'When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.
God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”'
--Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16
'Jesus began to teach his disciples that 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. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”'
--Mark 8: 31-38
I do not have any children, but I have witnessed enough small humans in my time to gleam a few things that appear to be common among nearly every single one of them. First, and they’re always awake when they should be sleeping, but are always sleeping when they should be awake. And second, they get really excited when they are seen. Like, really seen. Picture a baby playing peek-a-boo and the expression they have when they’re seen, or a toddler who throws a sheet over themselves pretending to be invisible but then screams with joy when the sheet comes off and their parent sees them. Children want to be seen for who they are.
To borrow a song title from Elizabeth and the Catapult: we’re all just taller children. We all want to be seen for who we are. Is there any more gratifying and empowering experience for any of us than for another person to see us and affirm our authentic selves? I seriously doubt it.
Album cover for Elizabeth and the Catapult's Taller Children.
As we’ve observed, this Lent our readings from the Hebrew Scriptures all deal with the various covenants that God makes with humanity. Last week it was Noah, this week it’s a wandering Aramean named Abram and his spouse Sarai, who enter into a covenant relationship with God and in doing so their true selves are seen and God gives them new names, their real names: Abram – whose name meant ‘exalted ancestor’ – becomes Abraham – meaning ‘ancestor of a multitude’ – while Sarai – whose name meant ‘princess of a family - becomes Sarah – “princess of a nation.” What is remarkable in this exchange is that it is God who sees these two elderly folk for who they really are before they themselves do; in fact, in the very next verse after the reading we just heard, Abraham doubts the promise and laughs mockingly at God. It takes him a while to be faithful, to trust what God has promised, but even when he and Sarah can’t see their destiny, their true selves, God does. How reassuring that promise is for us when the world around us can’t see us, but God always does!
There are times, though, when others around us can’t do that, and such a moment occurs in the life of Jesus. Mere moments after Simon Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah Jesus paints the picture for him and the rest of the apostles of what is going to happen to him: he will be rejected, suffer, and die. And rather than have his closest friends stand with him, he experiences the first rejection. Simon Peter rebukes Jesus for what he’s saying, and like an elder brother putting his sibling in a headlock, tells him, “Don’t say things like that!” In that moment he reveals his own fear, even though somewhere under there is love. Jesus’ response is that Peter isn’t seeing Jesus’ whole self, he’s not seeing the way God sees.
How hard it must have been, how much it must have pained Jesus to reveal to his closest friends this deeply important part of who he was, the truth that he was leading them on a path that was going to bring suffering, rejection, and even death! I suspect Jesus figured they might have a tough time accepting that truth, but I wonder if he thought they’d be as clueless as they were, insistent that this mustn’t happen to him, that they somehow understood things better than he did – understood him better than he understood himself. It must have been tough for him.
It's not a stretch, I think, to say that we want our friends and family not to worry, not to dread what lies ahead, and yet we also want to be able to be honest, fully known and accepted and seen for who we are and who God is calling us to be. We want to come out of hiding and break down the walls between us and let ourselves be seen and known for who we truly are. When being seen causes pain, what then?
The pain and disappointment that Jesus must have felt was held gently in his heart, which was attuned to God’s own heart, allowing him to feel it without reacting to it. There is a kind of pain that Simon Peter feels in this story, but it comes from not being able to listen all the way, not being able to fully see Jesus. He hears nothing after the words, “and be killed.” So afraid is he of facing the pain that he misses the rest of the story, he misses the “rise again” part. The soul of the matter, the really good news is there, if he will let himself listen to the whole story and see what God is up to, rather than just his own feelings that get stirred up or how the matter affects him.
It is in our covenant relationships with God that we discover our true selves. Sometimes, like in the case of Abraham and Sarah, that discovery leads to a new name, a new identity – or rather, one that is new to everyone else but known and held dear by God. It’s a powerful experience for anyone who has known it, but for those who haven’t, those who have been like Simon Peter, who love the other person but can’t see past their own experience, it can be difficult, they may even feel hurt by this new revelation, and in doing so hurt the very one they love, sometimes, again like Simon Peter, because they think they’re trying to protect them. But all that person really wants is to be fully seen and known as God fully sees and knows them. Just like Jesus.
The institutional Church has had a history of rejecting people when they come to us and proclaim who they really are, who God has called them to be. This has been true for a great many of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and non-binary siblings. It has also been true for numerous folks who have felt an authentic call to ordination, only to share the most vulnerable parts of themselves, parts that God has always known and treasured and used for transformation, only to be told that that’s just too much sharing, too much for us to deal with. Sounds like a certain apostle, doesn’t it?. If you are anyone who has been denied, unseen by the Church for who you really are, I am sorry. I pray we do better.
Lent is a good time for us to ask ourselves: who is it that we’re not seeing? Whose experiences are just too much for us to handle? This season is helpful for examining our blind spots and asking why it’s so hard. There is always hope, though, if we can move closer, into relationship with those who are asking to be seen. There’s power in just doing that.
Covenant relationships with God lead us down paths that can be tough for others to see and understand, but through them we discover who we really are, we discover our true selves, the selves that God has always known. May we not only have the grace this Lent to open our hearts to discover our true selves in this covenant relationship we have with God, but may we fully see and affirm the true selves of others – God already has, will we ; after all, we’re all just taller children, and in the end to be seen and known is all we really want or need.
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