Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead - since he was about a hundred years old - and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness - for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. (Romans 4:18-24)
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Let me begin this morning with a question: when is a promise not a promise? It sounds like a strange question, but I have a reason for asking it. After all, the world is full of unfulfilled promises. The world is even full of promises that are never intended to be kept. “Promise” has become one of those words that are used so often, and that are often used so poorly, that they lose their power to mean anything. I’ve talked before about how modern society has somewhat cheapened the word “love” by applying it to basically anything we like. So in the same breath I can say “I love ice cream” and “I love my wife.” Is it the same. No. But it kind of cheapens the word. The advent of Facebook has cheapened the idea of friendship. Your “friends” used to be the people you enjoyed spending time with and who you had some sort of real and personal relationship with. A lot of Facebook “friends” are people we never have and never will meet. Some people collect “Facebook friends” as a badge of honour just to see how many “friends” they can collect. But it cheapens the idea of friendship. And promises that are made with no intention of being kept, and when the person making the promise doesn’t have the ability to keep it, empty the word “promise” of its meaning. How many people pay any real attention at all to political “promises” during election campaigns? Most people that I talk to just assume that they’re nothing more than attempts to buy votes - and that they’ll be forgotten the moment the votes are counted. How many people make the promise to love and to cherish “in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, as long as we both shall live” - only to file for divorce when “irreconcilable differences” come up. I should think such differences are covered somewhere in the promise. I’m not suggesting, by the way, that all marriages should stay together forever. Some relationships are unhealthy and even toxic and need to be ended. I’m just saying that in a lot of cases, there isn’t even really an attempt to put the promises into practice. There's an old saying from a bygone day that says that “a man's word is his bond” - but that sounds so naive now doesn’t it. We no longer trust a man's word. We no longer trust people to keep their promises.
I began with the question, “when is a promise not a promise.” The answer is actually pretty easy. A promise isn’t a promise when we make promises we know we can't keep and when others know we can't keep them. But there’s another question. When is a promise reliable? When can we trust the promises someone makes to us? Well, a promise is reliable when the person making it has demonstrated their faithfulness. A long time ago, a seemingly ridiculous promise was made to a man named Abraham. God promised him many descendants - descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. This in spite of the fact that Abraham was 100 years old, and his wife Sarah was 90. The promise made no sense. It sounds a little bit like a political promise. “Let me be your God and look what I’ll do for you!” It would have been an easy promise to sneer at because it was so outlandish. But Abraham didn’t sneer. As far as Abraham was concerned, God had proven His faithfulness in many and varied ways since that first call came to a man whose name at the time was Abram, calling him to leave behind everything he had known to journey to a far off land. And Abraham (as he became) had seen the signs of God’s presence with him and had experienced the power of God’s love and the faithfulness of God’s word. And so, in spite of what reason told him, “he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.”
Today, we are at least the spiritual descendants of Abraham, and we’ve gathered to celebrate a promise. In faith terms, a promise is a covenant. A covenant by definition involves God. Without God you have an agreement or a contract, but once God gets involved you have a covenant. Covenants are important to a life of faith. We make a lot of personal covenants with God - and many of them go unfulfilled (not by God but by those who enter into them on the human side of the equation.) For a lot of people covenants become either a game (as in, God, I’ll go to church every week if you let me win the lottery) or they become a last gasp act of desperate piety (as in, God, I’ll give everything I have to the poor if you’ll heal me or someone I love.) In neither event are they serious on our part, if only because they’re conditional. God has to do something for us to earn the right to be in a covenant with us. But the covenants God initiates are different - because they’re based on grace. They’re freely given. Nothing is demanded in return. They’re given out of complete and unselfish love. They start with the rainbow covenant of the Book of Genesis, they continue with the covenant God made with Abraham to make of him a great nation, and to the covenant with David that one of his descendants would rule. And that brings us to Jesus.
Today, we are honouring a covenant. That’s what Communion is. The celebration of “the cup of the New Covenant in My blood, which is given for you all for the forgiveness of sin.” The blood language is off-putting for some, but all it really needs is some understanding. Jesus gives His life in order that humanity and divinity might meet fully, and that the walls that divide us from God might be broken down. That’s what Jesus has accomplished - the breaking down of the barriers between ourselves and God. And the guarantee of the New Covenant is the resurrection.
Paul says that in Communion we honour the Lord’s death until He comes. But crucifixion needs resurrection in order to be a covenant, because the resurrection is God’s guarantee that the covenant can be and will be fulfilled. A God Who can raise the dead can presumably do anything. Why would we doubt God? What reason do we have to doubt God? Today we're celebrating a covenant which means that today we are celebrating a promise. The promise was made by God, it was confirmed by God by the resurrection and it’s lived out today through the resurrection. Communion celebrates that New Covenant in the blood of Jesus which is given for all for the forgiveness of sin. Communion celebrates a covenant of new life and of new beginnings. Communion is a promise that the old has gone and the new has come. Communion is a promise that the disappointments of the past are now replaced by hope for tomorrow. Communion is a promise that the worries and fears of the past are now today's peace.
Communion is the commemoration of the Lord’s death, but it is celebrated only because we are a people who can also proclaim with no hesitation that “the Lord is risen!” The resurrection of Jesus is a promise to us all!
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