SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

March 16, 2003

by John Shearman

I) INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURES

GENESIS 17: 1-7, 15-16

The legend of Abram's and Sarai's names being changed to Abraham and Sarah has little meaning apart from God's covenant promise that went with it. All subsequent history of the Jewish people rests on this promise. They were to be God's people.

This particular story was part of a document written by a school of priests which forms the framework for the whole Book of Genesis. At least two earlier documents were fitted into this framework to create the present text. This editorial work was done in the 5th century BC, long after Israel's return from exile in Babylon and more than a thousand years after Abraham's time.

PSALM 22: 23-31

There is a possibility that this part of the psalm is actually a separate hymn of praise and thanksgiving unrelated to the lament of the first part. It may also have served as a liturgy for anyone who came to give thanks for deliverance from affliction.

ROMANS 4: 13-25

Paul's argument here is that God's promise to Abraham (our Old Testament lesson) had special value for Christians. Like the patriarch, faith in God, not keeping the law, makes the promise effective.

Our being given a right relationship with God (Paul calls it 'justification') depends on our faith in what God has done in raising Jesus Christ from the dead and not on our own good behavior.

MARK 8: 31-38

Jesus taught his disciples about his impending death, but Peter rebuked him. He still did not understand the kind of Messiah Jesus had chosen to be. Mark's narrative goes on to quote Jesus instructing not only the disciples but the crowd as well about the cost of discipleship. They must follow him all the way to the cross and beyond.

By so saying, Jesus made it clear that he was a different kind of SaviouBŽ’srael did not have any concept of a Messiah who came to suffer instead of overthrowing a hated oppressor.

II) Commentary

GENESIS 17: 1-7, 15-16

The legend of Abram's and Sarah's names being changed to Abraham and Sarah has little meaning apart from God's covenant promise which went with it. All subsequent history of the Jewish people rests on this promise. They were to be God's people.

Today, two other religious traditions, Christianity and Islam, also trace their origins to Abraham and Sarah. With Judaism, these three form a majority of the world’s total population of six billion. Despite our many divisions and frequent conflicts, does this not say something about God’s sovereignty over the history of our time and all time? Is this the meaning of the covenantal promise in vss. 6-7? Is it not at least something we should ponder as we move through the Lenten season? What on Earth is God doing? Why has God made covenant with humanity - ordinary human beings such as we are? Are these questions not extraordinarily relevant this year as we stand on the edge of open warfare involving people of all three traditions tracing their origins to Abraham?

It should be noted that according to the documentary theory of the Pentateuch this particular story was part of a document written by a school of priests, known to scholars as P, which forms the framework for the whole Book of Genesis. At least two earlier documents, called J and E after the distinctive names Jahweh and Elohim used in each, were fitted into this framework to create the present text. This editorial work was done in the 5th century BC, long after Israel's return from exile in Babylon and more than a thousand years after Abraham's time.

Much scholarly debate continues as to the historicity of Abraham. The most extreme views banish him to the status of a fictitious hero of the post-exilic or Persian period (539-330 BCE), or even later in Hellenistic times of the late 4th century BCE. The intent of this theological fiction was to create a new sense of self-identity among the Jewish people thus bringing about harmony among the returning exiles and the peasant classes who had not been transported to Babylon. Strictly orthodox Jewish interpreters, on the other hand, depend on vs. 8 as the charter for “Eretz-Israel” and the ideological foundations of modern Zionism. Many Christian scholars still hold to the more conservative position that Abraham was at least the leader of a tribe which migrated from the Upper Euphrates River valley (Haran) to Canaan circa 1750 BCE. One scholar has identified at least twenty-two separate episodes in the Abraham saga in Genesis 11:27 to 25:11. This reading is but one of those episodes. (See L Hicks. *The Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary* vol. 1.16)

Without question, second only to Moses, Abraham was the hero of NT authors. Twice he is regarded as the father of the impious (Matt. 3:9; John 8:39), but more often as an inspiration to encourage Jews to live up to their spiritual heritage as people of faith (Luke 19:9; 16:24; Heb. 6:13). In Galatians 3:7 Paul cited him as father of all believers and so a source of unity and harmony. This attitude offers hope for greater respect and dialogue rather than conflict and dissent among Jews, Christians and Moslems today.

