Lent: Covenant

What can be said about covenants that hasn't been said already?

We all know what they are. They're formal, binding agreements between two people, without all the boring language that lawyers love to attach to lesser contracts about the party of the first part, and the party of the second, hereafter, heretofore, ex post facto, e pluribus unum, it's all there in black and white, you stole fizzy lifting drink, I said good day sir.

Tribes used to make covenants with one another: If you let us use your well, then we will live among you and share our wealth and be as one people with you; and when enemies attack you, we will fight at your side.

A couple years ago, I shared a graphic rendering I had seen of Ruth 1:16-17. This is probably one of the most beautiful expressions of commitment ever written from one person to another. People recite it at their weddings; they embroider it to hang on the wall; they recall it at funerals.

"On no account will I turn away from you," Ruth swears to Naomi. "Where you go I will go, where you stay I will lay my head. Your people shall be my people, and your God will be my God; and where you die I will be buried. May God deal harshly with me if anything but death separates us."

It's beautiful, and even my old sinner's heart catches in my throat to hear it. I tell my daughters to set a life goal, and find someone who loves them the way Ruth loved Naomi.

A friend of mine read it, and said, only partly ironically "Ouch." Her wife had made that same pledge to her when my friend had begun to transition from male to female, and it had made her cry to be so loved.

The promise didn't last. The same woman filed for divorce not many months later.

Another friend saw the graphic and had a similar reaction. Despite the vows they had shared years earlier, his wife had divorced him too.

Sometimes we only know the value of the covenant when it's been riven. If we feel anything at all, it's devastation not just at what has ended, but at what that loss has done to us. It's a revocation of trust, of identity, of security. What was, is gone; what is left, is ashes.

Today is Ash Wednesday. The old covenant was meant to bring us life but it has brought us only death. It inspired hope, but gave us disappointment.

Today is Ash Wednesday. There's a new covenant coming, one that reaches deeper and promises to overthrow death. 

Today is Ash Wednesday, and it comes with a promise. Those ashes will smolder once more and burst into flame. The phoenix is on its way.