Abraham’s Faith – February 25, 2018

For worship this morning on the Second Sunday in Lent, Lectionary Year B, the readings are Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16, Romans 4:13-25, and Mark 8:31-38. Here’s my sermon on Abraham’s faith for February 25, 2018, at St. Peter Lutheran Church in Greene, Iowa.

How many of you have been watching the Olympics these last few weeks? I saw a suggestion a few years ago that the Olympics would be much more entertaining if there was a normal person in each event for comparison. Imagine how much more impressive something like ski jumping would be if we could see someone in normal physical shape without all the practice to compare to compare the athletes who’ve trained years for this!

Part what I love about the Olympics is getting to see sports I know nothing about. I know it’s a bad thing when a figure skater falls, but beyond that, I have no idea who deserves a higher technical score. Each sport has its own vocabulary too. Skating has triple salchows, twizzles, and quad toe loops.

I watched halfpipe snowboarding, where Shaun White won gold by completing two 1440’s, a double McTwist 1260, and a frontside 12. Someone else did a chicken sandwich grab. In free skiing halfpipe, David Wise was the only guy to land two switch doubles followed by a double cork 1260. I have no idea what any of that means; I just know it looks cool.

There’s a whole different vocabulary to some of these sports. Of course, it’s not just sports. Christians use all kinds of church words too, and often, we don’t define them very well. So here’s your word for the day from our readings. Ready? Faith.

Faith is a pretty simple church word, right? Basically, faith means trusting God. In fact, nearly any time you see the word faith, you can replace it with trust. But these readings bring up important questions: What is faith? What does faith mean? Hold that question for a minute.

Last week, we started talking about another one of those church words, covenant. A covenant is a promise, a sort of sacred vow between God and some other person or group. Last week, it was the covenant God made with the whole creation to never flood the earth again.

This week, we hear about another covenant, another promise, this time between God and this guy named Abram. God promises Abram that he will have many children, becoming the ancestor of many nations. Now, this is not the first time Abram’s heard this promise from God. Way back in chapter 12, God promised Abram he would father a great nation, and then it’s repeated in chapters 13 and 15.

The thing is, it wasn’t happening. Abram and his wife Sarai weren’t having any kids, and in order to have your descendants become a great nation, you need to start by having at least one child. Sarai thought maybe her husband had misunderstood God’s promise, or maybe God might need a little help, and Abram agreed, so in chapter 16, Abram has a child with Sarai’s maid, Hagar, and as you might remember, it doesn’t go well.

Hagar’s son Ishmael does become the father of a great nation, but it turns out he wasn’t the promised child God was talking about. Then, in our reading from Genesis 17, God reaffirms the covenant. By this time, though, Abram is 99 years old, and Sarai is 90. Basic biology says this isn’t going to happen.

And here’s where we get an example of what faith looks like. We’re doing all the readings today because Romans 4 is basically a sermon from Paul on Abraham as an example of faith, so listen again to what he says in verses 18-21.

“Abraham did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

So what is faith? Faith is trusting God means what God says. It’s being fully convinced that God is able to do what God has promised, even when it seems hopeless.

Now, I actually have some issues with Paul here, in particular the line, “No distrust made Abraham waver concerning the promise of God.” Paul is glossing over a LOT of Abraham’s story.

Yes, Abraham listens to God and follows where God leads him, but on the way he passes his wife off as his sister, not once, but twice, because he’s not convinced God will protect them. This is the guy who sleeps with his wife’s maid because he doesn’t quite believe what God said. Abraham doubts enough that God needs to not just give him the covenant, but then remind him of this covenant three times.

So Paul is being pretty generous in using Abraham as an example of strong faith. And that’s pretty encouraging for us. If Abraham, who makes some pretty big mistakes, can be held up as an example of faith, then we’ve got a chance too. But the point is that faith means trusting God and believing God’s promises are true, sometimes despite the evidence.

When you look around at the world, having faith can be hard. There’s a lot of evidence against God’s promises. For Abraham, it was the many, many years waiting for the promise to be fulfilled with nothing to show for it.

Historically, the stories in Genesis were likely written down centuries after the fact, during a time when Israel, God’s chosen people, were in exile, with their military defeated and their nation destroyed. They wrote down these stories to remind themselves to trust God’s promises, even when they seemed impossible.

We today are faced with all kinds of evidence that the world is broken. It’s easy to trust in the reality of sin when we hear about bombings in Syria and shootings in schools and people dying in car accidents. It’s harder to trust God has defeated sin.

The good news is this trust, this faith isn’t something we get on our own. Instead, we believe faith is a gift from God.

Paul says in verse 22, Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. Not only did Abraham not do anything to earn God’s promise, his very ability to believe it is only possible because the Holy Spirit gives him faith. God reckoned it to him.

As Martin Luther explains about the third article of the Apostle’s Creed, we cannot believe in Jesus Christ as Lord or come to him by our own understanding or strength, but the Holy Spirit calls, enlightens, and keeps us in faith.

Another way of thinking about faith is that faith means relying on God. In the gospel reading from Mark, Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We often think of denying ourselves as going without something or giving something up, and that’s true, but it’s giving up something more than just chocolate or television or money or a new car or something of that sort.

Denying yourself to follow Jesus means renouncing your claim on your life. It’s about relying on God for life rather than on anything you own or anything you’ve accomplished. Perhaps more accurately, denying yourself means recognizing the reality that you already depend on God for life, not just eternally, but here and now in this world. Life itself is a miraculous gift from God.

Back in Romans, in verse 14, Paul makes this point as well. If we could rely on ourselves for life, he writes, if we could do enough good works to earn God’s salvation or to live on our own without God, then faith would be null, and God’s promises wouldn’t matter.

But we know that’s not reality. We can’t rely on ourselves. We can’t do enough, and so, Paul continues in verse 16, it all depends on faith, and the promise of God rests on grace. God’s promise is a gift not only to Abraham, but to all his descendants, including you and me. All we can do is rely on God’s grace.

So faith is trusting God’s promises, faith is a gift from God, and faith is reliance on God.

Finally, faith changes things. Living in faith, living as if God’s promises are true makes a difference. Faith gives us the strength to make it through the times in life when God’s promises are hard to see.

The first verse of Hebrews 11 defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith opens our eyes to God, allowing us to realize there is more to this life than what we can see. Sin turns us inward to worry about ourselves, but faith turns us outward, setting us free to love others, to care for our neighbors.

As we continue in this season of Lent, I invite you this week to reflect on faith. Give thanks to God for the gift of faith. Live as if you believe God’s promises are true, because they are.

Allow the Holy Spirit to change you, to help you recognize and accept that you’re not in control, and that’s ok, because God is faithful.

And may the peace of Christ, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen