19th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle C 21-22
NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Wisdom 18:6-9 | Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19 | Luke 12:32-48
Almighty, everliving God, who taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters that we may merit to enter into the inheritance, which you have promised. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.
Every time I begin to reflect upon a set of readings like this, I spend time trying to see a theme that runs through all of them, and normally the readings are shorter and maybe not so complex. So this was a kind of interesting challenge. I kept going back and forth, trying to figure out what I wanted to say, but often I feel that, when I’m talking to you and drawing things from the scripture, I’m not just trying to do an academic sort of activity or be a scripture scholar or anything like that. I feel like what I’m doing and — God is using me to draw something out of these readings that you need right now, this moment. And so I have a struggle at times just to try to make sure I’m not looking at trying to be a really insightful person or whether I’m a servant, and what I really want to be, where my heart is, I want to be a servant. It’s such a beautiful image of a God of the Old Testament being a God, a master God that basically took care of his people by destroying their enemies, and he was powerful. The difference between this God and the other gods was the pagan gods were the gods that didn’t really care that much about the people that had to serve them. They were demanding and always demanding that they praise him and please him, and if they didn’t, he would punish them with horrible plagues and all kinds of plagues and all kinds of things. And then when God tries to explain who he is, he does something interesting. He builds on that knowledge they have of the gods and says, “Well, I’m one of those gods, but I’m different.” And one of the first things he says to them that says that he’s different is the difference between Yahweh and the other gods is this God is committed to taking care of his people. He will never ever dessert them. That’s his promise.
So I want you to begin this set of readings with me to look at one of the things that’s the most important gift that God is going to give to his people if he’s going to take us on a journey, and that’s what he does. You and I are always in some kind of state of flux between an illusion and the truth. We are always moving in that direction hopefully. That’s our destiny, to understand more who we are, why we’re here, what we’re doing, who God is. And so one of the things that I feel that is so clearly stated in the story of Abraham, not only does God reveal himself as a God who is for them, promises to be with them, promises never to leave them and that also promises to take them on a journey, he’s going to test Abraham, and Abraham, who is the master teacher of how we are to live going on this journey with him, he has faith — faith. That’s what I want to talk about today. Where’s your faith? What do you believe? How do you see the world? How do you see yourself? Wherever you are on this journey, if you’re moving in that space from what you know to what you don’t know, if you’re facing things you never had to face before, you’re going to always be in a state of anxiety somewhat, a liminal space. You’re not where you were in the past. You’re not where you’re going to be. That’s the area I think a lot of us are in these days with things in the world the way they are, with things not seeming to work, nothing’s balanced, nothing seems to be trustworthy. What do we trust in? Where do we go for some kind of peace? Well, it has to do with faith, and Abraham’s our model.
Listen to the way Hebrews, Paul in the Hebrews describes faith. It’s such a cool way of saying it. “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for.” Faith is the realization, the knowledge, that what you hope for is happening — is happening. Not it might happen, or it could happen, or if you do everything right it will happen. No, faith is the realization that anything you long for, especially the longings of your heart, will be taken care of. What’s the most basic thing we long for as human beings? What’s our most core — it should back everything else. What do we want to do? We want to live. We want to exist. We don’t want to die, in the sense of losing life. And God is saying, “Listen, I make a promise to you. You are my children,” as we said in the opening prayer. “I’m your Father, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you that’s going to take away that longing you have for having a life that is full and rich and beautiful. That’s your inheritance. That’s the journey that I’m taking you on. That’s the Promised Land.” And so he wants you to feel that conviction, and he also says — Paul says, “Faith is also the evidence of things not seen.” What that means is you know that the thing is working in the direction that God has promised it will work, which is somehow for you. You know that’s true even through you can’t see it, you can’t feel it.
I don't know where you are these days, but I have been off and on feeling, I think, just scared, afraid. Where are we going to go? What’s going to happen? Whether it’s climate, whether it’s politics, whether it’s medicine, whatever it is, we’re struggling with a sense of peace in the midst of a lot of anxiety, and the anxiety, if you’re not feeling it, I don’t think you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the world. It is a scary place right now. There’s no doubt about it. It doesn’t feel secure, but what a gift. What a gift, because on that journey that the Israelites took with Moses, it was anything but everything they expected. It wasn’t moving from one place to another, and each one was closer to the Promised Land, and they got better, and then they got better, and they got better until they got to the final thing. It’s not that at all. It was really a difficult journey, and Abraham becomes our model.
