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Lent 2B February 28, 2021

Posted on February 28, 2021 by Beth Crane

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

In our first reading today, we meet Abram and Sarai, who will become Abraham and Sarah. Abraham is a shining example of someone who has deep and abiding faith in God. God is telling Abraham and Sarah that God is going to make Abraham and Sarah the parents of  “a multitude of nations.” Abraham is 99 and Sarah is not far behind him in age, yet God is making this covenant with them. They will have as many descendants as the number of grains of sand on the beach or the number of stars in the sky.

Frederick Buechner is a Presbyterian minister and writer who lives in southern Vermont. Here is his description of Abraham and Sarah. “They had quite a life, the old pair. Years before. they had gotten off to a good start in Mesopotamia. They had a nice house in the suburbs with a two-car garage and color TV and a barbecue pit. They had a room all fixed up for when the babies started coming. With their health and each other and their families behind them they had what is known as a future. Sarah got her clothes at Bonwit’s, did volunteer work at the hospital, was a member of the League of Women Voters. Abraham was pulling down an excellent salary for a young man, plus generous fringe benefits and an enlightened retirement plan. And then they got religion, or religion got them, and Abraham was convinced that what God wanted them to do was pull up stakes and head out for Canaan where God promised that he would make Abraham the father of a great nation which would in turn be a blessing to all nations and that’s where their troubles started.

“They put their house on the market and gave the color TV to the hospital and got a good price for the crib and bassinet because they had never been used and were as good as new….

“So off they went in their station wagon with a U-Haul behind and a handful of friends and relations, who, if they didn’t share Abraham’s religious convictions, decided to hitch their wagon to his star anyway.

(Buechner, Telling the truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, pp. 50-51.)

Abraham and Sarah lived in Ur of the  Chaldeans, which is now a city in southern Iraq. The distance from Ur to Canaan is 3,461 miles. Abraham and Sara had no idea where they were going. God told them God would lead them there, and they trusted God. Think of starting on a journey to an unknown land and trusting God to help us find the way. That is real faith. Think of packing everything into a U-Haul and driving into the unknown. Think of packing everything onto camels or donkeys. Abraham and Sarah had deep faith. And, since we know the ending, we know that they persevered to the end. Sarah had a son, Isaac.

The other example of faith I would like to share today is Eric Liddell. In Holy Women, Holy Men and A Great Cloud of Witnesses, his commemoration date is February 22. Eric was born to Scottish missionaries in China in 1902. He and his older  brother Rob, were sent to a school for the children of missionaries in London. In school and later at the University of Edinburgh, Eric was a champion runner and rugby prayer. He was also an excellent student and a person of deep faith. On their leaves from missionary work, his family lived in Scotland, and the film Chariots of Fire portrays Eric running fleet-footed in the Scottish highlands.

In the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Eric was slated to run the 100 meter race and was strongly favored to win the gold medal. After arriving in Paris, Eric was told that the race was scheduled for a Sunday. Because he strongly believed in the observance of the Sabbath, Eric refused to run the race. He ran the 400 meter race and won the gold medal. He also ran the 200 meter and won a bronze medal behind two American runners.

After his graduation from Edinburgh, Eric returned to the area in China where he had been born and served as a missionary from 1925 to 1943. In 1932, he was ordained a minister in the Congregational Union of Scotland. Because of conflict between China and Japan, the missionaries suffered many hardships. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the British government advised all British citizens to leave the country. Eric’s wife, Florence, who was from Canada, took their three children and went to be near her parents.

Eric and his brother Rob stayed on and continued their work. In 1943 Eric was interned in the Japanese concentration camp in Weihsein. This camp held 1,800 people from many allied countries under terrible conditions. Holy Women, Holy Men tells us that Eric won the trust of his captors so that he could go around the camp and minister to his fellow prisoners. He died shortly before the camp’s liberation on August 17, 1945. He was 43 years old.

We have Abraham and Sarah and so many other people of deep faith, On Tuesday, we remembered Polycarp, a faithful and gentle Bishop who was burned at the stake. On Wednesday, Matthias, who replaced Judas as an apostle, on Thursday,  John Roberts, a priest who worked with First Nation people in Wyoming. We are all on a journey of faith, and thank God for all the holy examples of people we have to guide us. We are all taking up our cross, trying, with God’s grace, to follow our Lord Jesus in the way of the Cross, the Way of Love.

