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“Scare Tactics”
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35;
Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1
Rev. Sandy Nuernberg
Oakland-Cambridge Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, WI
Second Sunday in Lent - Celebrate
the Gifts of Women
Founding of OCPC - March 3, 1849
March 4, 2007
One of the best gifts we have in
this Lenten journey, it seems, is space and time for our faith and honesty to
evolve within us. To examine our hearts and minds and to discover how we have
fallen short in our faith experiences of truthfully living in God’s ways and not
our own ways. But I find it is hard, too, isn’t it? It’s really hard, this
self-examination stuff!! In our world we’ve recently come from a time of, as the
song says, ‘one-hundred (100) miles in the wrong direction’, or 100 ways, or
more, of taking the byways of our faith in celebrating the birth of Christ with
gifts, food, drink, and being merry; it’s our celebration style with friends and
family. The world we live in is, we think, for the most part, merry and bright
with our wants fulfilled. But in the valleys of our faith life, during Lent, our
texts describe for us, not of our own personal power and ways for life’s
fulfillment, in this consumer minded world of wanting more, but our reliance on
God’s grace and power in meeting our needs.
I find this a time of becoming
renewed in God-centeredness and not our own self-centeredness. But I also feel
that I am getting in the way of my self in accomplishing this when I ponder this
season of repentance. Perhaps I’m feeling guilty, not because we have come upon
a week after cancelling (weather related!!) our Sunday worship together, which,
I’m here to tell you, did give me guilt feelings! I don’t remember church
closings in my life of weekly worship. But perhaps the guilt is because our
texts, this 2nd Sunday in Lent, help us realize the need of honesty
to ourselves and to our God, in covenant to and with God. Our texts tell us of
God’s promises and God’s will to be done and not our own will and promises.
God’s promises, as the psalmist cries (Psalm 27),
are to be trusted by us despite all of the traps, fear factors, scare tactics,
and misrepresentation of power before us, ‘God is my light, my stronghold, my
salvation, and God will shelter and conceal (v.5)
us’ from our sinfulness, if we seek God’s way
(v. 11).
Our scene in Genesis is Abraham
talking with God, as God has asked him and his wife Sara to go to the Promised
Land. And God’s promises to Abram have made his name great; Abram is pleased;
but their sinfulness gets in their own way along the way. Now, as we remember,
previous to this text Abram tells the powerful Pharaoh that Sarah is his sister,
not his wife; and we also remember after this text, Sarah lets Hagar become
Abram’s woman to bear his child because they need an heir. Aren’t these examples
of their sinfulness getting in the way of their faithfulness and trust in
God–their relying not on God’s promises but their own?
We see the faithfulness of God’s
promises in the darkness (v.17)
and God answers God’s promises with an elaborate ceremony of their
covenant promise. It’s really God’s fulfilling God’s promises in God’s own space
and timing and not Abraham or Sara’s timing and ways. This first book of the OT
is filled with God’s people and their often sinful ways of timing and space, but
as we read scripture faithfully, we find God again has the last word. Abraham
and Sara, their entire lives, got in God’s way to try to help and yet God was
steadfast and still faithful, wasn’t God?
Jesus, in Luke, is lamenting on
his walk into Jerusalem of wanting to be the mother hen of his brood, and to be
a fortress for his followers. But they refuse this kind of shelter. Jesus refers
to the power of the ‘fox’, King Herod, that sly, crafty, deceitful Roman leader
who wants to kill Jesus. And the Pharisees use their own scare tactics in
wanting to warn Jesus about Herod’s death threat. The contrasts here of the fox
and the hen, really, of sinfulness and power, the ‘want’ by each are
significant; first, the political power of Herod, yet his worthlessness and
insignificant authority Jesus can’t be bothered by. Then, the Pharisees’ power
of intimidating Jesus because they never have been his friend. But then a soft
and caring Jesus, who wants to gather in and protect (gather) his children,
because Jesus knows all along who is in charge and who gets the last word.. It’s
all about God and God’s power and grace when the time comes, ‘Blessed is the one
who comes in the name of the Lord (v. 35).’
Aren’t these examples for us in
our world, of sinfulness, power and want? Our childish ways of wanting to be the
boss, to be in control, like Abraham and Sara, to make all the decisions we can
in our want, and want more world. My husband always grins when I say, ‘I want!,’
as he’s never sure what to expect from me! In our world we want food enough ‘til
we are too fat and have heart attacks and strokes because our systems can’t
handle the gorging of our appetites. We want to be sociable to the point that we
take our calendars everywhere we go to say, ‘no’ except for what we really want
to be a part of because it ‘looks good’ on the outside to everyone else. We want
to be connected and so we can’t leave our cell phones for emergencies, so we use
them to the point of having accidents or cutting people off (on the phone or on
the road) in our rudeness because we can’t miss ‘our timing’ to hear from who we
want to hear from and talk to. We are, let’s face it, sinful in our nature of
want and wanting more; we are like ‘foxes,’ aren’t we?
And yet, you and I, God is with us
still. God, the mother hen, promises that to us, doesn’t God? Our good news from
the gospel is that God’s grace and power are our salvation and God is with us
still and will continue to be with us. Let’s not get in the way of God. God made
a covenant with Abraham because Abraham responded in his faith to all that God
promised. God promises us salvation by our faith, like Abraham, and all we need
do is not get in the way of ourselves but to trust God in all of our needs being
met. As we come to the communion table let us trust that our wants will be
provided by God in God’s timing; let us walk to Jerusalem with Jesus in Lent not
with scare tactics and fear factors of power and want, but with courage and
determination in the steadfast love and grace of God within us.
Thanks be to
God. AMEN.
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