the Second Sunday in Lent ----- 17 March 2019

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great."

2 But Abram said, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." 4 But the word of the Lord came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." 5 He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." 6 And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

7 Then he said to him, "I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess." 8 But he said, "O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" 9 He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." 10 He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.

17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.

"Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great."  "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them… So shall your descendants be."

·       I have discovered that what I say has very little effect on the world around me. I have also discovered that what I do has little effect as well.

·       I have to say this morning that I am without words. Yes, I wrote a sermon and I found the process interesting… until Friday morning. Then the murder of 47 people at their worship took place in Christchurch, New Zealand. I have to say I was appalled but I was not shocked. There have been killings without number since I have become pastor here. People are dying the world over because somebody didn’t like the way they worshiped God, or didn’t like the way they voted, or didn’t like the way they lived their lives and who they happened to love or didn’t like the fact that they were there and had come from somewhere else.

·       I confess to you now that I am not shocked by all this. This is sin on my part. I want to think better of people and I want to be shocked by these events… but I am not. I don’t know if I’ve become jaded to this sort of thing or if I just don’t care enough.

·       47 Muslim people died in Christchurch on Friday. 11 Jewish people were shot in their synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania not too long ago. 33 Christian people were murdered in Nigeria very recently.

·       And I have done nothing about any of this.

·       I know I had nothing to do with any of these atrocities. And neither have I done anything to stop the next one.

·       Everyone here has felt hatred. Any number of you have suffered under either Gestapo, the Iron Guard, the Soviet secret police or other groups. I know many of your stories. I know how you had to leave your beloved homes and make a new life in what was a strange place. So did the people killed in Christchurch.

·       In 1846, a man named Matthias Dailey left his home in County Mayo in Ireland in the midst of a famine that reduced the Irish population by half and journeyed to a small town in Pennsylvania. He’s buried there… and he was my great-great-great-grandfather. Few know of the hatred those hungry refugees faced. But you know. And so did those killed in Christchurch.

·       A little bit ago I said “Muslim people”, “Jewish people”, and “Christian people” rather than Muslims, Jews, or Christians. Not discounting the importance of faith, I decided to focus on the fact that we are all “people.”

·       Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all “people of the Book”, a term we received from Islam. Spiritually we are all descendants of Abraham… or Abram, as he was once known… to whom God promised: "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them… So shall your descendants be."

·       Abram’s descendants have their differences, but even the followers of Luther’s understanding of the Gospel have their differences. We may not be able to stop these outrages against others who share the same spiritual ancestor, and still we may be able to do whatever we can to at the very least oppose them.

·       I am embarrassed to say some of these things since many of you know this better than I do.

·       Maybe it will help me and maybe it will help us all to say that today and every day, we will never meet someone who is not made in the image of God, who is not loved by God, and whom Jesus did not die for.

"Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great."  "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them… So shall your descendants be."