A Walk in Promise
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
March 2, 2014
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
Genesis 17:
15-22
Let
us pray, for a welcome mind and a loving heart
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For
your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
15
God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai
your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 I
will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her,
and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” 17
Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a
child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety
years old, bear a child?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “O that
Ishmael might live in your sight!” 19 God said, “No, but your wife
Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my
covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. 20
As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful
and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will
make him a great nation. 21 But my covenant I will establish with
Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year.” 22 And
when he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham. [1]
Abraham laughs when God says that Sarah will
be the mother because they have gotten old. It has been a long time since they
took that first step outside of Ur. Last week we talked about how with Abram
the story of redemption begins. God issues the call for Abram to take the first
step and he does. He leaves Ur, all for a promise, a promise of blessings, but
it is all in the future. Along with Abram on this path is his wife Sarai. She
is an amazing woman of faith, even though she falters, but you have to be
impressed, she kinda has to have double faith. She has to believe in God, like
her husband, but she also has to believe in her husband because it would seem
that she doesn't have any contact with God herself, or at least the Bible
doesn't mention it. She goes along, and sometimes, as we all know going along
is harder than being the one to go. For some reason the movie Field of Dreams
comes to mind, you know the movie where Kevin Costner hears a voice that tell
him to plow under his major crop, putting his family's financial future in
serious doubt. So he does it, and all along, his wife, who might be my favorite
character in the movie, she's fiesty, there is the scene where she picks a
fight at the PTA meeting over censorship in the schools, she's great, but most
of all she really believes in her husband, and so goes along with it. She says,
"If you really think you should do it, then you should do it." There
are actually some real parallels with the Abram and Sarai story. You have to
think that Sarai had her doubts, she shows them at some different points, but
for most believes just enough.
Think of the journey they are on, it is not
just plowing under a field, but to leave everything you know to go to some
land. So you go, and then while you are in the land, the promised land, a
drought happens and you have to leave. There is the first bump on the promise.
So we are supposed to have this land but it isn't what you hoped. It's barren
and ravaged by a drought. But faith drives you on, you don't head back to Ur,
if you still could. But it isn't really even an option. So you head on further
south to the land of Egypt. The biggest aspect of the story that always blows
me away about their sojourn into Egypt is that Sarai is supposed to be so
beautiful that Abram is afraid for their safety in the court of the Pharoah, so
he lies and says that she is his sister, rather than his wife. Could you
imagine such a situation, where it is so dangerous that it is better to pretend
your wife is your sister just to keep the two of you safe. Pretty tough sell
for Sarai, right. Could you imagine? Ok Sarai, so you've come with me to this
new place, it didn't work out like we planned, so now we have to go into this
foreign country, but it's not safe there so I'll have to tell everyone that you
are my sister. Could you imagine going through with that as Abram? Could you
imagine going through with that as Sarai? But they do, and somehow it all works
out. They go through it, come out on the other side, and grow ten times richer
in the process. Faith and then struggle and then growth, seem to be the
pattern. But what a difficult pattern, because the promise is still lingering
in the future after all that.
And there was still no child. How is Abram supposed to be Abraham, how
is he supposed to be the father of a great nation living in the land if there
is no child. Abram starts to wonder how it is all going to work out, he asks
God, should I just make Eliezar, my heir. . . but again God doubles down, no I
will make of your direct stock a line of
descendants, a great nation, living in this land. But not only is the land
prone to drought, it's also inhabited by others, and crowded. And Lot and
Abraham have to split up, and then Lot gets in trouble because he is living in
Sodom, and Abraham has to save Lot from Sodom, but does so without becoming
beholden to the king of Sodom, and there are also, the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the
Kadmonites, the Hittites, the
Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the
Girgashites, and the Jebusites, and all other ites, inhabiting the land. And
this is what they are given in promise? And still no child? What is this
journey we are on?
The temptation to try to take
control and make something happen, to try to make the promise come true in your
own way would be so strong. The next step seems so far off, why not just cheat
a little and take it now, and so we understand where Sarai is coming from, we
get it. She wants to bring about the promise, she wants Abraham to have that
real heir, the real child of promise. I might not be able to clear this land,
and I might not be able to lay claim to it, I might not be able to have my own
child, but I can make this promise happen. Abram, take my slave girl, Haggar,
make the child with her. What other choice do we have? God is not listening to
us, his promise just can't happen anymore. It is impossible. I wrote the prayer
of preparation, thinking about what she must have felt:
How can it be so that I
should have a child, since
Years ago I passed my prime?
When Lord, When? Is your
promise real, since
Nothing changes but the
time?
How can I believe beyond
what I see, since
Days and years come and go?
