Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
March 13, 2022
2 Lent C
A number of years ago, well before Don and I moved to
Hudson, I was out and about one day and I stopped for gas at a Speedway
station. I had on my usual attire for a workday
which included a black shirt, a collar, and my seminary cross. You know the outfit. After I pumped my gas, I went inside to get a
Diet Coke, my beverage of choice back in the day. When I went up to the counter to pay for my
soda, the clerk gave me a very odd look, leaned over the counter and said with
awe in her voice “Are you a witch?”
Nothing in my seminary education prepared me for that question. I do not think fast enough to come up a good
reply, but I knew enough to know that if she wondered if I was a witch,
explaining that I am a priest in 10 seconds or less was not going to help
matters. Her knowledge of my world, what
I do and what I believe was as limited as mine was of hers. There was a line behind me so I just politely
said “no,” paid for my drink and went on my way.
Who I am and what I do and believe was as bizarre to the cashier
in Speedway as whatever God and Abram are up to this morning is to me. God and Abram have been going round and round
about Abram’s descendants since Genesis 12 when God starts talking about
Abram’s offspring. At that point, Abram
was 75 years old. Now Abram and Sarah
have traveled through Canaan and the Negeb, then gone down to Egypt to avoid a
famine, back to the Negeb, to Bethel, and back to Canaan, where God again
promises Abram offspring that number the dust of the earth. Then there was some war and fighting over the
land before we hear God say to Abram in a vision “Do not be afraid, Abram.” And
Abram reminds God that he continues childless.
Again God promises Abram descendants that number the stars in the
sky. God’s promise looks a little
unreliable at this point. Abram is
pushing 100 and Sarah is not far behind.
Who could blame Abram for being a little skeptical about offspring at
his age? Yet Abram believes and it is
reckoned to him as righteousness.
Then we hear God promise that God will give Abram the land
to possess. When Abram asks God how he
is to know that he will possess the land, land that other people clearly want
both in the book of Genesis and throughout history, the story gets really bizarre. The instructions are very specific: Take a 3
year old heifer, a three year old female goat, a three year old ram, a
turtledove and a young pigeon. All the
animals except the birds are cut in half and laid out in a particular way. After dark, while Abram was in a deep sleep,
a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the pieces and we are told
that God made a covenant with Abram to give him the land from the river of
Egypt to the Euphrates.
What are we to make of this ritual and what on earth could dead
animals and a smoking pot say to us in the 21st century?
Actually, this story is a powerful account of God meeting
Abram where he is, in the midst of his doubt, and using an ancient form of sealing
a covenant. * The ritual described is called “cutting a covenant.” The two parties involved promise to keep the
covenant they make lest their own bodies be cut in two like the animals through
whose blood they walk. The story that
sounds so strange to our ears showed the ancient Hebrews the power of God’s
promise to Abram. How did the
descendants of Abram know that the promised land belonged to them? God had cut a covenant with Abram that
promised God’s life if God failed to keep the covenant. God met Abram where he was, in the midst of
his doubt, and used ancient human convention to seal a promise.
If there is any point of similarity between Abram’s
situation and that of Jesus this morning, perhaps the similarity is that Jesus
looks no more chosen this morning than Abram felt at the beginning of the reading
from Genesis. We heard God claim Jesus
as God’s own beloved Son at Jesus’ baptism.
Now, Herod wants to kill Jesus.
Jesus is heading to Jerusalem because it is impossible for a prophet to
be killed outside the city. Jesus wants
to gather the people together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but
the people are not willing. Jesus is
headed to Jerusalem to die a painful and public death. Not much about that sounds chosen or beloved
to me.
God
met Abram where he was with a ritual that sealed an outrageous promise. Likewise, God meets humankind where we are in
the person of Jesus. When times are
hard, when God’s promises seem farfetched or even outrageous, when death and evil
seem to be winning, how do we know, really know, that we belong to God and that
God will keep God’s promises? We know because
God was willing to meet us where we are by becoming a human to live among us,
show us what love looks like, and lay down God’s life for us in the person of
Jesus, turning death into life and hatred into love.
Because God has been outrageously and bizarrely clear about
God’s deep love for humankind throughout scripture and in the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus, the faith expressed in the psalm this morning makes
sense. In the midst of a pandemic, war,
personal challenges, the challenges our city faces, and any other situation in
which we find ourselves, we can say “The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the
strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid.” We know that God’s promise of life and love
is solid because the story of God and God’s people has shown that to us over
and over again, meeting us where we are, and giving God’s life for the life of
the world. Perhaps bizarre and outrageous
are required to convince our hearts of the depth of God’s love.
Amen.
*www.workingpreacher.org March 13 2022 Justin Michael Reed
No comments:
Post a Comment