Year C
 Genesis 15:1-12,17-18
 Psalm 27
 Philippians 3:17-4:1
 Luke 13:31-35

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Things seem tenuous.

They seemed tenuous to Abram too…  it had been years since God promised to make of him a great nation…  and he continued childless…  and he wondered…  would the heir of his house be someone whose name appears nowhere else in scripture…  Eliezer of Damascus…  someone whom Abram may have adopted on the presumption…  that he would have no children of his own…  at a time when Abram himself…  according to Romans 4:19…  was about one hundred years old…  and who…  when he considered his own body…  was as good as dead…  and the concern he may have felt about Sarai’s seeming barrenness…

Yes…  things seemed tenuous… and Abram questioned God…  as he would increasingly learn to do…  and God took him outside to count the stars…  try as he might… and told him that his descendants would be as numerous…  and Abram believed God…  who reckoned it to him as righteousness…  Abram believed…  without any proof…  but with faith alone…  but even still…  to demonstrate the commitment…  God instructed Abram to prepare a sacrifice…

The ritual cutting of animals in half…  and passing between them is found both in the Bible and in Mesopotamia…  there’s a parallel in Jeremiah 34:17-22 which implies that the essence of the ritual is a self-curse…  those walking between the pieces will be like the dead animals if they violate the covenant…  and in today’s reading from Genesis…  it is God…  symbolized by the smoking fire pot…  and the flaming torch…  who invokes this self-curse as a way of demonstrating the commitment…  with God’s own life in the balance…  while nothing is said about any covenantal obligations on Abram’s part…

Things may have been tenuous for the Psalmist…  who lamented that he had to contend with evildoers…  and armies encamped against him… and wars rising up against him…  and false witnesses…  and those who spoke with malice…  but who also acknowledged that since God is his light and his salvation…  then there was no one to fear…  that he put his trust in God…  who speaks in the heart…  and asks us to seek God’s face… 

In his epistle…  Paul reminds the Philippians of a tenuous reality…  that they don’t have a lasting dwelling place here… that their true citizenship lies in heaven…  from where their Savior comes…  and that they ought put their faith in him…  since he can combat and overcome evil powers…  and can transform the body of humility…  into the body of Christ’s glory…

And in some ways…  the Pharisees in today’s reading…  seem to think Jesus’ safety is tenuous…  they sound like the Diablos…  the devil…  from last week…  who wanted to impose limits on Jesus’ boundlessness…  because if Jesus turned the stone into bread…  then he’d have bread…  but that’s all he’d have…

And if he worshipped the Diablos…  then he’d be able to rule the kingdoms of the world by division and accusation…  the way the kingdoms of the world really work…  and then that’s all he’d have…  because he’d lose the unity he experienced with the Godhead…

And the third and final test placed before him…  brought him to Jerusalem…  the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it…  where he is asked to throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple…  expecting that God would command God’s angels to protect him…  and this reminds me of how in the synoptics…  that Jesus is tested by the chief priests who say to him…  if you are the Messiah…  the Son of God…  save yourself and come down from the cross…  and we will believe you…  and they would have their proof…  but lose the opportunity to grow in faith…  and so if Jesus threw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple…  God would protect him… but God would also be stooping down to the devil’s level…  and God doesn’t have anything at all…  to prove…  to the embodiment of divisiveness…  not after that thing that happened with Job…

The Pharisees in today’s reading…  think Jesus’ safety is tenuous… because Herod wants to kill him…  and in response Jesus says…  it’s not happening today…  not yet…  wait until I’m in Jerusalem…  then Herod can have me…  because then…  my work here will be done…

And yet…  Jesus laments over Jerusalem…  and the times he desired to gather her children together…  but they were not willing…  and he compares them to chicks…  and himself to a mother hen…  and Jesus rightly names Herod as a fox…  and what do foxes do…  they go after hens…  but a hen’s baby chicks gather instinctually under their mother’s wings…  while Jerusalem’s children are human beings…  who God created with free will…  and more than once they chose a willful resistance … rather than a willing-ness…  to gather under Jesus’ wings of protection… 

Lent…  like Advent…  is a time of waiting…  and we need to ask ourselves…  what does it mean to wait… and for what are we waiting…  how does waiting go against our cultural norms…  and how do those norms create or contribute to our impatience…  so it’s become difficult for us to…  as the Psalmist instructs us…  wait patiently for the Lord…  we’re so steeped in the idea of…  don’t just stand there…  do something…  that it’s almost impossible for us to become steeped in the idea of…  don’t just do something…  stand there…  stand there long enough to realize that we’re standing in the presence of the Holy…  that we’re standing in the Word of God…  and if we would but listen…  we would hear God’s Word speaking to us…

Things seem tenuous…  God’s seeming silence is uncomfortable…  but we cannot bypass the discomfort of Lent…  and while it may feel as though we too are being tested…  while it may be…  that the collective group consciousness all around the world…  reflects so little of God’s light…  that there are wars and rumors of wars…  we are also being invited into a deeper faith…  because the prophet’s words speak to us as well…  and if the prophet’s criticism is ever intended to break down anything…  all it hopes to break down is resistance to God’s will…  it is compassionate…  like a mother hen…  who wishes nothing more than to gather her children…  and protect them from the foxes of the world…  and their lies…

Things seem tenuous…  but ultimately…  they’re not…  God is simply waiting on us…  to listen to the Spirit who loves and speaks to us…  and to embrace Jesus’ promises which free us from the bondage of fear and doubt…  so that we put our trust in God…  so that we hear God’s voice in our hearts… and so that we can finally see God…  face to face…