Last week we began a new cycle of readings through the Narrative Lectionary, which is the list that determines our text each week in worship. If you were here, then I am sure you remember Jackie Cummings telling you not to let your boat get rocked by the wind and the waves – whether literal or metaphorical – because our faith in God will see us through!
What a great way to start off this cycle of the Narrative Lectionary, which will focus on Matthew’s Gospel paired with readings from the Old Testament. These readings also begin in Genesis with stories of covenant relationships and the promise of blessing. Last week we began with a reading of the story of Noah (which is a little more problematic than we often tell our children when we give them the Noah’s Ark playset).
I won’t go into great detail about that except to say that the traditional understanding was that suffering had increased so much throughout the earth that God felt the best way to fix it was to hit the reset button. Afterward, the rainbow (literally thought of as a divine weapon) was hung in the sky to remind God what a bad idea that was. Anyway, that’s all in Genesis 6-10 if you want to read through it.
Today we jump ahead to Genesis 12 and the call of Abram and Sarai. We tend to focus on Abraham, which is what his name will become, but Sarai is an active participant in this story as well (even though God doesn’t speak to her quite as directly).
As I said before about Noah’s Ark, as familiar as these stories are to many of us they are not without some significant problems. While I suppose you could say there are plot holes in these stories, what I am talking about are the massively problematic ways these stories have been used – and still are – to fuel some of the greatest divisions that plague our planet.
Of course, we get further by focusing on what unites us than what divides us, but sometimes we have to acknowledge the source of division to get to the solution. For example, this lovely story about Abram and Sarai – whom Paul lifts as the paragon of faith in Romans 4 – is steeped in a story from which we have justified racism, enslavement, and an expectation of ownership that denies the rights of some for the privileges of others.
Let me unpack that back a bit. God selected Noah and his family to collect a sampling of all the animals of creation and save them from the flood. Afterward, there was an unfortunate event in which Noah had a little too much to drink, and his youngest son, Ham, went to cover him up. For this, Ham and his descendants were cursed. His descendants just happen to be the Canaanites. See where this is going? The Canaanites are set up from the beginning as the bad guys.
Worse still is the fact that somewhere along the line the “mark of Ham” became associated with brown skin. I remember being taught that as a child, and it made total sense – especially if the earth was repopulated by Noah’s children. As an adult, I realized that 1) science proves that rainbows existed as long as there has been light and moisture; 2) anthropological data conflicts with the idea that Noah’s family repopulated the earth, and 3) the people who wrote these stories down in the first place all had variations of brown skin, and that crazy “mark of Ham” theory is actually fuel for the fires that divide us even today.
How do we square all this up with our Biblical narrative? Well, this may rub some of you the wrong way to hear this, but given what we know from anthropology and archeology and scientific inquiry in general (all gifts inspired by God in my opinion), these stories of flood and division and God’s involvement are given to us as a means of understanding who God is, who we are, and what kind of relationships we were meant for all along.
Let that stew a bit, and let’s get back to what we find in the text. In Genesis chapter 10 we get the formation of nations that follow the descendants of Noah. In chapter 11 we find that the flood did not fix human ambition and these nations are working together to create a siege tower (the tower of Babel) to attack the heavenly throne. In God’s mercy, the people were scattered and given different languages and cultures, such that they could not work together in the same way again.
That brings us to Abram and Sarai because their story is one of a relationship. Theirs is a story of the way that God chose to bring us out of our conflicts through our relationship with God instead of by the mighty acts of God against us. Here begins the story of the mighty acts of God in and through us!
With all the backdrop of what happened in the generations before them and all the baggage, we carry of all that has happened since this story becomes more and more crucial as a fixed point in time that God has set in order to help make sense of all that comes before and after it.
The first thing that we notice is that God has selected someone out of the genealogical lineup of chapter 11 for no apparent reason. Some have said that it wasn’t about Abram at all, but rather about Sarai. She was the first woman noted in scripture as being “baren.” Perhaps it is the impossibility of it all that makes it clear that only through God could a nation come from their marriage. Truly, we don’t know, but God does have a tendency to work in and through the ones, we least expect, like Tamar, Ruth, Gideon’s left-handed soldiers, and even the shepherd boy king – David.
