the future is in God's hands

There are times when it seems that the future is so far off, that we need not think about it. Abram has been told before that he will have descendants, but Abram can’t see how. He is old, Sarai his wife is old, and has not had any children. In the time of Abram and Sarai, children were the future. If there are no children, there was no future?

More than once Abram tries to take the future into his own hands; he doubts God's promise; he has a child by Hagar.

In this passage God is telling Abraham that there is a future, there will be a future and Abram is part of that future. We think of Abram is the father of faith, but most of what we hear is very, very normal.

The passage we heard this morning also tells of the covenant of the Lord made with Abram, the covenant that his descendants will have this land between the River Nile and the Euphrates.

For someone who does not have children, being told their descendants will be more than the stars seems absurd. But while initially it says Abram believed the Lord, he then asks for proof. Abram does as God tells him and prepares the animals. Then in the darkness of the night something amazing happened. Something mysterious. You see these particular close encounters with God happen rarely, even in the Bible. There are a few such instances reported, this one, the burning bush that Moses stood before, Transfiguration, a few others. But such occasions are rarely recorded in the Scriptures.

I wonder how much we think about the future, not just to our next holiday, birth of the next grandchild, retirement for those of us a little younger. How much, how often, do we think about the future in terms of the life that our grandchildren's grandchildren will lead. Many in our society will see their grandchildren born, some will even see their great grandchildren born, what kind of world will they live in.

It is much easier for us to look to the past, to what we know, what has been. We can know the past, we can learn from the past, but we cannot change the past. We cannot know the future, but we affect the future every day.

 [PPT image of hen] [i] 

Turning briefly to the gospel reading, and the image of Jesus like a mother hen gathering chicks under his protective wings. The power of the temple, the power of empire, was used to rule and dominate. Jesus also had power, he used his power to heal, to cast out demons. The ruling elite then, just as now, do not want to give up their power. We see people hold on to the power they have, we see greed, oppression, destruction. This is not the way that Jesus showed us to leave. His life show compassion, inclusion, generosity.

Abraham is told to not be afraid, yet fear is a common reaction in our world. We fear people who are different, we fear change, yet in many places in the Bible we are told not to be afraid for God is always with us.

Abram was having a hard time believing that he and Sarai had a future. Without children they were not part of the future. While that is how Abram and Sarai would have understood their world, it is also how many congregations understand their world. How can we imagine a future with so few children around us?

We can respond in different ways to our sense of not having a future. We can think it all revolves around us, and try harder and harder, thinking the only way that we will have the future of God tells us is that we do it ourselves.

Other people try harder and harder to hold on to what is, the familiar, the known; because we are all doomed, because there will be no future.

It is easy to become despondent, without hope, to become cynical and self-centred. It's easy to live for today, and leave tomorrow for future generations.

It's easy to be anxious, to be overwhelmed by the enormity of what is happening in the world, of war and rape, of poverty, environmental destruction. The Bible records for us stories of God's interaction with people over many centuries. The vision that God has is not hopeless, overwhelming or unrealistic.

As I mentioned earlier, we can know the past, but cannot effect it; we cannot know the future but we do effect the future.

The future is not up to us, we are not that powerful; but we are powerful enough to squander that which God gives us. this week I watched a YouTube clip of a 12 year old Severn Suzuki speaking to the UN Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil in 1992. She spoke of no longer being able to fish in the local river, and the pollution in the air, etc.  then she said:

“All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I’m only a child and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to realise, neither do you!
• You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer.
• You don’t know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream.
• You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct.
• And you can’t bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert.
If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!” [ii]

[image of no light for Lent] [iii]

I saw this and wondered if this is how we deal with fear, anxiety and lack of hope for the future. We close our eyes to that which we don’t want to see. We don’t trust God with the present or the future, so we close our eyes, we ignore greed, poverty and destruction. We don’t acknowledge the interdependence of all of God’s creation, so we take matters into our own hands, overusing some resources, holding tightly to what we consider ‘ours’ : doesn’t look much like the generosity and compassion that Jesus showed, or the image of Jesus as a mother hen wanting to protect her wayward, rebellious chicks.

The challenge for this week of Lent is to think beyond our own generation, to think beyond our children and their children. The challenge is to live trusting God with today and tomorrow.

 

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[i]http://revgalblogpals.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/11th-hour-preacher-party-gathered.html#comment-form

[ii] http://ssjothiratnam.com/?p=747

[iii] https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2QRSMvNpuYKKB5UpsdooXOvE9F-SxrRWU1M2Ah-ysuqo-ASVv2IrVo_DQojODX2UTCAZErHFjBg2d3BxOGK19wdqOImiA-tJT5Il52sJBUPz0v9p5x1pGyFst3Rpp64SBtt4viudf8aP/s1600/Liberal+Lent.jpg

Lent 1 an acceptable fast

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, a period of six weeks leading up to Easter. Traditionally this time has been a time of introspection, of reducing our human footprint. For many this is a time of ‘giving something up for Lent’, for others a time to add in new spiritual disciplines. Some of what I have read over the past few days on lent has encouraged me to think in a different way about Lent this year, one of those things has been the title of the Old Testament study: An acceptable fast.

