Lent 2C

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

Our gospel takes place after Jesus set out for Jerusalem (9:51),

but before the final week that will lead to his arrest and crucifixion. His enemies have already made themselves known, criticizing him and his teaching (5:30, 5:33, 6:2, 15:2), grumbling about his healing on the Sabbath (6:7, 13:14, 14:1-3) and questioning his authority (7:49).

It isn’t clear whether the Pharisees, who were the religious experts, were genuine in their concern for Jesus, warning him that Herod Antipas wanted to kill him, or whether they were scheming to manipulate Jesus.

But Jesus responds with the same steely resolve he adopted when he turned toward Jerusalem. He is going to continue to do his Kingdom work – “casting out demons and performing cures” (13:32) – and he will complete his journey to Jerusalem on his own time.

But even as he dismisses his enemies,

and fully knowing what awaits him in Jerusalem,

Jesus offers a lament for the city and its people. He cries out for God’s beloved because he knows they have turned away from God and God’s “unwavering love for [them.]”[i]

This is the choice God’s people make over and over again.

Returning to our first reading in Genesis, we hear Abram in conversation with God. It’s not the first encounter Abram has had with God. It was in Genesis 12 in the land of Ur that the Lord first promised Abram,

² I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Since then, Abram and Sarai have journeyed faithfully, trusting God’s promises, but they remain childless and dispossessed of any land of their own.  

But now the Lord comes to Abram and says, “Do not be afraid.”

For the ancient Israelites hearing this story, and for us today, those words carry a promise. Those words mean good things are coming.

Just in Genesis, we hear them when Hagar thinks Ishmael will die in the desert (21:17); when Isaac and Rebekah are in Beersheba (26:24); and when Israel, who is renamed Jacob, is traveling with his sons and their children and wives to Egypt to escape the famine in Canaan. (46:3)

But this time Abram doesn’t take God’s Word at face value.

This time, he has questions.

He is skeptical, asking, “What will you give me?” (15:2) and “How am I to know?” (15:8) because the promises God gave him in Ur haven’t been realized yet.

Abram isn’t simply impatient or fickle. He has been faithful, but he was 75 when the promises were made and with each passing year, they are harder to believe.

“Amazingly, God continues to be patient with him.”[ii] God continues to be steadfast and present, ready to bless Abram, despite his doubt and uncertainty.

God repeats God’s promise to Abram, saying, “Look toward the heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them...So shall your descendants be.” (15:5) and then he tells Abram “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” (15”18)

And just as God gave Noah a sign of the covenant by placing a bow in the sky (9:17), God makes a covenant with Abram. God’s presence with the Israelites on that day appeared as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, and represented by those objects, God passed between the cleaved livestock as a sign of God’s commitment to fulfill the promises God has made to Abram.

The Genesis text tells us that even as God was repeating God’s promises and even as Abram was questioning God and asking for signs of God’s faithfulness, Abram believed what God was saying. (15:6)

Faith does not mean relinquishing questions and doubts.

But just as God demonstrates God’s patience for Abram, God patiently waits on us, hoping for our trust.

Importantly, our response does not change God’s faithfulness.

God continues to be the God of promise known to our ancestors in faith, and God continues to be the God of grace and mercy whom we know in the person of Jesus Christ - the same Christ who laments when God’s people turn away from God, when we forget that we are connected to one another as God’s children and when we are unwilling to love another without exception.

We are invited to wrestle with the uncertainty and challenges we face in life and to have hard conversations with confidence that God’s love is unchanging.

Let us pray…[iii]

Holy God,

Thank you for promising us that we have nothing to fear.

You made a lasting covenant with Abraham and with all Your children;

help us trust in your steadfast presence as we wait on You,

confident that nothing separates us from your unwavering love.

We pray in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

---

[i] Bartlett, David L.; Barbara Brown Bartlett. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide . Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

[ii] Bartlett, David L.; Barbara Brown Bartlett. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide . Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

[iii] Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources.

