Sermon of July 17, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Genesis 28:10-22

“The Art of the Deal”

Some of you probably have heard that some years ago Donald Trump, the great New York real estate mogel, wrote a book called The Art of the Deal. I’ve not read that book but I looked up a little synopsis of it on line and it’s about his life and how he rose in the business world and how he used his brains, his experience, his contacts and relationships with other people, with financiers and politicians and bankers and community leaders and all the rest, to make deals that would purchase great hotels and office buildings and start developments in New York City and other places and build casinos and things like that. It’s his book about how to make a good deal. So I thought that was a good title for this sermon because this sermon is about how we make deals in our lives.

You know it’s very common for us to make deals. We do it all the time, probably without thinking. You know in the household sometimes one of the adults will say, “Alright, no ice cream until after you finish your dinner”. Or, “No TV until you’ve mown the lawn”. And sometimes the woman of the house will have things to say to the children, also. Like “you go to bed at 10:00 or else tomorrow, no TV at all”. And we do that back and forth with parents, with children, with one another, with neighbors. We make deals when we buy a new car, when we refinance our mortgage, when we work out vacation time at work–we make deals with one another, enter into agreements about how things will be in a certain area or on a certain subject. Because of this I thought this passage today from Genesis 28 offered some great ideas about the right way to make deals and so I would like to take a few moments to look through three different kinds of deals that can be made.

The first deal that I can think of that can be made that’s the most familiar to us I think is a contract. A contract, I’m sure we all know, is an agreement between two or more parties to do a certain thing, and each party has some obligation in the contract and if one party breaks the contract the other is thereby released from fulfilling their part of the contract. That’s a pretty well-known idea and we enter into contracts with businesses, with banks, for real estate, there are contractors who work on our home, we enter into contracts and say, “If you do this for me, I will do that for you” and again if one side breaks it the other side is let off the hook. An example is if we enter into a contract for leasing or buying a car and we don’t make the payments, we don’t keep our side of the bargain, the car company can send somebody out to repossess the car. They’re no longer obligated to let us have the car if we’re not paying for it. And if an employer says you have ten vacation days and you take 15 vacation days, well at the very least they’re not obligated to pay you for the last five of them and they may not be obligated to pay you any more if you keep that up too long. They may not like that and you might be out of your contract completely not just for vacation but for a job. So that’s how contracts sometimes work: if one side doesn’t keep it up, the other side can break their side also.

I think it was during the Yankee Street Fair, I was just talking with someone who had had a contract with a friend to do some remodeling work in their house and these two, the homeowner and the contractor, were old friends since childhood and school days and the person I was talking to said, “You know, I made sure we had a clear contract with each other, even though we’re just friends, and in fact I did that because we are friends; I wanted to stay friends, so we put everything down on paper–what work I wanted done, how much he was going to be paid, and all the details so that if a disagreement came up we could look at the contract and see what to do and it wouldn’t jeopardize our friendship.” It was a great idea and a great illustration of how contracts can be very valuable if they spell things out clearly and both sides understand, then the likelihood of a misunderstanding or a problem is greatly reduced.

On the other hand, when contracts are written with wiggle room and unclear language that seems to make it easier for one party to understand than the other, then there can be problems and disagreements and conflicts sometimes. I brought two contracts that the church recently had. The first is this, I thought it was a yellow sheet but it’s a white sheet, this is the contract we had with M&M Oil to replace our in-ground oil tank with two new oil tanks and do some work on the well and it says they’re going to remove the tank, install two new tanks, change the riser on the well and for $4,850--all on that one page, and it worked out just fine. They said what they’d do, we said what we’d do. They did the work, we paid them. It’s all over, the contract is finished. The church has just entered into a leasing agreement for two new computers. This is the contract from Dell [flipping pages]... I’m not done yet. Does anyone up here want to see this?  I’m still going....anyway, this is the contract from Dell, and at the end it says, “I accept or I decline”. Well, I just clicked “I accept”. You know why? Because if you decline you don’t get the computers at all. If you accept you accept it. So I don’t really understand all this but it does say how much we pay and what we get which is the main idea. So, the difference I think between this is the trust level and the familiarity: we’ve done work with M&M and M&M has done work with us for many, many years. This is all we need. We trust them, they trust us to pay them. It’s all that’s needed. Dell doesn’t know us, we don’t know the guy on the other end of the phone at Dell so, this is what we got (16 pages of legal stuff).  Contracts can be very different. I like the ones really where there’s a lot of trust. Once in a while it’s a problem but I like it where there’s trust but at least it’s written down.

