2026-03-01 Lent 2

Scripture Readings

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!

You know, without a doubt, one of the worst things in life is moving. Having to move to a new house or new apartment or new condo or whatever. A new residence. It’s not so bad when you’re young or in the kraft-dinner college stage of life and everything you have fits in the back of a 1992 Nissan Pathfinder. But the older you get, the more stuff you accumulate, the more established you become, ug… I can’t really think of something I’d rather not do. Having to load up my theological library which weighed 10,000lbs and cart them all over western Canada was never at the top of the list of fun and exciting. In Oxbow and Frobisher, I used to watch our older members when they moved into town from the farm and had the big auction sale to try and get rid of all the junk they collected for the last 70 years. Who knew you could amass such a collection of rusted paint cans and telephone line insulators! Barn-fulls of ’em! Having to sort that mess out?! What a nightmare! … At least they had pie at the auction sale as your consolation prize for the enormous headache of moving!

Moving. It’s on the agenda today in our Scripture readings for the Second Sunday in Lent. We are talking both physically and spiritually here. Abram. Genesis chapter 12. It’s the TSN turning point in the book: “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (12:1-3). Rise up, Abe. Rise up and go. Leave everything you know behind. I don’t care that you’re 75 years old and you have a bad knee. Go down to the liquor store and get some free cardboard boxes! It’s time to move!

God told Abram to go. Jesus tells the disciples to follow. “Go and Baptize all nations” He tells the church. This is “Kingdom Language” so to speak. It’s the language of God’s Kingdom. It is journey. It is travel. It is movement from one place to another. It’s unbelief to belief. It’s despair to hope. It’s death to life. It’s this world to the next. We see it with Abram. We see it with St. Paul. We see it with Nicodemus at night.

This theme fits well with our season of Lent, which in and of itself is a journey. It is our journey to the cross. In fact our entire lives as God’s people are a journey. Our Baptism starts us on the journey to eternity. But Satan, the world and our old sinful flesh will always try and pull us from the path. Worldly stuff, worldly things, worldly aspirations. They seek to derail our journey heavenward.

Just think about the Israelites on their Exodus from slavery in Egypt. They were moving at God’s command, headed to the promised land. Through the wilderness and the desert they needed to go. And when the going gets rough, what do they do, do you remember? They long for their life lived in captivity and slavery! “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic!” (Num 11:5). Nuttin’ beats that sweet, sweet Egyptian garlic, folks! It’s soooo good, you’d readily swap your freedom for it!

They should have been focusing on the new land that God had promised to them, a promise that went all the way back to Abram. Don’t look backwards, look forward! This is your promise from God. The God who loves you and redeemed you from slavery and oppression. The God who crushed your enemies and set you free. He is giving you the land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land abounding with blessings and prosperity! … But you’ve just got your heart set on … garlic!? It’s like a festival on South Hill for crying out loud!

Go. Follow. Move. This is what God tells us. Earthly stuff is fading. Moth and rust destroy. Thieves break in and steal. Governments and Empires rise and fall. But the Gospel promise of sins forgiven and life everlasting is exactly that: everlasting. It’s an eternal promise for all who will believe it by faith. Just as Abram did. Just as Paul preached. Just as Jesus taught. Our Lord’s heavenly Kingdom is bathed in light that does not fade. This is why Lent is a season of “Bright Sadness.” It’s always bright because of the light of Christ shining in our darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. It’s sad because our hearts and this world is so full of sin, always seeking to derail our journey of faith with Jesus.

An American journalist went to Poland to visit a famous and renowned Rabbi to do a story for a magazine. When he arrived at the Rabbi’s home, he was astonished to see that it was only a simple, one room apartment. It was filled with books. It had a table and a bench. “Rabbi,” the astonished American asked, “where is all your furniture?” “Where’s yours?” the Rabbi replied. … “Mine?” asked the puzzled writer. “I’m just a visitor here, I’m only passing through.” “So am I” replied the Rabbi.

All the great spiritual people who wrote books came to this same kind of conclusion. The famous Russian Orthodox Spiritual Classic book The Way of a Pilgrim starts out in much the same way. “By the grace of God I am a Christian, by my deeds a great sinner, and by my calling a homeless wanderer of humblest origin, roaming from place to place. My possessions consist of a knapsack with dry crusts of bread on my back and in my bosom the Holy Bible. This is all!” In these wise words written by a very spiritual pilgrim, we see the true essence of life here on earth. It is a journey. It is a journey of faith and prayer.

Our journey begins much like Abram’s. God calls each of us by the Gospel to be His child, to go to the promised land that He has prepared for us and all who love Him. He Baptizes us to give us His pledge and promise that our sins are forgiven and that we belong to Him. I find it quite interesting how Abram responds to God’s call to him: “And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord” (Gen 12:8). It has always been that God’s people have built an Altar as the focal point of a church. It has always been a sign of God’s enduring presence with us. Through our whole lives of pilgrimage, the Altar is central. When we get baptized, it is in front of the Altar. When we get confirmed, it happens in front of the Altar. When we come up front for the Lord’s Supper, it proceeds from the Altar. When we get married, we stand in front of the Altar and promise forever. And when we die, our body is placed before the Altar in the service. Our entire lives in this journey to eternity are focused around the Altar of God, in His house. It is here that we receive the necessary strength for the journey, to continue on as God’s people with His blessing.

So the point of Lenten reflection in all of this is, asking ourselves if we have become sedentary, a non-moving, non-journeying folk. Or has our journey to God’s Kingdom been derailed by worldly stuff? If so then we need to repent. We need to reclaim our Lenten journey to the cross in repentance and prayer. We realize where our help comes from and we ask our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to help us walk the road to the cross, ever pressing onward towards eternity. His blood shed on the cross purifies us from every sin and His enduring presence blesses us and fills us with hope. When calamity strikes or difficult times make life miserable, we don’t drown in the pit of despair. We continue to run this race of faith with perseverance, knowing that even though hard times may come our way – and they certainly do – our God is with us. Christ has conquered and “in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Rom 8:37). We continue on our journey to the cross and to eternity. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.