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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
If you do not learn to filter for your biases, they will filter everything for you. God is on your side. I will tell you that with absolute confidence. But that does not mean that God wants for you what you always want for yourself. Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a series about the lives of Abraham and Sarah.
Jeremy Duncan:It is called big promises, small steps. We're only two weeks in, and yet we've already seen a bit of that titular dichotomy play out. We've seen Abraham and Sarah respond to this incredible call of God. That's the big promise. We've seen Abraham then completely mess that up and potentially his marriage along with it through some very small, timid, and honestly kind of fearful steps.
Jeremy Duncan:Today, we're gonna get to see Abraham on the other side of his failure and learn from that. But first, a bit of a recap to set the stage. Two weeks ago, we saw the call of Abraham. The call that God promised would eventually result in the blessing of all peoples. But that was also the call to first leave his land and his home and his father's world to set out from everything that was familiar and to go somewhere new.
Jeremy Duncan:And we talked about some of the hints in the text as we read that about perhaps the religious superstitions of Abraham and his family. Bobby theorized quite poignantly, I think, about the potential failings of Abraham's father that may have prevented him from hearing that call to what was next. All of this though, as we read the story has been quite speculative, and I think that's something I actually want you to take from this series as we move our way through it. The Bible, particularly the Hebrew Bible, and specifically the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs, they really give us a why. Often what we're gonna see in these stories is a very Cormac McCarthy style tale.
Jeremy Duncan:Now, maybe that's a deep cut if you haven't read any of McCarthy's books, But he is famous for first, writing with a very biblical style. He borrows a lot of language from the bible. But also, his writing is almost completely avoids internal monologue. Like, his characters rarely tell you, the reader, why they're doing anything. You have to wrestle with their actions, their dialogue, what they say to discern their real intent.
Jeremy Duncan:I I think that's part of what makes McCarthy's writing so fascinating to wrestle with is you, as a reader, have to do a lot of work. But that's exactly what we see here as well. The writers of Genesis don't give us any glimpses into Abraham's head. They don't let us see what's behind Sarah's choices. Instead, we have to look for hints.
Jeremy Duncan:We have to wonder about gaps. We have to imagine ourselves in their sandals as it were in order to faithfully wrestle with the space between the words on the page. So when you hear us speculate about the faith of Abraham's father or we wonder about the unspoken relationship between father and son, when we pay attention to where God appears and then where God slips back into the shadows of the story. All of that is part of the faithful work of imaginatively engaging the text. Now at the same time, we also have to be careful that our fan fiction doesn't overwhelm the text, but wondering about what lies between the lines.
Jeremy Duncan:This is what the people of God have been doing for millennia. And that invitation to wonder is precisely why a story that is thousands of years old can still be very much worth wondering about today. So then Bobby last week walked us through Abraham's failures after the call in Egypt, and that's important to talk about because as amazing as Abraham went was to read. Seeing him then almost immediately use his wife as an object to ensure his own safety at her expense. Well, to call that disappointing would be a monumental understatement.
Jeremy Duncan:In fact, I wouldn't blame anyone here for not wanting to get back on-site with Abraham. In fact, I wouldn't blame anyone here for not wanting to get back on-site with Sarah once we reckon with how she treats Hagar. And by the way, Bobby talked about that a bit last week. We're not gonna cover Hagar's story directly in this series. That's because we did it recently.
Jeremy Duncan:You can find that sermon in a series called stories of shadow. It's in the archives from season eight. However, this once again is my point about the invitation to wonder about the text. Genesis is not presenting Abraham or Sarah for that matter as divine characters to emulate. That's not the point of the story.
Jeremy Duncan:The big spectacular world changing promises, those come from God. The small, timid, fearful, sometimes even backward steps, those often sadly are what come from us. And the beautiful part of the story, of faith in fact, the lesson we need to learn sometimes is that somehow the promises prevail in spite of us. Now today, we're gonna look at the next chapter of the story, Abraham's dealings with his nephew Lot. But to do that, we're actually gonna refer back to last week's story a few times as a comparison point.
Jeremy Duncan:So let's pray, and then we'll jump into Genesis chapter 13. God of promise and patience. We come today carrying both our hopes and our hesitations. Even as you call us as you once called Abraham to step out toward something new. And yet, as is often the case, our steps are small, uncertain, and slow.
