This sermon is for the 4th Sunday of Advent. It's based on the following texts: Isaiah 7:10-17 and Matthew 1:18-25
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Introduction
Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent and this season of repentance and preparation for the birth of Christ is drawing to a close. This year is another year when Christmas day follows on quite quickly from the last Sunday in Advent and so, rather than 4 or even 6 days of final preparation, we plunge headlong from the last week of Advent into Christmas day without a lot of time to think.
The American theologian Walter Brueggemann had this to say about Advent: ‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’
In today’s Old and New Testament readings, we hear stories of two people who probably felt very much under siege. One, quite literally.
King Ahaz
The first person was King Ahaz of the Kingdom of Judah. The holy city of Jerusalem was part of the kingdom of Judah and Judah was threatened by her enemies: the Kingdom of Israel was one of these enemies and Syria was another.
The King was worried that his country would be attacked at any moment and he wanted to make an alliance with the kingdom of Assyria in order to strengthen his strategic position. But the prophet Isaiah comes to the king and tells him, basically, ‘Don’t worry, God will protect Jerusalem and, just so you can be sure this is the hand of God, ask for a sign and it will be granted to you.’
Ahaz declines to ask God for a sign and Isaiah tells him, then God will give you this sign anyway: a young woman is going to have a son and she will name him Immanuel – God with Us. Before this boy is about two years old, the age when children begin to have a sense of self, all of your enemies will have ceased to be of any threat.
Basically, Isaiah says to king Ahaz, don’t try to take the matter into your own hands, simply trust in the Lord and within the next two to three years, you will see that your kingdom has remained intact.
I don’t know if they had the saying then, but I imagine king Ahaz might very well have been thinking ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves’. In fact, this may very well have been why he declined to ask for a sign: because he wanted to take matters into his own hands. King Ahaz was not known for being the most pious of Judah’s kings – it was he who introduced the worship of the Baal into the kingdom. King Ahaz probably preferred to take matters into his own hands rather than to trust in God to save his kingdom. He didn’t seem to think that there was much use in trying to find God’s will in his situation; he wanted to save himself.
‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’
Joseph of Nazareth
And then, in this morning’s Gospel reading, we have Joseph. Matthew chooses to tell the story of Jesus’ identity and ancestry by having the angel announcing the conception of Jesus to Joseph rather than to Mary. And the angel tells Joseph not to be afraid.
I imagine that Joseph must have been quite afraid actually, and the passage gives us some indication of his dilemma. We are told that Joseph is a man who keeps the Jewish law – he is a ‘righteous’ man. And the law as set out in Deuteronomy is that a betrothed woman who becomes pregnant by another man is to be stoned at the city gate.
The passage also gives us strong evidence that Mary’s stoning would not be acceptable to Joseph, but we can be certain that the requirement to keep the law would have weighed heavily upon him. It was certainly a huge dilemma: the requirement of the law on one hand and the compassion of a good man on the other hand. Which option should Joseph choose? If ever there was a situation where a person could not save themselves, this must be a prime example.
And at the point when it appears that there is no way out of this predicament, an angel of God appears to him and presents him with an utterly preposterous story: That Mary has not been unfaithful and that the baby she is carrying is going to be both Saviour and God With Us – Jesus and Immanuel.
And somehow, by the time the angel leaves, Joseph is at peace and he is ready to stand by Mary as her husband. Joseph was ready. His heart was open and, unlike Ahaz, he was alert to be able to see God working in a new way.
‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’
Are we Ready?
So the question for this morning is: Are we ready? Are we ready for the saving one? Are we alert to God’s presence all around us? Do we understand that Immanuel, God with Us, is present in our lives even when we may be having trouble perceiving him?
The thing that I find slightly frustrating about the story of the annunciation to Joseph is that he apparently goes from a fairly intense wilderness experience to complete peace in God’s purposes in just eight short verses. If you take the story at a very literal level, Joseph lays down to bed one night wracked with emotional pain and, by dawn, he is at peace with the very difficult task that God has given him to do.
Most of the time, real life is not that way at all and, coming to a place of peace with the events of our lives is often extremely difficult and takes a lot more than just a few hours between dusk and dawn. When circumstances are difficult for us or for those we love, it can be hard to see God in it and don’t we sometimes wish that an angel would appear and say ‘Fear not’ and make all our anxieties go away?
But this story isn’t meant to be a novel and it’s not meant to spin out the situation so that readers enter into Joseph’s anxiety and struggle in real time. This story is meant to be a narrative about who God is and what his purposes are for humanity and for his creation.
God himself will enter into the world and so the child is to be named Immanuel, God with Us. Secondly, the child will be the saviour of his people and so he will be named Yesuha – Joshua or Jesus. The child’s ancestry will be both human and divine.
