Second Sunday in Lent

Fear and Faith

Lent 2 13 Mar 2022

Readings: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18. Philippians 3:17-4:1. Luke 13:31-35.

One of the commentators I use for these thoughts (Scott Hozee at the Centre for Excellence in Preaching) remarked that Luke is an excellent story teller.  That I could certainly agree with – all the parables of Jesus we know and love, such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are told so well in Luke’s Gospel.  There is also Luke’s use of many  literature techniques that demonstrate that he knew what he was about when he wrote his Gospel as well as the Book of Acts.  Our gospel today (Luke 13:31-35), however, appears a bit disconnected.  It helps if we read the whole of chapter 13 but that would be too long for a Sunday Gospel, so what we get is the ending.  Scott Hozee says it reminds him of Winston Churchill who once sent a pudding back to a restaurant kitchen, because it lacked a theme!  Actually, with a bit of digging and thinking on today’s readings a theme does emerge.  For me, these reading join fear and faith.

Karen and I had an old friend around for lunch last Sunday.  She and I were ordained on the same day, although she now lives and works in Scotland.  After retirement she has been unable to make up her mind whether to return to South Africa or stay in the UK.  What surprised me was her comment that if the Ukraine-Russian conflict developed into a nuclear war, she would rather die in the UK, closer to the centre of the conflict than be left alive to die slowly on the edges of the devastated world.  Perhaps this is the sort of fear that the “Breaking News” ribbon that moves across the screen of TV News Channels brings to us because it is not just nuclear conflagration but also other things like gun violence, government corruption, violence against women, and countries’ leaders gaslighting the reality of global climate change. There is much we can be afraid of, but these reading call us to faith.  That hymn which seems to be at every funeral these days, Amazing Grace tells us that our lives can be transformed. “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.”

Certainly, this is the case for Abram in the Genesis reading.  He is fearful that he will die without an heir. He is afraid that his genetic line, and the memory of his life, will end at his death.  One of the commentators I read (Bruce Epperly at The Adventurous Lectionary website) speaks of us desiring several forms of immortality: biological immortality, creative immortality, natural immortality, theological immortality, and experiential or mystical immortality.  The most primal form is biological – we live on through our descendants and, as a genealogist, I know that feeling very well.  We want to leave an heir, “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh”, to carry on our legacy, achievements, and our blood line.  That was where Abram was when our reading happens. No child has been born from his marriage to Sarah. He has fathered a child from a slave, but this will not suffice in his own eyes and the eyes of his culture.

He feels he is lost, knowing that with his death, everything that is “him” will perish. In that moment of despair, God tells him to look at the heavens and count the stars. God is telling him to look beyond himself and his self-interest and survival to see the deeper realities of life, because Abram is star stuff.  His origins are beyond his imagination and they will be long after he is gone, God’s world will continue.  He is assured by God to trust the Creative Wisdom of the Universe, rather than his own fears and mortality.  God’s path is everlasting and infinite, and Abram’s life, your life and my life are part of this incredible journey.  We too are “star stuff.”  God is telling Abram that a child is coming to him and Sarah, be ready for it but, first recognize the wonder of God’s universe within which this child will be born.

Abram believes and God responds. Our trust in God opens up new possibilities and energies. A way will be made where we see no way. New life emerges amid death and hope amid failure. This is not necessarily some easy “alles sal reg kom” sort of thing, but merely saying that living faith is born in the face of the complexities of life and by discovering that, new possibilities are born.

Similar theme occurs in the New Testament reading.  Paul’s advice to the Philippians is to imitate him in standing firm in the faith.  Paul indicates that we are citizens of two worlds, the divine and the everyday.  The divine permeates everyday life.  We live in the real world with its fears, but we also have faith and thus see our reality with a heavenly perspective.  If God is omnipresent and omni-active, we are already in heaven, regardless of what is going on today.  We have everlasting life. We can stand firm because this world is filled with divine wisdom and glory. Our heavenly home shapes our earthly commitments. We can trust in the future and focus on today. Our times are in God’s hand, and when we trust God, even in adversity, we can experience God’s realm on earth as it is in heaven.

And so, onto what that commentator called a gospel passage without a theme.  I’m already starting to see a theme.  Fear and faith appear in this passage in a slightly different format.  The fear appears in the Pharisees and in what Jesus calls simply ‘Jerusalem’.  Really this passage expresses the wants or the desires of three groups, Herod, Jesus and Jerusalem.  The wants or desires are both fear and faith.

Herod’s Desire
It is the Pharisees who tell Jesus Herod’s desire.  It is to kill him.  Jesus sends the Pharisees back to Herod with a message that they must tell “that fox” that he answers to a higher authority than Herod.  Jesus is insisting that Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee, cannot hinder his work of casting out demons.  Nor will King Herod’s threat prevent him from curing the people and bringing them the Good News.  Jesus declares that he will keep working “today, tomorrow and the third day” when he will be completed. Now for us Christian mention on the third day would imply the resurrection. For Luke this third day is associated with God’s divine purpose at work, especially in the life (and death) of Jesus.

Jesus’ Desire
Luke characterizes Jesus as a prophet who takes upon himself the image of the divine bird. Jesus uses an unusual and delightful image, not as a grand eagle but a hen.  Jesus’ desire is to provide shelter under his wings.   Jesus’ work since chapter four of Luke 4 has been to live out the words of an earlier prophet, Isaiah, whom he quotes saying:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
         to bring good news to the poor.
 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
  and recovery of sight to the blind,
 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19 NRSV)

This message was not always accepted, but he does not cower from intimidation, he counters it by calling Herod a fox.  Jesus’ priority does not seem to be his own safety.  It is not fear.  He instead is primarily concerned about following the divine purpose.  This divine purpose does not lead him away from danger but leads him directly into it and ultimately through it.

Jerusalem’s Desires
So, Luke presents Jesus as a prophet and like so many of the prophets of old this prophetic identity has Jerusalem’s negative response to prophets.   Jerusalem does not desire what Jesus desires.  The texts portray the civic leaders of Jerusalem as understanding the prophet’s messages as divisive, controversial, and dangerous.  A threat to them from the Roman occupiers.  Rather than desiring the prophet’s message, they opt to stone those sent by God.

Fear and Faith.  They are both part of God’s story of salvation. Viktor Frankl in his book written in the Nazi concentration camps, quotes Friedrich Nietzsche, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” Jesus knew ‘why’ he was living.  His sense of purpose, his vocational sense, enabled him to face his fear of suffering and abandonment (his ‘how’), trusting that his life had meaning and that God’s purposes for him were more enduring than Herod’s hatred, Jerusalem rejection.

Thinking back to my priest friend as well as myself and perhaps many of you reading this, when we are faced with the desperate and apparently unsolvable crises of our time, let us not give up heart. Let us not be afraid. But let us respond with hope and courage to the struggles of day-to-day life, of global uncertainty, the threat of nuclear conflict, the impact of the pandemic on the church, the shrinking congregations, climate change and our own personal dramas – whatever they be.  Let us like Abraham, and with faith, count the stars in the sky, knowing that we are part of God’s story and that by our lives, we help heal the world.