Loading...
Sermon February 28, 2021
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers,
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Second Sunday in Lent, Year B
http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent2_RCL.html
Audio only: /documents/Eucharist_February_28__2021_audio
Video: https://youtu.be/XggrOCTaHLY
For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us,…. Romans 4:16
This past week I read an interesting article in the New York Times. It was titled, A Teenager was Bullied. His Ancestors Saved Him. The article was about Dennis Richmond, Jr. When he was 13 in 2008, he watched the series Roots about the writer Alex Haley’s family. He became fascinated and wanted to learn more about his own family, so he got online and found a US Census listing for his maternal great-grandmother. He also found the name of her father.
This started a journey of him discovering his own roots and legacy. It also helped him get through school, which often was a place where he was bullied. Knowing about the lives of his ancestors, provided him with role models. He says:
“Because grandpa John died of exhaustion, if I’m not dying from working hard, then why wouldn’t I continue to work hard?” Dennis said. “If I know that one of my ancestors couldn’t read and write for a few years because of the circumstances they were born into, but taught themselves how to do it, why wouldn’t I go online and look up a word that I didn’t know? So I’m learning from these stories. I’m not just finding these things out. They’re empowering me.”
This morning, our reading from Genesis provides us with an account of Abraham, who was now 99 years old. When Abraham was 75 years old, God came to him and told him to move, that is to uproot himself and move to a foreign place.
Then known as Abram, he and his wife, Sarai, and some other family members go From Ur, …”700 miles to the borders of present-day Iraq, another 700 miles into Syria, another 800 down to Egypt by the inland road, and then back into Canaan - what is now Israel,” according to a 1983 article by Malachi Martin about travel in the footsteps of Abraham. Imagine doing that on foot. Every few years for 24 years, Abraham and Sarah uproot themselves, traveling long distances on foot.
They are faithful to God’s leading. God has made a covenant with them. That is, an agreement with them to ultimately have a place to settle. They do have their times when they waver in their faithfulness. They become impatient or think they know how best to make God’s promise come true, especially when it comes to the promise that Abraham’s and Sarah’s heirs will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. But in the end, God is true to God’s promise.
At the time of Abraham and Sarah, there was no ten commandments; there was no law as written in Leviticus. The relationship between Abraham, Sarah and God was based solely on faith.
Nearly two centuries later, Paul, in his letter to the Romans, reminds us of this core truth in our relationship with God. Our relationship is built on faith. The laws that arose to guide us in our faith were to help us have a strong relationship. And those rules and laws sometimes missed the point. Instead of building up our relationship with God, they sometimes made the relationship more difficult or nearly impossible.
Paul says, “it depends on faith.” Paul emphasizes that the promise of God rests on the grace of God.
Nearly four thousand years later, we continue to hear this story of the faithfulness of Abraham and Sarah. Their faithfulness is the legacy they passed down through the ages, even to us in this day and this time.
Just as Dennis Richmond, Jr. discovered, knowing this legacy saves us. Our long-ago ancestors, Abraham and Sarah save us even today!
And we in this parish know about the power of legacies, don’t we? Our two church buildings provide a legacy to us. St. Stephen’s, as the oldest church in Juniata County, built in 1826. Think about the many people who prayed and worshiped in that space ever since. At Nativity, we are surrounded by markers inside the church of the people who established and built this space and this parish. Our hallway outside the church is filled with photos reminding us of the people who have gone before.
We all know about the various Trusts that were created to support the ministry and work of the parish. For the past decade, at least, we have tithed these Trust earnings and in the past few years given at least $20,000 to a variety of organizations that love and care for people in our region. Just this past week, Vestry voted to make some further donations to Join Hands and the local food banks in Perry and Juniata Counties to help support people during this time of pandemic.
The story of Abraham and Sarah provides an amazing legacy for us. The history of St. Stephen’s and Nativity churches provide an amazing legacy for us. These are legacies of faithfulness, even when things seem or feel impossible.
Our legacies of faithfulness have the power to save future generations. During this time of Lent, let us consider our own legacies of faithfulness. What is our individual legacy? And even just as important, what is our parish legacy?
Amen
A Teenager was Bullied. His ancestors saved him. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/nyregion/black-genealogy-connecticut-merritt.html?searchResultPosition=3
Traveling in the Footsteps of Abraham: https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/13/travel/footsteps-of-abraham-by-malachi-martin.html#:~:text=From%20Ur%2C%20Abraham%20traveled%20700,international%20polity%2C%20cannot%20easily%20replicate
