Faithfulness and Hospitality

 Faithfulness and Hospitality

When God promised Abraham and Sarah that from them would come a multitude, that they would be the parents of nations and of kings, when God made that covenant promise, Abraham and Sarah had already shown faith. In Genesis 17 the promise seems all one way, but as the Apostle Paul pointed out, Abraham's faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” And they had shown it: traveling with Abraham's father up the Euphrates Valley from Ur in Chaldean territory near modern-day Baghdad to somewhere near Mosul or Kirkuk, but then Abraham and Sarah had struck off on their own through the desert and across to Syria, and down through the Judean hills, probably along the Gaza coast and into Egypt, and then back to the land of Canaan, where three angels, Genesis 18 tells us, found them resting with their flocks and herds in the front of their tent under the Oaks of Mamre. The land they travelled through was not deserted: this happened about a thousand years after cultivation began in Tucson - Jericho was half as old as it is now, olive trees that are old now (and still bearing fruit) were only a thousand years old back then. There were no borders, no walls, no iron curtains thirty feet high between countries, but there was desert, and mountains, and rivers, and plains, and people who could be hostile or friendly. And it was in this environment that Abraham and Sarah showed faithfulness, courage - trust in the promise, and hospitality. For their response to the strangers who approached their tent was radical hospitality. Come turn aside to rest, let us give you water and food. And then it was that the three who were one, who were God cloaked indeed in mystery, laid on them their strange promise: you will indeed have children, Sarah will bear a child. We'll be back and you'll see. No wonder Sarah laughed - with surprise but with delight and joy.

Faith was reckoned unto him as righteousness and their hospitality showed it in action.

• Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
• Romans 4:13-25
• Mark 8:31-38
• Psalm 22:22-30
• Genesis 18

After the Second Sunday in Lent, Year B

It is when the path is darkest that I’m sure the light is there.

 Jesus invites us to take up the cross  

It is when I am not sure that I feel God the most, said my friend.

It is when the path is darkest that I’m sure the light is there.

It is when I let go that I receive.

It is when I stop guarding myself from God, when I start trusting God, when I step out in faith, into the night, that I find my way.

That I find – his way.

It is not really my way at all; it is his.

If you would follow me, you must deny your self – you must take up your cross and prepare to die with me; you must follow me beyond the grave to the resurrection.

But! You are the Messiah, the expected King. What is going on here? 

It is necessary…

Is it? 

Get behind me, Tempter! For your thoughts are not God’s thoughts nor your ways God’s way: if you try to preserve your self you will lose your self, if you lose your self, you will gain life.

It is when I am not sure that I feel God the most. 

It is when I let go and trust, 

when there is nothing to turn to, 

and no light on the way, 

that I know I am homeward bound.

There is a breath in the midst of the darkness, 

in the absence a pregnant pause:  he is listening; 

the world is listening, he is present.

It is when I find no purpose inside myself, 

and no hidden inner resource, 

that I am most thrown back upon God, who is faithful. 

When the promise is impossible, then it is kept.

When I no longer try to keep it to myself, I fully receive it.

I am most receptive to God’s leading, when I am least sure of my own.

When I am not sure where to go, what to do, where he wants me to go, what he wants me to do, 

it is then that I feel God the most.

It is when he is absent that I know he is here. 

It is when I give up my self, preserving my own life, my way, 

that I find my way, gain my life, and receive my self.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (1956)

Jesus invites us to take up the cross.

Second Sunday in Lent * Year B

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 

Psalm 22:22-30

Romans 4:13-25

Mark 8:31-38

Jesus invites us to become his true disciples: to take up the cross and follow him

JRL+

"Feeling God's presence in times of uncertainty", Keeping the Faith, Arizona Daily Star, Sunday March 28th 2021, E3.

https://tucson.com/feeling-gods-presence-in-times-of-uncertainty/article_4f02e95e-6089-5ca7-bdfa-05bb4eb3b4ce.html

Father of a Multitude

I will make you father of a multitude. Well might Sarah laugh - as she does in the next chapter of the book of Genesis - when she hears God make this promise to her ninety-nine year old husband. She is old too. And yet shall she have pleasure? She asks you. And yet - the day comes when God's improbably promise is fulfilled. Not by the means they concoct - here is Hagar, take her - but by God's own improbable scheme. For he has more in mind than these two's progeny - or Abraham's "seed" (biological offspring). 

