Second Sunday of Lent –Texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer – Amen.

We had a baby on September 16th, 2006. But the process of becoming parents did not begin and end on that date.

Becoming a parent sounds like something that would have happened in a moment of time, a switch that got suddenly flipped. As if there was an instantaneous moment that would have brought us from non-parenthood to parenthood.

Sure, there was a very important instant—when the baby came out and took her first breaths, when we held her in the delivery room and watched her open her eyes for the very first time.

But there were also nine very important months of expectation that came before, and there have been many important and formative weeks since. All of these moments have been immeasurably transformative—for all three of us.

I remember the doctor visit at ten weeks, when we saw Zoe for the very first time, via sonogram. She looked like a little shrimp. I mean that literally, not figuratively—she really looked like a curled up shrimp. And we were thrilled to hear her heartbeat.

Now Zoe is five and a half months old. She has officially discovered her opposable thumbs (to our cats’ peril!) And she can do many wonderful things, like smiling in at least a dozen different ways.

And yet, the fact that I am becoming a father is still sinking in.

This new high-maintenance roommate of ours is going to be around for a while. More than that, our identities have changed forever. We really are her parents.

In the beginning it was mostly conceptual, but now it is becoming real. It is becoming relational.

***

We say many words in church about our relationship with God. Sometimes we say them so often that we forget to think about and realize what we are saying.

We speak of being “children of God,” and of God being our “Father in heaven.”

We fall into a sort of trap with these words. If we are not careful, they become stale and generic rather than real and relational. We may accidentally find ourselves putting God into a box, in thinking that God is “up there,” looking down on us—or “in here,” in church waiting for us to visit.

If you close your eyes and picture God, what does God look like? The classic image is of an old man with a long gray beard, but surely this image is just a substitute—because the reality of God’s being is something beyond our imagination.

The German theologian Paul Tillich had a fresh way of talking about all this. He said that God is the ground of being.

Tillich said that we cannot really speak of God as being here or there, or being an entity among entities in the regular sense. Rather, God is being itself. God is the ground of our being, and the ground of all that is.

It is a simple and yet profound idea.

To be is to participate in the life of God.

And although we owe God for our very being, we do not always realize it. Tillich said that we inevitably become estranged from God at times in our lives. We build up walls that separate us from God and make us blind to our truest reality. When we are estranged, we suffer, until that time when we move closer to God by grace and feel the joy of unity again.

In an important sense, this is the story of the Bible, too. You could tell this story just by moving your finger through the air up and down in a wave pattern.

The people of God in scripture struggle with this up and down movement throughout the history of time. They experience times of closeness to God, and then they endure times when they are stiff-necked, experiencing distance and estrangement from God. It is a sinusoidal curve, never fully coming to total union with God, but also never becoming totally divorced from God.

***

Abram in Genesis hears the Word of God and receives a promise. The Lord says, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield.” Abram is worried at this time because he does not have an heir. Being without a son is his wilderness. But he has not lost faith. When God appears to him, he receives God’s Word with faith. He is promised not only a son, but descendants as numerous as the stars.

For Abram to believe was an act of surrender, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. In his surrender, he moves towards unity, coming into a real relationship with the almighty.

***

In Luke, Jesus is entering into his final journey to Jerusalem, and he is facing the powerful forces that speak in the name of God but do not know God. He is disappointed in their lack of knowledge, and he is marching right toward the center of their religion—Jerusalem. And he laments the estrangement of God’s people in history.

(He offers a very interesting image also, that he would be a mother hen to these people, taking them under his wing. Jesus would be a mother and nurturer! This is an image of God that gets lost in the shadow of all the fatherly images we are used to!)

Jesus is facing a religion that is controlled by authorities who have lost the gift of surrender. It has become a religion that is enmeshed in earthly politics rather than the love of God.

Herod himself is actually not a purely evil figure, but he is a tragically compromised figure. He is trying to hold together the religious state in the midst of Roman occupation. He has a goal of keeping things together, and this blinds him to God in his midst.

Meanwhile, Jesus is busy doing miracles and healing the sick, and he is given threats because he is not in line with the power structures in place.

Jesus does not give in when his life is at stake. He is not afraid. He can do nothing except surrender his life to God. And it is through his full surrender, ultimately, that he comes to be resurrected.

***

Our lives, like the lives of the people of scripture, will travel up and down in our relationship with God. We’ll have moments on the mountaintop, and between those moments we’ll spend time in darkness in the wilderness. But as scripture teaches again and again, hope is never lost. God will not give up on us.

The way to return to God is not so much defined by courage as by surrender. Like Jesus, and like Abram, we are called to walk in faith rather than fear.

It is not by courage but by surrender that one is able to grow into really being a parent.

And it is not by courage but by surrender that one may come into a full and genuine relationship with God.

- Amen.