Lent 2

Let me ask a question of those of you of a certain age: Do you ever look around at a group of your peers and wonder to yourself if you look as old as they do?

An older gentleman was sitting in the reception room of a dentist’s office. It was his first visit to see this dentist. While waiting for his appointment, he noticed a certificate hanging on a wall which bore the dentist’s full name. Suddenly, he remembered that a slender, nice looking young woman with that name had been in his high school class some 50 years ago.

Upon seeing the dentist, however, he quickly discarded any such thought. This gray‑haired lady with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been his classmate.

After she had examined his teeth, he mentioned a certain high school and asked if by chance she had gone to that school. “I sure did,” she replied.

“When did you graduate?” he asked.

She answered, “In 1970. Why do you ask?”        

“You were in my class!” he exclaimed.       

She squinted her eyes and looked at him real closely and then asked, “What subject did you teach?” Ouch.

Today’s lesson from the Book of Genesis begins like this: “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.’”

Ninety-nine years old! But this was not the first time that God asked something from Abram or Abraham, as we know him. It is said that Jewish history began with a command to Abraham which he received from God to leave the country in which he was born and to go “to the land I will show you.” Abraham believed God. And Abraham went.  That was the kind of faith Abraham had. And it was that faith that gave birth to the nation of Israel.

In today’s lesson, God challenges Abraham’s faith with even more of a fantastic promise. God tells Abraham that Sarah, his aging wife, will bear him a son. Abraham laughed at first. Wouldn’t you? He asked God how could it be that a woman of 90 and a man of 100 could become parents? But again, he believed God. Paul tells us that Abraham “hoped against hope” that the message was true.  And Abraham moved forward with faith.

Faith is a dynamic, forward looking relationship with God. Faith is not sitting on your hands waiting for God to perform a miracle on your behalf. Faith is a matter of movement.  It is a matter of achievement.

Many Christians miss this truth. For many, faith is a cautious, cloistered type of experience in which one seeks, first of all, not to ripple the waters. But that is faith in its weakest form. Faith involves risk. Faith involves moving out.  Faith involves setting our eyes on a lofty goal.  In other words, there is such a thing as being too careful. We miss the exhilaration of life when we refuse to venture out, to do things on faith, to stretch for that which is beyond our grasp.

Many of our attitudes about life are expressed in cautious, negative terms. For instance, the meteorologist gives the weather and says, “Tomorrow there will be a 20% chance of rain.” He never says, “There will be an 80% chance of sunshine.” 

Abraham is an example of what faith is all about. Faith involves moving out.  Faith involves setting our eyes on a lofty goal. People with the faith of Abraham are the achievers in this world.  People of faith are those who enlarge our horizons and champion our causes. They inspire the rest of us. 

Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician and microbiologist. One day he happened to notice that the fungus on a certain glass plate had died when it came into contact with some mold that was on the same plate. Fleming followed up on his observations. Most people would just wash off mold. We usually don’t see much good coming from mold that we find on something. Out of curiosity, Fleming took a bit of the mold and cultured it for further study. Out of his work back in 1928 came what? That’s right—penicillin, the most widely used antibiotic in the world. The result? Alexander Fleming found a way to treat formerly severe and life-threatening illnesses such as pneumonia and meningitis.

One observer commented that what impressed him about Fleming was that he immediately acted on his observation. Most of us, when we see something unusual, merely say ‘that’s interesting’ and do nothing about it. We need to let God show us how to see the world’s difficulties, so that we might know what we can do about them.

It is important for us as Christian people to see that Christian faith is not a static, passive, non-threatening style of life. Jesus was a doer. He was a person who was so outspoken that he aroused envy, bitterness and hatred. If he were a quiet, nice little person sitting in the corner doing no harm, he would never have been crucified.  

Somehow, though, the Christian faith is seen by many people as a style of life in which we are quiet, submissive people who never venture out, never trouble the waters, and subsequently never achieve great things. This is something of what Jesus meant when he said that the children of this world are wiser than the children of light. (Luke 16: 8) 

Christian faith is a dynamic, forward looking relationship with God.  People of faith are the doers in this world, the achievers, those who enlarge our horizons.  

But there is one more thing to be said:  The greatest acts of faith in this world involve our relationships with others.

You may be familiar with the name Philippe Petit. Petit is a French high-wire artist who gained fame when he walked a high-wire strung between the lofty towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971. Some of you may remember that, in 1974, he pulled off the same stunt with a high-wire walk stretched between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.  As thousands watched below, Petit made seven crossings of a cable stretched 1,350 feet above the traffic and concrete of Manhattan—dancing, spinning, grinning, even lying down in the middle his lofty cable.  Today he is artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan.

Even now Phillipe Petit is not afraid to take risks. In fact, he says that he does not see wire walking as risky. He has rehearsed his antics on the high wire so many times that he feels safe there.

There is one thing, however, that absolutely terrifies Phillipe Petit.  He says, “Some risks I find impossible to take—particularly personal risks with people—for example, marriage, or having children.”

Did you get that? Getting married and having children are scarier to this wire-walker than crossing a tiny cable 1,350 feet in the air.

You and I take such relationships for granted.  Maybe Petit’s unusual fear will cause us to think about our relationships. What greater risk is there than trusting your life to another person until “death do us part?”  That is an enormous leap of faith. 

Then there is the risk of having children.  There are some people who choose not to have children for a variety of reasons, and that’s fine.  But it would be sad if we chose that course simply because we are afraid to risk the hurt and the pain that are inevitable in all important relationships.  After all, such relationships also bring great joy.

Phillipe Petit helps us to put life into perspective and to realize that these are the greatest risks—these common, ordinary events that most of us never analyze, never think through.  

Perhaps you are a person who has always kept God at a distance—who has been reluctant to trust God with your life. Perhaps it’s time for you to experience an exhilarating new adventure.

Faith is not accepting a handful of propositions and saying “Oh yes, I believe. Now I am saved. Now I am bound for the promised land.”  That’s a pale imitation of the real thing.  The real thing is when you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord and you seek to live courageously and victoriously for him in this world, staking everything you are and hope to be on his eternal purpose and promise. Like Abraham hoping against hope that the message of an eternal covenant is true.  That is living by faith.