Preaching Helps: fourth Sunday after Epiphany-Fifth Sunday in Lent.

Trust God's promise!

When I was in fourth grade, my Sunday School teacher was obsessed with the word covenant. Almost every Sunday, she would ask, "What is a covenant?" We were to respond, "A promise!" "Whose promise?" She would ask. "God's promise!" We were to answer. My fourth grade Sunday School teacher willed the gospel, God's promise, into us. Our job, all that we could do, was trust God's promise. Trusting God's promise, we would live differently.

Abigail Zang Hoffman makes this same point in this series of Preaching Helps as she reflects on the readings for Lent. Covenants abound in these readings! We hear of God's covenant with Noah and his descendants and God's covenant with us in baptism, both of which are God's initiative and neither of which depends on human response. We hear of God's covenant with Abraham and Sarah and how Paul counted them righteous, not because of anything they did, but because they trusted God's promises. We hear of the covenant God made with Israel when God led the people out of Egypt and gave them the ten commandments, and the new covenant God will make with God's people, when God will write the law on our hearts.

Preaching about God's covenant, God's initiative, and God doing regardless of human response is a necessary balance, even corrective, in Lent. In a culture that encourages us to be concerned about ourselves, our needs, our desires, and our feelings, Lent can become a time when we focus on us-on our sin, on the ways we have failed Christ, on the things we have done and left undone, on what we are giving up-with the church's blessing. On Ash Wednesday, Jesus tells us, "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven" (Matt 6:1). Frequently, Jesus' instruction only drives our introspection, self-absorption, even self-obsession, underground. It does not make our concern with ourselves any less. We do a good job of using the forty days of Lent as a time for a probing consideration of our human condition, including sin and its deadly consequences for both individuals and society. What we need, I think, is to use Lent as a time for an equally intense consideration of the new possibilities offered to us in Jesus Christ and their implications for practical living. Biblical covenants provide both an occasion and a frame of reference for such proclamation.

Preaching God's promise, God's initiative, God doing regardless of human response, and inviting people to trust God's promise, might provide an incentive for those who have departed from the faith or fallen away from the church to embrace the Forty Days as a time for restitution and restoration. In many places, the "inactives" have all but been abandoned by the church. Their names are periodically expunged from the active membership rolls with the explanation that they are "no longer interested." Sometimes, this conclusion is reached because they have not made donations of record in a specified number of years. More often, this assessment is made after pastors call, contact, visit and listen to no avail. Maybe we've made it too much about responding to, defending, or apologizing for what the church (or someone in the church) did or failed to do. Maybe we could make it more about responding to what God has done, is doing, and will do, regardless of human response. The conundrum, of course, is finding ways to get the proclamation of Gods baptismal covenant out of the pulpit and into places where inactive members will hear it. Perhaps this could be the congregation's Lenten discipline.

Abigail Zang Hoffman graduated from Cornell University in 2002 with a BA (cum laude and with distinction in all subjects), and from the University of Chicago in 2006 with an M.Div. and an AM in Social Service Administration. I came to know Abby when she showed up in my Advanced Homiletics seminar, a course for seniors that often attracts a pastor or two. That semester, the class overwhelmingly consisted of very bright, younger women. The one male student and I quickly realized that we were in over our heads! When we relaxed and contented ourselves with treading water, we learned much about preaching.

Pastor Hoffman was ordained in 2007 and serves Bethany Lutheran Church in Elmira, New York, a congregation of the Southern Tier Conference, where I served my second call. She describes writing these Preaching Helps as a privilege and muses, "As is usually the case in my weekly preparation for preaching, the task was daunting at first but the process was enriching. I experienced the movement of the Holy Spirit as I realized (again and again) how the task of preaching is the work of the community. The voices of other preachers echoed in my ears and I know these writings reflect the many perspectives and insights that have shaped my own (including yours). What a gift." Perhaps preaching, like keeping Lent and being righteous, is all about trusting Gods promise.

Have a blessed Lent!

P.S. - You may notice that the possessive pronoun "His" is sometimes used in reference to God in these pages. This is the way I received these pages from Pastor Hoffman. Many of my students who are younger women, as well as my daughter, tell me that they sometimes use masculine pronouns for God as a deliberate choice and that it is inappropriate, even offensive, for me to change them. Like so many other things, inclusive language for the divine has become more complicated.

Craig A. Satterlee, Editor, Preaching Helps

http://craigasatterlee.com