We can think of Abraham and Sarah, traveling all those miles without a road map, GPS, cars, or airplanes. We can think of Eric Liddell, a champion athlete in sport, and a champion of faith, doing all he could do to comfort his fellow prisoners who were suffering under inhumane conditions. And all the saints of God who have shared God’s love and hope with others over all these centuries. We are part of that great cloud of witnesses. And we love and support each other. Through this wilderness journey we have stayed together and prayed together and encouraged each other. And in the midst of us, often out ahead us leading us, is Jesus, our Good Shepherd, making sure we stay on track, nourishing us with his presence, protecting us so that we can share the good news of his love.  Amen.

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Lent 2A March 8, 2020

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Beth Crane

Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

Our first reading today is so short, yet it says so much. Abram, later renamed Abraham, is one of the greatest examples of faith in all of the Bible. He lives in Ur of the Chaldeans, in a region which in those days was called Mesopotamia, on the bank of the Euphrates River, about 225 miles southeast of present-day Baghdad, Iraq. It is about 1600 years before the birth of Christ. 

God is calling Abram to make a journey far away from everything and everyone that he knows. Abram has a comfortable life and many possessions. Yet he packs everything up and goes on a journey.

That is what we are doing this Lent. We are going on a journey to grow closer to God. We are going on a journey to become more and more the persons God calls us to be.

Our psalm for today is one of my favorites, and, I think it may be one of your as well. It speaks of the hills, and we can think of our beloved Green Mountains and all the smaller hills that we love. This psalm reminds us that God is with us every moment of our lives. God watches over us. For those of us who are reading The Restoration, this psalm reminds us of Step One, remembering that God is everywhere and God is always with us.

In our gospel for today, we have the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of Judah. This is a group of extremely powerful men who make decisions that govern the religious and community life of the people. As a member of the Council, Nicodemus is familiar with the ways of worldly power.

Nicodemus has been hearing about Jesus and he may even have seen our Lord from a distance or heard him speak. In any case, Nicodemus has reached the point where he simply must go and talk with Jesus. But if he goes in the daytime, people will see him and this could cause great trouble for him. He could lose his place on the Council, and he could lose his life for associating with this powerful teacher who is a threat to those in power.

So, Nicodemus goes to see Jesus under cover of night. Nicodemus gets right to the point. He says that Jesus must come from God because of his teachings and his healings.

But then Jesus makes a spiritual quantum leap. He tells Nicodemus that we can’t see the kingdom of God without being born from above.

Poor Nicodemus is overwhelmed by this, and he takes it in a concrete sense, thinking that we will all have to go back into our mothers’ wombs and be born again. Then Jesus says that we have to be born of water and Spirit. For us, this is a clear reference to Baptism.

Nicodemus is still trying to figure all of this out. “How can these things be?” he asks with some frustration. Jesus refers to the time when poisonous snakes were biting and killing God’s people in the desert and God ordered Moses to hold up a statue of a serpent, which cured the people of the snake bites. and prevented them from dying. This is also a reference to the cross. And then our Lord says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

We do not meet Nicodemus again until after Jesus has been crucified. According to John’s gospel, Joseph of Arimathea asks Pilate’s permission to take Jesus’ body down from the cross and bury it in his own tomb. Nicodemus comes with spices to anoint the beloved body  of our lord. Both men are members of the Council, and both are risking their lives.

We can imagine that Nicodemus never forgot his meeting with Jesus. that he meditated on their conversation and grew in his understanding of who Jesus really was.

Abraham’s journey was both earthly and spiritual. He traveled hundreds of miles to a new land, always trusting in God’s promise that in Abraham all the families of earth would be blessed. The journey of Nicodemus was not geographical but spiritual.

Every day he would go to his work on the Sanhedrin. He would watch as a kangaroo court found Jesus guilty and as an angry mob demanded his death. As far as we know, he had only one close, face to face meeting with Jesus, but every day he grew closer and closer to our Lord, until the time came when his love for Jesus told him that he had to help his colleague Joseph of Arimathea take care of our Lord’s body no matter what that action might cost. He and Joseph were not able to save Jesus, but they felt compelled to give his precious body a decent burial.

Abraham went on a journey into the unknown with complete trust that God would lead him in the right direction. Nicodemus had the courage to go and meet with Jesus, and after that, his life was never the same. He grew closer and closer to Jesus. He grew to love Jesus so much that he joined Joseph in carrying out the most intimate and loving act of washing and anointing Jesus’ body for burial.

