Lent 2B – Preliminary Thoughts

I’m going to try to write something daily, even though I never intended this site to be blog-like.  I link to my blogs from here which have shorter thoughts on various passages, but I rarely get into the themes and the relationships between the passages in the lectionary in my blogging.  Over the last few weeks I have found it much easier to get notes on paper and in the margins of my Bibles than to get them into an article here.

This week I was struck by several themes, so let me list them in order:

1. God does it!  That comes through all the passages.  In Genesis 17, our lectionary reading skips Abraham’s response of laughter, and emphasizes God speaking of the blessing and how it will be done.  There is almost the sense that God intentionally waits until Abram (now renamed Abraham) is 99 and his wife Sarai (now Sarah) is 90 years old in order to emphasize that he is the one who does.  Psalm 22 ends on the words “he did” referring to divine action.  In Romans the focus is on the righteousness of faith as opposed to righteousness we manufacture ourselves.  I can’t help but think this righteousness must be real and manifest in the person in and on whom God works, and not merely transactional.
2.  Death is no barrier.  One common question Christians ask is why Jesus had to die. There are so many answers.  But one is simply that for God death is no real barrier.  In Genesis 17 we have Abraham viewing himself as effectively dead–no longer able to produce life, something Paul picks up on in Romans 4:19.  (Note that our lectionary passage skips Genesis 17:17 in which Abraham laughs, and Paul seems to ignore it too, seeing Abraham as a perfect example of faith!)  In Psalm 22, God receives worship even of those who go down to the pit(v. 29).  Finally, while Jesus has his human reactions to his coming death in various places, when he discusses it with the disciples it is a simple necessity.  Death is no barrier to God.
3. Sarah and Abraham are blessed together.  In a culture in which the man was seen as generating seed, and the woman was more or less a place for it to grow, God makes it clear that Sarah is part of this as well.  Thus we remember Abraham and Sarah together.  We might think of this when considering the difference between a God’s eye view and a culture eye view on men and women.
4. God’s word and action is effective.  This is a big topic, but I would simply note that when God blessed Abraham, it wasn’t only transactional.  So when Paul speaks of the righteousness of faith, should it not also be effective and accomplish something in the life of the person who believes?  It is all God’s action, but God’s action is effective.

Passages:  Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:23-31; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38.