Sermon March 4, 2012

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Psalm 22:23-31

Romans 4:13-25

Mark 8:31-38

“Living Legacy”

Have you ever thought that it would be nice of God would just tell you what to do clearly, face-to-face and with no chance of misunderstanding? Or that God would sit you down or more likely you wish God would sit down with a relative or friend and explain the circumstances of their lives? In our scripture from Genesis this morning, Abram has that chance. This isn't the first or last time either. Genesis describes several times when God walks and talks with the patriarch formerly known as Abram, telling him exactly what will happen and why—if not how. And the man we know as Abraham would tell you that working with God is always fraught with change, transformation, and the cost of being faithful to God's intentions for our lives.Even face-to-face, God is God and we are not.

All readings today speak of both blessings and costs. That puts Christianity at odds with much of today’s culture. People are wary of joining anything with “strings attached,” and churches struggling with numbers are not keen to make discipleship harder. But have you noticed that even today, people who are truly committed to the success or failure of a mission are more likely to join if there is a cost. The cost of mission seems to make it more genuine. We seem to understand intuitively that very little genuineness or commitment means very little results.

When I first expressed to my mother the possibility of becoming a minister—not that I wanted to preach, I was interested in learning more, going to seminary and, honestly, becoming what my husband calls a “professional student.”—she was, let’s call it, dismayed. Shocked, appalled, worried, upset, angry and that’s just what I know from how what she said, I have no idea what was going on inside. She wanted to talk me out of it, partly because I am a woman and partly because she saw the difficulties involved in living life as a minister. The small church I grew up in had student ministers from Phillips when it was in Enid, Oklahoma, and she used to joke, half seriously, that when those young ministers left Aline they had twins, got divorced or both. Ministry, even in her limited view inside that small church in that small town, was a stressful call to answer.

But she also saw, knew and loved many of the young ministers and their families who served there. They were not always treated with the most respect—or the respect due them—many were blessed and tested, and were blessed and discouraged, often at the same time. And I would say, looking back, that my mother was right about the difficulties of the ministers whose lives she had witnessed. And she was right about this being a difficult call to answer. And I would say that there is no easy call to answer, when God is calling. And God does call, each one of us to give our lives in some kind of service. God does call, each one of us differently and I believe that call continues throughout our lives though the call may change, adjust, and evolve as our lives change, adjust and evolve to the situations in which we find ourselves and the context of the world around us.

I understand that we are all not called to ministry in the same way—not to preach formal sermons or to take on the administrative responsibilities of a congregation or all the other weird little things that consist of my calling. Even different ministers are called to do different varieties of things within their ministry—we are all different. But I do believe that God calls us and we are ordained to that calling through baptism—by water, by spirit, and on rare occasion, by fire. In every one of our lives, in particular ways and with our own particular gifts, we are called to live the gospel of Jesus Christ, from the time of our baptisms until we take our final breaths.

I have heard it said how much easier people have it when they have faith in God—and I understand that sentiment, but I also know that it isn’t easy to be faithful to a God who calls us to go beyond our wants and desires and beyond the spotty and changeable moralism of modern culture.. It isn’t easy to consider the needs of our neighbors, when our neighbors are located in the house with the messy yard next door and in the trashed out apartment building across town and in the synagogues, temples, mosques, churches and in the palaces, refugee camps around the world. But in Jesus' words we are called to love our neighbors wherever they are when we are baptized into discipleship of Jesus Christ.

But we can be assured that the faithful women and men who have been called by God have never found absolute obedience that easy—I would even venture to say that, considering attitude, none have been absolutely cooperative, even if they have eventually obeyed.

The lectionary reading this week stops just short of Abraham's response in verse 17: "Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed." Sarah wasn't around to hear directly from God about her impending pregnancy (or, for that matter, her name change), but we find out in the next chapter how she reacted when she finally got the news: "Sarah laughed to herself" (18:12).

That's not all that the carefully chosen verses of the lectionary reading leave out: the rest of this 17th chapter tells us that the gift of "the land" is an important part of the promise, "for a perpetual holding," and then spends a good amount of time on the sign of this covenant, circumcision. One author* acknowledges that Christians may find these themes "relatively uncongenial": the promise of the land (which continues to be the source of great controversy today), circumcision (think of the struggle in the early church about its necessity), and finally, "doubt, manifested in laughter" (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 2). Great ancestors in the faith don't doubt or question, right? We certainly don't want them to fall off their pedestals.¹

The bible doesn't tell us about all of the conversations Abraham and Sarah probably had about the possibility of conceiving a child, about the possibilities of a successful pregnancy and all of the stuff that goes along with that kind of story. We can imagine that these were not the only times they laughed about it. And the times they cried about it. And the times they argued about it.

But God had made promise of an innumerable set of descendants—making this family of Abraham and Sarah an eternal family, if you think about it. And to begin this family some particular actions had to be accomplished. Abraham had to follow instructions; Sarah had be on board with the plan. Eventually they were sidetracked by taking matters into their own hands, but God made those folks a part of the promise, too— made Abraham's son by Sarah's maid, Hagar, another set of nations, according to the Bible. God's promise was doubly kept in Abraham's life—what is two times a multitude?

As each promise is made and each promise is kept, the faithfulness we witness and experience doesn't necessarily become clearer. But the promises are kept—and the promises are God's.

It is, of course, God who is at work in this story. It's God's initiative, and God's plan in motion. God is shaping a family, and commits to be at the heart of that family's story, to travel with that family when they wander and dwell with them when they reach their home. This covenant and its blessings aren't just for the sake of Israel, however, because God intends, through Israel, to restore all of humanity. But it starts here, with a man and woman who leave home and all that is familiar, including its security and its gods, to set out in response to the irresistible call of this "God Almighty." Thus begins a relationship, at times beautiful and at times troubled, between the children of Israel and their one God, whom they trust to be with them always.²

Though I know we are called to participate with and within God's promises—making ourselves available and expressing our discipleship in daily life. I also know that God will work wonders if we just don't get in God's way.

Perhaps this is Jesus' message to Peter, too. Though it seems a bit harsh to call him Satan, Jesus was in a very stressful situation, knowing that suffering and a painful death were around the corner. We don't have to like the road we're traveling and probably parts of it will be and have been very difficult.

Really, we do just need to be reminded that God's plan is everlasting—the covenant God made with Abraham to continue this family forever is everlasting. So we know we can be creative with God, sometimes just by getting out of the way of God's spirit. Let's don't trip up the wind of the spirit with worry and grief at what no longer is, but allow it to flow through us, moving us, shaping us and making all of us a part of this legacy God has promised, again and again and again.

To the glory of our God, full of steadfast love, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.

1http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/march-4-2012-second-sunday.html *W. Sibley Towner

2http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/march-4-2012-second-sunday.html