February 24, 2013: Second Sunday in Lent

 Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

Preacher: Pastor Paul Cannon

 Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18

 "Ancestors" 

"Sarah and Abraham" by Marc Chagall, 1887-1985

Good Morning everybody!  For our first reading, we heard one of the most central texts in the Old Testament – so I hope you were paying attention because that’s the text that I am going to preach on today.  The story is about a man named Abram – who God later renames Abraham – and his wife Sarai – whom God later renames Sarah. 

Abraham might be the most influential figure in the history of religion.  Three of the major world faiths trace their ancestry back to him: Islam, Judaism and Christianity.  Of course, each religion comes back to Abraham with their own interpretation of events, but what each religion recognizes is that the defining moment of our text today is when God comes to Abraham to give him this one simple word: a word of promise.

First, you have to understand that Abraham and Sarah were living in a time and a culture where having children was everything.  Everything you worked for in life, you did for the sake of passing it on to your heirs.  Families and lineages were at the center of Israel’s world view.  This is why the Bible so often takes valuable time, ink and parchment to trace the paths of descendants throughout Israel’s history.

But Abraham and Sarah were getting up there in age.  And not having children was a huge deal to them!  Their community, their tribe, their people – would have looked at them and wondered what they did wrong.  They would have whispered about sins allegedly committed to cause their predicament.  They would have been scorned among their people. 

And in the midst of all this, God shows up to give Abraham a promise.  “After these things” our scripture tells us, “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!”  In his response to God, you can hear Abraham’s skepticism.  He says “What will you give me?  For I continue childless and the heir of my house is one of my servants!”

And here is the part that those three religions will trace their history back to.  God leads Abraham under the cold, clear night sky.  And as they stood there, God said “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.”  And then God turned to Abraham and said, “So shall your descendants be.”

So shall your descendants be.  God makes a simple promise to Abraham, and from that promise springs three world religions. Muslims will eventually trace their lineage back to Abraham’s first child Ishmael who was born to a servant woman named Hagar.  Jews will trace their lineage back to Isaac who was born to Sarah – Abraham’s wife. Christians will trace their lineage to this story as well, but our lineage will be traced back not to a person, but to the promise tied up in the story. 

The New Testament is full of references to this passage.  Both Matthew and Luke quote John the Baptist who is scolding the Pharisees – The Jewish leaders of the law saying, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

For a culture that is so focused on genealogies and birth rights and first born children and heirs – this must have come as a shocking statement to the Pharisees at the time.  All kinds of laws were set up to make sure that proper succession took place in society.  Such matters were paramount. 

Think about it for a moment.  A wealthy man owns 100 acres of land and he has 5 sons.  Who gets the land?  Do they divide into 20 acres a piece?  Well then what happens when each of those children grow up and have 5 sons of their own?  Does each son get 4 acres for himself?

Well this clearly doesn’t work out for anybody, in the long run.  To keep the family strong there had to be clear rules of inheritance, which is why the first born son is so important in Biblical and historical records. Without laws to determine who gets the inheritance, wars would be fought between brothers and tribes and nations. 

And here comes John the Baptist to tell the leaders of the Jewish Law, saying “You fools!  Bloodlines don’t matter to God!  This rock over here could be a descendant of Abraham if God just said the word!”  Well that flies in the face of the entire social political structure of the time. 

These structures were so powerful that they still exist to this day.  Think about this for a minute:  How many of you like to follow gossip about England’s royalty?  It’s all about succession right?  Back in November, Prince Charles made the news when a reporter asked him if he was impatient to take the throne when Queen Elizabeth died.  He responded jokingly to the effect that he thinks he might be the one to go first.  The Queen is one tough cookie.

But John the Baptist says that none of these family laws matter when it comes to receiving God’s inheritance – his promises!  You could be a rock – heck you could be as dumb as a rock; you could be as passive as a rock and still be a descendant of Abraham.  There’s nothing you can do to prove that you are worthy before God!  There’s no way to justify yourself.

One of my old seminary professors was a fisherman and his wife would ask him “How can you waste an entire day just sitting in a boat and doing nothing?”  And his reply to her would be, “I’m not doing nothing, I’m practicing my justification!” 

I suppose that I could use the same excuse when I’m playing video games while my wife is around.  “Honey, I can’t do the dishes because I’m practicing my justification over here…I’m sorry babe – this is the Lord’s work.”

So I think we can conclude that husbands are indeed about as useful as rocks.  But that’s the point that John the Baptist is making.  You don’t have to be anybody special to be a recipient of God’s inheritance – you don’t have to do anything to earn God’s promise.  Being a descendant of Abraham isn’t about who you are related too.

You could imagine how upset the Pharisees might have been when this wild-eyed preacher from the sticks was telling them how unimportant bloodlines and works righteousness is to God. Those very things were the glue that held society together.

Well, years later, long after John the Baptist passed away, and after Jesus was crucified, comes the Apostle Paul – a former Jewish leader and a man who considered himself to be blameless before the law. He was a man who persecuted Christians until one day he suddenly had an encounter with the risen Christ on the road.

And what Paul realized when he encountered Jesus, was that even he didn’t deserve the gift that Christ gave him on the cross.  Even he was unworthy to inherit God’s Kingdom.  And so Paul turns back to our text today, and he hangs on to a certain phrase that helps him to reinterpret the entirety of the Jewish law. Paul remembers that God makes a promise to Abraham – that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars – and then the passage says this: “And Abraham believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

And it’s on this phrase that Paul realizes the entirety of his life was spent devoted to the wrong thing.  He had thought that he was righteous because he was a Jew.   He believed the thing that made a person worthy of inheriting God’s promises – was the law.

But Paul turned back to that phrase “And Abraham believed the Lord, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.” And what he realized was that Abraham was righteous because he believed.  God gave Abraham his promise because Abraham had faith that this God would come through – despite all the evidence to the contrary.

“For this reason” Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham.”

And that’s how Christians trace their ancestry back to Abraham.  We are not all relatives of his son Isaac.  We don’t share bloodlines with Ishmael.  We trace our deepest connections to God through the faith of Abraham.  That’s what we share: An uncommon belief that God can create life even in the barren womb of his wife Sarah.  We believe that through a cross – an instrument of torture and death – God can save the world. 

And during this season of Lent, we remember this is the promise given to us through the cross of Christ.  We know that God walks with us in the messiness of our lives because he did it.  He didn’t hold back.  His journey leads him to eat with tax collectors and prostitutes.  He walked among the sick and dying.  Ultimately, his journey leads him to the cross – not for the sake of the righteous church going folk – but for the sake of sinners: people who make mistakes in life.

It is faith in the cross of Christ, that links us to Abraham.  It is faith that connects us with the grace of God.  And thanks be to God for all these gifts.

Amen.