|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Genesis 17:1–7, 15–16 |
Psalm 22:22–30 |
Romans 4:13–25 |
Mark 8:31–38 |
Many of the people in the ancient stories of the Bible, despite their flaws, were great people of faith. Adam and Eve get a bad press for getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden, but they also showed extraordinary confidence in humanity’s future. When they lost paradise, they made another start and had two children. They knew life would be hard, but that did not deter them. Later, after one of their sons murdered the other, they again showed their courage in having a third child. Adam and Eve should be remembered for choosing life and betting on humanity’s future. Last week we read the story of Noah who witnessed the total loss of his familiar world and who had to recreate a whole new landscape in which he and his family would live.
Abraham and Sarah left their tribe and home and took the call of God to heart, even when they did not understand what God had in mind. I don’t know where the border between trust and foolhardiness lies, but they surely tested it. Let’s give them credit. They hung in there when the going was rough and the future outcome was tenuous at best. They were senior, senior citizens before God’s promises even began to make sense.
In this morning’s epistle, Paul is writing to Christians in Rome, knowing they would be pioneers, too, living far from Jerusalem, hearing of the destruction of the Temple, and realizing that Christians could never return to the womb of Judaism. Christians in Rome would be having children in the closing age of the Roman imperial empire, and preparing them for who knows what. We don’t have any of Paul’s speculations of what the future would be like for Christians, yet it’s hard to believe Paul would not have asked himself the question. After all, he was a Jew and knew of all the unexpected turns in Israel’s history. Paul reminds these pioneers of a new age that they have faith in a God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that are not.
How do we help a family torn apart by murder, begin again, like Adam and Eve? How do we aid people for whom their familiar environment has been destroyed, adapt like Noah? How do we help people leave the resentments and sores of old history and tradition behind and construct a new world, like Abraham and Sarah? How do we remain faithful to the Gospel and be the church in a changing world, like the early Christians in Rome? How can humanity be born again after having grown old? A key might be found in the wisdom of prayer used for Yom Kippur that goes:
Birth is a beginning and Death a destination
From childhood to maturity and youth to age
From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing
From foolishness to discretion and then perhaps to wisdom
From weakness to strength or strength to weakness and back again
From health to sickness and back, we pray, to health again
From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love
From joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion.
From grief to understanding, from fear to faith.
From defeat to defeat.
Until looking backward or ahead, we see that
Victory lies not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the Journey, stage by stage.1
In the Gospel today, Peter is obviously afraid of what might lie ahead for Jesus and the disciples. Peter wants Jesus to stop and return to the halcyon days of summer by the Galilean lakeshore when the crowds shouted their approval and welcomed Jesus to stay and give them more. I suggest Jesus’ great temptation wasn’t in the desert, but precisely at this point when, in effect, Peter begged Jesus to turn back. It would have been so tempting to ease the disicples’ minds, to tell them everything was gong to be all right, and offer comforting words about a clear and secure future.
However, that is not what journeys of faith are all about. Yes, here Peter was skillfully disguised and packaged as the mouthpiece of Satan. When people are apprehensive about the future, hungry for certainty, and long for a past golden age, the most dangerous leaders and guides in the world are those who offer us uncritical comfort food, who tell us with soft words just what we want to hear. That’s not the type of comfort or hope Jesus announces. Such food is poison for people of faith. Choosing the life that Jesus offers always involves choosing a journey that sides with humanity’s future, not its past, People of faith are not those who choose to retreat back or to stand still, paralyzed with dread. People of faith are those who believe that it is God who will bring into existence the things that are not, be it new paths in the wilderness or streams in the desert.
Abraham and Sarah did not become ancestors of a new type of society simply on their own within their past history. The Christians at Rome did not witness to the Gospel simply by looking back. The disciples did not fulfill Jesus’ mission by avoiding danger and controversy and staying in Galilee where they were popular. People of faith are the explorers who open windows for the Holy Spirit, the cartographers of hope, and the discoverers of God’s paths through the wilderness.
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
