Scott Wall: Abraham illustrates how the elements of our material world, where you walk and rest and eat and play and work, that these guide our small steps toward renewal. These hold the signposts and the markers of God's goodness that you desperately need to move forward. If you've been following along, you know that we are tracing the lives of Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis. We've seen them leave the familiar, set out toward new horizon. We've seen Abraham make massive errors in a foreign land and Sarah suffer because of those mistakes.
And then last week, Jeremy discussed how this cumulative nature of Abraham's mistakes, how it actually seems to catch up on him. And how right there at the crossroads of ill gotten wealth and family pressures and enemies circling and decisions needing to be made, Abraham lets his nephew Lot take the fertile desirable land that presumably could have belonged to him. And it's here that Jeremy suggested finally Abraham sets his eyes to the desolate wind blown hills to the west and chooses to trust that divine blessing isn't a limited resource. And with that choice, Abraham offers an object lesson worth emulating. That when others around us flourish, when other people around us find place and situations of plenty, when others around us see their dreams realize this is not a sign that our steps have got us on the wrong path.
And trust me, this theological idea, this life lesson, it can transform the way that you and I move forward if we can learn like Abraham seems to have, that the promises of God will not prompt and direct us to leave us high and dry. Know that those promises are here to keep and hold us come what may. And with this image of Abraham headed west again, Why don't we take a moment? Let's pray together, and then let's follow him. Shall we?
Pray with me. Loving God, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, It's to you that our hearts are open and our desires known this morning. And it's from this place of being seen that we pray, bringing our whole selves into this moment and this is why it's appropriate that we would pause and ask for grace to sense the ways that you continue your faithful work in us. We ask for your peace to come and to still the frenzy of our worry or our distress. And we ask that as we turn to ancient words, to maybe really unfamiliar images, to these deeply human characters that your spirit would come and remind us of the ways that you inhabit our world.
Help us to see the ways that you are present in our story, finding that as the ancient poets said, you are faithful to a thousand generations. We ask this in the name of Christ who is our hope. Amen. Alright. Well, last week, we left off in Genesis 13 with Abraham and his nephew choosing to separate each other.
And his nephew settles in that fertile valley and Abraham moves off to the hills and plateaus of Canaan and then what's interesting is that the story does a bit of cinematic time lapse in chapter 14, which we're not going through but I wanna to give briefly here. There's this montage of in images there where we see years pass and we see flashes of warring tribes and kingdoms amassing in alliances against other kingdoms and battles happening. We actually don't see Abraham at all until right at the end of the chapter, it tells us that Abraham gets his own private security force, apparently he had one of these, and he goes and he rescues Lot, his nephew who with his household and possessions had been taken hostage in one of these battles that's happened. And the dialogue shows that Abraham may have learned his lessons about ill gotten wealth because in the aftermath of this battle, he refuses to take any of the spoils of war. He refuses to profit from the dark and dubious tendencies of other characters in the story for the first time.
And the point is simply this, this time lapse shows us that Abraham is aging, that he's changing, and that there's so much uncertainty around him in the ancient landscape. And it's that uncertainty that lies at the heart of why today we need to talk about the base of all fear where faith forms our ways forward and a sure sign. So let's pick up chapter 15 in Genesis where we read that after this, after all these things that I've just sort of related to you, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision and said, don't be afraid. I'm your shield, your very great reward. But Abram said, sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?
He said to God again, you have given me no children, so a servant in my household is going to be my heir. The word of the Lord came to him, said, this man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be. Then the Lord took Abraham outside, step outside with me, said, look up at the sky and count the stars, if indeed you can. And then God said to Abraham, so shall your offspring be. And Abraham believed the Lord, and the Lord credited it to him as righteousness.
Okay. So clearly, we have a kind of cyclical return here, a flashback, if you will, to God's promise that sparked this whole story. Remember, in Genesis chapter 12, God tells Abraham to leave his father's house and that he would become a nation to bless all the other nations. And then, in the following chapter, Genesis 13, right after Abraham leaves his nephew Lot, God tells him that the land he sees will belong to him and to his offspring. That his descendants would be like the dust of the earth, like the dust blowing into Abraham's eyes at that moment presumably.
And this is why it's not insignificant that when God appears to Abraham here, after years have passed, after things have gotten a little bit crazy, after Abe's beard is noticeably grayer, God says, don't be afraid. Which of course, you may know this. This is the most repeated injunction in the scriptures. But here, scholars debate where Abraham's apparent fear might be stemming from. Could it could it be the social and political unrest and turmoil of the ancient world?
