Service on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seeyouonsunday/videos/2541744222696440 and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1rN_irbDG0
We need to start with a confession. I don’t really know what to do with the idea of the promises of God. I do a lot of listening and reading and preparation for Sunday mornings for sermon writing and everyone talked about the promises of God as if they are just a given and everyone knows what they are. And I think what causes me to hesitate, is that there was a time that I would have claimed as my own any of the promises or words of God to anyone throughout the scripture as if they were my own. I mean, not all of them, right? I would never have claimed Abrams promise of being a great nation and having a descendant as my own. But when Moses spoke on God’s behalf to the people of Israel saying that the Lord will fight for you, you just need to be still, that might be a promise for me. Or when God spoke through Jeremiah to the people of Judah exiled in Babylon, that God knows the plans for them, plans for future and hope, that is clearly for me too.
At least I was a little discerning.
So I am years away and several degrees from that person who didn’t question that all of the promises were for me too, I do question. What right to do I have to take the words and the experiences of people 4,000 years ago or even 2,000 years ago and claim them as my own? And then I have wonder if the problem is I don’t know if I’m worthy. And then I see other people move through the world with such certainty and wonder if I’m the problem…
I confess this because I have to believe I’m not alone–that there is someone here who has, at some point, questioned the promises that others so confidently claim.
In the pages between last week–the creation of humans and the broken trust that lead them from the garden–and what you heard today, things happened.
Adam and Eve got their names, had some kids and one of them killed another, so that’s a bummer. Communities started to be formed and things went poorly so God decided to start over with Noah and his family, flooded the known earth, and turns out Noah and his family were a mess also. Cities were formed, one tried to build a town to heaven and God decided that wouldn’t do so knocked it down, scattered the people, and that’s why we have different languages.
We meet Abram–far from perfect. Call calls him from his family and homeland to a new land that will be for his descendants who will be a great nation. He was 75, Sarai, his wife, was 65.
Right before this story, Abram had rallied a massive army to save Lot for whatever mess he was in again, and had won. Abram didn’t end up taking any of the loot, the spoils of war, for himself, though he let his men do so.
So when God shows up talking about reward, we just saw Abram give up a reward he was entitled to by the… laws of ancient war?
All of that is to say that time has passed between when God first came to Abram talking about making him a great nation. I guess it doesn’t explicitly say children but that was what was understood. I assume years have passed. I mean at the age of 75 how many years do you let pass with a promise of children before you start to get annoyed, even if you are distracted by long caravanning, interactions with a pharaoh, and a massive war to save your nephew?
So Abram had begun to doubt. I think Abram is actually annoyed by the time God shows up. Maybe even just downright mad. Maybe God had worked with people long enough to know not to say “First, you need to calm down,” and went with “Fear not” instead.
This story as we read it and as it continues in the chapter is incredibly important, it might be the most important in the story of the people who would come to make up the Jewish faith. We go from God trying to interact and work with all of humanity to hear god making a covenant with one family focusing there that they might be a blessing to the rest of the world.
I wonder if Abram would go back outside while he waited on the promises and tried to count the stars. Because Abram would wait. God told him the land would be generations of waiting, but even that one heir would be a wait. And getting from here to the promises wasn’t going to be easy. There would be losses, and hunger, and captivity, and more walking, they would get there. I wonder if the promises seemed lost. I wonder if Abram told the story to his son, and his son passed it on, and so on and so on, and it just became a fable and not a promise.
I wonder if that’s how the second and third generation of Jesus followers felt when that first generation had passed away in Jesus still hadn’t come back. Or when the promised Spirit was no longer wind and fire and passion and had become the day-to-day laboring for the kingdom that they were told was present and coming, but seem absent. Or those that watched that’s this way of living taught by Jesus who spoke of an Empire alternative to the Empire of power came wrapped up and a tool for the powerful. Or those who watched as the kingdom of God building was tied to promises of land, land that was/is ripped from others, and the laboring was on the backs of people stolen from their land. Humans haven’t had the best track record with receiving promises and then being a blessing for others with them. Usually we think the promise and blessing are just for us, whoever the us is.
But the promises of Christ’s return; of the Triune God’s presence in our lives, communities, and world; of the Spirit as comforter and change-maker; of the hope of transformed world; and of a place and a community in which we belong–those are ones that we continue to life up.
And sometimes the things I think about as promises are from the songs of our faith rooted in scripture, and not scripture itself. Like when you’re lost, you’ll be found. That I don’t have to carry, or bear, the weight of my wrongs. That Jesus is a steady, secure, supporting, like a foundation. That God’s welcome is wide, so wide it includes even me.
And I think that can be the hard part about Divine promises, that they include even me even you. Abram had to go outside of his homeland and then outside of his home; Abraham had to go outside of the places that he felt safe and secure. Could he have stayed exactly where he was and lived a fine life, and been forgotten in obscurity? Absolutely. But he would have missed the promises. He would have missed the journey, the joy and pain, watching his children stand and walk and fall and stand again, he would have missed everything.
Sometimes we have to step out of the normal, the expected, the safe and secure options. Sometimes we have to step off the path, take an unexpected turn,
Sometimes we have to go out at night
And Abram trusted. I don’t know that he had any proof that this God who was leaning him was going to follow through on all of this.
Your scripture translators seem to use believe faith and trust interchangeably and by definition they’re probably the same word. But they feel like they’re a little different. Like believe seems like a cognitive response you can say you believe something because you have mentally decided it’s true, you can check it off a list of things that I believe. Beliefs are hard to change because you’ve convinced yourself of them.
Faith is not unlike it it just feels a little squishier. People will use violence to defend their beliefs, people don’t do that with faith. Faith Like belief is also an unseen thing but he lives in your heart or Soul it’s a Feeling and can’t really be Quantified.
And trust me feels like movement. Trust is that first step you make because of the faith. Things is believing that when you cross your arms and fall backwards the person or persons behind you will catch you and trust is falling. Faith is believing those who mourn will be comforted and trust is feeling all of the grief feelings. When Abram trusted he moved in the direction of the promises that were made even if you didn’t know how they were going to be fulfilled and he didn’t know when, trust was moving forward anyway.
There are promises given to us as individuals, but again and again it is made clear that the story of faith is about and given to communities. There are promises given to the church, even us. The church is described as a body, so much like our own selves, I don’t think one of those is that a body can live forever. Nothing but love is permanent. But we also have been given promises of presence, and opportunities to share our blessings, to be a blessing to others, to be part of the work of the kingdom that is here and is coming, to raise each other up in love and share that love. It is not a promise of particular numbers or specific outcomes.
It is a promise that if we trust, if we faithfully take steps in love, compassion, justice, mercy, belonging, God will be with us, the Spirit will lead us, and we will be Christ’s hands and feet in the world. That’s the promise. Do the things, try the thing, fail and try again. Don’t give up. Love. You, we, will never be alone. God is faithful, worthy of every step we take in trust. With this life, this community, this church, this mission we’ve been given, and step out in love.
So maybe it doesn’t matter if I believe all the promises. Maybe it matters that I live as though I trust them. Maybe that’s the best we can do sometimes. And it is absolutely enough.