“…the Lord said…”

Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17; Genesis 12: 1-4a

FPC; 2-17-08

 

          In the first eleven chapters of Genesis, there is scene after scene of human decline and fall.  Last week, we read about the sin of Adam and Eve as they succumbed to the temptation of the tempter.  Following that story is the story of two brothers and its tragic scene as Cain murders Abel.  There is the story of the flood and the story of Babel and in the midst of all of these stories, in chapter six, it is reported that the Lord was sorry he had made humankind. 

          Only a few verses before the beginning of today’s Old Testament passage, it is mentioned that Sarai, Abram’s wife, was barren.  In Old Testament literature, barrenness is a metaphor for hopelessness.  From the first chapter through chapter eleven, humankind is barren, hopeless, without a future. 

          But, hopelessness and human misery serve as the stage for the unfolding drama of God’s redemption, God’s granting of a future where previously there was none.    

          “…and the Lord said to Abram, Go…”   The Divine, summoning speech breaks into the patterns of human misery and, like the moment of creation, the Lord’s speech brings new life, grants a future to a human race that, except for God’s grace, would have no future.  That future is shaped by promise, the promise of blessing.

The blessing of life is promised to Abram.  The promise is delivered not because of Abram’s potential-for he is without potential.  Nor is the promise based on his merit, for Abram is without merit.  The act of blessing derives from and is initiated by the Lord.  Not only does the Lord promise blessing to Abram; the Lord also promises that, through Abram, all families of the earth will be blessed.  To bless humankind is the item at the top of God’s agenda, which is to say that the Lord’s chief goal is to give life to a people who are dead, a future to people who are without a future. 

“Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”  This one, who was without a future, went to embrace the future God had given him.  

Because Abram went, we count ourselves among the families of the earth the Lord has blessed, ones to whom God has bestowed the gift of redemption; we count ourselves among the people who once were dead in their trespasses but who now have received the Lord’s blessing, the gift of new, resurrected life. 

The famous, influential hymn Amazing Grace was written by John Newton.  His life’s story is one of hopelessness and hope, of deadness and life, of being lost and found. 

At the tender age of 7, Newton was devastated by the death of his mother.  She was a Christian woman who had nurtured her son in the faith, had prayed with and for him, and had taken him to church. When she died, he was orphaned and alone in the world. 

A family that could not have cared less about spiritual matters adopted the boy.  They ridiculed the boy, taunted and mocked him.  No longer able to tolerate the emotional abuse, he ran away and joined the British navy.  Embittered and resentful, the young sailor became defiant.  Eventually, he deserted and became a slave trader on a Portuguese ship.  Emotionally battered, spiritually empty, morally decadent, his life had plummeted to its lowest depth.  Then, in a tumultuous storm off the coast of Scotland, while pumping water from his sinking ship, he had a life-altering encounter with God.  The assurance of God’s love swept over him.  He later described the experience as a miracle, a manifestation of God’s grace.[1] Newton once said of his conversion: “Only God’s amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God.”[2]

          Newton is included among the people of the earth blessed by God, given life by the Creator of life.  He was blessed and then became a blessing to others, an instrument through whom God’s gift of life was given. 

So it is with you and me. 

The Lord summons us, calls us, as he called Abram, to go.  The call is not based on our potential or our merit.  It is derived from, initiated and delivered by God.  In our going, in our response to the call, we are blessed that we might be a blessing; we are given life that we might be channels of God’s life-giving love. 

A century or so after Jesus lived on this earth, a Rabbi, Rabbi Meir, suggested that we are born into this world with our hands clutched tightly, as if wanting to grasp everything.  But we leave this world with our hands open, carrying nothing with us.  The Rabbi suggests this is the way we grow to maturity: by learning to open our hands, by learning to become vessels through which families of the earth are blessed and are given the gift of life.[3] 

Part of what this means for Presbyterians is that we will take seriously the vows we make at baptism; we will uphold the promises to nurture children in the faith, to pray for and with them, to be encouragers as they seek to discern the voice of the Lord in the midst of all the other voices that are sounding in this world. 

Patrick Wilson is a Presbyterian minister in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Wilson tells the story about his grandfather who, as a boy, went to church in a little place north and west of Fort Worth, called Dido, Texas.  There was no church building there; but every Sunday people from miles around would hitch up their teams to their wagons and load up their families and picnic lunches, and make the trek to the schoolhouse in Dido for church.  Some of them traveled many miles.  It took several hours.  Church was an all day affair.  There was bible study and hours of singing and dinner on the grounds.  Not every Sunday, but occasionally, there would be preaching.  Some itinerant preacher or seminary student would show up, and that would be a really big deal.  People would stay all day and then into the night to hear sermons that could go on for hours.   Well, one Sunday night, while the preacher was droning on and on, Patrick’s grandfather, who was a teenager at the time, and some of his buddies slipped out of church and went to the wagons where families had bedded down the younger children.  Very quietly and gently the boys mixed the children up, putting them in the wrong wagons.  Here is Patrick Wilson’s description of the results of what his grandfather and his buddies did:

“Couples who had no children went home with some; ranch families with no sons received a pair; mothers who had longed for daughters got one.  And of course, at the end of the preaching service everyone hitched up the teams and drove long miles into the night, carrying away each other’s children.  It would be a week before these folks saw each other again.  But for a week-until the next Sunday meeting at Dido-the kids were theirs-theirs to love and theirs to feed, and theirs to care for.”[4] 

That is one of the promises we make when a child is baptized: to love and to feed and to care for.  We, who have been blessed, given a future when we had no future, are called to go and be a blessing.  Through us families of the earth will be blessed.  The Lord summons us, calls us to open our hands and to become vessels through which his children and all the families of the earth are blessed. 

“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go”…”   “And Abram went as the Lord had told him.”

May it be so for you and me!

 

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Dunn, North Carolina  28334-3241

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