Matthew spends the first part of Chapter 1 outlining the genealogy of Joseph and Jesus: a genealogy meant to emphasise that God’s purposes for his creation are to be displayed in his covenant relationship with Israel. God’s character and identity are intrinsically bound up with the people of Israel, with human history, and with God’s physical creation. God’s promise to all of humanity is that God is here and his Spirit is with us.
The Good News of Advent
Walter Brueggemann said: ‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’ This is both a call to preparation and, it’s also a promise.
It is a very real part of the human faith experience that there are times when we find it difficult to perceive God’s presence at all, never mind perceiving him as being present all around us.
Like King Ahaz, we might be tempted to think that there is something that we can do to save ourselves, when in reality there is nothing we can do.
Like Joseph prior to the angel’s visit, we may sometimes find ourselves in a state of fear and anxiety.
The Gospel story this morning is not telling us to ‘snap out of it’ and help ourselves. The Gospel story this morning assures us that God has made a promise for Good with humanity and that God has kept his promise in the birth of his Son.
God is here with us. Immanuel, fully present in our humanity. Salvation is here in the birth of Jesus: Salvation from sin and guilt, Salvation from death and destruction, from poverty, sickness and hunger, from despair and hopelessness.
Whether or not we perceive God’s presence, whether or not we feel God’s presence, God’s promise is there and it has been fulfilled in the birth of Jesus.
Conclusion
Conclusion
In a few minutes, we will come to the Lord’s Table where we remember that Jesus promised to be with us whenever we celebrate this sacrament in remembrance of him. As we remember, we use real, physical things – bread and wine – the common foods of our everyday life.
And we remember that the God of Moses brought the people of Israel out of Egypt and that, in Christ, his covenant with humanity has been fulfilled.
As we remember Jesus’ promise to be with us in the Lord’s supper, I pray that our hearts will also be ready to receive the love of God in Christ as he comes to us in the birth of the baby Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man. Amen
Showing posts with label trust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trust. Show all posts
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Monday, June 18, 2007
Sunday 17 June - Storm at Sea
This sermon is based on: Mark 4:35-41
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Introduction
Mark 4:37: ‘Suddenly a strong wind blew up, and the waves began to spill over into the boat, so that it was about to fill with water.’
A couple of years ago a friend of mine became pregnant. Sarah – which is not her real name – was a convert to Judaism. And so, as a baby-gift I gave her a book called ‘How to be a Jewish Parent’
Some time later Sarah remarked to me that the book had revealed to her something she didn’t know. That was the three things that Rabbinic law (4th century) requires a Jewish parent to teach their child.
The first thing is religious, it’s something we share with the Jewish people and it’s pretty easy to guess. The Torah – the first five books of the Old Testament
The second thing is quite a bit more difficult to guess. It’s not religious. It’s very practical. And it’s something people need in order to make a living. Under Rabbinic law, Jewish parents have to teach their children a trade
The third thing is very difficult to guess. And, indeed, you might even think it’s a very odd thing. Jewish parents have to teach their children how to swim.
Here is what a modern rabbi had to say about the requirement to teach one’s children to swim:
What I think is interesting about this requirement to teach your children to swim is the fact that, in the tradition of the early Jewish people, the sea represented unrestrained chaos. The sea represented the powers of evil and the powers of darkness.
This would have been the way that the Evangelist Mark and the Jewish readers of his Gospel would have regarded the sea – as something dangerous, as the home territory of the forces of evil and destruction. But Mark’s Jewish readers would most likely have pictured hell as the sea at night: cold, dark, unpredictably dangerous and able to overwhelm a small fishing boat at a moment’s notice.
So when we consider the story of Jesus calming the storm, we can begin to see that this scene is very troubling. First, it is troubling from the point of view of what happens in the story. Second, it is troubling from the point of view of the disciples’ faith.
The Trouble with the Story
So what is troubling about the story itself? Remember first of all that some of the disciples were fishermen who were used to handling boats. They knew the Sea of Galilee intimately and they could handle an every-day rough sea.
But the storm in this story is no every-day rough sea. The disciples who were experienced boatmen were afraid for their lives. They were more than afraid, they were in a panic.
We also know that it was no every-day rough sea because it was a storm at night. Night-time storms are highly unusual on the Sea of Galilee – dare we say unnatural. Because it is the wind conditions that are caused by the heating of the atmosphere during the day time that are the usual causes of a storm on Galilee.
So, this unnatural storm whips up out of no-where, in the middle of the night when a storm should not be happening and professional sailors are terrified for their very lives
Since we now know that the sea represents the forces of evil and the forces of darkness to Mark and his readers, we can see that this is a situation where Jesus and the disciples are being viciously attacked by the forces of evil and the disciples are pretty convinced that the forces of evil are about to win!
