Second Sunday in Lent
February 25, 2018
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

First Reading:  Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:23-31; Second Reading: Romans 4:13-25; Gospel: Mark 8:31-38

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

So, after two weeks of Olympic coverage, how are you feeling about your own physical accomplishments? It’s inspiring to see the heights human bodies can achieve. At times, it can also make you want to throw in the towel. It’s hard enough to exercise in this college town swarming with the bodies of fit twenty-year olds – thank you very much!

That sense of inferiority can happen in our faith lives, too. Can we ever measure up to the great heroes of faith like Abraham and Paul, Dorothy Day, Bonhoeffer, Dr. King? They definitely knew what it was to carry their cross and give of themselves freely.

Today we heard a lot about Abraham in the first and second readings. The way Paul describes him in the Romans passage, Abraham sounds like a truly stellar spiritual athlete.

Paul writes: “Hoping against hope Abraham believed that he would become the father of many nations.” “He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body which was as good as dead or the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.” “No distrust made him waver” and he was “fully convinced” that God would bring him a son. This guy should get a gold medal for faith.

Except, with all due respect to the Apostle Paul, his memory of Abraham seems a bit … selective. A cynic might even claim Paul is like some election year spin doctor who’s sanitized Abraham, air- brushed him, made him look spotless and spiritually splendid. Paul does have good reasons for his portrayal of Abraham. He emphasizes Abraham’s faith to teach that faith is more important than good works – a key thing to remember. Yet Abraham’s faith is a bit more complicated than Paul lets on which, it turns out, is good news for us.

The first time God promised a son to Abraham, then called Abram, he believed God. It “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” But when some years passed and a son still hadn’t been born, Sarai and Abram took matters into their own hands.

Sarai decided her slave Hagar, rather than God, would produce a son. Abram, we’re told, “listened to the voice of Sarai”. It’s not clear if he listened to the voice of the Lord about this. He embraced Sarai’s plan- literally- and a son Ishmael was born. Slaves did bear children for their mistresses, so maybe this plan wasn’t a lack of faith. But it still seems a little sketchy; and the way Abram and Sarai treated Hagar was really awful.

God promised Abram a son again, and gave him the name Abraham, ancestor of many nations. This time God promised the son would come through the renamed Sarah. But, once again, Abraham was anything BUT fully convinced. “He fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’ ” It seems some distrust did make him waver a bit.

We really need this more nuanced picture of Abraham alongside Paul’s version. Because if we see Abraham merely as a larger than life hero of faith, we may get the wrong impression about God. We might conclude that God works only with spiritual giants of Olympian strength – muscular Christians – and despair that God can work with garden-variety humans like us, who are a little more weak and wavering.

Abraham doubted plenty. He struggled, took matters into his own hands, and laughed in disbelief.  He also tried to pass Sarah off as his sister twice in order to save his own skin. I think you should lose style points for stunts like that.

Yet, God still did a new thing in Abraham and Sarah. God made them a promise. That promise work- ed its way into their lives and bore fruit. Their son was born and a whole new faith was born. Sarah and Abraham became the forebearers of the Jewish and Christian faiths. According to Genesis, God also made promises to Hagar and Ishmael and their descendants in faith, that is Muslims. Because of God’s promises, each of these ancestors was a blessing to the world.

God’s promise brought new life and new faith. Abraham became fully convinced, not because of some heroic ability on his part, but because of the power of God who gave the promise.

God’s promises aren’t the empty words of a spin doctor or campaign specialist. God, as Paul says, “brings life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” God’s promise, God’s Word, makes things happen. God’s Word calls creation into existence, rips open the heavens, raises the dead and brings new life.

God’s Word also creates faith and hope – in Abraham and in us.

It doesn’t depend upon us to muster up faith. It doesn’t fall to us to bring about change and newness on our own. God’s Word creates the hope we need, the hope our world needs.

God’s Word of promise is given to you – in the covenant of baptism and in worship today through scripture, song, prayer, preaching, and Holy Communion. God’s Word is at work to forgive you, to set you free, to give you new life – each new day.

In all the times you feel like throwing in the towel, in all the ways you think you don’t measure up, in all your cynical laughter or despair about the state of the world and your own life – God’s word is for you. You don’t need to worry about saving and securing your life; you have what you need to let go and follow Jesus into the unknown.

