting light. In the reading you are about to hear, God sets the rainbow in the sky not so much that humanity would remember God's promise but that GOD would remember it. It's as if God knows he just might forget his promise not to destroy the earth again by a flood, so every time the rainbow appears God will see it and remember what he said! Taken literally, that's not the God we worship.

So we are not reading historical fact today. We read a sacred story about how God the creator is in covenant relationship with humanity. Let us listen now to the end of the Story of Noah and the Great Flood
The second reading is from the prophet Jeremiah. For centuries the people of Israel have been told to obey the written Law of God: the Torah, the commandments, the rules for morality and worship and civil government. There was the written law, outside of them, to be obeyed. And while there were moments when the nation obeyed the rules, most of the time they had failed pretty badly. And Jeremiah is standing near the terrible end of the nation of Israel as they are destroyed, and carried off into captivity.

But Jeremiah has a hopeful message, and foresees a better way. He sees a time when doing righteousness - that is, doing justice, having mercy, walking with God in humility - doing what is right, says Jeremiah, will not be a matter of following an external law, but following the law written on our hearts. Here is a new covenant - a new way that God is connected with us, and us with God. No longer merely a code of behavior, but an internal, living experience of God.
Hear now the words of Jeremiah announcing a new covenant . . . .

I don't like the story of Noah. I'm glad I don't have to teach it to children. I don't see how you can, really, without glossing over some of the major claim of the story, namely, that it is God who orders the destruction of the world. Oh, it's kind of fun to think about Noah and sons gathering up all those animals, two by two. It makes for great art, and great comedy, as Bill Cosby showed us in his classic rendition of the story many years ago. But there's nothing funny about 10s, 100s of thousands of people killed, no matter how "evil" you may think they are.

The first part of the Noah story portrays God as a God more to be feared than loved. If God orders things like tsunamis to, say, teach us lessons or to punish sin - some people believe that - we have a God that will be feared easily enough, but loved? Not in any meaningful way, to my mind. That's why I don't like the first part of Noah's story. Its God is not the God I worship.
I love, though, this ending to the story. I like it in part because it pictures God to be a little forgetful.

Now, forgetfulness in us is to be expected, and while a little frustrating also can entertaining at times, in humans, and usually not without a lot of consequence. Usually. But forgetfulness in God is not at all funny. We depend on God to keep things going, and we count on God to remember, say, that he promised not to ever destroy the world again, at least not by flood! The reading said, "Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember - Oh yeah! I remember I made a promise! - the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures . . . ."

As I said earlier, this story is one that comes out of a time when people had a more primitive idea of God. That is, an undeveloped, incomplete view of God - even more incomplete than the view we have. But this is a very early text in the development of our idea of God. So we don't believe in a forgetful God.

But here is what we can take away from this ancient story. What does God remember? God remembers the covenant - the promise - made with humanity. All of humanity. Remember what I said about covenants? That they connect us with one another? And this covenant that is the culmination of the Noah story connects God with us, with all humanity. And the rainbow, says the story serves as a symbol of that covenant relationship, Creator with Creation. We matter to God. We are connected to God.

Now going on to the Jeremiah text, we remember that the religion of his time - the early part of the 4th century before the birth of Christ - was one of keeping laws, rules. That law was chiseled in stone in the form of the Ten Commandments, and mounds of laws were added on for good measure. All of them outside of us.

But Jeremiah points to something radically new. And what's new is that the law of God - that is, what matters to God - is written now in flesh, written in our hearts. Inside.

"I will be your God" - yes, yes, we've heard that, God - "and you will be my people." Not "my people" as in owned by God to do whatever he wants to with "his people." No, here it is "my people" as in the people I - God - care about and care for. "My people" with whom I - God - am in covenant
relationship, everlastingly.

Remember that God in the Noah story has a problem with memory? Here in Jeremiah God has a memory problem too. But here God can't remember our sins. Here God forgives us, rather than destroy us: I will forgive their wickedness, and will remember their sins no more.

It is a new covenant. A new way that God makes promises, and keeps them, and where we make promises to God, and when we break them, as we do, God in mercy and grace forgives us.

Here is a covenant-making God, a covenant-keeping God. Here God enters into sacred relationship with creation, with us, making promises that connect us to God, and I would even say bind us to God.

Because this idea of covenant is so important to the biblical story, and to our faith, we talk a lot about covenants in life together. Covenants are good things, needful things, helpful things in keeping us together. Connecting us, giving us something to hold onto. Covenants support us because they form bridges between us and among us, lines of relationship that hold us together.

