February 28, 2010 - Lent 2, Year C (RCL)
It’s the strangeness of it
that sticks in your mind.
A cow
a goat
a ram
all chopped in half and laid out in pairs
with a kind of aisle between them,
and a turtle dove and pigeon
making the final pair.
And down the middle
a bowl of fire and a flaming torch
move as if by magic,
and you could almost imagine
we are watching a horror movie.
But this is not a horror movie, but the bible,
and in particular, the Old Testament,
It’s one of the many stories from the first book of the bile, the book of Genesis,
about the patriarch Abraham
and his meetings
with God.
And to make sense of it, we have to go back
to the beginning,
the beginning not just of this reading
but the beginning of the story of Abraham.
You might remember some of his story - we read it in our Old Testament readings
a couple of years ago.
It was somewhere around
the year 1923,
1923 BCE, that is,
when a man called Abram,
along with his wife and his nephew and everything they owned,
left their homes
and everything they knew,
and set out on a journey.
Travel wasn’t strange to them;
Abram’s father, Terah, had already moved the family once, from the city of Ur
had taken the family
to a town called Haran, most likely in Turkey,
and there they had settled.
And Terah died, and Abram became the head of the family,
and everyone expected life
to go in as it had always done.
But suddenly,
Abram got it into his head
that it was time to move on,
and he expected the whole family
to go with him,
not just his wife Sarai,
but his nephew Lot,
and all of their servants, and slaves, and animals.
And when Sarai and Lot
asked him why they had to move on,
all he would say
is that God
told him to.
And God hadn’t just told him
to move on,
but told him
where to go,
to the land of Canaan.
And there they wouldn’t be
just visitors, strangers, immigrants,
becuase this would be their home.
God was going
to give them this land,
give the land
not just to Abram and Sarai
but to their descendants.
Which of course
prompted a question.
Becuase Abram
was 75 years old,
and his wife a similar age,
and they had no children.
And weren’t likely to have any,
and weren’t even sure
that at their age
they really wanted to...except
that they had no one
to pass on
everything they had worked so hard to get,
the animals, the slaves, and of course, this land
that they had been promised.
And most of all, no one
to take on
their name,
to carry it through
generation
after generation
and assure them
that their memory
would never
be forgotten.
But they were old,
and their only hope
was their nephew.
This thing of God
promising land
to their descendants;
it just didn’t
make sense.
But Abram,
he was religious,
and what God said,
he did.
And so they left their home
and travelled to the land
that God
had promised.
But
only half
the promise
was fulfilled - land
but no child
and soon
there was no land either.
A famine hit, and they had to flee to Egypt,
and suddenly
it was just promise
again.
And even when
they returned safely
to the promised land
the other promise,
the impossible one
of a child
still hung over them.
Abram’s wife still
wasn’t pregnant.
And the borders of the land
were threatened
by an alliance of kings.
And it’s no wonder
that by the time we pick up the story in today’s Old Testament reading,
Abram is wondering
if he misheard.
Maybe
it was just his imagination,
playing games with his dreams,
wishful thinking;
maybe even
God
was toying with him.
After all,
that’s what gods were like,
at least the way the Canaanites and Egyptians spoke of them.
Gods were capricious.
You couldn’t rely on them.
He’d always said
that his God
was different.
But now, now
he wasn’t sure.
And so when God came to him again,
Abram decided
it was time to ask God
what was going on.
Worst case
God would strike him dead,
but he was old,
his time would come soon anyway,
and the risk
was worth it.
He was done
with waiting, done
with the uncertainty,
done with relying
on a feather light voice.
And God came to him.
“Do not be afraid,”
“Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield; your reward
shall be very great.”
“But God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir."
Bit God didn’t
strike him dead,
God took his question seriously.
“This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir. Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be."
And Abram
believed, against all likelihood, against all commonsense,
Abram
believed.
And God reckoned it to him
as righteousness.
And then God asked him
to gather the animals
that were traditionally used
to make a covenant
between two parties,
a heifer, a goat, a sheep,
two birds,
and to sacrifice them,
and divide the larger animals
and lay them out
with an aisle between them.
Because the tradition was
that when two people
made a covenant with each other,
they would walk between the bloody pieces,
and it was understood
that whoever broke the covenant
would be cut in two
as well.
But before Abram had time
to walk beside God
between the pieces,
night fell, and he fell asleep,
and while he was asleep
a pot of fire and a blazing torch,
the signs of the presence of God
passed between the pieces.
And God made a covenant.
A covenant with Abram
and Abram’s descendants
that God
was bound
to keep.
Without qualification.
It incredible,
that God,
the creator of the world
would make a covenant with a human being
which only God
was obligated to keep.
God said to Abraham,
“I’ll give you this land, and i’ll give you descendants. I promise.
All you have to do is....
nothing.”
And it’s still true.
God still has a covenant with us.
God has said,
you are my children. I love you.
And nothing
will ever get in the way of that.
And to prove it,
in place of the cow, the goat, the ram.
the turtle dove and the pigeon,
God gave his own son.
A sign
of God’s commitment
to us.
And all we have to do is...
nothing.
Nothing we do
makes God love us.
Nothing we do
makes God forgive us.
God just does it.
Although
that’s not the end of it.
Because while God’s love doesn’t depend on what we do,
it’s going to be hard for us to experience God's love
unless we actually spend time with God.
Just think about it.
If someone loves you,
but you never actually spend any time with them,
their love for you
might as well
not exist.
You never get
to experience it.
It’s the same with God.
God loves us, no strings attached.
But if we never spend any time around God
we’re not going to get
to experience
that love.
That’s why we come to church, week by week,
to spend time with God.
Worshipping, praying, meeting God in Christ
in the Eucharist.
It’s why we spend time during the week reading the bible, getting to know God better,
seeing how much God loves us.
It’s why we pray,
having a chat with God,
sometimes talking, sometimes listening,
getting to experience
God’s love.
And in the same way,
if someone loves you,
they may well have some good advice
about what you do with your life.
Not because they want to control you, not because they’re going not get anything about of it.
But because
it might just make
your life better.
God has advice for our lives.
Things that might just
make our lives better,
fuller, richer.
The ten commandments,
the words of Jesus, the good advice of Paul,
all of the invitations
to follow Christ,
to live as he lived.
Not because doing those things
will earn us the love of God,
but because they will make our lives
immeasurably better,
And God wants us
to have the best lives ever.
God loves us.
A cow
a goat
a ram
and a turtle dove and pigeon,
chopped in half and laid out in pairs
and a pot of fire and flaming torch
passing down the middle.
A man
standing on a hill, lamenting over Jerusalem,
and not long afterwards
hanging on a cross.
That’s God’s commitment to us.
Unconditional. Without qualification.
God loves us
and wants the best for us.
And invites us
to follow him.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010