Stargazing Trust.
Lent 2c 16, February 21, 2016 (Genesis 15:1-18 with Luke 13:31-35 in the b.g.)
TRUST. TRUST is essential to any intimate human relationship. But TRUST isn't easy. It doesn't come without risk even with someone we know, someone we love, someone we can see, feel and touch. TRUST can cost us dearly especially when trust is violated.
How difficult then is it to trust God?
To trust God, the One whom we cannot see, but whom we do sometimes "hear", sense, requires at least one leap of faith or more likely a number of leaps of faith. How then can we trust God in the living of our lives?
As we live we experience many disappointments. Others upon whom we have depended disappoint us – partners, friends, spouses, employers, pastors. Sometimes the Church disappoints us. Fewer and fewer people attend worship. At times the church has been caught up in scandal, in division over many things. All the while people (millions) are hungry, hurting, wondering – if these are the people of God, well where is God? They wonder, can they actually trust, lean upon, depend on God, if this is the way some people of God act?
We also know the fragility of life. Diagnoses are made. Our life's foundations may be shaken. Addictions raise their ugly heads within and around: to things, to substances, to obsessing about what others think or feel. How can we trust God in and with all this?
How can we trust God when things we thought we needed, things we thought God maybe even willed for us, don't happen?
I think of a woman who worked so hard, who tried to do what she thought was right. She studied hard. She married a man whom she had known for a long time. He seemed trustworthy. He appeared to share so many of her values. They both wanted a nice house. They were both willing to work hard. They began to plan to grow old together. They were married. Shortly after the birth of their first child, her husband abandoned her. Only short months later she discovered her baby had leukemia. Thus began, months and years of treatment. Miraculously, her cherished daughter lived. But now, years later, that child struggles with learning disabilities the result of the cancer treatments she underwent as a wee child had in order to survive. Can this mother trust God? What does that mean for her?
These are the questions Abram is raises today.
Years before Abram and Sarai his wife, had left their homeland. They didn't leave looking for adventure. They left the familiar landscape of home because they had the sense that God was calling them to leave. Even though some of it didn't make sense to them, they became convinced that God wanted them to set out on a journey with an uncertain destination. In their minds that command came with promises. As they journeyed in obedience to God they would experience the blessings of having numerous descendants, of having their own land and of somehow becoming a blessing to others.
So, off they go. Years pass. Much of their journey had been amazing. They encountered many different people. They engaged in struggles experiencing some victories. Recently Abram had been able to rescue his nephew from captivity. But - the clock is ticking. Now Abram is looking back, taking inventory of his life. God's long ago promises are still in his mind. Now he hears God's voice again. God is directing Him. But now Abram is old. He can't see how at this point in his life, God's promises are going to be fulfilled for him.
Descendants? Abram doesn't even have one child! Land? He's always on the move. A blessing to others? In the not too distant future he and Sarai will likely die. God reiterates these promises. But Abram just can't see it.
Can we identify with him?
Are we invested ourselves in seeking to know and do God's will in our living? If not, why not? Do we think, are we convinced that our plans will be better for anyone? Do our plans, as opposed to God's direction, draw us closer to others, to God, to creation?
If we are attempting to trust God, to hear and live in the face of God's promises for us and others – how is that working out? In the midst of all that is happening, personally - and collectively, do we see evidence of God's promises to us and through us, coming to fruition?
An important reality regarding Abram and Sarai is that God doesn't back off. God welcomes the voicing of our questions and their struggles with God. In fact, God ups the ante. God tells Abram to continue on his journey. But Abram is also to continue trust God's promises. Look up in the sky. See stars. So shall your descendants be. See this land on which you stand. Someday it will be your descendants' land.
Might it be that God is taking us by the hand? Could it be that God is exhorting us to continue trusting the promises God has made to us and for us? We may only be able to see or sense what is immediately within us or around us. We may not be able to trust that God's good and gracious intentions will be or are being fulfilled. Often we are limited by what we can feel or comprehend. Some of this is good. We are to feel. We are to struggle to comprehend. Our minds are amazing, God given gifts.
But we must also know this. There is more to reality than what we can feel or comprehend. This is especially true as hopeless casts its shadows over us, as we feel that there is nothing we can do. We must remember. We must know. God is God. God's promises can and do transcend our limited feelings and comprehension, our human capacity. God does deliver more than we cna imagine.
So, God points Abram to this amazing reality in the covenant ceremony. Abram is to bring a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon. There God makes a solemn promise, an oath a vow, of saying that, I will be cursed if I do not keep my promise to you.
Hundreds of years later, God's promise takes on flesh, filling out the third promise to Abram. God becomes a human being. This Jesus gives his life in the most vulnerable way to embody God's love, to enable us to live from that love, to become blessings to others. God keeps God's promises. God is trustworthy!
Nevertheless, trusting God is never for us a straight or easy path. There is always resistance to such trust from within and without. Such trust can never only be a head thing. Such trust leads to actions, to discipline, to seeking to listen to and obey God individually and together, despite the cost. Often there is cost to such trust because the resistance to the love of God for all is significant.
You see, we are not so far removed from Abram and Sarai. We too can hear God's promise. But like Abram we just can't see how and when this might all be for us or through us. We too are often blessed. At times we too have been less than faithful, just like Abram was.
But in those moments, God can take us by our hands, even by our minds and lead us beyond ourselves, outside, to behold the stars or to bend over and touch the earth. Curing Lent God leads us to a cross, perhaps a number of crosses, and says SEE, YOU CAN TRUST ME.
By a miracle beyond any and all human understanding God's own Spirit enables us to trust and obey God. May it be so even now!
Lord we believe, help our unbelief. Amen.