Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 12, 2006
Mark 1: 40-45
A story told by Fred Craddock: “There was a kid down home who would believe anything you’d tell him. You could say, ‘The schoolhouse burned down. We’re not having school tomorrow.’ ‘Oh boy,’ he’d say. He would believe it and he wouldn’t go to school.
“’They’re giving away free watermelons down at the town hall.’
“’Really, free watermelons?’ And he’d go running off.
“’Did you know that the President of the United States is coming to town tomorrow?’
“’Is he really? Great! Can’t wait to see him!’ That boy just believed everything.
“I remember once there was an evangelist who came to our town. He said to that kid, ‘God loves you and cares for you and comes to you in Jesus Christ.’ And you know what? That kid believed it. He actually believed it.”
When Abram was 99 years old, God came to him and told him, “Congratulations! You and your wife – herself over 90 – are going to be parents.” And Abraham laughed, just as later Sarah would laugh. They didn’t believe it. Who could? The two of them would be quite a sight at back to school night, don’t you think? I’ve known a number of people in our church over the years who were 90 or older, and I can’t recall a single one of them ever saying to me, “What I really need in my life right now is a new baby.” Ain’t goin’ to happen, no way! We know reality, we know biology. God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah? Completely, totally, unbelievable. And so they laugh, and we laugh. But, as one commentator writes, “Abraham laughed, Sarah laughed, and nine months later they laughed all the way from the geriatric ward to the maternity ward…The cynical laughter of disbelief becomes the astonished laughter that comes from the unexpected intrusions of a living, loving God.” “There was this kid down home who would believe anything you’d tell him…” I read this ancient, wondrous story of old Abraham and Sarah, and find myself wondering…what are we prepared to believe?
Over the years it has been my observation that many people of faith, and I would include myself in this, have this inner dialogue going on. One voice says, “Can you believe…?” and the other voice replies, “Yes, but…” Can you believe the promise made to Abraham and Sarah, a promise that came true? Yes, but they often exaggerated people’s ages back then. Can you believe that Jesus fed 5000 people? Yes, but everybody probably already had a little food to share. Can you believe Easter? Yes, but it really means that Jesus lives on in our hearts and thoughts. Can you believe a table where all are welcomed, can you believe the blind seeing and the crippled walking, can you believe a prodigal welcomed home, no questions asked, can you believe widows cared for, a Pharisee reborn into child-like innocence and the poor treated as first class citizens? Yes, but…
In the words of Old Testament professor, Walter Brueggemann, “In our day, ‘Yes, but’ is powerful and usually wins. ‘Yes, but’ makes us sane, sober, prudent, competent…When we have our lives governed by ‘Yes, but,’ by our proud capacity and need to control, we resist God’s power for newness. We deny God’s ability to bring the new into our lives. To say ‘Yes…but…’ is to end the song, we stop the lyric. We deny the truth of memory, and we only hold on grimly. But holding on grimly is an act of atheism, governed by ‘Yes, but,’ believing there is no more than what we can explain, no more than what we can control, manage and predict.” And that is why we have to be careful with these old stories. They have a way of breaking down our resistance, of opening us to a newness that is beyond all reasonable possibility.
Now wait a minute, Gene, are you turning into some kind of biblical fundamentalist on us? Are you saying that we must accept these stories as literal truth, that Sarah, for example, at age ninety was lugging a bassinet and diapers to her afternoon bridge club? Well for me, literal truth is not the issue here. For me, the issue is…are we ready for the truth that is revealed here about God? For this story is about God breaking the bounds of possibility. This is a story about the power of life and love which is at work beyond our careful management and control.
There was a young man whose search for God led him to seek out a wise spiritual director. The young man was told to quit his dissolute life, pray in earnest and purify his motives. Sick of his sordid life, he followed this advice, made steady improvement and, slowly, discovered health, meaning and joy returning to his life. The spiritual director then went away for a while, leaving the young man on his own. When the director returned, he sought out his promising protégé and asked, “How’s it going?” But the young man’s face clouded over. He admitted to having given up all his prayerful and healthy practices and of slipping back into his old negative habits.
“But why?” asked the puzzled spiritual director. “Things were going so well. What happened?”
“I opened the door,” answered the young man, “and found that the light was just too bright.”
Returning to our text, I believe that we see Abraham and Sarah opening that very same door. They find themselves enveloped in the light of the impossible newness and power of God. And they don’t turn away. They don’t close the door. In the words of Brueggemann, “Abraham is an invitation to believe and trust and risk and relinquish. He is the one who was fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised. Abraham was, in an awesome moment of faith, prepared to receive God’s newness that was against all probability, but that set his life utterly new. Such faith is modeled by the daring who sing songs, who receive gifts, who make journeys, who confess more than they understand and who claim more than they can explain. Faith is enacted by those who trust God and yield to an utterly new life.”
Are you ready for that? Am I ready for that? Are we ready to give up our “yes, buts” and yield to an utterly new life? Are we ready to believe that such a life is even possible? I realize that even though I stand here and preach and teach the transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in many ways I continue to hold onto a tightly disciplined, fearfully guarded notion of what is possible. Again, I am very good at the “Yes, but…” Don’t want to hope too much… don’t want to be disappointed. There is a part of me that can identify with the young man who opened the door and then turned away because the light was just too bright.
But then, who should I see coming down the road but old Abraham and Sarah, pushing a stroller. Abraham and Sarah – far-passed child-bearing years. Yet, God had made this promise, and even though they get a good laugh out of it, they dare to believe. They dare to hope in the face of hopelessness. They dare to trust in a God who gives life and being where there were none before.
Another text for this Second Sunday of Lent is Romans 4. Paul really can be a wonderful writer, and here he lyrically lifts up Abraham as a model of faith. Paul writes: “Hoping against hope, Abraham believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations’ according to what he’d been told …He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in the faith, being fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised…the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Can we give up our “Yes, buts,” our own tightly and fearfully guarded notions of what is possible, and begin to embrace the impossible power of God? Can we begin to identify in our own lives hints and glimpses of the God who calls into existence things that do not exist, that we never believed could exist – light where there had been only darkness, hope where there had only been despair, new life where we had known only death.
I recently came across these words written by Eberhard Arnold in his book, Why We Live in Community: “This faith is not a theory for us; neither is it a dogma, a system of ideas, or a fabric of words. Faith means receiving God. It means being overwhelmed by God. Faith is the strength that enables us to go this way. Faith gives us the vision to perceive what is essential and eternal. It gives us eyes to see what cannot be seen, and hands to grasp that which cannot be touched.”
This is a faith that demands a trust in God that goes well beyond our “yes buts,” our many resistances and presuppositions. Opening the door to such a light can be a bit scary to be sure. But what it demands is far less than what it gives – a newness, a hope, a song that dares to sing of things that do not yet exist. The God who invites such a hope, the same God who birthed Isaac, is no conventional God. And this God intends us no conventional life.