2

nd

Sunday in Lent C
2016

nd

Sunday in Lent C

1.In the Gospel, Jesus laments the lack of faith of Jerusalem,

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I
desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not
willing.
The last of these prophets was Jesus himself, and he was in danger: Herod, and the Sadducees were
conspiring against him. He was on his way to Jerusalem, where he knew he would also be killed.
What bothered Jesus the most was the fact that even though the Jews had received the revelation of God,
and claimed to believe, their faith had not changed their way of life, and they had persecuted all those who
had attempted to get them to change.
Their lack of faith stands in contrast with Abraham's faith. He is the model or the example of what it means
to have total faith in God

2. The reading from the book of Genesis describes the faith of Abraham
God appeared to him in a vision and told him to leave his hometown of Ur and go to the land of Canaan.
Abraham believed in God, packed all his possessions and traveled north to a place he had never seen. In
exchange for his obedience, God promised him that he would become the father of a great nation.
However, both Abraham and his wife Sarah were old and they had no children, and even after they settled in
the land of Canaan, the present day Israel, Sarah didn't get pregnant right away.
Abraham is presented as the model of a man of of faith, in spite of that, he had doubts and questioned God.
Without a son, all his possessions would go to Eliezer, his favored slave.
God took him out one night and showed him the stars in the sky and told him that his descendants would be
as numerous as the stars. Then God and Abraham made a covenant, a contract.
The passage from Genesis describes the ritual used to make covenants (contracts): animals were sacrificed,
and their bodies split in two. Then the two parties in the contract would walk between the dead animals and
proclaim, may the same thing happen to me if I dont keep my word
Abraham was faithful to the covenant, and God rewarded him with the birth of a son, Isaac. Isaac had 2
sons, Esau and Jacob, and Jacob had 12 boys who gave rise to the 12 tribes of Israel. The faith of Abraham
was rewarded.

nd

Sunday in Lent C

3. What is faith? What does it mean to believe?

Every Sunday, after the sermon we all stand up and recite the Creed. It is the summary of our faith, the
full list of what all the revealed truth Christians are supposed to believe.
For the first 3 centuries, the different Christian churches had a variety of believes about God, Jesus, the
Holy Spirit, and about the church. After Christianity was officially accepted, the leaders of the Church
met at the Councils of Nicaea in 325 AD and Chalcedon in 451 AD and defined the articles of faith all
Christians are expected to believe in, and those definitions are summarized in the Creed.
So, if we accept in our mind the list of statements in the Creed does that mean that we have faith? Not
really. The Jews who were antagonizing Jesus and the prophets believed all the right things, but their
faith didnt affect the way they lived.
I dont mean to downplay the importance of the truths we read in the creed. But there is more to faith
then simply accepting all the statements of the Creed.
Faith is not the same as absence of doubt. Abraham had doubts and questioned God. God has given
reason, so naturally we question what we dont understand.
But above all that, faith is willingness to change our way of life to follow Gods call. Abraham was called
by God, packed his possessions and moved to a land he had never seen. The leaders of the Jews at the
time of Jesus refused to accept John the Baptists call to repent, convert and change their way of life.
They used religion to enrich themselves and exploit the poor. They did not want to leave their comfort
zone and accept Jesus.

4. Paul was a person of faith. Once he understood that God was calling him to preach the
Gospel of Jesus to all nations, he changed his life completely.
Like Abraham he left his home and travelled all over the ancient world preaching and starting
churches. He founded a church in Philippi, in northern Greece, and them moved on to other
locations.
The Philippians remained always very close to Paul, and supported him financially in his missionary
trips. Paul wrote to the Philippians while being held as a prisoner. This is one of the 4 letters from
captivity, the others are the letters to the Colossians, Ephesians and to Philemon.

2nd Sunday in Lent C

Pauls purpose in writing to the Philippians was to thank them for their support, to encourage them
to persevere in their faith, and to warn them against the danger of listening to false prophets.
These false prophets, for Paul, were Jewish Christian preachers who tried to convince the Philippians
to convert to Judaism to become the people of God and thus become better Christians.
Paul fought against this ideology all of his life. Pauls argument is that Abraham was loved by God, or in
the right relationship with God (righteousness) because of his faith, not because he was circumcised.
His faith had made him the father of a great nation, not circumcision, which he received later in life.
Jesus had been rejected by the leaders of the Jews because, like the prophets, he too had challenged
their traditions and laws, and stressed that they would be saved only if they believed in God and
changed their way of life by loving their neighbors and helping those in need.

5. This brings us back to Gods promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as
numerous as the starts of heaven. Who are the descendants of Abraham?
The descendants of Abraham, the people of God are those who believe as he did, and are willing to
change their way of life to obey Gods call to love God and love our neighbors
All other things such as traditions, laws, and creeds are secondary. What makes faith real is the
willingness to roll up our sleeves and get involved in helping those in need.

6. The message of todays reading is faith: the faith of Abraham and of the Philippians are
held up as examples. So let us summarize what it means to believe?

Faith is to acknowledge that there is a divine reality beyond what we can see and touch.
Faith is to recognize that God loves us and communicates with us.
Faith is to persevere even when in doubt and when suffering, just as Abraham and Paul did.
Faith is to trust in God the way a child trusts in his mom and dad.
But beyond all that, faith is action. It is the willingness to practice what we believe. Faith is
involvement. Or, as the letter of James states, faith without good words is dead