    God through these human mean will bring a new joy into the world, a new closeness between humanity and Creator. And not before time. It has taken three thousand years - so far - for us human beings to live into the implications of that promise. To live into that promise and the call in earlier chapters of the same book to both care for and commune with the creation of which we are a part. 

    Over and over God calls on the people to come into relationship, and offers a few ... guidelines. As my friend Lois used to put on the butcher-paper cover over her Bible: "If all else fails, follow the directions." 

    How are we to live? Here is a way: to become the parents of a multitude, the progenitors of faithful offspring beyond count. Beyond count and beyond the charts of genealogists and family therapists. (Tho hoo boy Abraham's children could use some of those as well... ) But the emphasis here is on the gift: the free gift of God to all humankind, through the faithfulness of Abraham and Sarah. And what is that gift?

    No less than life itself, life in communion with God, each other, our own true selves, and all creation.

    So easily broken is the covenant, so faithful is the promise, that we continually are called back into it.

    "If God is speaking, God speaks more often than people hear."--Tanya Luhrmann.

    God is speaking and offering life. A few people fishing, straggled along the shore of a small Mideastern lake, get the message - a bit directly. A man comes toward them along the shore, past the small mammals and large birds and shoreline plants and rocks, a man they may know - from a hill town some nine hours' walk away - or may not have met before: and he inhabits and manifests and makes known clear and loud the Word that is God come to humanity - and this time, to 'simple fisher folk', in the form of a man who works with his hands, and calls them.

    The man along the shore has something to say to the workers mending their nets - the two brothers, the other two brothers, perhaps an independent woman working her own boat - and offers them a wider world.

    Come with me and I will make you fishers of people.

    This calls them away from their everyday occupations. It requires another level of concern, of care, of commitment. 

    Who do you really serve? Ultimately who is your family? Where is your allegiance? Who is your god?

    “To what do we pay greatest allegiance? Family, language group, culture, country, gender? Religion, race? And if none of these matter, are we urbane, cosmopolitan, or simply lonely? In other words, how do we decide where we belong? What convinces us that we do?”--Toni Morrison, 2002 lecture.

• Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
• Romans 4:13-25
• Mark 8:31-38
• Psalm 22:22-30

http://edgeofenclosure.org/lent2b.html

Tanya Luhrmann, Noel Q King Memorial Lecture, "Voices of Madness, Voices of Spirit" - (https://youtu.be/MTyxhro_Apw).

Toni Morrison, 2002 lecture, quoted in The New York Times: The Essential Toni Morrison by Veronica Chambers, Feb. 18, 2021(https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/books/best-toni-morrison-books.html).

The Rev. Dr. John Leech is an Episcopal priest, a Benedictine oblate, and a friend of the Iona Community. He has served congregations in northern California, western Washington, and southern Arizona.

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

legacy

Yesterday my wife and I drove to Cochise County to see the Sandhill Cranes. We drove south from Benson through Tombstone and then east into the Sulfur Springs Valley to Whitewater Draw. 

"I see a large bird."

"I see lots of large birds!"

"Wow!" 

We laughed in delight as we walked over to a shallow marsh where the birds were congregating like a crowd of cabbages, or lifting off and flying, circling or moving away high into the sky, always calling to each other. 

When we got back there was a message from a friend. He had looked up "sandhill cranes" and sent me a picture of two. I called them Abram and Sarai.

Then I sent him my own picture, of a multitude of cranes, with the caption, take two, multiply by ten thousand, then set them all a-flight.

In the evening Miles Green sent me a picture he'd just taken of the cranes resting again at sunset.

See for yourself at "cranes com" - https://www.azgfd.com/wildlife/viewing/webcamlist/sandhillcrane/cranecam/)

Or go!

So the story of a man and a woman, of Abram and Sarai, now to be called Abraham and Sarah, becoming the blessed forebears of a multitude, and a source of blessing to all people, is not so alien to Arizonans. 

It can happen. 

We have seen it.

A season of promise becomes a heritage of blessing.

So the promise, Paul says, comes to the children of faith, and it is through faith that we inherit the blessing, that we become the children of the promise.

