July 2, 2017 Covenant with Abram Genesis 15
An elderly lady
was well known for her faith and her boldness in proclaiming it. She would stand on her front porch and
proclaim, “Praise the Lord!”
Next door lived
an atheist who got angry at her proclamations.
He would shout back, “There is no God!”
Hard times came
upon the elderly lady. She prayed to God
for assistance. She stood on her front
porch and proclaimed, “Praise the Lord.
God I need some food. I’m having
a hard time. Please Lord, send me some
groceries!”
The next morning
the woman walked out on her front porch and noticed a large bag of groceries
sitting there. She proclaimed, “Praise
the Lord! He sent me groceries!”
The neighbor
jumped from behind the porch and said, “Aha!
I told you there was no Lord. I
bought those groceries and put them there myself!”
The lady started
jumping up and down and clapping her hands in excitement, “Praise the Lord!”
she said, “Not only did he send me groceries, he made the devil pay for them!”
This little joke
shows the many twists and turns faith can take.
Our Bible reading from Genesis 15 says of Abram, “And he believed the
Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” From one point of view faith and belief are a
very simple straightforward thing.
Simply believe and trust God and that’s all there is to it.
From another point of view it gets
very complicated. Citing this same verse
from Genesis we have Paul writing in Romans 4:3, “’Abraham believed God and it
was reckoned to him as righteousness.’
Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something
due. But to one who without works trusts
him how justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.”
And then citing the exact same verse
we get the opposite in James, “You see that faith was active along with his
works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says,
‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was
called the friend of God. You see that a
person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”
If that didn’t all make sense to you
that’s okay, because Romans and James outright contradict each other. There’s also the blatant contradiction
between the disciples when they see the resurrected Jesus in Matthew 28:16,
“When they saw [Jesus] the worshipped him but doubted,” and James 1:6, “…for
the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind;
for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect
to receive anything from the Lord.”
What a mess! And this is the core of our relationship with
God and that which we hang our hopes for eternal life!
Many people think they have wiggled
through this miry bog by saying that God loves everyone and invites everyone to
have a life of faith. Each person then
has a choice whether to accept God’s love or not. Those who accept it are then in right relationship
with God and are saved. Those who don’t…
well, some say they are damned. Some say
they don’t know. Some say they just
don’t want to think about it.
Whatever the case, this is a very
common way to understand faith. It seems
to wiggle through the complications. It
seems to work. And it does work well; at
least it works well for people who are basically prosperous and whose lives are
relatively orderly. This works well for
people who have encountered problems in life and then by their own strength or
daring or intelligence manage to find a way to work through the problems and
come out okay.
But when an uncontrollable crisis
happens this understanding of faith starts to crumble. And for those who are perpetually desperate,
needy, hopeless and helpless, this understanding of faith is completely
worthless. James 2:15-26 says, “If a
brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and if one of you says to
them, ‘Good, in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet do not supply
their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”
Or a similar twist that is all too
common, “If you had enough faith God would help you.” Try telling that to Syrian Christian refugees
fleeing their country who drown in the Mediterranean Sea because in the
policies of international politics no one would take them.
No, the idea that God loves you and if
you accept it that is faith and God will help you just doesn’t cut it. Jesus was crucified. Almost all the disciples were martyred. St. Paul withstood untold persecutions and
hardships and was executed in the end anyway, all for his faithfulness.
Let’s turn back to Abram and look at
him again to see what all these other writers are talking about. Abram’s faith was not a matter of simple
belief. It was an ongoing relationship
with God. Last week we read about the
time God called Abram to uproot and move in his old age. Abram did so.
Along the way there were problems.
Sometimes Abram did things that fit with the will of God. Sometimes Abram’s fears got the best of him
and he messed up.
We see Abram with questions and doubts
in what we read today. He knows God’s
promises of many offspring who will inhabit the Promised Land. But Abram has no children. In his doubts of God’s promises he has a plan
that Eliezer of Damascus will be his heir.
God says no, he will not be your heir.
Your own biological child will be you heir. Abram says prove it. So God tells him to do these strange things
with animals, cutting them in two and laying them against each other. At least it seems strange to us. But in those days that was the equivalent of
sitting down with your lawyer to buy a piece of property, or some other
act. Perhaps it was the equivalent of
getting something notarized. Anyway,
Abram has a deep and terrifying sleep.
He has dreams and visions and it’s not entirely clear from the text what
actually happened and what was a dream.
Whatever the case, it was an intense encounter with God.
Next week we’re going to look at the
birth of Ishmael, the son Abram has to his wife’s slave. We’ll see there that Abram has taken the
matter into his own hands. While he
seems to trust God he’s also going on his own.
The point is that Abram’s faith is not one of simply believing and
trusting God with absolute perfection and therefore everything always turns out
okay in the end. No, as we read through
the life of Abram we’re going to discover the true nature of his faith, this
faith the New Testament authors cite so often.
Abram wasn’t perfect. His belief wasn’t perfect either. But what we see between God and Abram is a
relationship building. God has chosen Abram. Abram accepts it. God sends Abram. Abram goes.
God makes promises to Abram. They
aren’t fulfilled. Abram makes
mistakes. God forgives him. Abram takes matters into his own hands, but
he is still open to God’s will. Back and
forth it goes.
I think our Lord Jesus gave us the
best image to use for faith, and that is of God as Father and us as
children. While not everyone has had a
good father or even good parents, you can still get the idea. Jesus calls his followers his family. Like in any family there will be
celebrations. There will be
sorrows. There will be successes and
failures, broken trust, and relationships restored. The point is that a healthy family is a
robust thing. It is not fragile. It is not weak. That is a relationship of faith.
To be true, God does not come to us in
the ways we often want. The clouds do
not spell out messages. Angels don’t
come with proclamations. Voices don’t
boom down from the sky. But God does
come to us in many ways, and we are wise to make use of them, for they are how
faith is built.
The Bible is always available to
us. We can read it to receive the word
of God anytime. I know parts of it are
confusing and vast sections are boring.
So just focus on the gospels if you want. Many people have called the Gospel of John
the Bible in miniature.
There is prayer, a constantly
available and direct way to speak to God.
And while it can take some discipline, a quieted mind can often perceive
God’s will.
We do not go through life alone. We have the community of the church with
other believers. We are wise to keep it
strong and healthy. Plus there are Bible
studies and small groups for projects socializing or whatever – community with
our brothers and sisters in Christ. It
can only give to us as much as we invest in it.
And finally of course are the
sacraments – God’s promised ways to be with us.
Baptism and communion are ways we feel and touch and even smell and
taste God’s promises. They are where the
relationship of faith is restored and rebuilt.
What is faith? You’ve heard me say this before. It is a relationship of trust with God. Abram had it.
Many of our ancestors had it. We
have it too. Make we set our live course
and make choices that strengthen our faith and the faith of those around us.
