Genesis 17:1-16
17When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him,
“I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. 2And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make
you exceedingly numerous.” 3Then Abram fell on his
face; and God said to him,
4“As for me, this is my covenant with you: You
shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be
Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of
you, and kings shall come from you.
7I will establish my covenant between me and
you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an
everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the
land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual
holding; and I will be their God.” 9God said to Abraham,
“As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you
throughout their generations. 10This is my covenant,
which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every
male among you shall be circumcised. 11You shall circumcise
the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me
and you. 12Throughout your generations every male among
you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in
your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of
your offspring. 13Both the slave born in your house and the one
bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your
flesh an everlasting covenant. 14Any uncircumcised male
who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his
people; he has broken my covenant.”
15God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife,
you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I
will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come
from her.”
Mark 8:31-38
31Then he began to teach them that the Son of
Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief
priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and
began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he
rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind
not on divine things but on human things.”
34He called the crowd with his disciples, and
said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and
take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to
save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and
for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For what will it
profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous
and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he
comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
What is your response to
God’s blessing and promise? As a disciple of Christ...as a member
of the body of Christ...as a child of God blessed by God….what is our response?
Let me be clear, God has
blessed us, in the waters God promises to rename us as a child of God, grafting
us into the eternal promise of prosperity, and everlasting life through Jesus
Christ. God blesses us with unconditional love, promises grace upon
grace, blesses us with forgiveness and mercy, promises life to all who believe.
So I was just curious, what is our response to God’s blessing and
promise.
Perhaps it is more occasionally appropriate to ask, How is your relationship with God this Lenten season? Have you found yourself at all challenged? And as a result growing? Has Lent challenged you to confront uncomfortable sins or temptations in your life? Reevaluate the priorities of this world? Or has Lent compelled you to confess that you’d rather not have your faith challenged during Lent? Regardless, Lent is an appropriate season not only for introspection and self-examination, but more so for dwelling how God is or isn’t present in your life. Lent is a good time to ask not only how is your relationship with God, but in what ways are you responding to the blessings and promises God has bestowed on us through Jesus Christ?
I don’t mean to be so heavy this morning, but our texts are rich with responses
to God’s blessing and promise. And all of these questions and pressure
points simmer down to our Spirit-empowered response to God’s blessing and
promise. Make no mistake...God has promised. God has blessed and
continues to bless. Therefore every aspect of our lives is a response to this
promise and blessing.
Enter Abram and Sarai in
our story from Genesis this morning. Abram and Sarai met God
several chapters ago when God told Abram to “Go
from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I
will show you.” And with his wife, nephew, and servants, Abram went.
At seventy five-years old he went. Destination unknown, but off
they went because in that convestation God promises to bless Abram. His
initial response to God’s promised blessing was a faithful and fully
God-dependent response.
This morning’s story happens almost 25 years
later. Abram and Sarai have wandered and waited, not so patiently, but
they’ve waited. Throughout their waiting they’ve had their struggles.
They often question God or force matters into their own hands.
And so
in today’s text Abram is all but convinced that he will die of old age before
God’s promise is fulfilled. His only son is illegitimate through his
servant Hagar and at 90 and 99 years old, he and Sarai have no descendants.
So this morning God speaks a covenant to Abram and Sarai. The
covenant is one of land and descendants...an exceedingly fruitful and numeran
nations. From which a king shall come. An everlasting covenant to
be God to him and to his descendants after him. In this covenant, as a
sign of God’s promise, God gives Abram a new name. Abraham, meaning
“father of many.” and to Sarai, Sarah, meaning princess. Of course
they go on to laugh at God and welcome their son Isaac a year later.
Isaac becomes the father of Jacob, and Jacob is later named Israel, the
father of the 12 tribes. The covenant fulfilled.
This is
the blessing and promise given to Abraham and Sarah. Despite their old
age, faithful struggles, flawed choices in their wandering, God remains
faithful to God’s promise. Their response is admirable.
In the gospel of Mark today Jesus begins to teach that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and death so that he might rise three days later. In this familiar passage Peter is less than happy with Jesus’ teaching and Peter rebukes Jesus. Jesus, of course, calls Peter satan and instructs Peter to get behind him. For Peter is setting his mind not on divine things, but on human things.
As a disciple of Christ, it seemed completely asinine to Peter that Jesus, the
supposed Messiah, would suffer and die.
In his book, The book of
God, Walter Wangerin describes the exchange from Peter’s perspective. He
writes, “Jesus knelt down by the spring, cold from the earth. He
made a cup of his hands and scooped water. Just before he started to
drink, he said, “I will be killed in Jerusalem, and on the third day be
raised--.” … “I grabbed Jesus’ wrist and shouted, “No!” The water
splashed from his hands. “No, God won’t allow it!” I cried.”
Peter’s response is rash, abrupt, and angry. Peter, despite all he has
witnessed to this point is blinded by his own preconceptions of what God’s
messiah can and can’t do. Jesus’ teaching is not up-to-speed with
Peter’s expectations. Or rather, Peter’s expectations of God and the
Messiah were selfish and uninformed. For Peter, the death of his Messiah
was about as improbable as a 90 year old and a 100 year old having a baby.