Jeremy Duncan:Yet still you walk with us. When our choices are tangled and when our faith is more aspiration than certain. And so in this moment, open us to the wonder of these ancient tales. Help us to listen, just for what Abraham and Sarah heard, but for what you might still be speaking today to us. Teach us to trust that your promises are larger than our failures.
Jeremy Duncan:That our journey, even the winding one, can bring us back to you. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Today, it's Abraham and his nephew Lot. And we will cover the weight of gold when you are ready East of West and the problem with good news.
Jeremy Duncan:But, when don't we start by reading through the story and making a few comments as we go. This is Genesis chapter 13 starting in verse one. So Abram went up to Egypt to the Negev with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him. Abraham had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and in gold. Just quickly here, part of the struggle with last week's story is that Abraham mistreats his wife and gets off not only scot free but ahead financially.
Jeremy Duncan:Like, can that be ignored? Well, it's not ignored. It's just not translated particularly well. Because here, this phrase, very wealthy, is doing a lot of work. If you remember back to Genesis 12, the whole reason that Abraham goes to Egypt in the first place and then tries to pass off his wife to the pharaoh is because there was a severe famine in the land.
Jeremy Duncan:Well, here the word wealthy is the same word translated severe just a few verses ago. Now, I understand where they're getting that from. It's not a bad per se translation per se, at least not in a vacuum, but it also completely obscures the connection the writer's trying to make. The word technically translates to something like heavy. So there was a heavy famine.
Jeremy Duncan:Now Abraham is heavy with silver and gold. Wealthy makes sense, but it's not actually the point here. Heavy is. Abraham is heavy with ill gotten wealth. He is weighed down with reminders of perhaps guilt over constant memories of the dignity and trust that he traded for trinkets.
Jeremy Duncan:As the scholar Victor Hamilton writes, he has lost the respect of his wife. A fortune has been amassed, but an opportunity for trust has been lost. In other words, the narrator here is framing this wealth not as a reward, but as a penance. Now the question in front of us as readers is whether Abraham will understand that. But perhaps the question in front of all of us as humans is whether we will understand that.
Jeremy Duncan:Sometimes the line between reward and penalty is razor thin. And sometimes the answer is not particularly objective. Sometimes it will come down to the lessons that you are willing to learn about yourself. And here, Abraham is gonna have to decide if his wealth means he was right or whether the weight that he carries means he needs to make some changes. So, let's watch for that.
Jeremy Duncan:But for now, let's keep going with the story. This is verse three. From the Negev, he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier, and where he had first built an altar. There Abraham called on the name of the Lord. So note here, Abraham's all the way back where he started.
Jeremy Duncan:Almost as if he realizes he's lost his way, he's trying to recapture that encounter he once had with the divine. Interestingly, there is no divine response this time. No angry outburst from God. No words of encouragement here. God is simply silent in the story, which can be an uncomfortable place.
Jeremy Duncan:And so the story just continues. Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, but the land could not support them while they stayed together. For their possessions were so great, they were not able to stay together. Again, there's this subtle, although not so subtle undercurrent. Wealth, particularly ill gotten wealth is perhaps not the blessing it seems.
Jeremy Duncan:Abram's marriage is strained. God is not talking to him. Now his relationship with his nephew is heading in a wrong direction. In fact, in verse seven, we find that quarreling arose between Abraham's herders and lots. And if that's not enough, the Canaanites and the Perizzites are also living in the land here at the same time.
Jeremy Duncan:So just to recap the story, Abraham is called by God to change the world, almost immediately sells out his wife to save his own skin. And now, he's rich, but has lost the respect of his wife. He's gone back to where he started, but God won't speak to him. He's with family and even that is causing tension for him. To top it all off, the help is fighting and hostile forces are closing in.
Jeremy Duncan:If we haven't picked up on this yet, everything we're seeing now is about the result of bad behavior. I mean, this is literally the meme. Well well well, if it isn't the consequence of my own actions. The problem is many of us, scholars, translators, pastors alike, any of us actually that have been discipled by Western capitalism, somehow we read chapter 13, we hear that Abraham is very wealthy coming out of Egypt, and somehow we assume this story is a straight line continuation of that blessing from chapter 12. Talk about missing the point.