‘Have you still no faith?’
And then, miracle of miracles, Jesus wakes and with one word – it’s one word in the Greek text – the storm ceases at his command. And how do the disciples react? Now they are scared of Jesus!
‘Have you still no faith?’
So, I think the story line itself is very troubling: First, the forces of chaos have reared their ugly heads with full force. Secondly, when Jesus shows that even the forces of chaos bow to his command, the disciples regard him as an object of fear.
The Trouble with the Disciples’ Faith
So what’s the trouble with the disciples’ faith?
That seems to be the theme of Mark’s Gospel, where the question ‘Have you still no faith?’ happens over and over again throughout the Gospel. No matter how long they have walked with Jesus as his disciples, no matter what Jesus has said to them, no matter what manner of miracle he performs, Mark portrays the disciples as never quite ‘getting it’ about Jesus.
And, truth be told, that’s one of the things I actually like about Mark’s Gospel – that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime never quite ‘got it’ until – as Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles – they received the Holy Spirit after Jesus’ ascension.
Because being a Christian – having Christian faith – isn’t primarily about ‘getting it’ about Jesus. Being a Christian – Christian faith – is primarily about trust in God. It’s about trust in the Father, trust in the Son and trust in the Holy Spirit.
I often say that Christian faith is the faith to throw yourself out of the window of a burning building knowing that your beloved will catch you. But you could also say that Christian faith is the faith to remain in the fishing boat with your beloved asleep whilst the forces of death and evil rage around you.
Once you throw yourself out of a burning building, once you are in the middle of a stormy sea in a small fishing boat – you are committed. There ain’t gonna be no changing your mind in either of those situations. This is a faith where your actions speak for themselves – louder than words. This is real trust.
But the disciples’ faith is still in the beginning stages – and that’s OK, by the way – because everyone has to start at the beginning. The disciples, who are professionals with respect to the sea, want Jesus to display the same sense of urgency that they have about the sea.
In our story, the Mark says that a great wind blew up and then later, when Jesus calmed the storm that there was a great calm. The disciples wanted Jesus to have great urgency, but Jesus was actually inviting them to have great calm. Through faith, the Triune God who created the sea out of chaos, invites us to have a great calm, he invites us to have a peace that passes all human understanding through faith in his power and his purposes
But many times, we don’t want to have God’s great peace. Many times, we want God to have our great urgency.
It seems to me that this was what the disciples were doing: Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth. Jesus, as he demonstrates in this story, has authority over the very fabric of creation and he has authority over the forces of evil. But the disciples were not content with Jesus’ mere presence among them. The disciples were in a great panic and they wanted Jesus up and panicking too. Instead, they could have traded their great panic for the great peace that deep faith can offer.
The disciples accuse Jesus of not caring about their fate. I wonder if you recognise this attitude too. I know I do: ‘God, I’m beginning to wonder if you care about the problems I have because I think if you did that you’d do things my way.’
Sigh. ‘Have you still no faith?’
Conclusion
This story is difficult. I think it presents us with questions and hard challenges.
The story doesn’t even attempt to give an answer as to why God permits the forces of evil and chaos to rise up in our lives, the story only assures us that, through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, that the Triune God has dominion over the forces of evil.
The story challenges us to trust deeply in God, even if he doesn’t seem to be acting in a way that we would like him to act. The story gives us no reasons for the storm, it only gives us the assurance that God is in control.
The story also tells us that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime faced the same challenges of faith that we do. So it’s OK to come into God’s presence with our doubts and it’s OK to pray loudly to God when we are in a panic.
But if we are looking for an answer, don’t expect God’s answer to be ‘OK, I’ll join you in your great fear.’ Expect God’s answer to be ‘I offer you my great peace’.
Have faith in God, have Faith in God’s peace.
Let us pray:
* From InterfaithFamily.com. http://www.interfaithfamily.com/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ekLSK5MLIrG&b=297381&ct=2010081.
** From Common Worship Daily Prayer: http://cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/daily/psalter/psalms101to118.html
==
Introduction
Mark 4:37: ‘Suddenly a strong wind blew up, and the waves began to spill over into the boat, so that it was about to fill with water.’
A couple of years ago a friend of mine became pregnant. Sarah – which is not her real name – was a convert to Judaism. And so, as a baby-gift I gave her a book called ‘How to be a Jewish Parent’
Some time later Sarah remarked to me that the book had revealed to her something she didn’t know. That was the three things that Rabbinic law (4th century) requires a Jewish parent to teach their child.