Why should I listen to what
you say, since
All my hope in you died long
ago?
I must take it into my own hands, but not for me for my husband. I can
handle it. It will be okay. So Hagar and Abraham conceive Ishmael, but Sarai
can't handle it. She thought she could but she can't. She thought it would be
enough but it isn't. She thought she wouldn't be jealous, but she is. She
thought she was strong enough but she just isn't. So she despises the child,
despises the mother, despises herself, despises Abraham, and despises God.
Interesting how it all started with her trying to take things into her own
hands. I get where she is coming from
completely. I feel her pain. I've been there, not exactly, but similar, because
walks of promise, all tend to be the
same: walks of doubt and worry, at the same time paired with promise and faith.
They are this type of mixed bag.
But eventually, when the time is right, God's
promise is actualized. Sarai, the barren, become Sarah, the mother. And her
child will be named Isaac, he laughs. The joy, the laughter, the completeness
of the story is there waiting at the end of the journey, or at least at the
culmination of these first steps, journeys don't really end, promises kept,
lead to more promises made, God's love and power, and promises abound, but the
journey to that place as we have seen is all over the place, not just one step,
but many, and in many directions, all toward the promise, but seeming to us
anyway, not in the direction of the promise. Faith is needed, and faith is hard.
I said last week that this story is like
chapter one of the story of redemption and that all up to this point is the
prologue. The question I want to ask is, would you keep reading, with this as
chapter one? Would you keep reading? I was listening to sports radio yesterday
and they were having an argument about watching tvshows on HBO and on demand
and all that, and whether you have to start with the first episode. One of the
hosts was saying that he likes to watch one in the middle first to see if the
story is worth watching, then will go back to the beginning if he felt it was.
The other host was flipping out, he said it was a violation, that you have to
always watch from the beginning, otherwise you'd lose the context, that the
context is the key, it makes it all important. So many of us, in our journeys
start with the Jesus stories, we start with the middle and we like it. It makes
sense to us. It is the redemption of the redemption story. But the walk of
faith, the story of redemption begins here with chapter 1. If you had to start
here with no knowledge of the rest of the story, as Abram and Sarai have to do,
would you keep reading?
One of the ways that scholars look at ancient
texts to dicipher which parts of them are authentic and which parts are later
editions or changes is, how embarrassing the story is to the movement. This one
must be authentic because it is quite embarrassing. You have a God who is all
powerful, offering a promise, but the promise just doesn't ever seem to
materialize, and you have people trying to be faithful amidst all the doubt and
worry over just whether or not the promise is real. Whether God is real?
Whether God is strong enough to fulfill promises if he is real? And whether God
doesn't just do it all as a cruel joke? We get all of these questions here in
chapter one. In some ways it is quite embarrassing. In someways if this were a
novel we'd probably stop reading, but the magic of this story is that it is
real. It is our lives played out.
God has promised us a lot. The redemption
story itself is one of tremendous promise, but like God's promise to Abraham,
it all is just a few steps away, into the future with the steps between there
and here hidden, crooked, winding, and frightening. We often feel like we want
to take things into our own hands. We often feel like we know how to get there
better. We often feel like if we were just to take this one short cut we could
handle it, that if we cheapen ourselves just a little bit it can all work out,
just as if we didn't. We think that each step should be blessed and work out
perfectly but it doesn't. We think that if we are good people our entire
venture should work out and be comfortable, but it just isn't. So many people
throughout the history of the church have promised this type of faith. That the
rewards for faith are good and pleasant, ease of life, but chapter one of the
redemption story says otherwise. Chapter 1 echoes the rest of the story, that
we should never waiver in our faith just because the path turns, is rocky, or seems
to be endless. Christianity is not a means to an end, but rather a journey to
no end, with the promise of a loving God to walk it with you, leading your
steps, onward, through anything, through everything, growing closer and closer,
with each step. It is quite a promise, though one that we often have trouble
with. It only gets harder for Abraham and Sarah, but with each new step God is
right there.
I chose to pair this text with Mary's song
from Luke, "The Magnificat" because in both there is a promise of a
child to an unlikely or impossible parent. In both there is a blessing, but in
both there is also trial. We will talk in the next weeks that there will be
sacrifice for and of both boys. But yet
through it all there is the promise. I said of Mary and her journey, her
promise, her calling, a few years ago, that she is a testament that to be
called is to be favored, to be favored is to be loved, and to be loved is to
never be abandoned. It is true for both of these mothers, for Sarah, and for
Mary, and though this world seems difficult and cruel, it is also true for each
one of us. Amen.
[1]The
Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Ge 17:15-22). Nashville:
Thomas Nelson Publishers.
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