Year A. Second Sunday in Lent Genesis 12: 1-4a
12 Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.
February 24, 2002
Title: “God alone has power to bestow blessing and give life.”
We cannot pin it down to an exact time, but somewhere in the early or mid-second millenium BC a nomadic or semi-nomadic Semite called Abram left his native area of Haran in Upper Mesopotamia and went to present-day Palestine. It would have been a quite unremarkable event, one we would never have even heard of, had it not been for the meaning both Jews and Christians assigned it. To them it was and is a defining moment in the history of the whole human race. It has been passed down to them that Abram did this out of trusting obedience to God who promises him three things: 1) he would father a great nation; 2) he would receive land; and 3) he would be a source of blessing for all peoples.
Chapter twelve in Genesis marks a new stage, the beginning of human redemption. The first eleven chapters have laid out humanity’s rebellion against God and the dire consequences of trying to go through life without God. In chapter five we are given a genealogy from Adam to Noah and in chapters ten and eleven genealogies from Noah to Abram. Abram married Sarah, who was barren. Thus the Scripture wants to say that it all ends in barrenness. Humanity can go on for ages and ages, but it will end in nothing, unless there is divine intervention, grace. Humanity has nowhere else to go. Barrenness- be it war, devastation, destruction- is the way of human history without God. There is no foreseeable future, only hopelessness. Human power, apart from God, cannot create or even invent, a future. Then comes Chapter twelve verse one; the Lord speaks his powerful word directly into this situation of barrenness. It is a word, a promise, about the future, spoken to this family without any hope of a future. It is also a call, a call to change, a call to abandonment of the familiar, a renunciation of what was considered valuable, a call for a dangerous departure from the world of what would be considered by humans as “security.” Yet, it was a call to and a promise of a great future, something Abram did not have and could not achieve; on his own. He did not even know where to look.
In verse one, go to a land that I will show you: We are not told that Abram dreamed of a better land than the one he knew. This is not Abram’s dream, but God’s. He will obey a command without knowing in advance when and where he will have reached God’s intended destination. God will deal with Abram on a “need to know,” basis. He will let him know more details when the time is appropriate in God’s estimation. For now, he is to leave the familiar and set out on an as yet unknown path to an as yet unknown destination and destiny. It is so very hard for many of us to realize that God still does that to us today. That is, God will ask us to do something and we have no way of knowing what the outcome will be.
In verse two, I will make of you a great nation: No details are given, just promises. Abram must take God at his word. Abram, we will learn, cannot have children by Sarah, though he has other wives. At first, the great nation, meaning “innumerable descendants” promise would be no great problem to believe in. Only when he finds that Sarah is supposed to be the mother of one who will carry forward God’s plan does the matter call for “great faith.” There is no evidence, and indeed nature contradicts even the possibility, that Sarah will get pregnant.
I will bless you: The Hebrew barak, “to bless,” means to empower, to enable to succeed, prosper, be fertile, live long, etc. It is the bestowal or conferral of abundant and effective life on someone or even something. Like promise, blessing has a futuristic dimension to it. Since God is the source of life, and therefore blessing, only he can control it and only he can bestow it, either directly, as here, or through an agent. Those not in a right relationship with God cannot bless or be blessed. Thus humanity, at this point, is without blessing, without life, barren. From the time of Adam humanity has been under the curse of death. God demonstrates in this verse that he alone has power to bestow blessing and give life. In the patriarchal narratives, blessing is specifically linked to reproductive powers and the meaning here implies the birth of an heir. The point here also is that God was not asked, by Abram, for his blessing. God took the initiative. God wants to bless. It is in his nature to do so. He does not have to be cajoled. He wishes to give it to all who trust in him.
In verse three, I will make your name great: “Name” is a metaphor for “character” or “being or one’s nature.” God will make Abram great, and thus his “fame,” will also be widespread. So that you will be a blessing: Abram will be the means or agent whereby God blesses others. As the “model,” paradigm, standard of what God’s blessing of a human would look like, Abram becomes a blessing in so far as God will treat others who model their behavior after Abram, especially his trust, in similar ways. Others will say, “May God bless you as he blessed Abraham.” I will bless those who bless you: This does not mean merely those who say nice things about Abraham, but those who also act well toward him. The opposite is also true. Those who act ill against him will experience that same ill will and ill effects from God.
All the communities of the earth will find blessing in you: From the very outset of this renewal of right relations with God, God intended to include all the peoples of the earth, not just the physical descendants of Abraham. As mediator of God’s blessings, Abraham foreshadows his long-way-off descendant, Jesus Christ.
In verse four Abram went as the Lord directed him: Abram is portrayed as totally at God’s disposal, completely obedient to his revealed and express will. Even though he is seventy-five years old, he is not too old to change- his ways, his life-style, his address, his whole outlook on life. The author very succinctly, if obliquely, silences those who would use the excuse of advanced age to excuse themselves from changing at the behest of God.
Sermon
If Adam represents all humanity, if he is “everyman,” and every woman, so also is Abraham a metaphor for everyone’s “journey.” If Adam and Eve stepped over the limits imposed by God to become like God, God’s very goal or purpose in creating humanity, if he used an immoral means to achieve a moral end, so also Abraham leapt over the limits of humanity, but he did do at the direction of God. Adam took a physical step of disobedience. Abraham took a spiritual leap of faith. He believed God where Adam did not. He trusted, despite physical evidence to the contrary, that God was innocent of the charge of keeping happiness and fulfillment from humanity. Even though Abraham dies without seeing and experiencing the evidence, the proof that his trust was not in vain, he still trusted to the end. Adam lived to see the evidence of his lack of trust, the consequences of overreaching the bounds, determining for himself the means to achieving as opposed to receiving fulfillment.
