Year C Lent II Genesis 15:1-12,17-18 Luke 13:31-35

“Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways….” So begins the collect for today. Who are the ones who have “gone astray”?

When I was in junior high school, I had a very close friend, Patricia. We were so close that after a while my mother would refer to Pat as her “third daughter”. This meant the world to Pat, whose own mother had died and who didn’t get along well with her stepmother. Pat and I shared time and interests both in school and after school.

One thing we did not have in common was the church we attended. Patricia was a Roman Catholic. She’d be raised in that church and she knew well all the rules and traditions – and not only that, as a young teenager she still observed them.

One day we were walking past the Roman Catholic church in town, Our Lady Queen of Martyrs (for years I thought that was one word since everyone said it so quickly), and we noticed a service was in progress. Patricia stopped, thought for a moment, and realized it was Holy Day of Obligation. She was upset she had forgotten, and so she took my hand and we crept into the service.

I don’t remember just when during the Mass we came in, but to this day I remember the end. The priest took the aspergillum and walked up and down the aisles sprinkling the congregation with holy water. As the water hit Pat she genuflected and crossed herself.

The service ended and my devout friend and I left the church. But as we descended the long flight of outside steps Patricia groaned, “Phooey! He got holy water all over my glasses, and I can’t clean them”. When I asked why, she explained the water was blessed and had to be removed by God, that is, allowed to evaporate. That made a real impression on me, the Congregationalist child with her Puritan religious training. I was in awe.

Funny though how, after making sure she didn’t miss that service on the holy day of obligation, the first words out of Patricia’s mouth as she left the church were not in thanksgiving for the wonderful blessing of having found the service and been reminded to attend, nor for the blessing, conveyed by the holy water. No, the first words she said, the first thing she did, was complain.

How often have we been told that we must choose between the world and God? How good are we at distinguishing between the two? Patricia, with all her training in and knowledge about her faith, never grasped that the blessing she had received actually briefly clouded her vision of the world. What she saw was something that briefly got in the way of her ability to control what she was seeing.

The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”

Patricia wasn’t the only person to respond to God’s blessing with a personal complaint of their own.

For Abram only one thing constitutes “reward,” only one thing is of utmost importance, that his name and his lineage should continue through a son. In ancient times this was a practical concern, because only a male child could inherit. Without a son, nothing that Abram has, neither fortune, nor his name, will continue after he is gone. God can promise him nothing of worth if a son cannot inherit it.

And God took Abram outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then He said to him, “So shall your descendants be… Then God said to Abram, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.”

For a long time now, God has been promising Abram two things, progeny and land, but what God has promised, Abram does not have. In our reading today, he is given not a son, but rather a prophetic experience of promise that there will be one. Owning no actual estate to pass on, Abram is given no possession, but a covenant commitment that a vast land will ultimately go to his descendants.

Impatient as we are today, we would be mightily disappointed and probably quite annoyed with all this talk and no action, but God has promised, and Abram believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

In the Old Testament, righteousness is the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship. Abram is a man involved in a relationship with God. God makes a promise to Abram, and though Abram has the normal human reaction, to point out that he does not have what is most important to him in this world, he is a man of faith. He trusts God, and so without question or doubt, Abram lets go and believes.

Total trust is the hallmark of any good relationship, and God’s response is to be generous to Abram, whom He deems righteous. In a ceremony that would have been familiar to the people of the ancient near-eastern world, “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants [there is God’s promise that there will be descendants] I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates [which is a very tangible piece of land - an area roughly the size of Solomon’s kingdom at the height of his reign].” And Abram trust and believes Him.

“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’”

Why would the Pharisees warn Jesus? Perhaps they were sent as Herod’s spokesmen. Or - perhaps they wanted Jesus to come to Judea where the religious authorities had more power.

“Jesus said to the Pharisees, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’”

Unlike us, who tend to focus on ourselves and our personal problems, who worry and fret and are anxious about so many things, Jesus isn’t concerned with Himself, not even with saving His own life if it means abandoning His relationship with God. For Jesus, the only thing of value is His relationship with His Heavenly Father, and the work His Father has given Him to do.

If Herod has sent the Pharisees, Jesus is clearly telling them they can tell “that fox” that He, Jesus, will be done in a few days. In Galilee He was busy casting out daemons and healing the sick. That time is ending. And shortly the time is coming when, for our sake, and because it is God’s will, He will turn His face toward Jerusalem, and toward Calvary.

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And then comes the touching lament: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

The temptation we all face is to be the fox. Like Herod we like being the clever ones. We like power, and prestige, and glory. We definitely do not like being beholding or subservient to anyone. What we enjoy is being the ones in control.

The invitation, however, from Jesus, is to be as helpless as a chick, in need of the protection we find under His wings. Relationship with Jesus does not mean worldly success or fame or any of the things the world prizes. Relationship with Jesus means surrender. We talk about it, we pray, “Thy will be done”, but when it comes right down to doing it, to letting go, it’s not that easy. We don’t like the holy water on our glasses to blur our vision and lesson our control even for a second.

It is Lent, the time set aside for us by the Church in which to contemplate and strengthen our relationship with our Lord, the time for us to become righteous people. How self-absorbed, how self-righteous are we? We come to church, we hear the Bible lessons, but do we take them to heart, do we embrace them, do we invite Jesus in to be the One in charge of our lives? We always have a choice, to either, like Abraham, surrender our control and grow closer to God, or refuse, and grow away from the Lord.

My friend Patricia followed all the rules of her faith, attended church regularly, but she never opened her heart to Jesus. She heard without listening, she took part in the service, but without becoming truly involved. Despite her good upbringing in the Church, she ended “going astray” to become a pagan, a religion that allowed her to feel that she was the one in control. It is easy to go through the motions. It is very difficult to allow Jesus to take control of our lives, of our hearts and souls.

This Lent you might consider the following prayer.

“Lord Jesus, help me to surrender to Your will.

Take all that I am and all that I have, and use them to Your purpose.

I give myself freely and wholly to You.”

The first challenge is to get ourselves to say it. The second challenge is to respond in a positive way when Jesus answers us, when He gives us the opportunity to be His instrument, gaining no glory for ourselves. It’s been said that you can always find work to do for the Lord, as long as you don’t want any recognition for having done it. G K Chesterton once said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

What then would persuade us to surrender to Jesus? There is no promise of wealth or fame or glory. There is only the certainty of hard work, and sacrifice. What calls us to be chicks instead of foxes is Jesus’ love for us, His promise to always be there for us, supporting us, guiding us, giving our lives both direction and purpose. When we belong to Him, everything makes sense, pain and sorrow fall into place, and at the center of our being is the joy and the peace that only He can bestow.

This Lent we can decide to go on doing things our way, accepting the praise of others, feeling strong, important and powerful, or we can surrender to Jesus, living our lives in accordance with His will. We say we await His coming. Will we wait as self-absorbed prideful people, or will we be among His friends, among the righteous?

Jesus said to them, “See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.'"

Let us pray:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was tempted by Satan yet did not sin: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; bring us into ever closer relationship with you, and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; Lead us through the narrow door, we ask in Jesus name. Amen.