Year C
Luke 13:31-35
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
A Lenten Roadmap
When I read the scripture passages for today, a prayer written by a fifteenth-century Dutch priest Thomas a Kempis came to mind. “Lord, what is my confidence which I have in this life? Is it not thou, O Lord God, whose mercies are without number? Thou art my trust, and my confidence, thou art my comforter, and in all this most faithful unto me. Amen.” The thread that runs through Thomas’ prayer and links all of our texts today is one of trust. The readings challenge us to ask of ourselves as individuals and collectively as the church, “Whom, do we trust?” In a world filled with broken relationships, personal disappointments, public scandals, political games, cultural disrespect, and increased threats, trust is difficult to extend—even to God.
Placing trust in God is difficult for us mainly because of the role fear plays in our lives. When I think about the role of fear in everyday life, I think about how pervasive it is, and how little we consciously acknowledge it even as fear shapes our thoughts and behaviors. What does fear do? It waits with phone in hand until the call comes and it hides jewelry in paper bags underneath the sink. Fear counts pennies, and worries if there will be enough. It worries about a child’s friends, a child’s grades, and a child’s future. When you get right down to it, fear practically runs our lives.
In the Genesis text, Abram (he has yet to become Abraham) fears and doubts that God will deliver God’s promises. Abram has become impatient and vexed that the promises of the Lord seem to be slow in coming. Where is the heir that was promised to him he wants to know? We hear God assure Abram that the promise will be fulfilled and he need only be patient. God takes Abram outside and has him look at the night sky. He tells Abram, as many as the stars in the sky, that’s how many will be the number of his descendants. And Abram believes.
Abram puts his faith in the Lord, he trusts God. And as we read, that trust is counted as righteousness. Abram is made right with God. We might not always be able to be righteous as I’m sure Abram was not always counted as righteous. In fact, we can hardly ever achieve righteousness. But we can be trusting. It is within our capabilities to trust, especially to trust in the Lord. To seal this vow, there follows one of those extraordinary Old Testament ceremonies that makes your hair stand on end with a mixture of horror and sheer power. Abram watches over and defends the corpse of the animal’s he has cut up until the symbols of God pass between the bodies, binding God to his promise to Abram.
What is amazing about this passage, in Genesis, is that it is God who binds God’s self with the promise. What this will cost God to keep these ancient promises to his people is spelled out in today’s gospel where Jesus speaks in tones of abject disappointment and utter heartbreak at the refusal of his own people to hear and heed the summons of God to draw near, to gather, and to come home: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Jesus’ lament over the city is a call to repentance. Your house is forsaken until you say, ‘Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ Blessed is the one who trusts in God’s promises.
We see in Jesus both the human trust in God and God’s own commitment to what he has promised. Nothing is to deter Jesus from the necessary path towards Jerusalem and the cross; nothing is to deter God from the promise God is bound to on our behalf. It is no mistake that the image of the spreading of wings wide enough to encompass all the children of Jerusalem parallels the spread of Jesus’ arm’s on the cross. Jesus laments the people’s failure to recognize the divine origin of his mission and message. In these verses, Luke and his readers will hear dark forebodings of the revolution and the destruction of the city and the temple in 70 CE and how all of this might have been avoided had the people trusted the words of Jesus and in the promises God made to Abram.
Philippians picks up the theme of trust in God’s promises. Just as God promised Abram descendants as numerous as the stars, Paul urges his readers, to trust in the bigger promise. Paul is utterly scornful about those who put their trust in ‘earthly things,’ and we have to admit how much of our security lies here on earth which feeds into our fears. It is a shock to hear Paul saying that our loyalties declare our citizenship. What do our actions, our hopes and our deepest desires say about our commitments?
To put comfort and the easy fulfillment of needs at the top of a list of priorities is to be incapable of understanding the cross, Paul says. Such people are ‘enemies of the cross. They find God’s work of salvation clashes with their values. Yet, the only hope there is for the salvation of the body is to learn God’s purpose for it to be conformed to the body of Christ and there is no way to do that except by trusting in God, even on the cross. It is on the cross, we see the Son of God allow him-self to be slaughtered like Abram’s animals to fulfill that promise to us and to show us whom to place our ultimate trust.
We have been given today a Lenten roadmap for dealing with our fears. Rather than worrying about the things of this world, placing ourselves in God’s hands can give us the strength to remain steadfast and the wisdom to, in the words of the psalmist, “see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Our faithfulness, our trust, our willingness to believe in and live by the word of the Lord, not just when it’s easy or when there is no risk attached, but always, will be counted to us as righteousness. Trust in the Lord. “The Lord is my light and my salvation, the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I fear?