God’s Covenant
First Congregational Church Evanston
March 4, 2007 (Second Sunday in Lent)
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18. Psalm 27: 1-7
Abraham, a Hinge of History
Thomas Cahill’s Volume II of his “Hinges of History Series” is called, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. Cahill quotes Black Elk, a relatively recent Native American Sioux religious leader as an example of the way people all over the world used to think about everything.
Black Elk says: “Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us through the sacred hoop of the nation ... Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood and so it is in everything where power moves(p. ix).”
Cahill says: “The Jews were the first people to break out of this circle, to find a new way of thinking and experiencing, a new way of understanding and feeling the world, so much so that it may be said with some justice that theirs is the only new idea that human beings have ever had. But their worldview has become so much a part of us that at this point it might as well have been written into our cells as a genetic code(p.5).”
So what is it that the Jews did? And how did it change everything?
Of Abraham’s paternal family Cahill writes: “Terah’s was a family of Semites, long settled at Ur. His ancestors, hundreds of years earlier had been part of wandering Semitic tribes that had overwhelmed the power of Sumer and had been subsequently absorbed by its superior urban culture....
“We cannot be sure what these citizens of Ur had in mind when they set out. Probably not much. They traveled northwest along the Euphrates from Ur to Harran...for [Abraham], however, Haran was to be but a stage. What is odd about [the] story is the assumption that the family’s ultimate destination is to be ‘the land of Canaan,’ a hinterland of Semitic tribes....No one whose family was established in Ur would have thought to leave it except for a similar city. So what we are witnessing is a migration in the wrong direction, a migration to simpler roots from which the urbanized Semites who had settled in Sumer had been cut off for centuries. But this peculiar migration would change the face of the earth by permanently changing the minds and hearts of human beings (p. 58-59).”
I love Cahill’s hyperbole. But he is driving home his point about a new perspective that we find in the Hebrew Bible. Here is Cahill’s translation of God speaking to Abraham in the 10th chapter of Genesis:
Go-you-forth
from your land,
from your kindred,
from your father’s house,
to the land that I will let you see.
I will make a great nation of you
and will give-you-blessing
and will make your name great.
Be a blessing!
I will bless those who bless you
and he who curses you, I will damn.
All clans of the soil will find blessing through you (p. 59-60)!
And so Abraham and Sarah left. “Wayayelekh Avram” Hebrew for “Abraham went,” are, as Cahill says “two of the boldest words in all literature. They signal a complete departure from everything that has gone before in the evolution of culture and sensibility. .... If we ... could have canvassed all the nations of the earth, what would they have said about [Abraham’s] journey? ... They would have laughed at [Abraham’s] madness and pointed to the heavens, where the life of the earth had been plotted from all eternity (p. 63).”
That is a flavor of the historical perspective that Cahill gives to the Hebrew story of Abraham’s new relationship to a God. Abraham hears God tell him to do something totally different from what anyone had ever done. Everyone was looking at the cycles of life and no one was thinking about history as a linear process. So. Abraham and Sarah are the beginning of a way of looking at history as a linear process. In this way of looking at things, the world has a beginning and an end. Life moves purposefully through a beginning and an end. We are not caught in a circle of fate and reincarnation. God interacts with people, and things change because of that interaction. Because this was such a revolutionary thing in its time, Cahill says the call of Abraham a “hinge of history.”
The Scripture Lesson
But when we look at today’s reading it begins “After these things, the word of the Lord came to [Abraham] saying, ‘Do not be afraid...’(Genesis 15:1)” and perhaps we want to ask, “What things?” What could have deterred this great father of faith – at the hinge of history?
Well, Abraham had gone as he was instructed, but everything didn’t go well. “In short, things had been a mess so far for Abraham and Sarah. In the time since they obeyed God and left their homeland in Mesopotamia, they had experienced trouble on every side. Famine, conflict, misunderstandings, family strife, battle, bloodshed -- life in this new land did not seem remotely as hopeful and promising as it must have when God first called them (Emphasis March-April 2007). But worst of all Abraham and Sarah had no heir.
We find this great spiritual father of nations – recognized today by Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths – we find him in at a point of deep darkness – perhaps depression – questioning God. And it was a little hard to hang onto God’s assurance: “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” How will I know, he was asking. How can it be?
In response Abraham heard God instruct him to bring offerings – the sort of thing that would be done when human beings were making a covenant. Animals were butchered and the carcasses were split in two. The natural thing then was for those who were making a covenant to walk between the two halves of the dead animals as a sign that they would fulfill their covenant no matter what – or they could die. (It was like the childish oath we took as children, ‘cross my heart and hope to die.” )
But after getting everything set up, Abraham sat and waited for God to come. And nothing happened. Abraham had to get up and chase away the vultures that were coming to get a free meal, and still no appearance of God – after all that!
Abraham was exhausted and a “deep sleep” and “a terrifying darkness (Genesis 15:12)” fell over Abraham. It was in this vulnerable state that Abraham received the assurance he needed. Since he was immobilized, it was only God who did something. In the dark night of Abraham’s soul, “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these [animal] pieces (Genesis 15:17).” When finally the covenant was made, it was only God, symbolized in the dream by the smoke and the fire – it was only God who passed between the pieces of animal carcass. It was not Abraham and God making a covenant with one another, but God making a covenant with Abraham. “To your descendants I give this land...(Genesis 15:18).”
In this experience, Abraham once again trusted God. Abraham couldn’t rely on his own wits – he had to relearn that again and again. He had to rely on the faithfulness of God.
Our Journey of Lent
Of course, as we are in our journey of Lent, we have to rely on God’s faithfulness, too. What darkness do we pass through? Individuals have been through some of the same issues that Abraham and Sarah had to go through – famine or at least loss of a way to make a living – infertility and hopelessness – family dissension – spiritual darkness. It is not new. Jesus had to go through it, too. Sometimes God seems distant, as when Jesus on the cross quoted the Psalm “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”
First Congregational Church is on a Lenten Journey. Your pastoral search committee is just getting started, your transition team is desperately trying to finish its work, the council and the finance team are trying to make faithful financial decisions. A group of younger families is meeting trying to envision the church on their own. And where is it all going? Sometimes it seems like too much. Perhaps you can understand how Abraham felt!
He was sure God had sent him and Sarah off on this new venture – not knowing that they were really going to change history. But the things they expected from God didn’t seem to materialize. And they were stuck with trusting God. Abraham saw that the covenant was not his thing, but God’s. Only a smoking fire pot and a torch going between the animal parts – Abraham, immobile – just watching.
When Abraham did get up, it was to persist in trying to be faithful to the covenant God had given him. I believe that is what God is expecting of this church, too. Trust God, even when it is not obvious where God is leading you. For Abraham it was to go to Egypt first and then to come back into the promised land.
Where will God lead you? Hang on for the ride. History moves forward. God is in it.
Amen.
Last Updated: Wednesday, February 6, 2008