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Our
Father Abraham – and The Family Resemblance that Matters Genesis
17:1-8; 15-22
Psalm 47
Hebrews 11:8-12
Luke 1:67-80 Whenever we bring out our family photo albums and
look at our ancestors – great-grandfather, grandmother, father, and then
finally ourselves – it’s easy to see a family resemblance.
Our ancestor’s jaw or hairline or nose is evident generation after
generation. More
important than the biological family that we were born into and whose traits
we’ve inherited, however, is the family of God.
The family and household of God, scripture reminds us, consists of those
whom the truth and reality of God has startled and stimulated.
The family and household of God consists of those whom God’s presence
and persistence has roused from spiritual slumber and who have found themselves
jabbed awake or won over or wooed into loving the One who comes upon different
people in different ways but always to the end of rendering us his children. To
be sure the nature of the response varies from person to person.
Some are taking their first, tentative steps in faith, fending off
detractors who tell them that faith is no more than unconscious fantasy and love
for their Lord no more than disguised love for themselves.
Others have lived close to him for years and want only to move closer to
him. No matter.
All alike belong to the family of faith, and all share a family
resemblance with their foreparent in faith. Foreparent?
Yes. Everywhere in scripture,
newer testament and older testament alike, Abraham is deemed the ancestor of
God’s people. Abraham is
acknowledged the prototype of the believing person, the model for all believers
in all eras and in all circumstances. Abraham
is the ancestor whose spiritual “genes”, as it were, are found in all whom
the gospel captivates. I: --
What is the first family resemblance that is traceable from Abraham to you and
me? The first is that we live by God’s promise. Abraham’s
story begins with his obedience to God’s command: “Go from your country and
your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
Abraham is invited and summoned to step out from his comfortable
familiarities and step towards a new land, step into a new future.
What land? We don’t know
its name. It’s spoken of only as
“the land of promise.” Abraham
is invited and summoned to move out into a future that appears radically
uncertain and therefore radically insecure. Then
is Abraham merely naïve? Is he
simply foolish, even stupid? Not at
all, for Abraham isn’t stepping into a vacuous future; he isn’t stepping
into a cosmic hole or into cosmic treachery.
He’s stepping into a future that appears uncertain and insecure from a
human perspective, to be sure; yet this future is already
filled with the God whose faithfulness and goodness Abraham knows he can
trust. At this point Abraham begins
to live by the promise. But of
course living by promise makes sense only if the promise is going to be kept.
Then to live by promise is to live trusting
the promise-keeping God. Abraham
steps out confident that God will unfailingly keep the promises he has made to
Abraham. Only the promise-keeping
God can we trust, and only the
promise-keeping God should we trust. It
has always been the conviction of the Church that the promise God made to
Abraham concerning land – “Go to the land that I will show you” – is
fulfilled in the The
kingdom-promises of God are manifold. [i] Here’s one.
“Whoever comes to me I never turn away.”
This is the promise of ready welcome, of free forgiveness, of a
Father’s eagerness to embrace any and all who are fed up with living in the
“far country” and want only to go home where they belong.
This promise guarantees that any penitent who looks homeward is going to
find arms of mercy that seize her even as her sin is forgiven and forgotten
forever. [ii] Another promise.
“Whoever gives to one of these little ones a cup of cold water…will
not lose his reward.” This is
God’s guarantee that the work we undertake in the name and Spirit of our Lord
for the sake of his people; our work in this regard will unfailingly be fruitful
even if we don’t see the fruit. The
work we undertake for God’s people he will invariably use to enhance others
and to increase our own faith and enlarge our opportunity for service. [iii] Another promise.
“The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts
and minds in Christ Jesus.” “Will
keep”? The Greek word phulassein
means “will garrison (it’s a military metaphor), will safeguard” our
life in Christ and our identity in Christ regardless of what howls down upon us.
As often as we are assaulted in life Christ’s grip on us will always be
stronger than our grip on him, with the result that we are garrisoned within
that “fort” which Jesus Christ unfailingly is for his people. [iv] Another promise, as profound as it is simple:
“I will never fail you or forsake you.”
It is simple, isn’t it. At
the same time, what could be more profound?
After all, don’t other people fail us as surely as we fail them?
Worse still, don’t we fail ourselves?
And as for forsaking, don’t others forsake us as surely as we forsake
ourselves? All of us have said and
done what left others looking at us sideways, muttering to themselves, “And I
thought I knew who he was.” All of
us have said and done too what left us shocked at ourselves, saying to
ourselves, “I always thought I knew who I
was.” What else is this but to
be self-failed and self-forsaken? In the
midst of all such distress, whether inner or outer, there continues to sound
forth that throbbing, bass note of our lives, “I will never fail you or
forsake you.” This throbbing, bass
note determines the rhythm of our lives; it’s the downbeat of our lives;
it’s the first beat in the bar, the predominant beat, as we step ahead as
people of promise: “I will never fail you or forsake you.”
