Lent 2, Year B | Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
February 25, 2024
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
No audio or video of the sermon is available.
It’s easy to look at the Bible as if it were a map, some sort of guide that shows us how to get to Disneyland or where to find a buried treasure. We start at Creation, take the exit for the Ten Commandments, turn right at the Beatitudes, trundle our way down the straight and narrow, make sure to avoid that oh-so-tempting turnoff for the byway to hell, and with enough time and luck, finally arrive at the Kingdom of Heaven, where God waits to settle us in for our everlasting dream vacation.
But treating the Bible that way will only lead to frustration and disappointment. That’s because the Kingdom isn’t somewhere we eventually go. There’s nowhere for us to drive off to, no magical resort waiting at the foot of Someday Mountain. God’s Reign is already everywhere, so there’s really nowhere for us to head off to and discover. We’re already there; it just doesn’t look quite the way we’d like it to.
So then, if the Bible isn’t a map detailing God’s exact location, what’s the point? Why should we even care what it says? If there’s no great adventure to go on, no grand quest that involves finding the Promised Land, then what’s the point? If this is the Kingdom, we might as well just settle down and make the best of the disappointment we already have.
That’s kind of what was going on with Abraham in our Hebrew Bible reading this morning.
In Genesis 12, Abraham (then known as Abram) hears God telling him to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”[1] Despite having little to no idea what was going on, Abraham obeys. In chapter 15, after he’s arrived in greater Palestine, God comes to Abraham again and promises him that, despite his old age, he’ll have a son, a direct biological heir to inherit his father’s mantle and responsibilities. Abraham and his wife, Sarah, immediately hatch a plan to make this happen, and about 9 months later, Ishmael is born to one of Sarah’s slaves. Family drama ensues. Hagar, Ishmael’s mom, runs away with her child, but God guides her back to what was undoubtedly an uncomfortable family reunion.
Here in chapter 17, the dust and tension seem to have settled, and Abraham has assumed that this is it—this is as good as it will ever get. He’s followed the map, improvising a bit where it was unclear, but this must be what God promised. There’s nowhere left to go; he’s finally arrived at the Kingdom. However, God shows up again and, as God tends to do, unsettles everything. It turns out Ishmael isn’t the heir they had discussed. The very elderly Sarah is the one who’ll carry the even more elderly Abraham’s baby. As Paul points out in our Romans reading, Abraham’s somewhere around 100 years old at this point, so he’s probably ready to let go of the hard life and just stay put, but he chooses to listen to God, pulls up stakes, and continues the journey. “So Abraham was faithful to God, and that was accounted to him as righteousness.”[2]
Then we look at Peter. Not two verses before today’s Gospel reading, Peter has openly confessed to Jesus, “You are the Messiah.”[3] And there it was: Peter had arrived. He’d figured everything out, unlocked the secret to life abundant, and was ready to sit back and claim his reward. But then Jesus almost immediately begins talking about upcoming suffering, rejection, execution, and rising. This was not the sort of Messiah Peter had signed up for—not what Heaven’s supposed to look like. So he takes Jesus aside to address this obvious mistake. Jesus rebukes him—loudly—and goes on to talk about what it will really take for anyone to keep following him. Peter, undoubtedly ashamed and embarrassed, has a choice. Will he step beyond his perceptions and dreams of what he expected God and Jesus to do for him, or will he stay put, clinging to proud ideals that could never be while Jesus continues on his journey to the Father?
Both Peter and Abraham had been looking for God’s Kingdom, a place to finally arrive, somewhere to settle in and enjoy the view for the rest of their lives. But no matter where they stopped, it would never be quite right. That’s because, while they thought they were looking for a place where everything’s just perfect, the way things ought to be, what they really needed to find was God. And God isn’t a location. God is a living being, always on the move.
We often treat the Bible like an atlas, but it isn’t the map we pretend it to be. It functions more along the lines of a field guide. If you want to see a particular creature in the wild, you have to learn as much or more about their habits and habitats as you do about what you expect them to look like. You learn to go where you’re most likely to encounter them. You gain the experience of knowing when it’s important to sit and wait yet constantly keep watch for signs it’s time to move. You hunt for hints of where your target’s recently been and clues as to where they might be headed.
We Christians talk about going to Heaven, but our real target ought to be God. That means we need to learn what God is like, how God moves and thinks, how God tends to behave, what God tends to love, and how God tends to live. The Bible shows us other people’s encounters with God not simply so that we can mimic their behavior and recreate their exact experiences but so we can recognize who God is as we search throughout our own surrounding landscapes.
Lent offers us a time to step back a little, to reassess our goals and to redirect our quest. Are we really trying to discover a Kingdom, a location that’s bound to fade and fail over time, or is God what we’re truly looking for? Are we searching for a settled throne, somewhere to bask in the power and share in the glory, a place where God finally imposes our will across the land and sinners cower before our grandeur and Divine Majesty? Or are we pursuing a living being, something rare and wonderful and amazing in its own right? Something that moves and breaths? Something always present yet seemingly impossible to catch a glimpse of? Do we really want to settle for a Heaven made in the image of man, or will we recognize that we’ll only be satisfied as we continue the quest not for some “home” beyond this world but for the real and living presence of the God we need to continue to follow?
[1] Genesis 12:1 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Romans 4:3 | My translation
[3] Mark 8:29b