Lent 2
February 28, 2010
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35
It seems to me that one of the most fundamental questions we ask ourselves throughout our life is, how do we find our way? How do we find our way through the complexities of our life and our world? The problem begins the day we emerge from the womb. We babble and stumble as we find our way to walk and talk. Every new experience we encounter, every commitment we make, every organization we join, every new job we take, every new stage of our life requires us to find our way, often in a new way. Only the easy journeys with concrete destinations give us a road map or a GPS device to find our way. Many of the other journeys, we travel by trial and error.
How we find our way through the difficult and demanding complexities of this life is often a testament to how well we are living it, and how fruitful it becomes. The same is true of our religious life. Lord knows, it is not easy to live a righteous life. Lord knows we don’t always succeed. But our scriptures today assure us that the best promise for our life lies in the plan God has for us. Our greatest joy is meeting his expectation of us. And our highest purpose is serving his heavenly goal of redemption and salvation, even as we live in this world. But we all know that finding our way to God, believing in God’s plan for us and trusting in his assurances is not easy. It was not easy for Abraham, it was not easy for the people of Paul’s churches and, believe it or not, it was not easy for Jesus.
This is not easy because God’s goal for his human creatures is centered in divine realities, not earthly ones; so staying focused on God’s heavenly goal is not easy for God’s human creatures who live on this earth. Following God’s plan and purpose for our life is not easy, either, because God’s plan and purpose for us does not necessarily match our own plans or the plans our family, or friends, or mentors have for us. And meeting God’s hope and expectations for us will always be difficult in a world where human hope and expectation never rise above or move beyond our need for the things of this world.
It was certainly difficult for Abraham to believe that God’s plan for him was to become the father of a nation. “You have given me now offspring, cries Abraham.” After all, Abraham was childless, and his wife Sarah was beyond child-bearing years. It was difficult for Abraham to believe he could fulfill the expectations of a God who wanted to change his way of life from a wandering tribesman to a settled landowner, whose descendents would become God’s chosen people. “How am I to know?” asks Abraham. Abraham cannot begin to comprehend that he is part of God’s plan of salvation. It’s all too scary. So when God comes to Abraham in a vision, Abraham is frightened. But God assures him he need not be afraid. When God asks Abraham to count the stars, they seem too many to number, but God assures him that they represent the numbers of his descendents. And when God comes to Abraham in his dream, he is terrified. But the very events of Abrahams dream become the means by which God will enter into a covenant relationship with him.
I wonder how you and I might respond in such a situation? Would we be able to see possibility in a plan which seems so impossible. A plan with no evidence which might make it easier for us believe and trust. Especially when the life we are living is quite contrary to the life we are being called to live, and we are relatively happy in it? But somehow Abraham is able to accept God’s plan, God’s expectation for his life and God’s goal for it all. And here’s the reason. The reason is, Abraham believed! Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Abraham believed in the Lord; he believed in God’s promise of offspring and in the new life God was calling him to live. But not in any cerebral way. No one in their right mind, not even Abraham, would be incapable of comprehending such impossibilities. But believing in God does not depend on what our mind thinks about it. Believing in the biblical sense is not a function of our mind.
Believing as a function of the mind is a modern concept which came to us during the age of scientific discovery in the 17th Century during the period of the Enlightenment. Believing came to be about proving the validity of an idea by facts information and empirical evidence. In biblical times, the word “believe” meant something quite different. Believing was a function of the heart. God spoke to Abraham’s heart and Abraham opened his heart to God. Acting on one’s belief was also a function of the heart, only a little lower, in the intestines or what we commonly call the gut, which is also closely connected to our soul. And isn’t it true. When we believe something deeply, we feel it more deeply than our heart; we feel it in our soul. But it is our gut which empowers our action. This is why we often call the powerful action which comes from strong belief “intestinal fortitude.”
