Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, Year A

Become A Member Of The Family Of Abraham

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, March 5, 2023

In the book of Genesis 3:1-7, we see the biblical account of the disastrous fall of our human progenitors— Adam and Eve. Their fall from grace to grass, from innocence to guilt, from perfection to imperfection happened precisely because they stopped listening to the voice of God. They fell because they listened to the voice of the tempter and to the demands of their own desires. What followed from their disobedience? After they stopped listening to God, what happened next? Dysfunction! Disorder! Tohu-va-bohu! And it came in different ways, from jealousy to rivalry, from hatred to cruelty and murder etc. Adam and Eve were punished; the tempter was cursed; Cain murdered his brother Abel. The human race was poisoned. What began with two people impacted and affected the entire creation showing us that sin is contagious. It could begin very small but could very quickly spread through an entire community. At the beginning of creation, there was Tohu va-bohu, that is the primal watery chaos, out of which God brought order. But through disobedience, through sin Tohu va-bohu has returned. 

Did God abandon our first parents to their misery? Not at all! He came up with a backup plan. Our first reading (Genesis 12:1-4a) for this week is the account of the beginning of God’s great rescue operation. It is important to know that God is able and capable of setting things right from outside. But our God is a relationship building God. He wants to set things right from inside and with our involvement. He wants to save us but with our cooperation. So, God chose Abram, formed a holy people, a people set apart, Israel, so that they might become a new healthy and contagious family. And from them will spread God’s way of thinking, God’s way of being, God’s way of acting. God chose Israel so that they might become a light to the rest of the world. Check this out! Trouble began when God’s human creatures—Adam and Eve refused to listen to God’s command. The solution began when one humble man, Abram, as a new Adam, listened to God. God does not want us trapped and stuck in sin. He wants us fully alive. To put it in human language, God is pained with our lack of life. So, God launches a rescue operation with the choice of a simple man, Abram from Ur of Chaldeans. God chose him not because he was great in the eyes of the world. God could have chosen someone with great military background, someone with impressive political and cultural influence. But God did not. Rather, he chose Abram, an insignificant man in the calculations of the world. More to it, Abram was not a young man. He was already 75  years old when God called him. Is it not surprising that this man’s mission started at 75 when he was supposed to have retired from anything active? Yet, he was the one that God called and said, “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.” Abram’s response is one of the most important lines in the Bible: “Abram went as the Lord directed him.” 

Now, in that seven lettered phrase, we find what makes all the difference. The human creature’s troubles began when they refused to listen to the divine command. The solution began when one human being, Abram, listened. Did Abram have the temptation to stay in his father’s house and in the land of his people? You betcha! He had family, livelihood, friends, familiar surroundings, and he was already an old man. The natural tendency would be to stay and not follow a strange command from a strange voice. But he pushed his needs and desires aside and followed the voice of a higher power. And this higher power took him on an adventure. It is not easy to leave one’s comfort zone. It is not easy to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar and to make it familiar. But centuries after Abram, St. Paul, a spiritual descendant of Abram said, “The power of the almighty is working in you, He can do anything you can ever imagine.” What’s the implication? Trust him! Trust him! Trust him! Beyond your ego, there is power already working in you. This power can do anything you can ever imagine or ask him. All you have to do now is to trust him. Listen to him. Trust him. Leave that which you are familiar with. Leave the settled way of sin and go on an adventure with God. Leave your familiar environments, go on an adventure and become a member of the family of Abraham. He is our father in faith. Right? Faith is openness. It is willingness to listen and to do what our father in faith, Abram did: he went as the Lord directed him. On the other hand, sin is a kind of faithlessness. It is a refusal to trust. It is a refusal to listen. By listening, you become a member of the family of Abraham. You become part of the solution that God continues to present to the sinful world. And here is the most delicious part of it: Abraham’s blessings shall be yours too. 

God bless you!