So let’s look at the things that are described in Paul’s reading that makes it so clear that this wonderful thing that Abraham left us as a Father in faith is clear, and the first thing is that Abraham basically had to go somewhere where he didn’t know where he was going. And that’s hard to do, but if you’re 20 years old, it’s not so hard. You like to try something new. Abraham is 90. His life is over in a sense. Why would he think that God is going to take him anywhere new, different? But he had a longing. He had a longing inside of him for a son, and think of that as his longing for having impact on the world, because to have a son at the time in the Old Testament was the only way you considered yourself as continuing on in the world, because there was no talk about a resurrection after death. None of the first five books of the Bible have anything in it about dying and rising, but there was something about having posterity, having somebody continue after you that gave you a sense of meaning and purpose. And that’s what God had promised and put that seed inside of Abraham, and it didn’t happen for 90 years. And he lived with that, wondering and doubting and questioning and probably had given up hope, and then he’s called to do it because of a miracle. And the miracle was he had a sense, a real sense that God would answer his longing all his life, like he saw something. He felt something, and what it was, it was the angels appeared — you know the story — and basically tell him, “Hey, you’re going to have a son.” They laugh, or Sarah laughed, because they were well past the age of raising children. It was hopeless — hopeless, and it happened. So here’s a man who had a dream inside of him that wasn’t fulfilled for so long and had given up hope, and then this sign comes to him from this God that says, “No, it’s never too late for you or for me to work together to find the solution to what your core longing is.” Think of that as your calling in life, whatever this core thing inside of you says, “I want to accomplish this.” And you keep moving toward it, but then it seems to be more and more elusive or like, if we’re working for a world that is filled with peace and comfort and everyone’s unified and working together, where is that? It’s nowhere right now, it seems. So in that kind of moment, we need a sign. We need a sign that we’re going to have it and get it, and the only sign that I’m calling you to pay attention to is Abraham, because he’s the model of what you have to do. He went so far as to trust in something that actually did — he had a glimpse that it was going to happen. That was exciting to him, and then God said, “I want you to kill your son.”
I always wondered about that. Why would God do that? Well, it was a question of — obviously we know why God did it. He was going to test him, but the thing is why would Isaac do it? And it says in the passage we just listened to, he did it, because he believed that God could even use the loss of that to keep a promise that would eventually get him what he wanted. He said, “He’ll bring him back to life.” That’s what he said. “I’ll do this sacrifice, but I know he’s going to come right back to me.” That’s the trust we need. How do we trust in a God who says, “I’ll be there in you, with you to deal with everything going on, and there’s no anxiety that should remain in your core. You’ll feel it now and then but not all the time.” And that image is so beautiful to me, because what God is saying is that, “My work with you is to awaken in you my presence that will help you get through everything. That’s my gift to you. That’s my food for you. That’s my nurturing you.” And so you have this image in these readings about a God in the Old Testament. In the first reading, it’s a God of justice, and he destroys our enemies. That’s what the Israelites would say. “He’s great. That makes us feel good. All our enemies are slaughtered.” And that master, kind of power God slowly dissolves over the Old Testament into the New Testament, and what do you have in Jesus? An entirely different God, not a God who’s demanding or controlling or even aggressively fighting evil and destroying it, like we’ve got to fix everything that’s wrong in the world, get rid of everything that’s broken. Then we get this new image of this God who comes into the world to give us an idea of what we believe God will do for us. The promise he made to Abraham he makes to you, that we’ll find this Promised Land. The Promised Land is not in the Middle East. It is in your heart. So what he’s saying, “I want to be in your heart with you, ministering to you.” That image he has of the master coming home and finding the servants doing their work, what is the work that we have? Building each other up in faith, giving each other confidence and trust. If there’s anything you can give to people around you these days is give them a hopeful message that this is all for a reason. This is all moving in a direction. This is the way God works. He takes us through the darkness, and then it gets to light. There’s no other way to get to the light. Things have to be bad before they get good. The ministry of Jesus in your heart, his presence in you, is to awaken in you, and he’s God, so he’s God in you, awakening you to this trust, the realization that everything you hope for is unfolding, is happening. It’s becoming. It’s beautifully orchestrated. It’s in the right time. It’s in the right place, and what we have to do is take those moments of anxiety and turn them into acts of faith.
The most important thing to know about faith, it’s a gift. It’s not a thing you can do. The faith you want is the faith that you never face any of these difficulties alone. He’s there in you, with you. So what you do is you get faith. It’s not to say, “I’m going to muster up my own strength, and I’ll have the strength inside of me to face anything.” That will never work. I muster up in myself a humble, beautiful prayer to God. “I can’t face these things without help. I can’t understand what’s going on in my life without help. I can’t hope for something that I can’t see unless you somehow show it to me and give me a sense that you’re there with me.” That’s what I long for. That’s what I pray for. That’s what I’m preaching to you for this morning. I want you to feel that kind of gift flowing inside of you, and when you do, there’s an immediate shift in your body. You can feel something almost possessing you, just breaking out and leading you. It’s called peace. It’s your inheritance. It’s your dad who’s promising it to you. Trust him. You will not disappoint.
Father, at the beginning of the gospel of this set of readings, Jesus said to his disciples, “Don’t be afraid any longer,” knowing that they were afraid, and he says, “Sell all your possessions. Give alms. Don’t hang on to any material thing or any way the story is unfolding as your treasure. Your treasure is it’s all in God’s hands, and he’s in you to help you do it.” The indwelling presence is the greatest gift, and we ask God to fill you and fill me with that gift so that we can fill life, hope, peace, all of which is what God wants in the midst of anything he’s put us through, because there’s a reason and a purpose. Amen.