The first thing is religious, it’s something we share with the Jewish people and it’s pretty easy to guess. The Torah – the first five books of the Old Testament
The second thing is quite a bit more difficult to guess. It’s not religious. It’s very practical. And it’s something people need in order to make a living. Under Rabbinic law, Jewish parents have to teach their children a trade
The third thing is very difficult to guess. And, indeed, you might even think it’s a very odd thing. Jewish parents have to teach their children how to swim.
Here is what a modern rabbi had to say about the requirement to teach one’s children to swim:
Learning how to swim is about basic life skills. It is parents' obligation to teach their children how to recognize danger and how to avoid or overcome it. This may include conversations about not putting your hand on the stove, and continues with how to have a successful and respectful argument. "Learning to swim" is teaching about vision and limits and risk taking. It also includes lessons on knowing where the shore is and how to return to a place of safety in order to venture out again on another day.*
What I think is interesting about this requirement to teach your children to swim is the fact that, in the tradition of the early Jewish people, the sea represented unrestrained chaos. The sea represented the powers of evil and the powers of darkness.
This would have been the way that the Evangelist Mark and the Jewish readers of his Gospel would have regarded the sea – as something dangerous, as the home territory of the forces of evil and destruction. But Mark’s Jewish readers would most likely have pictured hell as the sea at night: cold, dark, unpredictably dangerous and able to overwhelm a small fishing boat at a moment’s notice.
So when we consider the story of Jesus calming the storm, we can begin to see that this scene is very troubling. First, it is troubling from the point of view of what happens in the story. Second, it is troubling from the point of view of the disciples’ faith.
The Trouble with the Story
So what is troubling about the story itself? Remember first of all that some of the disciples were fishermen who were used to handling boats. They knew the Sea of Galilee intimately and they could handle an every-day rough sea.
But the storm in this story is no every-day rough sea. The disciples who were experienced boatmen were afraid for their lives. They were more than afraid, they were in a panic.
We also know that it was no every-day rough sea because it was a storm at night. Night-time storms are highly unusual on the Sea of Galilee – dare we say unnatural. Because it is the wind conditions that are caused by the heating of the atmosphere during the day time that are the usual causes of a storm on Galilee.
So, this unnatural storm whips up out of no-where, in the middle of the night when a storm should not be happening and professional sailors are terrified for their very lives
Since we now know that the sea represents the forces of evil and the forces of darkness to Mark and his readers, we can see that this is a situation where Jesus and the disciples are being viciously attacked by the forces of evil and the disciples are pretty convinced that the forces of evil are about to win!
‘Have you still no faith?’
And then, miracle of miracles, Jesus wakes and with one word – it’s one word in the Greek text – the storm ceases at his command. And how do the disciples react? Now they are scared of Jesus!
‘Have you still no faith?’
So, I think the story line itself is very troubling: First, the forces of chaos have reared their ugly heads with full force. Secondly, when Jesus shows that even the forces of chaos bow to his command, the disciples regard him as an object of fear.
The Trouble with the Disciples’ Faith
So what’s the trouble with the disciples’ faith?
That seems to be the theme of Mark’s Gospel, where the question ‘Have you still no faith?’ happens over and over again throughout the Gospel. No matter how long they have walked with Jesus as his disciples, no matter what Jesus has said to them, no matter what manner of miracle he performs, Mark portrays the disciples as never quite ‘getting it’ about Jesus.
And, truth be told, that’s one of the things I actually like about Mark’s Gospel – that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime never quite ‘got it’ until – as Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles – they received the Holy Spirit after Jesus’ ascension.
Because being a Christian – having Christian faith – isn’t primarily about ‘getting it’ about Jesus. Being a Christian – Christian faith – is primarily about trust in God. It’s about trust in the Father, trust in the Son and trust in the Holy Spirit.
I often say that Christian faith is the faith to throw yourself out of the window of a burning building knowing that your beloved will catch you. But you could also say that Christian faith is the faith to remain in the fishing boat with your beloved asleep whilst the forces of death and evil rage around you.
Once you throw yourself out of a burning building, once you are in the middle of a stormy sea in a small fishing boat – you are committed. There ain’t gonna be no changing your mind in either of those situations. This is a faith where your actions speak for themselves – louder than words. This is real trust.
But the disciples’ faith is still in the beginning stages – and that’s OK, by the way – because everyone has to start at the beginning. The disciples, who are professionals with respect to the sea, want Jesus to display the same sense of urgency that they have about the sea.
