Strategy

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
March 5, 2023

2 Lent A 

Three years ago next week, we needed a completely new strategy.  When Covid hit, our lives as individuals and as a church were turned upside down.  As individuals, we needed new ways to get groceries, medical care, education and human contact.  We needed a new strategy as a church for worship, to stay connected, take care of each other, reach out to the community and do all the things we do as a church.  Most of our strategies and ways we had lived our lives did not work anymore, which was confusing and devastating.  Three years later, I look back on those weeks that stretched int0 months and even years and I am in awe of how far we have come.

          God needs a new strategy this morning.  In the first chapter of Genesis, God created humankind in God’s own image. In the second chapter, God created humankind from the dust of the earth and set us in a lovely garden.  Either way, humankind is created to be in relationship with God, each other, and creation. 

          But in Genesis Chapter 3, as we heard last week, Adam and Eve violated the one rule God gave them.  They ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and they are evicted from the lovely garden.  This is not what God had in mind.  In chapter 4, Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel.  In the first act of extreme sibling rivalry, Cain kills Abel.  Again, not what God had in mind.  Then a genealogy takes us from Adam to Noah covering countless generations and thousands of years.  Next, the sons of God take wives from human women and bear children, which makes God sorry that God created humans in the first place, leading to the Great Flood.  Fortunately, Noah was righteous in God’s eyes, so God preserves humankind through this one family, along with one pair of each kind of animal.  After the flood, God makes a covenant with Noah, sealed with the rainbow, that God will never again use a flood to destroy all flesh.  The next bit of chapter 9 is not fit for a G-rated sermon, so you will have to read it for yourself, but suffice it to say that just a few paragraphs after the rainbow, God is rethinking that promise.  Chapter 10 gives us more genealogy which brings us to Chapter 11 and the tower of Babel which all the humans build so they can be united against God, so God confuses all the languages and scatters all the people.  Things have gone from bad to worse with God’s beloved humans, despite God’s best efforts.

          This morning we get God’s new strategy.  God is now going to focus on one family, the family of Abram.  We hear God call Abram to go from his country and his family to a land God will show him.  Then God makes a covenant with Abram in which God will make of Abram a great nation, bless Abram, and make Abram’s name great so that Abram will be a blessing through whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

          Has God lowered the bar?  Would harmony with just one family be easier for God and for the people?  That does seem reasonable.  When we bite off more than we can chew, common sense tells us to take a smaller bite.  But God is not taking a smaller bite.

          God is not abandoning anyone.  God is choosing one family, which will become a great nation, through whom to bless all the families of the earth.  This is not just a new strategy, but an incredible promise.  Other than when God tells Abram to “go,” and Abram goes, every other action word belongs to God.  Show, make, bless, bless again, curse….all will be God’s action.  The goal is not that the people will be 100% faithful all the time.  God knows that is highly unlikely and, in fact, the scriptures are brutally honest about the Hebrew people’s successes and failures at being faithful, the times they are hopeful and the times they lose hope, the times they understand their mission to all the families and the times they circle the wagons.  But God is going to be 100% faithful and the goal is that God will work through the people in good times and bad times to bless all the families of the earth. 

          In John’s gospel this morning, God expands the strategy.  The passage connects Jesus with Moses, a key figure in the story of God’s people, when Jesus says “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  Then we hear the beloved words of John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

          In Jesus, God has expanded the plan to bless all the families, all the people of the earth.  God still works to bless all the families through the descendants of Abram, and God works to bless all the families of the earth in a new way through Jesus and Jesus’ disciples.  The question this morning is not who does God love more, the Jews or Christians, as if we are siblings squabbling for the love and attention of the parent.  The question is not which of us is the true heir of Abram, the Jews or the Christians.  The answer to that question is “yes.”  The question is “what are we doing as people of God and followers of Jesus to be a blessing to all the families of the earth?” or at least the families of Hudson and Summit county?  Where is God calling us to go?  Three years ago, we came up with a new strategy to be a blessing by doing what we could, which was raise money to support those most affected by Covid.  We set audacious goals to raise money for the domestic violence shelter in Akron, for the futons needed for Family Promise to shelter the unhoused, for the Peter Maurin Center to serve those living on the streets and under bridges, for laptops for refugees and immigrants to learn English, and on and on.  But now we need another new strategy, a new way of being a blessing in this new world we live in, that connects us personally with those we serve.  Twenty or so of us gathered last Sunday as our Outreach Team to work on that exact question, and information about opportunities to be a blessing will be forthcoming, in addition to the opportunities we all have in our everyday lives.  The beloved words of John 3:16 come alive to the world around us when we are the blessing God calls us to be, showing the world the abundant and faithful love of God.

                                                                             Amen.