Second Sunday in Lent Feb 28, 2010 Nancy Meehan Yao
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 p10
15After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” 4But the word of the LORD came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” 5He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness. 7Then he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” 8But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. 12As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. 17When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.
Luke 13:31-35 p849
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
This is the word of the Lord:
Thanks be to God
Here we are, in the second week of Lent. We started with ashes on our forehead, and we have heard the story of Jesus in the desert, and his temptations. David Lose, a professor at Luther Seminary, says that Lent “reminds us of whose we are. The practices, the spiritual discipline, are not intended as good works offered by us to God; rather, they are God's gifts to us to remind us who we are, God's adopted daughters and sons, God's treasure, so priceless that God was willing to go to any length - or, more appropriately, to any depth - to tell us that we are loved, that we have value, that we have purpose.
Let us keep that in mind when we come to the story of Abram and God. God and Abram have been talking. God has called Abram out of Ur to go to a land that God will show him, and God will make a great nation out of Abram. Abram endures travel, and famine, land disputes and war, and some time has passed since God has spoken to him. Some Old Testament experts think it is about 13 years since God has last spoken to Abram, which means that Abram is by now in his mid-eighties. He has listened to the Lord, he has moved, followed the Lord’s instructions, has believed in God’s promises: but he still has no children.
And God comes to Abram, and gives Abram another promise: your reward will be very great. But Abram is not content with this. He argues with God, questions God. Even though we are told that Abram believed the Lord, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. That is, Abram is declared righteous. In the Old Testament, righteous acts are God approved acts, in which a human demonstrates that he or she intends to stand in a relationship of dependence on God.
So Abram, declared righteous, STILL continues questioning God—How am I to know that I am to possess the land you are giving me? And God then does something that seems strange to us- God gives Abram what sounds like a grocery list for a feast: and tells Abram to bring a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtle dove and a pigeon. This is not to be a feast—Abram cuts the animals in half, and lines them up on the ground. God is making a covenant with Abram. And this is how it goes: the animals are cut in two, and lined up so that a path or walkway is made. And the people making the covenant are to walk through this grisly path to seal the deal. It is, literally, cutting a deal. We did much the same as children, when we would make a deal or a promise with a friend, and say “cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye…”. But Abram, we are told, falls into a deep sleep—it is God, in the form of a smoking fire pot and a blazing torch, that goes through the midst of this carnage.
Because what God is doing is this: By passing through the slaughtered animals, God was ritually calling upon himself the same fate the animals suffered should God be unfaithful to the covenant promise. The animals stand as both witness and warning: this is what will happen to the one who breaks this covenant.
Now, in the covenant between God and Abram, we would expect it to be Abram walking down that line of bodies. But it is GOD who takes on that burden and pledge.
Which brings us to Jesus. Jesus is outside of Jerusalem. He has been warned by the Pharisees that Herod is after him. Jesus is not swayed by that news. Jesus does not run and hide, or change his mind, or tone down his life giving message. Rather, Jesus says this: “I am casting out demons and performing cures….and I must be on my way….” Jesus knows that Herod is after him, threatening to kill him, but at the risk of his own life, Jesus will keep doing what he is doing: healing people, preaching good news, giving people life instead of death. In the same way that God takes on risk to himself, walking through the covenant, Jesus takes on risk, going deliberately to Jerusalem to continue his salvation work—even when he knows how great and how certain the risk is.
Because Jerusalem doesn’t have a good reputation with prophets. Instead of being the town so nice they named it twice, like New York New York, or the city to busy to hate, like Atlanta GA, Jerusalem is the City of peace, which is what Jerusalem means in Hebrew. But Jerusalem, we are told is “ the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to it!” And yet Jesus sets his face to go on towards that city!
But before he goes, Jesus laments.
A lament is a form of prayer or song, in which the speaker is pouring out his deepest pain—to God. A lament is a frank, honest telling of one’s life and circumstances before God—we heard Job’s honest pain earlier this fall. There are more psalms of lament than any other kind in the bible. Jesus cries out in the lament of Psalm 22 from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A lament is always predicated on 2 things: the first is that God hears us—Abram’s questions to God can be seen as a lament—he is honestly telling God his fears and worries. This is considered part of the life of faith and the faithful: remember, Abram was reckoned as righteous.
The 2nd thing is that there is hope……in lament forms, there is almost always a turn at the end….a statement, a song of praise, an recitation of the good that God has done, how God has rescued the person from death to life. In Jesus’ lament over the city of Jerusalem, there is that same hope—hope that things will change, that the people will change, and be rescued from death to life…note that it is Jesus who laments over the people and their waywardness, their stubbornness.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes about it this way: "If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus' lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world --wings spread, breast exposed.”
Judgment and mercy are inextricably bound up in Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem. In Jesus we have both compassion and judgment. We don’t talk about judgment, much. We like to forget about that part of it. Yet in Jesus’ lament we have both.
Jesus, seeing the people’s sin and pain, takes it on himself. He walks, not through lines of killed animals, but into Jerusalem. There, at least for a day, people will say “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord…” The hopeful end of his lament is this: that the people, that we people, will recognize Jesus as the Blessed One, the One who is the Power of God, the One who opens His arms to deliver and protect us. The grace and mercy is that we, who have resisted Jesus, who have not been willing to let ourselves be gathered, will still be able, by the grace of God, to say “Blessed is He…” Today, and tomorrow, Jesus is at work, bringing life. On the third day, at the close of time, we will say “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord”. Amen.
