Bearing in mind that the first act of Lent is to remind you of your mortality . . . in order that the final act of Lent might be a serious renewal of the Baptismal Covenant by which you will never die, . . . last Sunday we had a glimpse at one of the “lesser” covenants which serve as a foundation upon which your Baptismal Covenant rests.  These “lesser” covenants were all instituted by God as the means by which He might gradually reveal Himself more and more to humankind, whom He made in His sacred Image and into whom He breathed His sacred Life.  By way of the Jewish nation, God’s purpose has been to reveal Himself to all the nations . . . in order that we might overcome sin and death by the guidance and grace of Christ Jesus, God’s Incarnate Word.  The culmination of all the “lesser” covenants is your Baptism.  In that Baptism . . . and in your renewal of Its Promises . . . you give yourself to God.  But you can’t give yourself unless it’s done freely.  And you can’t give yourself freely unless you know Him to Whom you are giving.  So, it’s a good idea, from time to time, to take a careful look at what all the “lesser” and foundational covenants have to show us about God.

    Last Sunday we encountered the earliest and most primitive of the foundational covenants:  the Noachite Covenant.  The Noachite Covenant came about when the Lord God Almighty became so exasperated by the utter depravity of human willfulness (except for one man named Noah); . . . the Lord God Almighty became so exasperated with human willfulness that He undid Creation.  Having provided for Noah and for the continuance of each species of land animal, . . . the Lord God Almighty opened the windows of heaven and allowed the waters of Chaos to cascade back to their original place and overwhelm the face of all the earth.  . . . The Lord God Almighty parted the heavens and allowed Death to inundate the earth.  . . . But then the Lord God Almighty repented, . . . and He resolved to never again make war upon humankind . . . no matter how bad men and women behave.  . . . So the Lord God Almighty made a covenant with Noah and all of Creation.  The Lord God Almighty vowed to Noah that the rhythm of seasons . . . that the rhythm of sun and cloud; of wet and dry; . . . that the rhythm of the seasons would never again be disturbed so completely as to allow Chaos to overwhelm the earth.  . . .  And as a sign of this “Noachite Covenant” . . . the Lord God Almighty hung His glorious war bow among the clouds.  . . . So that the next time the Lord God Almighty opened the windows of Heaven . . . which He did at the Baptism of Jesus . . . and at your baptism as well; . . . the next time the heavens were parted . . . Life was poured out upon us; . . . not Death.  . . . Because of the Noachite Covenant . . . when God next opened the windows of Heaven . . . the Holy Spirit alighted upon each of us like a dove.

    Today we encounter a second great covenant embedded in the history of God’s Self-revelation.  Today, in the Twenty-second Chapter of the Book of Genesis, we encounter the Abrahamic Covenant.  Now, in fact, the Abrahamic Covenant is established back in Chapter Seventeen.  Today’s reading from Chapter Twenty-two might be called the “ratification” of that covenant:  a test of its strength . . . wherein Abraham proves to God his faithfulness . . . and wherein the Lord God Almighty reveals to Abraham the absolute nature of His own faithfulness.

    On the face of it, the terms of the Abrahamic Covenant are simple enough.  God Almighty (El Shaddai, as Abraham called Him) . . . El Shaddai has called Abraham to follow Him and Him alone from among all the things which Abraham’s people called their gods; . . . from among all the things Abraham’s people worshipped as gods.  Moreover, El Shaddai has declared to Abraham that if Abraham goes in the way that God leads him and forsakes the customs dictated by all the other so-called gods -- forsakes the placation and worship of them -- then El Shaddai will make of Abraham a great nation.  El Shaddai vows to make of Abraham a great nation, giving him children as numerous as the sands.  Moreover, El Shaddai vows to Abraham that He will make of him a great nation that shall have the blessing of its own country -- a land flowing with milk and honey.  . . . Ah, the Lord God Almighty gave to Abraham a lovely and grand vision!  . . . But many, many years after the establishment of His covenant with Abraham, when Abraham is a very old man, . . . the best that El Shaddai has done so far to fulfill His promise . . . is to give Abraham a single son:  Isaac -- the only child of Abraham and Sarah’s old age, and a very, very thin strand uniting Abraham to the promise that he would father a nation.

