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.

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[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.

Holy Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 6:1-8

While our first reading is the story of Isaiah’s call to prophesy, it is first and foremost, the story of how Isaiah is a witness to the extraordinary, of something that is “normally concealed from the human eye.” Where, on Pentecost, in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke recalls Joel’s own description of the Holy Spirit being poured out upon the people, saying, “your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” (Acts 2:17), in this reading, we hear Isaiah describe his own vision of the Lord.

First he describes seeing the Lord seated on a throne and the hem of the Lord’s robe filled the room. This is the majestic and sovereign ‘Adonai’ — “God of the universe”, “Holy God, Mighty Lord, Gracious Father”, “Holy and mighty, holy and immortal” — whose glory we name in the Great Thanksgiving when we sing the sanctus using the words from verse 3: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (6:3)

Next, Isaiah describes the presence of the seraphs, celestial winged serpents near to God, and when the seraphs speak, the text tells us, “The pivots on the thresholds shook and the house filled with smoke.”

This encounter with the Lord was neither cerebral nor academic; it was tactile and it was physical. Shaking and trembling disturb you, and alert you to what is happening around you; smoke gets into your nostrils and lingers on your clothes, and even your skin. The encounter stays with you.

Isaiah’s extraordinary encounter with the divine echoes in the lives of Moses, Ezekiel and even Paul.

When Moses was leading the people of Israel to meet God, Exodus 19 says they stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and “[it] was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. (Exodus 19:18)

When Ezekiel was confronting Israel, Ezekiel 38 says the Lord declared, “… On that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel;  …and all human beings that are on the face of the earth, shall quake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the cliffs shall fall, and every wall shall tumble to the ground….  (Ezekiel 38:20) 

When Paul was imprisoned with Silas in Philippi, Acts 16 says, “Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened.” (Acts 16:26) 

Encountering God should affect us – leave us changed in some way; we should not be the same as we were before.

Often in Scripture we see God enter into relationship with a person who was then set apart to bear witness to God. (Romans 1:1)

After the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush and told him that he would lead God’s people out of Egypt, Moses protested, but God gave him a staff and healed him from leprosy so that the people would recognize his authority, as one whom God had sent. (Exodus 4:1-12) 

And again, when the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, he protested that he was only a boy, but, “Then the LORD put out his hand and touched [his] mouth; and the LORD said to [him], "Now I have put my words in your mouth. (Jeremiah 1:9)

And again, when Ezekiel was commissioned to speak the Lord’s words to the people, a scroll was spread out before him and the Lord instructed him to eat it. When he had eaten it, he testified that “it was as sweet as honey.” (Ezekiel 3:4)

And again, when Paul who was first known as Saul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he fell down in the road and was blinded for three days, before Ananias laid hands on him and he regained his sight and began to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God. (Acts 9)

When it was Isaiah’s turn, the prophet responded in confession and the seraph placed a burning coal upon his lips to purify and sanctify him.

His confession is both for himself and for the people of Israel:

"Woe is me!

I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" (6:5)

In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther teaches that the purpose of confession isn’t to

“come and say how upright or how wicked you are….[but] to lament your need and allow yourself to be helped so that you may attain a joyful heart and conscience…”…It is “to hear what God wants to say to you.” (LC, 478)

And the gift that Isaiah receives, and that we all receive when we encounter the Holy who is God, is the Word that brings absolution or forgiveness, for the comfort and restoration of our souls.

God responds to our lament with forgiveness, providing balm, and as the African-American spiritual promises,

curing the sin sick soul and making the wounded whole. (Washington Glass, “Balm of Gilead”)

Isaiah is a witness to the extraordinary.

Shaken and disturbed,

humbled by the awesome power of God,

compelled to confession,

and fashioned in forgiveness, he is sent out into the world.

This morning, I want to ask,

What will shake you into response?

Where have you heard God speaking and you cannot overlook or dismiss it any longer?

Are you moved to confession for yourself or for the world in which we live?

Not pointing fingers, mocking others for their beliefs or calling other human beings names but naming instead what Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls “the real deathliness that hovers over us and gnaws at us….”[i]

What will it take for you and I to voice true lament at the ways in which the brokenness – the sinfulness – of our human nature – our conceit and vanity – are on display? And how might we shine light into the darkness and tear away the veil that covers “the fear and the pain that individual persons want so desperately to share and to own but are not permitted to do so.”[ii]

Brueggemann describes the prophetic imagination to which we are called in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets:

as one that cuts through the numbness

and penetrates the self-deception so that,

to the ends of the earth, God is confessed as Lord.

Inhabited by the power and Spirit of God, our hearts are burning because our Holy God is here, setting us apart and calling us into the world as witnesses.

Let us pray.

Your way, O God, is holy. (Ps. 77:13)

Thank you for restoring your people with abundant grace and forgiveness;

Created for relationship and set apart as Your people, draw us to you in confession when we turn away from you;

Fashion us now into a people who bear witness to your love for all.

We pray in the name of the Father, Son + and the Holy Spirit.

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[i] Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination (p. 45). Augsburg Fortress - A. Kindle Edition.

[ii] ibid