Transcript
Good morning. The story of Abraham was told for centuries before it was ever written down. Stories of all scripture, ribbons of golden narrative falling into the hands of inspired tellers that wove those stories with wisdom, with truth, with some geopolitical information.
And those stories were told and refined and expanded until they found themselves on the parchment of the rolled scrolls of scripture held in place by the block letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet are Alephbet. You can hear a nod to that in our own word alphabet.
Alephbet. And it happens that those two letters hold the stories of scripture as they were told for centuries in place for us like an anchor. They are mystical in their work.
Alephbet are the first two letters of the name Abraham or Abram as he was called when we begin our story today. Tradition tells us that Abram was the son of an idol maker, Terah. Terah carved idols from stone and wood and baked clay idols in brick ovens in the city of Ur of the Chaldeans.
And he was a wealthy man. Business was good. People wanted to buy these little gods to ensure their health, their fertility, their crops.
And Abram would have been a helper in his father’s shop. Surely Abram would have moved the clay figures in and out of the brick oven and surely once in a while those small figures would break. Abram would hold the pieces of these gods, little g, in his hand and wonder how can a god fit into the palm of my hand and why can’t this god put himself together when broken? And he wondered on these things and he doubted which makes Abram our first theologian.
He wondered, he asked questions, he doubted, he didn’t stop at doubt, he kept going and lived the questions for a very long time until he could live into the answer. Many years later he found someone who was not afraid of his doubts, not afraid of his questionings, not afraid of his wondering, hesitated that it looked like he was also going to be wandering because it involved her and I am talking about Sarai, later known as Sarah. Sarah was all in.
She had never met somebody who had a sense of mission and purpose, a desire to find out more, to find out that this is not enough over here but it doesn’t make it completely wrong. Let’s keep going even if we don’t understand it. Abram said to Sarai, I am called to go into a foreign land as a foreigner.
I am going to leave the house of my father, the house of my kindred. I am going to take our animals and some of our riches and we, you and I, are going to go into a land where we know no one, we don’t speak the language, we will be welcomed as foreigners but this is what we are to do. And Sarai said, how do you know? And Abram said, because God said exactly that, that I am to leave the house of my father, leave the house of my kindred.
And Sarai, when we do this, our house will be blessed and our offspring will be blessed and all who meet us will be blessed and in turn, they will be a blessing to others. And Sarai said, offspring? Abram. I may be a younger wife but I’m 65 and you are 75.
Abram said, Sarai, we don’t have to understand it before we believe it. And together they went. They went into that land and it was green and the pastures were able to feed their livestock for a while but then famine came into the land and as many did, they went as already aliens in alien land to be aliens in a new alien land.
They went into Egypt. Abram worried about something. He said, Sarai, I know you talk about how old you are but I don’t think you realize how beautiful you are.
The sparkle in your eyes that comes from your wit and your intelligence and I don’t think this beauty is going to escape the notice of Pharaoh. We have to come together on this, Sarai. Pharaoh is going to want you in his harem and there’s two ways this can go.
He can kill me so he’s not taking another man’s wife into his harem or we can tell the Pharaoh that I am your brother. I will still be here when we’re through this and you will go into the Pharaoh’s harem. Sarai shared her husband’s common purpose and mission and now subterfuge and she did it but she was spared because all of the sudden the Pharaoh was having terrible dreams and plagues were coming upon his house and he tried to date back to when this started to get a clue and it was when Sarah came into his household and he went to Abram and said, she’s not your sister, she’s your wife.
Abram, why did you do this to me? I gave you livestock. I gave you things to make you comfortable in my land. Go take what I’ve given you but you must leave and there they went again.
God came to Abram and said, Abram, you are going to be a father. You are going to be a father of nations. You are going to have so many descendants and Abram said, so you keep saying.
I am not getting younger. Now I’m in my 80s. This started when I was in my 70s.
Trust me, Abram. Trust me. Abram shared this with Sarah and Sarah and Abram were only two human and sometimes we greet God’s promises with human solutions to rush the ending.
It’s human to want to rush the ending. And Sarah said, well now it’s my turn to come up with a plan. I have a maid called Hagar.
You can take Hagar as another wife. Now let me pause here because this is a very important part of the story. Abram and Sarai were born into a world where idolatry, polygamy, and child sacrifice were perfectly normal.
So it may be repugnant to us that Sarah would say take this other woman to be your wife. Her child will be our descendants and we will be able to put forth God’s blessings into the world. Our human solutions to rush the ending often have human consequences.
Sarah and Hagar, oh so humanly, began to resent one another. Hagar, now pregnant with Abram’s child, said why should I let this woman tell me who to be, what to do, when I am doing something she’ll never do. I’m carrying her husband’s child, now my husband.
And Sarah went to Abram and said, bad plan. This can’t be. This cannot be.
I will not have it be this way. God came to Abram and said, Abram, I’m going to make my covenant for you, with you. You are going to have a son.
He is going to have sons. Come over here, Abram. I’m going to change your name.
