Dear Lord, hear our cries, hear our pain, so many endless worries, we want our loved ones to be healed, to not have pain, we are tired of the financial problems, the wars, the heartaches, Remind us Dear Lord that in all you are there, we just need to reach out our hand. You always provide, as long as we are faithful
Teach us to give all our troubles to you Lord, Hear us Lord as we pray,
Thank you Dear Lord for letting me be your humble servant, Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my rock, and my redeemer.
It’s the second week of Lent, Lent is a time for repentance, and for facing the ways we are broken and have broken others and the world. We are early in Lent, a long way from Easter, we should not head straight to Easter from the shopping mall, or the spa, Instead we are invited to spend forty days examining the nature of our own covenant with God.
Upon what does that relationship depend? Who do we trust to give us life? What are we doing and what does it mean to walk with God?
How many of you remember Christopher Reeve-the actor who played “superman” if you remember his story he died in 2004 but lived the nine years prior in a wheel chair as he was paralyzed from the neck down from a equestrian accident. After his death it would seem only fair and right that his wife who cared for him and stayed by his side throughout would be able to move on with her life, re-start her acting career and raise their son. But then less than a year after Christopher Reeves death, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. A person who never smoked, I can remember hearing that news and thinking gosh that’s so sad and so unfair.
She died less than a year after her diagnosis leaving her 13-year-old son, it doesn’t seem right does it.
I mean after all it would make sense if you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day that you might get lung cancer. It makes sense that if you’ve kept your promises and worked hard that you’d be rewarded in life. Makes sense right?
I remember hearing the day after Christmas this year, about a father who traveled to NJ from Massachusetts with his two young daughters, they came to NJ to pick up the grandmother and take her back to Massachusetts, as they were driving right on the NJ parkway a tree fell across the road, landed on the car and killed both the father and the grandmother, right in front of the two small girls.
How many times do we hear stories that just don’t make sense to us?
These two and many others just like this are everyday stories, a trite story perhaps in the great scheme of things. But we human beings like for things to make sense.
But what makes sense to us is not necessarily how life works and this is where we run headfirst into a spiritual issue.
We forget that God’s ways are not our ways. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. As we read in Isaiah 55:8
8 "My thoughts are not like your thoughts.
And your ways are not like my ways,"
Just when we think we’ve figured things out, God surprises us- sometimes to the point that God seems like a complete stranger.
Now stay with me, and hopefully this will come full circle, now in Genesis 16 we know the story of
THE BIRTH OF ISHMAEL
It was a hard decision for Sarah to give Abram to Hagar. But she thought that that was her best option to build a family through Hagar. What’s wrong with her decision? Sarah did not inquire of the Lord before she made this decision. She tried to have a covenant son through her human effort. God said, “I will make you a great nation.” In Genesis (12:2) But Sarah said, “Perhaps I will build family through her.”(2b) “Perhaps” is a word of unbelief. God’s covenant will be fulfilled by God but not by our human means. She ignored God’s plan and allowed Abram to sleep with Hagar. She tried to achieve her human goal by using Hagar’s body. The source of unbelief came from her human calculation and impatience.
What was the consequence of their human calculation? Their decision brought chaos to their household. Human mistake brought family strife and jealousy and hatred.
God did not stop Abram from following his own way. He let him have Hagar, even though it was a sin. At the same time, God did not abandon him, either. He endured Abram’s human mistakes and cared for him and his family and waited on his own time. In our spiritual life we also become impatient and invite many pain and conflict and ruin God’s plan. We have to trust God and wait for his appointed time to the end.
Abram waited God for 10 years but God waited Abram for 13 years. God did not forget Abram and waited for the right time to help. Just as Jesus visited Peter when he was exhausted and miserable due to his failure, so God visited Abram after 13 years of spiritual vacuum. Thirteen years passed between chapters 16 and 17. Abram was 99 years old when God spoke to him again. There was a 13-year gap in his spiritual life. Look at verse 17:1. “When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “‘I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.’” Why did God appear to Abram when he was a 99 year old man? God told him what to do. “Walk before me and be blameless.” God demanded Abram to get up from his complacent life of sin and walk before him.
Now in Mark 8: 29
29 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Peter answered, "You are the Christ."
Peter had just given the winning answer in a discussion with Jesus and the other disciples when Jesus asked, “who do people say that I am? When Jesus asked this question Peter piped up and said, “you are the Messiah” or you are the Christ”
Messiah or Christ was a term that meant anointed one and throughout Jewish history, several had been called “anointed. But the Jews were long-waiting for the One True Savior who would come and bring fiery justice to Israel. They had been oppressed and humiliated for so long.
After all it was only fair that someone would come with awesome power and crush the enemies of Israel once and for all. In those days the enemies were the Romans. And crushing the enemies wasn’t merely the idea of First century Jews, the great prophets long before had called for it; Joel and Zechariah and Daniel they all said this, Christ was coming to rock things.