The harsh cruelty that certainly threatened everyone living in that time? See, that violence in the previous chapter that we watch, it may have been weighing on Abraham, but the truth is that the text only ever really shows him acting decisively and bravely to help his family. So could his fear maybe be the result of having this mysterious divine encounter? Like, was he hearing voices he didn't expect to hear? Or was he seeing apparitions?
The Hebrew grammar around what this vision may have entailed is actually similar to stories in scripture where God appears to the prophets. So maybe Abraham's just overwhelmed by this sudden intense experience. Maybe, but I'm actually more inclined to think that this assurance that God speaks lands a little closer to the base of all our fear. See, we have this deep concern that opportunity has passed us by sometimes or that time has run out Or that we haven't done enough. That despite our best efforts, despite our attempts to heal and to repair and to change, somehow our mistakes have cordoned us off from the promises of God.
Don't forget, Abraham is years from the moment he first felt God call him to go. And just like you, maybe he knows what it's like to be afraid that it was all in his head or that his intuition had led him astray or that faith is after all a fool's pursuit. This, I wanna contend, this is why God appears to Abraham. This is why Abraham's response is what it is because God says, don't be afraid. I'm your shield.
I'm your reward. And Abraham kinda goes off. How can I not be afraid? He seems to say. What could you possibly give to me that I won't lose someday because I don't have an heir?
And what can seem notable is this fraught emotional resonance that we pick up from the text. But that's not all that's there. Biblical scholars point to how this episode and really all of Genesis chapter 15, it's a kind of demarcation. See, up to this point, Abraham has simply obeyed divine directives. In Genesis chapter 12 verse four, God says, leave and Abraham leaves.
In Genesis chapter 13 verse 18, God says, look from where you are and Abe moves his tents there. But here, when divine presence comes to reaffirm this promise, Abraham talks back. It's a literary function of dialogue. Sure. Sure.
I'll give you that. But more than that, this dialogue offers a significant point for our theological and our spiritual reflection, I think. Because it's here that the Jewish scriptures ground the story of God and God's people in something more than divine dictates and human obedience. They come to tell you that God's actually not interested in that kind of relationship with you. It's here that the scriptures make this claim upon anyone who would choose to pick up a life of faith and the claim is just this, that faith is more than rote.
That faith is more than pious acceptance alone. See, this exchange between God and Abraham, between grizzled ancestor and creative force behind all the universe, it is not a peaceful interaction. It's hard fought and it's actually deeply argued. And in this way, this record of the first conversation between the Hebrew God and the Hebrew patriarch sets the parameters of a Jewish theological imagination and I wanna suggest that should shape ours too Because this is the God that Jacob will wrestle with in Genesis chapter 32. This is the God that Moses will question when he's commanded to go and face Pharaoh in Exodus chapter three.
This is the God that the prophets like Habakkuk railed against when they ask in the text, how long must we call for help? And you not listen. It's this God that the poets contend with when they say, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow with my heart?
That sounds like my therapy sessions. Right? Right here is where we observe the genesis of the only kind of faith worth talking about in my opinion. Where like Abraham models we see that there are no passive recipients of divine promise. Life will bring its worst to bear.
No matter the strength of your conviction of who and what God might be, good times and promotions and long for dreams can be so long in coming. And grief along the way is so persistent in the way that it holds on to us. And I don't know if you know this, but our bodies fail and our deepest intimacies fracture sometimes. And in all of that, the talk of big promises can leave you feeling like all you're holding is dust in your hands. And this is why I can't emphasize enough how Abraham is a model for the faith that forms in the deepest cracks of our hearts.
Not a faith of tidy neatly composed theological truisms but a faith born of howling lament. Faith that emerges from our genuine appraisal of how abandoned we feel sometimes. And maybe you need the reminder that Abraham is the godfather of all honest questions. Questions that become the bedrock of and the pathway toward hard won faith. These questions are after all just part of the two cycles that happen in this dialogue.
See, God declares to Abraham. He said, I am your reward and Abraham replies with the equivalent, yeah, but what have you done for me lately? That's the first cycle. And then the second cycle begins with God responding saying, listen, you're gonna have an heir of your own flesh and blood. And then the text says that God takes Abraham outside and tells him to look up at the sky and count the stars, if indeed you can.