The title comes from Isaiah 58, the people of Israel are complaining that they fast yet God does not respond to their pleas;

 ‘Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?’

The response:

 “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day,
and oppress all your workers.
⁴ Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
⁵ Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?” [Isaiah 58]

Fasting, giving something up for Lent is not about losing weight or being the one to deny ourselves the greatest amount, it is not to put on a  show of piety. The passage from Isaiah continues:

 “Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” [Isaiah 58]

An acceptable fast. It seems that an acceptable fast is one that isn't about giving something up, or adding another spiritual discipline into our life; an acceptable fast is one that is life changing, not only for us, but for the oppressed, those suffering from injustice, the hungry, the poor.

This Lent I am planning on looking mainly at the old testament reading set for each week, that reading today is Deuteronomy. This chapter of Deuteronomy occurs before the people of Israel arrive in Canaan the promised land. Moses has led the people through the wilderness, and this is part of his final instructions to the people as they prepare to go into the land that God has promised them.

Moses is reminding the people that they should remember who they are and where they came from. It can be easy when things are going well to ignore what has happened in the past. If I asked someone here, or someone on the street, today to tell me their story I'm guessing most people would start off with I was born, I have lived, I went to school, I work etc. Moses is telling the people that when they arrive in the promised land they should bring the first of their harvest to the priest. And then they tell the story, the story of being a wandering Aramean, of the time in Egypt, of the exodus, and the promised land. Each harvest people would really tell the story, the with bringing the first of the harvest, present it to the priest, then the community including the Levite and the foreigners would share the food together.

The people who would be saying this had not wandered with Jacob through the Genesis story; most of them would not be able to remember Egypt; yet this was their story. A story based on faith in God, being in community, offering thanks and sharing food together.

Reminds me a little of what we do in our communion services. We here again the story of faith, of creation and prophets, exile and exodus, crucifixion and resurrection; we hear the story of faith. But I wonder for how many of us is this the dominant story of our lives. There are a number of factors that influence our behaviour and thinking, I wonder where that God story comes into that in your life, and in the life of this congregation.

I wonder what the dominant story of our lives is, when we think about the environment, minimum wages, refugees, prisoners, health, education, and a whole range of other issues. Now I know many of these issues are considered political, and therefore should not be discussed in church.

Remember the words of Isaiah from chapter 58 about an acceptable fast, one in which the poorer feed the oppressed are given liberty those suffering under injustice are free.

I suspect that people who are worshipping here this morning will have something to eat at lunchtime, have safe accommodation and money in the bank. It's easy to think that everyone lives this way, but that is not the case. And to a large extent it's about when and where we were born.

None of us bought ourselves into being, none of us can make food appear out of nothing; we all rely on God for life, food, physical and spiritual growth. We also need other people, we don't grow cotton and weave it into our own clothes, we don't have our own animals and kill them for meat, most of us don't grow enough fruit and vegetables to feed ourselves, and we rely on manufacturing and building industries for our homes and cars and household goods.

This chapter of the study gratitude, it isn't always easy to be thankful for what is happening in our lives. Moses told the people who had been in the wilderness, the people who are about to go over to the promised land, that each harvest they were to go and give thanks to God. They did that with the story of who they are and where they came from, but they also said “the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, .. and he bought us into this place and gave us this land flowing with milk and honey so now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you the Lord had given me."

There is a sense in this passage of how much the people relied on God, in the liturgy the telling again each harvest is part of remembering that story and passing that story on to future generations. Thereof rituals in our lives as well, some are to do with church, some are to do with other parts of life. There are stories that get cold over dinner tables about great-grandparents who came from another country, who started farming, who built a house around the corner, the stories that get told over and over again.

This is the beginning of lent, a time when we move towards the story of Easter, the great three days in the Christian calendar. We are on a journey that takes us to a cross, and a tomb; for Jesus the cross and the tomb were transforming; and because Jesus was transformed we to can be transformed. Lent is a time for us to look at our lives, at our priorities, and our identity,  it is a time when we are encouraged to stop and think a little more deeply about what the influences on our lives are, about what cherished thoughts we need to let go of.

A prayer reflection:

Lent makes me so uncomfortable.

I prefer to remain in my 'zone,'
lounging in my chair;
glued to my plasma screen;
relaxing after a long day;
but you would lead me
into the wilderness

into those uncomfortable places
of tempting,
of power,
of testing.

I would like to hear words
about success,
and praise,
and feel pats on my back,
but you talk about
self-denial;
you mention the cost
of following God;
you invite me (!)
to shoulder
a cross.

couldn't you have sent
a more comfortable
Saviour,

O God?

~ Copyright © 2007 Thom M. Shuman. Posted on Prayers4Today. http://prayersfortoday.blogspot.ca/

What will you do with this Lent?

What fast will you observe?