Jeremy Duncan:This is a fascinating example of how if you do not learn to filter for your biases, they will filter everything for you. Look. God is on your side. I will tell you that with absolute confidence. But that does not mean that God wants for you what you always want for yourself.
Jeremy Duncan:The nuance of God's grace, even in my own life, in the ways that God has taken me through places and seasons, through relationships and conversations that I did not think I wanted to have. Only for me in hindsight to look back and understand the way that God was more gracious to me even than I could have known to ask for in the moment. There will always be, at least as far as I can manage it, one of the guiding realizations of my life. Like, don't believe that God is causing everything in my life as if God is micromanaging my day in minute detail. I think I make choices, and I think there are consequences for those choices.
Jeremy Duncan:But I do believe, like the apostle Paul says, that God is present all the time in the background working on me and in me to help ensure that every consequence I encounter can be used for my good if I can muster the courage to face it. So a blessing, a lesson, a transformation, a new awareness, an awakening, a realization, a change, a come to Jesus moment where I am confronted with what I could not see for myself, and then offered a new path to walk. All of that is grace. And importantly, this weight that Abraham carries here, it is grace for him as well if he can pick up on the story. Sometimes we just miss the cues.
Jeremy Duncan:Now, thankfully, I don't think Abraham does miss them. Because this is what we read in verse eight as the story unfolds. So Abram said to Lot, let's not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herders and mine for we're close relatives. Is not the whole land before you? Let's part company.
Jeremy Duncan:You go to the left, I'll go to the right. If you want the right, I'll take the left. And so Lot looked around and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan towards Zoar was well watered like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt. Remember, this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. We'll get to that story.
Jeremy Duncan:If you're wondering about that one, hold on. And so Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the East. And the two men parted ways. So, what do we see here? Well, I think we're seeing a very different Abraham than we did in chapter 12, which already brings up kind of an interesting observation.
Jeremy Duncan:The call of Abraham comes to a very immature version of the man. Someone who is, I would say by his own actions, unfit for that call. That makes me think about those times when I have thought that I heard or sensed or felt the call to try something new. Two weeks ago, we talked about some of these pauses in our life, the spaces where you're waiting to hear about what's next. Discernment can be a drag when it requires patience.
Jeremy Duncan:But now I wonder about the patience to wait even after we know what's next. I remember this dream that would become commons. That existed for years in my mind before any of this ever began to take shape. I had ideas about what a church could look like and how we could speak to each other, how we could structure community for people who were not being well served in the city and couldn't find a faith community that worked for them. And I remember all of those ideas rolled around in my mind.
Jeremy Duncan:They jumbled and gestated and marinated and evolved for years. And often, I have thought about that as if, well, those ideas just needed time to mature. When probably, honestly, it was less about the ideas and more about the person who held them needing a little more time to bake. Like, I I can't imagine what would have happened if I had jumped as soon as I felt the call to try something new. Rather than gracefully getting the chance to sit with it, to talk with people about it, to explore not only the idea, but what that idea would need me to become to follow it.
Jeremy Duncan:So was Abraham wrong to go right when God called him? No. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying sometimes the go starts inside of you long before there's anything on the outside that anyone else could ever point to. Because again, the measure of your journey is not how fast anyone else thinks you're moving through life.
Jeremy Duncan:It's how faithful you are to the life that God has called you to. Slow and steady is not the same thing as complacent. Still, back to Abraham. If you remember in chapter 12, famine hits the land and he runs to Egypt away from where he's supposed to go. Then he gets spooked by Pharaoh's power and assumes the worst about him, mistreats his own wife, and is surprised to find that Pharaoh is actually a pretty honorable man.
Jeremy Duncan:Now he's heavy with all this wealth, lots of gold, but his wife won't look him in the eye. So he backtracks to where it all started, builds an altar to God again, tries to manufacture a second encounter. But that doesn't work either. So now he's got everything he needs and nothing he wants. All of sudden, the specter of insecurity is rising again in conflict.
