Abraham, Paul, Jesus — they do stuff. And I talk about it.
Luke 13:31-35; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Psalm 27; Genesis 15:12,17-18
Last week I talked about how God has a tendency to intervene in our most hopeless situations. No matter how big or little these situations may seem, God acts in ways we might not anticipate at the time. In this week’s lesson, it continues this theme of God’s faithfulness, yet also leaves us with a warning about what happens when we get a little too comfortable.
Let’s start in Genesis 15. Abram, not yet renamed to Abraham, had just rescued his nephew Lot from a kidnapping at the hands of Kedorlaomer, a local king who was at war with Sodom, the town where Lot chose to settle. Abram recognized God’s help in his victory, and so gave a tenth of the spoils back to God, through the king-priest Melchizedek. At this time, Abram was quite old, but still without a blood heir. And so, understandably so, Abram was a little worried about the future. So God instead promises him that his children would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Because of his faith, Abram had no problem believing God about having children, and his example ended up being used several times in the Epistles as an example of a strong faith.
But then God tags on something to the end that Abram has a much harder time believing. Recently he had been just a wanderer, going from place to place with his herds and couldn’t really claim any land as his own. He grew up in Ur, around middle age set off with his father toward Canaan but didn’t quite get there, instead settling in Haran, where his father died. After that God told him to pack up and head off to Canaan, but because of the current inhabitants moved around a lot and never really found a place to settle. Yet God repeatedly promised that he would take possession of the land of Canaan.
So it’s a little understandable that Abram had a hard time with this, so he asks God for a sign. God provides a rather dramatic one, involving some animals, a torch, and a firepot, and the text says, “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram” that his descendants would be given the land of Canaan.
Now we know that over the course of time the Hebrew people conquered Canaan under Joshua, that rule was stabilized through judges and kings, then the people were swept away into exile, only to return seventy years later and not long after be conquered by the Greeks and Romans. By Jesus’ time, Israel was just another province of the Roman Empire, with Jerusalem the seat of the Roman governor and the puppet Jewish ruling class.
In our gospel text, those Jewish rulers told Jesus to flee from Jerusalem because Herod was trying to kill him. Instead, Jesus issues a warning to Jerusalem, “Jerusalem… how often I have longed to gather your children together… but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate.” The ones who had been promised the land had forsaken God, who promised the land to them in the first place.
Paul develops this idea even more in the book of Romans, where he shows the people of God as a cultivated olive tree. Originally, this tree was ‘pure’. It had all its original branches and no new ones had been attached. But with the coming of Christ, some of the old branches, the ones which did not bear fruit, were cut off and new, wild branches were attached in their place. For Paul, one’s previous affiliation as a Jew or Gentile is irrelevant, only that a person is part of the Body of Christ, a new group of chosen people – a new Israel, as it were. A new group with a new promise, though neither that unlike the old group or old promise. There was still a land to inherit, though not at all the same kind of land.
In our reading from Philippians, Paul explores this idea. “Our citizenship is in heaven.” he writes. We’re told not to focus on earthly things but heavenly things, awaiting with joy something else to come. As Christians, God’s chosen people, we await an inheritance far more glorious than the nation the Israelites were promised. No, we have been promised a redeemed creation to inherit, a creation full of the glory of God. Paul writes that we will be transformed to be like Christ, something can’t even begin to imagine, but I know that it will be more amazing that anything I’ve dreamed of.
But yet there is a warning. We’re called to follow Paul’s example, and not be like those whose god is their stomachs and whose glory is their shame. As Christians we know the promise God has laid before us, but we also know that the Israelites, for whom God also promised great things, forgot about God. They remembered what God said, and what he commanded – but they forgot Him.
This is part of what Lent is all about. We come before God in humility, seeking to remember not only his promises and his commands, but to remember God. We partake of a fast so that we remember that our god is not our desires, but a Loving God who gave his life for us. We search for glory not in our own actions, but in the shame of the cross of Christ which brings us forgiveness of sins and the promise of a new and wonderful inheritance. And in doing so, we stand firm in the Lord Jesus Christ.