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Our gospel reading this morning is from mark. Chapter eight. Beginning with verse 31. Listen, for the word of God. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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he comes in the glory of his father, with the Holy Angels, the word of the Lord right , The name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit one God, mother of

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us all. I grew up in a place where it nearly always rained, especially at this time of the year. The pacific Northwest, you see in early spring is a nearly constant drizzle fest. It

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will rain all day and then some gray skies abound . Moss covers everything including the left side of your face. If you stay outside long enough and if you step on the grass, you better be wearing

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rubber boots at the elementary school during recess. At this time of the year, we rarely got to play on the grass. Most days were asphalt days where we stayed on the blacktop or under a roof

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. Things were lush in the grass of course, but we couldn't go there if we did, we'd track too much mud into the school. Now when it rains like this day in and day out,

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things get green, They grow and they multiply and days like that still make my heart sing. The northwest of my childhood as I look back on, it seems to be the very definition of fruitfulness when

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I think of fertile soil. That is where my mind automatically goes. But now I'm a Texan. And one thing that has surprised me about this geographic transplantation is that I'm now drawn to other landscapes.

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The place that often makes my heart sing these days is the big bend country, the high desert of far west texas. I go there when I can to hike to camp to spend time under the stars

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to take in the vastness of that rugged and unforgiving landscape. Big bend kind of puts you in your place. You can't help but sense your own smallness amid the mountains and the wide open spaces of the

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desert out there. It's different from the Oregon of my childhood, and much of that difference I think is because it rarely rains there in Big Bend, things are brown, things are rocky, things are

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rugged, and to the untrained eye it often looks like the landscape is barren. The few plants that populate the soil hug the ground as if clinging for their very survival. Plants are thick and prickly.

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They hold on to what little moisture filters down to the roots. But there is this peculiarity to life in the desert out there, and it happens from time to time in spring. There are occasional rains

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, and sometimes these showers born of thunderstorms or cold fronts can cause the desert to bloom with an intensity that makes the Oregon of my childhood seem drab and colorless when it rains enough. A miracle happens in

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the desert. The cacti erupt with reds and yellows and violets in colors that would make an impressionist blush out there in the middle of nowhere, where all seems dry and forsaken. A canopy of flowers covers

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the desert. The flowers don't last long, but for those fortunate enough to behold them. A chorus of course of color breaks forth and song as if praising the creator in abundance and in excess. This

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texas desert in bloom ought to remind us of the way God works throughout the scriptures. The God of Israel is a God who is continually bringing new life out of what is barren and forsaken. And often

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in scripture, the promises of the new life that God gives are connected to Children. In our old testament lesson for today we see the splendor of these promises, how concretely they are connected to lives yet

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to be born. Abram, a 99 year old man is visited by a God who makes promises to him. God will establish a covenant with Abram that will extend across time across generations. It's a covenant

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that gives Abram and Sarai new names and it gives them a child. God will bring fruitfulness out of a situation that Abram and Sarai thought was fruitless. First A child will be born, that a nation

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will arise and ultimately kings will emerge from this nation . Over and again in scripture. We see this pattern working out baroness and the plea for a child answered by a God who brings forth Children as the

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concrete reminder of God's covenant and what happens to Abram and Sarah happens to Rachel and Jacob to Hannah and Elkana in the ancient world. Perhaps more than today , Children were seen as a sign of blessing and

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prosperity in North America. Today, we often consider Children to be burdens or responsibilities before Children are born , prospective parents worry a lot, particularly about the financial impact of a child's life, how on earth

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will we ever be able to afford college tuition? Will we be able to provide for this child? Our scripture lesson for today. Today reminds us, however, that Children come to us first as gifts

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the Children that come into our lives, whether we're parents, whether we're caregivers, whether we are fellow members of the body of christ with Children. These Children are gifts from the God who brings forth life

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for the world. Children are not primarily financial burdens or objects of obsessive parental responsibilities. They are instead manifestations of God's grace, a grace that always comes to us undeserved and for which we are usually unprepared

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. This is why Children surprise us and awaken us to new things in creation. Take a walk with a five year old and notice what that child sees . I bet there are things that you have overlooked

