Covenant: Baptism
We Take on a Covenant in Baptism
Genesis 9:8-17
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. February 21st, 2021
One of the unique characteristics of God of the Bible, as opposed to the gods of other faiths, is that he makes covenant with his followers. A covenant is a form of contract, concerning the rights and responsibilities of two parties. While today we write up contracts on sheets of paper, a covenant was a contract that was ritually recognized and mutually enforced. There are quite a few examples of covenants in the Bible, outside of the covenants God makes with his people. Isaac, when he is in the land of the philistines gets into a conflict with King Abimelech over the ownership of wells. The philistines won’t let him use his father’s wells, and they confiscate the wells Isaac digs up. Finally, King Abimelech arrives at Isaac’s encampment with his officers and offers a truce. He recognizes that the Lord is with Isaac, and seeks to make a covenant with him that they would be at peace. Isaac agrees. They have a feast at Isaac’s expense, and the morning after they exchange oaths. The men are now bound to each other, and peace is established.
Perhaps one reason we teach this account of Noah’s Ark to kids is we want them to teach them about God’s covenants and God’s promises through those covenants. I’ve often thought it is strange that Noah’s Ark is such a fixture in children’s curriculum, maybe you have as well. A church I once served had a gorgeous mural in their nursery of Noah’s Ark with the rainbows and all the animals coming out. Another church had multiple ark toys. Why, when trying to teach children about the love of God, do we begin with the time God got fed up with humanity and tried to do the most of us in?
On one level, that’s what this account is about, right? God sees all the wickedness on the earth and gets sick of it. So he resolves to bring a flood to wipe out all living things on earth. But, he cannot bring himself to wipe out absolutely everything. Instead he finds Noah, who is a righteous man, and tells him of his plan. He tells him he wants him to build an Ark, of certain dimensions, and to fill the ark with his family and two of every kind of animal. Noah acts dutifully amid the jeers of his contemporaries. Until the ark is completed, the animals are corralled in, and the rain starts to pour. And the rain pours, and pours, and pours, for forty days and forty nights. A biblical idiom that means “a very long time.” After some time Noah sends out a dove, who returns having found no land. Seven days later he sends the dove again, who returns with an olive branch, signifying land. Seven days later he sent the dove and it does not return.
When Noah finds land he builds an altar, and sacrifices to God. God then makes a covenant with Noah that he will never again flood the earth. And as a sign of that covenant he puts his bow in the sky. The rainbow that appears after a rain to remind us of God’s promise.
Truth be told when I was taught about Noah’s Ark growing up my mind did not fixate on the destruction of the earth, or on God’s wrath. The story was taught rightly so that my mind was fixated on God’s love and on all the cute animals. God’s love, in this story, is shown through the covenant he makes with Noah and through Noah with all of humanity. That covenant being that he will no more flood the earth. A covenant that is met with a sign, the sign of his bow that shines in the sky after the rain. God knows it’s not enough that we be told, but we also yearn to see. Which is why God so often matches his promises with signs. But I digress.
God uniquely shows his love for his people through covenant. God doesn’t have to act in covenant. God could simply declare things and let it be. God doesn’t need to get his hands dirty, so to speak, in this way. But the Lord’s love for us is such that he desires to bind himself to us. Much like two people come to love each other so much they wish to be bound together for the rest of their lives and get married, God loves us very much and wishes to bind himself to us in covenant.
God covenants to us through Noah. God covenanted to Israel through Abraham and Moses. And now God covenants to us through Christ. Noah’s Ark also points to that New Covenant made through Christ on his cross, whereby we are adopted as Children of God. As God saved Noah through water, Peter reminds us, so God saves us now through the waters of baptism. In Baptism God claims us as his own, and incorporates us into this new covenant he has established. That is to say, by being made part of this covenant we are bound to God, and God has bound himself to us. As the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with Noah, baptism is the sign of God’s covenant with us. The covenant of grace that promises eternal life. God has made his promise, and he remains faithful to his promises. God has set in front of us the path that leads to life, and will give us the grace that leads the way.
This season of Lent I will be discussing the covenants of God. What these covenants say about God’s love, what humanity’s response to God’s covenants says about us, and how God always remains faithful to the promises he makes in his covenants even when we are unfaithful. I think this is a good topic for us to cover in this season of all seasons. That we may be remembered that we are a covenant people, that we have taken on God’s yoke, that we may repent of the ways we have sinned. But further than that, we may also trust evermore in the promises and love of God as shown in the rainbow that streams across the sky, as shown in the water of baptism, as shown in the blood of the cross that washes us clean.