" I is for Israel" The Good Book Summer Series

Genesis 32:24-28 (NRSV)

and in the Message 

This morning, we heard the second of four stories from the Old Testament as we explore some of the stories of our ancestors in faith.

Today’s text is from Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, and it’s a story about Jacob.

A few chapters earlier in Genesis, we meet Jacob and his twin brother Esau at their birth.

I wonder if you had a nickname in your family? Or if you gave one to your brothers or sisters?

When Esau arrived first, he was given a name that reflects his red and hairy appearance, but Jacob was born holding onto his brother’s heel so his name means “heel sneak” or “usurper” which refers to someone who takes what is yours and claims it as their own.

The boys’ parents were Rebeka and Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah. And while most parents say they don’t have favorites, the biblical text says that Isaac favored Esau and Rebeka favored Jacob. It also tells us about an encounter between the brothers when a very hungry Esau gave his birthright – or share of his inheritance – to Jacob in exchange for a bowl of hearty stew. (Genesis 25)

But it was when Isaac was very old, and his eyesight was failing, that Jacob truly lived into his name.

When Esau leaves to go hunting, with their mother Rebekah’s help, Jacob tricks Isaac into giving him his blessing before he dies. When Esau learns how Jacob has deceived him and their father, he’s angry and their mother warns Jacob to flee to her brother’s home.

Today’s story takes place more than twenty years later as Jacob is going home and preparing to meet his brother Esau.

If you have been unhappily separated from a family member, you can imagine the uncertainty and anxiety Jacob was experiencing. He was afraid. He didn’t know anything about his brother’s character. He didn’t know whether Esau’s anger had been simmering for two decades, or whether he had forgiven him.

So, he sends his family and servants ahead with gifts for his brother, and he camps alone for the night by the river Jabbok.

And as our text told us, there he wrestled all night long with another man.

Jacob was a fighter. He had fought with his brother to be born and came in second; he fought with him again, stealing their father’s blessing. So, when this stranger found him, alone in the night, Jacob did what he knew how to do – he fought.

Today, wrestling matches are six minutes long. Jacob and his opponent wrestled all night long, hours upon hours without surrendering. Imagine the exhaustion and frustration that they felt.

Our text says that when the man saw that Jacob would not yield, he touched his hip, dislocating it. But even then, Jacob did not let go of his opponent.

Instead, Jacob demanded a blessing.  And incredibly, instead of turning away from Jacob or punishing him for the deceits he had practiced during his lifetime, the man gave him a new name, saying “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." (Genesis 32:28) and before he left Jacob, he blessed him.

The author of Genesis could have had Jacob emerge from the story more decidedly victorious, but he doesn’t. Instead, we see how Jacob wrestled with God, not against Him. He hung in there all night, refusing to be cast aside. And he came away changed. He walks with a limp. He has a new identity, no longer a “heel sneak” but a “God-fighter” or “one who strives with God” as his new name can be translated.

Now we know the story better,

what can we learn from Jacob’s stubborn and determined wrestling?

Dr. Anna Carter Florence is the author of “A is for Alabaster”, the resource we’re using for this series, and one question she asked as she talked about the chapter titled “I is for Israel”, is,

“How do things change?” from decade to decade in our lives. How different are the things with which we wrestle or for which we strive when we are 20, 30, 40 or 60?  

I don’t want us to answer too glibly or dismiss what our younger selves sought. I hope the question helps us reflect on which things endure, which ones are central to our identity as God-fighters (and followers), and which ones may be part of our own hubris or arrogance.

Because I think we are all a little like Jacob at some point in our lives:

wanting what someone else has;

unable to recognize the sufficiency of what God has already provided; and,

being afraid to face the consequences of our mistakes and the ways we hurt others.

