The Second Sunday in Lent

The Second Sunday in Lent – March 7, 2004

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

If I took a survey asking which promises people think others break the most, what do you think the answer would be?

Or, perhaps it is time to ask how you are doing on your Lenten promises? Someone riding with me in my car this week gave what I guess you could call “an informal confession,” that they have already broken their Lenten promise not to eat dessert. Like me, this fellow gives up dessert for Lent. Only he was at a friend’s home and dinner included dessert. He did not want to offend his host, so he ate dessert. Thus, he confessed his broken Lenten self-denial promise.

There are other promises that have a big impact on people when they are broken. How about marriage vows? The breaking of our marriage vows sometimes leads to divorce and we know that can bring much pain to many.

Unfortunately these days there is a myth going around that one-in-two marriages end in divorce. When you look at the statistics you discover that there is a small group of folks that marry and divorce, say five or six or more times. When that happens it skews the statistics and makes things look worse than they are. Actually more that 75% of married people are still married to their first spouse. We are doing better with marriage promises than the popular myth suggests.

The question remains, though, what is the most often broken promise? Well, my guess is that it is not your Lenten self-denial promise, nor is it marriage vows. Look here, on the back of a dollar bill, and you can see that the most often broken promise is written there. Do you know what it says? It says, “In God we trust.”

Do you believe that most people honor that promise? And notice where we find it, on the back of paper currency, on the back of money. It has been said that we sometimes worship and trust the “Almighty dollar” more than the Almighty God. Perhaps there is potential here for confession of our sin this Lent?

Do you agree with me? Is not, “In God we trust,” words from the back of the very money we spend, the promise most often broken?

What is amazing about God is that God remains faithful to us even when we break our promises. Perhaps God is most faithful when we do break our promises.

Abram’s story is told this morning. Here is God and Abram having a chat. God promises to be Abram’s God, granting Abram all that he needs and more, a reward beyond his asking. And Abram asks for a son. You know that God grants his wish and Sarah bears their son, Isaac. God promises and God is good for the promise.

God makes the promise clear in the very special scene where Abram places the slaughtered animals and God as smoking fire pot and flaming torch passes between.

So it is with the life we are given in Jesus. In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, in what I would call the “Cross Event,” God grants us life now and forever. Here is God making clear a promise. Here is the God of life giving a promise of resurrected life and being good for it. Just as God made a promise to Abram, God promises us in Jesus full pardon of our sin and resurrected life as a gift.

In Confirmation class this week I asked our youth when resurrected life begins for us. It is a good question. Lots of people think it is when they die, or at the end of time when Jesus comes again in judgment and grace.

John put up his hand enthusiastically and I called on him. “At our baptism,” he said. And John is right. As we die and rise in the waters of Holy Baptism with our Lord Jesus, he gives us forgiveness and resurrected life. It has already begun for us in our baptism. It will continue through death and through judgment and grace. We have the gift of the cross.

And you know from Abram’s story, let alone the story of the cross, that God keeps the promise that is made to us by God.

You can trust God.

Isn’t that what the words on the back of a dollar bill are all about? My guess would be that the tradition of putting those words there began as someone realized our tendency to easily fall in the trap of trusting more in money than God. It is a reminder not to let any false gods get in the way of our relationship with the true God.

So, we who know the grace and forgiveness of God in the cross know that money takes a different place in our lives. It is not our god, nor do we worship it. We learn to let it be a blessing for others and ourselves, but it does not become the source of life itself for us.

If at no other time I see this happen as someone discovers they are terminally ill. Many people who are used to using money to buy their way out of problems assume it will work with their health as well. It doesn’t. No matter how much you spend, the moment will come for all of us where nothing, not even money, can keep death away.

The good news is that God grants you resurrected life. It does not cost you. It cost the very life of the Son of God. The gift is yours. How fortunate we are that our God who keeps promises keeps the promise of resurrected life for us from the moment of our baptism.

Now, this is a God worthy of our trust. Amen.

Pastor Robert F. Holley