"Stone Soup and the Cross" - Sermon for Lent 2, 2018
Sermon:
Text: Genesis 17:
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus Christ who in covenant fills us.
There is a
story, told many different ways, called stone soup. A Monk enters a small town
far away from anywhere else. He walks to the center of the town square, all the
eyes of the town follow from their windows. There he starts a fire, and sets up
a pot, fills it from water from the well, brings it to a simmer, and carefully
adds in a medium sized very smooth stone. He stirs the pot a few times, takes
out a spoon and takes a sip. By now a few towns folk have come out to the
square to see what’s going on. The monk remarks to one of them, it’s very good,
but needs a little salt and pepper. I have some! And off they run to get it and
add it to the pot. Again, it’s very good, but needs a little onion, oh, I have
some. It could use some potato. I have a
few! If anyone has some stew meat. I do! And so forth, until eventually the entire
town is going through their pantries to find what they could also add to the
pot of stone soup. By the end of the night, the whole town is gathered,
enjoying a full and hearty meal together. And it all started with a empty pot,
and a stone.
We continue
to look at covenants today and our two main texts are Genesis, where we see the
covenant with Abram and Sarai, and Mark as Jesus calls upon the disciples and
us to take up our cross and follow him after he again declares that he must go
to the Jerusalem to die.
When we
read the section of Genesis that follows the lives of Abraham and Sarah, we
often get lost in who they become. We remember them as who God promises they
will become through the covenant. We immediately see them as the father and
mother of the Hebrew people, they are the origin of Jewish faith, and through
that our faith. All Jewish, Christian, and Muslim people trace their faith back
to Abraham. With worldwide religious populations percentages at 31.2%
Christian, 24.1%Muslim, and .2% Jewish, that means that 55.5% of all people on
earth trace their faith and belief back to these two people.
As such, we
see them as extremely full and prosperous people. They most certainly lived
into God’s covenant promise heard here that they will become the ancestors of a
multitude.
But, when
we meet them here, and in the chapters leading up to this, they are not full.
To go back to our stone soup story, they are that empty pot the monk first sets
up.
God in the
process of making this second covenant, after the first covenant with Noah and
all creation, doesn’t pick the young fertile couple at the prime of life. God
instead goes with the old, old, old couple, very far beyond child bearing
years, and to them promises descendants more than the stars in the sky, and the
sands of the sea. Both Abraham and Sarah laugh when they first hear about this
idea. And yet, who God picks is not the pot already full, but the empty pot
that God then fills.
That is the
heart of the covenant. Not just that God will make descendants of Abraham and
Sarah, but that God will fill those that are empty.
In our
Gospel lesson we read a passage where Jesus foretells his death and
resurrection. As we get closer and closer to Good Friday and the death that
entails, we remember that Jesus is God. Jesus is the Second person of the
Trinity, the Son of God, God in Three Persons, one in three, three in one.
Jesus is the one here that tells that he will suffer and die. And God is adamant
that this occur. Jesus tells Peter to be quiet, Get behind me Satan, this must
happen. In Many ways this is simply another temptation by Satan, the Tempter,
through Peter, will Jesus work to get out of death, or not. And Jesus chooses
death. Jesus chooses directly to say, no, you are wrong Peter, I must die. All
hangs upon that. All hangs on that Jesus, Son of God, the second person of the
Trinity, the Word made Flesh, God will die.
Jesus is fully human,
he will indeed die, but Jesus is also fully divine, this is God emptying God’s
self to the point of death, even death on a cross, to quote Philippians 2. In
that moment upon the cross, God will die. God there becomes the empty pot, God
empties God’s self, to be ready to be filled. God doesn’t choose glory and
power, but emptiness and death.
And so,
when we look to the end of our text, where we see Jesus telling us take up the
cross, he’s not calling us to needless suffering, but to empty ourselves. When
we take up the cross, we have to then put other things down. We have to put
down our idols, our fears, our sins, our insecurities. We have to lay down that
we are not worthy or loved. Because through Christ emptying himself, he bids
us, place your concerns on me. Lay your burdens upon my shoulders. Empty
yourself into my pot, so that in taking up the cross I may fill yours with good
things.
That’s the
covenant to us this week. Taking up the cross is not a burden upon us, it
relief from all that overwhelms us and then being filled with the love of
Christ. In taking up the cross, we see that we are then filled.
The thing
about stone soup is that it starts empty and in the end all are filled.
The thing
about God is that God empties God’s self, so also, in the end, all are filled.
Amen.
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