After the Father raised him from the dead, Jesus found two of his followers
walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They did not recognize him, nor did they know
he had risen. All they had heard was what they considered a strange rumor. Jesus
joined their conversation and asked them what they were talking about. They had
been talking about his death. One of them summed it up, “We had hoped that he
was the one to redeem Israel” [Lk 24.21]. We had hoped … hoping seemed pointless
now, given what had happened. The promise they had seen in Jesus failed. Maybe
God would still redeem Israel through someone else, but how could they even be
sure of that. The sting of disappointment would last.
Jesus’ disciples after his crucifixion had a lot in common with Abram in our
reading this morning. Abram is of course Abraham. God changes Abram’s name to
Abraham because it means “father of many,” but that doesn’t happen until chapter
17 of Genesis. We are in chapter 15. We are there, by the way, because I decided
to preach the Old Testament lectionary readings though the rest of Lent. We have
spent a lot of time in the New Testament lately, thanks to our series on the
Sermon on the Mount. I don’t want to neglect the Old Testament. I agree with
Calvin that Christ is the substance of the Old Testament. Today’s passage and
the ones coming in the next few weeks speak powerfully to our experience as
Christians. I am sure Abram and Jesus’ disciples are not the only ones who
despair because God’s promise seems to fail. They are not the only ones who get
tired of waiting. Hopefully, they are not the only ones who find their faith
renewed by God’s promise. We shall see.
Abram had already heard God’s promise. God had made a covenant with him back in
chapter 12. A covenant is a relationship of promise. Think of your baptism and
confirmation or marriage or your child’s baptism—relationships defined by
promises. God had called Abram: Leave your extended family; leave your father’s
house and country; go to a land that I will show you. Abram did. He believed,
and he obeyed. And they all lived happily ever after. … Not quite.
Abram had a number of misadventures. God had promised to bless all the families
of the earth through him, but he chalked up a real hit-and-miss record. Just
when we think he’s got this blessing stuff down, he does something stupid. Yet
when we are about to give him up as a loser, Abram does something wonderful. And
then we come to today’s passage. God promises Abram a reward. The idea here is
not a wage. It is not as if Abram had earned something. The idea comes from the
way ancient kings would bestow riches and honor on loyal servants they favored.
If you expect Abram to get excited, you are as disappointed as he apparently
was. “What’s the use?” he basically tells God. “There is nothing you can give me
that is worth anything to me. I am old. I won’t enjoy it. And I have no
children. My heir is a slave unrelated to me. What could you possibly give me?”
Someone was feeling disillusioned.
Have you ever felt that way? Felt that God has let you down? Felt that in the
absence of the one thing necessary for your contentment nothing God might do
could make things OK? Here is our first lesson of the day: Discouragement comes.
Circumstances can weigh so heavily on us that our faith strains. It is not that
Abram stopped believing in God. He just lost hope for himself. We can do that
too. Abraham is the father of faith. He is, for both the Old Testament and the
New, the primary example of a person who was God’s friend. That, by the way, is
the purpose of the story about how he almost sacrificed Isaac. People keep
asking me about that, so let me explain it. Many Christians think it is just
horrible and should not be in the Bible. What you need to understand is its
function. It is there because it protected children. All around ancient Israel,
pagan nations offered human sacrifices. God specifically ordered Israel not to
do that. That is not the sort of thing God wants. The purpose of the story about
Abraham almost offering Isaac is this: If father Abraham—God’s best
friend—didn’t do it, you should not and need not either. Was the Israelite less
devoted to his God than the pagan who sacrificed children? No. Abraham proved
that. So the story protected children.
My point is: Abram is our example. When we struggle to go on hoping, we can at
least take comfort in knowing he did too. Hopefully, if we follow him in
discouragement we will also follow him in renewed faith.
God’s answer was a repeat of the promise. “This man will not be your heir. You
will have your own child and become the father of a great nation.” God told him
to go outside and look at the stars. Could Abram count them? Well, his
descendants would be just as uncountable. Here is another lesson: God did not
give him convincing proof. He merely repeated the promise. The stars did not
prove the promise was true, but they did serve as a reminder. God gives us lots
of reminders, but precious few proofs. Take the Lord’s Supper, for example. It
does for us what the stars did for Abram. God invites us to this table. The
bread we eat, the cup we drink, these do not prove that Jesus died for us. They
do not prove God’s kingdom will come. But what do they do? They repeat God’s
promise to us, and they serve to remind us of it as often as we share them.
What happened next made Abram the spiritual father of all who believe. “He
believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Trust in
God and his promises is the foundation for life. Paul quoted this verse in both
Romans and Galatians to make the point that what defines us as God’s people is
faith. It is not law-keeping or rituals or anything else people back then liked
to point to in order to prove they were God’s chosen people. James also quoted
it to make the point that faith is not something you do in your head by deciding
to accept something as true: faith is a lively, risk-taking, life-transforming
trust in God that is willing to stake everything on his promises.
Abram believed God. He still did not have proof. He was still in the same
lamentable condition. The promise was still just a promise at that point, but it
was God’s promise, and that was enough.
Jesus once asked his disciples what people were saying about him. Who did they
think he was? Many people thought he was a prophet. “What about you? Who do you
say that I am?” Peter answered: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living
God.” Jesus told him: “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood
has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” That is when Jesus gave
Simon his nickname, Peter, “the rock.” Abram’s faith and Peter’s faith are
similar. Why did they believe? How did they know? They just did. They looked
into their hearts and found faith. They each received something from God too
good to be true: Abram the promise of becoming a great nation, Peter the
long-awaited Messiah and even more. And they believed.
