2nd Sunday in Lent

Today’s first reading begins by telling us that Abraham decided to put his faith in the Lord. What does this really mean to have faith in God? Surely it means more than simply believing that God exists and following his commandments. I would suggest to you today dear friends that to put our faith in God is akin to placing a wager, to betting our lives away. In order to put his act of faith in its proper context, we must remember that this story represents the emergence of the Israelite people from the ambient culture of polytheism into the beginning of what was to be a long journey towards thorough-going monotheism. With Abraham we see the beginning of monolatry – which is not the same as monotheism. Monolatry is the position that still acknowledges the existence of other gods – but chooses to worship only one god – Yahweh. This was the position that Abraham was in. in doing so, he takes a huge risk, for he might anger the other gods by neglecting them. He might anger the god of fertility for example, Baal, and expose him and his wife to infertility – a thought that probably crossed Abraham’s mind more than once. Living in such a primitive society where the human person was very much at the mercy of the elements, drought, floods, unable to dominate nature, and living a very contingent life constantly under threat of attack by the surrounding peoples, placing all one’s eggs in one basket and deciding to worship only one God was taking a huge risk. It was taking a wager that this God would come through for him.

But lest we think that Abraham was the one taking all the risk here, the story continues and we hear how Abraham entered into a covenant with the Lord. We are told of how the Lord instructs Abraham to cut into half a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon. Abraham does so and then as the sun sets, he falls into a trance and sees a flaming torch pass through the middle between the halves of the animals laid out in a line. In the ancient Near East, the idiom for making a covenant was “to cut a covenant” – they would cut and animal in half and – it was normally the weaker party would pass through the animals – which was symbolic of what would happen to that party, if they did not live up to their promise. So the fact that Yahweh passes through the animals in the form of a flaming torch is a profound statement on divine vulnerability and the lengths that God goes to show Abraham how serious he is about upholding his end of the bargain. God takes on a self-curse in order to show his commitment to the covenant. Instead of Abraham walking through the this aisle in the middle and taking upon himself the curse of breaking the covenant – God takes this curse upon himself. This speaks to the utter faithfulness of God, and how irrevocable is God’s love and commitment to us. God by choosing to enter into a covenant makes Godself vulnerable to being hurt by our own non-observance of this covenant. God will show how serious God is about “taking upon” Godself the full weight of the covenant in Jesus Christ who goes to the cross to show his great love for us, and to show us that this love is irrevocable and simply cannot be lost, no matter how badly we might mess up.

What should strike us about this biblical story is that the author realized that God was the partner with the bigger part to play here. In this time of Lent when we are thinking about giving up something, when we are trying to improve and perfect our service of God – this is a stark reminder to us that what our faith is really all about is about what God does for us, and not about what we do for God. Too often we can make lent into some kind of Pelagian spiritual boot camp. But if our sacrifices are not helping us to become more aware of what God has done for us, then they are in vain.

A Jesuit priest in cape Town had been to one of the poorer outlying townships for the day to go and serve and help the poor there. He finished late and at 8 pm at night found himself waiting alone in the train-station for the train to take him back home. Suddenly out of the shadows emerges and young man who pulls out a gun and threatens him with his life if he doesn’t hand over his money. The priest is in shock and doesn’t know how to react – in the meantime – it would seem that the thief has caught sight of the priest’s dog collar and is now quite embarrassed and starts apologizing to the priest acknowledging the help that priests bring the community – and how the community should therefore look after them. So the priest then senses an opportunity to perhaps convert this young man from his errant ways – and they start chatting. While they are talking – the priest pulls out his pack of cigarettes and offers one to the young man – who politely declines saying “No thanks father – I’ve given up smoking for Lent”

It is worth noting that in this story the thief was not converted from this thieving ways by his penitential practice of giving up cigarettes for Lent. What stopped him dead in his tracks was the generosity and good work of the priest that he was about to rob. It was the realization of the gratuity of God – of the self-less service of this Jesuit priest to his community, the fact that this man had probably visited his mother when she was in hospital, visited his brother when he was in prison that made him convert from his evil ways and be ashamed of them. Similarly, it will not be by our own efforts at holiness that we will become better people, but rather by realizing the extraordinary love that God has lavished on us.

So what we have in the first reading is in fact an extraordinary love story. A romantic relationship is never more alive than when it is a risk – when both parties have taken extraordinary risks to be together and put their whole lives in jeopardy to do so. Both Abraham and God are going out on a limb, putting their trust in one another, agreeing to be vulnerable in order to make this relationship work. We might ask ourselves how we might become more conscious this Lent of the great lengths that God has gone to in order to show us God’s love for us and thereby become holier people for it. Questions for reflection

1. What risks have you taken for God lately?
2. How are your Lenten penitential practices leading you to a deeper appreciation of God’s love for you?