In our story, the Mark says that a great wind blew up and then later, when Jesus calmed the storm that there was a great calm. The disciples wanted Jesus to have great urgency, but Jesus was actually inviting them to have great calm. Through faith, the Triune God who created the sea out of chaos, invites us to have a great calm, he invites us to have a peace that passes all human understanding through faith in his power and his purposes
But many times, we don’t want to have God’s great peace. Many times, we want God to have our great urgency.
It seems to me that this was what the disciples were doing: Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth. Jesus, as he demonstrates in this story, has authority over the very fabric of creation and he has authority over the forces of evil. But the disciples were not content with Jesus’ mere presence among them. The disciples were in a great panic and they wanted Jesus up and panicking too. Instead, they could have traded their great panic for the great peace that deep faith can offer.
The disciples accuse Jesus of not caring about their fate. I wonder if you recognise this attitude too. I know I do: ‘God, I’m beginning to wonder if you care about the problems I have because I think if you did that you’d do things my way.’
Sigh. ‘Have you still no faith?’
Conclusion
This story is difficult. I think it presents us with questions and hard challenges.
The story doesn’t even attempt to give an answer as to why God permits the forces of evil and chaos to rise up in our lives, the story only assures us that, through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, that the Triune God has dominion over the forces of evil.
The story challenges us to trust deeply in God, even if he doesn’t seem to be acting in a way that we would like him to act. The story gives us no reasons for the storm, it only gives us the assurance that God is in control.
The story also tells us that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime faced the same challenges of faith that we do. So it’s OK to come into God’s presence with our doubts and it’s OK to pray loudly to God when we are in a panic.
But if we are looking for an answer, don’t expect God’s answer to be ‘OK, I’ll join you in your great fear.’ Expect God’s answer to be ‘I offer you my great peace’.
Have faith in God, have Faith in God’s peace.
Let us pray:
O living Christ, rescue us from foolish passion and still the storms of our self-will; and, as you are our anchor in this life, so bring us to the haven you have prepared for us; for your mercy’s sake. Amen **---
* From InterfaithFamily.com. http://www.interfaithfamily.com/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ekLSK5MLIrG&b=297381&ct=2010081.
** From Common Worship Daily Prayer: http://cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/daily/psalter/psalms101to118.html
Friday, March 16, 2007
Sunday 4 March 2007 - Trust In God
This is a two-part sermon based on Genesis 15:1-18 and Luke 13:31-35
Genesis 15:1-18
Faith without ‘results’
The theme of today’s readings, my commentaries reliably inform me, is “Trust in God” Today’s readings are about faith and trust and hope but neither of them are very comfortable readings.
Consider the Old Testament reading that we just heard. I expect that many of us are familiar with the story of God’s promise to Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah) but I want to quickly put this particular reading from the 15th Chapter of Genesis into context.
It was way back in Chapter 12 when God told Abram that he would bless Abram and make him a great nation if Abram would set out on a journey toward the land that God was promising him.
By Chapter 15, when this reading takes place, much time has passed. Abram has seen Caanan and been told by God that his descendents will live there although he will not. He and Sarai had been forced into exile in Egypt, they have lived with and parted from Abram’s nephew Lot, and Abram has done battle with foreign kings.
We can assume that Sarai is already too old to bear children because in the very next chapter, Sarai tells Abram to conceive a child by her servant. Although Abram has received a promise from God, he and Sarai have arrived at the twilight of their lives with absolutely no concrete sign that God’s promise is going to be fulfilled.
Now, of course, we know the end of the story, but in order to appreciate this reading, we need to forget what we know. At the moment, the story is one of unfulfilled potential, of longing, pain, disappointment and probably even a sense of mourning for what might have been. The man who was arguably one of the greatest Patriarchs of the Judeo-Christian tradition is barren and, at the moment, he is forced to continue to live in a state of barrenness.
Even when the longing of Abraham and Sarah is fulfilled by the birth of their son Isaac, I don’t think it’s a case of a fairy-tale ending of the “they all lived happily ever after” type. Abraham dies without seeing his descendents living in the Promised Land so he dies not knowing whether God’s promise is ultimately fulfilled.
To be a person of faith is to trust in the future that God has promised. To be a person of faith is to live assured of that future even in a barren or deathly present.
This kind of faith can be really difficult. By our nature, human beings like to deal with tangible things. It often seems contrary to common sense to be told, like Abraham: no, your prayers have not yet been answered, and they may not be answered in your lifetime, but I have made my promise to you that hope does exist, that new life does exist and I give you my solemn pledge that everything I am doing is for a future of justice and righteousness and for the best interests of humankind.
I don’t know about you, but if I’m really honest with myself, there are many times in my life when I don’t want to live with the tension required by faith. I want to know with certainty how God intends to bring about the Kingdom, I want to know what that Kingdom is going to look like and I want to know when it’s going to happen. And most of all, I want to see people who I care about be young and healthy and prosperous forever, even though I know that this is not the way the world works.
