Sermon for Sunday 13 March 2022 at 9.00am and 10.30am – Second Sunday of Lent
Texts: Genesis 15.1-12, 17-17; Psalm 27, Philippians 3.17-4.1; Luke 13.31-end
Where do we put our trust?
The core question in our texts and for us today is where do we put our trust? Is it in the language of fear and anxiety? Or is it in the language of trust in God?
This question is rooted for us in the reality of the current reality we face not the desire for escapism. We face a terrible situation in Ukraine at and one which is getting worse by the day where our hearts reach out in grief and empathy to those who are facing such horrors, destruction and total disruption of their lives in the face of the Russian invasion. As we try to imagine and understand even in a tiny way, all that they are enduring at this time, so it is difficult not to be overwhelmed with fear, anxiety and dread for the future. Where is God in all this? And how can we, with any integrity, talk of trust in God, when the world appears to be collapsing around us?
So it is really important that we ask ourselves today – where do we put our trust both as individuals and as a Christian community. Do we believe deep down that this narrative of fear is the final voice? Or is our ultimate trust in God and if so, what can we draw upon to help us keep faith in this time when so much which we took for certain, is challenged and in the face of so much evil and suffering inflicted on the innocent? And how can we, as a Christian community here in Geneva, help others to place their trust in God and not in despair?
Each of our readings today is astonishingly relevant and each give us a different ‘take’ on how to respond to these hard questions. I hope that by looking at those concerned in each case responded to the challenges of threats, uncertainty and fear that they faced, may give us an insight as to how we too may respond. I think they can help us because, like us, they had to face and make decisions about how they would respond in contexts where they didn’t know what was going to happen and within the fog and fear of their present moment.
So let’s begin with Abraham and Sarah – or, as they are at this stage of their story, still know by the names of Abram and Sarai. They’ve had a rough time, right from the start when Abram hears God’s rather peremptory call to him where they are living in the land of Ur; “Get up and go”. Astonishingly he and Sarai do just that, leaving family, livestock, familiar gods and obey the call of a god they hardly know, heading off into the unknown with the promise of one day, he will make lf him a great nation and his name will be a blessing.
As they journey, we see them beginning to know and trust God but we also see the deep underlying fears which preoccupy them. Their two major fears are revealed in our reading today – Abram pours out in anguish to God his fear that he will never have an heir and his distance relative, Eliezer, will inherit all he has. God reassures him, showing him the wonderful image of the desert night sky with its myriad of stars, promising him that his descendants will be as numerous as these. Abram believes and we are told that God ‘reckoned his faith as righteousness’. It was genuine, coming from the depths of his being.
Yet only a short time further on, we hear of Abram’s other big fear – when and how will God’s Promise come into effect – the Promise that Abram will inherit the land. We can understand his fears – Caanan was a dangerous country, there was fierce fighting and attacks between various kings and tribal groups and Abram’s nephew, Lot has recently been seized and had to be rescued by Abram using armed force. God responds to Abram by putting him into a deep coma and granting him, in a vison, the sign of the Covenant that he will make with Abram – a Covenant which will not be broken because God is faithful.
The story of Abram and Sarai is immensely helpful for us because it helps us to understand how our faith and trust in God is something live with all the potential and frailty which accompanies life itself. Both grow in faith and trust and they experience and live through times of great challenge and as they learn to get to know God as a real presence in their lives. But they also encapsulate for us our human frailty and the really understandable crisis of faith we have when new challenges arise or we cannot see God’s promises fulfilled in the timescale they hope.
Moving on to our Psalm today, Psalm 27, this is particularly relevant in our current time of darkness and challenge to our faith. I strongly recommend that you read and pray through it carefully after service for it has so much to say to us. For this psalm presents to us the very clear choice we face in time of extreme challenge – do we place our trust in the prevailing narrative of fear and let that predominate or do we, instead, put our trust in God?
I think it’s especially helpful for us because despite the hope and trust expressed in it, the psalm has developed in the context of the very real threat of enemy invasion, oppression and false witnesses. It isn’t therefore coming from a context where all was fine and peaceful nor a situation where someone is trying to flee a reality which was too hard to bear. Instead the psalmist is exploring how we find and express trust in the God precisely in the midst of the narrative of fear which threatens to engulf them.