In this exchange Jesus is telling Peter, the disciples, and those around how he
will fulfill God’s promise for a Messiah. It is through the suffering,
death, and resurrection of the Son of Man that the blessing and promise of God
is made known to all the world. It must and will happen. Through
the cross God will fulfill the covenant made to Abraham.
Peter’s response is not a response of faithful discipleship but rather
selfishness. He was not prepared for, nor comfortable with having his
faith challenged.
We are a week and a half
into the Lenten season. About 10 days into a season of wandering with
God. Self-examination and assessment. A season that challenges our
response to God’s blessing and promise in uncomfortable ways. And I think
today’s texts are well-timed within our Lenten experience.
How is your relationship
with God this Lent? What is your response to God’s blessing and promise?
Do you experience God’s
blessing and promise in a way that resembles Abraham and Sarah? Willing
to trust in God by faith that God will lead to the unknown destination.
And despite your flaws, temptations, and selfish ambitions along the way,
do you recognize God’s continued presence. Do you laugh with joy at
God’s promises? Not because they’re ridiculous but because only God can
fulfill such joyous promises?
Do you experience God’s
blessing and promise in a way that resembles Peter? Unwilling to hear and
accept the call to discipleship? Rebuke any challenge of your faith.
Prefer to focus on human desires and understandings rather than dare
trust God’s ridiculous promise? Perhaps you experience a bit
of both.
In both of our stories this morning God speaks of a covenant, a promise that
may sound ridiculous. It may warrant laughter, or a rebuke. But the
truth of these stories is that their characters are forever changed by their
encounter of God’s promise and blessing. These exchanges, these covenants
forever shape the way they see and interact with God. Despite their past
understandings or immediate response they are changed through their experiences
with God and the Son of man. It affects how they see and hear...how they
view the world...It affects, for better or worse, how they understand their
faith in God. Both characters this morning are in the midst of their own
Lenten season...examining themselves and their faith in God.
Just like the characters
of today’s scripture we might consider our own response in the face of God’s
covenant. Do you remember the covenant God made with you?
“We give you thanks, O
God, that through the water and the Holy Spirit you give your daughters and
sons new birth, cleanse them from sin, and raise them to eternal life.
Sustain us with the gift of your Holy Spirit: the spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and
fear of the lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both no and forever.
Child of God, you have
been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.
Each and every day we
are good to remember that God has has entered into the divine covenant of
promise and blessing with each of us. Baptism is that covenant. In
the waters we were chosen by God. We enter into death like Christ
and are raised with new life. We are made new. God makes a covenant
with us too. And as a mark of the covenant we are given a new name.
...child of God. A new name that signifies a new relationship with our
creator. For all who have faith and believe in God, God extends the
promise eternal life. God blesses with unconditional love, promises grace
upon grace, blesses us with forgiveness and mercy, promises life to all who
believe. We belong to God, and our new name is a calling….a calling to
live every aspect of our God-given lives as a response to what God has done in
Jesus Christ. God has bestowed us with every good gift for the purpose of
building up the kingdom of God.
And like Abraham and
Peter and all the saints before us, the covenant of baptism forever shapes the
way we see and interact with God. It affects and informs how we see and
hear...how we view the world...It affects, for better or worse, how we
understand our faith in God. It empowers our response within the world.
And for 6 weeks in Lent we take an intentional assessment of this
response. We are invited to spend forty days examining the nature of our
own covenant with God.
So friends, what is your
response to God’s abundant promise and blessing?
Jesus speaks plainly to
the crowd saying, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves
and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their
life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake=, and for the sake
of the gospel, will save it! For what will it profit them to to gain the
whole world and forfeit their life?
Jesus demands an intimidating response of faith. Jesus instructs that we are to give up our priorities and the priorities of this world. In the covenant we are to be aligned with the will of God in the great commandments...love God and love neighbor. For Jesus, a response to the covenant means praying thy kingdom come, thy will be done...and meaning it. It means dining with outcast members of society. It means denying the prosperity of the world by finding favor with the poor and lost. It means acting against corrupt authority, challenging oppression systems, and restoring justice. It means risking persecution or suffering for the sake of proclaiming the gospel.
As a disciple of Christ
is your response one that is set on human things or divine things?
As a member of the body
of Christ is your response to pick up your cross and follow Jesus
And scary as it may
seem, there is nothing we can do to escape the blessing and promise of God in
our lives.
Make no mistake, this is
the blessing and promise of God. It’s not to say we won’t have out faults
or flaws. It doesn’t mean we won’t struggle with our new name and our new
way of life. After all the generations of Abram would endure great
challenges...barrenness, loss of land slavery, exile…Peter would continue to
struggle with his call to discipleship.
So as you reflect and
self-assess this season of Lent and beyond, may we remember this good news:
Like Abraham and Peter and all the saints before us...God’s promise is not and
never will be dependent on our own faithfulness...no matter what, the covenant
will not be broken.
So what is your response
to God’s covenant? At the very least, it is a gift from God.
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