I suspect that lots of people think this way. The reason that I think this is because, as human beings we seem to be constantly searching out magical solutions to the challenges of being human.
I’ve recently heard of a new movement in the US called ‘The Secret’; It started with a DVD which claims that there exists an ancient ‘secret’ of success that has been suppressed by the powers that be and – surprise, surprise – by the Roman Catholic church, of course. The advert for the DVD claims that all successful people have known ‘The Secret’ and that by unlocking ‘The Secret’, a person can have health, wealth and happiness and anything else that they want.
In the Christian Church we have these movements as well. If you just ‘do’ Christianity the ‘right way’ or have the right beliefs about healing ministry or speaking in tongues, or whatever, all your problems will be instantly healed and magically go away.
This all too human desire for easy solutions is not so much about faith as it is about finding faith difficult. The consolation is that we are in good company.
The great Patriarch Abraham also got tired of having faith. He also got tired of waiting. He did continue in his faith, but not without asking God: Where? How? How Long?
Luke 13:31-35
Seeing God in the Emptiness
Every now and then someone says to me “Well, of course, faith is a crutch for those who are not strong enough to face life on their own.” But I don’t actually think that faith is a crutch and I think you know by now that I don’t think it’s always the easy option.
There are times when people of faith are somehow given by God the courage to stand and face the looming empty spaces of human existence. Perhaps an emptiness of illness, fear of death, fear for a loved one, or the fear of hopelessness, whatever the emptiness consists of. Faith in God gives us the ability to stop and linger in that uncomfortable place and live in that uncomfortable place despite the fact that you don’t really want to be in there in the first place.
But our culture is very uncomfortable with this experience of emptiness. We immediately look to fill the empty places with activity, with words, but most of all with the “certainty” that everything will work out OK in the end. We create a lot of noise and busyness to distract ourselves. But it is sometimes during these times and in these places of emptiness that we are able to see God more clearly.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus stood and looked into the void and he chose to walk toward it rather than away from it. Today’s Gospel reading – perplexing as it may seem – is, I think, about Jesus making an intentional choice to walk towards his crucifixion.
Now the way that you might teach this to a young person might be to say that ‘Jesus had to die for our sins, so that we could be saved. So Jesus made the decision to go to Jerusalem where he knew that he would die.’
I just want to unpack this a bit for adult ears because I don’t think the scenario was that simple.
In making this decision to walk toward his crucifixion, I think that there was a lot of faith involved on Jesus’ part. Remember that he was fully human as well as fully divine.
I think that the significance of Jesus’ incredible faith was his ability to look into the gaping emptiness of his upcoming crucifixion and see God in that emptiness.
The emptiness he faced included not only his own death, but also all the sin and hopelessness of the entire cosmos: past, present and future. Jesus looked into the gaping void of eternal death, despair, depravity and destruction and in this void he had the faith to see God’s purposes for the future.
Ultimately, Jesus had to trust in the Resurrection. With no reason to do so other than God’s promise and covenant – the same covenant that God made with Abraham - Jesus had to trust that God’s purpose was ultimately a purpose for life rather than for death. And so do we.
Why does Jesus set his sights on Jerusalem? Quoting Psalm 118, Jesus says that he is going to Jerusalem because it is the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.
The Temple City of Jerusalem, which is supposed to be the sign and the symbol of the Kingdom of God on Earth, is not. Jesus is going to tear down the Temple and rebuild it in three days. The presence of God on earth does not dwell in the Temple. The presence of God on earth will dwell in the Risen Christ.
The sacrifice of the Temple is going to be replaced once and for all by Jesus’ once and final sacrifice. This is a sacrifice of Love (with a capital L) and a sacrifice of Forgiveness (with a capital F).
The worship of God through laws and prohibitions, through sacrifices and rituals is going to be replaced by God’s love and forgiveness. This divine love and forgiveness is costly. If Christian love is self-giving love, the crucifixion is the ultimate self-giving.
Martin Luther said that Jesus defeated sin, death and the power of the devil. Earlier on, I said that Jesus gazed into the abyss of the sin and hopelessness of the entire cosmos and that he had the faith to believe that God’s purposes would prevail.
I suspect that there are no words on earth that are adequate to express what our salvation is about. In very crude terms this is the ultimate stand-off between good and evil, between God and ‘Satan’, between hope and despair.
What is the eternal meaning of existence? Is it death, despair and destruction? Or is it life, hope and creation? The Christian tradition has always affirmed that the external meaning of existence is life.
