Lent 2
March 16, 2014
Lessons
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=25
In the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In the north of Denmark is the
medieval city of Aalborg, famous in past times for its thriving trade in salted
herring. And in this small, quiet
Danish city in the 19th century, the Bishop of Aalborg had a
problem. Actually, it was a
problem that involved the whole of the Lutheran Church of Denmark, but it was a
unique problem in Aalborg. At that
time, the bishop of Aalborg, Peter Kierkegaard, found himself often needing to
speak out against the secular and anti-Christian writings of a difficult and
prolific writer. This was a messy
thing for the bishop of Aalborg because that writer happened to be his younger
brother, Soren Kierkegaard. Peter
frequently had to choose between relationship and faith.
The Danish bishops claimed that
Soren called into question the tenets and traditions of the Church, and high on
the bishops’ list of criticisms was Soren’s short work entitled Fear and
Trembling. That book is an
exploration of Abraham, and a review of faith: the virtue for which Abraham is
so well known. And it is Abraham
who in ancient times, in 19th century Denmark, and even today the
Church still lifts up as a model of faith. There is no one else in the Church’s history who is so
esteemed as a perfect example of faith.
Soren Kierkegaard thought, however, that faith might be more complicated
than Abraham’s example of unquestioned obedience.
In the first lesson from Genesis,
the epistle reading from the Letter to the Romans, and in the Gospel this
morning, we hear Sacred Scripture mention faith. The readings remember Abraham for his faith for a number of
reasons, but in particular for a story that unfolds on the slopes of Mt Moriah,
when God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac; Abraham readies a knife
meant for his son, but is stopped at the last moment and given a ram to
sacrifice in Isaac’s stead.
Kierkegaard criticizes the Church for holding up Abraham and his faith
based on this act.
Even though the Church has used that
passage from Genesis to instruct about the virtue of faith, it’s actually a brief
story, and includes few details. So,
in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard paints in a hypothetical background for
us. In one passage about what may
have unfolded, Kierkegaard writes that Abraham’s faith in God is so absolute
that requires that he follow God’s command to sacrifice Isaac. But, Kierkegaard wonders if Abraham worries
that, as Isaac is laid out for sacrifice he will kick and scream and curse
their God who asked for the sacrifice, that Isaac will lose his faith even as
he is given up according to his God’s desire.
And so, Kierkegaard wonders if Abraham
so valued his faith in God and so valued Isaac’s faith in God, that Abraham
would do anything to preserve both.
Kierkegaard writes:
The two of them climbed Mt Moriah,
but Isaac did not understand Abraham’s words about sacrifice. Then for an instant, Abraham turned
away from Isaac, and when Isaac again saw Abraham’s face it was changed, his
glance was wild, his form was horror.
He seized Isaac by the throat, threw him to the ground, and said,
“Stupid boy, do you then suppose that I am your protector? Do you suppose that
this is God’s bidding? NO! It is my desire.” Then Isaac trembled
and cried out in his terror “O God in heaven, have compassion on me! If I have
no father on earth, then you are my father in heaven!” And Abraham in a low voice whispered to
himself “O lord in heaven, I thank
you. After all, it is better for him to believe I am a monster, rather than
that he should lose faith in you”.
Faith, Kierkegaard thought, was not
something to be valued above all other things; faith, Kierkegaard thought, was
not a simple thing.
In today’s Gospel, Christ told
Nicodemus that faith was not a simple thing. Nicodemus came at night, secretly, asking about how the
works that Christ was doing, how those works were part of God’s plan. Christ immediately avoids the issue and
changes the topic to what is truly at the heart of the discussion: faith. Christ responds to Nicodemus that
seeing the kingdom of God, that having faith, is only possible if you are born
again, if you’re born from above.
Faith, Christ tells Nicodemus, is taking on the mind of God, and seeing
in a new way how God is working in the world and in our lives.
We can often think of faith in God
like Kierkegaard wondered if Abraham may have thought of it: as something so
precious that it must be protected at all costs, as something that must never
be defiled, that it might be better to destroy a relationship but keep our
faith intact, better to maintain utmost fidelity than to fall, better to obey
than to love.
But hear again how Christ describes
faith, not as a litmus test, not as a standard to be obeyed: Christ, in a dark
garden, whispered to Nicodemus that faith was being born from above.
In Scripture, we are often given
images and recollections of God that seem entirely contradictory. In Genesis, God demanded Abraham kill
and burn his son Isaac to show that he was truly devoted to God. We hear of God bringing death and
destruction, vengeful armies, pestilence, disease. We hear of God sending angels to bear us up lest we dash our
foot against a stone, of our God who loves us like a mother, of our God who so
loved the world that he sent his only Son. How can all of these stories, all of these images be of the
same God? Of the same God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Of the
same God of Nicodemus? Of the same
God of Jesus?
If we accept that faith is only as
deep as the last command we received, as a list of instructions, then these
different stories of God stand as a testimony that our faith is hollow, nothing
but the dust from which we are made and to which we will return. But, if we are born from above, if we
begin to see ourselves and our lives as God sees us then it becomes so much
clearer. The stories of an angry
God, of a compassionate God, of a jealous God, of a self-sacrificing God are
stories given to us, true stories written by those who lived these experiences
of God. They are given to us because
we can be angry, we can be compassionate, we are jealous, we are
self-sacrificing. God, in his
perfection, reveals himself to us, by being more than only one thing, just as
we are more than only one thing.
God is perfect, and holy, and the source of all goodness, but that
doesn’t mean that he is not complex, that he’s not messy.
We are messy, too.
This is our second Sunday in Lent,
and we do well to recall that the season of Lent follows immediately after the
season of Epiphany. In Epiphany,
the lessons focus on the divine and miraculous nature of God’s work in the
world, especially in his work in Christ: water is changed into wine, Christ
converses with Moses and Elijah in dazzling light, wise men follow a
supernatural sign to the east. And
then Lent opens with this perfect and dazzling Christ doing what? Being tempted…being pulled toward
denying God and accepting power from the Devil. Our God is not just one thing: he is both dazzling and able
to be tempted, just as we can be both dazzling and also be tempted.
Abandoning faith as a list of commands
that must be always believed and blindly obeyed, abandoning that and replacing
it with a birth from above means that we accept that we are both dazzling and
tempted. When we are in the midst
of our achievements and highest points, we must also remember our sins,
remember the sufferings of our neighbors.
And when we’ve hit rock bottom, when all seems lost, we remember that we
are loved, that a ram was given in place of our sacrifice.
Epiphany is about God’s glory and about
majesty shining forth in the world.
Lent is about God’s temptation, his suffering, and his loss. And Lent is about our temptation, our
suffering, our loss. It’s about
all of that, coupled with our love, with our glory. Lent is about the very reality that our lives, our God are
messy.
We may think about Lent as a time
of penitence: breast-beating, crawling, weeping penitence and self-denial for
our manifold sins and wickedness.
However, it is impossible to be penitent unless the first step we take
is to be honest. Honesty requires
us to admit and cherish that we are beloved children of God, that we are given
life as a free and beautiful gift, and that we have often betrayed that gift
through negligence and selfishness.
Being honest means that we accept our lives as being messy, accept that
no list of rules can make us holy, no list can be copyrighted as faith.
Honesty also should lead us to find
faith, not only in obedience as Abraham found it, but also finding faith by
being born from above, by taking on the mind of God in Christ, and seeing as
God sees. For God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not
perish but may have everlasting life.
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