Lent 2
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams
Saint George’s Episcopal Church, Arlington, Virginia
Lent 2/ February 25th, 2024
“For the promise…did not come to Abraham or his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith… “…God…gives life to the dead and calls into existence that things that do not exist….” Romans 4:13-25
Lent is a time for preparing for Easter. And it is a time that many people who haven’t been in church in a while, decide to give church another try. Despite the decline in awareness in our culture overall of Christian practices, most people have heard of Ash Wednesday and most people know that Lent is a season for reevaluating your priorities in life. And it is a long-standing part of Christian tradition to take on specific spiritual practices during Lent OR to give something up. Giving up things and taking on new practices are both good things to do, as long as we do them as a way of increasing our awareness of our dependence upon God. The trouble comes when we use these things as a way of fooling ourselves into thinking how righteous we are, as in, when I resist ordering that vanilla latte that I gave up, that I love so much. OR when I think I am earning heavenly brownie points when I succeed in doing my 15 minutes of prayer time every day for a week straight. The issue with looking at things this way is that the focus is on me and my power to control my own destiny, rather than on God, and my reliance on him. Most of us grow up thinking that if we do all the right things, if we follow all the rules, we will be rewarded, and that if we just work hard enough, we can achieve anything we desire.
But Christian faith teaches us something different. Jesus did not come into this world to establish a meritocracy. He came into this world to show us that everyone is worthy of God’s grace and love, and that we take up our cross and follow him, not as a way of proving ourselves or earning salvation, but in grateful response to the gracious love that he showed us in his willingness to die a gruesome death at the hands of the meritocracy and through his resurrection, triumphing over the forces of evil, sin and domination.
Just like us, the first Christians struggled to understand how to reconcile their faith in Jesus with the forces of the culture around them. Paul wrote his letter to the Romans about 8 years after the expulsion of the Jews from Rome by the Emperor Claudius in 49 C.E. . And while their Jewish siblings were in exile, the gentile Christians in the Church in Rome had gotten used to being in charge of things. They had reverted back to the norm of the outside culture, looking down their noses at their Jewish friends, and thinking of themselves more highly than they ought. Paul is writing to the church as the Jewish Christians are being re-assimilated in the midst of these power dynamics. He reminds the non-Jewish church members that they have been grafted into the covenant that God originally made with Abraham, long ago, even before God gave the gift of the law to Moses. And just as God was gracious in grafting them into that covenant, they should be gracious to the returning Jewish Christians, recognizing that faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection binds all of them together. Faith is the great equalizer. All of them are inheritors of God’s promise, originally made to Abraham and fulfilled in Christ. God is first and foremost the giver of a promise. That promise was given to Abraham who is the “father of many nations”, and all three monotheistic religions regard him as their ancestor to this day, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Faith in God’s promise, argues Paul, is the key to the kingdom. (God’s promise is far more important than adherence to the law given to Moses. )
And God’s promise creates something where there is nothing. The story of God’s promise to make Abraham the father of many nations is about hope, despite any obvious reasons to be hopeful. Abraham and Sara were old and Sara was way beyond child-bearing years, and yet God gave them many descendants.
“…God…gives life to the dead and calls into existence that things that do not exist….”
They responded in faith to God’s graciousness and came to believe in God’s promise to them over time.
But trusting in God’s gracious provision can be a struggle. Sometimes we think we are beyond God’s favor, that we are beyond hope. But even if we feel like our lives are a great, barren void, God really can bring something out of nothing. Sometimes that void is created by our own sinfulness, and other times by suffering that comes from outside of ourselves, that is beyond our control. We lose a job out of the blue, someone we love dies, we are left bereft by our own limitations. But that promise that God made to Abraham, that promise that God would bless him, that is our promise too. And God can come into our perceived voids and create something new, can fill us with hope, and can assure us that we are worthy, not because of our own merit, but because of God’s promise that was brought to fulfillment when Christ was raised from the dead, and bringing all who trust in him into new life.
New things really are possible. That is the greatest blessing of Lent. We look forward to the promise of Easter. Even if we don’t think we have the gift of faith, we can pray for it and trust that just as Abraham had a hard time believing in God’s promise at first, God provided and Abraham came to faith over time. And we are all one in this journey of faith, the people who have walked the path for a long time and the people are just beginning today, whatever our ethnic, cultural or religious backgrounds. God’s promises are made to humankind and the thing that distinguishes us is whether we decide to live in faith and hope or to give into cynicism and despair. May God grant us the grace to pray for the gift of faith, for ourselves and for the life of the world.
“For the promise…did not come to Abraham or his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith… “…God…gives life to the dead and calls into existence that things that do not exist….” Romans 4:13-25