The Good News we have from Jacob’s story is that God’s grace is sufficient, in fact, abundant. And in the face of our all-too-human responses to the world around us, God still loves us, and names us, “God’s child now and forever.”

One of the professors at Luther Seminary Dr. Rolf Jacobson, noting that Jacob was buried in the same place as his grandfather Abraham, wrote,

We don’t know if they wrote anything on his tombstone, but if it were…, it would have said, “Here lies Jacob, a thief and a sinner claimed by God in order that God might bless the entire world.”[i]

Let us pray.

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for wrestling with us and not against us.

Help us recognize you when we encounter you,

And remember the blessing we already have by your grace,

That you call every one of us “God’s child now and forever.”

Amen. 

---

[i] Crazy Book. Rolf Jacobson, Editor. 132.

First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Matthew 4:1-11

Throughout the forty days of Lent we’ll be exploring the “wilderness”, recognizing it’s not always someplace we go willingly, and yet, sometimes, it’s where we need to find ourselves so that we can draw closer to God.

Wilderness looks different in different parts of the world and it means different things to different people. We are close to Linville Gorge and Shining Rock but wilderness could look like the Boundary Waters of Minnesota or the Mojave Desert in California. And the wilderness that Jesus experiences looks different from those and even different from the garden where we meet Adam and Eve and the serpent in the Genesis text.

Importantly, no matter what our experience of the wilderness is, there is no place where God’s love cannot reach us.

I want to begin with our reading from Genesis that Lisa read. It’s part of the first three chapters of the the Bible, which have not one, but two, different creation stories in them.

The first is where God declares that the works of creation are good, and then, when humankind is created in God’s image, it is very good. (1:31)

God creates us to flourish and loves us.

Our verses for today come from the second creation story. Here humankind has been created for relationship with each other and cautioned against overreaching, and eating from this one tree, but the humans disregard God’s plan or intention for them and, instead, they seize the chance to “be like God knowing good and evil.” (3:5)

I doubt that we’d hear the parallels if we didn’t have these texts side by side like we do today, but when Matthew tells this story of Jesus’ temptation, it is immediately after his baptism when the Holy Spirit of God had descended upon Jesus and God had declared, “This is my Son, the Beloved,” with whom I am well pleased.” (3:17)

God has said again, “This is very good.”

And then the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness where he faces the tempter. In Genesis, humankind justified eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because it was “good for food, and …a delight to the eyes and ..was to be desired to make one wise.” (3:6) But in Matthew, Jesus pushes back on each distorted claim the tempter makes and is satisfied and sustained by God’s Word.

But the point isn’t that “Jesus got it right where humans messed up.” Or to assure us that Jesus knows what it’s like to be tempted so if, or when, we break our Lenten fast, he’ll forgive us.

So, what do we learn from these wilderness stories?

(pause)

It goes back to being God’s beloved.

Adam and Eve are already created in God’s image and do not need anything else. Created to live as servants of creation and do God’s work in the world, they fail to recognize the breadth of God’s love or the expansive freedom God has given them and they make self-serving choices. In his book Simply Christian, Bishop Tom Wright described the human propensity for distraction and disobedience, saying it’s like we are following one route and then we choose to take a left or a right, and head in a different direction, and God accompanies us, saying, “Well, that’s not what I had in mind, but I’ll go with you. Now you’ll need to take these turns…”

Jesus doesn’t take any detours or look for shortcuts. He hears God say, “You are my beloved” and knows his identity as the Son of God. He trusts God to provide for him –confident his hunger will be sated and his thirst will be quenched; he is obedient to God and doesn’t try to secure his own way, and he chooses his relationship with the Father over anything the tempter offers.

The Good News is we are God’s beloved, too.

When we find ourselves in the wilderness,
the tempter may meet us in those wild places and distract us with distorted claims, but we are not the first ones to be in the wilderness and we do not need to be afraid. “For as long as there has been creation, there has been wilderness.”[i]

Sometimes, we may think we are making wise choices for good things, but it turns out that those things are not what God has intended for us. The very One who breathed life into us gives us God’s Word, its commands and promises, teaching us how to live with God and with each other.

