This sermon was preached on Sunday, March 8, 2020 at St. Andrew's, Wellesley for the Second Sunday in Lent. The readings for this text are: Genesis 12:1-4a, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, John 3:1-17, and Psalm 121.
On one of my favorite podcasts this week, the Rev. Dr. Matthew Potts, an Episcopal priest and Harvard Divinity professor, reflected on a scene from a fantasy young adult novel. In the scene, a wizard attempts to put out his house fire with a magic wand that’s been snapped in two. Potts commented: “this perfectly encapsulates...the lesson for what’s to come. The world is burning. All we have are imperfect tools. Get to it...The crisis you have is the crisis you have, the tools you have are the tools you have. The fact that you do not have the right tools for the job does not absolve you of the responsibility to get to work fighting the fire...We do not have easy access to the tools to fix the problems we face, but they are the tools we have and so we’d better get to work.”
When I look around my life, I see so many people for whom this scene might resonate: caregivers whose parents, children, spouses are struggling in new ways, but none of the diagnoses, medications, or paths forward seem to make any sense. Communities experiencing a sudden crisis, but the local authorities’ response seems too drastic, or not drastic enough. People hit with huge, wildly shifting forces from tornadoes to plummeting markets to a global pandemic, with nothing to do but hunker down. Others facing choices for a leader or a life-partner, and all the options are deeply flawed. Something’s on fire in my life or yours and neither of us know if we have what it takes inside of us. The crisis in front of you, or your family, your friends, your neighbors, is the crisis you have. And here are the imperfect, inadequate tools.
When we meet Abraham in the short excerpt from Genesis this morning, the father of the three great religions is not yet Abraham but Abram. And Abram’s not actually a very decent guy. He tricks people out of their possessions and land, he’s terrible at sharing. Not to mention that he uses and abuses his wife, exploits and abandons his slave girl and their son. Abram is a very flawed human being--but so are so many of the Biblical prophets that God finds a way to use for good. One of my favorite Sunday School lessons from Godly Play defines prophets simply as people who come so close to God, and God comes so close to them, that they know what they must do. And so, again and again, God comes close to Abram and promises that through him and his many descendants, God will bless the nations of the world. Abraham and his children will be a blessing to all the families of the earth.
Lent is a season when we are to focus on our brokenness, our personal inadequacy. It’s when we learn not necessarily how to fix it , but how not to let it paralyze us. In Lent, we come to terms with our imperfection and face the truth that God is calling us, anyway.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul reminds us that Abraham’s most important quality, the one thing that stands out to God and to the world around him, is his steadfast faith. He believes God and God’s promises. His righteousness was not about doing everything right, or personal perfection, but trust. In each place he went, Abram built an altar to God. Each time God came with a promise, Abraham believed. It all depends, Paul writes, on faith. Coming close to God, and God coming close to you.
Each summer in high school, hundreds of teenagers from my church packed into buses and headed down to West Virginia to do emergency home repair in the poorest counties of Appalachia. The homes, of course, were not on fire, but they were in dire need: collapsing floors, rotted roofs, nonexistent foundations. And here we were, teenagers. With hammers. When I returned to work for the ministry, Appalachia Service Project, for a whole summer in college, I could not hide from the enormity of the raging fire we were really facing: chronic, generational poverty, the economic exploitation of a region, communities filled with despair. And this is who God had sent. Four college kids in a couple of beat-up pick-up trucks. None of our tools were adequate. None of us was the right person for the job. We had to choose to come close to God, to allow God to come close to us through the people we served. We had to trust, anyway.
This June, I’ll be going down again to Tennessee, with a couple dozen teens and adults from St. Andrew’s and St. Michael’s. We’ll be inadequate. Some of our tools will break. It’ll never be quite enough. And we’ll carry with us a blessing, and a promise. God is here, God loves you. You are not forgotten.
There will be moments in each of our lives, or perhaps one is already here, when we don’t have the tools to fix what’s happening to us, or when the tools we have are so minor, so inadequate, that they can barely dent the harm. There will be times when our getting through does not matter so much on doing the right thing in the right way, protecting ourselves, or following the directions to a T. What will matter most will be our ability to stand fast in our conviction that God intends us to be a blessing in this world. This is the one thing on which it will all depend: the inner strength to pray, to be present to another’s suffering, to endure with hope.
Compassion, steadfastness, kindness in the face of crisis--this is how we are a blessing. This is how Abraham’s legacy shines through. When the world is shifting and churning, when the things on which we have built our lives and our societies are shaken, we have something to offer: our faith. And when I say, we, I mean we. We stand up together each Sunday at the Creed, we say “We believe.” Even when our own individual faith falters, there’s another one beside us, or on the phone, or in prayer, to hold us steady.
