Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Go to iTunes or SoundCloud for Audio Podcast
Original Manuscript:
Imagine you're making a contract with a bank. Maybe it's for a house, a small business loan, something. As we all know, contracts mean there are certain agreements, as well as certain agreements if the conditions are met.
Now imagine that this contract has very steep penalties if you break it. This may be less hard to imagine than not. Now normally those penalties would fall on us, but imagine that in this scenario, if you break the contract the penalties don't fall on you but instead on the bank.
This may sound like a very strange and bizarre scenario, but it is exactly the same as what we see in our reading from Genesis this morning.
Abraham, at this point known as Abram, has given all to follow the Lord. He left the home of his family, all that he knew, for God. He and Sarah, known at this point as Sarai, have gone through many adventures and many dangers to get where they are today. All that remains is an heir, a son, to pass it all down to.
So God tells Abraham to gather a variety of animals and cut them in half. This was an ancient form of contracts, also called covenants, particularly with nations. They would cut the animals in half and each party would walk through them. The animals aren't there just for ritual's sake, they are, in fact, very symbolic. What the animals are saying is that if you break this contract between us, this is what is going to happen to you.
This is more than just a normal bank contract. This is literally a life or death situation.
But Abraham never walks between these animals. Instead, a deep sleep falls over him, and he dreams of fire and a torch passing though.
God, the bank, will take the fall for the contract. If Abraham, or his descendants, don't live up to the bargain, mainly following God, and, spoiler alert, they won't, then God, not they, will pay the price.
This is a sign to us as well. This foreshadows what God will do for us. The price of sin, that is, the price for that which separates us from God and thus leads away from the source of our life and being, mainly to death, that price does not have to be paid by us. God has taken care of it for us. God died so that we wouldn't have to.
Those things that bring us away from following God, that is, from being in relationship with God, they no longer have to keep us from our Lord. Our sin draws us away from God, the source of our very being and life, but Jesus Christ draws us back through the cross. His death has turned death backwards for us, to quote C.S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We don't have to worry about the price for our continual folly, the breach of our contract, because Jesus has us covered.
Most of all, it shows God's love for us, that though we continue to go against the Lord and though we hurt ourselves, our God, and our neighbor, God hasn't abandoned us. Quite the opposite. God takes on our breach of contract, even if no bank ever would, and the Lord goes as far as possible to show us that love, to keep us safe, and to preserve our lives.
This is the Lenten message. Sin is there, and it tries to keep us away from God. But there is hope because God is continually working to bring us back. God loves us, and we will celebrate the depths of that love in Holy Week and the fruits of that love at Easter.