As Christians, we believe that the Christ Event is the fulfilment of the covenant promise that God made with the Patriarchs. The Abrahamic Covenant is particularly meaningful to us, because Christians see this covenant as being not just to the Jewish people but to all peoples and all nations.
Conclusion
I said earlier that the theme for today’s readings is “Trust in God”. Both Abraham and Jesus had their faith and their trust in God challenged in extreme circumstances.
God asked Abraham to have faith, against all apparent reason, that he would be the father of God’s people and indeed, the father of God’s covenant with all nations.
As part of his divine mission, Jesus was called to look into the abyss of eternal evil and have faith in God’s purposes for life, to have faith in the resurrection and thereby to BE the catalyst for eternal life: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
On this second Sunday of Lent, I pray that we may be given the grace of faith both when faith comes easily and when it is difficult. I pray that when faith is difficult, that we may be inspired by the faith of Abraham but also take comfort in the fact that he too challenged and questioned God.
But most of all, I pray that we remember that it was Jesus’ faith in the love and forgiveness of God that brought salvation into the world.
During Lent, we examine our lives and our consciences, but we also look forward to Easter in the faith and the conviction that the eternal purpose of God is life, hope and creation. Amen
Genesis 15:1-18
Faith without ‘results’
The theme of today’s readings, my commentaries reliably inform me, is “Trust in God” Today’s readings are about faith and trust and hope but neither of them are very comfortable readings.
Consider the Old Testament reading that we just heard. I expect that many of us are familiar with the story of God’s promise to Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah) but I want to quickly put this particular reading from the 15th Chapter of Genesis into context.
It was way back in Chapter 12 when God told Abram that he would bless Abram and make him a great nation if Abram would set out on a journey toward the land that God was promising him.
By Chapter 15, when this reading takes place, much time has passed. Abram has seen Caanan and been told by God that his descendents will live there although he will not. He and Sarai had been forced into exile in Egypt, they have lived with and parted from Abram’s nephew Lot, and Abram has done battle with foreign kings.
We can assume that Sarai is already too old to bear children because in the very next chapter, Sarai tells Abram to conceive a child by her servant. Although Abram has received a promise from God, he and Sarai have arrived at the twilight of their lives with absolutely no concrete sign that God’s promise is going to be fulfilled.
Now, of course, we know the end of the story, but in order to appreciate this reading, we need to forget what we know. At the moment, the story is one of unfulfilled potential, of longing, pain, disappointment and probably even a sense of mourning for what might have been. The man who was arguably one of the greatest Patriarchs of the Judeo-Christian tradition is barren and, at the moment, he is forced to continue to live in a state of barrenness.
Even when the longing of Abraham and Sarah is fulfilled by the birth of their son Isaac, I don’t think it’s a case of a fairy-tale ending of the “they all lived happily ever after” type. Abraham dies without seeing his descendents living in the Promised Land so he dies not knowing whether God’s promise is ultimately fulfilled.
To be a person of faith is to trust in the future that God has promised. To be a person of faith is to live assured of that future even in a barren or deathly present.
This kind of faith can be really difficult. By our nature, human beings like to deal with tangible things. It often seems contrary to common sense to be told, like Abraham: no, your prayers have not yet been answered, and they may not be answered in your lifetime, but I have made my promise to you that hope does exist, that new life does exist and I give you my solemn pledge that everything I am doing is for a future of justice and righteousness and for the best interests of humankind.
I don’t know about you, but if I’m really honest with myself, there are many times in my life when I don’t want to live with the tension required by faith. I want to know with certainty how God intends to bring about the Kingdom, I want to know what that Kingdom is going to look like and I want to know when it’s going to happen. And most of all, I want to see people who I care about be young and healthy and prosperous forever, even though I know that this is not the way the world works.
I suspect that lots of people think this way. The reason that I think this is because, as human beings we seem to be constantly searching out magical solutions to the challenges of being human.
I’ve recently heard of a new movement in the US called ‘The Secret’; It started with a DVD which claims that there exists an ancient ‘secret’ of success that has been suppressed by the powers that be and – surprise, surprise – by the Roman Catholic church, of course. The advert for the DVD claims that all successful people have known ‘The Secret’ and that by unlocking ‘The Secret’, a person can have health, wealth and happiness and anything else that they want.
In the Christian Church we have these movements as well. If you just ‘do’ Christianity the ‘right way’ or have the right beliefs about healing ministry or speaking in tongues, or whatever, all your problems will be instantly healed and magically go away.
This all too human desire for easy solutions is not so much about faith as it is about finding faith difficult. The consolation is that we are in good company.
The great Patriarch Abraham also got tired of having faith. He also got tired of waiting. He did continue in his faith, but not without asking God: Where? How? How Long?