Lent is a journey. God’s people journeyed for forty years in the desert. Jesus fasted and prayed for forty days in the wilderness. We journey together to grow closer to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Closer to realizing that God is always with us, leading and guiding us, forgiving us. feeding us, giving us the grace to take the next step, the next leap of faith, the next quantum leap into the loving heart of God. Amen.

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Lent 2C   March 17. 2019

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Beth Crane

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35

In our opening reading for today, we meet those shining examples of faith, Abraham and Sarah. At this point, their names are still Abram and Sarai. God has called them to leave their comfortable life in Mesopotamia and journey to Canaan.

Abram and Sarai have no children, and God has promised them that they would have many descendants. They have been through trials and tribulations and challenges too numerous to describe, and, although they are humans like us, they have stayed on the path and kept the faith as well as anyone could  under the circumstances. Yet, they are still childless.

Back in those days, around 1600 years before the birth of Christ, having children was everything. If you had children, you had a future, If you had no children, you had no future. If you had children, you could leave your land and flocks and herds and fields to them and they would take care of you. If not, it was easy to feel that you had nothing to live for.

By this time in their lives, Abram and Sarai are very old, way beyond the childbearing years. Yet God has made a covenant with them, and now Abram is asking God, when are you going to keep your end of this bargain? God takes Abram outside and shows him the night sky. See that? That’s how many descendants you will have.

Abram still needs more proof, so God actually tells Abram to carry out a liturgical offering, a sacrifice. Then Abram falls asleep and has a dream in which God confirms that the promise will come true.  

Have you ever thought you didn’t have a future? Have you ever thought God had broken a promise? Has your faith ever wavered? Here we have Abraham, that great icon of the faithful person, needing reassurance from God. And God responds.

In today’s gospel, the Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod is trying to kill him.  Jesus has little patience with the machinations of worldly leaders. His response is terse, “Go tell that fox that I’m going to keep on healing people and helping people and on the third day I finish my work.”

Jesus knows exactly what is going on. These days we would say he is streetwise. He knows that Herod is a fox who is ready to raid the hen house and eat the chickens. He is totally focused on his mission, and he knows that he has to go to Jerusalem. Yet he tells us a tragic truth. Jerusalem, the city where the temple is located, the city which is supposed to be listening for the voice of God and following God’s leading, is a city in which the leaders, both sacred and secular, do not hear the voice of God. Beverly Gaventa writes, “Ironically, tragically, the city that houses God’s Temple also houses a persistent refusal to hear God’s word.”  (Gaventa, Texts for Preaching Year C, p, 207.

Because of this, Jesus wants to protect his little chicks. Like a mother hen, he wants to gather us under his wings and protect us from the likes of Herod and other foxes. But he cannot do this. The powers that be in Jerusalem are not going to permit it. He is called to go to Jerusalem, and he will go, but he will not be permitted to offer healing and comfort and protection to the people. The earthly powers will stand in the way. They will kill him. Jesus knows exactly what a fox is, because he has the vantage point of a mother hen, or maybe even a chick.

How easy it is for us humans, when we acquire a great deal of money and a great deal of fame and power, to lose our bearings. The recent scandal involving very rich people paying money to insure that their children get into the best colleges and other people running a business that facilitates these transactions is a glaring example of this.

What would we do if we had that amount of money and power? What would we do without our faith? What would we do without God and Jesus and the Spirit guiding us and giving us grace?

In his letter to his beloved Philippians, Paul reminds us that, ultimately, we are not citizens of this world. Yes, we are called to stay informed and participate in our government and exercise our vote, but, as Paul writes, “Our citizenship is in heaven.” We are following Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith”. We are waiting for him to come and complete his work of creation. And we are not waiting passively. We are doing all we can to help him build his reign of peace, harmony, and wholeness.

Sometimes, on this journey, we wonder, where is God in all of this? Sometimes we may feel that God is far away. Abram felt that way, even though he was a person of deep faith. He called out to God and God answered him.

In today’s gospel, we stand beside our Lord as he shares his profound grief, “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!” Even  before we call out to him, our Lord is ready to help us.

And yet, our Lord knows that he will not be allowed to offer that comfort and protection to Jerusalem. He will be killed.

But we are listening, and we know that, at this very moment and always, Jesus is offering us his presence, his grace and strength and guidance. He is with us right now, doing just that. We don’t even have to ask him, We don’t have to call on him. He is here.

