Patrick Comerford
Sunday next [25 February 2018] is the Second Sunday in Lent, and the readings in the Revised Common Lectionary are: Genesis 17: 1-7 and 15-16; Psalm 22: 23-31; Romans 4: 13-25; Mark 8: 31-38.
There is a link to the readings HERE.
Introduction:
Lent in Ireland has traditionally been a time for making resolutions – resolutions that are often like New Year’s resolutions. We start out well, giving up drinks, or sweets, or smoking or chocolate – at least for the first week or two.
But now that we are into the second week of Lent, I imagine Lenten resolutions are much forgotten already, just like New Year’s resolutions.
How many of us can remember what your New Year’s resolution was this year?
And if we can remember it, have we stuck to it?
How many of us are continuing on the Lenten journey?
Yet, we often start doing things like this, not as spiritual disciplines, but to reshape, remould ourselves in an image and likeness that I or my friends will find more acceptable.
And when we fail, when we go back to our old habits, how often we feel precisely that – that I’m a failure, that I am worth a little less in the eyes of others, that I’m not quite as close to perfection as I thought I might be
And we are constantly reminded in advertising and through the media of the need to be perfect. If only I drove this car, had that new DVD player for home viewings, cooked in that well-stocked kitchen, or drank that tempting new wine or beer, then I would be closer to others seeing me like a perfect Greek god.
Yet the lectionary readings next Sunday are a call to put aside the struggle to conform to outside demands and pressures, and instead to journey in faith with God.
Genesis 17:1-7,15-16
On the First Sunday in Lent [18 February 2018], we heard a story of journey and covenant when we read about Noah, his family, and the journey in the ark that ends with a new covenant not only with Noah, not just with his family, but with all humanity and all creation.
This story the following Sunday is a story about the next major journey in Genesis that ends with a new covenant, not just with Abraham, not just with his family, but with all humanity and all creation.
Abraham’s journey in Genesis is a struggle to better understand God and to discern his place in God’s plan. Along the way, Abraham learns that no one individual has a monopoly on God’s covenant.
A covenant is between two parties, each of whom have benefits and obligations; it is made by both and can be terminated by either.
However, God’s covenant with Abram is different. It is God who makes the covenant (verses 2, 6) and God who and establishes it (verse 7). Most of the obligations rest with God, and most of the benefits are designed for Abram. God promises to make Abram ‘the ancestor of a multitude of nations’ (verse 4), giving him ‘numerous’ descendants (verse 2) and giving him for ever the land of Canaan where he is now an alien (verse 8).
It is not clear how God is to benefit. But Abram has one obligation, to ‘walk before [God] and be blameless’ (verse 1). In return, God will never break the pact (verse 7), and it applies to Abraham and his descendants.
As a sign of this covenant, all males will be circumcised soon after birth, so that they will carry the sign or mark of this covenant as part of their life-long journey, their life-long identity. A man who is born a Jew can never forget that he is born a Jew. As the poet-singer Leonard Cohen sings in his poem/song, ‘First we take Manhattan:’
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens (guided, guided)
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
Abram becomes Abraham; his change in name is significant (verse 5): the gift of a new name signifies a new relationship, a new status, a new stage in life.
Sarai shares in God’s blessing; she too has a change of name and becomes Sarah (verse 15). She will be blessed with fertility; she too will ‘give rise to nations’ (v. 16) and kings (verse 16).
But Sarai is childless and elderly and has not given Abram an heir. Abraham laughs in disbelief at the idea that Sarah is going to have a son (verse 17). He will be named Isaac, meaning ‘May God laugh in delight.’
Not only will Sarah have a child, but Abraham and Sarah will be the ancestors of a people that shall share in this covenant, and shall be the ancestors of the Messiah.
The story of Joseph, Mary and Jesus is deeply woven into the story of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac. We too can laugh with God, for we have been incorporated into a covenantal relationship with God through Christ.
We are to be a people who are peaceful and a blessing to all. We are to be a people who go and a people who find God out in the world. We are a people who have a covenant with God, who see God at work in the world, and who show this to the world.
