This is the text of the message I prepared for KSSM for Sunday 13th March 2022, the second Sunday in Lent.
God’s covenant with Abram is a promise of greatness, wealth and a heritage for generations to come. But Abram answers “what will you give me…my heir is some random in another country;” in other words what is the point of all this blessing when it either dies with me or is dispersed amongst the family of a household slave. But The LORD promises Abram his own family and Abram believes the LORD, in other words he accepts what God has said to be true and trustworthy, and it is on this basis that Abram is accredited righteousness (Genesis 15:6).
God’s desire for us is right relationship, and for God that relationship is most securely fastened when we believe God with complete trust: “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” as the 1980s Christian bumper-snicker says. So your righteousness is proportional to your trust in God; your righteousness is not dependent upon your theological statements, nor your acceptance of the Creeds nor the doctrine of infallibility. Your righteousness depends upon whether you trust God enough to take your hand off it, or put your hand to it, or whatever it is that God has set for you to put [God] to the test (Malachi 3:10b). I understand the word righteousness to mean primarily this, “to be in right relationship with God”. Righteousness as I understand it is not about being sinless, or being theologically correct (and politically incorrect), or morally perfect; these things if they are evident follow from the relationship with God, but they do not supersede it. To be righteous is not to be good, or pious, it is to be beloved by the Father and the Son as a daughter and a sister, or son and brother, and to live from that identity. Abram, Abraham was not useful to God because he was perfect, but because he was trusting and obedient. Your usefulness to God is dependent upon the same, not your “no” to sin but your “yes” to God’s invitation to action, and your acceptance of God’s reassurance when you ask for clarity or encouragement to go.
Our story from the Jesus Traditions today is an intriguing one, especially that first verse. In Luke 13:31 we read that some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here for Herod wants to kill you.” Do you find that interesting? Why do you find that interesting? Isn’t it because the Pharisees are supposed to be Jesus’ enemies and therefore they’d actually have been on the side of Herod and his assassins? So, why do Pharisees warn Jesus to flee? I find that interesting, because of course it’s not so black and white. The Pharisees are what we would today call “Evangelicals”, faithful people who love scripture and love God (in that order) and who are trying to live a righteous life through obedience to the Bible and to biblical traditions. Sometimes they missed the point of what God was doing, mainly because God was acting beyond what they were reading, and here is a case in point. Jesus tells the Pharisees, who I’m going to assume were nice people in this story and genuinely wanting Jesus to escape from his enemies, that I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work, (Luke 13:32). In other words, “look, I’m too busy doing the work of God to think about running away from the malicious yet stupid people arrayed against me”. Here is the righteousness of Jesus, trusting God that since his work was not yet done he was obligated to stay where he was, and that God would protect him not because he was being obedient (as if rescue is some kind of reward for being good) but that his confidence in God for the work he was doing was sufficient for God to be able to warn him off if God needed to. Thanks for your concern religious friends, but I’m actually pretty tuned in to the Father directly, and God hasn’t told me anything different than stay here and keep up with the healings and exorcisms. Jesus also had confidence in his hearing the wider plan, that he would only be killed in Jerusalem; here in a random highway town he would be okay. Later, in the Christian Traditions of Acts 23:11 and Acts 28:23-24 we find Paul speaking and acting with the same confidence, that God had promised him an audience with Caesar so there’s no worries when he’s imprisoned at Caesarea Maritima or shipwrecked in Malta. “No, sorry chaps, can’t actually be killed yet, still got kings to see and corpses to heal”. Not righteous because he is defiant and obedient, defiant and obedient because he trusts God’s promise absolutely; which is accredited to him as righteousness, the evidence that his relationship with The Father is tight and full.
Is this your righteousness? Is this how you see yourself as righteous before God: not that you are obedient and moral but that you are trusting and confident in your dependence?
In the opening verse of our story from the Hebrew traditions God says to Abram [d]o not be afraid…I am your shield; your reward will be very great, (Genesis 15:1), which with all that we have said I think is the key promise made to Abram. The covenant is for a land and for the descendants to fill it, and when the covenant is reviewed with Jacob there is the added part of those descendants being God’s special nation who will be an example of God to all of the other nations and tribes and language groups across the whole planet. The covenant we recognise is that there will always be a people called “Jews”, and there will always be a home for them in a land called “Israel”, the land of Jacob’s family (but not Esau’s nor Ishmael’s). That is the covenant, but the promise (if there actually is a different one) is the one where God promises to be trustworthy. I am your shield declares The LORD, God’s own self and the Angel Armies at The LORD’s command are your back-up Abram (Damien, whomever). And your reward will be very great not because you have been well behaved and relatively sinless, (with the cross dealing with the down-bits), but because you have trusted God and followed God without delay or caution and have therefore been able to enter most fully into the best that God has for you. You went beyond waving and smiling distance to approach God, beyond even hi-five or handshake distance, beyond even an embrace; when God called you in, you climbed right up onto God’s lap and snuggled under God’s beard and into God’s belly, your reward is the complete feeling of love and security and home-ness when other may only feel noticed. Only the most trusting child and the least afraid get to snuggle, and wouldn’t you rather snuggle with The Father than wave across a room? Do you trust God enough to approach, do you feel safe in God’s presence? That’s the definition of righteousness. And then of course the righteous are obedient and attentive; but its love freely given that calls you close and attentiveness that keeps you close, it’s not terrified obedience that earns you a place on God’s armrest.
After dismissing the worrisome Pharisees, kind-hearted but misguided that they are, Jesus goes on to lament over Jerusalem. He will be killed there, all prophets are, and that is where Herod (and the Sanhedrin) will finally nail him. But it’s not his impending death that prompts his lamentation, but the lack of righteousness amongst the Jerusalemites. How often have I desired to gather your children together, asks Jesus in the voice of The Father, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. The LORD the God of Abraham does not need you to defend God’s reputation against even a false Messiah (let alone the true one), The LORD invites you into a relationship of paternal and maternal lovingkindness and utter trustworthiness. You don’t need to be afraid of falsehood in the streets, you don’t need to be afraid of how Pilate might react to a shouty Galilean in the streets, you just need to accept God’s invitation to be your Father and you The Father’s children: and you were not willing! No wonder Jesus is desolated; not only will they assassinate the Messiah for blasphemy, the King of Kings for treason (pause and consider), but God invites them to snuggle, and the most religious men in the most holy nation say no!
Abraham said yes and was blessed with the fruit of obedience because he trusted God to lead him well and ultimately he was well lead, even when Lot took the best pastures and Abraham twice gave Sarah to the local rapey-king to save his own skin. Paul (the one-time Pharisee) said yes, was blessed with the fruit of obedience because he trusted God to lead him well and ultimately he was well lead, preaching the gospel in Rome and in Caesarea. Abraham died a very old and very wealthy man. Paul died less old man and was executed as a criminal, but both went “to their fathers” knowing that they had finished the work set for them, their lives complete, and then they died. Jesus died the same way, he said “it is finished”, and then (and only then) he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:30). The key to running the race to the end is not perseverance or sinlessness, it is trust which drives obedience.
Today, right now, I invite you to come to God. Come to The Father and have a cuddle, come to the hen and be gathered under her wings. Listen to God’s word for you, just you, and hear your mission. And then, and then go knowing that everything is in place for you, even the end. And then, after the end, you get to go home. Hallelujah, Hosanna, Amen.
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