The Gospel according to Goliath: Along the Covenant Trail

Out our way, the novice cowhand has to learn a few terms to fully understand what others are talking about. For example, when Charlie first asked me to ride "drag" on our first cattle drive, I wondered if I was supposed to put on a dress. And when he told me to check if there were any pairs in the Hawthorne bushes, I thought he was pulling my leg. I may have been green, but even I knew that pears don't grow on Hawthorne trees. Later, when I learned the terms and what they meant, pushing cows was a whole lot less confusing and Charlie's directions made a lot more sense.

When I went to seminary, I have to admit, I was as green at theology as I was at roping calves. I heard all sorts of words that had little or no meaning to me, and I found that preachers who used them to impress non-seminary students tended to find congregations staring at them with the same blank expression I saw on young calves who didn't quite understand what a horse and rider were. Fortunately, in time I found out what some of those words meant and Goliath and I mean to share some of them with you.

If you have ever followed a cattle trail along the side of an arroyo, you know that you can only see a few yards at a time. Brush, rocks and the sides of the hills tend to obscure your view. But if you go up the ridge to where you can see the whole trail laid out for you, your understanding and perspective become totally different. The idea behind The Covenant Trail is to help folks go up the ridge to get an overview of the "trail" God calls us to follow, and with hope, gain a little more perspectve on where we are going and why.

So let us begin with the word "covenant." It is another word for a contract between two parties. In this case, the party of the First Part (God) has made a covenant with the party of the second part (His people) that is designed to transform both humanity and the world. Indeed, the basic covenant is stated numerous times, "I will be your God and you will be my people."

Now that leads to another word we need to define: The word "holy."  To be holy has less to do with "who" we are than "whose" we are. For the word "holy" simply means "to be set apart for God's use." A vase of flowers in the church is holy, not because the flowers are better than any others but because they have been set apart for the glory of God. In the same way, the church is "holy" because it is formed to serve God.

That leads to another term: "The church."  Most people think of the building or the institution as "the church," but that is not what the word means at all. The word we translate as "church" means "those called out, those set apart, for God's service." It has nothing to do with buildings or membership rolls, and everything to do with putting God first.

Now, related to all this is another word most folks have heard but whose meaning most they don't generally comprehend. The word is "gospel,"  and if you look it up, you will discover it means "the good news." But how can anyone fully appreciate "the good news" if they don't first comprehend "the bad news." Hence the importance of getting the big picture. As I mentioned last week, the good news of lush pastures and good water was meaningless to a cow who didn't understand that the old pasture was over-grazed and the water was drying up. Unaware that there would soon be no feed or water, they balked at being driven from the old pasture to the new one.

We balk too until we understand why God is pushing us out of the old and into the new. That is what the Covenant Trail is all about, taking us up "on the ridge" to get the big picture so that we not only see that there is a trail, but where that trail is leading and why we need to follow it. Then we discover two more important terms and their definitions: "sin" simply means to be going in the wrong direction, and "repentance" just refers to turning around, changing direction.

The Covenant Trail is the history of humanity repeatedly balking at being headed toward the green pastures and still waters of the high ground, and of God's doing all that is necessary to turn us around so we can get there. You don't have to be a cowboy to be a good theologian, but as Goliath reminds me, it sure helps.

--

Goliath and John Bruington have studied God's Word at the Institute of Horse Sense Theology located in various places around the Havre area. They hope their sharing of lessons learned will help other wanderers find the way to the green pastures as well.