You have what you need to hope and risk and start again, and to be a blessing for our world. See, this promise is for you, but not only for you. The world needs people who can hope against hope, who remain open to new life, who freely give of themselves.

As God’s people together, as children of the covenant, we can do this. Not because we are heroic but because God is faithful.

Let’s take a moment for prayer and reflection.

First Sunday in Lent
February 18, 2018
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus. And, Beloved, what can we do about the gun violence in our country?

This week, yet again, we’re angry, we’re sad. We feel hopeless and yet we know we need to take action.

Something has to change. We cannot continue to watch these events unfold and do nothing.

It seems God has similar feelings. Today we heard the end of the story of Noah and the flood, but it helps to start with the beginning of the story.

We’re told throughout Genesis, chapter 6: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth … And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart … Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence … And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them, now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.’ ”                       

God also was grieved about all the corruption and violence on the earth. God refused to simply watch it unfold and do nothing.

God decided to act- to destroy all flesh and all creation and start over again with just a small remnant of people and creatures.

This is a troubling story. I’ve always wondered why we emphasize it with children so much. I know the animals can be cute, but why do we think divinely driven genocide and global annihilation make up a good bedtime story? Good night, sleep tight, don’t get washed away by a flood tonight?

This is a troubling story and yet I’m also grateful that we have a God who is grieved by human corruption and violence, rather than a God who’s some kind of unmoved mover – unaffected and uninvolved in creation. God is troubled by the ways we harm each other. God is bent on justice for the sake of the flourishing of all creation.

So, God sent a flood in the days of Noah.

But then after the flood, we hear in chapter 8, “the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never … again destroy every living creature as I have done.’ ” And then, in chapter 9, God made an everlasting covenant with all living flesh, promising to never again send a flood to destroy the earth.

God is still, and always, bent on justice; but it seems God has decided that anger from a distance is not the answer. Instead, God has committed to be even more involved with creation by making an everlasting covenant with all flesh. God has pledged to be actively engaged in the flourishing of life to bring about justice and compassion through relationship with flesh.

Anger and destruction from on high would keep God removed from all the violence and corruption. In- stead, God has moved in closer. We see this in all the covenants God makes with people throughout the Old Testament – covenants we’ll hear about this Lent. We see this most fully in Jesus who gives the new covenant in his blood – a covenant of non-violent, self-giving love.

God not only made a covenant with all flesh; God, in Jesus, also became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus entered into all that we face: desert times, temptations, suffering and death. He got angry at injustice but could not be stopped from loving us – even when we killed him. He rose again and comes to us still in his body and blood. God, in Jesus, does not remain at a distance but moves in very close.

We need to do the same when it comes to addressing gun violence and other difficult issues we face.

We need to turn away from anger at a distance. We can’t simply post rants on Facebook; we can’t get angry at everyone else from afar. We, like God, must get more involved with God’s creation for the sake of the flourishing of life. We must commit to engage and move in closer.

This is our work as people of God’s covenant. We have been brought into God’s covenant with all flesh in a very personal and powerful way through baptism. In baptism, we go through the waters that bring death to our sinful selves and we are brought into new life. As we heard in the 1 Peter reading, just as God saved Noah and his family in the flood, so baptism saves us from all that would cut us off from life, from God.

The new life we have been given is not for our sake alone. It is given to draw us into God’s work of bringing justice and mercy through us. Our baptism calls us into this work and compels us to move in close. We’re called to have difficult conversations with people we’d rather despise. We’re called to engage the political process for that is how we work for justice and mercy together. We’re called to go to places that make us uncomfortable, to keep working, to keep hoping.

We are doing this together now around the issue of immigration. Instead of just being angry from a distance about the broken immigration system in our country, we have become an AMMPARO congregation and are caring for the health needs of unaccompanied minors. We have moved in closer by calling and writing to our representatives in Congress. We have walked with our neighbors, the Campos family, as Raul was detained by ICE. Raul has been released on bail, but the journey still continues for the Campos family and we will stay in this journey for the long haul.

In these and so many other ways, we as God’s people are drawing near to others so that we can know God’s justice and compassion, so that life can flourish in our communities. We need to continue this work together, especially around the issue of gun violence

Beloved, we have what we need to do this work together. God has made a covenant with us in the rainbow and in the waters of baptism. We can move in close for God is always close to us.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.