"Wrestling our way to the cross"

Lent 2, Year C, 2001

Christ Church, New Brunswick NJ

Readings: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27

Broken
promises.
They come in all sorts
of shapes and sizes.
Some are just tiny - I'll meet you at 5, he said,
and at 5.45
you are still waiting,
wondering
if something has gone terribly wrong,
when he rushes up.
"Sorry, I forgot the time."

Some are kind of middle-sized.
"Read my lips - no more taxes."

And some are huge - "I take you
to be my husband,
to have and to hold
from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish
until we are parted
by death.
This is my solemn vow."
except that it wasn't death
which separated them,
but a drifting apart,
a slow-moving silence
punctuated only
by sharp bursts of acrimony.

Broken
promises.

Even the small ones
have the potential to shape our lives,
to rub calluses
on our hearts,
to tear holes
in our trust.

Every promise
that is broken
makes the next promise
a little less believable,
and the next,
and the next,
and the next.

Until,
if your experience is anything like mine,
you view any promise
with a measure of suspicion
and any invitation to trust
with your fingers crossed.

And so
it has always been.

It was somewhere around
the year 1956,
1956 BCE, that is,
it was somewhere around that year,
when a man called Abram, who most of us know as Abraham,
a man called Abram,
along with his wife and his nephew and everything they owned,
left their homes
and everything they knew,
and set out on a journey.
Abram
was seventy-five years old,
past the age
for adventuring.
Some said
he was just darn crazy,
but all he would say
was that
it was the voice of God.
A voice out of nowhere,
a voice which promised children and land and blessing.
Of course
the fact that he and his wife were both well on in age,
and the fact that just when he got to this promised land,
a famine hit, and they had to flee to Egypt,
those facts
didn't auger well
for this God-spoken promise.

They eventually come back from Egypt,
and again
the voice of God
was heard,
a promise of children
and land
and blessing.
But this promise was no more certain
than the last.
Abram's wife still
wasn't pregnant.
The borders of the land
were threatened
by an alliance of kings.
This promise was tenuous,
this promise was hanging
by a thread.

By the time we pick up the story in today's Old Testament reading,
God's voice
is heard
once again.

It's promise time,
and Abram
must be beginning to wonder
if the promise
will really hold.
Maybe
it was just his imagination,
playing games with his dreams,
or maybe
God
is just toying
with him.

He has no children.
The land has been threatened
by famine and war.
And blessing
seems kind of fleeting.
As far as he can see
the landscape is full
of broken
promises.
It's promise time.

"Do not be afraid,"
God says.
"Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield; your reward
shall be very great."
And Abram wonders,
"Can I trust this voice, can I trust
this promise?
Where were you, God, shield,
when down in Egypt, Pharaoh wanted my wife
for his plaything?
Where were you, God, shield,
when my nephew
was taken prisoner?
Where are you, God, shield,
when my only heir
is a slave?"

"Don't be afraid, you say,
but how can I be sure?
All your promises - they have come to nothing.
Where are you?"

Abram
is face to face
with God. Face to face
in all his anger
and frustration
and despair.
As far as he can see
this God
has broken
his promises.
And if one promise
is broken
what about the rest?
Can this God
really
be trusted?

It's the question
which faces all of us
at one time or another.
Can God
really
be trusted?

When we see around us
a world
where injustice
seems to win
over justice, Where some people starve
while others
throw money around
as if it were only worth
the paper its printed on.
Where earthquake and flood
strike indiscriminately,
and drought
shrivels up
the shoots
of a potential bumper harvest.
Can God really
be trusted?

When teasing and bullying
find their answer
in shootings,
when racism
and sexism
scar the landscape
of our society,
can God
really
be trusted?

When our own lives
are battered with pain,
when the gifts
which grace us
are stifled,
and the relationships
which guarantee our security
fall apart,
can God
really
be trusted?

There is one school of thought
in the Christian tradition
which say that faith
is about accepting
what we are given
as God's plan for us,
about trusting that God means good
in every situation,
no matter how bad it seems.
It's what I would call
Pollyanna
Christianity,
always looking at the bright side
of life.

That worries me.
Because it's just a small step from there
to a God who condones everything,
one small step
to God
as a not so benevolent
dictator.

It's one small step
to the woman whose husband abuses her, and who says,
"But, he's my husband. I love him."

It's one small step
to the man who holds his stillborn child
and says,
"It must have been God's will"
and who bottles up all his grief and pain
until he becomes an empty shell,
unable to weep, unable to love.

Can this God
really
be trusted?

But there's another school of thought
which sees things differently,
which understands faith
as something to be wrestled with, something that is hard won.
This is the tradition of the psalmists,
who cry out to God, as we heard in our psalm today,
"Do not hide your face from me!
Do not cast me off,
do not forsake me,
O God of my salvation!"

It's the tradition of Job,
abandoned by his friends,
struggling with a God
who seems to let Satan
have free reign.
It's the tradition of Jonah,
sitting under
a withered vine,
wanting
vengeance
and facing instead
the incomprehensible mercy
of God.

And it's the tradition of Jesus the Christ,
alone
in the Garden of Gethsemane,
and Jesus the Christ
groaning
from the cross
"My God, my God,
why
have you forsaken me?"

Can this God
really
be trusted?

*****

Time and time again
the people of God
have wrestled
with God.
Abram is just one of many
who wrestle their way to faith,
who struggle
with a God
who makes promises,
but sometimes seems to take
an awful long time
in keeping them.
And God kept
those promises
to Abram.
Some
were just a few years
in coming;
others
took generations.

"Do not be afraid," God said to Abram. "I am your shield;
your reward
shall be very great."
Could God
be trusted?
Abram called God
on it: where is
your promise?
And God took him
and showed him
the stars in the sky...
"That many
will be
your descendants."
And Abram
believed God,
and God reckoned it to him
as righteousness.

The faith that Abram
was called to,
is no peaceful, pious acceptance,
but a hard fought
and deeply argued
conviction,
resting
on the promises
of God.⁽¹⁾

The faith we are called to
is not just peaceful, pious
acceptance,
but a hard fought
and deeply argued
conviction,
resting
on the promises
of God.

Lent
is a time
to wrestle
with God.
To look at God
face to face,
not simply
as some ghostly
figment
of our imaginations, but as the holy One
who is Other
than us.
To struggle
with the promises
and ask the difficult questions.

We wrestle, these forty days,
we wrestle
our way
to the cross,
and there,
with Christ,
risk everything,
on the hope
that God
can be trusted -
a hope
which is grounded
in the promises of God - promises of presence,
promises of healing,
promises of forgiveness,
promises
of resurrection. Amen.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
11 March 2001

___________________________

1. Walter Brueggeman, Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 141.