February 24, 2013
© 2013
I.
Listen to this quote and think about who might have written it and
when. “Our earth is degenerate in the latter days. There are signs that the
world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common. Children
no longer obey their parents. Everyone wants to write a book, and the end of
the world is evidently approaching.” Does this sound like some Christian doomsday
prophecy preachers? Every few years another one writes a book. Or maybe a
commentary on the Mayan Calendar. We know that Socrates and others made similar
observations about the impending collapse of Greek and Roman culture over 2,000
years ago. This was quoted in the Chicago
Tribune on December 9, 2012 from an Assyrian clay tablet dated to 2800 BCE,
4800 years ago – closer to Abraham than to us. (Christian Century, January
9, 2013, p. 9)
A.
Rather than dismissing our present anxieties by comparing them to
ancient anxieties, I want to ask, how can we keep believing God has a
redemptive plan when generation after generation sees so much doom?
B.
Whom do you trust when the dark spaces in life seem interminable?
C.
What do you hear when you listen for God in the dark, interminable
spaces of life?
II.
When you heard the story in Genesis 15, did you think, “That’s
strange?” At that time, when two nomadic chieftains made a treaty, they each
brought an animal which they cut in two and holding bloody hands walked between
the halves of the animals before offering half of each animal as a sacrifice to
each of their patron gods. When our English translations of the Hebrew
Scriptures say “made a covenant,” the literal translation would usually be “cut
a covenant.”
A.
You may remember back in August and January I mentioned that fire and
smoke are often signs of God’s presence. Here the smoking fire pot and flaming
torch that pass between the halves of the animals signify that God alone is
responsible for keeping the covenant with Abram.
B.
Though Abram does nothing to show he was responsible for the covenant,
verse 6 says, “He believed the Lord and the Lord reckoned it to him as
righteousness.” This may be the most important single line in the entire Bible.
1.
About 1400 years after Abram, the prophet Habakkuk (2:4) made it the
core of God’s expectations of all people, “The righteous will live by their
faith.” The New Testament traces the Gospel to this seed in Romans 1:17; 4:3;
Galatians 3:6,11; Hebrews 10:38; James 2:23.
2.
The usual English translations say Abram “believed the Lord.” We tend
to use “believe” to mean agreeing that something is true. So we speak of
believing in God as meaning we believe God is real. But Genesis makes an
entirely different point that could probably be better translated “Abram
trusted the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
C.
Abram trusted God’s covenant promise of descendants and land, even
though both seemed impossible. Abram and Sari were well beyond childbearing
years. They were landless nomads among hostile people who were not about to
give them any land. The rest of Genesis records how Abram and his immediate
descendants repeatedly do things that seem to interfere with the covenant, but
God fulfills it anyway with Isaac’s birth and Joshua leading Israel into the
Promised Land five centuries later.
1.
God reminded Abram that God brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans to
give him the land where he was then an alien (v. 7).
He had to live in the space between Ur and Canaan. The Ten Commandments open (Exodus 20:2) with God reminding Israel that God had brought them
out of Egypt and slavery to bring them into the Promised Land and freedom. For
40 years in the wilderness they lived in the space between Egypt and Canaan, between
slavery and freedom.
2.
Hebrews 11:9-11 explains that Abraham could live in this in between
space because he looked forward to a city with foundations whose architect and
builder is God, much as Philippians 3:20 reminds us that our citizenship is in
heaven.
III. During Lent we follow Jesus
in the space between his ministry in Galilee and his crucifixion in Jerusalem.
Luke 13:31-35 comes as Jesus had been going through one town and village after
another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem.
At that very hour some Pharisees came and
said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”32He said
to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and
performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.33Yet
today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible
for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’34Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to
it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers
her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35See,
your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time
comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
A.
We compare a destructive person in charge of something vulnerable to a
fox in the hen house. Jesus gives the fox and the hen a surprising, distinctly
Hebrew twist. To call someone a fox was not so much about their cunning but a
contemptuous way of saying they were unimportant and insignificant. So Jesus
was saying that Herod, whose interest was immediate power was not significant
enough to keep him from his long-term mission in Jerusalem.
B.
Then Jesus compared himself to a hen gathering her brood to protect
them, but the chicks of Jerusalem insisted on exposing themselves to danger.
Like prophets before him, Jesus did not waver from going to Jerusalem and the
cross. What seemed like defeat was the path to ultimate victory. Herod the fox
lost, and Jesus the hen won.
C.
Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem (vv.
34-35) was inner
anguished musing, not a speech to an audience. He quoted Psalm 118:26, “Blessed
is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” connecting Israel’s ancient hope
with his Triumphal Entry and his redemptive passion. In this space with Jesus, God’s
redemptive plan for all humanity was suspended between anticipation and
fulfillment.
IV. What do we hear when we
listen for God in the interminable, dark spaces of life?
A.
God says, “Trust me, however dark or long the space.”
B.
Philippians 4:1 tells us to stand firm on this way. God says, “Be
patient when the dark path seems long.”
C.
Some time ago I watched a program on Public TV about Chinese Jade. One
piece was about 4-5 feet high and 2-3 feet in diameter. It was intricately
carved with scenes of people in nature in elegant details that were visible not
only on the outside but through a latticework of passages and windows that went
all the way through. The history of this piece was that when it was found the
Emperor commissioned the premiere jade carver in China to create a work
suitable for the Imperial Palace. The carver began his work, and when his son
was old enough he taught him not only jade carving but also the design for this
special piece. The jade carver and his son also taught his grandson. Eventually
the original jade carver died, but his son and grandson passed both the skills
and vision for this very special piece of jade to his great-grandson. Shortly
before the original jade carver’s grandson died, he and the great-grandson
presented the finished carving to the great-grandson of the Emperor who had
commissioned the work. He received it with great pomp and gratitude,
exclaiming, “This is exactly what we in the Palace have been expecting for four
generations!”
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