Promises

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 30, 2023, Proper 12: Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

Today’s readings are full of promises: good promises and bad promises, promises kept and betrayed. We start with a broken promise. Jacob worked for seven years for Laban to win his daughter Rachel who Jacob loved; after seven years, Laban instead gives him his older daughter Leah. Laban argues that the younger daughter cannot be married before the older one, but if Jacob works another seven years, he can marry Rachel.

The psalm tells us to rejoice in the Lord. The psalmist reminds us that “He has always been mindful of his covenant/ the promise he made for a thousand generations:/ The covenant he made with Abraham,/ the oath that he swore to Isaac.” This is the Lord we can count on, promises that are kept.

Paul is also full of promises. These are somewhat more complicated. Paul is thinking through predestination, the idea that our salvation is set before we are born, and is not in our control. Predestination is comforting in a way, as it takes control out of our hands. But that is also difficult: most of us like to be in control. And we might even like to know if we are among the saved. So Paul suggests that those who truly love God will also be “justified”, or saved. He suggests that, “if God is for us, who is against us?” And then comes the rousing promise, one that many of us have heard before:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God. That’s quite a promise.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is describing the Kingdom of heaven. With a series of images, Jesus reminds us that while the Kingdom may seem small, its value is all out of proportion to its size. The little mustard seed produces a great tree; the merchant sells all he has for the one pearl of great value. But then there is a sorting: the net catches many fish, but the bad fish are thrown out. The promise Jesus makes at the end is a hard promise: “The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

We, of course, want to believe with Paul that we are among the righteous, that we will not be among those weeping and gnashing their teeth. But I do not find it comforting to know that anyone will suffer in the furnace of fire.

Promises matter. We seek assurances that promises will be kept. But promises also take decisions away from us: once we have promised, there are choices we do not have. Not all promises have happy endings. So we have trouble with promises.

As Christians we make promises, starting with those which (for many of us) were made for us when we were baptized. We reaffirm those promises when we have a baptism, and again at the Easter vigil. We promise to renounce Satan, and accept Jesus. We promise to be faithful, to resist evil, and when we sin, to repent and turn to the Lord. These are promises to God.

But the next set of promises turn to the world: to “proclaim, by word and example, the good news of God in Christ”. To “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself.” And finally, to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

In baptism, we make promises to God. We try to keep them, but often fail. (That makes the promise to “repent and return to the Lord” valuable!) And while we may not always believe it, God promises us life eternal. Nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus”.

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