Christ Among Us, Showing Us Faith

Last Sunday, Paul introduced us to the concept of covenant through the lens of repentance: metanoia (a change of mind); shuv (turn around, return). It’s an important theme. Paul calls us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12) and to have the mind of Christ (Philippians 2, 1 Corinthians 2: 16). Thank you, Paul, for reminding us to turn from our self-centeredness to orient our lives around Christ.

Today, the conference materials remind us that this same Christ is among us and shows us the way of faith – an unwavering trust in God (which is, of course, the result of turning around and renewing our minds in Christ). We have two Scripture passages that show us this idea of faith, so we turn to them.

Genesis 17

The story in Genesis 17 is a curious one, with two basic parts. Abraham is now 99 years old, and Sarah his wife is 90. The story makes it clear that they were too old to have any children, but the second basic part of the story is a promise from God that Sarah and Abraham were going to have a baby. I can imagine our children’s response if Lois and I told them that we were trying for another baby – disbelief, shock, concern that we might have lost our minds.

Abraham and Sarah responded as our children might. In the verses we read, Abraham falls on the ground laughing at the idea. ROTFL, we might say. Sarah’s turn comes in Genesis 18, when three men (messengers from God) tell them again that she will have a baby. She scoffs at the idea, and that the men tell her that the child will be named “Isaac” – which means “laughter” or “s/he laughs”. Scorn and absurdity turn into joy and laughter.

The first part of the passage that precedes this prediction of Isaac’s birth is the use of circumcision as a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah. God stated that God would make Abraham’s family into a great nation with their own land. They were wandering nomads with no place to call their own home, and they would become not just a people, but a “multitude of nations” with their own place to call home. This promise has become a vision of our own lives as Christians – wanderers in this world on our way to “the promised land”, the new heavens and new earth, the new creation which we receive in Christ (2 Corinthians 5). In response, God asked Abraham to circumcise all the males in his family as a sign that he and his family had given themselves completely to God.

In verses 18 to 27, Abraham first reinterpreted God’s promise of a son to mean Ishmael. God said, “No. I mean it: Sarah will have a son, Isaac. Ishmael has his place too, but I mean Isaac.” So Abraham took Ishmael and all of his male slaves and circumcised them, and this action became the marker of what it means to belong to God’s People. I am not sure immediately what to do with this, so we turn to Romans to work out our next step.

Romans 4

Paul wrote the book of Romans to explore the place of Jews and Gentiles in God’s reign. The church at Rome was probably started by believers in Jesus who had been at Pentecost, described in Acts 2. This led to a Jewish Christian church, but given their location in Rome, they soon became a church of Jews and Gentiles mixed together.

One commentator suggests that this mixture was changed when the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome in the mid 40s. A church that had combined Jew and Gentile together in one body became a primarily Gentile church. Claudius evidently felt that Jews – especially those who had also become Christians – were stirring up trouble, and sent them out of Rome for a number of years. Then they filtered back into the city and resumed their lives in Rome, and therefore also in the church at Rome. The trouble is that the church was no longer sure how to combine Jew and Gentile in one body. This situation was a local variation of a problem that faced the whole of the New Testament Church, and Paul deals with it in depth in Ephesians 2. This situation also provides a clue for what is going on in the book of Romans.

In chapter one, Paul greets the Romans and proclaims his devotion to the gospel of God’s saving power for all people. He then observes that all people – Jew and Gentile – need God’s saving power. In chapter two, he looks first at the Gentile world and then at the Jewish world, saying again that God’s grace is available to all – Jew and Gentile. Both need God’s grace, and both can receive God’s grace by being “circumcised” inwardly – a commitment of the heart rather than an outward physical act.

Chapters three and four then show how faith in God fulfills this inward circumcision, where the law could not. Paul argues that Jews have had the blessing of the Law and that Gentiles now can join them through faith. In fact, as the verses we read say, Abraham had acted by faith in the first place, so that the path to God’s salvation, to reconciliation with God, was always a matter of trusting in God with the heart, an inward circumcision.

Synthesis

Abraham’s readiness to circumcise the men in his extended family (immediate family and the men who worked for them) was a sign of his faith in God’s covenant. The way that Genesis 15 puts it (another covenant passage), he believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness – quoted in Romans 4. Obeying the command to circumcise his family was a sign of faith. We are also part of God’s people, and we also find ways to make our commitment of faith visible to ourselves and to the world around us.

The Brethren in Christ of my youth had observable visible symbols of our covenant with God and the church. For example, we dressed in a distinctive way. Women wore head coverings that looked like an inverted bowl made of gauze. The stated reason for this covering was Paul’s words that women should cover their heads when they pray, and also as a sign of respect for the angels (1 Corinthians 11). It’s a curious passage, but it almost certainly did not mean that we needed a kind of official church uniform. Somewhere in the 1960s, members of the BIC decided that women could wear a simple hat to church and did not need the more elaborate covering.