Now my next point about contracts is that there’s not very much in the Bible about contracts. There are a few, I was trying to think a couple weeks ago we had another  passage from Genesis where a servant is being sent by the master to go find a wife for another son and the servant says, “Well that’s our agreement, I’ll be your servant, I’ll go get the wife, I’ll come back and remain your servant, but what if I don’t find a wife back in the homeland?” and the master says, “Well then you’ll be released from the contract, from the agreement.” So there’s a clear understanding there that one side could fail and the other side not but the first side says, “Well if you do, I’ll let you off the hook”. But there was a contract with an if/then to it.

The most prominent agreement or deal in the Bible is, as probably most of you know, the covenant. It’s a different idea. It’s still two parties, maybe more than two parties sometimes but at least two parties, and both have sides that they are bound to in the agreement, in the deal, but if one side defaults in a covenant generally the understanding is the other side still is obligated to fulfill their part. That’s where it’s a major difference from a contract. In the Bible if one side doesn’t come through the other side still has a responsibility to uphold their side of it. There’s a covenant in this passage. Jacob offers it to God. At the end of the passage Jacob says, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God and this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be God’s house and that all that thou givest me, I will give a tenth to thee.” That’s usually one of those stewardship sermons about tithing because that’s one of the areas where tithing becomes introduced–that Jacob sets this model that of all that God blesses us, we give a tenth back to God. This is not going to be a stewardship sermon, don’t worry, you don’t all have to leave right now. I’m talking about covenants. The covenant here is Jacob says, “If you God will take care of me, give me clothes and bread and get me safely back here after you send me away, then you will be my God, this will be your house on this place where I’m putting this rock and I will give a tenth of what I got back to you”. If/then. If you do this for me, God, I will do this for you. It’s a covenant. If Jacob were to not fulfill that part, if Jacob only gave God back five percent or if Jacob didn’t get the house back at Beth El on that stone, God’s obligation is still there and God would still be Jacob’s God and would still bring Jacob safely home. And would still take care of him and provide for him.

That’s how a covenant works. It works vice versa too but it’s unlikely that God would not fulfill God’s part of the covenant. There are a few places where God gets pretty angry in the Bible and thinks about not wanting to fulfill covenants but God’s faithfulness is much greater than ours so you don’t have to worry about God not fulfilling God’s part of the covenant but if in a covenant with God someone like Jacob or someone else doesn’t fulfill, God will still be faithful.