Abram and Sarai are where that pattern begins, and God says to Abram, “Go. Leave the security of your father’s house. I make a great name for you, give you land, and all families will be blessed through you. Those that curse you, I will curse.”
Of course, Abram and Sarai went, and apparently, they had quite a bit of resources to take with them. That’s not to say that they were without risk. In fact, the first thing that happened once they settled in Cannan (v10) is a famine that drives them into Egypt instead.
Ultimately, in their lives, they didn’t actually own a chunk of land until Abraham bought a burial plot for Sarah, yet in their lives, they experienced the promise of God again and again as they traveled. In the end, the Canaanites, whose land his descendants are to possess, regard him (23:6) as a “prince” among them because he has not come as a conqueror but as a stranger seeking and offering hospitality wherever he went.
It strikes me that this idea, that Abraham and Sarah were resident aliens for most of their lives, is fundamental to so many of the commands of Mosaic law. More than that I find that it connects with so much of my life’s experiences and the basic condition of being human. How often do we feel like we are in an alien environment? How often do we set up boundaries and barriers to make sure that we aren’t in a space with strangers or in a situation that we cannot control?
Seems to me that is the very reason that so many of us struggle with loneliness in an age when it is easier to connect than ever. In fact, if I were to summarize the invitation of this text and even the great commission of Christ into one word it would be “vulnerability.”
I’m sure many of you have seen quotes or heard talks from Brené Brown about the value of vulnerability in relationships, but she essentially says that it is the key to human connection. She says, “Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage.”
The beautiful thing about this invitation of God to Sarai and Abram is that it leads them into a transformative covenant relationship that has ripples throughout all of space and time and even invites you and me to be a part of it. That invitation eventually comes from Jesus himself, who scripture tells us appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, but get this – V18 says that they worshiped him but some doubted.
Without missing a beat, Jesus still invited them all to be a part of what God began in Abraham and Sarah and was continuing through Jesus. Could it be that we might make disciples of all nations in the same way? Yes! Of course, we can!
It will require us to become vulnerable to each other and before God. It will require us to manage our doubts and fears through faith that God wants us to be unified under the discipline of love for God, for one another, and for ourselves as people who have been selected for no good reason except that God wants to demonstrate love and hope and grace and peace – even through you, and even through me; and to God be the glory for that. Now and always. Amen!
What a great way to start off this cycle of the Narrative Lectionary, which will focus on Matthew’s Gospel paired with readings from the Old Testament. These readings also begin in Genesis with stories of covenant relationships and the promise of blessing. Last week we began with a reading of the story of Noah (which is a little more problematic than we often tell our children when we give them the Noah’s Ark playset).
I won’t go into great detail about that except to say that the traditional understanding was that suffering had increased so much throughout the earth that God felt the best way to fix it was to hit the reset button. Afterward, the rainbow (literally thought of as a divine weapon) was hung in the sky to remind God what a bad idea that was. Anyway, that’s all in Genesis 6-10 if you want to read through it.
Today we jump ahead to Genesis 12 and the call of Abram and Sarai. We tend to focus on Abraham, which is what his name will become, but Sarai is an active participant in this story as well (even though God doesn’t speak to her quite as directly).
As I said before about Noah’s Ark, as familiar as these stories are to many of us they are not without some significant problems. While I suppose you could say there are plot holes in these stories, what I am talking about are the massively problematic ways these stories have been used – and still are – to fuel some of the greatest divisions that plague our planet.
Of course, we get further by focusing on what unites us than what divides us, but sometimes we have to acknowledge the source of division to get to the solution. For example, this lovely story about Abram and Sarai – whom Paul lifts as the paragon of faith in Romans 4 – is steeped in a story from which we have justified racism, enslavement, and an expectation of ownership that denies the rights of some for the privileges of others.
Let me unpack that back a bit. God selected Noah and his family to collect a sampling of all the animals of creation and save them from the flood. Afterward, there was an unfortunate event in which Noah had a little too much to drink, and his youngest son, Ham, went to cover him up. For this, Ham and his descendants were cursed. His descendants just happen to be the Canaanites. See where this is going? The Canaanites are set up from the beginning as the bad guys.
Worse still is the fact that somewhere along the line the “mark of Ham” became associated with brown skin. I remember being taught that as a child, and it made total sense – especially if the earth was repopulated by Noah’s children. As an adult, I realized that 1) science proves that rainbows existed as long as there has been light and moisture; 2) anthropological data conflicts with the idea that Noah’s family repopulated the earth, and 3) the people who wrote these stories down in the first place all had variations of brown skin, and that crazy “mark of Ham” theory is actually fuel for the fires that divide us even today.
How do we square all this up with our Biblical narrative? Well, this may rub some of you the wrong way to hear this, but given what we know from anthropology and archeology and scientific inquiry in general (all gifts inspired by God in my opinion), these stories of flood and division and God’s involvement are given to us as a means of understanding who God is, who we are, and what kind of relationships we were meant for all along.
Let that stew a bit, and let’s get back to what we find in the text. In Genesis chapter 10 we get the formation of nations that follow the descendants of Noah. In chapter 11 we find that the flood did not fix human ambition and these nations are working together to create a siege tower (the tower of Babel) to attack the heavenly throne. In God’s mercy, the people were scattered and given different languages and cultures, such that they could not work together in the same way again.
That brings us to Abram and Sarai because their story is one of a relationship. Theirs is a story of the way that God chose to bring us out of our conflicts through our relationship with God instead of by the mighty acts of God against us. Here begins the story of the mighty acts of God in and through us!
With all the backdrop of what happened in the generations before them and all the baggage, we carry of all that has happened since this story becomes more and more crucial as a fixed point in time that God has set in order to help make sense of all that comes before and after it.
The first thing that we notice is that God has selected someone out of the genealogical lineup of chapter 11 for no apparent reason. Some have said that it wasn’t about Abram at all, but rather about Sarai. She was the first woman noted in scripture as being “baren.” Perhaps it is the impossibility of it all that makes it clear that only through God could a nation come from their marriage. Truly, we don’t know, but God does have a tendency to work in and through the ones, we least expect, like Tamar, Ruth, Gideon’s left-handed soldiers, and even the shepherd boy king – David.
Abram and Sarai are where that pattern begins, and God says to Abram, “Go. Leave the security of your father’s house. I make a great name for you, give you land, and all families will be blessed through you. Those that curse you, I will curse.”
Of course, Abram and Sarai went, and apparently, they had quite a bit of resources to take with them. That’s not to say that they were without risk. In fact, the first thing that happened once they settled in Cannan (v10) is a famine that drives them into Egypt instead.
Ultimately, in their lives, they didn’t actually own a chunk of land until Abraham bought a burial plot for Sarah, yet in their lives, they experienced the promise of God again and again as they traveled. In the end, the Canaanites, whose land his descendants are to possess, regard him (23:6) as a “prince” among them because he has not come as a conqueror but as a stranger seeking and offering hospitality wherever he went.
It strikes me that this idea, that Abraham and Sarah were resident aliens for most of their lives, is fundamental to so many of the commands of Mosaic law. More than that I find that it connects with so much of my life’s experiences and the basic condition of being human. How often do we feel like we are in an alien environment? How often do we set up boundaries and barriers to make sure that we aren’t in a space with strangers or in a situation that we cannot control?
Seems to me that is the very reason that so many of us struggle with loneliness in an age when it is easier to connect than ever. In fact, if I were to summarize the invitation of this text and even the great commission of Christ into one word it would be “vulnerability.”
I’m sure many of you have seen quotes or heard talks from Brené Brown about the value of vulnerability in relationships, but she essentially says that it is the key to human connection. She says, “Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage.”
The beautiful thing about this invitation of God to Sarai and Abram is that it leads them into a transformative covenant relationship that has ripples throughout all of space and time and even invites you and me to be a part of it. That invitation eventually comes from Jesus himself, who scripture tells us appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, but get this – V18 says that they worshiped him but some doubted.
Without missing a beat, Jesus still invited them all to be a part of what God began in Abraham and Sarah and was continuing through Jesus. Could it be that we might make disciples of all nations in the same way? Yes! Of course, we can!
It will require us to become vulnerable to each other and before God. It will require us to manage our doubts and fears through faith that God wants us to be unified under the discipline of love for God, for one another, and for ourselves as people who have been selected for no good reason except that God wants to demonstrate love and hope and grace and peace – even through you, and even through me; and to God be the glory for that. Now and always. Amen!
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