Do You Promise?

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without
wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
Hebrews 10:25

There is an old Seinfeld episode in which Jerry has made a reservation to pick up a rental car at the airport.
He arrives, tired from his trip, only to discover that his expected car is not available.
“Do you have my reservation?” Jerry inquires. “Yes,” the agent replies.
“And doesn’t that mean you promise to have a car waiting for me when I arrive?”
“Well, yes. I know what a reservation is.” And so where is the car?
The agent stammers a bit, until Jerry finally responds,
“the problem with you is that you know how to make the reservation,
but you just don’t know how to keep the reservation. And it’s the keeping that matters.”

That’s true of promises, isn’t it? The making of promises is rather easy.
They are part of the necessary rhythm of life, essential to all public and personal interaction.
But the keeping of promises is another matter, as most of us are all too aware.
We say vows when we get married, and then sadly discover
we—or they—or us can’t follow through and the marriage is over.
We promise our spouse we going to be better about helping out around the house,
and in short order find ourselves backsliding.
It turns out the job we hired on to isn’t exactly what we thought was promised.
The person who struggles with alcohol promises themselves they don’t need that drink to get through the day,
and find they slip up again. Politicians promise us the moon when running for office,
and we most often are sorely disappointed by the performance.
In our own minds, we imagine that keeping promises is the stuff of great drama.
But in fact, promise making and keeping, is usually anything but heroic;
it is rather everyday and ordinary, and yet promise keeping is the glue that holds families and communities together.

God is a promises keeping God—as our text says,
“The one who has promised is faithful,” and when we keep promises we are mirroring God.
I was deeply impressed as an young women helping my mother take care of my father,
bedridden by lung cancer. All their hopes and dreams for retirement were swallowed up with sleepless nights.
How do you do it? I wondered.
Her answer was simple.
I made promises that I would love him in health and in sickness.
That simple promise enabled her to persevere in difficult circumstances.
It was her way of reaching out into an unpredictable future
and making one thing predictable—that she would be there,
even when being there cost her more than she wanted.
But when a person makes such a promise,
he or she stretches themselves out in circumstances that no one can control
and controls at least one thing: that they will be there no matter what the circumstances turn out to be.
With a simple word of promise, a person creates God like position.
When we come here, to church, we are asked to make promises.
We make promises when a baby gets baptized, as parents, and as a congregation.
We make promises at weddings.
Hebrews reminds us that the purpose of this promise we make not to neglect worship is encouragement.
The core promise is to make Christ the center of who we are,
it is the promise to let Christ inside,

So, this promise keeping God invites us to come to the table, where Christ promises to be present.
Drawing on this promise of God, tangibly expressed,
God then send us out from here, to be his living body, making and keeping promises to God and each other.
Be Faithful in making promises, for this is a measure of being a light unto Him,
That gave us Life!