Heartfelt belief and intestinal fortitude are what we observe in persons who endanger their own life to save the life of another; people we call heroes. Talk the person who saves a family from a burning home, or person who dives into impossible waters to save a person’s life. They will tell you that they did not stop to think about it. They believed in their heart it was the right thing to do, and the strong feeling they had in their gut compelled them to do it. Or just ask an addict who is making a total life change to health and well-being. They will tell you, when they “hit bottom” there was no more thinking about it. A belief in a power greater than themselves provoked a desperate cry for help, and gut response to the power of redemption drove them into rehab and into healthy relationship with other recovering addicts who share the same experience. Or you might ask a person who has made an abrupt and complete change in some aspect of their life how or why they did what they did. They will tell you that no amount of thinking about it was able to bring them to make that change. The change in their life came from a change of heart, a change in what they believed about the truth of their life. And it was a powerful feeling in their gut which they could no longer deny or ignore which swept them into a new way of living which brought deeper meaning and greater purpose to their life. Like my gay and lesbian friends who have been able to come out of a closet of denial and fear to live openly in the truth of their life.
We see the same scenario at work when we look at the life changing event that happened to Paul. Paul’s plan for his life, his expectations and the expectations of others, and the goal he sought to accomplish in persecuting followers of Jesus were turned completely upside down when he was knocked from his horse that day as he traveled the road to Damascus. Such a life change would never have occurred to Paul. His mind had been made up about followers of Jesus. They were heretics who must be punished. And the mind is a powerful tool for justifying our life. So, we might say that Paul had to have his sense knocked out of him that day; his mind’s eye blinded, and his body confined in a place of rest and quiet to receive the same God who turned Abraham’s life upside in much the same way. So that, like Abraham, Paul would also come to believe in him. And what power of belief came to Paul that day. We can see it in the epistles he writes to his congregations. Paul’s letters shows a great mind which speaks from the heart, acts from the gut, and bears witness to the soul. An apostle who bears witness to the God whose plan for us is divine, whose expectation for us is that we will follow that plan and whose goal is to raise us to our divine possibility long before we get to heaven.
I think we can say from experience that God still speaks to us in visions and in dreams. God still finds ways to knock us off our high horses of denial and rejection. But God’s ultimate plan for redeeming his people, for changing our life and changing our world, was put into place the day he came to us in the flesh. On the day of his birth Jesus brought God’s divine plan to us and God’s divine expectation of us for accomplishing his divine goal. So, we are not surprised that Jesus would follow God’s divine plan for him, because he was God. But we are also not surprised when Jesus’ dreads its consequences of suffering and death, because he is also human.
In today’s scripture lesson, Jesus knows he must follow God’s plan to go to Jerusalem, because this is where all the great prophets of Israel came to be killed. And Jesus will continue to meet God’s expectation of him, regardless of Herod’s threat to kill him and the Pharisee’s warning that he should run away from that threat. I have work to do, says Jesus. And God expects that my work will not be finished until the third day. Until that day, “I am casting our demons and performing cures.” And, of course, we know that on that third day Jesus will achieve God’s divine goal. God will raise him to heaven. And all humankind will be freed from the power of sin and death and made able to live into the promises of eternal life, in this life, in this world, long before we go to the life to come.
In today’s scriptures Abraham, Paul and Jesus show us how to find our way into God’s promise, God’s plan and God’s expectation of us. They show us how we can live a life not just as citizens of this world, but at citizens of heaven. Martin Luther tells us we were made citizens of heaven by our baptism. Now all we have to do is believe it, so that we can live it. Not argue with it, or deny it, or dismiss it as not worthy of our brilliant thoughts. These are mind games. And they can never bring God’s grace or favor, God’s truth or promise, God’s redemption and transformation to our life. Like Abraham, and Paul, and Jesus, we simply need to believe. And then we need to trust. Trust that God*’s goal is the most worthy goal to strive for, trust that God’s plan for us is the best plan we can follow, and trust that we can deliver on God’s expectations of us. Evangelical pastor and editor of Sojourners Magazine Jim Wallis, says it best. “We need to trust in god, despite all evidence—then watch the evidence change.”
As we journey with Jesus through this period of Lent, we will see lots of hard evidence which seems to refute the good that God wants for us in this world—evidence that violence and suffering, darkness and death rule in this world. But Easter will come; resurrection will happen, evidence will change. And like Abraham and Paul, we can also believe that the evidence can change us.