3-17-19 Readings & Sermon

A reading from Genesis.

The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

Do not be afraid, Abram.

I am your shield.

Your reward shall be very great.

But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me?

For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Elizar of Damascus.

And Abram said, You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.

But the word of the Lord came to him, This man shall not be your heir.

No one but your very own issue shall be your heir.

He brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.

Then he said to him, So shall your descendants be.

And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Then he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you from Ur the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.

But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?

He said to him, Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.

He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other.

But he did not cut the birds in two.

And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your descendants I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.

The word of the Lord.

When evildoers came upon me to eat up my flesh.

And though war should rise up against me, one thing have I asked of the Lord, one thing I seek.

To behold the fair beauty of the Lord.

For on the day of trouble, the Lord shall shelter me in safety.

Even now the Lord lifts up my head.

Therefore, I will offer in the holy place an oblation with sounds of great gladness.

Hearken to my voice, O Lord, when I call.

Hide not your face from me.

You have been my helper.

Cast me not away.

Do not forsake me, do not my hand.

Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord is the same.

Show me your way, O Lord.

Deliver me not into the hands of my adversaries.

What if I had not believed that I should see the goodness of the Lord?

O tarry and wait the Lord's pleasure.

Be strong, and he shall comfort your heart.

Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.

For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.

I have often told you of them, and now I tell you, even with tears, their end is destruction, their God is the belly, and their glory is in their shame.

Their minds are set on earthly things.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He will transform the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

The word of the Lord.

Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.

Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day, I must be on my way.

Because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.

How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

And you were not willing.

See, your house is left to you.

And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

The gospel of the Lord.

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

In our gospel reading today, Jesus identifies as a prophet, one who, in biblical tradition, is called by God to speak truth to power, to put forth God's word all the way to the top, so to speak.

Jerusalem was the location of the temple.

It was the seat of religious authority for the Jews.

For a Jew, it was all the way to the top.

As Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry.

At the end, he is compelled to journey toward Jerusalem to speak truth to power.

In today's gospel reading, we get some foreshadowing of the fate that awaits Jesus in the ancient Judean capital.

But we see before Jesus' time in Jerusalem the difficulty he faced on the journey just to get there.

Some Pharisees came to Jesus in the guise of being helpful.

But we know their real motivation is to keep Jesus out of Jerusalem, to prevent him from going there if at all possible.

I would not put it past Caiaphas to have sent these folks to scare Jesus into changing his mind, to stray from his course and hopefully go into hiding.

Jesus, you are vulnerable here.

Save yourself by staying small and keeping a low profile.

The religious leadership in Jerusalem, they had enough headaches, just running interference between your run-of-the-mill zealots and the Romans.

The last thing they wanted was to deal with this popular teacher, whom many thought to be God's long-awaited leader.

Recent history had already shown the Romans would not hesitate to unleash violent force, to put down a riot or anything at all that smelled of insurrection.

Go and tell Jesus that Herod's in town and wants to kill him.

Perhaps that will be enough to keep Jesus away, at least until after the Passover festival.

Now we hear this reading on the second Sunday in Lent, when we're well on our way in this liturgical journey through the season.

The gospel reading may point us to ask: in what way are we compelled, in what way are we driven by the Spirit to speak truth where it may not be welcome?

Where it might be understood in the wrong way or misunderstood or turned against us where it certainly will not be appreciated?

What barriers may stand in the way of our saying the right thing?

What scripts do we play in our own minds to discourage us from speaking the truth, especially where it is so desperately needed?

The world is once again reeling from the news of a mass killing of civilians.

At last count, fifty people have now died from the shootings at two mosques in Central Christ Church, New Zealand on Friday.

That terrorist attack appeared to have been carried out by a 24-year-old man who was hellbent on furthering a white supremacist ideology.

It's hard for me to fathom how a person could be so evil as to plan the mass murder of other human beings.

I used to think that the underlying motive for this kind of terrorism had to be hatred.

We sometimes hear the term hate crimes to describe attacks on people in their places of worship.

Hurtful words and internet memes are often referred to as forms of hate speech.

But here's the deal I don't really think that hate is the most accurate term for this.

Instead, I think that the word contempt is probably closer to the truth.

My work as an educator would from time to time involve educational counseling with students who were being disciplined for bullying behavior.

Of course, bullying involves repeated acts of meanness by a person, often with the support of bystanders.

One thing I learned in this work is that students who persisted in bullying were not angry at their victims.

Instead, they view their victims as somehow undeserving of an equal place in their community.

Victims were somehow beneath the status of the student who was bullying.

Sometimes a student who bullied another tried to blame the problem on the victim.

He annoys me constantly, or she's always in my way.

But this kind of anger was a facade.

The real issue was a distorted version of reality in which the victim is viewed as a legitimate target for scorn.

Now, contempt is nothing new in human history.

Jesus was surely well aware of the contempt he would face in Jerusalem, both from the religious elite and from the Roman authorities.

