The Rev’d Kenneth H. Saunders III
Christ Episcopal Church
Cleveland, NC
RCL Year B (Lent 2) – March 8, 2009
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Christ Episcopal Church
Cleveland, NC
RCL Year B (Lent 2) – March 8, 2009
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Mark 8:31-38
I walked into the grocery store the other day, and I couldn’t help but notice when I walked in, my senses were immediately blasted by the vast array of colors… Have you ever noticed it?
All the cans and boxes with the endless colors… more than you could ever put into a big box of Crayola 120 crayon colors. All these colors in the store were coming from the labels. The labels on cans and boxes… the labels that the manufacturers of the products put on the products to identify them and advertize them… the greens, and blues, the yellows, the reds, and oranges. It was quite an array.
That made me wonder… What if we removed all the labels, and took all the pretty colors away, what would we be left with? How would we know what was in the box? It would be a mystery, right?
We would look at a can of green beans and not know it was green beans… it could be corn, or peas. Without the label, it’s just a generic can that looks like any other can on the shelf.
Then I get over to the produce, where stuff isn’t in boxes and cans. Still colorful, still vibrant, yet loose, and open… we can tell the difference between bananas, apples, and oranges… but wait… more labels! It’s either a Dole banana, or a Chiquita banana… without the little sticker, you wouldn’t know. And the apples… are they Red Delicious or Fuji? I know that they taste different, but without the label, you wouldn’t really know, would you?
This morning, in Paul’s Letter to the Church in Rome, I think Paul is dealing with a lot of label problems, labels that the Christians in Rome have placed upon themselves in order to identify themselves.
There is a Christian group with the label Jew, or followers of the law, and another Christian group with the label gentile. By now, Rome was full of coverts to the Christian faith, some from Jewish origin, who knew God and have come to a greater understanding of God through Jesus Christ. And then some converts from Greek or Hellenistic origin, who have come to know and love Israel’s God through Jesus Christ.
Paul is trying to persuade everyone he is writing to, that the gospel he is preaching makes sense, to just trust God, and live in right relationship with each other and with God in Christ.
So he set’s it up for them in a message that they would all understand. He uses the ancient tradition of Israel and Israel’s God. He uses the story of Abraham and Sarah, the foundation of a covenant relationship between God and a man.
A man that Paul says was the “father of ALL of us”… the father of many nations. He tells these different Christian groups that because they share the common thread… because they confess Jesus the Christ as Lord and Savior, they are actually sharing in the faith of Abraham.
He is trying to get them to realize that the same God that spoke the world into being out of nothing, that brought forth nations from Sarah’s barren womb, and that and rises the dead to new life, is all about relationship based on faith.
Yes, Abraham had a covenant with God, a contract promise sealed in blood… but first, Paul reminds us, Abraham had faith in God, an overwhelming faith and trust in God that predated Israel’s laws… a faith that made him “righteous” before God. Why? …because Abraham trusted God. Abraham was fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised to do.
I have talked about faith and relationship a lot from the pulpit. It is because that I feel emphatically that faith in God includes both a cognitive belief and a commitment to faithfulness in an ongoing relationship. A relationship that nurtures that faith… a relationship that calls us to be involved in the life and work of God in the world around us… This is where the rubber meats the road…
God said to Moses on the mountain, I AM. Relationship with God is not abstract, it IS a way of being which makes itself evident in the way people live their lives.
This morning, we got on our knees in the beginning of the service and recited the Decalogue, better known as the 10 commandments, where the laws of Moses for Israel are laid out in a very straight forward way.
But Paul is calling us to go a bit further than a life lived by the letter of the law. He is calling us to a life of relationship as we walk with Christ, a new relationship based on faith, and a new life… not one chiseled out in stone, but one formed by conscious and right relationships.
Paul attempts to take all the labels off of what was considered Jew, and living by the letter of the law, or gentile… and points he out that faith has always been the primary basis of a “right” relationship with God.
By this, Paul put both Jewish Christians and Non-Jewish Christians on the same level. If we go into a grocery store, and peal the labels off of all the bananas, then they are just bananas. God grew them, God made them green, and them yellow as they ripened…
If we remove the labels, is it any less of a banana?
I don’t think so. But we have to remember that banana’s are out in the open, all wrapped up in God’s package. However, if we remove a label from a can or a box, we can’t really tell what’s on the inside, can we?
Have you ever been to one of those damaged shipment stores where there were no labels on the cans, except for a few? But they were all in the same case, comingled with other, so you still knew what they were.
That’s where I think relationship in faith comes in, and I think that is what Paul is trying to say to us… Paul is trying to say that we need to have faith, have faith trust God to guide us where God is leading, trust God enough to live in right relationship with each other.
It doesn’t matter what we are labeled, American, European, Hispanic, African, Asian, or Indian… It’s what’s on the inside that counts. It is the stuff that we are made of, by God, in the image of God.
It’s not the can that we put ourselves in, or the label that we are born with, or that we attach. It is the life of faith that we lead… the faith of our father Abraham, our “father in faith,” because we are all connected though the life and grace given to us by God through Jesus Christ.
I sometimes think that our problem is that we don’t trust what’s in the can. We like our can because it’s comfortable, it’s what we know. We like our can so much sometimes, that we want to store other things (our treasures), and make cans for them also.
To think of life outside our can would make us vulnerable to nourishing others with who we really are… with who God created us to be. Living outside our can in right relationship with others and with God, and focusing on divine things, not human things is what Jesus calls us to do… every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day.
