2nd Sunday in Lent

Date:8th March 2009

Preacher: Revd David Carpenter

God of the alternative plan

IN THE NAME OF GOD: OUR WISDOM AND OUR TRUTH.

How are you at picking up snakes?

Those of you who followed the BBC 2 series ‘Around the World in 80 Faiths’ would have seen the Anglican vicar and TV presenter, Peter Owen Jones, visiting a Pentecostal church in America where the worshippers do just this: Literally calling on Jesus, they pick up poisonous snakes.

I watched with a mixture of incredulity as one man, who had previously been bitten by one of the snakes and had to be rushed to hospital to be given the antidote just in the nick of time, was being critical of his lack of faith. He was back the following Sunday to try harder.

The idea of course comes from a literal interpretation of the verses in S Mark’s Gospel (16:18): “they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well." Personally, I thought it rather bazaar, and come to that, a waste of the paramedic and hospital time and resources. Well, that’s often what happens when you take things as read, and to be truthful, I’m not sure that such a literal interpretation is what is intended. Interestingly they didn’t try drinking the deadly poison.

In today’s first reading we hear how God visits Abram and Sarai. He says to Abram, “Walk before me, and be blameless and I will establish a relationship with you and your children for all time, and as a token of this, Abram was to receive a name change: no longer being called Abram but Abraham. As for his wife Sarai, who was to become Sarah, she was to bear a child.

Now the reaction of this couple was perhaps understandable. Abraham laughed. He had cause, notwithstanding the fact that today we often hear of older men becoming fathers, Abram was a hundred. As for Sarah, well thanks to modern science we have seen the age at which women can conceive increase quite dramatically, but there was no such fertility treatment in Abrahams day, and beside which, it was pushing the boat out a little (a lot really) when you consider that she was ninety-nine. So she had a laugh as well. I don’t suppose it was a funny laugh of course, rather a kind of don’t be ridiculous laugh.

The point however, is to be found in the great age: an age beyond which many things would seem improbable. Yet God says, trust me, I can do the extraordinary. I can achieve what the world, what you, seemingly sees as impossible. The exaggeration emphasises the possibility of the action of God in conjunction with human faith.

It’s not that you should begin to worry, if you don’t want to be a parent and you are ninety nine next birthday. Or back to where I began, to pick up the next adder you come across, or struggle with the zoo’s anaconda. The seemingly ridiculous is used to shock us into understanding that faith can achieve where doubt and misgiving can’t.

S Paul restates this; the promise given to Abraham was a promise which was dependant on Abrahams unwavering and unequivocal faith. He says, “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God”.

Here is the clue. I suggest, to understanding Jesus’ criticism of Peter. Peter was a nice guy and didn’t want to see his friend Jesus hurt, but he failed to see that great things are achieved through hanging in there, even when the moment seems blackest: that there was a journey to be made, and a tough one. And like Abraham at a hundred: for that journey we are enjoined to walk before God, blameless, and in unequivocal trust that God can and will achieve great things. The greater our willingness to embrace this, the greater, with God, can be the achievement.

Today’s gospel should be read, I believe, in this context. Jesus sets aside, what he describes as a satanic attempt to keep religion safe. He announces his own suffering and death and calls his disciples to follow him with the cross: to make a journey. Abram, as a token of his faith journey, received a name change. Peter, you will recall, was also given a new name, as we all are when we are Christ-ened.

We are challenged then, to consider the meaning of discipleship in the world. We are challenged in looking at Abraham and Sarah to consider what we can become. What we can achieve with faith, is immense when encompassed with God’s grace.

Abram and Sarai were drawing to the close of their lives, fighting days were done, and they were slipping into the evening sunset when God said excuse me: You are no longer to be known as Abram and Sarai, but Abraham and Sarah and we together, despite the odds, have a journey to make, a faith journey.

Jesus was embarked on such a journey, and his friend Peter wanted to stop him. He wanted to spare Jesus the hurt that this action was going to result in, but Jesus says, hold on there, you have to take this journey with me and walk it in faith.

You could say, as the Revd Judith Satchell said on Friday in her sermon at the Women’s World day of prayer, “that God is the God of the alternative plan.”

I suspect that most of us occasionally discern the sweeping bush stroke of God’s action in the world about us and in the life of a particular individual. It is perhaps harder to appreciate that it is in the finer detail of my own life that the intricate working of God is also found. But be warned, it is not just ‘my faith’ – just yourself and God as it were; rather it is about what faith compels me to do and to become in the world and for others: a broader canvass altogether.

So what are we to take away from all of this?

Do you think that when things go your way, when things are comfortable and as you would like them: when success brings that warm glow and your prayers seem to have been answered that God is undoubtedly with you?

Or:

Do you look for the unexpected, and see the hand of God in the things that unsettle you?

Do you see challenge as an opportunity, and when things appear to go badly wrong, the chance for a new beginning?

Is a day something to be got through quietly, walking hand in hand with God casually, with as little in the way of change of disruption as possible?

Or:

Is a day, an opportunity, to be pushed by God into expecting the unexpected?

Too many questions! So put it this way:

What journey are you and God going to take for the remainder of this day, and in the coming week, that is going to make a difference, both to yourself and to the various communities where you find yourself?

There are, after all, dreams to be dreamed and serpents to be picked up.

Amen.