Sermon for the
Second Sunday in Lent
February 17, 2008
Genesis 12:1–4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1–5, 13–17
John 3:1–17
Year A
I.N.I. (In the name of Jesus)
There is a song that has found its way into our church’s repertoire that is set in a jazz style. The composer is the late New Yorker Eddie Bonnemère, whose rich chordal structure and fetching rhythms, has captured our attention, when he set this text:
I’m going on a journey,
and I’m starting today.
My head is wet,
and I’m on my way.
Christ’s mark is on me;
it’s on you, too;
it says he loves, me,
and he loves you, too!
--Kenneth D. Larkin, ELW 446
Is it a wonder to you your experience of the Christian faith is like a journey?
Do you think about the cross as something you wear as a billboard for others to read?
Does it matter to you that you have been baptized?
Here we are on a Sunday, where we could easily be doing something else, and yet we have assembled as if it is important to mark our way on the journey of faith. Many if not all regularly sign the cross on their bodies as if we want to allow its power and its story to seep through to our insides.
Here we are in the Second Sunday in Lent, and we are already praying for any who are preparing for baptisms. Soon, beginning this afternoon, we will be forming and informing those who want to claim their baptisms as something that matters. Young children with their parents will learn and seek how sharing the meal of bread and wine shapes us and saves us. Others will learn and seek how being a part of this community at Christ the King marks them in their faith journey as they wish to become members of the congregation. Each Wednesday from September to June, young people gather for Confirmation, where the outcome is that at the end of the process, they formally and publicly affirm their baptisms. This is Christ the King’s baptismal ministry, known in other words as Formation, or Initiation, or Vocation (all curiously ending in tion.)
What if those tions, our experiences of Formation, Initiation, and Vocation spilled over into how we present ourselves every day? In the song about the journey, it says my head is wet. How do people know that your head is wet?
I was just nineteen years old, in my second year of college. I was not quite BMOC (big man on campus), but was becoming well ensconced in the circles at the Department of Music. I was in the concert choir and the select Chamber Choir, directed by the inimitable Eldon Balko. Within one year I would be a Resident Assistant, and begin to sing a number of solos. I was a boy from the cultured East in a Midwestern town famous for Orville Redenbacher popcorn. And I liked to joke and tease with the best of them, often around the cafeteria tables in the dorm. So I was talking to John and Doris, who were dating, and Emily and Jeff, who were just friends. We were happily eating and jawing with one another about our daily college activities, when the subject came up about what’s next after college. John talked about engineering. Doris talked about teaching elementary school. Emily and Jeff were uncertain. All eyes were on me, next! “Tim, what about you? What are you thinking about after college?” I hemmed and hawed, and shrugged my shoulders, as I was not used to talking about such things, not yet anyway. So I muttered against my better judgment, “I don’t know. I’m thinking about going to seminary and being a….pastor.” And all four nodded their heads and one said on behalf of all, “I can see that.”
How did they know that my head was wet? How did they know that not only my baptism was important to me, but that my struggle up to that point was squaring God’s call to public ministry with my family lineage of pastors?
That story and many others like it describe my call, my vocation.
That story and may others like it describe my affinity toward Abraham, who one day was a Bedouin up near present-day Turkey and now is called the father of monotheism.
Today’s story from Genesis 12 is where it all began for Abraham. Up to this point we only know that the world has begun, and that it’s not all peaches and cream. Earlier, the first murder of Abel by Cain is documented. Then, the flood story is told as a way for the world to get a fresh start with Noah and his family. Then the tower of Babel is constructed as yet another indication that the human propensity for power mongering is hardwired.
It seems that God’s mark on Abraham is the next idea. It seems that calling Abraham, currently called Abram, in order that God’s blessing will radiate from him, is contained in these four verses. So God speaks to the heretofore unknown descendant of Noah’s son Shem, and says leave everything behind, your land and your family. My mark will be on you for blessing and cursing. At that point, the call, the vocation of Abraham changes from herding sheep and being identified with his father Terah, and now he represents someone yet to be revealed through a journey. Not just a walk around the block, not just thirty minutes a day for exercise, but a rather treacherous and adventuresome relocation program, in order to make something new out of Abraham.
As we are sitting on the edge of our seats to see how Abram responds to the question, “what are you going to do now?,” it all turns on the three beginning words in verse 4: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him….”
He went, on the journey of a lifetime. He went, and we are still standing in the wake of that response of faith. Abraham’s initiation, formation, and vocation were begun by going on a journey.
The friends with me around that dorm cafeteria table might as well have lit a firecracker when they could see something in me that I did not readily acknowledge, that my own vocation would include giving voice and leadership to the Christian faith.
But here I am, almost thirty years later, telling the story. It was as I said earlier, stories like this that describe my vocation, my call.
Here’s what I want you to notice. Abram’s call came to him seemingly out of nowhere, and his journey took him to palaces and desert oases, to foreign places, all sorts of missteps. He lied about his marriage to Sarah. He argued with God about the faithfulness of the city of Sodom. He went to sacrifice his only son Isaac as yet another call of God, only at the last minute it was called off. And yet Abraham’s legacy is huge, revered by Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. Abraham’s journey took him places where God’s name and God’s promises were made known.
Here’s what I want you to notice. My call came to me at a lunchtime meal with friends at college, which at that point in time seemed to come seemingly out of nowhere. My journey has taken me to large cities, small towns, and suburbs. I have been in thriving congregations, congregations embroiled in deep conflict, and congregations facing their own questions of what’s next. I have struggled with how to spend my time in ministry while my family and married life offer callings of their own, and have failed to get programs off the ground and spent probably too much time in the office and at meetings without a lot to show for it. Unlike Abraham, who is dead and gone, I am still at it, wondering still what’s next, how with you who walk together will be initiated, born, reborn, formed, reformed, and called into faith.
I want to hear your stories. I’m sure that others also want to hear your stories, that tell them in so many words that it is important for you to be baptized, that your faith is like a journey, and that by others encountering you they might be drawn to the cross as something they too might trace on their bodies and find its way inside.
There was a man named Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night who himself sought to find his way, who recognized something in Jesus that was of God. Jesus talked with him. Jesus shared his idea about being initiated, formed, and called by water and the Spirit. Jesus compared the serpent on a stick in the wilderness that healed the Israelites to life given all as we face the cross.
Will you continue the journey this Lent and throughout your lives as the walking wet? Will you continue the journey this Lent and throughout your lives considering how the cross gives you meaning and new life?
Will you pray for continued formation for others who like you, like Abraham, and like me, seek to find our way to the promised land, flowing with milk and honey?
Nod, if your answer if yes, and remember the song
I’m going on a journey,
and I’m starting today.
My head is wet,
and I’m on my way.
Christ’s mark is on me;
it’s on you, too;
it says he loves, me,
and he loves you, too!
--Kenneth D. Larkin, ELW 446
I.N.I.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
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