Covenant Fulfillment

II Samuel 7:5-7, 11b-14a and Mark 9:2-9

Promises are important. They define who we are and our relationships. We call God’s promises “covenants.” There are 4 important covenants that God makes in the Old Testament.

If we go back to the very beginning we see that throughout the Biblical story, over and over again, people are sinful and God is faithful. Last week I used the analogy of a cable box or an internet router. Over and over again, God hits the “reset” button on creation, responding to human beings’ in preschool terms “poor choices” and creating again the possibility of realizing God’s creative vision for life on earth, resetting earth.

Perhaps another way to think of God’s covenants is to think of God as a gardener and each of the covenants an attempt at re-growing the garden God initially created.

The first hard reset was the great flood. God was like a gardener with a tiller. God kept the seeds, Noah and his family and breeding pairs of all the animals, and tilled the whole thing. God’s covenant through Noah promised never again to till it all under. Never again would God respond to the sin of humanity with wholesale destruction.

Within 10 generations another reset was needed. This time, God went grassroots. Anybody know who the father of all three of the world’s major religions is? Abraham. God would bless one person and through that person’s descendants, eventually the whole world would be blessed. If you have ever dug up monkey grass, you know grassroots are nearly impossible to destroy. God’s covenant with Abraham promised the blessing of land and descendants so that through those blessings all the world would be blessed.

Again, people were not faithful. The Israelites wound up slaves in Egypt. Then God called who to lead them out? Moses. And God became a formal English gardener – you’ve seen those gardens with the perfectly shaped hedges around neatly planted flowers – shaping and tending, ever present, ever pruning. The Israelites depended on God to lead them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, to provide food and water. God was leading. God was providing. They were depending on God. They were following God. It was going fairly well as they wandered in the wilderness. God planned to lead them back to the land with which God blessed their ancestor Abraham. First, God will form them as a covenant community, with commandments for living that will guide them and form them to be God’s Kingdom. God makes a covenant with Moses, “If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” And not 40 days went by after receiving the 10 Commandments before the people had built a golden calf to worship.

But, God was faithful, continuing to bless and provide and guide, and see beyond what was to what could be and will surely be, not because of people, but because of God – God’s kingdom realized on earth, human beings living according to God’s will.
40 years after the Israelites followed Moses out of Egypt, God led them out of their wilderness wandering back into the promised land. Then 400 years went by, 400 years of God leading through judges who were to use the Mosaic law to shape and form community life. 400 years of the people asking to have a king like all the other nations. Finally, God relents.

Saul is the first king, that’s a disaster story for another day. Saul and his son Jonathan both die in battle, and David, Jesse’s youngest son, Ruth and Boaz’s grandson, becomes king. Everything is great. He conquers Jerusalem; he defeats and finally drives back the Philistines, and he establishes Jerusalem as the capital city. The Tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant are brought to Jerusalem and set up. David has a palace built for him. Relations with the surrounding nations are all peaceful. And then, David realizes that here he has this beautiful palace, and he really should do something for God. He tells his palace religious advisor, Nathan, who thinks it’s a great idea. “YESSSSSS, do it. God is with you. This is going to be amazing.” And then in the night, God gives Nathan a message for David, “You…want to build ME…a house? Forget it. I am building YOU a house. If you start this building project all of Jerusalem will be ringing with the sounds of hammers and chisels – before long everyone will be caught up in what YOU are doing and not attentive to what I am doing. The kingdom that I am shaping here is not what you do for me but what I do through you.

I will establish a house for you, a royal lineage, with descendants, your own flesh and blood, to succeed you. And then the text is interesting. All of a sudden there is 1 descendant somewhere down the line that God points to. This is God’s covenant with David:
I will establish his kingdom, and his throne forever. I will be his father and he will be my son. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.”

This is the taproot of the messianic hope in ancient Israel. In fact, Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann considers this the most crucial text in the Old Testament for faith that relies on God’s grace.

God is plants a tree with a deep taproot. God’s covenant with David is like a tree. That tree will get cut down. Israel will be exiled. But, the prophet Isaiah knew that the tree was not dead. “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse (remember David is Jesse’s son); from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” Roughly 1,000 years later, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him to the mountaintop where they first see the bud of the shoot – he is transfigured before their eyes.

You may have noticed that there is a slip of paper with a picture on it in your bulletin this morning. Anyone know what that is? (take guesses) It is an acoustic phenomena. Using an X-ray-free-electron laser, scientists filmed a sound wave move through a diamond crystal structure for the first time ever last year. One-millionth of a second. Have you ever experienced something and thought, I’m not sure what just happened? That’s what happened to me as I watched the video. I really don’t even understand how it is possible for a sound wave to travel through a diamond, but I watched it. They had slowed down the video so much that it was 10 seconds long instead of a millionth of a second. I wasn’t even sure what to capture to show you. What was I really looking at? What moment was most important?

Peter, James, and John were having a similar experience. As they reached the mountaintop, all of a sudden Jesus’s clothes were an other-worldly bright white. They didn’t have a word for glow yet, I just imagine maybe they would have described them as glowing if they had. Then there wasn’t just 1, there were 3. Jesus with Moses and Elijah, Jesus with the great Law giver and the great prophet. Peter wants to be a contributor, part of this moment. Lord, it is good for us to be here. Let us build you each a shelter. Like David, Peter is eager to build God a house. But, again, it isn’t about what Peter can do for God, but about what God is doing through Peter.

Then, a cloud, like the one that had covered Mt. Sinai as God met Moses, settled around them and sound waves emanated from the cloud, “This is my Son, whom I love! Listen to him.” The covenant fulfilled! God’s promise to David crowned! Son of God was the phrase that had come to mean Messiah, the one who would reestablish the throne of David.

And then, the one-millionth of a second had passed, and they looked around. Jesus was standing alone. And as they went back down the mountain, Jesus told Peter, James, and John not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. Why the secret? Because they didn’t understand. God was making a new covenant.

Over the coming weeks of Lent, we will be following Jesus to the cross through the story of Peter as he catches one-millionth of a second glimpses of what is truly happening, as he falls short, as he is restored, and finally as he becomes the rock on which the church, the hope of God’s new covenant, is built.