Sermon - February 28, 2010 - Lent 2

Year C | The Year of Luke

Today's message is going to be very simple, and very basic. Jesus says in today’s reading from Luke, “I must be on my way.”

We are in a period of our history when people move a great deal. It is very common to have kids and grandkids move far from the communities in which they were reared. Home for many of us today is at best a loose and elusive geographical term.

This was not the case that long ago in our past. It certainly was not the case in the ancient world.

In the ancient world, home was where you were born; and home was where you died. The span between birth and death was often spent in familiar village, raising a family, plying a trade, and working the fields. The land itself was home – and it did not change all that much from one generation to the next. Home was permanent, fixed, and local. This is why the when Abraham and Sarah moved, it was such an epic event. People just did not leave where they were born.

Thus, the ancient Israelites, traced their origins to Abram’s journey from a place far away, to the land, which the Lord promised to give him. “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans,” the Lord tells Abram in our first reading today, “to give you this land to possess.” In taking possession of the land and inhabiting it, Abram – later Abraham – and his descendants become the Lord’s own people.

Jesus treads this same land centuries later, “casting out demons and performing cures,” as he reminds the Pharisees and Herod, and by extension us, in our gospel account. He makes his way from his home in Nazareth – where his own townspeople reject him – to the holy city of Jerusalem. In some sense, his passage serves to remind us of Abram’s journey centuries before. However, the land promised to those who will heed Jesus’ voice does not consist of acres and square footage but of the very kingdom of heaven.

Abram marks the Lord’s covenant with him and his descendants by a sacrifice of heifer, goat, ram, turtledove, and pigeon. The Lord, present in “smoking fire pot and flaming torch,” passes solemnly among Abram’s gifts and once again affirms his covenant and the gift of land – of home. However, the sacrifice that marks our Lord’s new covenant and the gift of the kingdom is not that of young, unblemished animals, but his own death.

“Today, tomorrow, and the next day, I must be on my way,” says Jesus in recognition of the fate awaiting him in Jerusalem. Not even the warnings of presumably friendly Pharisees that “Herod wants to kill you” can dissuade him from his work and mission. His painful pronouncement over Jerusalem, “the city that kills the prophets,” becomes prophecy of his own death on the cross. “On the third day,” concludes Jesus, “I finish my work.” His journey comes to its end. However, his death and resurrection mark also the beginning of faith and redemption for us as his people.

Lent is our annual reminder of this reality – of the lasting covenant that God forged with us at the cross and of the “land” that has been given to us as our heavenly home. As Paul tells us in our second reading from his Letter to the Philippians, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Abram’s faith in God’s promise was reckoned “to him as righteousness.” Today, our faith in God’s word and promise is reckoned to us as sign and assurance of our true citizenship in heaven.

No matter who we are, our Christian faith nevertheless calls us away from places of comfort and the familiar – just as the Lord’s word thousands of years ago called Abram from his home in “Ur of the Chaldeans.” Like Abram, we too must be on our way. As ones who follow Christ, our journey is sharing in the way of sacrifice, in the way of the cross.

Our first reading begins: “The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, 'Do not be afraid.'" The same words are spoken to us. We have nothing to fear. “As a hen gathers her brood under her wings,” so our Lord has gathered us, his people. We are the Lord’s own people, and our heavenly citizenship makes us all “brothers and sisters” to one another.

In Christ, we are at last home. Amen.