Other times, we may be isolated, footsore and famished, but God, who loves us and calls us very good, is with us accompanying us on each step. We are not alone, and we will find a way forward.

Let us pray…
Good and Gracious God,
We give thanks for your beloved Son Jesus and for your Spirit that accompanies us even in the wilderness. Forgive us when we are distracted or choose our own ways over You. Inspire us to have confidence in your promises, remembering we are loved and created to serve and love. We pray in your Holy name. Amen.

[i] From “The Wilderness is Somewhere We’ve Been Before.” Prayer by Sarah Are |A Sanctified Art LLC| sanctifiedart.org

Second Sunday in Lent

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Luke 13:31-35

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she should go, and the cat tells her, “That depends on where you are going.” When Alice replies, “I don’t know” the cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

The same thing holds true for discipleship. We can say that in Lent we want to “return to God with all our hearts”, but discipleship isn’t about following blindly or without thinking; it is our response to the knowledge of grace that we have first been given. We can not return to an unknown God.

The Word of God tells us who God is. Last Sunday we heard Moses recount the promises God made to our ancestors in faith and heard how those promises are woven into our identity at baptism: living in the faith we have received, we have confidence in God because we know that we are God’s beloved children and we know what God has accomplished already.

Except when we don’t.
Because sometimes it is hard to believe.

Today, in the Genesis text, we meet Abram, the patriarch of our faith, and of Judaism and Islam. Earlier in the book, God made a three-fold promise to Abram:
first, that his name will be known;
second, that his descendants will be numerous and become a great nation,
and third, that he will be rewarded with land. 
These three things are what God will do for Abram.

But in this text, Abram has grown tired of waiting on God and he is arguing with God, questioning God’s faithfulness. He is struggling to believe.

Graciously, God doesn’t get angry, strike him down or revoke His promises. Instead God takes Abram outside and tells him to look up at the sky, saying, “Look toward heaven and count the stars if your are able to count them. …So shall your descendants be.” (15:5)

For generations, stars have helped people navigate or find their way. In Scripture, of course, the magi report the appearance of the star over Bethlehem at Jesus’ birth. (Matthew 2) But for centuries before and since, the stars have guided travelers on the way.

The North Star, which is located so near the earth’s axis that it appears to stay fixed in the sky, is one of the most well-known stars. “In Norse tales, [the North Star or] Polaris was the end of a spike around which the sky rotates; in Mongolian mythology, it’s a peg that holds the world together.”[i] And among the First Nations’ peoples, there’s the tale of Na-gah, a tenacious mountain climbing sheep, who climbs through tunnels to reach the top of the highest mountain he has ever seen. When he reaches the peak, he looks down on the earth from above but then he realizes he cannot get back down and he will die on that mountaintop. His father Shinoh is looking for him from the sky above him and he weeps when he sees that Na-gah can’t return to him. So that his son will not die, Shinoh turns him into a star who will be a guide for “all the living things on the Earth and in the sky.”[ii]

God directs Abram to look at the stars for assurance of God’s promises. The same Creator God who puts the stars in the heavens cares for each one of us. “We know,” from Paul’s letter to the Romans, “that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  (Romans 8:28-29) This is the confidence we have in faith.

While Abram makes many missteps (because we know this isn’t the last time he will try to wrest control of his circumstances from God) today’s gospel shows us another way. When the Pharisees come to Jesus and warn him that Herod wants to kill him, Jesus remains steadfast. He is committed to the work he is doing – casting out demons and performing cures – and he is un-willing to change his plans for the convenience of avoiding confrontation or escaping opposition. He persists, telling the Pharisees he will finish the work he has been given and then he will leave. He will not let fear make his decisions for him.