And then God says to Abraham, so shall your offspring be. And then right after this, we get this the most famous verse in almost all of the Hebrew bible where we learn that just just like that, it seems. Abraham believes the Lord and the Lord credits it to him as righteousness. Now, I don't have time this morning to go into how the apostle Paul will take this verse and use it as a cornerstone for his argument in his letter to his friends in Rome Nor do I have time to unpack how Martin Luther is gonna take Paul's use of this verse and build upon it in his contention that faith, simple faith in Jesus, simple trust in all that God does in the person of Christ, this is what makes us at right with God. What I find myself though wondering is how finally Abraham's trust solidifies.
Like, how does this happen? I mean, remember, in the story so far, just quick review, the text says that God speaks to him and that he leaves everything that he's known. The story says that God speaks to him again after his nephew leaves and he God tells him that his descendants will be innumerable. Then he has this vision, whatever that is, and then later the word of the Lord comes to him like it would to the prophets. And after all of that, it says that God walks him outside and tells him to look up at the stars to glimpse his future.
And I don't know if you're for you, this is the same as for me but to be frank, this is all quite mythical and inaccessible given that I, at least to this point, I haven't had these kinds of visions or encounters. It can feel a little bit like the model being described of how we receive and we trust divine direction. It's actually being obscured by the text or the very best that it's impractical. And this is why I love how scholar Walter Brueggemann points to how this episode isn't an account of how God offers a miraculous proof to Abraham when he walks outside and he sees the vaulted sky. Now, Bruggemann argues, this is an example of how we all find our way using what Bruggemann calls sacramental discernment.
Like, what does that mean, Walter? Well, what he's referring to is how Abraham's trust in God seems to emerge from his ability to discern the connection between the concrete visible, the night sky, and what he believes to be God's promise to him, his extended family. Or said differently, that Abraham illustrates how the elements of our material world, where you walk and rest and eat and play and work, that these guide our small steps toward renewal. That sacramentally, that by grace, the physical and geographical elements of your life, these hold the signposts and the markers of God's goodness that you desperately need to move forward. Now let me be clear.
This does not mean that your future is going to unfold right where you find yourself right now. Or to say that whatever difficulty or delay that you are experiencing is somehow divinely sent to you. No. But could it be for you like it's been for me recently? See, just a few weeks ago, I walked downstairs during our 9AM service and I saw nearly 20 volunteers gathered and eating and laughing together.
There was this palpable energy and kindness and joy in the room and it could have been the smell of bacon that arrested me. It could have just been the bacon, honestly. But more than this, there was something about this image of a long table and many voices, an open welcome that reminded me that I want to give my life to forming spacious communities where we can be safe and gathered in our differences. Or how on a recent trip, I watched my wife scramble up onto ledges like this, and I was struck, first of all, by her profound strength and tenacity and lack of appropriate fear. Yes.
I was struck by that. But then secondly, I was reminded how sometimes the harshest conditions of our lives offer us the most perspective. They offer us the grandest views. They offer us a deepest appreciation for what matters most. Or how as I raked leaves last month, I had to pause.
I had to wonder at the beauty in my front yard just streaming down on me. As I thought about all that passes. How each year we're invited in that in to see that in our letting go, we aren't spared from loss, but we're prepared for all we hope might come to return and heal us. See, some part of me thinks that Abraham's ability to trust God stemmed from him learning through the elements of his physical surroundings. It was through those elements that he discerned how God was leading him in each slow painful step.
How he was being led like you and like me by a kindness somehow far off and yet somehow still illuminating like the shining stars. Now, that's not the conclusion of the scene actually. The text tells us that Abraham trusted God and then it goes on to say that God promises Abraham that the land he's standing on will be his as he's looking up at the sky. And Abraham responds to that promise from God with yet another question. He asks how he's supposed to know this is true, which I will just reiterate.
This illustrates how faith is never a static reality in our lives. This story literally embodies the gap that's there, right there between big promises and next steps. Abraham shows you what it's like. Anyway, we read somewhat cryptically that in response to this request for proof, the Lord says to Abraham, bring me a heifer, a goat, and a ram. Each needs to be three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.
So Abraham brings these to the Lord. He cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half. If you're wondering if this is a strange turn, it is. Let's keep reading.
As the sun was setting, Abraham set fell into a deep sleep and thick and dreadful darkness came over him. And God said to him, know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants are gonna be strangers in a country not their own, they'll be enslaved, they'll be mistreated there. This is a reference, if you aren't aware, to Abraham's descendants becoming enslaved in Egypt, which is the setting for the book of Exodus. In this text in Genesis 15, it goes on to describe some other events of early Israelite history before it says, that when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces of these animals. And on that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham.