As we are gathered here, in a community of faith, gathered as people of God, who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, let us focus on living a life of faith in right relationship with each other, and in right relationship with our God.
It’s the only way we can truly take up our cross, and follow Jesus.
I walked into the grocery store the other day, and I couldn’t help but notice when I walked in, my senses were immediately blasted by the vast array of colors… Have you ever noticed it?
All the cans and boxes with the endless colors… more than you could ever put into a big box of Crayola 120 crayon colors. All these colors in the store were coming from the labels. The labels on cans and boxes… the labels that the manufacturers of the products put on the products to identify them and advertize them… the greens, and blues, the yellows, the reds, and oranges. It was quite an array.
That made me wonder… What if we removed all the labels, and took all the pretty colors away, what would we be left with? How would we know what was in the box? It would be a mystery, right?
We would look at a can of green beans and not know it was green beans… it could be corn, or peas. Without the label, it’s just a generic can that looks like any other can on the shelf.
Then I get over to the produce, where stuff isn’t in boxes and cans. Still colorful, still vibrant, yet loose, and open… we can tell the difference between bananas, apples, and oranges… but wait… more labels! It’s either a Dole banana, or a Chiquita banana… without the little sticker, you wouldn’t know. And the apples… are they Red Delicious or Fuji? I know that they taste different, but without the label, you wouldn’t really know, would you?
This morning, in Paul’s Letter to the Church in Rome, I think Paul is dealing with a lot of label problems, labels that the Christians in Rome have placed upon themselves in order to identify themselves.
There is a Christian group with the label Jew, or followers of the law, and another Christian group with the label gentile. By now, Rome was full of coverts to the Christian faith, some from Jewish origin, who knew God and have come to a greater understanding of God through Jesus Christ. And then some converts from Greek or Hellenistic origin, who have come to know and love Israel’s God through Jesus Christ.
Paul is trying to persuade everyone he is writing to, that the gospel he is preaching makes sense, to just trust God, and live in right relationship with each other and with God in Christ.
So he set’s it up for them in a message that they would all understand. He uses the ancient tradition of Israel and Israel’s God. He uses the story of Abraham and Sarah, the foundation of a covenant relationship between God and a man.
A man that Paul says was the “father of ALL of us”… the father of many nations. He tells these different Christian groups that because they share the common thread… because they confess Jesus the Christ as Lord and Savior, they are actually sharing in the faith of Abraham.
He is trying to get them to realize that the same God that spoke the world into being out of nothing, that brought forth nations from Sarah’s barren womb, and that and rises the dead to new life, is all about relationship based on faith.
Yes, Abraham had a covenant with God, a contract promise sealed in blood… but first, Paul reminds us, Abraham had faith in God, an overwhelming faith and trust in God that predated Israel’s laws… a faith that made him “righteous” before God. Why? …because Abraham trusted God. Abraham was fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised to do.
I have talked about faith and relationship a lot from the pulpit. It is because that I feel emphatically that faith in God includes both a cognitive belief and a commitment to faithfulness in an ongoing relationship. A relationship that nurtures that faith… a relationship that calls us to be involved in the life and work of God in the world around us… This is where the rubber meats the road…
God said to Moses on the mountain, I AM. Relationship with God is not abstract, it IS a way of being which makes itself evident in the way people live their lives.
This morning, we got on our knees in the beginning of the service and recited the Decalogue, better known as the 10 commandments, where the laws of Moses for Israel are laid out in a very straight forward way.
But Paul is calling us to go a bit further than a life lived by the letter of the law. He is calling us to a life of relationship as we walk with Christ, a new relationship based on faith, and a new life… not one chiseled out in stone, but one formed by conscious and right relationships.
Paul attempts to take all the labels off of what was considered Jew, and living by the letter of the law, or gentile… and points he out that faith has always been the primary basis of a “right” relationship with God.
By this, Paul put both Jewish Christians and Non-Jewish Christians on the same level. If we go into a grocery store, and peal the labels off of all the bananas, then they are just bananas. God grew them, God made them green, and them yellow as they ripened…
If we remove the labels, is it any less of a banana?
I don’t think so. But we have to remember that banana’s are out in the open, all wrapped up in God’s package. However, if we remove a label from a can or a box, we can’t really tell what’s on the inside, can we?
Have you ever been to one of those damaged shipment stores where there were no labels on the cans, except for a few? But they were all in the same case, comingled with other, so you still knew what they were.
That’s where I think relationship in faith comes in, and I think that is what Paul is trying to say to us… Paul is trying to say that we need to have faith, have faith trust God to guide us where God is leading, trust God enough to live in right relationship with each other.
It doesn’t matter what we are labeled, American, European, Hispanic, African, Asian, or Indian… It’s what’s on the inside that counts. It is the stuff that we are made of, by God, in the image of God.
It’s not the can that we put ourselves in, or the label that we are born with, or that we attach. It is the life of faith that we lead… the faith of our father Abraham, our “father in faith,” because we are all connected though the life and grace given to us by God through Jesus Christ.
I sometimes think that our problem is that we don’t trust what’s in the can. We like our can because it’s comfortable, it’s what we know. We like our can so much sometimes, that we want to store other things (our treasures), and make cans for them also.
To think of life outside our can would make us vulnerable to nourishing others with who we really are… with who God created us to be. Living outside our can in right relationship with others and with God, and focusing on divine things, not human things is what Jesus calls us to do… every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day.
As we are gathered here, in a community of faith, gathered as people of God, who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, let us focus on living a life of faith in right relationship with each other, and in right relationship with our God.
It’s the only way we can truly take up our cross, and follow Jesus.
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