Readings for the day (2nd Sunday in Lent – Sunday, March 13, 2022):
Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
A year ago, there was a knock at the front door. It was a woman with a briefcase full of papers to be signed. We were closing on our first house. Full of excitement and jitters, we signed away; going into debt further than we’ve ever been before. And seeing the estimated payoff in the year 2051 was difficult to fathom. I’ll be close to retiring in 2051.
Now if you’ve ever received financing to purchase a house, or even a car, you know the extent to which the bank researches who you are. The bank looks at how you pay your bills, where you work and where you live. Hoping to figure out what type of person you really are. At least on paper. And more specifically, they’re looking to see if you are worth the risk. Are you going to be a bad investment or a good investment? The bank wants a guarantee (or at least as close to a guarantee as they can get) that you are going to payback everything that has been borrowed to you.
In our reading from Genesis today, we have Abram – soon to be Abraham, but God hasn’t changed his name yet. And here, Abram is looking for a guarantee from God. Abram has been following and listening to God for a little while now, but it is here in this story where God makes an everlasting covenant, or a promise, with Abram. “Look toward heaven,” God says, “And count the stars, if you are able to count them, so shall your descendants be.”[1] But Abram has no children. How can one have descendants without children? Abram needs something more. He needs a guarantee that following God and doing His will, won’t turn out to be a bad investment for him.
Now before Abram, God didn’t have much skin in the game. Before Abram, God really had a throwaway mentality. When humanity didn’t work the way he intended it, God just wiped ‘em out and started over. But with Abram, God changes His approach. God’s willing to work with Abram to find a solution. And to find a solution, that requires God to put quite a bit of skin in the game. When working with humanity, it will require God to have patience and offer forgiveness. And it will ultimately mean giving up His own Son. Knowing the rest of the story, we know how far God is willing to go for our sake. Abram, however, is still looking for that guarantee.
And we too, desire some guarantees. We look for that guarantee that life is going to be okay. We do what we can, to ensure that our children and loved ones will be okay. And because we know there are no guarantees in life, and so much of our future is uncertain, we opt to purchase insurance in order to protect us from many uncertainties. And in some cases, such as my house, the bank even requires me to get insurance, as a way to decrease their risk and enhance their guarantee. What an insurance policy does is gives us some peace of mind. We can’t get a full guarantee that everything will be okay, but at least we have something that will help us in the case of a lose.
But you know, there is something that can’t be insured. There is something that we do that we cannot first obtain a guarantee for. And that’s following God. We can’t purchase an insurance policy on following God, to make it less risky. Oh, it’s not that it hasn’t been tried before. Churches have tried to convince people that for a certain price (monies given to the church of course), that the church can make various promises, or guarantees, regarding the quantity of someone’s blessings or possessions that they will receive from God. Churches have also tried to guarantee one’s position or place in heaven. But there’s no insurance policy that we can purchase on our faith and walk with Jesus.
Just like how a bank uses my credit history to give them a glimpse into what type of person I am, and if I’m worth the risk of lending me some money – seeking to get some comfort in the form of a guarantee. We look to God’s history to see who God is and if following Him is worth the risk. There’s no guarantee in following God, but we can look to God’s history and weigh the risk.
And we’ll find that our prayers aren’t always answered in the time or way we desire for them to be answered, but overall God is faithful. And God has always been faithful to His promises. God hasn’t promised us an easy life, but has promised an eternal life with Him. God hasn’t promised us riches, but has promised a rich relationship with our Creator. A relationship that includes Jesus, who today describes Himself as a hen who gathers and shelters her brood under her wings.
Jesus calls King Herod a fox, but really the fox could be any number of crafty, cunning things that seek to draw us away from God, trying to convince us that being a follower of Jesus is risky business. The Pharisees tried to scare Jesus into not going to Jerusalem – to not carry out the mission that He was on.
Do we shy away from our relationship with God when things get hard? When the risk seems to be too much? When we know that there isn’t a guarantee? When it seems that we are being draw away from God and away from His mission for us, tell that fox off! Remember that our Savior has broad enough shoulders to scare away any fox that gets in the way of God and God’s children. The fox will not get the last laugh. In God’s eyes, you are worth the risk. You are worth the risk of even death itself. And that’s why Jesus wasn’t afraid of whatever Herod had to say. His mission is the cross, all so that you may be given a guarantee that your sins are indeed forgiven.
There are not many guarantees in this life. And that’s why we have a variety of insurance policies. But by rising from the dead, Jesus freed you from your sin and gives you the greatest guarantee you’ve ever had – your sin no longer defining who you are. Instead, you are defined by who your Creator is – who shelters you, who provides for you, who forgives you, and who give you life. That is – Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
© 2022 Anthony Christoffels. All Rights Reserved.
[1] Genesis 15:5, NRSV
The Rest for The Weary 