Second Sunday in Lent

Richard Davenport March 5, 2023 - Second Sunday in Lent Genesis 12:1-9 The story of Abraham, or Abram as he's known as at this point, is pretty amazing. You don't get much of an introduction to Abraham and his early life. The previous chapter starts with the building of the tower of Babel, which doesn't go well. Then we get a list of the numerous generations between Noah and Abraham. Then we're told Abraham takes a wife, Sarai, and they had settled in the land of Haran with his father, and his cousin, Lot. It's at this point we get our reading for today. The Lord speaks to Abraham. He tells Abraham to pack up all of his stuff, which was quite substantial, gather his family and trek off to the land of Canaan. Now, already things are a little strange. God calls on Abraham to leave everything and go...and he does! It's a lot to ask. How many people would be willing to pack up all of their worldly possessions, gather their whole family, and travel across the country, or, better yet, another part of the world and live there just because God said you should? It really isn't like moving across country, because at least here you can count on things like the language being the same and the culture being pretty much the same as what you're used to. Abraham had no such assurances. He also had many flocks and herds to move, along with all of the people that tended those animals and dealt with all of the other business affairs he had. It's a lot to be responsible for. It's a lot to ask, not just of Abraham, but of everyone involved. Still, he does. He packs it all up and leaves. It's quite the act of faith. The book of Hebrews specifically mentions this point again when it's listing great acts of faith in the Bible. Why wouldn't he go? After all, God told him to and that should be enough. Surely God has good things in store for him. You'd think he'd be eager to go. God certainly did have good things in store for him. But, you know as well as I do that just because God directs us to do something doesn't mean we're all that eager to do it. God makes a lot of promises and we know, deep down, he'll deliver. But we still aren't jumping at the opportunities. Thankfully, he does listen and does go where he's sent. But, why? Why does he listen to God at all? We don't really know anything about Abraham, or his beliefs. We don't even know if he's a faithful follower of God. It's possible, but the last encounter anyone had with God is the tower of Babel, and that didn't go so well. What the spiritual state of the world is at this point is anyone's guess, though I'm sure it didn't take long for false gods to arrive on the scene. By the time Abraham comes around, false religions are everywhere. It's nice to think of Abraham as a faithful guy before Exodus 12 rolls around, but we don't actually know that. That's why the call to pack up everything and drive off to Canaan is a marvel. It's not even as if he were someone like Moses in the days after the Passover, someone who could look back at recent events and know that God had done miraculous things and could make just about anything happen if he wanted to. Abraham doesn't have any of that. So what proof does Abraham have that this will all turn out ok? What evidence is there that this is really what he should be doing? There's nothing to support anything God says. It comes off sounding like any number of spam callers who would like to inform you that you can have cheap life insurance or a new roof on your house at no cost to you, or any number of other great deals people like you would surely want to have. I don't go for any of those kinds of things, so, if I were Abraham, why would I do this? As I said, the book of Hebrews lists Abraham as one of the exemplars of faith. People like Abraham show us what faith looks like. He heard God's promise. God promised him the land would be for him and for his offspring. He didn't believe it because he already had it. That was kind of the point. Could God have done that? Could God have just scooped up Abraham, his family, and all of his stuff and just dropped them in Canaan? Sure, but he doesn't. The journey itself is part of the plan. There is something to be gained by the effort here, something more than just the land itself. That's the uncomfortable part in all of this. Knowing that Abraham made it to the land God had promised, that's nice. Knowing that Abraham lived a long, full life and eventually had a son of his own. That gives you the warm fuzzies. Knowing that, many generations down the line, the savior would eventually be born from his lineage. That's pretty great. But Abraham didn't know any of that at the time. The only thing Abraham had to go on was this simple declaration by God. It's a strange situation we get ourselves into. Before you make any big life decision, you want to have some assurances. Before you quit your job, pack up and move across the country, you want to know there will be a job waiting for you, there will be a place for you to live. This isn't really an unreasonable expectation. You have to take care of yourself. You have to take care of your family. After all, God gave you those things and it's your job to care for them properly. I do the same for myself and my family. If I didn't have a place to live here in Fort Smith, I wouldn't have been able to justify