And the great model we have for us today is the covenant we have as church members. When people join our church, many of you have done this and many of you have observed this too, we have a time when we have an open house for potential church members and when they join they come forward and they’re asked this promise: “Do you promise to participate in the life and mission of this family of God’s people, sharing regularly in the worship of God, and enlisting in the work of this local church as it serves the community and the world? If so please say, ‘I promise, with the help of God.’” And church members say, “I promise, with the help of God.” In return the church offers the new member a place to come and worship, pastoral care, Christian education, a place to serve in mission; that’s the covenant between church members and the church. Now we all know that of all the people we think are members, a lot of them, well, a number of them, you don’t see at worship any more or at all, and may not contribute financially and may not help with the volunteer work of the church but may still come to the church some time and say, “I need help with something. I need to talk to somebody about a problem or there’s been a death in my family and I need a funeral or there’s a wedding coming up,” or something like that. And almost invariably our church keeps that part of the covenant. It says, “We’ll help you. You haven’t necessarily kept your part but we keep our part and so if you come back and you want to put somebody in Sunday school, that’s OK, or if you need help with a wedding or a funeral or if you need help getting through a difficult time, we’ll help you.” Now once in a while it doesn’t work and sometimes it’s because somebody comes with something so specific that it just it can’t be done like, “I want a wedding or a funeral on a day when there already is something scheduled,” and they won’t budge on that. Or there’s some other little circumstance that just doesn’t quite work out. But most, the vast majority of the time, we do everything we can as a church to keep our part of that covenant. That’s how it works today. If one side doesn’t necessarily fulfill, for whatever reason, the other side still keeps the covenant. It’s a beautiful thing about covenants. It’s a hard thing to do; it’s a hard thing to sometimes be on the other side and keep the covenant when the other party isn’t, but it’s a wonderful model.

Now the third type of deal is what I’m calling, there might be a better term for it, but the unconditional promise. We heard what Jacob said to God: if you do all these things, if you take care of me, God, I’ll put your house here and I’ll give a tenth back to you. That’s Jacob’s offer of a covenant. But before that God gave an unconditional promise. God said, “I am the Lord the God of Abraham, your father and the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants and your descendants shall be like the dust of the Earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the Earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you”.  One way: God says, “I will do this for you. I will make you as vast as the dust of the Earth. I will take you back here, I will be with you, I will keep you safe and there’s nothing asked of Jacob there. There’s an implication that Jacob’s at least got to get married, have a family and start building this great nation, but really God is saying, “I’m going to do all this for you and I’m not asking you to do anything in return.” An unconditional promise. That’s something we’re not used to. Or maybe we are. Maybe we are.

I think about how parents many times have that understanding with their children. “I will be your parent. I will love you, I will take care of you. This will always be your home, you can always come here when you have a need. Period.” Not, “if you’re a good boy or a good girl,” not “if you get these grades in school,” not “if you marry the right person or don’t marry the right person,” not “if you get the right job or don’t get the right job,” not “if you stay perfect or if you make lots of mistakes.” A lot of parents have that understanding with their children. “I love you. This is your home. You can always come here. If you can’t take care of yourself, I’ll help you. I won’t necessarily do for you what you think you want me to do for you, but I will do what I think is best for you.” That’s an agreement parents often have with their kids. It’s a wonderful one-way unconditional promise: “I will be here and love you, care for you, have a home for you whenever you need it.”

And it’s something I think we do with a relative or friend of the family who becomes gravely ill or elderly and unable to really take care of themselves anymore we say the same thing. We say, “You don’t have to do anything. I don’t need anything from you in return, but during this difficult time for you I will be there for you and I will love you and I will care for you as much as I can and I will be there for you.” Almost the same words that God gives to Jacob. Or when someone goes through a depression or a critical, difficult time in their lives and they can’t take very good care of themselves we often say to that person that we love, “You don’t have to do anything for me right now. I’ll be there for you. I’ll try and give you everything I can that’s good for you. I’ll love you. I will give you a place to be. Period.”

The good news today is that contracts are very good. We need them, they have a great place in our lives. Covenants are even better. The best thing I think is the unconditional promise. We need to be more aware of how we really do those and how we offer them and how important they are and what a great return they give us. They won’t give us, neither a covenant nor an unconditional promise will not get us a huge skyscraper on whatever street is the great street in New York City in Manhattan, or won’t get us a great casino or have a multi-million dollar portfolio or a billion dollar portfolio. We won’t get those things, but we will get something better if we keep covenants and we give unconditional promises. We will know that we have given and received love and there will be deep peace in the hearts of all those who keep their covenants and who offer unconditional promises built on a foundation of love.

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