Promises Kept
Text: Genesis 9:8-17; Genesis 17:1-7; Romans 4:13-25
By: Rev. Terry Carty
Date: 03-04-12
Place: Kingston Springs United Methodist Church
Season: Second Sunday in Lent; two days after the hail storm/tornado
Main Point: God keeps promises. Our part is to keep the faith and look for the signs of God’s promises kept.
In Romans 4:13-25 Paul reminds the Jewish-Christian congregations in Rome that the founding stories of Judaism point to a God who graciously offers to include people in covenant on the basis of faith, not perfect obedience to the law.
This has been quite a week. It seems like last Sunday was a different life from today. But something I saw on Friday that helped keep me in continuity – built a bridge of faith.
This week I took some time away in Crossville for retreat, reflection and some recreation. While I was there on Wednesday tornados devastated a small community of homes a few miles from where I was – and two lives were lost. It seemed so far away as I watched the accounts on the Knoxville news station.
On Friday I checked out and drove home through threatening weather back to Nashville where I joined one of our church families as they waited during a surgery at St Thomas Hospital in Nashville. They had just been told that the surgery was complete when all visitors were told of a tornado warning and hurried into the Medical Learning Center where there are no windows.
The storm that we had been watching on our weather apps moved over the building and we heard the winds and the popping of the hail hitting the roof. I would soon find out that the same storm center had ravaged Kingston Springs. When I went to my car I got a phone call to say that the church and community had sustained damage. “All the windows are blown out” was the actual way I heard it.
I drove as fast as I dared to get to the church. As I drove west, I saw in the clouds a rainbow. Did I imagine it? No, I looked over my shoulder again and it was real. A rainbow.
The rainbow connected me to a scripture that we had read last week but did not talk about very much – Genesis 9:8-17. I had glibly mentioned something that I had seen in a sermon text about God having given up floods for Lent. Actually God gave up trying to eliminate evil by drowning. Instead, he made covenant with humanity that was marked with the sign of a rainbow.
When I saw that rainbow, it brought peace to me. I knew that what I would see when I would eventually get to Kingston Springs was not the work of an angry God. It was the
work of a Creator who made the earth to be self-healing. And what we would experience, if we have faith, would be signs of a God who turns destruction into opportunity.
I found that I was bridged to last week by that rainbow, bridged to the promises of God, and a peace came over me. As I parked up the road and walked the last 1/4 mile past the twisted trees being cut out of the roadway, I had the patience not to run ahead, but to observe all that was happening in the wake of the storm. God was everywhere.
On Main Street, people were gathering as they could get through and seeing the damage with amazement. But there was such a calm in the place. Everyone was thinking about how to secure the buildings from further damage. Spontaneous plans were put into motion, and we moved into our future. There was no thought that we would cease to be people of faith.
Since that time we have heard one story after another about storm experiences. And once again, this community has pulled together to help each other after a disaster of epic proportions.
Today’s story of Abraham, remembered by Paul in the Book of Romans, reminded the Jewish-Christian congregation of the promises God made many generations earlier. God made a covenant to be their God generation after generation. Paul says that we are included in God’s promises on the basis of our faith, not on the basis of our ability to follow the rules.
Tying these thoughts together helps us make sense of what we have been experiencing and feeling this week. We have been feeling the activity of a healing God. Neighbors have been helping neighbors to cut trees and board up broken windows. People who have never seen each other before have been working side by side to help when and where they can. And everywhere we look, we see signs of vitality. God lives in our community. Generation to generation, our faith survives.
Now comes the part where we consider what to do next. We will not have a good day of community love and then go inside our boarded up building to be comforted in our loss. What we will do next is consider how does this gathering of believers continue in faith to serve God in this community.
As the Trustees consider repairs to this historic building, the congregation as a whole will redouble their energies to move beyond our repairs into the lives of others. Many will have inadequate insurance to restore their homes and we who gather here will help. Some will try to take advantage of others in their loss, but we will advise and protect. As days turn to weeks in dealing with insurance claims and expensive repairs, we will bring hope to our community because we know that God is working among us for physical and spiritual healing.
The rainbow this week reminds us that God does not destroy us. And the passage from Paul reminds us that God rewards our faithfulness. The scars on our building and our broken windows remind us that God’s rewards don’t always come in the ways we expect. God’s rewards come in opportunities to remain faithful in the way we live. God is calling us back out of this place to be a healing force in a hurting world.