He was under no illusions that these forces would have any respect for his teachings, or finally, even for his life.

What is new and unique in human history is what God has done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

In life, Jesus taught with parables, stories and images that had staying power and caused us to think.

In the gospel reading, Jesus uses such an image.

What does God want?

God wants to gather the chicks under wing to protect them.

If only they were willing.

In the parabolic image, the way God has of being God is to gather, to assemble people together, to bring people into a family, but only if they are willing.

Adoption into the family of God is an invitation to accept God's nurture and favor.

In his death, Jesus laid down his life to pay the price for our ignorance, for our lack of trust.

He paid the price for the way we betray God, one another, and even the way we betray our own selves.

Jesus showed us that God's desire is to gather people together under wing, people from every nation and tradition, a new family whose exact makeup is a mystery known only to God.

And in the resurrection, Jesus gives us hope.

Human life itself, it's grounded in hope, is it not?

Life is easier to live when we hope for good things in the future.

At different times in our lives, we hope for success, we hope for happiness and peace, and we extend that hope to those we love, and even to strangers.

In the face of a tragedy, we mourn, but we keep our hope for a world that will be better.

A world with solutions to disease, to poverty and hunger.

A world without violence fueled by contempt.

Hope sustains our lives at the worst of times because with it we can hold in our imagination the possibility for something that is better.

Those who face a grave challenge in life know that hope is required.

It's not optional like something you could take or leave.

In our reading from Genesis, we learn that Abram is tempted by despair.

God had promised that he would become the founder of a great people, a people who would come to be a blessing to all nations of the earth.

But as it had turned out, Abram was getting along in years and he had no children of his own.

It seems as though what he had signed on for was not happening.

Into the midst of this low point for Abram, God reaffirms the promise first by showing Abram a vision of the night sky and comparing the stars and how numerous they are to the family that Abram would eventually be the father of.

Then in the next story, God gives Abram a dream in which a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between cut pieces of animals.

This unusual dream portrayed some type of ancient covenant ceremony, some type of ancient contract between parties.

So it in itself was a reaffirmation of God's promise, a kind of signed contract, as it were.

We learn from this story that Abram is inspired by these mysterious visions and dreams.

He could have ignored them or attributed them to something he had eaten.

They certainly were bizarre, especially the animal cutting piece.

But instead, his faith in God's promise was rekindled.

For what God gave him was hope.

In these dreams and visions, God gave him hope that his life was on course, hope that his calling was true.

Hope that his life was connected to something larger than himself.

Hope that life has meaning and purpose.

The first time I rode the subway in New York, I was cautious.

I was afraid, really.

All my life I had heard negative things about the subway there.

As the time came for me to board, I was imagining pickpockets, direct thievery, half-crazed addicts, just looking to do harm.

I found a seat and I clutched my computer case for dear life.

I looked downward, avoiding eye contact with others on the train.

All I wanted was to make it alive to my conference destination about six, seven, or eight stops to the north.

And at the very next stop, there was a sign.

I noticed a boy of about 10 years of age enter the subway car by himself.

He looked to be on his way to school with books and homework.

This all looked like regular routine for him as he exited on one of the stops before mine.

This unaccompanied miner was a sign for me.

He instantly Put my fears to rest.

He put a light on my own dysfunctional view of the subway in New York.

I laughed inside from embarrassment.

How could a grown man be afraid of something that was just an everyday routine for a school-age child?

I was a bit more relaxed for the remainder of the ride and reminded that signs of hope can be seen even where we least expect them.

Now, many years later, I have to admit, you know, in my life right now, the biggest, most great, wonderful sign of hope for me has been my new grandson Jonah.

Now, I I would say something myself that I think his great-grandfather Craig Morgan said it best.

When holding Jonah for the first time, he proclaimed, When you look at this baby, you know there is a God who loves us.

The scriptures are full of signs meant to give us hope.

The stars of the sky, a smoking firepot, and a flaming torch, even.

A hen gathering her brood under wing.

Perhaps today's lessons invite us to reclaim the place of hope in our lives.

This is especially challenging when we see how human beings can hold each other in contempt and how this can lead to violence.

As people of the cross, we have a vision of a better world, a world made different by the transformative power of God's love.

We hope that the kingdom of God, established in power and beginning when Jesus came among us, will one day be known in all of its fullness.

One day all the earth will see Jesus and say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Until that day, we live in the between time, a time when we need hope to see God's love at work changing the world.

May hope allow us to live our lives with meaning and purpose.

In hope, may we love our neighbors as ourselves.

May we see all peoples as God's creatures worthy of love and connection, all invited to gather under God's wing for protection.

May hope allow us to speak truth to power, to call bullying when we see it, to recognize contempt, and to do our best to stand apart from it with acts of kindness to its victims.

As that wonderful Sunday school song says, all God's children got a place in the choir.

May hope allow us in some small way this week to make our world a little safer for all God's children.

Amen.