PSALM 22: 23-31

There is a possibility that this part of the psalm is actually a separate hymn of praise and thanksgiving unrelated to the lament of the first part. It may also have served as a liturgy for anyone who came to give thanks for deliverance from affliction.

The first few verses of this reading presents some insight into the common practices surrounding a thankoffering in the temple. Rejoicing in deliverance from distress, the worshipper invites the gathered congregation to join him in praise as he offers his sacrifice. The invitation includes sharing in a feast, or at least the eating of a portion of the sacrifice, possibly meat, sweet cakes or fruit. It may only have been a token and symbolic meal such as we share in the celebration of holy communion.

The psalmist, however, has a more universal understanding of what happens. Not only is this act of worship and praise to Yahweh shared by those in attendance at the time. It is for all people and for all time because Yahweh is sovereign over all (vss. 27-28). And not only the living, but the dead will join in the worship (vs. 29) and so also shall the unborn (vss. 30-31).

The psalm as a whole reflects the lament for the terrible tragedy of the Babylonian exile and the hopeful universalism of Second Isaiah. Like the various NT descriptions of the Passion of Christ and the theological insights of the Epistles, vss. 1-22 speak of hate-filled hostility and horrible suffering. Yet vss. 23-31 bring out the triumphant note of thanksgiving and praise for deliverance from affliction efficacious for all people of faith. It is highly probable that this psalm typified for the NT authors what Jesus has done for us. Hence the quotations from vss. 7, 8 and 18 in the Passion story in all four Gospels and the underlying motif of Paul’s Christology.

ROMANS 4: 13-25

Paul had a difficult task in writing to the Roman Christian community. They were unknown to him. He may have met some of them in his travels, but by and large he did not know them personally. He did know, however, that like so many other communities of faith he had founded in Asia Minor and Greece, they were a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles drawn from many different backgrounds with very little in common. He also carried with him the weight of his own background. A Jew of the Diaspora, he had a sensitivity toward Greek-speaking Gentiles. As a thoroughly trained rabbi of the Pharisees as well, he knew the Torah intimately. Then too, his mind and heart had been profoundly transformed by his conversion to Christ and his many years as a missionary apostle since that tumultuous experience on the Damascus Road..

All of this personal and religious history comes to bear on this passage. Paul's argument is that God's promise to Abraham (our Old Testament lesson) had special meaning for the Roman Christians. As for the patriarch, faith in God, not keeping the law, made the promise effective for them. It works the same way for us. Our being given a right relationship with God (Paul calls it 'justification') depends on our faith in what God has done in raising Jesus Christ from the dead and not on any good behavior of our own. Indeed, Christian moral behavior follows from a deep commitment to faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ .

Note how many times Paul used the word *faith* in this passage - seven. *Believe* occurs three more times and *promise* five times. Isn’t faith an extremely fragile basis to depend on for anything, let alone one’s eternal justification, a permanent relationship with the Creator of the universe? If one does not have faith in what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, like Abraham, we are as good as dead. Isn’t that rather contemptuous of all we “enlightened” people have achieved in making life wholesome and worthwhile in the past two or three hundred years?

A friend of mine once was asked, “What happens to those who died without believing?” His blunt answer went right to the point, “They’re dead.” Edward FitzGerald put it more poetically in his sardonic work, *The Rubaiyat of Omar Khaiyim*: “Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend, Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and - Sans End.”

On the other hand, Paul’s conviction, was based on his own faith and many generations of the Hebrew faith tradition behind him. Yes, this was a whole new interpretation of the Torah. But this was for Paul precisely the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He knew from painful personal experience how deadly every attempt to achieve righteousness acceptable to a Holy God could be. He knew also that the Gentiles’ ignorance of the Torah did not necessarily exclude them from the gracious love of God so fully revealed in Jesus. Yet both could be come heirs of God’s promise to Abraham through faith in Jesus Christ (vss. 16-17).