May we accept his gracious gift of himself.  Amen.

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Lent 2B February 25, 2018

Posted on February 25, 2018 by Beth Crane

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

In our first reading today, we meet Abram. God has called Abram to leave his comfortable home, pack up all his belongings, and travel with all his livestock to a land Abram has never seen. At this point, Abram has traveled hundreds of miles. This is all happening around 2,000 years ago, and all this traveling has been done on foot. When this journey began, God promised that God would make Abram the father of a great nation.

As the scene opens, Abram is 99 years old. His wife, Sarai, is also far beyond the age when folks normally start a family. Many things have happened since they left their comfortable home years and miles ago. Some of those things have been very difficult. And they still have no child.

God comes to Abram, and Abram falls on his face and worships the Lord in an attitude of complete trust. After all these years and all these challenges, Abram is still faithful. And God tells Abram that he and Sarai are going to have a son.

Sarah is listening in on God’s conversation with Abraham, and after God leaves, she bursts out laughing. She rolls on the floor laughing. So does Abraham. Just when we think all hope is gone, and we’re 99 years old, God tells us we have a future . There is hope after all. Abraham and Sarah were faithful to God. And God made a covenant with them that they would have descendants as numerous as the stars or as the grains of sand on a beach.

In our reading from the Book of Romans, Paul writes about Abraham and the strength of Abraham’s faith. He was 99 years old and he still did not lose faith. This is a powerful example for us. The journey may be difficult, things may look dismal, but God is always there, and hope is always there.

In our gospel, Jesus is telling the disciples that the religious authorities are going to have him killed, and he is going to rise from death. Peter can’t accept this. He tells Jesus to stop saying these terrible things. And Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”

What is going on here? Why would Jesus say such a thing? Peter loves Jesus. He does not want anything bad to happen to him. He does not want to lose this friend and teacher who has become like his brother.

Jesus can see the handwriting on the wall. The authorities are watching him. They will go to any lengths to preserve their power. Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine. He does not want to suffer and die.  When Peter tells him that this horror can’t happen, it makes Jesus wish that it would not happen, but it is going to. If he is true to the ministry to which he is called, the authorities are going to try to destroy him. So, even though Peter loves Jesus and means well, he is actually tempting Jesus to abandon his ministry and run away to safety. That is why he calls Peter by the name of the tempter.

There were two schools of thought running through the Scriptures about the Messiah. One was that he would be a conquering hero who would overthrow the Romans, and the other was that he would be the suffering servant described by Isaiah. Some of Jesus’ disciples saw him as the conquering hero. James and John wanted to sit beside him in his kingdom. But that was not to be. His is not a  kingdom of earthly power. At this point, perhaps Peter did not understand that. Later he did. So did James and John. We are all growing in our understanding of who Jesus is and what he us calling us to do.

Then Jesus calls us to take up our cross. He calls us to stop trying to save our lives and to lose our lives for his sake. This does not mean that he is calling us to do self-destructive things. He wants us to accept his love for us and to take care of ourselves. He is actually calling us to stop doing anything that is self-destructive.

But he is also calling us to readjust our vision. His is not an earthly  kingdom. His kingdom, his shalom, is a world of peace, harmony, and wholeness. There may be some things that have seemed really important to us in the past, but in the light of his call, our perspective changes. As we listen to his call to us, as Abraham listened to God’s call thousands of years ago, our values shift. Things that were once important to us become less important in the light of his call to take up our cross.

Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Part of this process is to deny our selves, to redirect our egos into following him. Our self becomes a part of his loving and caring and healing self. We experience newness of life here and now as we follow him and help him bring in his kingdom.

Taking up our cross and following Jesus may involve struggle, and sacrifice, but it will always lead to new life. It will always lead to wholeness and to being true to ourselves. It will help us to become the persons he calls us to be.

It is a journey, like the journey of Abraham and Sarah. It is a journey with our Lord, a journey of transformation, a journey of love, hope, and joy.  Amen.

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Lent 2C RCL 2/24/13

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Beth Crane

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:7-4:1
Luke 13:31-35

Our first reading today, from the Book of Genesis, shows us Abram, later to become Abraham, in an encounter with God. But here we see Abram in an unusual light. Abraham is the major Biblical example of a person of faith. Yet, as Herbert O’Driscoll puts it, “Here we see Abram, the seemingly towering founding figure of a future people, nervous and insecure! We hear the voice of God making effort to reassure Abram. “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great. The words could be said to a fearful child and not be out of place. Interestingly, they do not have the slightest effect in calming Abram’s fears. Yet this is the person who has come down in history as the wonderful example of a person who trusts God!”

