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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 2 Year B RCL March 1, 2015

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Beth Crane

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

In our opening reading, we meet Abram and Sarai. Abram is ninety-nine years old. They have already come a long way. Back when Abram was a mere seventy-five, God called him to leave everything and move to the land of Canaan. In faith, Abram answered that call.

Now God is again telling Abram that he and Sarai are going to be the parents to a multitude of nations, including kings. God even gives Abram and Sarai new names. Abram means “exalted ancestor” and Abraham means “ancestor of a multitude.” Sarah means “Princess,” which is appropriate, since she will be the ancestor of future royalty.

Following the passage we have read, both Abraham and Sarah burst into gales of laughter over this covenant with God. They are very old. The whole thing is preposterous. And yet….

In our epistle, Paul tells us that Abraham and Sarah hoped against hope that this promise would come true. Here they were, way beyond the age of starting a family, and yet it happened. In the time of Abraham and Sarah, children meant more than having a family. They were the sign of the possibility of having a future; they were the source of hope. Without children there would be no future and no hope.

So, when God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would indeed have a multitude of children, they laughed, and at the same time they believed that God’s promise that they would have descendants as numerous as the stars would come true. And it did.

In today’s gospel, Jesus begins to make it clear that the whole journey is going to lead to suffering. Peter is the one who has said that Jesus is the Messiah. Some people believed that the messiah would lead a revolution and expel the Romans. Many scholars think that Judas Iscariot was a Zealot, a member of a group that saw the messiah as a military hero. Perhaps Peter had this view of our Lord.

But now Jesus is letting his followers know that he is the suffering servant, and Peter can’t bear to hear this. Things have been going well. More and more people are flocking to hear Jesus. Surely this new movement will be successful. That is what Jesus means when he talks about Peter thinking in human terms.

On a personal level, Peter loves Jesus like a brother. Jesus has changed Peter’s life. The idea of losing Jesus is devastating for Peter.

And Jesus has such personal power. Surely Jesus is wrong about all this doom and gloom. Surely he can convince the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders. Surely he can bring them around.

So Peter takes Jesus aside, and says, “God forbid, Lord, that something like this could happen!”

Jesus is shocked. Peter is the one who has seen that Jesus is the Savior. Now Peter is falling apart. Peter is losing his focus and starting to think in human terms instead of divine terms. But worst of all, he is making things more difficult for Jesus. Jesus does not want to die. Later, in the garden, he will sweat blood over this. He will ask God to take this cup from him. In a sense, Peter is weakening Jesus’ resolve. So Jesus says the thing that will be like a slap in the face to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” That must have hurt Peter. What a moment that was in their relationship. Peter could have left. Jesus could have wavered. Neither thing happened. Peter stayed in the group. He was the rock. He was the leader. But he still denied Jesus. He wasn’t perfect.

And that is a great help to us, because we are not perfect either. But we are still following Jesus, and we are walking the Way of the Cross.

Jesus tells Peter that he is setting his mind on human things, and, of course, we do that, too. The idea of our Lord suffering this most horrible form of humiliation and death is beyond comprehension. We know that it happened, and we wish there had been another way.

So we are Abraham and Sarah and we have been on a long journey, and the future is looking pretty bleak. Actually, it is looking non- existent. God comes to us and makes a promise that changes everything. It gives us a future, hope. It gives us everything that makes life worthwhile. On the human level, this is ridiculous, and, if we are Abraham and Sarah, we burst out laughing. But then we stop and think and pray and we realize that God has never broken a promise. God has led us this far. God has always been faithful to us. And that gives us reason to be faithful to God. So we get down to business and put one foot in front of the other and try to be as faithful and loyal to God as we can and go about our daily lives seeking God’s will and doing God’s will. And just believing that it is going to happen.

As we walk the way of the cross with our Lord, we are not going to be able to manipulate this awful situation or control it or make it come out the way we think it should. That is human thinking.

We are walking with a God who loves us so much that he is willing to hang on an instrument of torture and death that is reserved for the worst criminals and die. God does not lash out. God does not kill us.

God forgives. God takes all that death and hatred and works with it and transforms it into new life.

As we walk with him, we can begin to be aware that this is what he is doing. At this point in the journey, our hope may be wavering, and yet our Lord reminds us that there is always reason to hope against hope. There is always new life. It isn’t easy. There are labor pangs. There is struggle. Underneath it all and in all of it is love, the love of God.

There is always reason to hope against hope. There is always reason for faith. Blessed Lord, give us grace to follow you and to be faithful to you.  Amen.

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