Created by God and redeemed as God’s children, we too are called to obedience.

In modern culture where autonomy or independence are celebrated, obedience — submitting to the authority of anyone other than ourselves — is counter-cultural. In our school days, obedience might have meant a grudging and grumbling acquiescence accompanied by eye rolling. Even now a call to obedience might provoke resentment as though obedience to someone or something demands an unwarranted and undeserved sacrifice. But the late pastor and author Eugene Peterson described obedience as “the strength to stand and the willingness to leap.”[iii]

Obedience is our response to God’s good and generous grace that has been poured out upon us. In faith, we are freed for the sake of the world, and our obedience to God flows from our salvation.[iv]

This Lent as we commit to return to God with all our hearts, may we be confident in what God’s Word tells us about who God is and who we are as God’s children, and obediently follow Jesus, looking for the Light of the World to guide us just as the stars led Abram, the magi and centuries of travelers on the way before us.

Remembering God used the stars as a sign of the promises given to God’s people, I invite you to take the paper star that is inside your bulletin and write down a prayer or a promise that you want to make. You may put your star in the offering plate later during worship or keep it for yourself as a reminder of God’s faithfulness.

Let us pray.
Holy God,
You made the heavens and the earth and then you made us!
Thank for your creative and life-giving Spirit that enlivens us to witness to your abundant mercy and grace.
Help us return our hearts to You that we would obey Your Word in all things.
Strengthen us to follow Your Son Jesus and stand for those who cannot.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

[i] Daniel Johnson. “Meet Polaris, the North Star.” Sky and Telescope, April 19, 2018. https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/stargazing-basics/meet-polaris-the-north-star/ accessed 3/16/2019.

[ii] “Why the North Star Stands Still: A Paiute Legend.” https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/WhytheNorthStarStandsStill-Paiute.html, accessed 3/16/2019.

[iii] Paraphrased from Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience, p. 164-165

[iv] Luther, Freedom of a Christian, 405.

First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 9:8-17

One of the dangerous myths that has been propagated since Wednesday’s killing of seventeen people in a Parkland, Florida high school is that God wasn’t there when the bullets were flying. The storyline is that because our elected officials have upheld religious freedom in our public schools and no longer require prayer, God got mad and left.  

Thankfully, Scripture offers us a different picture of the world and the character of God.

The reading from Genesis picks up the flood narrative near its end. The three chapters preceding this morning’s text describe how God witnessed the ways that humankind repeatedly turned to violence and God expressed remorse at creation.

From Eden onward, God has desired relationship with creation, and intended “that creation’s comfort is found in God’s own care and promise.”[i] But instead of recognizing how we belong to God, humankind continually distances ourselves from God and insists upon living in a world that is in-dependent of God.[ii]

In Chapter 6, the author of Genesis writes,

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (Gen. 6:5-6)

While we like to remember the ending of the flood story with images of brightly colored rainbows, its beginning is rooted in a grieving God who first decided to blot out all creation. But that’s why it’s so important to get the whole story!

What begins as a story of violence that begets violence has a surprise ending. As this story unfolds, God’s own heart changes.

While God allowed Noah and his sons and their wives to find safety from the floodwaters, the waters swelled on earth and killed “every [other] living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air” (Gen. 7:23)

Then, the text tells us that “God remembered Noah” and sent wind over the earth and the waters receded. Later in Genesis, God remembers Abraham and spares his nephew Lot from the destruction that rained down on the cities where he lived and he remembers Jacob’s wife Rachel and opens her womb.

While the world continues to be battered and bloodied by violence, the Word tells us that God remembers and is merciful.

Our reading today describes how God responded to Noah and to all creation after the flood. It is the first of five covenant stories from the Hebrew Scriptures that we will hear during Lent.

In Scripture, “covenant” is a word used to describe how God interacts with us and enters into relationship with us.[iii] It is a promise or set of promises made between two parties and accompanied by a sign.