This is the heart of the Lenten message for our generation. We no longer put much stock in faith or in holy living, particularly in our complacently prosperous part of the world. We have done so well in mastering our economic problems. We change governments without violent revolutions and political instability. We have become so self-sufficient. And so self-righteous about our success. Who needs faith, God, salvation, holiness, Jesus Christ as Lord? These have become foreign words to our generation.

For Paul and for all people of faith that is not our true inheritance. We have lost our sense of sin and our need for redemption. We are dangerously close to being spiritually dead. According to the Genesis story, Abraham was a hundred years old when he received the promise that he would inherit the world (vs. 13). A hundred years from now, we shall all be dead and the world will not remember very much of what we have achieved. Our vaunted prosperity may have passed to some other part of the world in control of other people. Will Edward Fitzgerald’s rhyme then be our lot? How then can we justify our existence?

The point Paul makes in this passage is that we don’t need to justify ourselves. We need faith, like that of Abraham, like that of Paul himself. Faith in God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead alone justifies living creatively in the world as it is right now.

MARK 8: 31-38

When Jesus taught his disciples about his impending death, everything he said had little or not meaning for his disciples. Peter rebuked him because he still did not understand the kind of Messiah Jesus came to be. In a sense, he was yet one more temptation in the way Jesus had chosen

Israel did not have any concept of a suffering Messiah. Their view was that of a messianic king who would achieve a military victory over Israel’s enemies and bring in a golden age of freedom, peace and prosperity. Even the Suffering Servant of Second Isaiah (Isa. 40-55) with its prophetic and salvific mission cannot be regarded as anything like the Messiah the New Testament authors had in mind. That synthesis only came to fruition in the person of Jesus. We need to be very careful not to impute the New Testament view of the Messiah to the works of Old Testament prophets centuries earlier. Rather, the NT authors appear to have searched the OT for proof-texts to sustain their interpretation of a suffering Messiah which ultimately had come from Jesus himself. As John F.A. Sawyer, of the University of Newcastle on Tyne, England, wrote in *The Oxford Companion to the Bible* (1993): “The notion that his suffering or self-sacrifice is in itself saving is given unique emphasis in Christian messianism.”

Peter was the putative leader of the apostolic fellowship and, for Mark’s audience, the now martyred “prince of apostles.” In rebuking Peter, Jesus reiterated the discontinuity between his messianic role and that perceived by his chief opponents, the Pharisees. They were the dominant interpreters of the Jewish religious tradition at that time. They had developed a view with four main characteristics: a monarchic messiah of impeccable Davidic ancestry; a messiah who would be preceded by the return of Elijah; a messiah whose arrival would be accompanied by many signs and wonders; and one whose prophetically announced mission would be accomplished during his own lifetime. In his many clashes with the Pharisees, Jesus discounted his own fulfilment of these qualifications. Above all else, for the Pharisees his crucifixion would totally abrogate any messianic role. They may well have plotted with the Sadducees and the Herodians to have him executed to disprove any messianic claims. The majority of Jews followed them in this regard. Peter spoke not only for himself, but for most people of that time.

Mark's narrative goes on to quote Jesus instructing not only the disciples but the crowd as well about the cost of discipleship. They must follow him all the way to the cross and bey„¶Ï By so saying, Jesus made it clear that he was a different kind of Saviour. It also communicated to Mark’s audience in Rome essentially the same message that Paul’s letter had conveyed. The gospel proclaimed by the apostolic church revolved around faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Such faith not only would be costly in terms of this world’s values. Christian discipleship required sacrificial commitment that inevitably could lead to death. Even worse, however, was to deny their faith, a very current issue for the Roman community with its cult of the emperor. To offer sacrifice to the emperor would effectively end every hope of redemption and eternal life when Christ returned in glory (vss. 36-39). The issues involved in being a faithful disciple could not have been stated more clearly.

(Comments to John at jlss@sympatico.ca.)