You are now Abraham, to mark this moment. And I want you to look with me. I want you to look at the infinite number of stars sprayed across this dark blue sky.
Abraham, count them if you can. Abraham, now Abraham, said there’s too many. There’s more than I can count.
Yes, said God, more than you can count. How many grains of sand do you stand on, Abraham? More than I can count. Yes, more than you can count.
But something caught in Abraham’s throat. He had a son, and he loved his son. Ishmael, he choked out.
Ishmael, his son’s name, Abraham. I won’t forget Ishmael. He will be the father of princes.
He will live in Egypt. He will father a nation. And so it is that Muslims trace their heritage to Abraham through Ishmael.
Later, Abraham sat outside his tent at the oak of Mamre. There was a slight breeze, and you could hear the rustle of leaves, that beautiful sound. I love it so much, that shh.
And I am going to ask you to do that with me so we can create it. Shh. That’s right.
You have to do it too. Shh. I wonder if to Abraham it sounds like it does to me every time I hear it, the whisper of the Holy Spirit.
He felt God’s presence in that rustling of the leaves, and he looked up, and there were three visitors. Now, it seems like at the beginning of time, someone tossed a golden coin way, way, way up high, and that coin has been tossing heads, tails, heads, tails, heads, tails, through time, through history, through place. And on one side is welcome the stranger, and on the other is expel the alien.
Welcome the stranger. Expel the alien. Welcome the stranger.
Expel the alien. And on this particular day, outside of Abraham’s tent, it landed on welcome the stranger. And he said, let me get water to wash your feet.
Let me order cakes to be made. Let me order the fatted calf for your feast. Come and be my guest today.
They began to talk as they ate, and one of the visitors said, you, your wife, where is she? Sarah made herself smaller, just behind the flap of the tent. Sarah was never far away during these meetings, and Abraham needed her not to be far away. They were in this together.
She was listening. She’s in the tent, said Abraham. Sarah, when we come in the next season, will give birth to a son, and his name will be Isaac.
And Sarah laughed and quickly covered her mouth. It is true. She will bear a son.
Abraham said, so I’ve heard, but now I’m 99. It is so, said the guests. And then one went toward the flap of the tent and said, why did you laugh? And a voice from the other side said, I didn’t.
I didn’t laugh. And in scripture, it says, and I love this. I just love the tone of it.
Yes, you did. You laughed. It came to pass.
Sarah gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. His name was Isaac, and he laughed early. And when people saw him and held him and held his little hands as he learned to walk, they couldn’t help but laugh too.
He inspired such joy. And Isaac grew and followed his father. And he heard his father’s stories about how time and time again, his father and his mother listened to God and went out, even though they didn’t know where they were going, how they would be cared for, but they believed it was what God wanted to do.
And they knew that if they trusted God, they would be all right. And they knew that together, they kept each other trusting in God. One day, God came to Abraham and he said, Abraham, your son.
Abraham said, I know. What can I give you? What can I give you, Lord? Just tell me. And God said, your love is enough.
Your gratitude is enough. Your heart is enough. My love, my gratitude, my heart.
What do I love most? For what am I the most grateful? What is my heart? And just then, he saw his beautiful boy. This, he wondered, would it be this? He took Isaac, took a knife, took the things he needed. And Isaac, having heard the stories of his father’s trust in the Lord, trusted his father in the same way.
And he went. And he went every step. And Abraham took every step.
And he lay Isaac flat. And he took the knife. And he never stopped hoping that he would hear what he heard in that moment.
Abraham. Yes. Yes.
Yes. No. That’s not what I require of you.
And Abraham put the knife down. He enfolded his son. He picked him up, lifted him up, and put him down on his feet.
And then there was a rustling, not the wind rustling, but another kind of rustling. And there was a ram in the bushes. And Abraham sacrificed that ram.
In the idol shop, Abraham ended idolatry and began seeking God on our behalf, with his wife Sarah on our behalf, the aleph and bet of our spiritual journeys, our spiritual stories. With the Pharaoh, Abraham ended polygamy. And on that day, when he took his love, his gratitude, his heart, and lay it on the altar, and his hand stopped in midair by God’s voice, that was the day he ended human sacrifice.
And he turned toward God, one God. And he turned toward his wife, one wife. And he turned toward his child, the father of nations.
Imagine a distant plane, windswept, a nomad. Who are you, you might ask. And he might answer, a wandering Aramean was my father.
Biblical scholars think that reference is Jacob, and it is. But who’s Jacob’s father? Isaac. Who is Isaac’s half-brother? Ishmael.
Who is Isaac’s father? Abraham. And to this day, if you are Jewish, if you are a Christian, if you are a Muslim, your story is traced back to the father who gave us one God. And to the belief that God’s voice is within us, directing us to the path we are to take.
And for us as Christians, Jesus is that path. Let us pray. Lord, we give you thanks that you call us to a beautiful life, and you bring us through the messy middle.
Thank you for your faithfulness, for turning our doubt to wonder, for numbering the stars, and for the infinite sand that makes the community that is all around us. In Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