God promises and we respond. Or at least that’s the hope.

Sadly, more often than not, just as we did before the flood, humankind rejects God and lives in a world without reference to God.

Thankfully, unlike us, God upholds God’s promises. “Gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, [God] relents from punishing.” (Joel 2:13) The “evil, death and destruction [we witness in the world] are not rooted in God’s anger or rejection.”[iv] It is human arrogance to think that we have the power to “allow” or “not allow” God anywhere and it is ignorance to think that our human impulse to answer violence with more violence is anything new.

After the flood, God promises that “never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Gen. 9:11) God surrenders his bow of battle, placing it undrawn in the clouds, pointing away from the earth.[v] God’s promise, or covenant, is that God will not be provoked.

God’s heart has changed, not humankind. “[God is] fully aware that the inclination of every human heart is evil from youth, still.” [vi] But “God decides to endure a wicked world while continuing to open up the divine heart to that world.” [vii]

This same God who places a rainbow covenant in the sky for us is the God who bears witness and suffers alongside us when evil disrupts and when violence destroys.[viii] This is true in Parkland, Florida and it was true two thousand years ago when Jesus was crucified. On the cross God shows that human violence is “impotent compared to God’s life-giving power of love.”[ix]

As we draw near to God this Lent and repent for of our rejection of God’s loving intention for each one of us, may we remember that God’s everlasting love is what creates life and reconciles us in a world that kills.

Let us pray.

Holy God,

We pray with thanksgiving for your everlasting covenant with every living thing in creation.

Overcome our human impulse to respond to violence with violence and teach us to depend on your steadfast promises and abounding love.

Restore us to life this Lent and give us courage to follow Your Son Jesus,

In whose name we pray.

Amen.

---

[i] Interpretation, Brueggemann, 21.

[ii] ibid, 19.

[iii] “Covenant” in Crazy Talk. Rolf Jacobson, Ed. Minneapolis: Augsburg Books. 46-47.

[iv] Brueggemann, 84.

[v] ibid, 84-85.

[vi] Cameron Howard, WorkingPreacher.org

[vii] Terence D. Fretheim, WorkingPreacher.org

[viii] “February 22, 2015: First Sunday in Lent”, Paul Nuechterlein. Christian Century.

[ix] ibid.

3rd Sunday after Pentecost

A few days ago, I heard an interview with Krista Tippet where she was talking with Martin Sheen, who was born Ramón Estévez, and he was telling her about the first real job he held, as a caddy at a golf course. As he talked, he described how he was as invisible to the men playing golf as a gnat or bumblebee on the greens.

And I remember a movie from a few years ago where a woman who was working as a hotel maid was arguing with a politician who had fallen in love with her. He had discovered she had lied about her name and her work, and he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t told him the truth when they met. She told him, “That wasn’t the first time we met; the first time we met I was cleaning your bathroom.” She had been hidden in plain sight, as overlooked as a towel rack or a set of clothes hangers.

Sadly, stories like theirs aren’t new or novel. In fact, they are among the oldest stories we find in our biblical narrative. Today, in Genesis we meet Hagar, an Egyptian slave woman serving Abram’s wife Sarai, and the mother of Ishmael, but to understand the story we have in chapter 21, we need to go back to an earlier chapter of their lives together.

Listen to these verses from Genesis chapter 16:

Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress….
Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.

Abram and Sarai, to whom God had promised a blessing of descendants that outnumber the stars in heaven (ch. 15), doubted God’s promises and provision. Instead, they seized an opportunity they saw in front of them to make things turn out theway they wanted by their own actions.

In Hagar, Sarai saw a young and fertile slave who Abram could take as his wife and who could bear his son. Hagar was nothing more to her than a means to an end; because slaves and their children were property of their masters, Hagar’s childbearing would elevate Sarai and remove the stigma she experienced by being barren.

