February 25, 2024

Lent 2 Year B

Epiphany, Winnipeg

Mark 8:31-38

I’m sitting at the Forks, clicking away at my sermon on my computer and waiting for a gigantic plate of nachos that Val and I will share. The Commons is full of people, all shapes and colours and ages and varieties of everything, everyone. I look around at the crowd and I wonder what’s going through all those minds, and I wonder, more than anything because of this sermon I’m writing, what kinds of promises they are holding. Promises they may or may not believe, promises they may or may not think possible, promises that keep them going or promises that are still there but in a dusty corner of their heart, long forgotten…even while the reason they need the promise still remains.

There’s someone standing there with a sign that says “Genocide is not self-defence,” and I wonder how many people with Palestinian connections have seen that sign and said, “Yes, exactly!” or how many Jewish Winnipegers have walked by and felt a bit of shame, or felt attacked and angry or afraid. And I wonder how many of us all who pass by just long for peace.

There are all kinds of promises and hopes in that place. Not hopes for a new car, or promises on a good investment, but hopes and promises for things that seem so far away: maybe for world peace or for just relationships in our own country, maybe for things like a place to live or a job, or there’s someone who hopes that they will survive whatever that nagging pain right over there really is. All kinds of hopes, and are there promises to match?

How many impossible hopes and promises are being held by the people there in that room?

How many are there in this room? What promise are you trying to keep on believing? What is it just too hard to believe?

We heard another piece of the story of Abraham and Sarah, which is also our story, a few minutes ago. You may recall that way back at the beginning God promised the two of them that they would have a child, and they would have grandchildren, and they would have countless descendants, as many as the stars in the sky, and they would be a blessing to the whole world. The catch is that Abraham was seventy-five at that time, and Sarah was sixty five. As we meet them in this chapter today, a quarter century has passed and there’s still no child – how could there be? – and no descendants, and no blessing for all the nations of the world.

So today God meets Abraham and makes that promise again:

“You will be the ancestor of countless people. And your wife Sarah will have a son.” Abraham does the only thing that makes any sense: he says “I’m a hundred! Sarah’s ninety! And he rolls on the floor laughing right out loud, while God stands by and watches.

But God knows what’s up, and the promise comes true. And there are children, and grandchildren, and greats and great-greats over thousands of years, and one day there will even be three religions that trace their roots right back to that couple and to an impossible promise. You know, Christians, Jews, and Muslims all trace our roots back to that story of a couple who are nearing the end of their days and living with an impossible promise that comes true.

Yet toda, at the Forks there’s a man with a sign. Maybe he’s Christian, or Muslim; maybe he’s Jewish. Passersby who are Jews or Muslims see the sign, and there are two Christians sitting at a table with nachos and computers, pecking away at their sermons. And they all share curious or tense moments all these generations after their common ancestors heard and trusted an impossible promise.

Here’s a thing we learn from Abraham and Sarah: Sometimes promises come true, but it doesn’t mean that everything gets easy. Sarah and Abraham get their children, but over centuries and millennia the tensions in the family will be strong, and the family ties will seem about to break. Sometimes the promise takes longer than it seems.

Whatever else we might make of this story, it also speaks of something that’s right there in our roots: We have inherited promises that seem impossible in a world that seems broken or in our own lives that can seem like that too. And we have inherited this deep trust – we call it faith – this deep trust that God makes impossible promises and God keeps impossible promises.

Fast forward a few thousand years and we find Jesus, Peter, and the disciples out on the road, walking from here to there. Jesus is talking to his disciples, who have given up everything so that they can follow him. He tells them and the crowd that has gathered that one day soon he will be rejected by every influential person who matters, and he will suffer, and will die, and after three days rise again. Something about this doesn’t sit right with Peter, so he takes Jesus aside and tells him so, and Jesus snaps back and says, “you’re thinking of human things, not divine things.”

Now I may have said and we all might have heard a handful of times or a thousand times that what Peter doesn’t like is that Jesus says that he will have to suffer and die. But maybe what’s really bugging Peter is that Jesus said that after three days he will rise. It’s bothering Peter because it seems like an absurd promise. There’s no way that the dead can be raised. That’s a promise that couldn’t possibly come true. So Peter takes Jesus aside and tells him so.

But Jesus sees it another way. He says, “Peter, you’re thinking these things can’t happen, and that new life can’t happen. You’re thinking of human things. But promises kept, a covenant honoured, an impossible birth, a resurrection after three days, a blessing restored – all of this is a divine thing.” This can happen. This will happen.

You see, Jesus probably knew this story of his ancestors Abraham and Sarah, this story about how God makes impossible promises and keeps them. Surely that same God can promise that what is dead will be raised…and God will keep that promise.

I think that sometimes it’s a lot easier to believe the doom and hold on to it than it is to believe the promise. You know, the promise that there will be blessing, goodness, life for all the nations. You know, the promise that Jesus is risen and the dead will be raised – that’ll be all of us – and that life will always rise up where we only see death.

We see nations at war, or a nation on the verge of collapse, and it’s tempting to believe that there could be no life to rise up out of that. It’s always been that way, so how could we expect more? But the promise that even we could be a blessing to the world, the promise that there will be generations after this, and after that, and on an on…that promise keeps being spoken. We see death and we know that it’s real – nations do collapse, hopes do die, bodies and spirits just wear out and stop – life is tough and then you die, and that’s all there is. But we live with this promise that God raises the dead. We could be like Abraham and laugh at the promise because it’s just so impossible, and we could be like Peter and say, “No way, it couldn’t be like that. There can be no new life rising out of this mess.”

Or we could say it’s Lent, and we could repent. Repent, which sometimes just means we’re being called to change our mind. And in these days, repenting will mean that we stop letting doom win. And we return again to the one who promises that people will bring blessing to the world, and who promises to raise the dead.

This will be hard to believe. After all these years - how long have humans been around? How long ago did Abraham and Sarah hear a promise – after all these years it’s hard to see any promise and sometimes and it’s hard to trust the one who makes the promise.

So here’s what happens. God puts us together in community, and we help each other trust, and we help the world see promise and hope. When one of us is rolling on the floor laughing because the promise is unbelievable, someone comes along and says, “You know, it’s not a joke. It’s true.” When you or I might just be not rolling on the floor but rocking in the corner in fear or are just worn out by trusting promises that don’t seem true, someone else comes along and says, “You know, it’s true.” When one can’t believe, the others believe for them, and when some can’t trust the other ones still trust, and help them all to see. That’s the way it’s always been, through countless generations of ancestors and descendants. We support each other and we trust for one another, and we pass all that on to whoever comes next, and so on, and so on…and here we are…and that’s how it will continue to be.

We will pick each other up off the floor because God has given us this trust that doom won’t win, and that life will have the final say and the first say. We return to that promise during this Lent, as we keep on looking to that day when we will say that Christ is Risen, and we’ll hear again that the promises are true.

PRAYER FOR DEACONS (from Speak It Plain by Meta Herrick Carlson) The call is to stand between, in the liminal and fuzzy boundaries where church and world blur, coaxing folks out of stark categories and into real life where proclaiming the gospel and serving the neighbour are never separate. You are ordained for action that embodies God’s love on the margins and moves people toward purpose and love that do not require a crucifix, font or altar. Instead you show them how God lived in a body, wrapping a towel at your waist, stooping down to fill a basin with water, washing and drying your neighbor’s feet with such care, they are certain they’ve seen Jesus. Amen