moving my family down here. Thankfully, even though the housing market was, and still is, a complete mess, we were able to find an apartment that met our needs until we could get a home of our own. Even those star-struck 20somethings who leave everything behind to go off to Hollywood in the hopes of becoming the next big actor or actress are basing their decision on the fact that this is the place where that sort of thing happens. There's at least some connection there. You probably wouldn't leave everything and head off to Kansas to be a movie star, not without some kind of assurance. That's what this ends up being all about. You want assurance. You want something in writing, something that you can count on, something that carries some legal weight behind it if you're going to make a big decision like that. But, we fool ourselves in clinging to that kind of security. How often does it happen that those who had every legal claim to this or that found they were denied? Even having the signed piece of paper in your hands doesn't guarantee you anything. People are denied justice every day. They are denied the ability to claim something that should be theirs. They are denied the ability to go and do things they should be able to do. They are attacked by opportunists, muggers out on the street or white collar criminals who embezzle and defraud. They are attacked by those who are supposed to protect them, as government officials run roughshod over them and their families. We are supposed to care for one another. We are supposed to honor and support one another. We are supposed to protect and defend others, those who are under attack, those who have been wronged, especially when they are less fortunate than we are. But, many in the world care about little beyond themselves and their own wants and desires. The plight of others is unimportant. To many, each of us is here to fend for ourselves. There are no guarantees. Not here. We do a lot of things with the assumption that those guarantees are there, but we are disappointed as often as not. So why does Abraham go? Because the guarantees God makes are different. We don't know what kind of relationship Abraham had with God prior to this, but we do know that the stories of the past are still there. The tower of Babel and the Flood that preceded it still loom large in the history of the people at this time. A huge, devastating flood that wipes out life is a recurring theme in the mythologies of other religions in these days, proof that even pagans can't deny the miracles of God. All they can do is try and put their own spin on them. When Abraham sets out for Canaan, he doesn't have a piece of paper declaring him the owner of this big plot of land, not that that would have helped him anyway. What he did have was the knowledge that God can act in huge, world altering ways, both to thwart evil and to save his people. If God can send a flood to wipe out all life and yet still save 8 people and a bunch of animals, God can make good on this promise as well. Looking at Lent, we know what awaits Christ. We know he will suffer injustice, beaten and killed just because what he said offended the self-righteous sensibilities of a few people. When we look ahead at our own deaths, the thought is frightening, paralyzing, driving us to panic as we thin about all of the uncertainties there. We look for guarantees, ways to prevent death, to stave it off for even a little while. God promises to see us through death, that life awaits us on the other side, but we find ourselves in the same situation as Abraham. That other side feels distant and unknowable. It feels like there can be no certainty there and we are tempted to look for it in this world, even knowing that everything here eventually fails us. But, then we look to Christ. Christ died. But then Christ lived. He didn't fake his death. The Roman empire knew how to execute people. God even ensures there will be no doubt, prompting the centurion to stab him with a spear to prove to the world that Jesus truly is dead. And still Jesus lived. He continues to live. He will always live. A miraculous, world altering event. One who was dead now lives and can never die again. And now God promise that this very thing will happen to you too. This is the nature of trust. It would be nice to be able to trust God implicitly. To just take him at his word and know he'll follow through. But we always have doubts. We see how the world works and we then assume God operates the same way. So God doesn't just tell us, he shows us. Lent is that dark time when we know what's coming. Good Friday will arrive whether we like it or not, Christ's death, and some day our death as well. But just as Good Friday inevitably comes, Easter always follows. The world is powerless to prevent Easter from coming. God knows your faith is weak, which is why he never stops reminding of what he has done, what he is doing, and what he will do in the future. That's one of the reasons he delights in sharing a meal with us. He invites you to his table to show you again that he is here, that his forgiveness is freely available, and that he has prepared a place for you. He doesn't just send you off to find it. He leads you there himself. You don't go into the unknown. You follow the one who has already gone and who is already there waiting for you.