I have a question for you. Don’t worry - it’s a simple question, and not a bad one to ask yourself on this second Sunday of Lent. I need to warn you, however, that it is one that may bring back unpleasant memories from your past if you’ve usually been asked this simple question as though it has a simple answer that you would give “if only you weren’t so stiff-necked.” I am hesitant to even ask it because I know that for some of you the question itself brings to mind a harsh form of Christianity that asks this question in non-life-giving ways that turned you away from the Church for some period of your life. But I have to ask it; because our gospel lesson today may well cause some of you to be like a dear friend of mine named Alan who in midlife has suddenly become obsessed with this question. So here it is: “Are you saved? If you died tomorrow, what would be your status before God?”

Of course, many of you already know that if you came to me, as Alan did, asking, “am I saved?” - my response will be that you’re asking the wrong question. Or at least framing the question in the wrong way. I think the right question for us to ask is “have I accepted my freely-given identity as a member of the family of Abraham?”

True story: when I responded to Alan in that way, he looked at me with a blank stare and asked “What’s Lincoln got to do with it?”

I’m relieved that you’re laughing. But seriously, how do we think about salvation if we don’t know our story? In a Church in which many of us have never heard of Abraham, where do we begin? I imagine most would begin with the story of Abram of Ur in the Chaldeans being called by God to make that amazing journey on foot from the Fertile Crescent, a journey of over 800 miles, crossing the mountains of Turkey to enter into Canaan. But to truly understand the significance of Abraham, I think we need to begin before that. To understand Abraham, we need to remember the story of Noah and the ark. For our God is the God of new beginnings, and Abraham is the story about the new beginning of which we are a part.

You remember how our story begins. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Gen 1.1-2). But evil was in the heart of men (Gen 6), so God reversed all he had done in those first seven days, and started over with Noah. And here’s the important point: God made a covenant with Noah: our Lord promised that never again would our Creator destroy all creation in order to bring about a new beginning. And so God put an archer’s bow in the sky, pointing it away from us, away from the earth, as a sign of God's promise that God would never destroy humankind again.

But we broke our covenant with God once again when we built that stairway to heaven at Babel; when we once more tried to put ourselves in a place equal to God. And that’s where Abraham comes into our story. For it was because of God’s decision to limit God’s freedom by promising never to destroy humankind again - because of that promise of the rainbow - that God had to find a different way to bring about a third new beginning. So what did God do? Our God found a righteous man named Abram, from Ur of the Chaldeans. And the Lord said to him, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing...in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12.1-2).

In other words, the way God chose to bring about a new beginning for the world was to call a righteous man from a faraway place and to establish him in a new land of milk and honey. God created a special people - the family of Abraham - who are not ordinary people. We are distinct because we've been given a special life purpose - to live together as the household of God in order to show the world what it means to live together in authentic fellowship with each other and with God.

If you are a member of this household, your life has a special purpose. If you are a member of this household, then you are a part of the world where God reigns. And to be saved is to live in that household, to be an active participant in this family where God reigns. As Paul tells us in our epistle lesson today, the question, my friends, is not whether or not you are saved. The question is, “are you or are you not a member of this man’s family? Are you a member of the family of Abraham?

Now my friend Alan responded with a question: “how do I know?” Paul tells us that we can tell those who are part of the family of Abraham by their faith. They are the ones who make that long journey like Abraham. They surrender themselves to God’s will, surrender themselves to this purpose of showing the world what it doesn’t know - what it means to live in fellowship with God and each other.

Of course, you and I live in a much later act of God’s drama. You and I have been grafted into Abraham’s story by virtue of our baptism in Jesus Christ. We become a part of God’s new beginning, we become a part of the family of Abraham, by participating in the life, death, and resurrection of this man, Jesus Christ. In our gospel lesson today, Jesus tells us how we do that. He says (Mark 8:34-35 NRSV) “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Whoever wants to save their life will lose it! What are we to make of such a paradox? A good clue is found in the phrase “take up your cross.” You see, that was a common phrase in first century Palestine. Everyone would have known its meaning. For the cross of crucifixion was the way the Romans executed those who rebelled against its power. It was the most horrific way to die imaginable, and it was reserved for political prisoners - a way of shaming the people into submission. What’s interesting is that this phrase was a well-known recruiting slogan of the group we call the bandits - those who believed that the best way to resist injustice was to take up arms against Rome and her collaborators in Palestine. In other words, to “take up your cross” was a call to arms, a call to respond to the injustice and violence that those in power perpetrate on the weak with a more formidable violence.