There is a lot we could say about 1 Corinthians 11, and we just won’t. I am happy to elaborate on it during the Living our Faith time after the service. It is enough for the moment to observe a positive function that the covering played. It meant that when a woman decided to join the church, she had to decide also if she was willing to be a full part of the community, accepting the authority of the community even in the way she dressed.

Men had our own plain dress that acted like a church uniform. One result was that when a BIC man or women went shopping in town, everyone knew that they belonged to the church. Sometimes when we think that people don’t know who we are, we are tempted to act in ways that we should not. We might lose our temper, or take something that does not belong to us, or in some other way act badly. But when you had the head covering on or were wearing the plain coat, everyone knew you were part of the church. It acted to remind us of who we belonged to.

The negative side of these practices was a kind of legalism that undercut the positive effects, and I’m glad that we gave up our church uniform in the 1950s and 1960s. But I do miss the benefit of wearing my identity as a follower of Jesus on my sleeve, so to speak. Do you think we can have the benefit without the legalism of the past? I think we can.

Living Out Our Faith

Paul suggests that Abraham demonstrated this applied faith. Listen again to Romans 4:

¹⁹ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰ No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²² Therefore “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ²³ Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone ²⁴ but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵ who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Abraham believed God’s promise of an heir. Paul tells us that our corresponding belief is belief in God who raised Jesus from the dead. This belief locates us in the season of Lent, in the 40 days of preparation for Holy Week, in which we remember the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the badge that we wear, which marks us as Christians. How do we live this out?

Next Sunday’s sermon picks up this idea, asking what Christians should look like, so I have to tread carefully here. I don’t want to end up saying now what I want to say next week! For today, then, I want to focus on the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In all of God’s interactions with Abraham and Sarah, God was creating a fuller and greater reality than they could imagine. The promise of many descendants expanded their horizons. In God’s interactions with us, God is also creating a new reality. We live in a world that defines success by power and wealth. People put their trust in their ability to control others and get what they want. God calls us instead to put our trust in Jesus, the one who died and rose from the dead. Our culture puts its trust in self-love; God calls us to put our trust in self-giving love.

Lent

We are in the season of Lent, the 40 day period that prepares us for the cross. Lent is modelled on Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, also given in the gospels as lasting 40 days. Jesus was tested by Satan in order to prepare him for his ministry, culminating in the cross. When we give up something for Lent – chocolate or Facebook or whatever we choose, we do so to prepare ourselves to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Jesus gave himself for us. Jesus shows us that God’s essential nature is self-giving love. When we take up our own cross and follow Jesus, we follow him in this path of self-giving love. We give ourselves to God on behalf of the world around us.

Some of our own Mennonite people still wear a distinctive dress, almost like a kind of physical circumcision – a visible sign that they have given their lives to God and to God’s people. We don’t have such a physical sign at SMC, but we do seek what Paul calls the circumcision of the heart – a sign of our covenant with God, a sign of our willingness to take up our cross and walk with Jesus.

That inward sign is self-giving love. Lois and I were talking with each other recently about friends of ours who have fostered a number of children over the years. They have opened their homes and their hearts to children in difficult circumstances. When you do that, you will almost inevitably experience the children’s problems yourself, and it won’t feel good. But you let them into your lives as a sign of God’s love and care for them; you give them a chance for God to work in their lives and give them new hope.

We have many examples from our own congregation of people who give themselves to others – providing rides to people, providing comfort and help to people, using their talents and abilities to make the world they live in better. I am encouraging us all to build on these examples and to allow God’s love to change us from within as we place our faith in the crucified and risen Christ.

May God give to us “circumcised hearts”, an inner volition, an inner will that seeks to follow Jesus in all our relationships with the world around us.

Genesis 17:1–17

The Sign of the Covenant

17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. ² And I will make my covenant between me and you and will make you exceedingly numerous.” ³ Then Abram fell on his face, and God said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁵ No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁶ I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. ⁸ And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding, and I will be their God.”

⁹ God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. ¹⁰ This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹ You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. ¹² Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. ¹³ Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. ¹⁴ Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

¹⁵ God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶ I will bless her and also give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” ¹⁷ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”

Romans 4:13–25

God’s Promise Realized through Faith

¹³ For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵ For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.

¹⁶ For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, ¹⁷ as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. ¹⁸ Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So shall your descendants be.” ¹⁹ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰ No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²² Therefore “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ²³ Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone ²⁴ but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵ who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Questions: What does Faith ask of us? How does living in faith shape our thoughts and actions? The Old Testament Jews had circumcision as a sign of faith; what do we have?

Focus Statement: Abraham and Sarah believed God and oriented their lives to God’s will; we also orient our lives to God’s will every day.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Lent 2 February 25, 2024