A Jewish commentary on the Prophet Micah has this to say, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief (or its fear). Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” We will not complete this work. How can we with these broken tools? But let God come close to you, come close to God, and pray that we may know how to be the blessing each other needs.
On one of my favorite podcasts this week, the Rev. Dr. Matthew Potts, an Episcopal priest and Harvard Divinity professor, reflected on a scene from a fantasy young adult novel. In the scene, a wizard attempts to put out his house fire with a magic wand that’s been snapped in two. Potts commented: “this perfectly encapsulates...the lesson for what’s to come. The world is burning. All we have are imperfect tools. Get to it...The crisis you have is the crisis you have, the tools you have are the tools you have. The fact that you do not have the right tools for the job does not absolve you of the responsibility to get to work fighting the fire...We do not have easy access to the tools to fix the problems we face, but they are the tools we have and so we’d better get to work.”
When I look around my life, I see so many people for whom this scene might resonate: caregivers whose parents, children, spouses are struggling in new ways, but none of the diagnoses, medications, or paths forward seem to make any sense. Communities experiencing a sudden crisis, but the local authorities’ response seems too drastic, or not drastic enough. People hit with huge, wildly shifting forces from tornadoes to plummeting markets to a global pandemic, with nothing to do but hunker down. Others facing choices for a leader or a life-partner, and all the options are deeply flawed. Something’s on fire in my life or yours and neither of us know if we have what it takes inside of us. The crisis in front of you, or your family, your friends, your neighbors, is the crisis you have. And here are the imperfect, inadequate tools.
When we meet Abraham in the short excerpt from Genesis this morning, the father of the three great religions is not yet Abraham but Abram. And Abram’s not actually a very decent guy. He tricks people out of their possessions and land, he’s terrible at sharing. Not to mention that he uses and abuses his wife, exploits and abandons his slave girl and their son. Abram is a very flawed human being--but so are so many of the Biblical prophets that God finds a way to use for good. One of my favorite Sunday School lessons from Godly Play defines prophets simply as people who come so close to God, and God comes so close to them, that they know what they must do. And so, again and again, God comes close to Abram and promises that through him and his many descendants, God will bless the nations of the world. Abraham and his children will be a blessing to all the families of the earth.
Lent is a season when we are to focus on our brokenness, our personal inadequacy. It’s when we learn not necessarily how to fix it , but how not to let it paralyze us. In Lent, we come to terms with our imperfection and face the truth that God is calling us, anyway.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul reminds us that Abraham’s most important quality, the one thing that stands out to God and to the world around him, is his steadfast faith. He believes God and God’s promises. His righteousness was not about doing everything right, or personal perfection, but trust. In each place he went, Abram built an altar to God. Each time God came with a promise, Abraham believed. It all depends, Paul writes, on faith. Coming close to God, and God coming close to you.
Each summer in high school, hundreds of teenagers from my church packed into buses and headed down to West Virginia to do emergency home repair in the poorest counties of Appalachia. The homes, of course, were not on fire, but they were in dire need: collapsing floors, rotted roofs, nonexistent foundations. And here we were, teenagers. With hammers. When I returned to work for the ministry, Appalachia Service Project, for a whole summer in college, I could not hide from the enormity of the raging fire we were really facing: chronic, generational poverty, the economic exploitation of a region, communities filled with despair. And this is who God had sent. Four college kids in a couple of beat-up pick-up trucks. None of our tools were adequate. None of us was the right person for the job. We had to choose to come close to God, to allow God to come close to us through the people we served. We had to trust, anyway.
This June, I’ll be going down again to Tennessee, with a couple dozen teens and adults from St. Andrew’s and St. Michael’s. We’ll be inadequate. Some of our tools will break. It’ll never be quite enough. And we’ll carry with us a blessing, and a promise. God is here, God loves you. You are not forgotten.
There will be moments in each of our lives, or perhaps one is already here, when we don’t have the tools to fix what’s happening to us, or when the tools we have are so minor, so inadequate, that they can barely dent the harm. There will be times when our getting through does not matter so much on doing the right thing in the right way, protecting ourselves, or following the directions to a T. What will matter most will be our ability to stand fast in our conviction that God intends us to be a blessing in this world. This is the one thing on which it will all depend: the inner strength to pray, to be present to another’s suffering, to endure with hope.
Compassion, steadfastness, kindness in the face of crisis--this is how we are a blessing. This is how Abraham’s legacy shines through. When the world is shifting and churning, when the things on which we have built our lives and our societies are shaken, we have something to offer: our faith. And when I say, we, I mean we. We stand up together each Sunday at the Creed, we say “We believe.” Even when our own individual faith falters, there’s another one beside us, or on the phone, or in prayer, to hold us steady.
A Jewish commentary on the Prophet Micah has this to say, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief (or its fear). Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” We will not complete this work. How can we with these broken tools? But let God come close to you, come close to God, and pray that we may know how to be the blessing each other needs.
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