Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38
Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
grace and peace to you
from the one who works to offer us grace. Amen
This Lent
we are spending time with stories of wilderness wandering
and coming home
as we remember Jesus’ last days
moving with him and the disciples through the story
to the cross and the grave
and ultimately to the new life of Easter morning.
On Ash Wednesday
we heard God call us home to the heart of God
through the transforming of our own hearts.
Last week we heard about how transitions in life
either into or out of wilderness times
are often marked by water
which reminds us of how inextricably intertwined life and death are
and that our God is the God of the living and the dead.
Today we hear about how it is never too late to start a new journey with God
because God is the one acting in the world
and who calls us to participate in the actions of God
through trusting in the promises of God.
We see this dynamic at work in our first reading for today
when God comes to Abram
and makes a covenant with him
- remember covenants are two way agreements-
but notice how most of the covenants made
are pretty one sided as far as action goes,
on the one hand Abram is supposed to walk before God and be blameless,
on the other hand God promises to make Abram exceedingly numerous,
to be the ancestor to multitudes, even kings,
and to be the God of these offspring forever,
oh and God will give Abram,
now Abraham (his name changed as a mark of his change in relationship with God)
a son, a son through his wife Sarai, now Sarah,
and it is through this son of Abraham and Sarah
that God will do these things.
And it will be all the more miraculous
and require great faith
because Abraham and Sarah are of an advanced age
and Sarah has never had any children.
Now this seems pretty straight forward,
especially for those of us who know what happens next,
how God keeps the promise God makes
even as both Abraham and Sarah
laugh at the thought of their having a child,
resulting in the name of their son Isaac- which means laughter.
But of course it’s more complicated
than what this snippet of the story suggests,
because this is not the first time that God has come to Abram
to make a covenant with him.
This whole journey started 24 years earlier
way back when Abram was seventy-five years old (a mere spring chicken)
and God came to Abram and called him out of his established home
telling him “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation…”
and Abram, trusting God
left home and wandered around the land, living in tents,
and at various places God reaffirmed the promise
to give certain bits of land to Abram’s descendants,
and generally Abram followed where God led,
though not without mishaps-
not once but twice he and Sarai must seek refuge
in foreign lands because of famine
and not once but twice does Abram pretend Sarai is his sister
because he’s afraid for his own life,
and not once but twice
does God reveal the truth and protect them.
And after ten years
the call of God turns into a formal covenant,
when God takes Abram out and promises him
as many descendants as stars in the sky-
when Abram protests because he is childless-
God reiterates that it will be Abram’s own offspring
that the numerous descendants will come from.
And Abram believes God.
Against common sense and his own protestations
Abram trusts God’s promise
and God sees the righteousness,
the faithfulness of Abram.
Now Abram believed God
when God promised that it would be his own child
who would give rise to nations,
but God doesn’t explain
how a man and a wife who have been childless for 85 years
will produce a child.
So his wife Sarai takes matters into her own hands
and convinces Abram to use her slave Hagar as a surrogate.
Hagar, mistreated at the hands of Abram and Sarai,
has her own story and relationship with God
but that is for another time.
What matters for right now
is that the result is Ishmael
born when Abram is 86 years old.
And it is only now we finally get to the part of the story
we heard this morning,
when 14 years later, when Abram is 99 years old,
God comes again
and revitalizes the covenant
making sure to include Sarah as well-
we didn’t hear this part
but Abraham does lift up his son Ishmael to God
as the one who would fulfill the promise
but God rejects Ishmael for the covenant
though does promise to bless him
and make him a great nation in his own right.
And then there’s one more part to the story,
one more part to Abraham’s faithfulness that we didn’t hear,
you might have noticed that our appointed reading
left out some verses
- in those verses are the instructions to Abraham
for the human sign of the covenant-
the circumcision of all males in the community
even servants and slaves-
and after Abraham has accepted God’s covenant in faith
he takes his son Ishmael
and all the men of his household including himself are circumcised
a tradition which is passed down to this day as a sign of the covenant.
Now this was quite a journey for Abraham and Sarah
and they started this journey late in life,
from their example we take away the lesson
that it’s never too late to respond to the call of God,
to start a journey of faith,
even if what God is calling and promising seems impossible.
I also find solace in the fact
that God is still able to accomplish what God wants
despite the very serious flaws
in the actions of Abraham and Sarah along the way,
when even in faith they sin and cause harm to others
God still works through them and their faith.
This is Paul’s point in Romans,
that what is important about Abraham is his faith
rather than his actions,
and it is through Abraham’s faith
that God was able to do the work of God
anything Abraham himself did-
like follow the sign of the covenant through circumcision-
is incidental to the story.
This is important to Paul
because he has been called to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the gentiles,
to those at least according to the practice of the law
who are outside the covenant,
and there are some that argue
that the practice of the law
the keeping of the covenant
must come first.
To which Paul points to Abraham
and says his faith came first,
circumcision and the rest of the laws that emerged
are a way of honoring the covenant,
a way of demonstrating faithfulness in the promises of God
- promises that it is up to God to keep.
“The promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace…”
God is the one who acts
and who out of grace
shares the results of those actions
with those who trust God
and nowhere is this more profound
than in what God does in Jesus
“who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”
On our own we can never be perfect,
Jesus in grace promises to join us to his own perfection.
This is what Jesus is on his way to do
when Peter rebukes him,
and Jesus will not let anything stand in his way
even earnest followers
who he knows will fall away
when the way becomes too difficult for them,
even the ones who say they will go to the cross with him,
will fail when the time comes.
And the good news for them,
for us,
is that our salvation does not depend on what they do,
or what we do,
it depends on what Jesus does
and he does what he says,
he keeps his promise,
a promise he calls us to trust in,
on a journey of faith
where it is never too late to start. Amen