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We all love stories, and stories have been used for thousands of years in understanding God and imparting truth and things for us to learn about God and ourselves. And today, we have two powerful stories that I wanna go a little bit more into depth with. Our first reading comes from the book of Genesis chapter 12. It's about Abraham, then at that time called Abram. God speaks to Abram, to Abraham and says, I will give you blessings.

I will make you a great nation, and I will be there for you. And I'm sure this had to be a lot of convincing because Abraham's pretty much settled where he's at. To leave the area and go to a foreign area means at that time, you would leave your own god because gods were only territorial. In other words, their powers and their presence doesn't work in foreign lands and in other places. So Abraham has to be convinced to leave his land and follow God to another place.

Eventually, he says, Takes Sarah and others along and they go and landed in a place called Canaan. Now he did everything right. Listen to God. He risked. He sacrificed.

And guess what met him in Canaan? Famine. Famine. Not enough food. Well, wait a minute.

You made all these promises, God? And I did everything in the right way, followed the right formula and risk, and and you send this famine. You're allowed us to go. What am I supposed to do? Over a long period of time, he decides without god's command on his own to think of his own self preservation which is pretty normal.

And he flees that promised land and goes to Egypt, brings his wife and others. Now here's when things began to change. Pharaoh would be interested in his wife Sarah. So he tells Sarah to lie to Pharaoh and his people and say, you're my sister not my wife because the wife would be taken away. So being the sister, Pharaoh brings them in to the area and Abraham benefits because of that.

He gets wealth. He gets land or he gets a livestock. Everything that's good. In other words, his moral compass is gone. He gives in.

No longer is he faithful to God and trust God, but he's willing to lie. And he's willing to say, this famine, I gotta take care of myself and think of me first and not worry about God. And so finally, he's there feeling comfortable. God sends pharaoh in Egypt many many plagues. And finally, pharaoh calls Abram over and Abraham and says, you know, you're the cause of all this.

Get your butt out of here. And kicks him out. What's the lesson we learned from the story? That even when difficult things come, when we do the right things and thinking we followed the right formula with god, it should be pretty easy. There should be no obstacles.

And yet, even though Abraham is not faithful, God is. Abraham is not perfect, but he can change. I think that's the story of the second Lent Sunday. That obstacles are gonna be part of every faith journey that's here tonight. We shouldn't be surprised by that.

The next obstacle comes from the gospel of Matthew today. This event is in the three main gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So the early Christian community thought, hey, this was pretty important. Jesus takes three of the disciples with him there, Peter, James, and John. And he goes up the mountain.

Now a mountain is a place where you commune with god and be close to god. Now prior to this, Jesus has met with failure. Everyone thinks he's a failure. They don't respect him. They don't understand him.

And I'm sure Jesus and his humanity is going, this isn't what I signed up for. And what happens then is what we call the transfiguration. The transfiguration is giving a preview of what will happen. Now the disciples like that. Yeah.

Glory. Boy, that's a great suit you're wearing. Jesus, we'd like to have that too. We like all the benefits. So there'll be resurrection.

There'll be kingdom and power and authority. We're in for that. But here's what they don't like if you read the rest of the story. The cross. The cross is not taken away.

Disciples only see victory. They see transformation without having to surrender. They see comfort all the time and no suffering should be allowed. Even Peter speaks up on behalf later on in the story and says, we don't want any part of that for you. So what we learn in being disciples is we can do the right formula.

We can say the right prayers. We can sign up and be baptized and have this false impression that life will be easy because we did everything God asked us to. So many of us here on our faith journey want transformation without surrender. Oh, I wanna feel good about myself, but I don't wanna give up the things that are causing me to sin, causing me to be distance or wounding my brothers and sisters. I want the transformational part.

I want prayers of comfort. That's why I come to church. That's why I say my prayers. That's why I'm a Catholic or a Christian or following been baptized. And I made this decision to come here Sunday morning and I want to be comforted not challenged.

Jesus is on the mountain of glory, but later on he will be killed on a mountain with two criminals. Jesus is called this is my beloved son And those who execute Jesus on another mountain say, there's the son of God. Jesus' body broken and in shame. And so if we think Christianity and our faith should not have any obstacles, if we get so discouraged because I think discouragement is part of the evil one's plan for all people to be discouraged. That's his greatest weapon that he uses against us, and we see that from last week's gospel.

And so many people walk away and say, I did the right things. I said the right prayers. I go to the right church. I looked up the right gospel or the doctrine. Even Google.

I looked up Google and I should know everything about the bible and god. But yet, when brokenness comes, when immorality takes us, when hearts that are full of selfishness and self centeredness, when those things take over, we wonder why those things are allowed in our lives. Everyone's going to have obstacles, and that's the reading for today's gospel. Jesus doesn't say, okay. I'm gonna take away the cross and no suffering for you good people.

He says what? Listen to my son. So this is why we do the practices of lent. This is why we practice self discipline. This is why we fast.

We sacrifice. We are willing to give up things to teach us then when life becomes difficult. When it becomes burdensome that we don't walk away. We don't like the message. We don't like what's being said.

We disagree. This isn't working out. I did everything correctly and I am so disappointed in life. My friends, that's what this whole gospel journey is about. So leaving here today thinking you're not gonna have any suffering, any obstacle, any pain, you are not living in reality and neither am I.

Cause you will never hear a prayer that says avoid all sacrifice. Avoid the cross. But we wear it. We might even have it in our room and we all came up for the sign of the cross on Ash Wednesday, but there is no glory or resurrection without the cross. Keep those lenten good practices going.

Don't be discouraged. And when these stumbling blocks come before you, remember Abraham, remember the disciples, Remember the words of god. This is my son. Listen to him.

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