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March 12, 2006 - Lent 2, Year B

It's a great story, the story of Abraham.
He was an ordinary man, hardly worth noticing, originally from a place called Ur, halfway between present day Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. His father had begun the journey to the land of Canaan, but got waylaid and stopped in south eastern Turkey,
and it wasn't until Abraham was seventy five years old
that he left the family camp
and headed out to finish the journey his father had begun,
to the land of Canaan, what we now call
Israel.
But it wasn't
Abraham's idea. He was happy enough where he was — the family had done well in Haran and there was no real good reason to leave, but God told him to move and so he did. And eventually he settled in Canaan, and in his old age had not one but two unexpected sons,
and lived to see the fulfillment
of the promises
that God had made him.
That's how most of us remember him, that, along with his wife Sarah laughing
when she heard she would have a son in her old age,
and Abraham's fearful journey up a mountain to sacrifice his son.
It all ended well,
and Abraham became
one of the great figures of the Old Testament,
along with his son Isaac and grandson Jacob
the forefathers
of Israel.

We remember those stories,
and when we get to the New Testament, Abraham is remembered there too,
but he's not remembered
for the reasons we expect. Abraham
is not remembered for the things he does;
instead, he's remembered for what God does.

The book of Romans, which we read part of today,
spends a lot of time talking about Abraham. But it doesn't pay
a whole lot of attention
to what we tend to remember about Abraham.
What it does, is to talk about how it is
that the Jewish people in general
and Abraham in particular
end up being counted as on God's side — friends
rather than enemies
of God.
And what's behind this
is a bigger question. And the bigger question is,
how is it
that some people get to be friends with God
and some don't?
Especially
when you start to complicate things
with Jesus.

And what the apostle Paul writes,
his best advice on it all
is this.
What matters
is faith. It mattered for Abraham, it mattered for the early Christians,
it matters for us.
It's all about faith.
You see, faith
is what caused Abraham
to pack up his family and all his belongings
and head off from the nice comfortable place
he'd made for himself in Haran
into the unknown, unpredictable place
called Canaan.
He trusted God
and God's promises.
And God didn't keep his promises
because Abraham moved,
God kept his promises — and they came
no strings attached — God kept his promises
because God keeps promises,
and because Abraham had faith
he was able to recognize
that the good he received
came from God.

It works kind of like this.
Sometimes
we're tempted to think about it like this.
When everything is going well with life, we enjoy it. We celebrate, we say, "isn't this great? I've done real well. I'm so glad things worked out."
And then, when things aren't so good,
we get tempted to say,
"you know, this stinks. Why is God letting this happen to me?" We get tempted to blame God.
In other words, when things go right, we thank ourselves. When things go bad, we blame God.

Faith, the way the apostle Paul looks at it, works the other way round.
When things go right, we thank God.
When things go bad, we look to see if we — or other human beings — are worthy of blame.
It's about perspective.

But there's another step.
Because when Abraham
had faith in God,
God reckoned it
as righteousness.
God counted Abraham
among the good guys.
It wasn't anything to do with what Abraham did,
it wasn't that he was a nice moral person, or that he kept the rules, or any of that. All it was
was that Abraham was willing
to look at things from God's perspective, to trust God.
God took that trust seriously,
and as a result
a new relationship was born, one of peace and love
between God and Abraham

It reminds me of what happens when you meet a child for the first time.
Usually
small kids are a bit suspicious of adults, and rightly so.
After all, we're huge, and often talk unintelligibly, and they don't know us.
But gradually, if we're willing to reach out to them, to spend time with them,
they begin to get to know us.
Our smiles get a response. They might come sit beside us
or give us an unexpected hug.
They trust us.
Children respond to us, and us to them, and what happens
is that a relationship is born.

That's how it is with God and Abraham.
God reaches out to Abraham with promises. Abraham slowly, uncertainly, begins to trust God, to believe that God has good in mind. And God responds, and there comes a relationship between Abraham and God, a relationship where it ends up that God blesses Abraham beyond his wildest dreams, and becomes the God of Abraham's people, the God of Israel. God and Abraham
get
to be friends.

And so when God asks Abraham to do stuff,
Abraham doesn't do it
because by doing it
he'll earn points with God. He does it
because he trusts God, because he believes God has good in store for him, and above all
because he wants to please his friend.

The same thing happens
time and time in Scripture. Think about the disciples, think about Paul.

Paul was not a nice guy. He was well educated, successful, by all accounts, and privileged — he was a Roman citizen, in a time when that counted
for a lot.
He'd made his mark, persecuting the early Christians, and he was set for high office.

But then one day, as he was on his way to finds some more Christians to be his victims,
he was stopped by a blinding light, and a voice from heaven, the voice of Christ.
Most Christians would have given anything
to have a vision of Christ, even one
with just bright light and words. But instead it was Paul, or Saul as he was known then,
the last person to deserve it.
But God reached out in Christ to Paul,
and you know what? Paul responded. He did what he was told. He trusted that voice, no doubt with some fear and trepidation,
he trusted God.
And God took that small trust,
and responded, and gave Paul more than he could ever imagine,
and at the core of it all
a relationship of love.
Paul and God
become friends. And everything else Paul does
the whole rest of his life
comes out of that relationship of love. Because he knows
that there's no point trying to earn God's love — he's already got it! All he can do is be thankful, and to continue to live
from that perspective of thanks
and trust.

It's a pattern. God reaches out. Someone responds
with a tiny bit of faith. God comes back
with overwhelming love, time and time again,
and as we respond,
that love between God and us gets stronger and stronger
and we become friends.
And when we live out our faith, when we are generous, when we serve on another and the church, we are not doing it
to earn points with God. It doesn't work that way.
We can't earn God's love — we've already got it!
What we can do
is bring pleasure and delight to God
by doing what pleases him.
Living in God's way.

That's why at Trinity
we emphasize stewardship, why we talk about how we use our time, our gifts, our money.
Not just
because our budget us short,
though it is.
And certainly not
because we think that we owe God, or have to do something to earn God's favor.
But because when you love someone
the least you can do
is try to bring them
pleasure and delight.
And what brings pleasure and delight to God
is when we live in a way
that echoes God's priorities. When the love, when the generosity, when the servanthood
that we experience in Christ
becomes something at the core of our own lives.
Because we love God.

And that's what grace is all about. It's what connects God
and us, faith and righteousness, the whole big love thing,
grace is that wonderful experience we have
when we live having faith,
trusting
in God,
living as God's friends
knowing the goodness
of the one who created us
and continues to love and to bless us.

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2006