This story is also a counter-balance to tendencies to overemphasise personal salvation. The story of salvation is not about a personal covenant but about a covenant with a whole family, that expands to a whole people, and that then widens out to the whole of humanity. There are no individual, solo Christians, we are always in partnership with God and with others who are invited into that covenant.
Psalm 22: 23-31
This psalm is a prayer for deliverance from illness. The psalmist, who is gravely ill, feels that God has forsaken him. But he offers thanksgiving in the Temple and in this portion of the psalm he comes to the conclusion that God hears the voice of the poor and the hungry (verse 26). God is the God of all people and nations, to the ends of the earth, and the God of the generations to come, a people yet unborn (verse 31).
Romans 4: 13-25
Earlier in this Epistle (Chapter 2-3), Saint Paul has argued that through the Gospel, it is faith that brings humanity into harmony with God. Now he considers Abraham as an example. At the time, it was believed that God’s blessings came to Abraham because he kept the Law of the Covenant.
Here, however, Saint Paul argues that Abraham was blessed because he believed, because he had faith that he would be the father of a nation and a source of blessing for ‘all ... families’ (Genesis 12: 3). Those who are part of God’s covenant and family are not those who keep the law, but those who have faith in God.
Our relationship with God is founded on faith (verse 16), and on God’s free gift of love or grace. If it was based on law, we would all break the law continually, and find ourselves outside God’s covenant. But it is based on faith, and so Abraham is the spiritual ancestor of us all (verse 17; see Genesis 17: 5).
Sarah becomes the mother of Isaac because of God’s promise and because of this faith. Contrary to expectations, Abraham, who had every reason to doubt that he would become a father, believed because of the hope given by God’s promise, his faith grew stronger as he thanked God for this gift (verse 20), and he found a right relationship with God (verse 22).
For Saint Paul, Abraham is an archetype of faithfulness, but not because of what he did. For Saint Paul, faith is much more than keeping the law – it is about accepting God’s gift, about keeping faith in God’s promise. God loves us because God has created us worthy of God’s love.
We may choose to live life differently, but we can never be perfect. But we can freely receive God’s promise, God’s love, and God’s mercy, and our faith is our response to that promise.
Mark 8: 31-38
We have been reading about the journey of Abraham, and the promise that goes with being faithful on that journey. Now Jesus and the disciples are on the journey from Bethsaida to the villages of Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8: 27) in today’s Golan Heights and then a centre of the cult of Pan, from an area inhabited by Jews, by people of the Covenant, to an area that is Greek-speaking and inhabited by many Gentiles.
On the way, some of the disciples reveal that they are not quite sure who Jesus is. Some may think he is another John the Baptist or Elijah, or another prophet. But Peter recognises that Jesus is the promised Messiah (Mark 8: 29), even though he cannot yet know the meaning of this declaration of faith, or the cost of discipleship that it implies.
Jesus then speaks openly about his forthcoming death and resurrection. But Peter, who has just confessed his faith in Christ, now takes him aside to rebuke him, only to be rebuked himself. When Peter impetuously rejects Christ’s teaching, he is told that he is under the influence of the devil: he is relying on human values, not divine ones (verse 33).
Yet, Peter’s reaction is a normal reaction. Who would want to continue on a journey like this, to face a short-term future like this, without knowing the long-term promises, the full promises of God?
Christ then describes true discipleship: first, a disciple must renounce self-centeredness (verse 34) and follow him. Those who are prepared to give even their lives for his sake and for the sake of spreading the good news (verse 35) will find true life. But those who opt for material well-being deny their true selves and lose out (verses 35-37).
There is a cost to discipleship, but the challenge to take up the Cross and follow Christ is open to the crowd, not just to the disciples, is open to Gentiles and not just Jews, is open to all (see verses 34-38).
God in Christ has come to enfold humanity. The cross will not stop the proclamation of the Good News, nor will it keep salvation history from breaking into the cosmos.
So often, in the face of criticism, the Christian response is either to shut down or to retreat to a different understanding of God and Jesus. But Christ tells the people that if they want to follow him on the journey, there is a cost to discipleship.
We are challenged on this Second Sunday in Lent to take up our cross and follow Christ on that journey.