Jeremy Duncan:And here's the question for us. Is all of this experience, this failure, all this frustration, is all of this going to make Abraham more fearful than he was the first time? Or is it somehow going to make him more courageous? I think the answer here is the latter. You see, Abraham here has the right of paterfamilias.
Jeremy Duncan:That means he's the uncle, Lot's the nephew. That means Abraham always gets first pick. In fact, it actually means that Abraham can tell Lot to pack up and hit the road if he wants to. As far as ancient legal precedent goes, Abraham is sole proprietor here. And yet, not only is he gracious to Lot, he lets Lot set the terms.
Jeremy Duncan:And that is, I think, the key to the whole episode. Abraham gets a call from God, and then immediately sets out to engineer the way to manufacture that call. Go to Canaan. Well, there's a famine there. I guess I'll go to Egypt instead.
Jeremy Duncan:Uh-oh. There's a big bad pharaoh there. But you know what? I like you there. Maybe I can just buy him off with some bad choices.
Jeremy Duncan:Uh-oh. Turns out the pharaoh was too moral for my machinations. Now he's kicked me out, but you know what? At least I got all my money. Actually, though, it feels kinda gross, kinda heavy.
Jeremy Duncan:I think I'll go back to where it started. I'll build an altar. I'll ask God to start over. Except God's not talking, and now Lot is, I'm gonna need to wrestle with this somehow. What's interesting to me is that finally here, I think Abraham decides to respond to a crisis not with fear, but with optimism.
Jeremy Duncan:This whole left right thing, sort of a setup for the punch line. Right? Because ordinal directions don't mean a lot to us as readers. I mean, don't know which way he's facing. Lot does though.
Jeremy Duncan:And Lot chooses East. First up, right in the text, we know East is the good stuff. It literally reminds Lot of the Garden Of Eden, and it's watered like Egypt where they all just got rich. But not only that, East is functioning as a metaphor here. Later in scripture, the tabernacle and the temple, the place of God on earth will face east.
Jeremy Duncan:And when the Messiah comes, he will come from the East, specifically the Mount Of Olives on the East Of Jerusalem. Even the Garden Of Eden, which is already referenced here in this verse, when it gets closed off and God sends Adam and Eve out into the wilderness, they are sent into the West as God puts angels to guard the eastern entrance. Now today, sure. I mean, we know the earth is a ball. If you go east far enough, you'll end up back West.
Jeremy Duncan:But in scripture, West is the way of work and settlement. West is crafting a life out of the unforgiving wild. It's all that same story we tell ourselves in Alberta, actually. In the ancient world though, East is coming home. East is the way of return and peace, security, and prosperity, And Abraham offers that choice to his punk nephew Lot.
Jeremy Duncan:This isn't just about a generous posture. This is about Abraham finally beginning to trust the call of God. The historian Thomas Cahill wrote about the significance of Abraham's story and he says, out of ancient humanity which knows in its bones that all striving must end in death, comes a leader who says he's been given an impossible promise. A dream of something new, something better, something yet to happen, something in the future. For Abraham to offer his nephew the known quantity so that he can face toward what could be.
Jeremy Duncan:This is, as far as I'm concerned, where Abraham finally embraces the call from chapter 12. And here's what I wanna talk to you about with that. There's a way of moving through the world as if every good thing has already been discovered. That means prosperity, blessing, security. I mean, whatever language we want to give to all the good things we hope to experience, all of that has already been discovered, so it must come eventually at the expense of someone else.
Jeremy Duncan:If all good things have been located, and if all good things are already in circulation, to get yours means, well, sadly, less for your neighbor. So we call scarcity mindset. And I would say it's exactly what we see driving Abraham in chapter 12. God wants me to go to Canaan, but there's a famine here, and there's harvest over there. That must mean I'm in the wrong place.
Jeremy Duncan:Only so much good to go around. I better go there. Now in a vacuum, not a bad move. I mean, Abraham can't control the weather. Food is pretty essential.
Jeremy Duncan:I get it. But as a mindset, that can bleed over into all kinds of areas of our life with unfortunate unseen implications. Here's a parallel. You and a friend, you work at the same company and they get a promotion. And you wanna be happy for them, but the truth is you're a little choked you didn't get that promotion.
