Lent 2 - 16th March 2025
Readings: Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17 – 4:1; Luke 13: 31-35
Lent, as you know is a penitential season when all of us are urged to reflect on our own brokenness, to reflect on the need for repentance. The baptism service makes this specific. “Do you repent of your sins”, the sponsors of the child are asked on his or her behalf, or in the case of someone able to answer for themselves, they’re asked directly. How do we understand repentance?
We often overlay repentance with guilt – mistakenly in my view. Repent comes from a word which simply means to turn your mind, to think in a new way about your life. This isn’t to downplay its seriousness. Jesus places a condition on it – “unless you repent”[1] he says, there are serious consequences.
But again, this isn’t meant to weigh us down. I think the notion of repentance as being a turning is helpful. We turn from one thing towards another. It’s made clear in the baptism service “Do you turn to Christ”. And it’s good for us to ask ourselves the same question during Lent. Luke Timothy Johnson, a significant commentator on St. Luke’s gospel writes that Jesus’ call to repentance has a specific quality. He writes that it: “is not simply a turning from sin but an acceptance of the visitation of God in the proclamation of God’s kingdom.”
There is an element of grace in repentance – grace being God’s free gift to us. There’s more than a hint of it in the gospel story earlier in Chapter 13 when the fig tree is given a second chance.[2] Repentance is not simply a turning from sin (which is described not so much as the biblical vice lists, but a deep alienation from God). Repentance is the acceptance of the visitation of God.
Abraham is visited by God as we hear in our first reading from Genesis this morning. It’s important that we set the reading in its right context. Remember the first verse – the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. What we have is the description of a dream. It’s not the first time that God has called Abraham – a couple of chapters earlier in Genesis, Abram, as he is then called, hears the call of God to leave his home country and to travel to the land that God will show him. Abraham in this dream is promised many descendants. On one level, it’s quite a funny exchange. Abraham is promised a great reward and his reply to God is sort of “That’s all well and good, but what can you give me anyway – I don’t have any children.” Children were extremely important for inheritance. And Abraham goes on “and what’s more, God, if I don’t have any children, all my inheritance will go to Eliezer of Damascus.” The subtext is, I think “Perish the thought”. Abraham goes so far as to accuse God of not giving him any children. Eliezer is going to get the lot and it’s all your fault, God! But the story also speaks to a deep fear. Abram is afraid that he will die without an heir. He is afraid that his line, and the memory of his life, will end at his death. No child has been born from his marriage to Sarah. He has parented a child from a slave, but this will not suffice in his own eyes and the eyes of his culture.[3] But Abraham is shown a vision and despite his fears, his questions and his doubts about the way in which God’s promises were to be carried out, he has faith that God will be faithful to God’s promises. “And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Or as one who is right with God. Paul, in his letters to the Romans and the Galatians establishes Abraham’s legendary reputation for faith on the basis of this verse. Abraham has heard the call of God, not just once or initially, but as a continuing invitation to follow and to trust. Abraham accepts the visitation of God. To live in faith is to trust that God will be faithful to his promises despite the questions and doubts and fears that inevitably arise – and so it is for us, too.
The Apostle Paul has also heard and responded to the call of God as it has come to him through Christ Jesus. We know from the account in the Acts of the Apostles how that call comes to him as he travels to Damascus. Paul urges the Christians of Philippi to whom he writes to imitate his single-minded devotion to the call of Christ. He acknowledges that there are some who live differently – he calls them “enemies of the Cross”, but he does not call for punishment or any thing like that. He simply acknowledges it in sadness – in tears - that they cannot set their minds on the hope to be found in Jesus Christ. However, for those who trust that God will be faithful, he uses the image of citizenship – citizenship of Heaven. Paul prized his Roman citizenship, but for him, his true and lasting allegiance was elsewhere. I’ve referred earlier to the baptism service, and I often think there are quite a few similarities between the baptism service and a citizenship ceremony. People come for all sorts of reasons, but fundamentally because somehow, they see the possibility or promise of a different kind of life. They take part in a public ceremony at which promises of allegiance are made, certificates are given in recognition of this. But just because people have gone through the ceremony doesn’t automatically make them good citizens – that depends on the decisions they take about their lives, the people they surround themselves with, how faithful they are to the promises of allegiance made to their new country. Like Abraham, the question is – do we respond to God’s continual invitation and call, do we continually trust that God will be faithful.
Paul’s own life was lived between two poles – Christ’s crucifixion and the expectation of his return. Christian life is determined and shaped by the death of Christ on the cross, which calls us to the same kind of faithfulness and self giving love; and, on the other hand, Christ’s followers wait in hope for transformation – Paul describes it as the transformation of the body of our humiliation – other translations have “humble bodies” which I prefer – but transformation in order to be conformed to the body of his glory.
In the gospel reading, the stakes are much higher. Jesus is warned that his life is in danger. This is no news to him – he is fully aware of the dangers ahead of him. Herod is out to get him. But Jesus continues to teach. He must follow his vocation and in following his vocation, he finds his strength. His life gains perspective. It is all part of God’s holy story of salvation. In his book born of the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor Frankl quotes the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how’.”[4] Jesus’ sense of purpose, his vocational sense, enabled him to face his fear of suffering and abandonment, trusting that his life had meaning and that God’s purposes for him were more enduring that Herod’s hatred.
Repentance, which is where we began, and acceptance of the call of God makes transformation possible for us all. Transformation may not mean that the physical circumstances of our live may change all that much, but it does mean that despite questions, doubts, fears, disappointments, extreme dangers, we will see our lives in a new light as having new meaning, new purposes, new hope grounded in the promises of God.
Abraham trusted the God who called him, despite the questions he had, Paul trusted God’s call to him through Christ, Jesus trusted God’s purposes for him. How much do we trust God’s call to us?
[1] Luke 13:5
[2] Luke 13: 6-9
[3] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2019/03/the-adventurous-lectionary-the-second-sunday-in-lent-march-17-2019/
[4] ibid
© The Rev’d WD Crossman