Number the Stars
Genesis 15:1-18; Luke 13:31-35
February 28, 2010
Can we sing it? “Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham, rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham, rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham, Lord, rock o’my soul.” There may be people sitting here who do not recognize this spiritual, and that may be a sign of authentic spiritual poverty, but no matter, we can fix that. Today I hope we can all be enriched by our father Abraham.
This spiritual is in fact a New Testament, a Gospel song, for its image is taken from Luke’s rendition of Jesus’ parable about Lazarus and the Rich Man in which the poor beggar Lazarus is being comforted in the bosom of Abraham in full view of the poor rich man suffering in the hell of Hades. For African-Americans this was a song of their collective Lazarus-ness, trusting that some day they will be rocked and comforted in the bosom of Abraham in the Kingdom.
Abraham is having a renaissance lately. The configuration of the world religions has certainly undergone a shift in the last decade and part of the discovery has been that Abraham is the original religious human being of the three major faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Each faith naturally has their particular spin on this patriarch, and that spiritual is an important part of the Christian interpretation.
How important this Abrahamic interconnection is for our common endeavour hit me when a friend asked what I thought of him applying for a new academic position at the University of Oxford - the Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions - in which one would be studying the inter-relationships between the three faiths. In the thick of the political realities of today’s world, this would not be just another academic post. I told the friend that he was perfect for the position and he should apply. He was a perfect fit and he didn’t get the job. Instead he is now headed to the University of Cambridge, the other place, to assume a similar position in Jewish-Islamic relations.
Who is this guy Abraham and why do we still bother with him, and indeed are bothering with him all the more? The usual dating estimates him living 4000 years ago in a world so different from ours that we cannot imagine it. Abram is first mentioned in Genesis 11:26 as one of the three sons of Terah, and his exploits are narrated right through to Genesis 25:8 when he died at the age of 175.
Abram’s story, particularly the one read this morning, is not that spectacular. He accomplishes a lot, becomes very wealthy, yet generally he does not initiate much action, responding instead to the events around him and to the wonderful, yet seemingly impossible and improbable call of God. “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your family and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation.’” For ever after, this has been called the Promise, with a capital P. The entire Biblical story - all of the Old Testament, including the Gospels and the New Testament - is grounded in that short paragraph, that Word of the Lord that came first to an undistinguished human being named Abram.
It was perhaps the grandest vision of what a human being could become. Yes, Christians would eventually want to baptize the entire world into the faith of Jesus Christ, and Islam would spread the revelation of Mohammed and the Qur’an to the known world, but both begin with Abraham’s vision. In the first decade of the third millennium a vision came to some Canadians that we could “own the podium” at the Vancouver Olympics, but some visions tell us more about ourselves than about our calling.
So Abram moved, down to Canaan on his way to owning the Promise, and the first thing he does is hold a worship service. But then a natural disaster happens, not an earthquake but a famine, so Abram and Sarai kept going way down to Egypt land. They had the Promise of God repeated to them in Canaan, but they were afraid of the Egyptians. A ruse became their strategy - Sarai was simply Abram’s sister - and like most ruses it works well until it nearly becomes a disaster. Sarai nearly becomes the mother of Pharaoh’s child, but in the nick of time plagues afflicted Pharaoh’s house, alerting him for the first time that something is wrong in the eyes of God.
The couple returns to Canaan, again conducting wonderful worship services to God. Abram and Lot decide to divvy up the Promised Land - Lot takes the fertile Jordan Valley, Abraham accepts the hilly Canaan to the west. For the third time the Lord speaks to Abram and assures him this is the land promised to him and his innumerable descendants, this time described as numerous as the grains of dust. Abram continues to worship, gets involved in a military operation, is blessed by the Melchizedek, the king of Salem, and becomes more and more a person possessed by God.
Now we are into the 15th chapter of Genesis, the fourth chapter after Abram enters the story. Biblical chapters are not a measure of time, but we do sense that time has moved on and it is noted that Abram is not getting younger, 75 years old when he first left Harran and went down to Canaan. A lot of action, a lot of visions, a lot of podiums, yet something hasn’t happened yet, and Abram has noticed and hesitatingly brings the matter up.
Abram is having a mid-life crisis, though it was more like his mid-eighties. Not just once, Abram asks God, “How can all of this be more than just a nice idea if I do not have a descendant, if I do not have a child? Right now, my heir would Eliezer of Damascus.” God, like most of us, responds more quickly to specificity, “Oh no, it won’t be Eliezer, because he’s not appropriate for what will take place.”
Then for the fourth time the big vision is revealed. Number the stars, if you possibly can, for you can’t possibly count the number of your descendents. Since there are 30-70 sextillion stars, give or take a few ‘tillion, in the observable universe, this is a poetic rather than a mathematical statement. You are in a far bigger game than you have imagined. This is not a parochial concern, worried only about your own backyard, but you are meant to be an actor in a universal play where God’s Good News rings in ears, except there is no longer a play. An actor pretends to be someone else, so Abram had to be thinking - just like you and I have been thinking - that God was just having him play a role. Take careful notice that even now with all the fireworks and special offerings and ceremonies, God does not magically zap this couple and give them a child, a descendent. Many of you have had some remarkable things happen in your lives, full of grace, but there was no magic.
This complicated journey of Abram, full of promises, but low on fulfillment, mirrors how we have wound our irregular ways to enter this sanctuary today. Is there anybody here who has not had a dream earlier in your life that right now has not yet come to be fulfilled? Are you there yet, or do you think that your ‘yet’ has elapsed, has expired? We are sitting where Abram was sitting and thinking. Yet, we have an advantage. We already know where this story is going.
If you are reading a novel, I know we are cheating, but this is more than a novel, a story we read to be entertained. This story reads you and me and we hear ourselves repeated in it. Yes, Abram and Sarai will have a son Isaac and the dream will start from there, the stars will begin to come out one by one. They were like you and me looking in the wrong place for their solution. Abram kept doubting God’s providence and figured he could nudge the situation along, that if he finagled enough he could make it work. They tried Hagar and Ishmael, and again in the kingdom of Gerar they attempted the “she’s my sister, he’s my brother” ruse. And again, by the grace of God, they escaped tarnished, but with the Promise alive.
We human beings have a habit of looking in the wrong places, especially we religious human beings. Being closer to God we tend to believe God needs a little extra help from us, and then we try to fix it and make it work our way. The promise you thought you heard has not passed its expiry date; it’s just that you have been looking on the wrong shelf. The story still includes you, but you have to listen without talking. Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan