The Adventurous Lectionary \u2013 The Second Sunday in Lent \u2013 March 9, 2025
\nGenesis 15:1-12, 17-18
\nPsalm 27
\nPhilippians 3:17-4:1
\nLuke 13:31-35<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s readings join hope, fear, and faith. They mirror our time of struggle and anxiety as the nation seems to be ruled by whim and bullying rather than policy and partnership.\u00a0 Many congregants have seen the nation they loved disintegrate over the past two months, and now see our nation\u2019s leadership as the \u201cbad guys\u201d on the world stage, with no hope in sight that they will change and fear that everything we thought was best about our nation is dying before our eyes.<\/p>\n
In the Genesis reading, 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. Robert Jay Lifton asserts that we live by several images of immortality \u2013 forms of symbolic immortality \u2013 biological, creative, natural, theological, and experiential or mystical. Lifton asserts that the most primal image of immortality is biological. We want to leave an heir, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, to carry on our legacy, achievements, and blood line.\u00a0 Abram\u2019s hope for immortality is biological and despite the fact that he has a male child by Hagar only a male child conceived with Sarah will do.\u00a0 He must have a child from his marriage to Sarah or his name will be lost in the sands of time.<\/p>\n
He is spiritually lost, realizing with his death, everything he loves will perish. In that moment of despair, God tells him to look at the heavens and count the stars. God counsels him to look beyond himself and his self-interest and survival to see the deeper realities of life. He is star stuff. His origins are beyond his imagination and long after he is gone, God\u2019s world will continue. He is counseled to trust the Creative Wisdom of the Universe, rather than his own fears and mortality. God\u2019s path is everlasting and infinite, and his life is part of this incredible journey. God promises that\u00a0 a child is coming to Abram and Sarah, and prepare for it. But, Abram must first recognize the wonder of God\u2019s universe within which this child will be born. The same applies to our own anxieties about the future. We need a sense of divine grandeur to help us deal with the challenges of our time; infinite hope to help us, as Martin Luther King asserts, to respond to finite failure.<\/p>\n
Abram believes and God responds. In the spirit of William James\u2019 \u201cWill to Believe,\u201d our trust in God opens up new possibilities and energies. A way will be made where we see no way. New life emerges amid death and hope amid failure. This is not some easy \u201cprosperity gospel,\u201d but living faith born of facing the complexities of life and discovering that within our limitations new possibilities are born.\u00a0 The lively, reckless confidence in the grace of God, as Martin Luther says.<\/p>\n
Psalm 27 emerges from the battlefield of life. This is no psalm for the faint-hearted. \u201cThe LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?\u201d Fear and threat are real for the Psalmist as they are fornus: evil doers abound. They are nipping at our heels and denying our God and our way of life. Yet, God lives and will have the final word. We can trust God because God will outlast every enemy. In the valley of the shadow, God is our companion.<\/p>\n
The results are not always clear. There are no guarantees that we will be successful, or that our side will triumph in the challenges of everyday life and responding to the machinations of the US president and his minions, and the mortality rate remains 100% or in our social context. Tempted to give up hope and focus on the micro alone, trust in God places our efforts in the context of a larger story, God\u2019s vision of Shalom. Trusting God, we know that \u201cdeep in my heart, I do believe, that we shall overcome some day.\u201d In that spirit, we can proclaim, \u201cwe are not afraid,\u201d despite the words of fear mongers, the obliviousness of governmental leaders to climate change, and our own personal crises.<\/p>\n