But Sarai’s carefully laid plan to elevate herself backfired, because it revealed her callousness, and itreduced her, costing her the respect or esteem of Hagar the slave woman. And when Sarai saw that she was no longer respected by Hagar, she despised her even more.

In the next part of the story, while she is in the wilderness, an angel of the Lord appears to Hagar, giving her the first annunciation in Scripture and telling her to name her son Ishmael or “God heard.” Then, she becomes the only person to name God, calling God “A God of seeing.” (16:13)

Knowing she has been both heard and seen by God, that God cares for her needs and values her, she follows the angel’s instructions and returns to her mistress.

When we pick up the story today, the family is celebrating a milestone in Ishmael’s life when Sarai becomes jealous and orders Abram to send the child and his mother away. Their presence is a painful reminder of her former barrenness, and her failure to trust God.

But, instead of the harm intended for her by Abram and Sarai, Hagar experiences the compassion of God first in exodus and now in exile.

This time God doesn’t instruct her to return to her mistress. This time, when God finds her in the wilderness and speaks to her, God remains with her where she is, recalling the divine promise to make her son Ishmael into a great nation. Just as God provides for Israel when they are exiled in Babylon, God provides for Hagar and Ishmael in Paran, recognizing that while they are outside the covenant established with Abram, they are not outside God’s mercy and compassion.

This story prompts me to ask, “Who are the people hidden in plain sight in our lives today?” "Who are the invisible people?"

Is it the man sitting on the median on 74 with the sign that says “homeless” or the women behind the locked doors of the shelter down the street?

What about the people hidden in plain sight in our everyday lives: a cashier at the grocery store or gas station, a server at a restaurant, a receptionist on the other end of the phone?

Who are the people we avoid or dismiss because their very presence awakens our fears or recalls our regrets? What blinds us from seeing the person God created and loves? Are there people with whom we have broken relationships or, perhaps, whole groups of people narrowly defined by political party or race, or whatever label makes them unpopular this morning?

While the good news given to Hagar and Ishmael is that no one is outside of God’s care,
if we, like Sarai, are the ones in power, sending away those who we have named “other”, that good news may sting.
And, if we are like Abram, complicit and submissive, watching as others are shut out, it may convict us in our silence.
Thankfully, God’s love persists for us, too, and God’s mercy and forgiveness is healing balm for those self-inflicted wounds.

Let us pray.
Holy and compassionate God,
Thank you for the wideness of your mercy that is not limited or bound by us.
Thank you for the reach of your love that you find us when we are in the wilderness.
Thank you for the steadfastness of your promises even when we doubt and fear and try to wrestle control from you.
Whether we are in safety and comfort, exodus or exile, may we find our rest in you.
In the name of El-Roi, the God who sees, we pray.
Amen.

First Sunday in Lent, Year A

This year is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation of 1517. Instead of merely marking history, Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton has been encouraging congregations to read and study Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. Luther wrote the catechism as instructions to parents to lead the teaching of their children and households, and too often, it is relegated to our confirmation classrooms. This anniversary offers us all a new opportunity to engage the text and better understand the teachings that Luther believed would help us to constantly keep God’s Word in our hearts, on our lips and in our ears. [i]

During Lent, I will be preaching on Sunday mornings from the readings assigned in the lectionary and connecting those Scripture passages to the five different parts of the catechism over the five Sundays of Lent. The first is the ten commandments; the second is the creed; the third is the Lord’s Prayer; the fourth is baptism and the fifth is Holy Communion. On Wednesday evenings, after our soup and sandwich supper, we’ll continue our study of the catechism with table talks during our evening worship, reading from Scripture and from the catechism that is printed at the back of the cranberry hymnal.

Today we begin at the beginning with Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve in Eden. The biblical story of Eden grew out of basic questions humans have:
Why do we suffer hardship?
Why does evil exist?
Why aren’t our souls at rest?