Okay. So curious and mystifying imagery and we're gonna discuss all of it before we close today. But before we do, I need to mention something And it's just that I need to say that how this chapter and some of these verses are interpreted, how we go about this work is so important. See, Genesis 15 images God promising Abraham and his descendants very specific lands in the ancient Near East. And this is a promise that has been used to substantiate the claims of the Jews Jewish people to these same lands historically.
And these are claims that are now being made and executed by a modern contemporary nation state and those who support it using violence and oppression in horrific ways. And we stand today as interpreters of a text like this. We place Jesus at the center of our imagination of God and that means that we have to use care with a text like this. Understanding that it's been used to cause incredible physical, theological and ethical harm. And, it's harm that we believe goes against the peaceable way of being human that we see in Jesus.
We actually talked a little bit about this last week, how God's promises don't have to come at the expense of someone else. And, if we are paying attention, we can actually see that all of this, this story we're in today, it's a continuation of God's earlier promise in chapter 12 to make Abraham's descendants a blessing. And that's why I humbly submit that all violent nationalist interpretations, uses, applications of these texts, Genesis chapter 15, it maligns God's best for all people. And it breaks with the generous intent toward all humanity that's at the heart of the story of Abraham. With scholar Ellen Davis, I think Genesis models time and time again that humans are actively involved in transmitting divine blessing from one generation to a net to the next and from one nation to another.
And we can participate in that blessing in the ways that we choose to interpret the story. It's also true that we can participate in it when we choose to espouse and embody peaceable Christian faith. That said, what do we do with the image of animals cut in two, Of swirling darkness? Of a smoking dinner pot floating through the carnage? Well, we can acknowledge that this imagery appears to be, as scholars note, similar to other ancient depictions of how solemn agreements like treaties were made.
This is not a sacrifice or a religious ceremony. There's no altar in the story. Similar to other ancient references, the slaughtering of animals seems to have been conducted as a sign of what might happen to the party that violates the agreement or the covenant being made. And that might seem unnecessarily gruesome and potentially irrelevant until we look closely at the text. See, scholars note that only the smoking pot and blazing torch, presumably images or representations of God's divine presence, only those elements pass through the animals that are gathered by Abraham.
And this indicates a unilateral when one way agreement, not a bilateral one. Said another way, this covenant is one that God makes with Abraham, and by proxy, all humanity and creation. And in this agreement, God will take all of the impositions and the demands of that agreement upon God's self. And yes, we will see this embodied clearly in Jesus. And this is why this smoke filled scene should shape the way we think of all divine promises in scripture.
And I think it can help us hold on to our faith like Abraham did. I think. I think. Because first, it shows us that across the centuries and the cultures and the expressions that inform the redemptive arc of scripture, the defining characteristic of the story is not our ability to be faithful, but God's unerring commitment to be. And trust me, faith feels so much lighter when you start to see it more as a giving in to a greater goodness as opposed to holding on to something that can feel so elusive.
And this this gets to the second point, how if we watch Abraham carefully in the story, you can almost see the moment that everything clicks for him. When he realizes that God's greatest promise that it was going to come true long beyond the scope of his remaining years. And I wonder if that same realization isn't the surest sign of faith in you and me. Do you wanna know where you can see it? You can see it there in the ways you love the children that will outlive you.
It's there in the ways that you share and contribute to communities that will at last you. It's there in the ways that you are forming habits today that you hope someday will bear results. It's there in the forgiveness you practice and the work you do in your own story without knowing how other people are going to react. It's in the prayers you've prayed that are years in the making, in your practice of loving those who can't possibly repay you and sowing seeds of hope and delight that sometimes you tell yourself, I'm not even sure this is worth it but you do it anyway. Perhaps, this is the sign that you are living with far more faith than you thought.
Let's pray. Loving God, again today, we find ourselves swept up into the vast expanse of a much bigger story. And maybe we can see how our fears are actually ancient ones. And how our questions are a continuation of this conversation you had with Abraham. And how our world and our homes, our neighborhoods, our sky, our days, these are still the places where you lead and you direct and you guide.
And in it all, we humbly receive this striking invitation to trust a promise that is so big. A promise to renew all things, a promise to be true to us even in this moment we find ourselves. And this is why we pray that where we are fearful, would you come and would you comfort us? Where we are worn down or we find ourselves at the end of our capacity, would you help us to rest in something grander than our strength? Where we are seeking direction, where we need wisdom, where we need support, would you remind us in the practice of community, of relationship, in reaching out for help that we are not alone.
Be with us in every small step we take today and this week. In the name of Christ who is our hope. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan: Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you
Scott Wall: soon.