SCRIPTURE: Romans 4:1—5, 13-17
TEXT: 17as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) —in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. THEME: We all become a community through our faith in God. INTRODUCTION Lent is a season that prepares us to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at Easter. The Lenten lectionary readings remind us of the capabilities of God through Jesus and calls us to live the life Jesus has shown us through his love for us. We are using the Apostle Paul’s letters to the church in Rome for our lenten journey. Lent traditionally assumes we have something to work on spiritually and begins with the ashes of God’s creating and the ashes of our mortality. Often there is a fast where we give up a vice to focus on prayer, reading God’s word or add on a healthy/spiritual habit. Last week’s reading turned our attention to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and God’s grace through forgiveness. This week we are looking at the faith of Abraham and Sara. SCRIPTURE There is a difference between belief and faith. We have those experiences in our lives when we believe God and Jesus, and times when we struggle. As Rachel Held Evans puts it, “Some days I believe in God; other days, I want to believe in God.” Our lives, as illustrated by the lives of Abraham and Sara are a series of faith, belief, unbelief and faith. Paul’s main warning in this passage is to keep us away from acts of devotion that gives to us a false sense of God obligating God’s self to us. This sort of arrangement would cancel out God’s gracious love that forgives us and leave us subject to living in obedience to the 10 Commandments. The 10 Commandments are a description of how God wants us to live in relationship with God and each other. Simple enough but hard to do. Our humanness gets in the way from being the people we would want to be. The writing in this passage is a little dense. It is written as a legal argument for grace over works. The logic follows but we need a few helps to decipher it. Whenever it mentions righteousness, or justification is actually talking about a relationship with God. As we discussed this in last week’s sermon, grace a matter of unmerited forgiveness and not as a result of superhuman obedience. The story of Abraham and Sara is the calling out of a couple who are sensitive to the movement of God. They are called out from the community they are in to be in relationship with God and be the parents of the people of God, and heirs to real estate. Abraham and Sara believe God and gather their belongings and servants and away they go to parts unknown. The other challenge is that they are an older couple, meaning beyond their child bearing years but are willing to live believing in God and God’s promises for them to be parents. The rest of their lives is epic; struggle, doubt, mistrust, MacGyvering God’s promise, jealousy, deception, manipulation, fear, strange visitors, birth, sacrifice, Evil choices, following along with evil choices and through everything God’s promises come true. There were many times they disqualified themselves from God’s promises, but they were not. God was committed to them and loved them all along the way. This is very similar to the story of Adam and Eve and how much God loved them and treated Adam and Eve with compassion, forgiveness, grace, life, commitment and promise. Sacrifices in the Bible have been to show devotion, remorse and appreciation but never as a straight-out payment to settle a debt. When our relationships are based on love and forgiveness, we don’t need sacrifices. But when they are based on payments, reckoning, and sacrifice then they are contractual and maybe not really relationships, we are coworkers, employees and staff but not partners, family or the people of God. The last verse of this passage speaks to this as it says, “God gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist.” In regards to Jesus, whom Paul is writing about, God through Jesus gives the dead resurrected life and calls a people, community, a church into existence. A community of those who believe God, a community of people who live with the reality of the resurrection over death. A community of those who have been forgiven by grace and love and not by works or sacrifice. APPLICATION What kind of community is God trying this build through our belief? Jesus’ ministry invited all people to be part of the People of God. From carpenters, homemakers, lawyers, synagogue leaders, tax collectors, rabbis, sinners, infirm, lepers and shepherds. From temple worship with sacrifices, debates over the Law on the synagogue floor, in a litigious setting, to the church living their relationship with God and forming communities of respect, grace, diversity, love, caring and forgiveness. Paul is writing to the church in Rome, but his words are good for us to hear 2000 years later and worlds apart. We get Paul’s vision of the kind of community God wants us to build, as the People of God from the letters he writes to the church. Each generation needs to build on the foundations laid for them and interpret the gospel for the next generation. For the last few generations, we been passing down the same vision of the church. But with the pandemic, scientific advancements, technological advancements, our social climate, climate change and the political dishevel, our faith has become irrelevant, judgmental and mean to the upcoming skeptical, ‘not doing it just because you say so’ generation. We need to get back to the basis of grace and faith. Forgiveness and the inclusion of everyone. To make accommodations of welcome and to see the image of God in each human being. The fruits of Holy Spirit and its gifts are offered to us for building up the church. For having the abilities, we need to participate in God’s mission among us. Jesus talked about our neighbors, which becomes those we see who we can be kind to. These are the kind of things I see our church doing. Getting back to basics, praying, reading the word of God with new eyes. And questioning our traditional practices and being willing to move on a journey of discovery and faith. CONCLUSION “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” Hebrews 11:1 NIV. The work of ‘being sure of what we hope for’ is an ongoing process of questioning, change, exploration, experimentation, consultation, prayer, listening, modification, adjustment and practice. We have mistaken faith for stubbornness to one idea. With each new discovery, answered question, we adjust our belief and strengthen our faith. “Being certain of what we do not see” is filled with grace, missed steps, as well as mistakes, allowances for forgiveness and correction so we can get closer to the truth of God. Faith is not bull headed keeping of religious ideals, but tenacious in holding our doubts and moving us towards having more days where believe than days that we don’t. A life of journeying with God, not working for God. And the building of a community of traveling companions. Faith is the process of having certainty of what we know and hope for, as our belief, has us journeying with God.
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