Sermon Lent 2, 2011

Sermon Lent 2 2011

Text: John 3:1-17, Gen 12:1-4a

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.”

Whoa! Um, what God? Really? I am going to be a blessing? My name shall be great? And not just a few people blessed, but all the families of the earth shall be blessed?

And Abram just goes!

“So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.”

That's a lot of faith and trust. And it's the first we hear of Abram, who will become Abraham in 5 chapters. In the chapters leading up to this story we hear of the Tower of Babel and the spreading of the people of the earth, and then we get a chapter of genealogy from Noah's son Shem down to Abram's father Terah, who settles with Abram, Abram's wife Sarai, to be Sarah, and Abram's nephew Lot in the land of Ur, somewhere in modern-day Iraq towards the Kuwait border.

The first words that God speaks to Abram, are Go from your country and everything you know and go to this land I will show you.

That's a lot to ask of Abram I think. Yes, he is promised to be blessed, but how? At this point what we know of Abram and Sarai is that she is barren, she has no child. In a culture where blessing and future promise was through your children and descendants it is hard to see where blessing will come for Abram and Sarai, but Abram trusts.

Dennis Olson of Princeton Theological Seminary thinks that this is a transition marking God's decision to try a new strategy with humanity. To focus on one family and their descendants, and as usual God works through mysterious means, here a childless barren couple. Abram seems to fit God's new plan at this point. And so we see a transition from curse to blessing. In the first Chapter of Genesis that we heard last week, Adam and Even do not listen to God, they do not follow what God commands of them. But, Abram does, and he is to be a blessing.

Why is it that Abram and Sarai obey God? For many the reason mentioned is that the trust in this promise of change. A change from barrenness and emptiness to fullness and blessing. To Abram and Sarai the promise of blessing is all that is needed. Where they are they have nothing, and they have realized that. In a society where wealth and prosperity are through children, they are barren in more ways than children. No matter what the blessing will turn out to be, they are willing to take it. Abram and Sarai at this point do not even believe that it will be descendants, they hear blessing and trust in it. When God finally tells them that it will be children and grand-children as much as the sands of the sea, they both break down and laugh. In Gen 17 Abraham falls on his face and laughs. But in their state of barrenness, whatever the blessing is, it is the promised hope they long for.

It is all that is needed.

During Lent, we journey looking for what it is that we need. Last week we considered what tempts us, and work to overcome those temptations, but we know we cannot on our own. And so we continue journeying. And like last week we often turn away from God to find our answers. But, we need to be like Abram, hearing the promise of blessing given to us.

We journey and we travel, we continue journeying towards the cross, and we know that. But, what we do not see is that the cross is right next to us. God is right next to us. In Abram and Sarai's journey they discover they can put behind them their barrenness, they emptiness, and dwell on God's blessing, God's promise. They trust that in the journey God is sending them on, God will be with them. In Lent, we can rest assured that we can put behind us our own emptiness, our own burdens and failures, because we can trust in God's promised given to us in the cross. The promise that God is with us, and dies for us.

It is all that is needed.

For Abram and Sarai, God is promising a new creation for them, a place of blessing away from where before was only barrenness. For us it is the perverse place of death, where we find life. Lent seems to always send us towards death. We consider our own mortality on Ash Wednesday, we look at the things around us that lead us to death, lead us away from God. And all the while we are on a path to a symbol of the most gruesome death.

The Roman's did not usually have to physically kill someone with a cross to have an impact, they merely had to erect it and have it's specter fall over the land. But here, it is different. It is not the specter of the cross that is lifted, it is the Son of Man, the Christ, Jesus our Lord, who is lifted up. In that death, which we are connected to in Baptism, we find life, for Christ dies for us.

It is all that is needed.

I read an article about free slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth this week. In it she recalls how she got the name Sojourner Truth.

“My name was Isabella; but when I left the house of bondage, I left everything behind. I wasn’t going to keep nothing of Egypt on me, an’ so I went to the Lord an’ asked him to give me a new name. And the Lord gave me Sojourner, because I was a travel up an’ down the land, showin’ the people their sins, an’ bein’ a sign unto them. Afterward I told the Lord I wanted another name, ’cause everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people.

The Truth Sojourner declared was their right to freedom. The sin was slavery. The freedom was the freedom given in Christ. Her journey was for that purpose.

Abram and Sarai are set free. Set Free into God's blessings. And just as Abram and Sarai's journey to blessing is for all the families of the earth, so is our journey for others. For in Christ we are set free from the pain of the world around us, set free to journey. Seeking not our own freedom, but journeying for Christ's sake, seeking out the lost in the world, and showing them the cross already next to them. This freedom allows us to reach out to others and show them the cross where through Christ's death and resurrection they are given life.

It is all that is needed.

Let us pray,

God of all that is needed, we thank you for the faith of Abram and Sarai, we ask you to help us have the same faith and trust. We thank you for your Son Jesus Christ, who was lifted up on the cross for us. We ask you to be with all those in this world who journey not knowing where they are going, give them direction and worth.

Amen

Hymn of the Day: Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound ELW 779/LBW 448