Book of Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
March 16, 2025: Lent II
Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT
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.’ 2But Abram said, ‘O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’* 3And Abram said, ‘You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.’ 4But 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.’ 5He brought him outside and said, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ 6And he believed the Lord; and the Lord * reckoned it to him as righteousness. Then he said to him, ‘I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.’ 8But he said, ‘O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?’ 9He said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon.’ 10He 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. 11And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terror and darkness descended upon him.
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire-pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant [literally cut a deal]] with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.
Well here it is. For those of us who like to know where the beginning is, it is here. The seed of the claim. The start of the conflict. The crux of roughly four thousand years of religious tradition. The trunk of the tree is planted right here in today’s reading from the Hebrew Bible. It is the very source of the three mainstream Western tributaries of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The three so-called Abrahamic religions claim their divine authority from today’s reading in the Book of Genesis. They all trace their roots back to this exchange between the God of Creation and the ordinary man named Abram; who, at the tender age of roughly 75, packed up his wife Sarai and his father Terah and his nephew Lot, and left his home and extended family in Ur (a land a bit southeast of modern day Bagdad) to travel through Syria and Jordan and Egypt to the land of Canaan (a land that today constitutes much of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon). There, the God of Creation became the God of Abraham. As we heard this morning, God spoke to Abram in a vision. (God would soon change his name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah) And in that vision was the promise, The promise, with a capital T: ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Said the God of all Creation to the childless senior citizen. ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And Abram believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as justice.
And just like that the covenant was cut. The covenant.The covenant that ties all three of the so-called Abrahamic religions to God, and to each other. God promised Abram a universe of descendants, all the people of the earth. And Abram believed God and thereby stopped worshiping the gods of his ancestors.
And our monotheistic traditions were born.
Well, not just yet. But they were soon to be born. Abram and his wife Sarai were both in their senior years and they had no children. But Sarai had a young handmaid named Hagar, and she became the mother of Abram’s first descendant. The first fruits of God’s outlandish promise.
And this first born son of Abram was named Ishmael. Ishmael is the branch of the Abrahamic tree that is claimed as the root of the tradition of Islam. But Ishmael was not to be Abram’s only heir. Fourteen years after the promise made in this morning’s passage, Sarai, then almost 100 years of age, bore Isaac, Abram’s second son.
Isaac is the branch of the Abrahamic tree that is claimed by Judaism. Please note, it took fourteen years for God to deliver on God’s word to Abram and Sarai. And please note, that both Abram and Sarai were nearly 100 years old when Isaac was born. So where ever you are in your own span of life, you can be pretty sure that God is not finished with you just yet!
So the Islamic claim to God’s promise is Ishmael. And the Jewish claim to God’s promise is Isaac. The two sons of Abraham are two roots of the claim to God’s promise, God’s covenant, God’s family. But we Christians have an equally powerful claim to the covenant with God through Abraham.
The Christian claim to the Abrahamic tree – as it is articulated in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians- is directly and simply through the Word of God. The promise first spoken in chapter 12 of Genesis, and then reiterated in this morning’s vision. The promise that God made to Abram that he would be the father of all of the nations of the world and that all of the people of the world would be blessed through him, is our assurance of inclusion in God’s promise.
This understanding was indubitably clarified by Paul. There was a kerfuffle in the early Christian church. The folks in Galatia insisted that only Jews had access to God’s covenant. And so anyone who wanted to be included in that covenant had to convert to Judaism. In short, they thought that only Jews could become Christians. Because only Jews had access to God’s covenant.[1] Buzzz. Thank you for playing, but that answer is incorrect Paul assured them that no such conversion to Judaism was necessary. Their fitness for Christian life was not grounded in Jewish law or lineage, but rather in God’s promise to Abraham and all of the people of the earth. By God’s Word they were as worthy to follow Jesus Christ as was anyone who descended from Abraham. They had God’s Word on that. And we have God’s Word on that. Just as we heard this morning.