    And then, . . . El Shaddai says to Abraham

Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, . . . and offer him . . . as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains . . .

A lesser man would have thrown down his hat and said to God, “No!  That is an unreasonable and contradictory request.  In all these years, Isaac is all you’ve given me, and I will not sacrifice him!”  But Abraham is a remarkable man; . . . Abraham is a man under a vow of fidelity to El Shaddai; . . . Abraham is a man of faith.  And so, no doubt with great anguish and sorrow, . . . Abraham clenches his teeth, and silently and carefully makes all his preparations; . . . and in painfully slow stages Abraham proceeds to the moment of finally putting out his hand to take up the sacrificial knife.  He does it all without a word of protest; . . . without a word of rebellion.

    In the end, God stays the hand of Abraham.  God stays the hand of Abraham and redeems Isaac with a ram to be sacrificed in his place.  And by this . . . the Lord God Almighty -- El Shaddai -- reveals to Abraham that their covenant is not simply an agreement of loyalty in exchange for property and posterity, . . but the Abrahamic Covenant is an everlasting vow of mutual fidelity between God and man; . . . that not only is the Lord God Almighty reasonable and utterly dependable with regard to the elemental universe (as we learned in the Noachite Covenant), . . . but El Shaddai is a faithful God relationally!  El Shaddai is not an indifferent God, but is a God Who is capable of interpersonal fidelity.  It was a wonderful thing for Abraham to be called to serve a God who does not hold humanity in contempt, . . . but El Shaddai has revealed a tremendous, new thing:  El Shaddai looks upon us with esteem!  . . . El Shaddai speaks to Abraham with reverence when He says, “now I know that you fear God . . .”; by which is meant not that Abraham is afraid of God, but that Abraham is afraid to be without Him.  Abraham has defined himself in terms of faithfulness and obedience to his God!  Who is Abraham, father of Isaac?  He is a man who is faithful and utterly obedient to the One, True God . . . so that every other person and every other thing takes its meaning from that relationship . . . and is subordinate to it, . . . because Abraham has given his word.  He hasn’t just made a promise to God; . . . Abraham has given himself to God, . . . so that if Abraham doesn’t keep his covenant . . . Abraham is obliterated; . . . if Abraham’s word has no true existence, then he is nothing and no one.  . . . And the thing which God foreknew has happened(!):  it is possible for humanity and divinity to be in communion -- it is possible for us to be friends; it is possible for us to think in harmony; to love one another unconditionally.  For, that is how Abraham is in relationship with God:  . . . unconditionally.  Abraham gives himself to God . . . completely; . . . and just as completely (we discover) God has given Himself to us.

    God has given Himself to us so completely that, just as He redeemed the life of Isaac with a ram, caught in a thicket, on the mountain, . . . so, the Lord God Almighty has redeemed the life of all humanity . . . by sending His Son -- His Incarnate Word -- to be caught in a thicket of human sin.  The ram that redeems Isaac is a type of what the Lord God Almighty shall do in Christ Jesus, when “the Son of man . . . [shall] suffer . . . and be rejected . . . and be killed . . . and rise again” so that we might live.  And so, when Jesus says (in the Gospel appointed for today) “If any man would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me . . .”, He is saying that if anyone desires God’s fidelity, . . . then a like fidelity, a fidelity like Abraham’s, must be given to God.  . . . In other words, the Abrahamic Covenant shows us that the force and effect of our Baptismal Covenant is founded upon the redeeming regard and love which God has extended to us in Christ Jesus.  Our Baptismal Covenant has been ratified by the Cross!  . . . And so, because God has given Himself to us, . . . we have given ourselves to God; . . . we, like Abraham, have obligated ourselves to be men and women of faith who are defined by our faith; . . . so that if there is any life in us at all, . . . it is the sacred Life of God.  Or, as Saint Paul puts it in the Sixth Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans:

all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death . . . so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Our God is not an indifferent God, . . . but One Who regards us with esteem:  an esteem first revealed at the ratification of the Abrahamic Covenant when El Shaddai preserved Abraham’s life by redeeming Isaac from death.