SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B

February 25, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

 

Genesis 17:1-7 

Psalm 22:22-23 

Romans 4:13-25 

Mark 8:31-38

 

 

A theme running through today’s readings is that of God’s trustworthiness. Throughout Scripture, God makes multiple promises to his people, including us, and God’s promises are reliable and true. God is worthy of our trust.

 

Both the Old Testament and the Epistle readings describe God’s promises to the Patriarch Abraham. In the reading from Exodus, God makes a covenant with Abraham, promising that he shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations: “I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.” Lest there be any misunderstanding, moreover, God specifies that this progeny will come through a son born of Abraham’s wife Sarah and no-one else: “I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

 

Now, at face value, these promises are literally unbelievable. Abraham is at this time 99 years old; and Sarah, who’s been infertile all her life—in biblical language, “barren”—is well past the childbearing years. Nevertheless, as Saint Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle reading from Romans, Abraham believed God. “Hoping against hope,” Paul writes, “[Abraham] believed he would become the father of many nations … He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead … or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb … [but] being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised … [Abraham’s] faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.” 

 

At a time when people believed that they lived on after death primarily in and through their children, God’s word to Abraham and Sarah was, in effect, the promise of immortality. Their joy in believing may thus be summed up in the words of Psalm 22, which we just recited: “My soul shall live for [the Lord]; my descendants shall serve him; they shall be known as the Lord’s for ever. They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.” 

 

In the Gospel reading, however, Peter’s response to Jesus stands in stark contrast to Abraham’s response to God. After Jesus makes what is known as his first passion prediction—foretelling that “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again”—Peter begins to rebuke him. But Jesus in turn rebukes Peter: “Get behind me Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 

What’s going on here is that Peter seems to hear and understand the parts about suffering, rejection, and death, but not the part about after three days rising again. Unlike Abraham, Peter lacks the faith to trust that God can literally bring life from death. So, where Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness, Peter’s lack of faith earns him the rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan!” Peter will in due course have the opportunity to make up what’s lacking and live up to his vocation as the Rock upon which Christ builds his Church. But, for the moment, he’s not there yet.

 

So, the contrast presents a choice. Will we respond to God’s promises with the belief of Abraham, or with the unbelief of Peter? As Saint Paul says, just as Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness, so will our faith “be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead …” 

 

Only by trusting in God’s promises is it possible to respond affirmatively to Our Lord’s call to take up our cross and follow him. God never promises us an easy life in this world. While the way of Christian discipleship brings many moments of deep joy, it can also be at times difficult, discouraging, and painful.

 

Eight years ago, I went on a Church of England pilgrimage to Lourdes, in the southwest of France, where the blessed Virgin Mary appeared 18 times during the year 1858 to a young peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous. The apparitions sparked a renewal of faith and devotion in France at a time when the Church was under sustained attack by the forces of secularism. Lourdes quickly became a center of international pilgrimage known for its ministries of healing, and today it attracts approximately five million pilgrims per year from all over the world.

 

Now, as Episcopalians, we’re not required to believe in the authenticity of Mary’s appearances to Bernadette. Our Anglican tradition doesn’t require us to believe anything that cannot be proved from Holy Scripture. For that matter, Roman Catholics aren’t required to believe in the Lourdes apparitions either. The Roman Catholic Church simply declares them "worthy of belief," which means that Roman Catholics are free to believe them if they find them persuasive, but they don’t have to believe them if they don’t find them persuasive. So, it’s safe to say that we’re free to take the Lourdes apparitions on their own merits.

For me, the most memorable words of Our Lady of Lourdes to Bernadette were: “I do not promise you happiness in this world, but in the next.” Even if Bernadette was uniquely favored by these wonderful encounters with Mary, and even if she was a chosen instrument for the spiritual renewal of the French Church, as I believe she was, we discover when we read her biography that her life was never easy, either before or after the apparitions. She was born and raised in grinding poverty. The authorities of both Church and state initially treated her story with skepticism and hostility. She was subject for years to stressful questioning and cross-examination by the ecclesiastical commission appointed to investigate her case. Finally, after her local bishop proclaimed her visions worthy of belief, she was sent off to a convent where she was treated harshly by strict superiors and jealous sisters for the rest of her life.

 

Like so many of the Church’s saints, Bernadette’s example teaches us to follow Jesus no matter what, in the confidence that God is trustworthy and his promises are true. God fulfilled his promises to Abraham, and God will fulfill his promises to us. This life brings us many God-given moments of joy and happiness in this world, and that’s good. But God’s ultimate promise to us is the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. So, whatever sufferings, hardships, or humiliations we may have to undergo in this world, Jesus promises final victory and glory to all who persevere in taking up his Cross and following him.