And the psalmist identifies three things which can help them to do this – points which again, I believe speak to us too powerfully today in the context we face.
The first is to remember God’s faithfulness – these are expressed in the wonderful images of this psalm – God as light, salvation, refuge, shelter in times of threat. It’s an invitation to go back – to remember how God has been with us before in times of deep challenge and to hold that reality to strengthen us in the present moment.
The next point is to wait on God., Here – it is not passive waiting in terror for what our enemies may do to us – but instead, active and prayerful waiting on God (of the sort which we associate particularly with Advent). This is conscious act of faith on our part – putting our trust in the one who is faithful, that He will act.
And their third and really important point for us to note is the emphasis which the psalmist places on the community worshipping together in the temple as a source of strength and renewal to face the current threat. For it is in the temple, or for us today, in our physical church and linked together online, that we encounter God’s presence, we are renewed and sustained by Him and given those gifts we need to be a source of hope for others so that they too may trust.
So at this time, the psalmist calls us to deeper response of trust in God through our life of prayer, learning and worshipping together. This Lent we are invited to enter into this more fully – so that as we journey with Christ, we too can learn and receive those gifts of faith and trust which God is then calling us to share.
In our Epistle today we gain another insight again about what it means to choose to trust God even in situations of great pressure. St Paul is writing to the Christian community in Philippi from his prison cell. He has no idea what will happen to him and ultimately no control on what those who hold political power will decide to do to him. What’s more, the church in Philippi was facing the threat of persecution. It was not therefore, a promising context to express hope and trust in God either from Paul’s or the young church’s perspective. Yet Paul proclaims his faith in Christ’s redemption and bringing to their mind, what Christ has already done for them, speak of his faith and joy in the salvation which he believes Christ will bring and urges them to stand firm in the Lord.
And Jesus in our short but punchy Gospel reading today shows us what it means to live out our trust in God even when everything appears to be falling apart in from of us. Some of the Pharisees warn him that Herod is out to kill him. We don’t know whether they warned him out of genuine concern for his safety or whether some of them were actually collaborators with Herod and probably Jesus didn’t know either.
What is clear from Jesus’ stark response to their warning is that he is totally aware of the dangers he is facing. Yet at the same time, he is also resolute that he is going to fulfil the mission for which God has sent him –
‘Go tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I’m casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work’.
He is also clear that the fulfilment of his mission lies in Jerusalem – the city which murders its prophets – those who bring God’s call to repentance and who offer God’s salvation. And we hear of Jesus’ grief that they will not listen to him and come to seek safety with him, but instead will bring down judgment both on themselves and on the city. The tender and beautiful image which Jesus uses of the hen sheltering its chicks from danger under its wings, may well have arisen from his own experience of God, his father’s love and his passionate wish to share it.
For us, Jesus’s steadfastness in the face of such threat and danger, shows us his determination both to proclaim and also to live out his trust in God even as the storm clouds gather. His words and actions call us to think today – in what then am I going to put my trust today?
Drawing all this together then, we face an incredibly difficult time at present which challenges our faith and how we live it out and proclaim it. Although we enjoy at this time, the blessings of peace and security, we grieve for the terrible suffering of those in Ukraine in exile, all driven into exile and those from both sides of the fighting who have lost loved ones in the conflict. As we see the rising tide of accusations and false witness of what is happening in this terrible war, we can feel enormous pressure to let the tide of fear sweep over us and to wonder – can we in any way proclaim in the fact of this, the presence of a loving God in our world – who is the God of justice and of peace?
For all of us, I believe this is a ‘wilderness’ time – lived out in stark reality by those fighting in Ukraine, those uprooted and dependant on the mercy of strangers who have lost all physical security and all that was familiar. But for us too, it’s also a wilderness time, when we are challenged by seeing what we thought was unthinkable becoming a daily reality and wondering where and how it will end.
But we have a choice. A choice whether we buy into the narrative of fear and believe this as the final word. Or whether we put our trust in God and live out that trust in ways which make that trust a reality in the world and for others to witness.
Our readings today have shown us the responses of Abram and Sarai, the psalmist, St Paul and our Lord himself in situations of similar dark challenge and fear. We’ve seen how put their trust in God and we also know that in Jesus, God himself entered into the very depths of our world’s evil and darkness to redeem it.
So what will we choose? And how will we live this out?
Amen