Sermon by Marjorie Brown for 2nd Sunday in Lent - 8th March 2008

Back in the day when banks usually got a better press, and the Midland Bank had not yet become HSBC, it used to advertise itself as “the listening bank”. How true it was in practice I can’t comment. But Mark and Linda and I would genuinely like to be the listening ministry team. And at the Lent groups that started this past week we have heard a couple of things we need to act on.

One is that many people would like to have more silence in church in order to become more aware of the presence of God, and to have space for our own prayers. Doing this after communion is just not possible when we are blessed with so many young members whose patience is at an end by that point.

So we have opted to follow the Common Worship suggestion of allowing a space of silence at the beginning of the eucharist. At the words, “Let us pray”, we are invited to do exactly that – not listen straightaway to the president reading the prayer of the week, but doing our own praying in silence. We can follow the old practice of having a particular intention as we join in the church’s worship. Maybe there is a certain person we want to pray for, or part of the world that is on our hearts, or we may have something we are wrestling with in our own lives. We can offer these prayers in a period of silence before the president collects all the prayers up in the collect – for that is what it says on the tin.

But we heard something else in the Lent groups. Perhaps unwisely, we asked everyone what they felt about preaching – well, it was one of the chapters in the Lent book by Timothy Radcliffe. The author reminded us of the time when St Paul was preaching in such a long-winded fashion that one of the congregation, who was rashly perched on the sill of a third-storey window, dropped off both metaphorically and literally and ended up dead. Now we may bore or annoy you from time to time but we certainly hope we haven’t killed any of you!

What some people in the Lent groups said was that they would like to understand a bit more of the background, particularly the Jewish background, of the scriptural readings that are read in church. With what I can only call providential timing, the readings for this very Sunday seem to cry out for just this kind of background briefing. So here goes.

Let’s look at what is probably the hardest of the readings, the one from Romans. This letter of Paul’s is perhaps the most studied and argued-over book in the Bible. It was the flashpoint for many of the debates at the time of the Reformation. Paul’s closely argued account of how we are justified by faith is still a hot topic – just this week I have been reading a new book by Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, arguing for what is called “the new perspective” on this centuries-old debate.

The early Church had a real struggle, trying to reconcile the Jewish faith in which most of them, including of course Jesus, had been nurtured, and the radical inclusion of the Gentiles into the Body of Christ. Some of them tried to get everyone to become good Jews as well as good Christians, undergoing circumcision as well as baptism and living by all the food laws in the Torah. Others thought that the Torah was now a dead letter, that the whole history of Israel had been a failure and God had started all over again with Jesus.

But Paul had a strongly held conviction that God actually knows what he is doing and that he acts in accordance with his purpose throughout human history, in order to bring all creation to the glorious fulfilment that Mark was preaching about a few weeks ago. Paul asks us to go back to Genesis, just as our lectionary requires us to do today, and remember the story of Abraham, with whom God entered into an eternal covenant.

This was not a stopgap until a better covenant partner could be found. It was a promise that has never been rescinded, that through the family of Abraham and the people of Israel who are his children, God’s purpose for humanity would be fulfilled. God didn’t promise Abraham heaven when he died or forgiveness for his sins: he promised him descendants so numerous that they couldn’t be counted.

From the people of Israel, Abraham’s physical descendants, many centuries after Abraham, Jesus of Nazareth was born. His life, ministry and death demonstrated the obedient faithfulness that had been the calling of the whole people of Israel, a calling that the prophets tell us they had, being ordinary humans, repeatedly failed to live up to. When Jesus began his ministry he proclaimed that the day of Lord, promised in the scriptures, had come at last. The purpose established long ago and made explicit to Abraham was now to be fulfilled through a son of Abraham. All of humanity, more numerous than the stars in the sky or the sands on the beach, were now invited to become Abraham’s children through faith.

But the way to this fulfilment of the scriptures involved rejection for Jesus – he became a sort of lightning rod for the sin of broken humanity. And in the gospel reading from Mark he warns those who want to a share of his glory that God’s purpose requires faithfulness even if it leads to death.

This is what is involved in the call to take up the cross. We often speak of people bearing the cross they have been given, meaning something like chronic pain or a tragic bereavement or the responsibility of caring for a sick relative. But these are just the facts of life in this fallen world. We need God’s grace to bear them cheerfully, but that is not the same as taking up our cross.

Taking up our cross to follow Jesus means, not just accepting and bearing what comes to us beyond our control, but freely choosing to trust God with the whole of our life. The cross we carry is our discipleship, a path in which we seek God’s will for our life and ask God’s help to follow it. It may involve suffering at times, but it will also mean our flourishing as we grow into our full stature and become the people God created us to be.

As disciples, members through faith of Abraham’s family, we enter into the glorious freedom of the children of God. Tom Wright says that we become “little walking and breathing advance parts of that eventual new creation”. We are, if you like, the secret agents of the resurrection life. We know that through Christ’s victory, God’s final judgement, putting all things to right in creation, has broken into human history. The verdict has been brought forward and we are declared, right now, to be God’s own children, forgiven and free.

This is good news, gospel, and it is not of our doing but only through the free and loving act of God. But if we are transformed by believing the good news – and remember that faith itself is a sign of grace, God’s gift to us – it will show; it will have an effect in our lives. This transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit, enabling us to live freely, gladly and faithfully.

So God’s purpose is being worked out in human history. To recap: Abraham was called to be the father of us all: he believed and trusted in this promise. God gave the law to the people of Israel, calling them to faithful obedience to the divine plan of putting all things right through Israel, for the benefit of the whole of creation. From Abraham’s descendants and faith tradition, Jesus was born to be the one who perfectly fulfilled the call to faithful obedience and thereby enabled God’s putting right of creation to break into human history. Now it is our turn: we are called to take up our cross as disciples and by the power of the Spirit to live in the same faithful obedience to God’s purpose. That purpose is for our flourishing and for the making good of all that has been spoiled by sin. The new creation, the resurrection life, begins here and now and we are the ones who must show, by our lives, what it looks like.

May God give us the grace, through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Spirit, to live so that others may see that purpose at work in the lives of us who worship at St Mary’s Primrose Hill. When our worship ends, may our service begin. Amen.