Second Sunday of Lent Year B 2024

Peter H. Davids

Lent • Sermon • Submitted 2 months ago • Presented 2 months ago

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All who are committed to God will be tested. That shows us more than God that he is really the most important in our lives. With Abraham it was in the matter of his only son, the sire of his descendants, the source of blessing to the nations. In the transfiguration the disciples were asked to give up their Messianic dreams - first Jesus was reveals for how great he was and then it is taken away in the “listen to him” and his speaking of his death and resurrection. Of course, God who is love, showed his love in giving his Son for us. The question for us is how will we respond to our test, with quick obedience and trust or with trying to hold on to our dreams?

Notes

Transcript

Title

It Costs Us Everything

Outline

Two of our readings are beloved and one is fascinating but a struggle.

In the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “Do not bring us to the test” or “Cause that we not come into the test.” The same theme is taken up in James ch 1. But we all know that God’s choicest servants are tested, as Sirach says, even Jesus. Why is this?

In a test we discover (God does not need to discover) whether God is our all or whether we serve God for what we can get. As the angels says to Abraham, “For now I know that you fear God, since you did not withhold from me your son, your only one.”

Isaac was all Abraham had, for Ishmael was gone. There was no hope of another - even Isaac had been a miracle. He was Abraham’s future, the source of his descendants and in them the source of the blessing of all the nations of the earth.

And when faced with the call of God, he prepared to offer him. For him God was all.

That is how much God love us

God is love, so of course he loves himself; the question is whether we love, seeks the good of, us?

How do we know this is true, unlike Abraham he did not just start to sacrifice his son, but actually offered him. That being the case, “How will be not also give us every else along with him?” It is this son, “Christ Jesus who died, rather was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.”

To show how great this love was and whom he was handing over to sacrifice, we have the transfiguration.

Jesus shows who he is in the shining white of a theophany. The great prophet Elijah and the national founder Moses appear, not as rulers, but as courtiers. God speaks from the cloud, not listen to Moses or listen to Elijah but “This is my beloved son. Listen to him.” What dd they have to listen to? That they are not relate any of the experience to anyone “except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” They were strengthened in the face of impending sacrifice so that their trust would not totally collapse.

So, my friends, listen to him

God will test us: he will ask us if we will give up our most valued “stuff” for him, he will ask us as he did Peter if we love him “more than these,” he will ask us to give up our Messianic dreams and visions, even give up Jesus himself as a sacrifice, because we are listening to or following him.

And what, my friends, will we do? Will we get up early in the morning to go to obey like Abraham? Or will we try to hold on to our dreams like Peter did in proposing to build three tents or lean-to’s?

What we are asked will fit us individually. For Abraham it was his son, for God it was an infinitely more valuable son, for Peter it was his messianic vision - we do not even know if Peter had a son. But it will be difficult and cut like the knife on Mount Moriah.

However the result will be that we will know that we love God more than anything and that God loves us and that all we really need to do is to listen to him, even if we do not fully understand yet.