So when Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow him, he’s making an unmistakable claim that following him means resisting the injustice and violence with which the powerful hold the weak in bondage. If you're part of the family of Abraham, you're part of this effort through which God is conquering evil; you're part of this resistance to the ways of the world. So, one of the ways the world can tell that we are part of the household of Abraham is that we embody this; we actively embrace our vocation that includes resisting the injustice and violence of the world.

At first glance, that doesn’t seem so hard. I think all of us here earnestly desire to fight injustice. And it sounds romantic - like Jesus is telling us to fight alongside the bandits in their crusade. Taking up the cross means joining Robin Hood and his Merry Men, doesn't it? I’ll volunteer for that. Won’t you? I don’t know about you, but I was groomed from the time I was a little boy to be a bandit. Um, let me rephrase that. That is, I was groomed to be a warrior, an alpha male who knows how to lead my part of the tribe. I don’t mean that my parents reared me that way. I am saying that our culture - the world - shapes little boys and little girls that way - to be successful in our world is to be a polite warrior. “You gotta learn to swim with the sharks.” “Only the strong survive.” “It’s a dog eat dog world.” We are groomed from childhood to identify with the bandits.

Unfortunately, Jesus subverts the meaning of the bandits’ recruiting slogan by adding three inconvenient words: “...and follow me.” There’s the rub. For it means that we are not to take on injustice with our swords and tanks and sharpened tongues. Indeed, if you have been listening to our stories from Mark these last few weeks, you know it means the opposite. For following Jesus means being agents of healing. It means being the one who reaches out to touch the heart of the leper in our midst. It means feeding all who hunger. So we’re to put aside all the polite and civilized ways we murder each other - the murder we commit with little arrows to the heart that say "I can’t affirm whom you are, I can't be seen to be affirming someone like you; I can’t stand by you; I can’t eat with you; I won’t share my bread with you." No, taking up the cross of Jesus means more than riding with Robin Hood. Taking up the cross and following Jesus means we’re to take our bow and put it in the sky as a sign that we’ve forever pointed it away from our fellow man.

To take up your cross and follow Jesus means to do that which is certain to get you crucified. To save your life is to lose it.

When I told this to Alan, he came back at me with another question. He said, “Ok, I get it. The question is not ‘Am I saved?’ but ‘am I part of the family of Abraham?’, and being part of the family of Abraham means taking up my cross and following Jesus. But how do I do that? how do I lose my life in such a way that I save it?

Let me suggest a radical approach that is sure to get you crucified. I hope you’ll try this at home and work. Love your neighbor. Decide right now - in this moment - that no matter how your family members, friends, and those outside your intimate circle respond to you, that their behavior towards you will in no way determine your relation to them. Determine in advance that no matter what they do or say, no matter how often they break your heart, no matter how many arrows they fire at you, no matter how many times they break the bonds of affection between you, that their rejection of you won’t determine your posture towards them. Determine in advance that there is nothing they could do that will cause you to turn off the fountain of love that gushes out of you from some source that you know is beyond you. If you do that, I can assure you that you will be crucified. For the world can’t tolerate that kind of love. And it’s that kind of journey to the cross that tells the world that you are indeed part of the family of Abraham, living out the God-given purpose of your life of being the bearer of new beginnings.

So hear the good news. This is exactly the posture God has taken towards you. God has determined in advance - before you and I were born - to love us in spite of the fact that we are often unlovable. No matter how many ways you have broken God’s heart, no matter how often you have rejected God’s love for you, no matter how low you may have fallen, no matter how far you have run from him, you will never reach a point at which restoration is impossible, you will never get beyond the reach of his loving embrace, you will never be far from the possibility of this new beginning that has already been given for you.

May the rainbow be forever a sign for you of this promise of the God of Abraham and Noah, our God of New Beginnings.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.