The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III

© 2025, Dr. Tamilio

 William Johnson Everett was a professor of Christian ethics at Andover Newton Theological School.  He has long since retired, and, instead of writing learned papers detailing the intricacies of Christian moral philosophy, he’s gone fishing, I believe.  I emailed him a year or so ago and, based on what he told me, he’s enjoying retirement.

I learned more about the concept of covenant from Dr. Everett than any other teacher I had or any book or article that I’ve read.  According to him, all covenants involve three parties: God, people, and the land.  God gave Israel the Promised Land as a trust.  It is viewed as a living partner in the relationship God established with Israel.  Mind you, Israel does not own the land.  Scripture makes it quite clear: God can take it away from Israel if they do not uphold their end of the bargain.  At one point, he does.

Covenants are interesting relationships.  I am sure I’ve preached on this topic in the past, but it behooves us to revisit this idea now and then.  If you look up the word “covenant” in a thesaurus, you will find among the many synonyms the word “contract,” but a contract is quite different from a covenant.  People enter into contractual agreements to protect their own interests.  If I enter into a contract with someone, I really do not care about their interests as much as I do my own.  Contracts spell out the legal obligation we both have: what we have to give, what we have to do, what we will receive, and the ramifications if either of us does not uphold our end of the bargain.  Contracts spell out penalties, for example, for breach of contract.  You entered into a contractual relationship when you bought your house or car.  Believe me: Wells Fargo or your local Credit Union really do not care about you.  They just want your check each month.  As long as you do that, you can do pretty much whatever you want to your home or vehicle.

That is not how covenants work.  A covenant is a relationship of reciprocal love, support, and care.  If I enter into a covenant with you, your best interests are my best interests.  If you’re hurting, I’m hurting.  If you rejoice, I rejoice right alongside of you.  It’s called a marriage covenant, not a marriage contract.

When I lived in Kansas City, I owned a home in a very nice area of town.  Believe me: housing costs in the Midwest do not compare to Massachusetts.  Most homes in or around Kansas City are within subdivisions.  These subdivisions have covenants: rules homeowners have to follow.  But these rules are meant to ensure that everyone’s property value remains as high as possible.  I do not want the value of my home to depreciate, so that means I do not want the same thing to happen to your house.  Therefore, we work together.  Homeowner covenants ensure that everyone keeps their grass cut; that they do not put old, broken, large appliances on the front lawn; that they do not paint their homes bright pink with purple trim.

But what about biblical covenants?  How do they work?  Much the same way, save for the grass, old washing machines, and paint color.  When people enter into a covenant they do so with God and with one another.  They also do so (according to Prof. Everett) with the land.  The land is given as a trust.  They are to care for it and nurture it.  There is a whole sermon here on ecological ethics, but I will save that for another time.

In today’s Hebrew Bible reading, we hear more about the covenant that God entered with Abraham.  We first get an inkling of what this will covenant will be three chapters earlier in Genesis when God says to Abraham (then called Abram): “To your offspring I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7a).  The promise is repeated.  In Genesis 13:14-17, we read:

The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west.  All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever.  I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.  Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”

And then we have today’s reading where the deal becomes clearer.  The covenant is clearly established between God and Abraham, sealed within the sacrificial system of Israel.  Two chapters later, circumcision becomes the sign of the covenant and Yahweh changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah.  Abraham is 99 years old at this point in the story.  Sarah is 90.  You can probably see why this childless, elderly couple laughed when they were told that their descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore.

But that’s how God works.  He makes the impossible possible.  He establishes his righteous will with the most uncommon people.

And he has done so with us.

No, I do not think he is going to ask the aged among us to have children — at least I hope not.  But he will be with us to guide us into a full covenantal relationship with him and with one another.

However, it is an ever-expanding covenant.  It isn’t just with us.  It is with the Church Universal and with those who are not in our fold yet.  This is why we have to evangelize.  We talked about this yesterday at the spring meeting of our Massachusetts Association of Congregational Christian Churches.  Our guest speakers, Pastor Ben Feldott and his daughter Rev. Brittney Feldott of the Cape Cod Church, spoke about how they grew their church from a handful of people to hundreds.  Ben spoke about the parable of the lost sheep — how the ninety-nine are left in the fold as the shepherd searches diligently for the one lost sheep, and how he rejoices once he finds it.

Our covenant is not complete either until we find that sheep who is lost.  And once we find her, we need to search for the next one, and then the one after that, and the one after that.  That is how Christianity works.  As good ol’ Billy Graham once said, “Evangelism has always been the heartbeat for our ministry; it is what God has called us to do.”  James H. Aughey said, “The mission of the Church is to seek and to save them that are lost.”  Charles Spurgeon said, “Every Christian is either a missionary or an impostor.”

This is who we are and what we are — a people bound together in love to share that love (God’s love) with others.  God reached out to Abraham millennia ago to establish his covenant, and he hasn’t stopped yet.  As we sang at the start of today’s service, “What a covenant, what a joy divine!”  Amen.