We at the Community of All Saints planted catnip seeds on Ash Wednesday. They have yet to germinate. We know from experience this kind takes patience.
This week’s Hebrew reading tells us of Abraham’s patience with God’s covenant promise, or perhaps more accurately God’s patience with Abraham. 25 years had passed since Abram left Ur of the Chaldees with the promise that God would make him the father of a nation. In this week’s reading God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, and Sarai’s name to Sarah to reiterate God’s promise.
Paul tells us it wasn’t any deed or quest that won Abraham God’s favor; rather it was his faith that God would do as God promised that was credited to him as righteousness, in spite of his sometimes downright sinful actions. Abraham lived in expectation of a son, of offspring that would become a nation, because God said so.
Expectations are important. Having a correct expectation is also key. I remember when I was a child planting a packet of carrots in the clay in my backyard. My intention was to tend them and watch them grow. Like Larry’s story last week I was a bit impatient for it too. I pulled the weeds around where I had planted them. Trouble was I didn’t know what a carrot sprout looked like. I likely pulled all the carrots along with the weeds.
The disciples didn’t have a correct expectation regarding the Messiah either. We can look back at scripture through a christological lens and see the suffering Messiah all over the pages of the Hebrew scripture. Psalm 22, the latter half of which we read this Sunday, is a prime example. Jesus quotes the beginning “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” But the Son of Man and Messianic traditions didn’t have that in mind. They looked for a conquering king, and expected glory in battle.
For the followers of Christ, their reward wouldn’t be won in the fields of battle, but like Abraham, in the place of faith. Jesus prophesied his death, offering a promise to his disciples quite different from the promise God made to Abraham. Yet it is in taking Jesus at his word that would allow them to follow him.
Jesus tells them that not only must he suffer and die, but they too, if they are to be his disciples must “take up your cross” and follow him. This is Mark’s first mention of the cross, and I can’t imagine that there is any metaphorical weight to Jesus’ statement. Perhaps they were walking by the site of a crucifixion, but the fact remains that to the disciples his call to follow would be shocking and concrete.
In the face of such uncomfortable revelation, shocking and unexpected, only faith, the souls gaze on Christ, could have brought them through to the other side of the promise. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