Our faith cannot be much different, wouldn’t you agree? Look around and you will
see a lot of brokenness, if you look honestly … in the world, in the church, in
your family, in your self. You come to worship and hear the promises of God. I
preach about God’s kingdom. Where is it? What’s taking so long? I preach about
how God works through the church. Our record is as hit-and-miss as Abram’s.
Sometimes we are glorious. Other times we fall flat on our collective face.
Don’t get me started on family. Abram’s family was so dysfunctional it would
have made Dr. Phil give up counseling to become a Wal-mart greeter. If you don’t
believe me, read the rest of Genesis. And of course, the self. I have it on good
authority that I am a new creation in Christ Jesus. The old has passed away.
Behold! The new has come! Some days I don’t feel like a new creation. Some times
I don’t act like a new creation. And even when I do, I often have to struggle to
resist the evil and do the good. One might think God could make it a little
easier.
That, I suppose, is what we really want. We can wait patiently for the whole
promise provided God gives us enough of it in the present. I can stand for the
world to be a mess, as long as my community is safe and prosperous. I can stand
for the Church (with a capital “C,” meaning everyone who believes in Jesus
Christ) to be divided and confused, as long as my congregation does and says
what I think it should. I can stand family problems, as long as we all get along
reasonably well. And I can be patient with God’s work of transforming me into
the likeness of Christ, as long as I have peace, joy, and a sense of my own
worth and goodness. That’s what we all want, I suspect. We want to be safe and
happy. We want to be protected from suffering. But I also believe it is not what
God wants for us. Ultimately he wants that for us, but for now … things are a
bit more complicated. Why do I say this?
First, because it is a compromise. We can stand brokenness somewhere else, as
long as it is not too close to us. God cannot stand brokenness anywhere. He will
not rest until the world, the church, human relationships, and human beings are
everything he dreams they will be. God is more patient than we are. He works at
his own pace, and it seems slow to us. It seemed slow to Abram. Yet we are far
too willing to come to terms with the way things are and settle down with less
than the full promise. God does not compromise.
Second, because it is selfish. No one says, “I can stand some sin and pain in
the world, as long as I am the only one suffering it.” Well, one person said
that. He decided he would suffer the ravages of our separation from God so that
we would not have to. He went to the cross to make it happen. The rest of us
live by the creed, “Not in my backyard.”
Third, I know God does not accept our selfish compromises because of all those
times we do not get what we want. The world goes from bad to worse, and some of
it happens to us. People in this church, in the time I have been pastor here,
have had homes destroyed by hurricanes, have been diagnosed with various
diseases, have had friends and relatives sent to war, have lost jobs, and on and
on. A lot of you know how Abram felt. He was old, and he thought he was going to
leave this world without the satisfaction of believing it would be a better
place he was passing on to the next generation. It wasn’t a better place, and
there was no next generation. What God had been doing since making those
promises, he didn’t know. But he knew what God had failed to do … or did he?
Don’t get me wrong. God does not want bad things to happen to us. It is just
that this world is broken. God is doing something about it. He has promised to
fix it—and us—just as he promised Abram descendants as numerous as the stars.
But God works in his own way and in his own time. And until he establishes his
kingdom in all its glory, this world will have problems. And God’s purpose for
his people is not to exempt us from the sufferings of the world. He wants us in
the middle of them. Why? Because our faith, hope, and love are contagious. We
can be for other people what the stars were for Abram—a sign of God’s promise, a
source of hope. It began with Abram. He believed God. He obeyed God. And through
him, God changed the world, making first a great nation, and then from that
nation bringing forth the Messiah and Savior, Jesus Christ. God chose Abram, but
he did so because he loved the whole world, not just Abram.
I should say something about the second half of the passage before I finish. It
follows the same pattern as the first. This time God promises Abram land. Abram
asks, “How am I to know that I shall possess it?” Again what he gets is not
proof but renewed promise. The odd ritual described in the passage is hard to
understand, but it has something to do with how kings and rulers of that time
made treaties. They would promise certain things, such as “I will stay out of
your territory.” Then they would cut an animal in half and walk between the
halves, saying, “May God do this to me if I break our treaty.” The point in this
passage is that God has no one greater than himself to swear by, so he swears by
himself, binding himself to his promise.
Most of the time, in our lives, we can see enough little signs of God’s grace
that it is easy to believe. God really does change lives, and changed lives,
especially when your life is changed, are powerful evidence in God’s favor. You
can probably find enough good in the world, the church, and your relationships
and own heart to justify faith. But don’t rely on those for proof. Most of you
will go through a period of disillusionment (maybe even more than one). Like
Abram, you will be discouraged, and hope will seem pointless. In that dark hour,
God will not give you proof. He will also not solve all your problems right
away. What he will give you is his promise. That will be all you have to hang on
to. When you find yourself in that situation, hold on for dear life.
One day Jesus met two of his followers on the road to Emmaus. They did not
recognize him. They told him about the death of Jesus of Nazareth and lamented,
“We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” So Jesus began to explain
to them the scriptures, how the Messiah would have to suffer and die to redeem
Israel, and their hearts burned with them. At supper, he took bread, blessed and
broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized
him. Amen.