+Abraham laughs.
God gets a little needy.
Paul hits the nail on the head.
And Jesus loses it a bit.
Yes, we're in Lent, where all pretense is stripped away and we get down and dirty with this thing called faith.
Lent is when we're reminded just why God had to come and be among us in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ…
..Lent is when we're reminded that our relationship with God has been, more often than not, pretty rocky and that together we, humanity and God, have had our ups and downs…
..Lent's when we're reminded of just how difficult it is for God to understand us, God's beloved; and how difficult it is for us to understand God.
Things gets all stripped down in Lent because this stuff can be confusing and we don't have much time---40 days give or take---to make sense of God's love for us and our love for God before we dive headlong into the crux of our faith, those heart wrenching, faith challenging three days.
It's in Lent when we wrestle with our limitations while learning to accept God's limitlessness.
Lent is when we get clear that while we may see through a glass dimly, God sees all that has been all that is and all that will be.
Lent is when we get real clear about who God is, The Divine, and who we are, the Not Divine.
Lent is when we practice living fully into who we are rather than who we are not.
Scary? Sure.
Exciting? Yes.
Surprising? Always.
Lent's not easy, but when has being a Christian ever been easy? What we learn from our readings today, what we learn from the beautiful struggle of our individual wilderness experiences is this: standing up for those who have no standing, demanding dignity for all, protecting our children, our elderly, our downcast isn't easy, pretty or fun.
But we don't tackle any of this alone because, as promised to Abraham in the book of Genesis and as promised in the birth of Jesus himself, God never stops reaching out to us, reaching out for us. God never leaves.
We have a great example of this in today's first reading from Genesis. This reading is famous for being the one where God renames Abram and Sarai, Abraham and Sarah, making them the parents of a multitude of nations rather than just parents of one…but the first name change, the first change of focus, the first new identity isn't theirs….it's God's. You see, up until now in Genesis God's name has been The Most High God (El Elyon) or the God who sees me (El Roi), here in chapter 17 is the first time God refers to God's self as El Shaddai, the All Sufficient, All Encompassing One. Today, God, Abram and Sarai all get new names,
New identities.
It's seems clear here---God is making something all together new and God has begun with God's very self.
Now embracing a new identity, whether it's a name change, a life change or a faith change, can be pretty unsettling. So God, in God's All Sufficient and All Encompassing manner paves the way by going first. God tells Abraham, "yes I am leading you into a new identity, I am leading you into the all together new, but I'm going first, just follow me." God then proceeds to tell Abraham that he and Sarah will have many descendants that God will make fertile and lively that which had been infertile and dying---
Of course Abraham has no idea what God's talking about---our translation says that Abraham falls on his face which, at first blush, suggests that he assumed a posture of adoration and worship but in truth, the Hebrew word used here suggests less adoration and more incredulity, less worship and more shock. Less falling down in joy and wonder and more tripping over his own feet while saying, "you're gonna what?????"
And, in a scene of beautiful longing, El Shaddai, the All Encompassing All Sufficient One, doesn't smite Abraham for disbelief, doesn't move on to to someone else. No God persists. Imploring, maybe even begging, Abraham to believe. "Yes, Abraham, I'm talking to you, YOU and Sarah are the ones through which I am going to do this marvelous thing. I want, I need I long for YOU to do this with me."
Here it is in black and white: God reaches out to us, God longs for us, God, even in God's all encompassing, all sufficient divinity, does not, can not, will not walk this path alone. God needs, God wants, God longs for us, the descendants of Father Abraham and Mother Sarah, to walk alongside.
This is where the rest of today's readings come in…. Paul, in Romans, goes on and on about the Law vs. Faith, what he's working out, what he's realizing is, to coin a phrase from another of Paul's letters:
there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, man or woman…every one, all of us, any of us, each of us, are invited to journey with the Almighty, All Encompassing All Sufficient Love that is God.
This is why Jesus loses it with Peter…Peter can't bear the thought that Jesus would have to endure what Jesus will endure. He cannot fathom it, so he denies that it is true.
What Jesus is saying to us, through Peter, is this:
Yes I have great trials ahead-we all have great trials that we endure, we all have great crosses to bear, we all are constantly and relentlessly pulled toward the darkness of Not God but through the promise of the Almighty One, El Shaddai, we can walk through the dark and barren valleys of life because we are never ever alone. Jesus is telling Peter and us just what God was telling Abraham, just what Paul figured out in his letter to the church in Rome: we are in this together. We are invited we are all wanted, we are all needed. The path won't always be smooth, the way not always easy, but together, walking with the God who created us, the God who redeems us and the God who sustains us we will make it. So, welcome to Lent, welcome to faith, welcome to the all-encompassing, all sufficient Love that leads the way. Amen.
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