Christianity cannot be reduced to an individual mental or philosophical decision. It is a journey with Christ and with not only the disciples but with the crowd, the many, who are also invited to join that journey.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer distinguishes between cheap grace and costly grace, and reminds us of the ‘Cost of Discipleship’ Some reflections: the Cost of Discipleship
Saint Mark’s Gospel next Sunday reminds us of our failings in discipleship, in taking up the cross. How often we want God to be a god made in our image and likeness, rather than us being shaped in God’s image and likeness.
And that is how the disciples behave in this Gospel reading. They want Jesus to be a messiah who will meet their expectations. When Jesus starts telling his disciples what sort of demands are being laid on them if they want to be his followers, they react with shock and horror at what he has to say.
They were not expecting a counter-cultural Messiah, a Messiah who would be rejected by the social and religious leaders of the day. They were expecting a lot more than that. And they were hoping that the coming of the Messiah would make things easier and more comfortable rather than more making things more difficult and more demanding.
Peter takes Jesus aside and gives him a good ticking off. After all, who did this Jesus think he was? If he was going to be the Messiah, he had better start behaving like one, like one that had been expected to act … to act with power and command.
When we find we fall short of other people’s expectations, it is often not because of who we are, but because of other people’s expectations – false expectations – of us.
How often have you heard someone say, ‘I’m surprised to hear you say that,’ or ‘That’s not the way I expected you to behave’?
And how often do we do that to God?
How often do we pray to God expecting God to do something? And if we do not get the answer to our prayers, we blame God for not answering me, for not being God in my image and likeness – instead of praying to God and asking to be more in God’s image and likeness?
The beginning of the creation story is that we are made in God’s image and likeness. The beginning of the Gospel stories is that God in Christ took on our image and likeness. Now Lent, in part, is about preparing to accept that in taking on our true image and likeness.
God in Christ totally identifies with us – with all that is difficult in life, with all that is messy and dirty in our lives, with all that is painful and gross in my life – to the point of actually dying in the most messy, dirty, painful and gross way possible.
If Peter knew what was ahead of him, he might have been even stronger in rebuking Christ in this Gospel reading. But the triumph comes not in getting what we want, not in engineering things so that God gives us what we desire and wish for, so that we get a Jesus who does the things we want him to do. The triumph comes in a few weeks’ time, at Easter, in the Resurrection.
True discipleship and true prayer means making God’s priorities my priorities: the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the isolated, the marginalised, the victims, the unloved. It that is difficult, nobody said that being a Christian was going to be easy, that being a Christian would not cost anything.
As the German martyr and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer might have put it, being a disciple means having to pay the cost of discipleship. There is no cheap Christianity and there is no cheap grace.
Liturgical resources:
Liturgical colour: Violet.
Penitential Kyries:
In the wilderness we find your grace:
you love us with an everlasting love.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
There is none but you to uphold our cause;
our sin cries out and our guilt is great.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Heal us, O Lord, and we shall be healed;
Restore us and we shall know your joy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Collect:
Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
Grant to all those who are admitted
into the fellowship of Christ’s religion,
that they may reject those things
that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things
as are agreeable to the same;
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lenten Collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Introduction to the Peace:
Being justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5: 1, 2)
Preface:
Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who was in every way tempted as we are yet did not sin;
by whose grace we are able to overcome all our temptations:
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Creator of heaven and earth,
we thank you for these holy mysteries
given us by our Lord Jesus Christ,
by which we receive your grace
and are assured of your love,
which is through him now and for ever.
Blessing:
Christ give you grace to grow in holiness,
to deny yourselves,
and to take up your cross and follow him:
Suggested hymns:
The hymns suggested for the Second Sunday in Lent (Year B) in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling, include:
Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16:
545, Sing of Eve and sing of Adam
323, The God of Abraham praise
Psalm 22: 23-31
581, I, the Lord of sea and sky
8, The Lord is King! lift up your voice
493, Ye servants of God, your master proclaim
Romans 4: 13-25
418, Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face
545, Sing of Eve and sing of Adam
244, There is a green hill far away
Mark 8: 31-38
608, Be still and know that I am God
93, I danced in the morning when the world was begun
94, In the name of Jesus
588, Light of the minds that known him
59, New every morning is the love
108, Praise to the Holiest in the height
599, ‘Take up thy cross’, the Saviour said
605, Will you come and follow me
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