Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 13 March 2022.
Giovanni Bellini, c. 1490 (Source)
• First Reading: Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18 (Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness)
• Psalm 27
• Epistle: Philippians 3: 17 – 4: 1 (Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven)
• Gospel: Luke 9: 28b-36 (The Transfiguration of Jesus. Moses and Elijah speaking with Jesus of His departure)
They call it the fog of war, that when the conflict starts, the confusion begins. All the careful plans are tested, sometimes to destruction and communications between the different parts of the state become strained.
If this is true of warfare, then it is also true of the life of faith. The tests and strains of normal life undermine our confidence in God and in Jesus Christ and these things have to be refreshed. This is one reason why we come together to pray and worship and to meet one another.
It is a resetting of our moral and spiritual compasses after the stresses and confusions of normal life.
And what was true during times of peace and plenty can then become even more so during times of national stress, such as the Covid pandemic, and our responses to events in Ukraine.
But there is also that sense in which wherever we are, God still cares. He is still present and we may still approach Him with our own prayers and together as we worship.
In Genesis, Abram had been summoned, late in life, to a pilgrimage into Canaan. He would be a stranger, passing through the land and relying wholly on what God was saying to him and where he was being led in his earthly and his spiritual journey.
Having been promised the land he was still perplexed at how it was to be fulfilled since he had no personal offspring. This was where the promise and its fulfilment came into tension and where his personal faith was the field of battle.
Would Abram trust in God who had led him this far, to bring the promise home? Would he look to his own resources and give God a helping hand? Or would he abandon the whole thing as an exercise in wishful thinking and resign himself to a lonely life and a disappointed death?
It was at this point of crisis that God met Abram and re-stated His promise. It had already been given as told in chapter 12 of Genesis and again in chapter 13. But Abram still faced a daily reality of being childless and daily his faith was being tested.
And so God met him again and repeated the promise. And yes, Abram was willing to believe, and that state of personal faith was what made him acceptable in the sight of God. For all his worrying Abram still trusted God and this was enough.
And yes, it came long before there was any formal cult or law.
In the gospel, Jesus was also treading out a life of faith. His disciples did not really understand what He had been saying about His coming suffering and death.
Daily there was the temptation to put it off, find another way, negotiate His way away from the cross. Surely God did not really intent for Him to be crucified?
Daily, Jesus was taking up a mental and spiritual cross and walking under it. He had begun to explain to the disciples what lay ahead, but their understanding was cloudy.
Now, He would go up a mountain and be alone with God. And in going up there Jesus met the climax of the law and the prophets of Israel, and of the promise to Abraham.
And here too Jesus was reaffirmed in His mission, for both Moses and Elijah were speaking to Him of the task that lay before Him. It was the unfinished business of their own lives and ministries, and it would definitely be the climax of Jesus’.
This time there would be 3 disciples to see it, as Jesus committed Himself to the purpose of His earthly life, and to the will of God His Father.
This time also the 3 disciples would hear and see Jesus being affirmed in His mission, and they would learn that there was far more to Jesus than just a new spiritual teaching and lifestyle.
Here too the disciples would understand that what lay before Jesus was not going to be the fate of an innocent in a wicked world. It would be a revealing of the Glory of God Himself.
This still leaves us with the business of the daily life of faith. Paul was busy exhorting the church in Philippi to hold together in their faith, even and maybe especially when others in the church were doubting it.
There were many agendas around and many lines of teaching and philosophy. There were many lifestyles and surely the gospel could be made appealing to some of them?
It would fill the pews, replenish church funds, bring the young into church and they would find their place in society. So why not?
It is an important and real question. But Paul points to his own experience and its subsequent lifestyle. It was sacrificial rather than fashionable. He would not pander to social trends which would only lead him away from the life of faith and into some social and moral dead-ends.
There were people, then as now, for whom the cross was an embarrassment and even a stumbling block. Surely there were other, less demanding and maybe more socially acceptable ways?
Paul says no. To abandon the cross and faith in Jesus was to live as an enemy of Christ and there was no alternative. His sense of belonging was in heaven and in the things of God.
There were no alternatives and to live would be to continue with the cross, and to find fulfilment in Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