Jeremy Duncan:Is that uncomfortable? Sure. Is it reasonable? Yeah. Honestly, it is.
Jeremy Duncan:And yet if we let it, how quickly does that scenario transition into you and a friend work at different companies and they get a promotion? And you wanna be happy for them. But somehow, honestly, that still feels like it means less for you. That idea that there's only so much good to go around, that good news that's not yours is bad news for you. Once that gets its claws in us, it's incredibly hard to shake.
Jeremy Duncan:I told you this one before, but it's on my mind. Because good people here in this community just adopted a little girl this week, and that's not my story to tell. But guys, just please know we love you. We are caring for you. Thing is, our kids are adopted as well.
Jeremy Duncan:At 12 ago, we found ourselves finally getting what we had waited for for a very long time. The thing is, we were in our late thirties when we adopted our son, into our forties when we adopted our daughter, but that's a story for another time. And we had struggled for infertility for years before that. But when you're in your late thirties, struggling with infertility, waiting for three plus years on an adoption list, let me tell you, you will find yourself surrounded by an absolute avalanche of baby announcements. So here's the question.
Jeremy Duncan:Does a friend getting pregnant have any bearing on your ovulation? Does a baby shower have any impact on your sperm count? Does yet another announcement card in the mail do absolutely anything to slow down the adoption wait list? Of course not. But they're all still hard to sit through.
Jeremy Duncan:And it's because we all have a little bit of this story somewhere in the back of our head that tells us there is only so much goodness to go around. And so you smile, and you celebrate, and you go to the baby shower, and honestly, you do feel happy for them, but there's that little bit of an insidious voice in the back of your mind that says, somehow, this is bad news for you. And maybe it starts, life's not fair. But it very quickly becomes, well, I've gotta get mine. That is poison for your soul.
Jeremy Duncan:What I think is fascinating is that it's here, finally in God's silence, that Abraham seems to snap out of that spiral. He messes things up. Everything goes badly. He tries to recreate the voice of God and manage the divine into responding to him. But in the end, all that Abraham is left with is the promise from chapter 12.
Jeremy Duncan:And the question, does he believe it or does he not? And my argument is that it's finally here with Lot that he says, okay, I do. You take what you want. I'm gonna trust what God has in front of me. Is it possible that somewhere years ago you said yes?
Jeremy Duncan:And you set out on a journey to where you thought God wanted you to go, and yet somehow you found yourself today back at square one trying to recreate the magic. Maybe you got scared or maybe you lost sight of the goal, maybe you forgot you where you were going, maybe you messed things up and you had to backtrack. Well, look, that happens at some point to all of us. Fair play. The point of the story of Abraham is not that straight lines lead to God.
Jeremy Duncan:The point is that if we can start to believe that goodness is a renewable resource and that the world is not winner take all, then we can learn to cheer on those nearest even as we learn to dream about our own tomorrow. Can broken marriages be restored? Yes. Can busted relationships be mended? Of course.
Jeremy Duncan:Can crushed dreams be renewed? Absolutely. Can hearts that have had their optimism stolen from them return to promises that felt like a lifetime ago? I promise you they can. But that starts when we stop trying to scratch and claw for everything we think someone else has.
Jeremy Duncan:And, we return to the promise and the work and the life that God has put in front of us. Let them take the East. The adventure is what's in front of you right now. Let's pray. God, for all those moments when we have traded the call to the future, to what could be, to undiscovered goodness in the world, and we've defaulted to a small imagination of thinking that to get what's ours means it needs to come at someone else's expense.
Jeremy Duncan:That every good thing is already out there in circulation, and we need to find ours. We repent of that imagination, and we ask that you would gift us with something bigger and more courageous and more optimistic. This imagination that love is not a finite resource, and that there is possibility ahead of each of us In new relationships, in restoration that we didn't think was possible, in moving forward through the world believing that there is more of your love to discover. And that in turn, we can live as if that was true in the ways that we engage with the people near us. God, might that imagination slowly begin to take root in us and might it change, Not just the way we think about ourselves, but the way we engage with the path of grace and peace in front of us.
Jeremy Duncan:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. 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.
Jeremy Duncan: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.
Jeremy Duncan:Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.