A Sermon from way back in Lent

Genesis 15:1-21 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." ² But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" ³ And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." ⁴ But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." ⁵ He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." ⁶ And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness. ⁷ Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess." ⁸ But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" ⁹ He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." ¹⁰ He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. ¹¹ And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. ¹² As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. ¹³ Then the LORD said to Abram, "Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; ¹⁴ but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. ¹⁶ And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." ¹⁷ When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. ¹⁸ On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, ¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, ²⁰ the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, ²¹ the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.

I find this passage endlessly compelling. I almost couldn't begin composing a sermon. Every time I wrote a thought down, I read a bit more, and then I thought a bit more: I wrote and erased. I began and began again. You may think that this passage is straightforward: a man in the desert has a vision from God; God tells him that he'll have a son and possess a land. His, Abraham's, descendants will become a great nation – in fact, many nations. Some of his descendants will even be in a land “not their own” and be enslaved. But then they will be rescued and come into this land to possess it. And what a land: stretching from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates.

Much has been written and rewritten about this text. In Romans and Galatians, Paul uses verse 6, “the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness,” as a means to describe how believers are brought into covenant relation with God. James quotes this verse when he writes that faith without works is dead. So this verse tells us that faith is more than mere assent or the mastering of a systematic theology.

Walter Brueggemann has written a wonderful book called The Land. I found it in a stack of books in my studio while I was preparing this sermon. Or I should say that it found me. Anyway, I've sat in his class in seminary and heard him talk about land, among other things, but it was while reading his book that this text in Genesis became refocused for me. I say refocused because the connection to Paul's argument in Romans and Galatians is more in the forefront of my protestant mind. Indeed it's hard to hear this passage without hearing it through the filter of 500 years of reformation history with 2000 years of church history. From Paul to Augustine to Luther to Calvin to Barth – and more in between and coming after we're conditioned to almost not hear this text. Justified by faith, not by works, and smacked down in the middle of the covenant – God's ray of sunshine beams down on us amidst a world of rain. Or so seems the popular expression of what this means: condensed for rapid consumption, reduced to bumper-sticker sized thought for today's consumer.

So I came back to this text over and over, each time trying to erase more of the overlaid interpretations of history to arrive at the moment itself. What moment? The moment where Abraham, having left home and taken his family out into the wilderness, wandering to a land that God would show him, has a vision from God. When he has this vision he is already old and he asks God what will God give him since he has no son. You can tell it's been on his mind: this sonlessness thing. And God says what are you worried about? Here look at the stars and try counting them, that's the number of your descendants.

Right here Abraham believes God. Abraham is utterly taken in by God's promise. In the face of all the questions that Abraham could ask: where have you been all this time? How likely is this? Do you know how long I've already waited? Abraham believes. He believes as one who knows from experience the character of God.

Could Abraham have had this vision and promise years earlier. Say when he and Sarai were still young? Before they'd lost so much time? Before the birth of Eliezer of Damascus in his house? Before so much experience of the world's difficulties? But all this time Abraham has experienced the world, he's also experienced God: God's steadfastness, God's loving-kindness, God's unpredictable presence. He never knows what God will do, but he knows that God will do something, say something, encounter him with something that will knock him out of complacency, change his direction, and bring him to a new way of seeing the world. God doesn't do any of this all at once, and so it's only here, over 90 years old and with Sarai old and barren as well that God brings up the notion of a son and inheriting the land.

Abraham's faith doesn't cause God to reckon him righteous; Abraham's faith is a sign that his thinking, his heart, is right in line with God. How could Abraham have known that he had faith until this moment when God tells him this incredible tale: you'll have a son and your descendants will inherit this land. Such faith is not a work because it is not the result of conjuring up an emotional state – it just is; it's existence is as effortless as the existence of love in the presence of the one you love. Faith results from being intimate with God. Such intimacy has had this effect on Abraham over the course of his life, that now in his 90^th year when God tells him something unbelievable (that the laws of nature you've witnessed over a lifetime don't apply), Abraham is in such a state that he believes him. And so- Abraham has righteousness.