I'd been thinking of Lent as a season of preparation for Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter.

But here it is founded in hope. Lent is a season of promise, fulfilled in Good Friday and Easter.

For Jesus' whole life was a testament to faithfulness. Even unto Death he did not fail.

And we share in his rectification, his glorification, his resurrection, as he is raised from the dead in triumph over Death, and his faith communicated through his first witnesses, and comes to us.

Witnesses - for witness is the basis of discipleship, of following Jesus - from Mary at the Tomb to his astonished Apostles, to -- us. We did not see but yet may Believe. 

It is said that one sign of his truth is the crowd of witnesses we have Become.

We have seen life transformed, we have seen hope in the midst of Despair, Joy in the middle of sorrow.

We have seen small become great, and we have seen the mighty overcome by the true.

Faithful adherents, to the promise, joining in the heritage that two small creatures began, that grew into a multitude, a crowd of witnesses like a cloud above us and circling around us, in which we delight, and at last share in peace.

Jesus invites us to take up the cross

Jesus invites us to take up the cross  

It is when I am not sure that I feel God the most, said my friend.

It is when the path is darkest that I’m sure the light is there.

It is when I let go that I receive.

It is when I stop guarding myself from God, when I start trusting God, when I step out in faith, into the night, that I find my way.

That I find – his way.

It is not really my way at all; it is his.

If you would follow me, you must deny your self – your life, your inmost being; you must take up your cross and prepare to die with me; you must follow me.

But! You are the Messiah. What is going on here? 

It is necessary…

Is it? 

Get behind me, Tempter! For your thoughts are not God’s thoughts nor your ways God’s way: if you try to preserve your self you will lose your self, if you lose your self, you will gain life.

It is when I am not sure that I feel God the most. 

It is when I let go and trust, 

when there is nothing to turn to, 

and no light on the way, 

that I know I am homeward bound.

There is a breath in the midst of the darkness, 

in the absence a pregnant pause:  he is listening; 

the world is listening, it knows he is coming.

It is when I find no purpose inside myself, 

and no hidden inner resource, 

that I am most thrown back upon God, who is faithful. 

When the promise is impossible, then it is kept.

When I no longer try to keep it to myself, I fully receive it.

I am most receptive to God’s leading, when I am least sure of my own.

When I am not sure where to go, what to do, where he wants me to go, what he wants me to do, 

it is then that I feel God the most.

It is when he is absent that I know he is here. 

It is when I give up my self, preserving my own life, my way, 

that I find my way, gain my life, and receive my self.

(When I am most fully myself is when I am least full of myself!)

When I chose this passage from Genesis 17 for an ordination anniversary Eucharist, last summer, I was remembering the promise: I will make you ancestor of a multitude – of many who receive the blessing, who share in the faith; who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.  

Abram and Sarai are newly called in to covenant as parents of the promise, as parents of the faithful. They are faith-parents to faith-children; those who live in faith all are their descendants.

Our children are children of faith,

Our legacy is a legacy of hope,

Our mission is a mission of love.

The mission is the message: faith and trust and hope abide; and end in love, as they began – in Christ, in the bearing of the cross, love’s redeeming work is done.

Jesus invites us to take up the cross.

Second Sunday in Lent * March 4, 2012 

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 

Psalm 22:22-30

Romans 4:13-25

Mark 8:31-38


Jesus invites us to become his true disciples: to take up the cross and follow him

have a blessed day

A year ago Sarah and I were in the Aran Islands, in the west of Ireland, and we walked out to the ancient stone forts on the western cliffs. The island lifted, at that point, hundreds of feet above the sea; when you came to the edge of the cliff you were at a sheer drop hundreds of feet into the Atlantic. Above was the endless sky. And to the west, looking out, across miles and miles of ocean, you could see a pathway shining in the sun, reaching almost as far as oblivion – or a new world.

This is what the ancient peoples of the Islands saw to the west – where mortality and immortality met. To embark on the journey to the west was to leave all you knew behind, and go to a new place, one from whence you might never return.

The Lord said to Abram, “Go,” and he went: he left his father’s house, and his kindred, and his country, and set out with Sarai and Lot and the people of their household, leaving the land of Mesopotamia and heading west across the desert to find a new land, Canaan, and to found a new people, the people of the Lord.