The whole premise of our faith tradition, the whole foundation of our Christian edifice rests on the truthfulness of God’s Word. It rests on our being able to believe God’s Word.That as descendants of Abraham, we are heirs to God’s covenant. Members of God’s family. Keepers of God’s Word.
And for us, as Christians, God’s Word comes to us primarily through the Torah of the Hebrew Bible, and the Gospels of the New Testament. The five Books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those scriptures are ground zero for God’s Word in our faith tradition. In our faith, full stop. That scripture provides us with everything we need to know about who and whose we are in this life. And, what we are called to do with this life.
We are beginning a Lenten series on Spiritual Practices of Resistance this morning after church. This series is a response to the rapid and radical changes that are pummeling the norms and values of our “One Nation Under God.”
These are trying and fearful times for many of us. As many of us lose the footing on which we have predicated our lives. Our jobs. Our security. Our peace of mind. Many of our neighbors whom we are called to love are feeling deep fear and dread. And not because some of these changes are not needed. But because the rapid and ruthless manner of change seems to be unfolding without regard to the wellbeing or the dignity of those who are most affected….and everyone who loves them.
Like the 1,400 United States Aid for International Development workers who were summarily fired without notice or recourse, and the millions of marginalized people around the world whom they served with humanitarian aid. And tens of thousands of federal employees like park rangers and scientists and teachers and researchers to name just a few who were left without severance pay or health insurance, and holding untrue termination letters that listed poor performance as their cause. So good luck finding another job. And thousands of United States veterans who have served this country courageously with their very lives and are now experiencing serious cuts to their benefits like healthcare. Anyone whose livelihood depends on Social Security. Anyone whose healthcare depends on Medicare or Medicaid. And let us not forget the planet, God’s good earth that is increasingly treated as a commodity rather than a gift.
All of these creatures and creations of God are understandably feeling newly threatened in ways that violate every Gospel value in the book. Values that we as Christians are required to uphold and defend if we are to be true to our faith. If we are to have any integrity as followers of Jesus Christ who gave his own life for those values.
And we all know those values by heart. Care for those in need, welcome the stranger, tell the truth, walk with compassion and mercy, share what we have, honor the dignity of every living creature, love our enemies, love our neighbors. Love each other. Love every descendant of Abraham. Love God and God’s Kingdom and God’s Word. Full stop.
These are the values that undergird the Kingdon of God.The Kin-dom of God. The family of God. The heirs to God’s covenant. These values are the Words of God. And they matter!
And so as Christians, I believe we are called to, as Paul says in this morning’s reading from Phillipians, stand firm with the Lord. And God’s Kingdom. And that standing firm with and for God is a necessary resistance. As Christians we must resist the claim that there is anything more desirable, anything more important, anything more holy than the values by which Jesus teaches us to live in our Gospels.
The values for which Jesus died on a cross.
I think we will do well to continue to find our peace and our resistance always in the Word of God. And there is no Word of God that is more prolific, more prevalent in our scripture than God’s assurance to Abram in this morning’s reading: Be not afraid.
In fact, those words show up more than anything else in our Holy Bible. Approximately once for every day of the year. 365 times in all. Coincidence? I think not. They appear in this morning’s covanent that credentials our faith, and then 364 more times in case we did not hear it. God tells us that we have nothing to fear.
And like Abraham, I think we should believe God. Because the one thing we can take to the bank is that God keeps God’s promises. The Word of God matters.
So Spiritual Practice of Resistance number one: Be not afraid.
I want to leave you with a poem that I refer to over and over and over again when things get difficult in my own life. It is by the wonderful naturalist Wendell Barry.
It’s called The Peace of Wild Things.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free.
And the people said: Amen.
© March, 2025 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw
[1] This is apparently what the churches in Galatia had been told by a troupe of unnamed Christian missionaries.
The Grim Review 