2 Lent, Year C
Sunday, February 24, 2013
St. Mark’s, Bay City
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35
Jesus knew he was going to be killed. When the Pharisees warned him to flee because
Herod was trying to kill him, he didn’t run from Herod, and he didn’t say, “No
Herod won’t kill me.” He basically said,
“yes I’m going to be killed, but not yet and not outside of Jerusalem.” That was not Jesus’ desire. Jesus longed to gather the people of
Jerusalem to be faithful to him and renew their faithfulness to God, and as he
said, “[they] were not willing.”
Jesus’ desire was not that he would be killed in Jerusalem,
but that he would bring about reform and greater faithfulness to God in
Jerusalem, and yet Jesus trusted God’s plan that he should be killed in
Jerusalem. Jesus trusted and loved God without
agenda.
Jesus had a rather unique relationship with God as God’s son,
as God himself, and that might have brought some leverage to have things go the
way Jesus wanted them to go, but as we saw last week in the temptations of
Jesus and as we see this week, Jesus didn’t use his relationship with God to
make things go his way. Rather, Jesus
trusted in God and loved God, even when it meant things would absolutely not go
his way. Without agenda, Jesus loved and
trusted in God with his whole heart.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I
fear? The Lord is the strength of my
life; of whom then shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1) The words of Psalm 27 express this same love
of and trust in God.
The
Psalm expresses deep love for God. Reading
back over the psalm, we hear the heart of someone who loves and trusts God
totally. “One thing have I asked
of the LORD; one thing I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all
the days of my life; To behold the fair beauty of the LORD and to seek him in
his temple. (Psalm 27:5-6) There’s gotta
be something particularly wonderful about God for the one thing the Psalmists
wants is to dwell with God forever. Even
the prayers for safety and security that the Psalmist gives are given so that
he may dwell with God. Love of God
without agenda is the first commandment of God.
You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
Our love of people is similar. We don’t love in order to manipulate. We love simply to be near the beloved and to
be loved in return. Love for the purpose
of control is not real love, but a form of idolatry.
Back when people fashioned idols
out of wood and clay and other materials, they made them in order to gain
control of the world around them. By
making a god, people now had something powerful which they could plead with,
and try to please, and use to control the world around them. Love of the idol was not a part of the
picture. Control over the changes and
chances of life was the purpose of making and worshipping idols.
When we seek after God for the same
purpose, to control the changes and chances of life, we treat God as an idol as
well. Believing in God in order to get
what we want out of God, believing in God with an agenda is to turn God into an
idol in our minds. Seeking to control
God or to control those around us through God is idolatry, even when our faith
is in the true God who created all that is. We may not be silly enough to say, “I made
you, now do what I want,” but we may act as though we are saying “Ok, Lord, I
didn’t make you, but still, do what I want.”
Instead,
of this form of idolatry, which we all might have experienced from time to
time, we are called to wait patiently for the Lord and to trust in the
Lord. We don’t know if all in life will
end up well. Faith in God is not a
talisman thwarting tragedy. We are even
assured that tragedy will likely come, for us as for all people. Basically, that’s life.
Paul wrote to the Philippians, “our
citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it
may be conformed to the body of his glory…” (Philippians 3) We may not expect this body of his glory in
this life. We are the Body of Christ and
we seek to follow his example and live lives of love of God and neighbor,
trusting in God in all we do, and yet, we are not yet fully transformed into a
body of glory. That comes later, when we
don’t know, presumably after death. We
trust God with our lives and with our deaths, believing in the promises he has
given us to love and care for us.
There’s a fine line, however,
between trusting God and believing in his promises, on the one hand, and
expecting and demanding those promises on the other. I want to get to heaven when I die, therefore
I will trust and believe in God. That’s
not love of God. That’s the form of
idolatry I spoke of earlier.
I will trust and believe in God
simply because I find God to be beautiful.
I find God to be the fulfillment of the deepest longing of my heart, the
source of all goodness and love. I love
God simply because of the beauty and wonder of Who God Is, and with that love
of God, I also trust in God’s promises that there is life after death, a
beautiful life lived completely in him.
We love God also not for what he
will do for us, but for what he already has done for us. God showed his great love for us by saving us
from our sins, from all the ways we harm ourselves and each other. Jesus paid the price to set us right with
God, even with our flaws and faults, and Jesus showed us how we can live
without sin, how we can truly love God and neighbor without agenda, loving God
and others simply for the sake of loving God, and loving all those who are
beloved of God.
Jesus taught us how to live not as
idolaters trying to control the world around us, but as people who love and
trust God deeply. Jesus taught us to love
and trust God deeply even when we don’t particularly like what the consequences
will likely be.
The LORD is my light and my
salvation; whom then shall I fear? The
LORD is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid? One thing have I asked of the LORD; one thing I seek; that I
may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life; To behold
the fair beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. O tarry and await the LORD'S pleasure; be
strong, and he shall comfort your heart; wait patiently for the LORD. (Psalm
27:1, 5-6, 18) Amen.