In our baptism a covenant is made. In baptism parents make a covenant with God and with their children to be good people, caring and sacrificial parents, loving partners, so that their children will grow up in a loving home. Those are worthy, essential ideals, and so we have ritualized that covenant in baptism.

We say that when two people love each other and want to commit their lives to each other they can enter into a sacred covenant. And so this community of faith offers a covenanting ceremony. It is a covenant in which, as we say, "the two become one," and with that ritualized covenant we offer the blessing and support and encouragement and protection of our community to that new family unit.

And we talk about covenant when we talk about how we relate to the "body of Christ" that we call a church. In just a few minutes we will be "owning" the covenant of this church, and welcoming into membership twelve people. And as I said at the start of the service, they are the latest twelve of thousands of people who have covenanted with this church since its birth in 1849. In fact on July 11, 1849, there were another twelve people who owned the covenant, meeting at the schoolhouse of the village of Oshiosh - the founding twelve members:

oseph and Emeline Jackson, Noadiah and Hannah Sacket, Homer Barnes, Williams and Martha Anderson, Fanny B. Kellogg, Achsah Chapman, Esterann Nichols, Christiana and Sophia Ternouth.

Four men - and eight women - women have ALWAYS outnumbered men in the church!

I thought it would be fun today, having looked at the idea of "covenant" in the Scripture, to look at some of the covenants we have used in this church over the years. These are the covenants that have bound people to one another and to this church. These are the words that people have used to make of themselves a church in this place.

People become members of this church not by conforming to a creed, but by covenanting with a community. We are not a church because we believe all the same ideas - we certainly don't - but because we are committed to the same ideals. We are a church not because we make promises to an institution, but because we promise to walk in love by faith with one another, as best we can. The glue that holds us together is the covenant promises we make.

I'd like us to look very briefly at the insert that has four separate church covenants. We begin with the present covenant - the one we will use in just a few minutes. We have used this for well over half a century, and it may be time to revisit our covenant to make sure it reflects who we are at the early part of the 21st century.

You'll see that in our covenant we profess faith in God, and discipleship to Jesus Christ. We say that we exist to do the will of God, as we best understand it, here and in the community. We promise to do the things that make a church work: come to church, give of our resources, receive the counsel of the community of faith, and share in the work of the church.

Go back now a hundred years or so, to the on from around 1914.. Before the new members owned this covenant the minister would say to them, updating the language a bit:

Dearly beloved, as you are here for the purpose of uniting with this Church, it is fitting that you be reminded of the object for which it exists. As a Christian Church, we are banded together to develop a consciousness of our relationship and duties to God and one another, to maintain the worship of God; to proclaim the Good News of Christ; . . . to instruct people in Christ's way; and to inspire them with a love for truth, a passion for righteousness, and an enthusiasm for service.

And then they promised to be followers of Christ, to work with others in Christ's Kingdom, and to support the church's social, educational, benevolent, spiritual and financial endeavors, praying for and working for the purity and peace of the church.

Now go back to the very first covenant of our church, the one that those founding twelve people made with each other in 1849. We have a much larger covenant, don't we! We won't look at all of this - you will find it very interesting to read later - but note that there is a much more specific theology going on here - the Trinity is clearly affirmed, and there's something about the Bible too. And the promises made are more specific.

They promised to "constantly attend" the sacraments, and worship, and to strictly observe the Sabbath (I doubt if my golfing this afternoon would be acceptable!)

Further, they committed themselves to daily prayer, and to "restrain from vicious practices" all those under their care. "Vain conversation and amusement" is out, and so is "intoxicating drink."

The covenant of 1849, of course, was a covenant for that time, and for those people. It is not up to me to criticize them for living out the faith as they understood it in there time, the formative days of Oshkosh. The content of the covenant is not so important - it can change to reflect the church in any given time, and the needs of the world in that day. But in all times it is the covenant by which we knit our lives together, being the "body of Christ" in this place.

But go back one more covenant, all the way back to 1629. Here is the Salem Covenant, the earliest covenant in the churches in this country, a covenant that is still in use in many churches today, and if it were up to me this is the covenant we would have here! I love it for its simplicity and for its quaint spelling!
We covenant with the Lord and with one another, and doe bynd ourselves in the presence of God, to walke together in all his waies, according as he is pleased to reveale himself unto us - "God is still speaking" - in his Blessed word of truth.

We need one another. We long for meaningful connections with others. And as people of faith we want to affirm the connection we have with God as well, a God of covenant promises. A God who will write God's law on our hearts; who says I will be your God, and you will be my people.

And so I want to invite those who would own the covenant for themselves today to come, with their Fellowship Friends, into the Chancel.