True, Abraham was given “signs”- and they were enough to convince him that he was not merely imagining God’s promises. Yet, when all is said and done, how small these signs were. He was promised that he would be the father of a great nation, yet all he saw was a single son, and that son only after a long wait. He was promised land, yet all he saw was a small plot to bury his wife. Most people would have demanded more, would have needed more to go on and to go on believing. There is a long way to go from a single son to a great nation, from a field to a country. In the end, Abraham was even more a homeless wanderer than he had been at the start, and there were not many more people around him than at the beginning. Faith could not have come easily. It was grace that filled the huge gap between the boundaries of promise and fulfillment. Christ, a long way off, would be that bridge.
God’s plans translate into hopes for humans. And Abraham had high hopes. The one who calls the world into being now calls Abraham to father an alternative community in creation, one that will be the standard for the rest of humanity, embodying again the original blessing, lost by the original sin and its consequences, which can only be described as “curse.” Where Adam’s family resisted and mistrusted, Abraham’s would receive and respond, ultimately transforming the nations by example. God’s promise or word creates the future. What God says, happens. Faith is the human response, embracing that pre-announced future with such passion that the present can be relinquished, left behind, renounced, for the sake of that future. Abraham left the safe, predictable, controllable dimension of worldly living, thereby placing a question mark on everything that is, questioning the best laid plans of humans, and embraced life as a journey. Unlike the secular vision of human history, described in the Greek myth of Homer’s “Odysseus” the name of the lead actor and the Greek word for “journey,” who journeyed from his home, only to return there twenty years later, Abraham would go to a new, as yet unspecified, city. Abraham would disengage from the present, barren way of living and embrace the promise, the future, unknown and risky though it be. Being barren themselves, Abraham and Sarah have no future until they embrace the word. If they stay in safety, they remain barren. If they leave in risk, they have hope. That hope is a gift, not an accomplishment. They are the prototypes of all disciples who forsake everything and follow, without questions, without hesitation. The questions, though, will come later. Abraham’s faith would lead, over a long time, to Israel, who, though she would fail in her responsibility to do something for others, fail to be a model for the other nations, would produce, like Abraham, a single son, Christ, who would accomplish all these things as he fulfills all the promises of God.
God initiates the process from alienation to reconciliation.
Accepting “grace,” is allowing God to be God in our lives and the God of our lives.
Like human promises, God’s promises give us the end result without providing the details of how to get there.
Trusting God’s word and listening to his Spirit above reacting to our human worries is the only road map humans have to arriving at God’s goal.
Obedience is trust-in-attitude and trust-in-action, that is, trust incarnate.
Journey: The contrast between the secular mentality and the spiritual mentality is drawn in Scripture not in philosophical terms but in mythological terms. It is expressed more than explained, cast in a story, a story that uses history as its basis, but not as its standard. Thus, there can easily and legitimately be elements in a mythological story that are not quite historically accurate. The details of history serve a larger purpose in myth. Myth seeks to teach a truth, not merely report it. So, the whole point of human life is expressed in terms of a journey. Abraham journeyed to a new land, representing everyman’s journey in and through life. He learned many things along the way, got closer and closer to his God-given goal and mission and quest, but did not live to see it completely fulfilled or finished. He made his contribution to a larger story, but his was not the only story in God’s storybook. Nonetheless, his story is to be read as part of everyone’s story who places his or her trust in God. As a journey, life is full of challenges, both obstacles to be overcome and new vistas to be enjoyed. It is movement over stagnation. It is progress over inertia. It is adventure over repetition. It is risk over security. All because the end result is worth the intervening effort, inconvenience and cost. The Greeks, representing the secular mentality, had their journey story too. However, the hero of their story has him, Odysseus, “odyssey,” returning to the same place he started from, a circle rather than a line. He actually did go “home,” again and rest in the security of familiar surroundings. Not so, Abraham, representing the spiritual mentality. He left the familiar for good, not because it was bad, but because it was not good enough. He was secure, but bored, itching for a fresh experience. He trusted his guide rather than himself, believed in his guide’s, his God’s, vision more than he believed in the facts on the ground and before his eyes. He had no real idea where he was going or how to get there, but he went anyway. All human beings have the same challenge and choice. Will we be pioneers or settlers? Will we accept the challenges of developing our potential, all the while avoiding the mistakes of our grandfather Adam? Will we listen to voice of the snake or of God? Will we trust before the evidence is there? Will we risk failure in order to succeed? Eternal life is a promise and its details are somewhat unknown. However, God has given us a pledge, a down payment, a foretaste, a sample, of what it is like. He has given us not so much a philosophy of life as he has given us life itself, his very life, experienced under the form of what he calls his Son, Jesus Christ. Christ, in turn, has given us himself under the form of what he calls his Spirit to be our guide throughout the journey, a journey not to a physical place but to a personal space wherein we share uninterrupted and unmediated life with him and all others related to him.
Grace: It became quite clear that human beings had no hope of becoming fully human, of journeying from where they were born to where they could and should live, without outside help. It is simply not within the created make-up of human beings to make the journey on their own power. Why, they do not have a clue about where to go, let alone how to get there! It is also quite clear from the record of revelation that God intensely wants to give us the grace his life and energy and love, to become all we can become, but that he will not force us. He requires the same trust of us that he required of Abraham, our father in faith. If you have faith in God you are a child of Abraham because Abraham is the father of faith. Amen.