This word righteousness as we encounter it in the rest of the Old Testament, especially the prophets, has an ethical quality. Righteous people care for the poor and the land, they seek justice for the alien and the widow, they deal honestly and don't lie. Indeed these are the very things that God cares about. Abraham has been with God long enough that he knows what God cares about. Abraham believes God's justice is directly connected to the promise of a son and to this promise of land.

The land is important to understanding God’s character in this passage. The land promised to Abraham is currently filled with iniquity. Injustice fills the land. The righteous God does not directly give an unrighteous present. Instead Abraham's descendants will go to a land “not theirs” where they'll be enslaved until the day when this land of promise is ready for righteousness. So there are two lands: this promised land and this land of enslavement. Notice how righteousness and iniquity are differentiated: Iniquity loses the land; righteousness possesses the land. In the history of the covenant: iniquity loses the land. Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah all state this theme. God's righteousness is found in pursuing justice for the margins of society, for the weak, for the dispossessed. God seems upset when Israel gets lost in pleasure while widows are kicked out of their homes, while poor people are trapped further in debt. God doesn't blame the victim, he blames the person with the biggest pile of cash – that is, if the epistle of James is to be believed. And so Israel goes into exile when they no longer resemble Abraham but instead resemble the Amorite. This is exactly what happens: Israel possesses a land in righteousness; Israel is told do righteousness, and then Israel is distracted. Israel is distracted by pleasure, sure, but also by business, by war, by the need to get ahead, by the need to expand. In all its working hard and playing hard there was bound to be some collateral damage. But if they would not listen to their society's cry for justice, God did. And Israel found itself in exile. Back where they started, but this time on the river Euphrates. It's interesting isn't it, how in our text, the two rivers mentioned as the boundaries of God's promised land are the two rivers along which Israel suffered separation from God. They hadn't suspected anything was wrong, but now they know.

In both exiles, they are not so separated that God isn't with them, that God doesn't hear them, that God doesn't passionately yearn for them (read Hosea and Ezekiel). Indeed Israel enters the land not once but twice. The second time under Nehemiah and Ezra they're going to get it right. Well up to a point. What is the New Testament about but a new entering the land and a new exile. What does Jesus talk about but how God's cause is with the weak of society: those who have no defense in law courts or with banks; those who are easily trapped by market forces. Jesus doesn't talk about getting tough on crime or family values; Jesus doesn't talk about celebrities or how to invest for retirement. And this is most distressing for me: Jesus doesn't talk about the new baseball season or some new movie opening. When Jesus is presented with his day's version of the 6 o'clock news (the tower of Siloam fell and people were crushed; Herod's been up to no good again) his response is that “if you don't repent you'll likewise perish.” Jesus is focused on God's righteousness like a laser beam.

God's righteousness is not an abstract quality. Jesus constantly points out that it's a matter of how people treat each other. Are enemies being prayed for? Are neighbors being loved? Are the hungry being fed and the homeless housed? How about widows and orphans and prisoners? Is the resort to violence being denounced? Are people treating their possessions like a hot potato? Jesus knows God like Abraham knew God.

And so Paul tells us that it's this kind of knowing faith, this faith of Jesus that places us in the covenant. It's this faith that makes its power felt in acts of love that shows we've had an encounter with God's righteousness. We read in Paul that we've been taken from a land of enslavement and exile to a land of promise. Jesus desires to gather us together as chicks under his wings in a land where righteousness abounds.

Just as God never forgets Israel, he never forgets us. God's love and steadfast care are always with us. Jesus invocation to come is not a one-time offer, but an encouragement for every day. Come to God's land of abundance where there's enough for everybody. Come to God's land where there is justice for all, no matter how weak or obscure. Come to God's land where fear of scarcity is abolished by a generosity that never ends.

This is my thought for Lent: how can I fully show my gratitude to God in God's land of plenty, and how can I live less in the land of scarcity and exile.