In its telling we’re reminded that God first created humans in and for relationship. We are not mistakes; we are fearfully and wonderfully made by a loving God; and, we are not objects created for selfish purposes; we are created with God-given purpose, to nurture life and do God’s work in the world.

These two attributes alone set apart the biblical story of creation from other ancient creation stories,
like the Mayan myth of how two gods, who wanted to preserve their legacy, created man first from mud, which crumbled, and then from wood. They found their creation was soulless and without loyalty, so they destroyed him;[ii]
another myth, in Babylonia, described how the greatest of their kings, named Marduk, created humankind to be slaves to the gods.[iii]

We also hear in Genesis how God set boundaries for humankind. Just as we teach a child to use crayons and markers on coloring pages and not carpets, or scissors to cut paper not hair, and to get drinks from the refrigerator and not from the cabinet under the sink, God establishes life-giving boundaries for us.

Eve had not yet been created when God instructed Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But when the serpent confronts her, she knows it’s forbidden. The beast questions why God had given them such a commandment, and whether the consequences of eating from the tree would be as fateful as they had been told, offering a plausible alternative, and sowing doubt and mistrust into their relationship with their Creator. And with their confidence in God compromised, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.

Although they did not physically die then, in that moment, their relationship with the loving God who created them with God-given purpose withered and died.

The Eden story in Genesis illustrates how the root of sin is not one person’s actions or failures,
but the broken and damaged relationship with God.

And the brokenness didn’t end with Adam and Eve. It continues throughout the biblical narrative, as over and over, God’s people become distracted and forget God’s instructions; begin to question whether the boundaries are really needed; or think we know better than God.

When we meet Jesus in the wilderness in today’s Gospel, he has just come from his baptism by John where the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:16-17)

“Temptation reveals who we are and what we are to do.”[iv] In contrast to Adam and Eve, Jesus remembered his baptismal identity, an identity and belonging that empowered him as he faced temptations of pride, power and possession.

Like Adam and Eve, and later Jesus, we too face temptations to deny God, to doubt the relevance of God’s Word in our lives, and to question the promises God has given us and the boundaries that God has set.

Describing the Ten Commandments, that we hear in Exodus and again in the catechism, as God’s measuring lines; Luther wrote that they instruct us “what we are to do to make our whole life pleasing to God.”[v] Recognizing that faith is lived out in community, the first three commandments are about our relationship with God, and the remaining ones speak to our relationship with each other and with our neighbors.[vi]

In Luther’s explanation of the commandments, he establishes that the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods.” is the foundation for all the rest. He prefaces the explanation of each of the following commandments with the same words, “We are to love and fear God, so that…”

Believing that “anything on which your heart relies and depends is really your God” Luther taught that obeying this first commandment sends us straight to God to cling to Him alone in whatever temptations or circumstances we face. Then, remembering our own baptismal identity, we are empowered to act, recalling in whose image we are created and who has given us our purpose. That is the freedom we have in faith in Christ, who resists what we cannot.

Throughout this Lent, let us reflect on what our identity as baptized children of God and followers of Christ means as we respond to the temptations and false promises that the world offers.

Let us pray….[vii]
Loving Creator,
We are tempted in every way to give in to a world that tells us the way to fulfillment is power, and riches, and might.
In response, you sent Jesus, a humble, suffering servant who would eventually die on the cross, mistaken and misunderstood.
May we daily remember our baptism and your purpose for us when we are tempted or think we know better than You.
Help us make life-giving choices for ourselves and for the world which you so love.
Amen.

[i] Book of Concord. 400.
[ii] “Mesoamerican creation myths”, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_creation_myths#The_Maya_creation_of_the_world_myth
[iii] “Enûma Eliš”,Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C3%BBma_Eli%C5%A1
[iv] Lent 1A, Lectionary Lab Live podcast.
[v] Book of Concord, 428.
[vi] XLII, Luther’s Table Talk.
[vii] Adapted from Faith Lens. http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/