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. Well in scripture. These prayers for Children are nearly always answered and here is where I want to wrestle with the text. Just for a moment. You see sometimes the story of Abraham and Sarah of

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Jacob and Rachel gets twisted. We make a big deal out of the faith of Abraham don't we? The passionate prayer of Rachel and then we notice that the prayers get answered A child appears and all is

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well again in every generation of the church. I think there have been voices that have claimed that God always answers the prayers of the faithful, Pray hard enough for a child and you will receive one remain

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faithful to God, and you too will be rewarded if you have the faith to move mountains and mountains will surely be moved. But a faith built on a formula like this, is bound to fail you

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and I know and you and I have prayed prayers that have not been answered. And this recognition makes it difficult for many of us to read the stories of Abraham and Sarah of Jacob and Rachel pastoral theologian

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, Jeannie Stephenson Messner writes of this disconnect quite bluntly . There is not one woman recorded in either the old or the new testament who desirous of progeny remained barren. There is not one model mentor or mother

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in all of scripture, with whom modern day infertile women can connect linger with that For a second, our common experience in the experience of all who suffer often reveals fractures in a theology that correlates faithfulness with

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fruitfulness. But we often act in the church as if fruitfulness is the mark of faithfulness. Think about it, preach the gospel faithfully and people will come a growing church is a faithful church. If there

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aren't a lot of Children in the pews, something must be wrong with the church. Or sometimes it's even this direct grow the church or die if faithfulness or if fruitfulness is the chief marker of faithfulness,

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then the life of and ministry of jesus. Sure look weird in today's gospel lesson we encountered, jesus first foretelling of his own death and resurrection. These words, mind you occur straight on the heels of

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Peter's declaration of jesus as the messiah as the anointed one. Immediately upon hearing Peter's declaration, Jesus tells his disciples that he will undergo suffering rejection and death . This initial result of jesus ministry is not a

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sudden upsurge in the membership rolls, but an arrest a sham trial, torture and death, and by the time of his death the disciples have betrayed him , fled or denied him. Now, I'm not

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sure how you measure fruitfulness, but this does not seem like a very well conceived church growth plan. Why on earth does jesus earthly ministry end in this way, in this death a death that is gruesome

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. The question has stretched the imagination of each generation in the church, and often the church has responded by making jesus death a kind of necessity that it was the just penalty that God demanded of a sinful

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world, or that it was the only appropriate result of the collision of God's love and God's grace with a sin, sick world. And of course, these answers have much wisdom to them. There is

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a clash between the sin of the world and the grace of God, but but we do ourselves a disservice to the God who brings life out of baroness . If we conceive of christ death only as a

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demand. What if rather we considered that he died , not out of a demand, but out of solidarity with the living. Out of solidarity with those who undergo the experience of baroness and unfruitful nus out

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of solidarity with those who cling to life in the face of death dealing odds, jesus death then becomes an act of radical solidarity with those who face the abyss, an abyss that all of us face eventually

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and that many of us face over and over again in life jesus death shows us that there is no place we can go, no loss that we can experience no pain that we can undergo where God is

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not already there with us and in undergoing death, jesus shows us that there is new life even in the most hopeless places. Yeah, some of you know I might skip this part of the sermon now

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, I better better stick with it. Um My dad has been struggling with cancer and I've prayed a lot these last years. Sometimes the prayers seem to be answered often not, I have argued with God

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at least as much as I've prayed. Yeah and there's much that I don't understand in the struggle. I do not know what the future holds. Mhm . Um but if the marker of christian faith were

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the success of prayer, I would have abandoned it long ago. Many of you would too lent is the time in the christian year when we attend to what is lost to what is absent to what calls

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out for healing and redemption but lent also reminds us that the God of covenant for the sake of life will not let us go Yeah generation to generation in being lost and being found. And yes, even

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in a death that brings new life to the world , this is a God who clings to life so tenaciously that even in death we are not abandoned wherever we go. Whatever we experience God is already there

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in life and in death and in the life that is to come bearing fruit for the life of the