The Power of a Promise

Scripture Lessons: Ruth 1: 15-18 and Matthew 1: 1-6 Sermon Title: The Power of a Promise A Sunday School teacher was leading her class into a sanctuary just like this one and she addressed her class saying, “Children, this is the sanctuary. It’s important to come into this place with reverence and dignity. It’s important to come into this place having prepared your heart for worship. And it’s important to be nice and quiet when you enter this room. Do you know why it’s important to be so quiet here?” A little boy near the back of the group raised his hand and said, “It’s important to be quiet in here because this is where the old men sleep.” Maybe that’s true, but in addition to dozing off, another thing that people do in sanctuaries like this one is make promises, and they don’t make little promises they make big promises – monumental promises really. Up here at the front, you’ve seen it – the man says to the woman, I take you, to be my wife, and I promise, before God and this congregation, to be your loving and faithful husband, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live. These are bold words. And these words make up a promise so big and so bold that you can’t help but want to be here when it happens, so brides and mothers plan, grooms and fathers grumble right up until the big day when this sanctuary fills up with friends and family who have showered and groomed and dressed their very best on a Saturday just so they can witness two people make a promise that takes about two minutes to make but is so profoundly idealistic that only half the couples who make it are able to keep it. The statistics are powerful, but the statistics have hardly eliminated the longing of those who love each other to make such promises. Love compels us to it, so even while common sense would temper some passion, it cannot stop men and women from making such promises because promises are not based in logic. That makes promises different from investments which, while risky are still made by those who are armed with expert advice and common sense. That makes promises different from contracts, for while contracts are contingent on performance, those who bind themselves to each other as husband and wife are tethered so that when one falls the two fall together, when one is in pain the pain is shared, and there is no longer one without the other. And such promises are found in Scripture. If anything, the promises we find in our Bible are even more bold than those we make to each other in the wedding liturgy. Our first Scripture lesson is the great promise made by Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi. After Naomi’s son, Ruth’s husband, died along with his father and brother thereby severing the bond that would have held Ruth to her mother-in-law any longer, Ruth pledges herself to Naomi in a promise saying: Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die – there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, If even death parts me from you! “If even death parts me from you.” Such a promise makes the vows of a wedding seem almost easy, and so Ruth’s dedication to Naomi, pledging herself through life and beyond death foreshadows the love of God for humanity in Christ Jesus our Lord because his love for us was also a power fiercer than the grave. If even death parts me from you! And you know that such a promise made by Ruth points toward the kind of promise that Emanuel – God with us – has made to you and me. The promise is ancient. In Exodus, when Moses was afraid he heard the promise of God saying, “I will be with you.” And it’s there in Isaiah: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. But how are we to respond to such promises? As God promises to be with us, what are we to do in return? Well what would it be for the groom to say his vows and for the bride to remain silent? What would it be for the Elder in a baptism to call on the congregation to promise their faithfulness to a child and for that congregation to be speechless? “And behold, I am with you always, till the end of the age” – the Lord says to us, and in response we must promises ourselves to him – what else could we do? That’s one use of a pledge card. Just as our Lord has promised himself to us, so we must promise ourselves to him. It’s about much more than money, and it always has been. A pledge is a promise that you will commit yourself to the God who has already committed himself to you. Promises. Promises are not always honored by people because sometimes people are just a little too human. To make a promise and to keep a promise – this is a trait of the divine – keeping promises makes us something greater, and so Ruth who made her promise and kept it, she was not forgotten by history though her birthright as a Moabite was to live as second class in ancient Israel. Instead, by the strength of her promise, in the first chapter of Matthew we read that she became the great-grandmother of King David, she is a great name in the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah. But we shouldn’t be surprised. That’s the power of a promise. Amen.