A Journey Into Covenant: Trusting (Lent 4)

Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16 & Mark 8: 31-33

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Roger Lynn

March 22, 2020

4th Sunday in Lent

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God’s desire is to be in relationship with us. We find this truth revealed throughout all of scripture, from the opening verses of Genesis right on through to the closing verses of Revelation. Down through the centuries, people of faith have experienced God reaching out to embrace us and walk with us and be a part of our lives. It is foundational to our faith and at the heart of our understanding of Jesus’ mission and message. To put it in theological terms, God seeks to establish and maintain a covenant with all of humanity.

There are a variety of factors which affect the ways we respond to this covenantal desire of God’s, both as individuals and as a faith community. We must be open to an awareness of God in our lives and in our world. We must be sensitive to what God might be saying to us and to where God might be leading us. But we must also trust God in the process. Otherwise faith becomes little more than an intellectual exercise which has no real effect on the quality and character of our lives.

Abraham provides us with a wonderful example of both the absence and the presence of trust. Abram, as he was known in the days before his life was forever changed by his encounter with God, was 75 years old when he first became aware of God’s active presence in his life. He came to understand that God was calling him to leave his home and journey to a new land, where he would become the father of a great nation. And despite several serious reasons to question the validity of this promise from God, such as the fact that he was 75 and his wife was 65 and they were childless, Abram responded. He packed up his household and his family and they departed for the land to which God was sending them. Such a move required a tremendous amount of trust – that it really was God who was calling, that the message really had been correctly understood, and that God could be counted on to hold up God’s end of the bargain. But trust is not a one time event – it is an ongoing process. Covenant is not a transaction – it is a relationship. So, along the way, Abram experienced ebbs and flows in the strength of his trust. As time went on and still no children seemed to be forthcoming, he attempted to take control of the situation. He used his wife’s slave, Hagar, to provide him with the son which his wife seemed unable to provide. But God had something else in mind for Abram and Sarai. There was still a child in their future. What was required was trust. So the process continued. When Abram was 99, almost a quarter-century after he first felt God’s claim on his life, he heard God’s voice once again. It was the same message. God’s desires had not changed. And still Abraham struggled with the issue of trust. After being reminded once again that it would be with his wife, Sarah, that the promise of a child would be fulfilled, Abraham’s response was to laugh. And thus it is that we see played out in Abraham’s life the tug-of-war struggle between faithful trusting and self-centered control. And we see God’s patient faithfulness in bearing with us in the midst of that struggle.

Several thousand years later, two of Abraham and Sarah’s descendants find themselves playing out that same struggle of faith, between trust and control. Jesus has just finished asking who people were saying that he was and who his disciples thought he was. This is the occasion when Peter comes up with the insightful response that Jesus is the Christ – God’s anointed Messiah. So, with that insight serving as the backdrop, Jesus begins to explain to them what it will mean for him to be the Messiah – there is pain and suffering and death in his future. And it is at this point when Peter chooses to set aside trust and declare that he knows better than Jesus what it means to be the Messiah. He joins Abraham and all the rest of us who have ever demonstrated that trust is something we must grow into. Sometimes we can let it rise to the top and other times we bury it under layers of our own need to be in control. Jesus’ response reveals much about how God seeks to deal with us. He challenges and corrects Peter’s arrogance. But he doesn’t give up on him. Time and time again you can almost hear Jesus saying to Peter and the other disciples, “OK, let’s try this one more time.”

And so, two thousand years later, we find ourselves in a similar situation. God is still seeking to be in covenantal relationship with us. God is still calling us to move from where we are to where God would lead us. God is still presenting us with a model for faithful living. And we join with Abraham and Peter in being called to trust. How will we respond? Will we risk stepping beyond our comfort zones as we take on some challenge which we believe God is calling us to meet? Will we set aside our fear as we seek to live in ways which we understand to be faithful, but which frighten us nonetheless? Will we open ourselves to the possibility of a deep and intimate relationship with the God who is alive and actively present in our midst, even when such a relationship requires that we let go of the tight grip of control which we strive to maintain on our lives? Will we trust God enough to begin journeying into uncharted territory when we cannot see the end of the road? As with Abraham and Peter, our answers are likely to be rather tentative and uneven. There will be times when such trust comes easy and there will be times when we must begin again because we have panicked and grabbed back control. But hopefully what we will discover along the way is that God is, indeed, faithful and can be trusted. And in the process we will begin to live into the kind of covenantal relationship which God has desired with us all along.