Year C

Luke 13:31-35

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Reality of Contradiction

You have heard said and most likely have said it yourself, “Things are not always what they seem.” Contradiction between appearance and reality can be a part of life and characterizes much of the history of Israel. For example; remember King David, the unsuitable youngest son of Jesse who says yes to God and becomes the one who rules over Israel. Or the seemingly impossibility of Israel’s release from the overwhelming power of Egypt which becomes a reality when God renders Egypt powerless and Israel free to begin that 40 year wandering in the wilderness. Or, what about the call to repentance during the season of Lent; in the language of our day for some it does have negative connotations, implying humiliation for wrongdoings in order to appease God who some believe is an angry God.

Today all the readings speak to the reality of contradiction and invite us to reconsider the nature of repentance. The journey of 40 days toward the three-day Easter feast rather than being simply a time of stricter discipline, is really a time to reflect on the life we are called to live every day. Lent calls us to turn back to God not for God’s sake but for ours, and God is not angry, but lovingly concerned for our well-being. God acts as a devoted mother who implores her precious child to put away dangerous things and run back into her loving arms. Repentance, in the context of these texts is God asking us to turn away from those things that would hurt us so that we might return to a right, healthy relationship with God and each other and learn what it means to live in a faithful covenant relationship with God.

In the first reading from the book of Genesis, Abram or Abraham seizes the moment after hearing God’s assurance of protection, to remind God that he and Sarah are childless. They may have God as their “shield,” but there is little evidence that they will have any posterity. God, the creator of the universe, comes to Abram and promises him the most important reward he could desire; the promise of an heir. Abraham the great model of faithfulness is also a person who wants to know how God is going to fulfill God’s promises. God says, look count the stars and if you are able to count them, “so shall your descendants be.” Such incredible generosity to be blessed beyond measure and what seemed as an insurmountable obstacle becomes divine generosity.

In the face of seeming impossibility, Abram believed. Here faith is understood as living with complete trust in God’s future. In Latin “To believe” or credo, means “I set my heart upon” or “I give my loyalty to,” which describes faithful believing. For Abram, believing is a confession of trust and it is the giving of his loyalty to God, brought about by love. As he trusts in God’s promises for the future in spite of the evidence of the present, he is considered in a right relationship with the Lord. Not always easy to do. Our challenge, like Abraham and Sarah, is to believe, in spite of evidence that sometimes suggests the contrary, a believing that calls us to a constant returning to God and to giving God our heart and loyalty.

The Psalmist today echoes Abram’s complete trust in God, “The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” And Paul, in his letter to the congregation at Philippi, urges them to “stand firm in the Lord” as he points out that Christian life runs counter to the world’s values. He encourages them to follow his example by giving up material or “earthly things.” Paul’s affection for the community at Philippi shines through as he urges his brothers and sisters to remain steady in their life in Christ by knowing Christ and by following his example of sacrificial love. We follow his example by emptying ourselves and embracing the cross. This is the season in which the church is invited to the task of personal reflection about the cross, and to examine our own cross-denying ways. Paul gives us the patterns to follow; patterns that either lead to life or death. We are given the choice to live as enemies of the cross or to live out our baptismal calling by carrying the cross into the world.

The pattern we imitate is nothing less than grace and peace because the life of the cross leads to grace and peace. Talk about a contradiction between appearance and reality. Lent gives us the pattern of sacrificial love and Paul reminds us we can “stand firm in the Lord” by following the way of the cross. We are called to walk the wilderness with Jesus and to pick up the cross on which he will be crucified. Later, in Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, he will remind the church that we must always “press on toward the goal to win the prize, the treasure, for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus, at this midpoint in the gospel of Luke, also talks about the choices one must make in order to follow him. We see the dangers from without “enemies of the cross,” whose examples might lead us off the true path or the Herods who would stop us cold in our tracks if they could. Yet, the journey must go on; and we must follow Jesus. As he travels from village to village, teaching about the kingdom of God, healing the sick and calling people to repentance, his face is set to go to Jerusalem and as he looks out on the city that would reject him, we hear him speak in tones of abject disappointment and utter heartbreak at the refusal of his own people to hear and heed the summons of God to draw near, to return to the Lord God. Yet, he is able to see beyond the evil destructiveness of the city’s history.

He calls the people to repentance and faith, to renew their commitment to the covenant God made with Abraham and he tells them the consequences for those who have forgotten that covenant. For Jesus, God’s compassionate desire is to gather God’s children closer and closer in God’s embrace and love. That mission and commitment is at the center of Jesus’ work but there are those whose values and mission, are opposed to the values of God, to the call of God’s embrace. He will be killed as a prophet in the city he so loves.  His words to the Pharisees, who come to warn him, imply that his enemies have no power over him until the time set by God. Jesus will not be distracted from doing the work God has given him to do. “I’m throwing out demons and healing people today and tomorrow,” he says, until after the third day when this work is “complete.”

Knowing that this very same Christ is in us, our challenge is to live with and through him as those who are in the world, yet in a faithful covenant relationship with God. It is to live fully in the here and now, in the contradiction between appearance and reality, doing the work God has given us to do. Jesus wants us to know that God’s commitment to us is like that of a loving parent, and though we may reject God’s love, God does not reject us but calls us over and over again to return; to take up the cross and follow, which is a call to a way of life that “stands firm in the Lord.” So that what may seem like an insurmountable obstacle is not when we set our hearts upon the one who would give his life to gather us under his wings. In the theme of Lent “Return to the Lord your God.”