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Scripture used Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 and Luke 13:31-35
Poor Abram. He’s been promised, again and again, things will be well. Things will be well and great. 3 chapters ago, when he was 75 years old, “the Lord said to Abram, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I 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.”
This starts the series of misadventures of Abram… famine, Pharaoh taking Sarai as his wife, getting Sarai back, plagues, infighting with his nephew Lot… Again, God comes to a few years older Abram and says, “Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”
A second promise of this – offspring, lands, great nations from descendants…
But the misadventure continues. Now multiple kings in the area get into a massive battle – throwing one another and their troops into tar pits. War rages over the Dead Sea area. The citizens lose their belongings and homes. Their lives. And many are taken as slaves. Among these is Lot. This drags Abram and his own people into the bloody war.
And that brings us to today’s reading. And for a third time God says I will make you the father of a great nation. Now God promises these descendants will number not just any, not merely all the dust of the earth – but every stardust of the sky. That’s 100 to 500 BILLION in our galaxy alone. How many galaxies exist? For the third time God promises all shall be well.
In reply, “he believed the LORD, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.” We… don’t know who credits, or reckons, who. Translators sometimes fill in this as the LORD reckoned it to him… and sometimes they leave it ambiguous. We don’t know which he gave benefit of the doubt to the other. Scripture supports both.
The NRSV chooses it is God who credits Abram. Because Abram has faith and trust, God continues in the promise and makes it sealed with a ritual and covenant and sacrificial animals. This reading says that Abram is so devout and faithful and God credits Abram for this. God chooses to do these wonderful things for a human, against logic.
But it could also be Abram crediting God. God hasn’t delivered on this promise in any of the previous encounters. Famine, war, internal-strife, and Sarai being unable to get pregnant, and the couple being elderly, have all gotten in the way. Abram doesn’t believe God now, but is willing to give God the benefit of doubt. Credit it to God. “Okay, God. I’m choosing to go along with this… against logic.”
I feel this is us in the world today. We’ve been promised again and again that God is good and God is present. We’ve also been promised God is powerful and mighty. We’ve also been promised God knows the future and God intervenes into our world, our time, our outcomes.
Yet there’s war. And evil. Pure evil. There’s chaos. There’s senseless destruction. There’s a whole lot of random awfulness and planned sin both making this not heaven on earth. If the time of the Lord’s favor is now, if Jesus’ mission to announce the reign of God is complete… what’s happened?
The promises look unfulfilled.
So.
Do we trust God anyways? Do we give God some credit and say, “I don’t see you working, but I trust you are…”
Or do we ask God for some credit? Look at how we humans love to kill and bomb and destroy each other? “Kyrie eleison!” (KEE-ree-yay ee-LAY-ee-sohn) “Lord have mercy!” Save us from ourselves for we cannot do this ourselves. Let us go into debt with you – forgive us, for we do not know what we do.
… I think the ambiguity is good. I don’t think we need to choose one or the other. We need the help. And trusting God when things are bad is a credit – something we don’t owe but choose to give.
It’s so easy to praise God and trust God in the good times. It’s much harder to praise and trust God in the bad times.
It’s so easy to look past on Abram and know that eventually, eventually, long after Abram is dead and buried he is AbraHAM – the father of many. The father of Islam and Judaism and Christianity. It’s easy to look back and see that yes, God is fulfilling the promises. But for Abram? It was chaos. And delays. And war.
I wonder if our descendants will look back on this time now, and from their position in the future, they will see how clearly God was active in the chaos that is now. With 20/20 hindsight they’ll see the moments people chose to trust goodness and hope and kindness and work for it — even when it seemed ridiculous and naive. They’ll wonder how we chose in our time to keep the faith when it all seemed to be going wrong. They’ll wonder how we chose to find hope anew for each day. They’ll wonder what kept us going.
… What does keep you going?
What keeps you trusting in the goodness of God?
… What gives you hope?
… What reassures you that no matter how evil and destructive and catastrophic our times are… there is still goodness? There are still good people. There is still a candle burning against the night. There are still stars. Still beauty. Still God.
I feel like Jesus standing there looking at Jerusalem. I want to gather up all these hurting people like a hen over her chicks. I want to ruffle up my feathers, lower my head, and protect them. How dare you bomb a children’s hospital? How dare you murder these pregnant women? How dare you promise safe passage and then shoot down families who just want peace? Who want to live? How dare you?!
A mother hen will gladly attack a hawk, a dog, or anything many times her size to protect her little chicks. She might be terrified, but she uses that fuel her protectiveness.
Jesus wants to gather all those people. All the kids and elderly. All the middle aged and all the newborns. Gather them all. Protect them.
Even as he knows it’ll be his death. Even as he knows his death will come from those very people he protects.
How is it God loves us so much God is willing to hurt, to cry, to die for us? Even when we’re not appreciative?
When my daughter was born she demanded with deafening cries food, being held, and clean diapers. She thanked me with puking on my shirt and sneezing in my mouth and making me sleep deprived.
And yet I would have gladly died for her to live.
God loves us like that. Sometimes we are babies and the cutest most tender bright eyed and curious and innocent little creatures that are in God’s own image. Sometimes we are babies bent on inventing new ways to kill ourselves and need rescuing. Determined to stand on tables and eat anything we find on the floor and pull on wires. And God loves us so much, each and every one of us – the good children and the troubled children and the evil children – that God won’t give up on us. Keeps on loving us. Keeps on crying over us and protecting us and calling us to our best selves.
I don’t understand why God’s promises sometimes happen so quickly, and sometimes seem to never appear, and sometimes happen only generations and generations later. I don’t know why God allows us to harm each other — of if God is powerless to stop us from harming each other. I don’t know.
I credit, I reckon to God, the promises made. I choose to believe that all will be well. I choose to have faith. I choose to believe each person has the light of God in them. I choose to trust that even when we are in a pandemic, with war on the horizon, and famine after that, and death all around… even then… God has not abandoned us. God will not abandon us. God loves us and will be with us no matter what.
Eventually, in the words of Julian of Norwich, all shall be well.
She lived during the 100 year religious war about her. She lived during the black plague. There are riots and revolts around her burning government buildings. Of the 75 million people in Europe, 19 to 35 million die of the plague in just 5 years. More die of the wars and the famines. She nearly dies herself.
In this… IN THIS… Jesus visits her in a series of visions. She writes (one of the few female medieval writers we have!) “In my folly, before this time I often wondered why, by the great foreseeing wisdom of God, the onset of sin was not prevented: for then, I thought, all should have been well. This impulse [of thought] was much to be avoided, but nevertheless I mourned and sorrowed because of it, without reason and discretion.
But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’
“These words were said most tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any who shall be saved.”
She saw our world as small as a hazelnut, an acorn, in the palm of God’s hand. She saw Jesus as a mother tenderly, lovingly, nursing us. Caring for us.
She saw that in all of the chaos and horror of her time, God is present and loves us.
I choose to believe in this time, just as in Julian’s time, just as in Jesus’ time, just as in Abram’s time: God still is present, gathering us up, and loving us.
No matter how much we mess up, how much the world messes up, the promises of God will be fulfilled… and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Amen.
Julian of Norwich. Showings. New York: Paulist Press, c1978.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 