March 8: Second Sunday in Lent
Sunday’s Readings
Genesis 12:1-9 Psalm 33:12-21 Romans 4:1-17 John 3:1-16
Below is a transcript of the sermon Fr. Steve Sterry delivered at ACE on 8 March 2020.
Our Old Testament Lesson describes God’s call to Abraham. God orders Abram, to whom He later gives the name Abraham, to gather his family and servants from the city of Haran in the north of Mesopotamia, the home of his father’s family, and travel to Canaan, a destination that would later become the area of ancient Israel. The journey from Haran to Canaan is one of 400 miles, but Abraham and his family along with their animals and belongings would travel for many more miles through the countryside before finally settling at Hebron. All this travel would result in God’s blessing a great nation that would be formed by the settlement of Abraham and his descendants.
God first promises to bless Abraham, and then promises to bless others through him, including all the families of the Earth. How could all the families on earth be blessed through him? Both Abraham and his wife were advanced in age. He was 75 years old, and Sarai who God would later rename Sarah, was only ten years younger, well beyond childbearing age. Under those circumstances, perhaps, Abraham and his family might look forward to becoming wealthy, but their prospects of being blessed with a large family, no less all the families on earth, seemed impossible.
God also promises to make Abraham’s name great. Great to who? Himself? Others? How could this be with such a small group that included Abraham, his wife, his nephew Lot, along with a few other people who joined them from the City of Haran? And yet, Abraham obeys God without question or complaint. He embraces the call that God has given to him.
An often forgotten part of the story of Abraham’s trip to Canaan is that, in Genesis, Chapter 11, when Abraham received his call from God, his father and family had already begun the trip from Ur to the land of Canaan, but when they arrived at Haran, Abraham’s father, Terah, made the decision to settle there. Is it possible that Terah had been first called by God to complete the journey but had given up after traveling some 600 miles? If so, then, was Abraham also faithful to God’s call to his father by his obedience to leave his father’s house and land and to continue that journey with his family?
As Abraham’s journey continues, we are told that the Canaanites were in the land. The land belonged to them, and so the land would probably not be available to Abraham, until later on, after Abraham’s death, then to his offspring. Only after the Exodus could Abraham’s descendants truly possess the land. And yet, Abraham does not question God, even though he believes that his wife is too old for childbirth.
And so, as the journey continues Abraham builds altars to God at important places where he sojourns. Presumably, he would have also offered sacrifice to God at those places. In other words, he performs acts of worship in acknowledgement of his encounter with God and in homage and gratitude for God’s promised blessings. The end of the reading, then, finds Abraham and his group journeying south, onward to the Negev, the large desert region in today’s Southern Israel.
So, at this point, let’s look at Abraham’s situation as it appears from his early encounter with God:
He was promised God’s blessings for both himself and his family, yet he had no descendants and was 75 years old.
He was asked to pack up his household and head for a place called Canaan where he had never been and was occupied by other peoples
His travels would be indirect, he would eventually journey for more than 1,000 miles before arriving at his final destination, and the land would never become his, but could only be owned by his ancestors after his death.
He and his wife were elderly and childless, and at this point, he had no descendants; the closest family member traveling with him was his nephew.
How would we react to that situation? Our Epistle reminds us that Abraham was not justified by works but was declared by God as righteous through his faith. Even though God’s promises seemed to be preposterous, Abraham was willing to trust God and Obey Him. It was Abraham’s belief in God that made him different from other men. And it was God who, through Grace, declared Abraham righteous. In other words, he was counted as righteousness despite his propensity to sin. And Abraham was blessed because of his faith in God. Therefore, God chose him to become the father of all nations.
Chapter 19 of Matthew’s Gospel provides an example of how many of us might react if God came to us in a similar scenario. It says, “Someone came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?” And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” Then he said to Him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not commit murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother; and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept; what am I still lacking?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property. And Jesus said to [His disciples], everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last; and the last, first.”
Obviously, Abraham did exactly the opposite of the man in this story. He left his parents and his land to obey God’s instructions. He performed what Father Greg describes in his writing for Biola’s Lenten Project as a process of “detachment.”
As he talks about his love for books, Father Greg writes “Bearing in mind that all created things are good (cf. Gen. 1:31), I am still responsible as a Christian to steward them (that is, the books) in an appropriate and godly manner. And appropriate and godly stewardship certainly also means getting rid of them if that is what God wants. Otherwise, I’ll find out that I am no disciple at all. And I should care about this not only because my boys will be saddled one day when I’m gone with a grotesque amount of books on Christian monasticism so that they’ll have to get rid of because they’re growing old and starting to stink (like the spoiled blackberries in Heaney’s “Blackberry-Picking”, a poem that was included in the Biola devotion) but also because my willingness to detach myself from things is evidence of my submission, as a disciple, to Jesus. This is not rocket science: detachment from things is discipleship. Francis of Assisi was so willing to give it all up that he got naked in the town square! Would I do that? Will you?”
And so, what will each of us do when God asks us to follow Him on some strange new mission? Will we choose to be like Abraham and say, I’m in, or will we find some excuse to retain the baggage that keeps us away from our obedience to God’s wishes. We need to think on that question so that we will be ready to give our answer when God asks us to follow him on some new or unexpected quest.