God continues to try to reassure Abram, but Abram remains full of doubt. So God asks Abram to make an offering and God gives Abram a dramatic sign and makes a covenant with him.

This lesson can speak deeply to our hearts. Even Abram, the great icon of faith, had times of wavering, times when he needed reassurance. Doubt is not the opposite of faith. We all have times of doubt, times of questioning. God has given us minds with which to think. When we have times of questioning, this does not mean that we have lost our faith. It means that we are continuing our journey of faith.

In our gospel for today, an unusual thing happens. The Pharisees get a bad press in the gospels, but today, they warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him. In contrast to Abram, Jesus is not wavering. He is courageous, resolute. He tells the Pharisees to go and tell that fox that Jesus is doing his ministry. He is making people whole.  In using the word “fox,” Jesus shows that he is not naïve, that he sees exactly the kind of person Herod is. He is as crafty as a fox. He is wily. He will do anything he needs to do in order to preserve his power.

Jesus says that he will finish his work on the third day. This is a reference to the resurrection. He says, in a sad and ironic tone, that it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside Jerusalem. The holy city is a dangerous place for truth-tellers. The powers that be will mow them down.

And then he says those words, which are so moving and poignant: “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!”  Jesus offers his tender, nurturing love to Jerusalem, but that love will not be accepted. Instead. He will be killed. But first, he will be hailed and welcomed with the words, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” God gave us the gift of free will, and sometimes we humans use that gift to reject the love of God.

Our epistle today is from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Philippi was a city in Macedonia on one of the main east-west roads in the Roman Empire. The Church in Philippi was the first Christian Community which Paul founded in Europe. This community was subject to all the influences of the Roman Empire, and scholars tell us that the Empire was beginning to sink into decadence.

We don’t know exactly what was going on in Philippi, but we all know what a preoccupation with what Paul would call “earthly things” can do to people. Paul calls the people to imitate him. This is not an arrogant gesture. In those days, you would choose a moral teacher and you would imitate the life and practice of that teacher. If course, we know that Paul is really calling us to imitate Christ. Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. Our Savior Jesus Christ is at this moment transforming us as we grow closer and closer to him.

In my daily AA meditation book, entitled, “Twenty-four hours a Day, ” the message for April 20 reminds me of our epistle for today. It reads, “There are two paths, one up and one down. We have been given free will to choose either path. We are captains of our souls to this extent only.  We can choose either the good or the bad. Once we have chosen the wrong path, we go down and down, eventually to death. But if we choose the right path, we go up and up until we come to the resurrection day. On the wrong path, we have no power for good because we do not choose to ask for it. But on the right path we are on the side of good and we have all the power of God’s spirit behind us.”

The prayer that goes with the meditation says, “I pray that I may be in the stream of goodness. I pray that I may be on the right side,  on the side of all good in the universe.”

Like the Philippians, we have a choice. Every day we have many choices. Will we follow where our Lord is leading? Here we are, a week and a half into Lent. Maybe we are like Abram. Maybe we need to ask God for some help, some reassurance.

Some commentators think that the Pharisees told Jesus that Herod was out to get him in order to scare Jesus and make him turn away from his ministry. If so, it didn’t work.  Jesus walked courageously toward Jerusalem and his death. Think how much he loved the people of Jerusalem. Think how much he loved everyone. Think how much he loves you and me. He even loved Herod. But Herod’s mind and heart were so focussed on protecting his power that he couldn’t let God into his life. Herod is a perfect example of what Paul is calling us to avoid.

Jesus knows exactly whom he is dealing with. He knows what people will do when they are preserving their power at all costs. Yet he goes ahead. That is the model of courage we are called to follow. That is the model of love we are called to follow.  This could be quite daunting if we had to walk alone, on our frail human level.

But we are not walking alone. That is the whole point. And we have made our choice. And we are making our daily and hourly choices to follow Jesus, to be citizens of his realm.

“Our citizenship is in heaven.” What a thought. Not that we are other-worldly. No, we are quite down-to-earth, as Jesus was, and we have chosen to follow Him, because he is gathering the whole world together in loving and healing arms and making everyone and everything whole.

May we be in the stream of goodness.  May we be on the side of all good in the universe.            Amen.

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