Many of you may recall the scene in the movie Amadeus when the Viennese composer Antonio Salieri tries to strike a bargain with God. He offers to devote to God his chastity, his industry, his deepest humility, indeed every hour of his life, if God will in return fulfil his desire for the glory and immortality of a Mozart. He will offer a great sacrifice to God in return for the social recognition he so intensely craved. What kind of God did Salieri think he was dealing with? Clearly he thought that he was dealing with the kind of God who was prepared to do deals, who would reward for service rendered, whether at our own initiative or God’s. In short, Salieri thought God was a negotiator.

In my pastoral experience, this model of God as negotiator is widespread. We have ‘purchase’ on God, we think, provided we’re prepared give God his ‘pound of flesh’.  This contractual model of God is attractive because it gives us some kind of hold on God even though the cost of dealing with God in this way is bound to be high. It appeals to our deep-seated intuition that in this world nothing comes for free - even from God Himself. God even appeals to the English sentiment that there is something admirable about naming your price, standing by it and leaving us to take or leave it.  God may drive a hard bargain, but if you’re prepared to meet his demand, the return is assured.

Another widely-held model of God is God as Santa Claus. On this consumerist model, God is principally there to satisfy our preferences, conferring gifts rather like the Christmas Santa who doles out a gift to a child at a department store simply for turning up. The whole point of God on this view is to give us presents like Santa Claus without demanding anything in return. Unlike the bargain-driving model of God which at least sees us in a two-way relationship with God, this model of God sees us in a one-way relationship with God. God is seen as a ‘sugar-daddy’ profligately dispensing gifts, but not at all concerned about how we get on with our lives and live in God’s good world.

In our reading from the book of Genesis, God is presented in a very different way.  In one sense, it is a one-way relationship, but here God is not here presented as Santa Claus. In another sense, it is a two-way relationship, but doesn’t have quite the reciprocal character of the God who drives a hard bargain. In our reading, Abram has a dream, and in it, God declares himself to be Abram’s protector and that Abram would be the recipient of a very great reward, although we are not clear at the outset what that reward will be. It then becomes apparent on the basis of Abram’s need for an heir that Abram’s reward will be not only a natural heir but numerous generations of heirs, as numerous as the stars in the sky. And not only will that, but the land of the Chaldeans will be given to Abram for he and his heirs to possess.

The $64 k question begged is what precisely God will demand in return for this promise of stellar proportions. The answer comes in what is perhaps one of the most significant verses in the Christian bible, ‘And Abram believed God and God reckoned it to him as righteousness’.  Abram believes God in the sense that he trusts in the one to whom his faith clings, Abram fixes his heart on God and places himself in the hands of the promise giver. It is Abram’s trust in God that is creditworthy and supplies due consideration for the progeny that God has promised him. In other words, in return for what the promise promises, God is demanding no more than that Abram place his trust in him, and it is because of his faith that God formally declare Abram righteous. 

The Apostle Paul was very quick to spot that this accreditation of Abram occurs well before the first requirements of the law are mandated. Judaism was from the outset a religion based on Abram’s faith. And obedience to the law was given not as a precondition of righteousness but as a means of expressing thankfulness for the blessings that God had bestowed. Paul focuses on what Abram becomes by virtue of God’s declaration in view of his faith in support of his argument that membership of God’s covenant community is based not on the ‘works of the law’ but an Abram-type faith. Anyone sharing this Abram-type faith is eligible to settle down together in table fellowship in spite of their class, race or wealth.

The relationship between God and Abram is therefore a two-way relationship because God’s promise of the blessing of offspring expects a faith-response. But it is also one-way because the initiative is God’s and the burdens of the relationship fall overwhelmingly on God’s side. This is powerfully brought out in the form of that mysterious ritual which occurs towards the end of our reading.  This is orchestrated by God in response to Abram’s request for further reassurance that God will indeed honour his promises. A very ancient and widespread ritual is enacted whereby animals were cut up and the parties involved would appear to have walked between the parts of the severed animals. The Hebrew idiom ‘to make a covenant’ means literally ‘to cut a covenant’ and what is implied in the ceremony is that the parties to the covenant accept that they will share a similar fate to the animals that have been cut in two if they break the terms of the covenant.

So God himself – represented by the fire-pot and the torch - is binding himself to the terms of the covenant. He is binding himself in a covenant relationship with Abram and his descendants. He is taking very seriously the implications of being in a permanent relationship with the human race. And the biblical story, as we know, is the story of the way in the face of Israel’s repeated disobedience God improvises to put his relationship with Israel on a more secure and permanent footing. The relationship is one-way in the sense that God is faithful even though Israel was repeatedly unfaithful. God does whatever he can to keep the relationship alive and ongoing even to the lengths of dying a sacrificial death on the cross still drenched with the tears he weeps over Jerusalem as he contemplates his destiny.

God does not demand his ‘pound of flesh’. Rather God has given his pound of flesh, the severed flesh of his crucified body. It is through Jesus’ crucified body that we enter upon the blessings of a new community and a restored heaven and earth in which there is no more mourning, crying or pain. God does not need to drive a hard bargain with us because he has no need of anything we might give him. God does not give us gifts with no expectation of return because he out of his own absolute freedom he has bound himself to us in love and wishes to draw us into relationship with him. As we prepare for Easter, let us reflect afresh on what it means to relate to God in a relationship which is “two-way” but also “one-way”.

All things come from you O Lord and of your own do we give you,

In Jesus Name