Paul counsels the Philippians to \u201cstand firm\u201d in the faith. We are citizens of two worlds, and the divine permeates everyday life. We live in the embodied world, but we also have a heavenly perspective. If God is omnipresent and omniactive, then we are already in heaven, regardless of what is going on today. We have everlasting life is the passing moment. We must face \u201cnecessary losses\u201d (Judith Viorst) and threats to our safety and well-being. But we can stand firm because this world is filled with divine wisdom and glory. Our heavenly home shapes our earthly commitments. We trust in the future and focus on today. Our times are in God\u2019s hand, and when we trust God, even in adversity, we can experience God\u2019s realm on earth as it is in heaven. To believe that \u201call shall be well\u201d takes great faith, but it is the faith that allows us to move mountains and share with God our vocation as pathfinders making a way where we thought there was no way.\u00a0 As children of heavenly purpose, we realize that God is God, and we aren\u2019t, and God is God, and Trump and Musk aren\u2019t!\u00a0 They are creatures of the moment, who will be borne away by the ever-flowing stream of life in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n
In the gospel reading, Jesus is warned that his life is in danger. This is no news to him. Like Martin Luther King in Memphis, he has been to the mountaintop and is aware of the dangers ahead of him. Herod is out to get him. Despite the threat, Jesus continues to teach. He must follow his vocation and in following his vocation to seek salvation for humankind, he finds his strength. His life gains perspective. It is part of God\u2019s story of salvation. In his book born of the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor Frankl notes Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s affirmation, \u201cThose who have a \u2018why\u2019 to live can bear with almost any \u2018how\u2019.\u201d Jesus\u2019 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\u2019s purposes for him were more enduring that Herod\u2019s hatred.<\/p>\n
Further, the God that inspires Jesus \u2013 the God that sends Jesus \u2013 is filled with empathy for the human condition, feeling our pain as well as our joy, and willing to suffer for our personal and social healing.\u00a0 God is the Great Empath, touched by the world, changed by the world, and active in responding to the world.<\/p>\n
Facing the desperate and apparently unsolvable crises of our time, let us not give up heart. Let us not be afraid. But let us respond with hope and courage to the struggles of day to day life, global uncertainty, our fears for our nation\u2019s survival. changing demographics and their impact on the church, shrinking congregational budgets, climate change and the rise of racism, and our own personal dramas. Let us count the stars in the sky, knowing that we are part of God\u2019s story and that by our lives, we help heal the world.<\/p>\n
Giving birth to a new future isn\u2019t easy.\u00a0 The birth pangs of new creation are painful and turn everything upside down.\u00a0 But, the God of the Galaxies is with us, companioning us and challenging us to be God\u2019s companions in healing the world.<\/p>\n
++++<\/p>\n
Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD (https:\/\/www.westmorelanducc.org\/<\/a>) and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary. He is the author of over 80 books including: \u201cHomegrown Mystics: Restoring the Soul of Our Nation through the Healing Wisdom of America\u2019s Mystics\u201d (Amazon.com: Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America\u2019s Visionaries: 9781625249142: Epperly, Bruce: Books<\/a>) \u201cJesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet \u201c(Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet: Epperly, Bruce: 9781625248732: Amazon.com: Books<\/a>), Saving Progressive Christianity to Save the Planet\u201d( Saving Progressive Christianity to Save the Planet: Epperly, Bruce G: 9781631999215: Amazon.com: Books<\/a>), and his most recent book, \u201cGod of the Growing Edge: Whitehead and Thurman on Theology, Spirituality and Social Change.\u201d (The God of the Growing Edge: Whitehead and Thurman on Theology, Spirituality, and Social Change: Epperly, Bruce G: 9781631999291: Amazon.com: Books<\/a> The God of the Growing Edge: Whitehead and Thurman on Theology, Spirituality, and Social Change: Epperly, Bruce G: 9781631999291: Amazon.com: Books<\/a>)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Adventurous Lectionary \u2013 The Second Sunday in Lent \u2013 March 9, 2025 Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 Psalm 27 Philippians 3:17-4:1 Luke 13:31-35 Today\u2019s readings join hope, fear, and faith. They mirror our time of struggle and anxiety as the nation seems to be ruled by whim and bullying rather than policy and partnership.\u00a0 Many congregants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":6466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1721,1247,35],"class_list":["post-6617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-immortality","tag-new-creation","tag-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\n