Sunday 25 February 2018

Father Abraham (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16)


(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on February 25, 2017, Lent II)



“I’m Not One of Them, and Nor Are You”

In today’s scripture, Abram gets a new name, Abraham, which means something like “Father of Many.”  Because that is God’s promise to him: “You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations….I will make you exceedingly fruitful” (17:5-6). 

It’s hard for me to hear today’s scripture without hearing echoes of a song that I learned long ago, a song that I probably sang at every Vacation Bible School and church camp I’ve ever been to.  I’m sure you know it.  We sang it here at our last VBS: “Father Abraham.”  When I was younger and I sang that song, I didn’t give it much thought.  I just figured that Abraham was our father because he was really old.  I just figured that all of our family trees, if you traced them back far enough, would converge at father Abraham.  And isn’t that just what today’s scripture is saying?  That Abraham would indeed become the father of many different peoples, probably including you and me?

Well, according to Paul in one of our other lectionary texts today (Romans 4:13-25), God was not talking about literal fatherhood.  God did not mean that Abraham would go on to be the lineal father of the Americans and the Czechs and the Argentineans and the Congolese, and so on.  In other words, if we’re talking about the children of Abraham’s bloodline, I am not necessarily one of them, and nor are you. 

What, then, could God’s promise of fatherhood mean?  How could Paul call Abraham “the father of us all,” especially when much of Paul’s audience was non-Jewish?

Father of Faith

It’s simple, says Paul.  Abraham lived before the temple and its system of sacrifice.  Before the Hebrew people received God’s law.  So Abraham is not the father of a religion.  He’s not the father of a religious people.  He’s the father of something much more elemental than that.  He’s the father of a fundamental experience.  He’s the father of faith.

If you’ll remember, Abraham’s story begins with letting go.  He’s seventy-five.  Settled in a nice metropolis.  Gathered together with his father and his brothers and all his family.  When God calls to him out of the blue and says, “Leave behind your country and your culture and your kindred, and go where I show you.  And I will bless you, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (cf. 12:1-3).  Faith is what led Abraham to let go.  Faith is what made him leave his country behind.  His culture behind.  His kindred behind.  Faith is what led him into the wilderness, not knowing where he was going (cf. Heb 11:8). 

Abraham, according to Paul, is much more than the father of an ethnic group of people.  He is the father of anyone who has taken the leap of faith and let go of his or her life, trusting that the blessing of God lies outside the safe harbor of the heart, outside the four corners of the home.

Blessing: The Redemption of Creation

What Abraham does is pretty incredible.  Up until that point in history, humanity has done the opposite.  Rather than letting go, they have grasped and clawed for control.  Rather than living selflessly outside their hearts and homes, they have lived greedily from the center of their hearts.  The first humans grab the forbidden fruit in the hope that they will become as powerful as God.  Cain seizes his brother and kills him out of a jealous anger.  Things get worse and worse until all the earth is filled with this grasping and clawing, this violence.  Next comes the great flood, which we looked at last week, which is less a story of what God actually did and more a story about whom the ancient Israelites understand God to be—namely, a God beside rather than a God above, a God who hangs the bow in the sky (never really carried it in the first place) and comes down to enter into relationship with humanity.  But even with the promise of a caring and faithful God, humanity persists with its grasping and clawing.  Rather than filling the earth selflessly with life, they merge into the single, selfish heart of an empire—and empires always mean control and cruelty.[1]  How else could they accomplish their plan to build a tower as tall as the heavens, than through conscription?

What is God’s response to this history of grasping and clawing, this genealogy of violence, this fall of creation?  Blessing.

What a gentle response.  Openhanded.  Outward-facing.  It is the opposite of our grasping and clawing.

And when God responds to humanity with blessing, Abraham responds in turn. Trusting that blessing abounds outside the grasp of his heart, outside the reach of his home, Abraham lets go.  He leaves.  It’s no understatement to say that the redemption of creation begins with Abraham.

“I Am One of Them, and So Are You”

So is it any surprise when we hear Jesus say in today’s gospel scripture, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the good news, will save it” (Mark 8:35).  Is this not another way of saying what Abraham shows us? When we let go of our life, we enter into the blessing and redemption of the world.  But when we hold onto our own life—our country and culture and kindred—we lose it.  It’s like the child who holds onto the ball for himself, controllingly, protectively, unaware of the joy to be had in the game that could be played with others.  Holding onto our own lives closes us off to new life, to the redemption of all life.

I don’t know what holding onto your own life looks like for you.  For me, it’s sometimes as simple as reading and listening to voices that I already agree with, not risking real dialogue and change.  For many in our nation, I wonder if holding onto our own lives has not taken the shape of racism and sexism, and today especially nationalism and capitalism and gun enthusiasm—for how easily the flag and the dollar and the gun separate us from others. 

As Paul would later proclaim rather radically, being children of Abraham and followers of Christ means that we have let go of these things, that we are ultimately not defined by country or culture or kindred.  “There is no longer Jew or Greek…slave or free…male [or] female” (Gal 3:28-29). 

All of this leads me to wonder if, for God, Abraham was meant to be not simply the proud father of one huge family, but rather the father of a new humanity, a humanity no longer defined completely by country, culture, and kindred; a humanity that does not grasp after control; a humanity that is redeemed from its past violence.  We see this new humanity most clearly, of course, in Jesus.  Jesus was ultimately a child of Abraham not because he was Jewish but because he was faithful.  Jesus faithfully let go of everything and confirmed what began with Abraham: the blessing and redemption of the world.

“Father Abraham had many children.  And many children had Father Abraham.  And I am one of them, and so you are.”  So let’s let go of the life that has defined us in the past, and follow Christ, who leads us outside our heart and our home and into the blessing and redemption of all the world.

Prayer

Christ of the cross,
Even more than Father Abraham,
You let go of your life—
Country, culture, and kindred.
Not just on the cross,
But when you befriended
Tax collectors and women
And lepers and Roman soldiers.
Fill us with your faith
And your letting go,
That we might enter into
The blessing and redemption of all creation.  Amen.



[1] The language of “brick” and “mortar” in Gen 11:1-9 appears next in the Bible in the story of the Hebrews’ conscripted labor in Egypt.


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