So herein lies the problem; Jesus did not huddle in close with his disciples and give them a preview of the serious hurting he was going to give the Romans. Instead said this- and not in whispered tones. He said, “ The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the Jewish leaders, be killed and then after three days rise again.
WHAT?
Peter, who must have been feeling confident after his last contribution, you know the award winning answer, pulled Jesus aside and said what? That can’t be right, Peter rebuked Jesus. In Matthew Jesus changed Peters name from Simon, but here Jesus gave Peter yet another new name: the name was “Satan”
Get behind me, Satan!
For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things
Story of our lives.
When something happens that doesn’t make sense, when God allows things to go a way that we never would have chosen for ourselves, when God feels like a stranger to us… maybe we are the strange ones. Maybe we are the ones who just don’t get it.
If it doesn’t make sense to us, if God’s plans for us and God’s expectations of us don’t seem fair from our perspective how foolish are we to believe that they must not make sense eternally from God’s perspective? This is what faith is all about, this is why its so hard to have faith.
Peter continued to say the wrong thing-
Abram and Sarai did the wrong thing; they both did the faithless thing,
Peter did the most faithless thing the night before Jesus died.
Peter who had followed Jesus for three years – denied ever knowing him, three times he denied it.
Thousands of years before Peter received his new names there was God would rename two others, Abram and Sarai had once lived comfortable lives in Haran (which is now Turkey). But God instructed Abram to leave his father’s land and move on to a new land.
God’s promised to make Abram’s name great- no so that life would be even better for Abram and his family but so that Abram “would be a blessing” to the rest of the world. And so Abram went.
He left everything he knew. He left his father’s grave behind and he went to Canaan, just like God told him to.
But then something strange happened: there was a famine in Canaan, no food for Abram, his wife, his nephew, his huge assortment of cattle. They were going to have to move again, this time to Egypt where Abram would be “an alien”, living in a land where his very life would be threatened. This couldn’t be right, why would God call Abram to a faraway place only to starve or be threatened?
Abram was told that he would be the father of a multitude of nations. But that couldn’t be right either.
Abram was old and his wife was beyond childbearing years. Abram and Sarai, realizing that this made no sense, so again we remember the story of how ISHMAEL came to be, as in Abram and Sarai’s thinking that’s what made sense.
But here in the passage we heard this morning, God clearly revealed that if they would only trust God-God would indeed have a child with Sarai. And to seal the covenant, Abram would be re-named Abraham. And Sarai would be forever called Sarah. And Abraham was so trusting of God that he agreed to be circumcised and have all the men in their community is circumcised. And as for Sarah having a baby at her age, both Abraham and Sarah laughed at the thought of it because the thought if it just didn’t make sense
Sometimes God is a stranger.
God allows things to happen and it doesn’t make sense to us. Maybe we don’t understand it. Maybe it makes us want to shut down or shake our fist or pull God aside and say, “this can’t be right.”
But not only are we suppose to trust God, we are suppose to deny ourselves and take up our own crosses and follow Jesus. Even when it doesn’t make sense, Even when it doesn’t seem quite fair.
These are hard words to hear. Lenten words.
How many stories in the Bible, like Abraham, like the disciples being asked to leave their home, and follow God, or follow Jesus, knowing full well it could be dangerous and scary.
All we have to do is read the Bible to know that obeying God doesn’t guarantee a life free of pain or sacrifice. But God blesses us with glimpses of glory, glimpses of angels just a few samples of what it will be like to be free.
Something miraculous and wonderful can happen in the midst of tragedy. We can discover many gifts that come out of sharing hardship.
How could Superman be paralyzed? How could a strong healthy woman get lung cancer, why would small children have to witness such pain? How is it that the King of the Jews, the Son of Man, and the Messiah should have to suffer and die?
Jesus gives us a clue, but Peter completely missed it. After three days he would rise again. God has something planned that is so beyond what we can see or imagine. This is the hope for those who follow Jesus, for those who obey God.
It’s not easy, sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes we’ll find that God feels like a stranger. But if we hand on, I believe we will see the divine things waiting for us.
Abraham accepted God’s promise. He accepted God’s mission and God’s covenant. On that very day he was circumcised; and on that day he circumcised Ishmael and all those born in his house. Abraham’s obedience was incredible. He obeyed immediately though it was painful for the old man to be circumcised. This was an act of obedience that comes from faith. Abraham believed that God is God Almighty. He made a decision to walk before him in complete trust and obedience. God blessed Abraham to become a great nation with his Mighty power. I pray that we all may walk before God not before men and a live a blameless life as his servants.
Let us pray:
Holy God, your ways are not our ways, and your thoughts are not our thoughts. But grant us such faith that something miraculous and wonderful might happen when we are most vulnerable and afraid. Help us to discover the gifts that come from sharing hardship with each other. Remind us that you are with us always.
Amen
