Second Sunday in Lent Year C 2010

02 Lent C 10

February 28, 2010

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

15:1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great."

15:2 But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?"

15:3 And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir."

15:4 But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir."

15:5 He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be."

15:6 And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.

15:7 Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess."

15:8 But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?"

15:9 He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon."

15:10 He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two.

15:11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

15:12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.

15:17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.

15:18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates...." Psalm 27

27:1 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

27:2 When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh-- my adversaries and foes-- they shall stumble and fall.

27:3 Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.

27:4 One thing I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple.

27:5 For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.

27:6 Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the LORD.

27:7 Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!

27:8 "Come," my heart says, "seek his face!" Your face, LORD, do I seek.

27:9 Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!

27:10 If my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up.

27:11 Teach me your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.

27:12 Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence.

27:13 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

27:14 Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

Philippians 3:17-4:1

3:17 Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.

3:18 For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears.

3:19 Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.

3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

3:21 He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

4:1 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

Luke 13:31-35

13:31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you."

13:32 He 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.

13:33 Yet 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.'

13:34 Jerusalem, 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!

13:35 See, 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.'"

“The Garden Plot”

You sometimes hear in twelve-step fellowships that the way to follow God’s will is simply to do the next right thing. And you hear that in church too sometimes. I think we all want to believe that knowing God’s will is beyond us and that just doing what seems ethical is about the best we can do.

In the twelve-step fellowships, however, the main suggestion is decidedly not to simply do the next thing that seems to be right. The goal is to stop drinking and to stay stopped. But everyone who has joined AA knows that stopping and staying stopped is by no means a simple proposition. It involves following a plan, a very specific path, with twelve very specific steps.

It is also not true that we can’t know what God’s will is. We do know and can know and should know. That’s exactly what the bible is all about. God’s will is to restore his kingdom on earth, to remake the troubled world into the garden of abundance it was always meant to be. The bible is abundantly clear about God’s will, God’s vision.

The kingdom of God: more citizens than there are grains of sand on a beach or stars in the sky, a beautiful land flowing with milk and honey, a fruit-rich vineyard overflowing with delicious wine, dense fields of wheat blowing in the wind, the flock of chicks warmly gathered under the mother hen.

But we know, don’t we, that getting to such an outcome is not at all simple?

There are all kinds of threats to God’s plan, there are the vultures that swoop on the sacrifice meant for the Lord, those pesky adversaries in Psalm 27, there are those people Paul says live as enemies to the cross of Christ, whose God is the belly and whose end is destruction, and there is that fox Herod, who scatters the chicks and murders the hen.

The challenge to Jesus is to protect the chicks, to plant a fruitful vineyard or a richly profitable wheat field, to make an offering to the Lord that doesn’t get swept up by vultures. He says in this text, “I must be on my way.”

I wonder if we could think of this “way” less as a path to enlightenment or fulfillment and more as a working strategy, a kind of plot.

Jesus has found a working strategy for overcoming the pitfalls and resistance that undermine the flowering of God’s abundant garden in the world. The way of the world is to fight, force or frighten enemies. But such strategies are precisely what keeps the garden from flourishing. In fighting the vultures and the foxes, we unwittingly join them. How do we plant and nurture God’s garden in the face of foxes and vultures?

We need a plot. We need a Garden Plot.

First off, Jesus kept his goal very much in the forefront of his plot. The goal is finally restoring the garden that God’s creation is supposed to be. The goal is bringing the kingdom of God back into the world. One of the keenest tools the adversary uses against the people of God is distraction from the main goal. If we become convinced that we need to attend to this or that emergency, we will quickly find ourselves rushing about from emergency to emergency and we will forget what we were about doing to begin with.

Second, Jesus spent a lot of time reflecting. Jesus spent a lot of time listening to God. Most people who do the Myers-Briggs personality index come out as people of action. Most people, that is, don’t want to spend a lot of time planning or thinking through something. This is why democracy often doesn’t work. Because it’s easy to talk a big unhappy crowd into swift unwise action.

I’m told it’s quite difficult to hunt predators. They know all the tricks. To defeat them one must know them well, but not become like them. Jesus called it being wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
The enemies to the cross spend a lot of time planning and reflecting. They invest a lot of energy and resources into carefully studying their situation. Vultures and foxes have very finely tuned strategies that have been worked out over countless generations.

Third, Jesus took the time to lay the groundwork before he went in for the main event. He stuck to the plan. As he headed for Jerusalem, a place from which he’d initially fled, the warnings come that this is not a safe place to go. Jesus knew this. Of course he did. He has spent nearly three years carefully building a following, with the full attention of using that following when he turned toward the powers that were. And this was not some new concept Jesus was using. It’s pretty clear from the Old Testament that the prophets all developed supporters. Jesus’ goal is to enter Jerusalem as the rightful king of Israel, at least in the minds of the people.

He knew of course that the crowds would not protect him any more than they’d protected the prophets that came before him. Mass support, then and now, has a way of drying up overnight. But he also knew that no one was going to forget being healed, no one was going to forget being freed from demonic possession, and no poverty-stricken farmer was going to forget the good news of God’s justice. They might in the moment of persecution, yes, but when the danger was passed, and they looked back, who would end up looking good to them? The ones who won or the one who lost? After all, despite the many prophets who were executed throughout Israel’s history, they were nevertheless remembered, while those who had killed them were not.

Jesus also made sure to do the hard work of training successors. He demonstrated his way, despite the difficulty of getting it across to his trainees, and never gave in to dumbing the message down, no matter how they failed to get it. He did not give them a simple message, and he did not tell them a single thing about being happy or successful. He taught them the way to plant and nurture God’s garden in the midst of a world full of predators and scavengers. Of course, there is much joy in such work, but there is also much that is challenging and difficult.

He also did not work alone, did not do everything himself, but spent time equipping others to do what he did and even more. He obviously spent significant time involving people and organizing them.

But perhaps the most important element of Jesus’ “garden plot” was to seek above all other things the life-giving power and wisdom of God’s Holy Spirit. This in itself is quite a process and involves some clearly defined steps, steps which he has also outlined to us.

The predators and scavengers of God’s garden are real. They will try to scatter the chicks and even to kill the mother hen. Why will they do this? Because their motives have to do with getting fed, not sharing in a feast. They are like dogs who each have their own bones but who aren’t satisfied unless they have the bones of all the others.

We need a plan to deal with them. We need a way to make God’s garden prosper no matter what they do. We need a Garden Plot.

The life story and teachings and practices of Jesus, taken together, is our Garden Plot. It is the subversive plan to share in the true abundance of creation, to restore justice and righteousness to the earth. This time of Lent is a time for all Christians to return to these basics, the life pattern of Jesus, the purpose of his ministry, the vision of God’s kingdom, the Garden Plot.

Are we involved in the Garden Plot? Are we carefully examining ourselves? Are we willing to turn our backs on the powers of the world, no matter what they promise us? Are we spending time listening to God? Are we working with others, planning and coordinating our mission strategies? And above all, are we doing everything Jesus commanded in seeking above all other things God’s wisdom and life-giving power?

If they rounded up all the conspirators in God’s garden plot, would we be arrested? Would there be enough evidence to convict us?

Amen.