Second Sunday in Lent

Second Sunday in Lent

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

God’s promise to Abraham sent him on a journey. It was a journey to space. Abraham was to travel a distance to a land that would give him. It was a journey of time. It took God many years to accomplish the promise of a child to Sarah and to him. It was a journey of faith. Abraham needed to stretch a great deal. God took Abraham and Sarah far beyond their physical capabilities to produce children and continued to promise that they would produce a child against all of the odds. The graphic bloody nature of the sacrifice in today’s lesson simply stated in clear fashion that God was going to produce the heir that Abraham and Sarah waited for so long.

Abraham’s journey was filled with difficulties and many turns in the road. Twice Abraham misrepresented his relationship to Sarah as brother and sister to save himself. Twice he feared that her beauty would cause his assassination so that Sarah could marry them. Twice Abraham lied and Sarah was married away. Twice others suffered the consequences of Abraham’s lie. The clean up afterwards was not easy.

In today’s Gospel lesson, we enter that part of Jesus’ journey into Jerusalem that would be his last. Jesus’ journey began in a stable. His journey was riddled with perils and turns in the road also. Many times Jesus’ friends tried to dissuade him from taking the road ahead of him. The Devil tempted him in the desert to take the easy road of power. Peter tried to talk him down when finally Peter saw the messiah. In the garden of Gethsemane they tried to defend Jesus physically from him captors. Each time, Jesus fought off the temptation to turn down another path away from his crucifixion to return to the course that God laid out for him.

Jesus chose a road that is full of risks up to an including the risk of death. It is the same road that God called Abraham to travel, and it is the road that Jesus invited his disciples to follow with him in the present and after his ascension. We too are on the road of discipleship, following Jesus into the world. We have been invited, like Abraham and Sarah to be part of a growing community of God’s people throughout the world. The purpose of the journey is to build the kingdom of God. Though we have an inheritance bigger in a future that we cannot yet see, we have a calling to build the kingdom of God here in this place. Jesus commissioned his disciples to out baptizing and making more disciples like ourselves, and teaching the world to obey what Jesus commanded us.

We are probably going to take the journey more like Abraham and Sarah did than the way Jesus did. We are probably going to have a great many conflicts when we come to the bumps and turns in the road. We are probably going to succumb to the fears and the slips that Abraham and Sarah experienced; but, the road that we are on is the road that Jesus went upon before us. We will find the hand of God picking us up when we fall and binding up our wounds when we get hurt, and yes, raising us up when we die. That is were the road of God end up, in life, not death.

March 4, 2007