Lectionary blog for March 12
The second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121;
Romans 4:1-5; John 3:1-17
Unless you have been an avid golfer for a very long time, you probably don’t know the name Harvey Penick. He was a long-time golf pro who was a mentor to many of the best golfers of the 20th century. When he died in 1995, The New York Times told this story in his obituary:
Despite his fame in the golf world, the public was largely unaware of Mr. Penick and his teachings. But for 60 years, he scribbled in his little red book at the end of the day his thoughts (on golf and life). … He happened to mention this diary to … Bud Shrake, a former Sports Illustrated writer. Before long, he and Mr. Shrake had collaborated on a work that Simon & Schuster published in 1992 under the title, “Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf.” When Mr. Shrake told Mr. Penick that the advance for the book would be about $90,000, Mr. Penick misunderstood who would be paying for what. … Mr. Penick believed he would be paying for it. “We’ll see if there’s another way we can take out another mortgage,” he told Mr. Shrake.” (The New York Times, April 4, 1995)
Many of us are like Harvey Penick. We think our relationship with God is about what we pay God. But it’s really the other way around. God freely gives us love. Our Gospel lesson teaches us “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
We Lutherans are really good at saying the right words about this relationship. We learned them in Sunday school or confirmation class. We hear them over and over in sermons. We do know how to say the words:
Justification by grace through faith.
Justification by grace through faith.
It’s our mantra, our slogan, our holy chant, our rallying cry. But do we believe it? Not so much with our heads and with our words, but deep in our hearts and in our souls and in our emotions? Do we know that God has saved us because God loves us? Do we know that it’s about what God has given us, not what we have to give God?
Often our standards are higher than God’s. It is the basic human condition that in every area of life we seek to prove that we are good enough, or smart enough, or faithful enough, or diligent enough, or beautiful enough, or holy enough to deserve what we have. The reality is: None of us is any of those things “enough” to have earned the love of our parents, or our children, or our partners, or our friends, much less earning and deserving the love of the creator of the universe.
The most important moment in any close relationship is when you realize that the other person just loves you. You didn’t earn that—it’s a mystery; it simply happens. Parents love their children; children love their parents. Husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends love each other because they do. If love is embraced and nurtured, it will never die. People do not earn each other’s love. They accept and receive and care for each other’s love, and in that warm, caring space, love grows stronger and more enduring.
The same is true of God’s love for us and our love for God. We do not earn God’s love. We do not merit God’s love. We are not so lovely and good that God looks down upon the earth and says, “Oh look at that one! There’s a beautiful holy person. I’ll love her!” And none of us is so ugly and sinful that God says, “Look at that disgusting person. I’ll turn my back on him!”
God made all of us, and God loves all of us. There is nothing we did to create that reality, and there is nothing we can do to change it. God is love, and God loves you, and God loves me. We did not create God’s love, and we cannot change it, but we can either live in God’s love, or we can ignore it. We can choose to embrace God’s love, or we can abuse it by taking it for granted.
Our readings from Genesis and Romans refer to the story of the calling of Abram and Sarai. They were called to leave the land of their birth, Ur of the Chaldees, and to go wherever God sent them.
The Bible says nothing about God seeing something special in these two people that made God pick them; God just did. We don’t know; Abram and Sarai may not have been God’s first choice. God may have been going around the Middle East calling people for years, but nobody else listened. Who knows? Maybe Abram and Sarai were at the bottom of God’s list, not the top. But they were the ones who said yes to God’s call. They heard the promise of love and blessing and responded by placing their trust in God and following where they were led.
That’s what justification by grace through faith really is—hearing God’s call, feeling God’s love, being embraced by God’s grace, and allowing our lives to be changed, altered by God’s very real presence in us.
Amen and amen.
