Surprises
Romans in Lent 2
Lent 2A - Genesis 12:1-4a, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, John 3:1-17
When you travel with someone you know, even someone you know really really well, you get to know them even better on the trip. Travel takes us out of our comfort zone. New circumstances give rise to different feelings and needs. There are surprises. Some worrisome, some welcome. One way or another, on the journey we will get to know our companion better.
This Sunday’s reading from Romans is about “faith” — a word with many different shades of meaning.1 Paul said Abraham was an example of faith. The first words Abraham heard from God were: “Leave your home and travel to a place you don’t know.”2
It’s hard to believe that Abraham had faith or trusted God right away. God was an unknown. If Abraham was trusting anything in the beginning, maybe it was his luck, or his ability to manage if this new god turned out to be a bust.
We know more about God than Abraham did at first. We have scripture and tradition. They can remind us of where to look for God and what to listen for. And we have our own experience: especially the times when help or love or forgiveness found us even though we were sure we didn’t deserve those things.
All of that helps us to know how and where God has been before. And where God might be now. Or next.
Life, like travel, inevitably takes us out of our comfort zone. We can trust the One we journey with, as Abraham eventually did. And even then, the One we have come to trust, whom we know really really well, may still surprise us.
Peace.
Paul’s literary world included secular Greco-Roman literature, the Hebrew Bible, the Greek Septuagint and/or a Jesus tradition. By “faith” [ πίστίς ] he could have meant belief or “trust, confidence, honesty, trustworthiness, loyalty, fidelity, faithfulness, assurance, pledge, guarantee, argument, and proof.” Schliesser, Benjamin. “The Theology of Paul in a Nutshell. A Fresh Look at the Phrase ‘From Faith to Faith’ (Rom.1:17)” The Beginning of Paul’s Gospel. Ed. John K. Goodrich & Nijay K. Gupta, (Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugune, OR. 2023). Kindle edition at location 1640.
Gen. 12:1. After God made a covenant with him, Abram’s name was changed to “Abraham.” Gen. 17:5.