The Bargaining Impulse

AM Psalm 50 • PM Psalm [59, 60] or 8, 84
Gen. 16:15-17:14 • Heb. 10:1-10 • John 5:30-47

In today’s readings there is a lot of talk about burning and snipping. In the psalm God speaks of his people “who have made a covenant to me by sacrifice.” But let’s be clear, God adds. I don’t need what you give to me on that altar fire. I created all that lives, from blue whales to katydids, and I don’t need for you to give me a little burnt bull or goat’s blood. Sacrifices are simply an expression of obedience and gratitude, a “thank offering.”

In the passage from Genesis, God promises Abraham (nee Abram) all the land of Canaan and a rich lineage of nations and kings, but this promise comes with an iron rule. All males in that lineage must be circumcised on their eighth day, and any who is not will “be cut off from his people.” The two exchanges have in common a price for acceptance: No sacrifice/circumcision, no deal.

Then came Jesus. The author of the letter to the Hebrews (maybe Paul, likely not) declares that Jesus overturned the old covenant. The old ways, the law of Moses, with its sacrifices for sins year upon year, could never fully cleanse us of those sins and so could not free us from feeling guilty for them. Jesus’s time among us, through his message, example and sacrifice, opened the way for us to be truly cleansed, all of us, “once for all time.” Presumably absolution from the old covenant also covers the demand for circumcision. With all that we are freed from guilt over our shortcomings.

Except, of course, most of the time we aren’t—freed, that is, from pangs of remorse for things done and left undone, for not loving our neighbors as ourselves, etc. etc. We express that remorse every week, and every week our priest assures us that we are forgiven, but how many of us truly and fully take that to heart all week long? I know that I often fall back into something akin to that old covenant, which at its heart sees our relationship with God as a sort of bargaining: if I do this, or promise to do that, or not do this or that, I’ll be accepted.

How strange it is that about the hardest thing in a Christian life is to genuinely accept the best that could possibly be given to us—to accept that we are accepted, fully loved, no bargaining required. How strange, too, that at those times when we do manage to accept the gift, we in turn feel freer to live into a life of giving, not as a bargain for forgiveness, but as a thank offering to a forgiving God.

Written by Elliott West

Elliott is distinguished professor of history emeritus at the University of Arkansas. He has been a member at St. Paul’s for more than thirty years.