It was a tribal migration, of a herding people, yet it was more: Abram stepped out in faith. The people he gathered with him, and took on the journey, and the people who joined them, became a new nation – Israel. Yet it was more: in him, as the Lord God promised, all the families of the earth were and shall be blessed.

Abram’s true descendants are the people of faith, the people who share the promise. They do not just take a share in the promise for themselves, they extend to others the blessing they have received by faith.

Abram’s faith was counted for him as righteousness, as he put his trust in God. As we put our trust in God, and reach out to him in faith, we too receive the gift of righteousness, and the gift of life – from the source of life.

There is a great shift here: from trusting in our own righteousness, or achievements, or performance, or worldly connections – social status, family, tribe, or nation – to trusting in God as the source of life, the source of being, identity, and meaning. Abram stepped out into a new world in faith. He became the ‘father of the faithful’, those who follow his footsteps into the promise of God. We too are now heirs of the promise – and agents of the blessing.

There is a great shift here: a call from God to turn from fear to hope. This is the legacy of faith and this is the mission of the people of God: to go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, bringing the good news of salvation to all peoples, loving one another and loving our neighbors as ourselves. To become as numerous as the sands of the sea, as numerous of the stars: and for all of us and each of us to find our identity in the one true and living God who makes all things and gives them life, who gives life to the dead – giving the gift of new life into the lives of Sarai and Abram, raising to life Jesus his Son, raising from the tax tables Matthew to be a disciple of Christ, raising a young girl from her death bed to witness to God’s power, and calling forth in us the faith of the resurrection.

Trust in God: put your faith in him, believe and act knowing that God is present with you, guiding you every step of your own journey, from your origins onward.

‘The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse (I’ve got your back); and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

‘So Abram went, as the Lord had told him…’

This the Lord the psalm sings about, this is the nation that is blessed: the people whom God has chosen to be his own, the ones who trust in God and share the promise, the ones made righteous by faith. Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous; it is good for the just to sing praises. For the word of the Lord is right, and all his works are sure, and the loving-kindness of the Lord fills the whole earth.

We put our trust in God, and, as Herb O’Driscoll (who was with us in Ireland) puts it, ‘then, in confidence, we act.’

Faith and praise and promise: these are the life-builders. We are made right with God by God’s own gift of grace; we now live by faith. We leave behind the old world and strike out for the new: counting not for security on our own programmatic efforts but faithfully practicing the commandments of God; not trusting in old habits to define our future but by God’s merciful guidance performing those things that are right; not looking for easy answers but seeking the wisdom that comes with faithfully following the way of the living Lord.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And Matthew arose and followed him. And with Jesus and in following Jesus he found new life, new identity, new meaning. The source of his life and of his being was the living life gift of Christ.

As Jesus sat at dinner –with tax collectors and sinners— a leader of the community burst in and kneeling, pleaded for his daughter’s life. And Jesus arose and followed him – and brought new life into the household of that man.

As Jesus was going on his way, a woman in pain quietly touched the hem of his garment. And he turned to her, and with compassion said to her, “Take heart: your faith has made you well.” And she was well; she had found health in Christ, and her life was new.

When Jesus got to the home of the community leader, the people laughed at him – for he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” But he took her hand, and the girl arose. New life had come into that house. And the word spread.

The word spread: new life comes from the living Lord. Put your faith in him. Put your trust in God. Let him heal you and make you whole. And let him guide you. Follow Jesus – follow him on the path of life. Follow the blessing way – and have a blessed day.


Lord as you have called us, makes us worthy of your calling. As we reach out to touch the hem of your garment, touch our hearts, and we shall be changed: that we may live to your glory, O Jesus, Christ our Lord. Help us to trust in you, that we may hope beyond hope, and trust beyond trust. Let the people of the world see the faith of your church; let us witness to your almighty power. Though our faith is small it is in a great God. Grant that we, by the gift of your Spirit, may help to lift up your people, to raise the fallen, and restore the sick to health. Lord, heal us and raise us up. Guide us and teach us, and lead us on the way of life, in Christ.

AMEN.

Closing prayer drawn from "Clouds and Glory" by David Adam (SPCK, 1998)