Luke 13:31-35
Seeing God in the Emptiness
Every now and then someone says to me “Well, of course, faith is a crutch for those who are not strong enough to face life on their own.” But I don’t actually think that faith is a crutch and I think you know by now that I don’t think it’s always the easy option.
There are times when people of faith are somehow given by God the courage to stand and face the looming empty spaces of human existence. Perhaps an emptiness of illness, fear of death, fear for a loved one, or the fear of hopelessness, whatever the emptiness consists of. Faith in God gives us the ability to stop and linger in that uncomfortable place and live in that uncomfortable place despite the fact that you don’t really want to be in there in the first place.
But our culture is very uncomfortable with this experience of emptiness. We immediately look to fill the empty places with activity, with words, but most of all with the “certainty” that everything will work out OK in the end. We create a lot of noise and busyness to distract ourselves. But it is sometimes during these times and in these places of emptiness that we are able to see God more clearly.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus stood and looked into the void and he chose to walk toward it rather than away from it. Today’s Gospel reading – perplexing as it may seem – is, I think, about Jesus making an intentional choice to walk towards his crucifixion.
Now the way that you might teach this to a young person might be to say that ‘Jesus had to die for our sins, so that we could be saved. So Jesus made the decision to go to Jerusalem where he knew that he would die.’
I just want to unpack this a bit for adult ears because I don’t think the scenario was that simple.
In making this decision to walk toward his crucifixion, I think that there was a lot of faith involved on Jesus’ part. Remember that he was fully human as well as fully divine.
I think that the significance of Jesus’ incredible faith was his ability to look into the gaping emptiness of his upcoming crucifixion and see God in that emptiness.
The emptiness he faced included not only his own death, but also all the sin and hopelessness of the entire cosmos: past, present and future. Jesus looked into the gaping void of eternal death, despair, depravity and destruction and in this void he had the faith to see God’s purposes for the future.
Ultimately, Jesus had to trust in the Resurrection. With no reason to do so other than God’s promise and covenant – the same covenant that God made with Abraham - Jesus had to trust that God’s purpose was ultimately a purpose for life rather than for death. And so do we.
Why does Jesus set his sights on Jerusalem? Quoting Psalm 118, Jesus says that he is going to Jerusalem because it is the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.
The Temple City of Jerusalem, which is supposed to be the sign and the symbol of the Kingdom of God on Earth, is not. Jesus is going to tear down the Temple and rebuild it in three days. The presence of God on earth does not dwell in the Temple. The presence of God on earth will dwell in the Risen Christ.
The sacrifice of the Temple is going to be replaced once and for all by Jesus’ once and final sacrifice. This is a sacrifice of Love (with a capital L) and a sacrifice of Forgiveness (with a capital F).
The worship of God through laws and prohibitions, through sacrifices and rituals is going to be replaced by God’s love and forgiveness. This divine love and forgiveness is costly. If Christian love is self-giving love, the crucifixion is the ultimate self-giving.
Martin Luther said that Jesus defeated sin, death and the power of the devil. Earlier on, I said that Jesus gazed into the abyss of the sin and hopelessness of the entire cosmos and that he had the faith to believe that God’s purposes would prevail.
I suspect that there are no words on earth that are adequate to express what our salvation is about. In very crude terms this is the ultimate stand-off between good and evil, between God and ‘Satan’, between hope and despair.
What is the eternal meaning of existence? Is it death, despair and destruction? Or is it life, hope and creation? The Christian tradition has always affirmed that the external meaning of existence is life.
As Christians, we believe that the Christ Event is the fulfilment of the covenant promise that God made with the Patriarchs. The Abrahamic Covenant is particularly meaningful to us, because Christians see this covenant as being not just to the Jewish people but to all peoples and all nations.
Conclusion
I said earlier that the theme for today’s readings is “Trust in God”. Both Abraham and Jesus had their faith and their trust in God challenged in extreme circumstances.
God asked Abraham to have faith, against all apparent reason, that he would be the father of God’s people and indeed, the father of God’s covenant with all nations.
As part of his divine mission, Jesus was called to look into the abyss of eternal evil and have faith in God’s purposes for life, to have faith in the resurrection and thereby to BE the catalyst for eternal life: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
On this second Sunday of Lent, I pray that we may be given the grace of faith both when faith comes easily and when it is difficult. I pray that when faith is difficult, that we may be inspired by the faith of Abraham but also take comfort in the fact that he too challenged and questioned God.
But most of all, I pray that we remember that it was Jesus’ faith in the love and forgiveness of God that brought salvation into the world.
During Lent, we examine our lives and our consciences, but we also look forward to Easter in the faith and the conviction that the eternal purpose of God is life, hope and creation. Amen
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