He who raised his son from the dead is never going to abandon you and me
to that deadliness by which we are otherwise victimized, even self-victimized. [v] Concerning the congregation here in Schomberg
there are two promises taken together that move me over and over: Jesus says,
“Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of
them” and “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed…nothing is
impossible to you.” David Bloomer
has told me several times of the days when the worshipping congregation here was
down to four or five people. They
sat at the front of the church and the minister, wanting to be less formal
amidst so few people, pulled up a chair before them and simply related to them
in a conversational tone what he had meant to preach that day.
I am moved at the promise-clinging faith of people like David and Betty
and a couple others who didn’t give up, didn’t turn angry or bitter,
didn’t do anything except trust that with God a promise made is a promise
kept. It is because of their
Abrahamic confidence that there’s a congregation here today. Living
by promise is always an adventure. It’s
as much an adventure in 2004 as it was for Abraham.
For like him, you and I don’t know what life is going to bring before
us. We don’t know which people, what events, what kind of challenges or
assaults or griefs or opportunities are going to appear from nowhere, loom
before us and linger with us. We
can’t anticipate them. Myself,
I noticed years ago that virtually all of the disastrous downturns that I feared
might happen to me didn’t happen. In
other words, my anticipation of negativities was groundless.
On the other hand, the assaults that clobbered me (one of which at least
brought me as close to being admitted to hospital as I’ll ever come without
being admitted) I couldn’t anticipate in any case.
We tend to fear what turns out not to happen, and we can’t anticipate
what does happen. Then we are left
having to live by the promises of God.
Promises,
plural. Yes, the promises of God are
manifold. Nonetheless, said John
Wesley, all the promises of God recounted in scripture are gathered up in one,
overarching, grand promise. There is
one grand promise that comprehends them all: it’s the promise of shalom,
salvation. The promise of shalom,
salvation, is the promise that on the day of our Lord’s appearing we are going
to be found fully restored, every last defacement of God’s image in us
remedied, every last disfigurement addressed, every last sin-wrought flaw
healed. We are going to be found
restored. The book of Hebrews says
it succinctly: “There is a Sabbath rest (restoration:
in the wake of the Fall “rest” is restoration) promised the people of
God.” Knowing
that this grand promise is going to be kept, like Abraham of old we step forward
in life knowing that whatever else the adventure brings, it always brings with
it the unfailing goodness of the promise-keeping God.
He will not fail us or forsake us. II:
-- While
we are thinking of family resemblances on Christian Family Sunday we should
realistically admit that there are some family resemblances we wish weren’t
there. There is an unsightliness
here or there, a blemish, even an ugliness, which appears from generation to
generation. We wish it weren’t so,
but it is. As
much can be said about Abraham’s life under God and about ours too.
Abraham is journeying with his wife into foreign territory.
The king of this foreign country, a fierce fellow, starts eyeing Sarah,
Abraham’s wife. Abraham sees that
this king has lecherous designs on Sarah.
Abraham, frightened now to the point of near-panic, thinks to himself,
“This man is going to rape Sarah. If
he thinks she’s my wife, he’ll kill me in order to have her.
But if he thinks she’s only my sister, he’ll rape her in any case but
spare me.” In that dreadful moment
of screwed-up thinking that is as understandable as it is inexcusable Abraham
blurts, “She’s my sister; she’s only my sister.”
Truth to tell, Abraham did this twice.
He lied to save his skin. Are
you and I any different? In a moment
of intense pressure haven’t we falsified ourselves, falsified someone else,
exaggerated, lied or simply fallen silent because in our cowardice we panicked
before the consequences of telling the truth?
When was the last time we were dead wrong before our children but
wouldn’t admit it because the loss of face would have been too humiliating?
Haven’t we given silent, tacit consent to malicious gossip, wickedly
untrue, because we didn’t have courage enough to stand up for the person our
silence victimized, and didn’t have courage enough to contradict the crowd we
wanted to include us? Haven’t we
all behaved in a manner that could never be squared with a profession of faith
in Jesus Christ, and immediately pleaded any number of “reasons” that will
never extenuate us? Abraham
lied to spare himself even as he exposed his wife to sexual molestation.
This can only be a hideous, grotesque disfigurement in our spiritual
forefather. Yet we must admit that
it is part of the family resemblance,
since the same cowardly abandonment is found in us. God’s
people are those whom scripture speaks of as his “peculiar treasure.”
Unquestionably we are God’s peculiar treasure.
And yet the treasure is tarnished. We
shouldn’t be cavalier about this. At
the same time, neither should we be paralysed by it.
You see, because God has promised that there will always be more mercy in
him than there is sin in us, we shouldn’t write ourselves or others out of the
household and family of God just because the treasure is tarnished.
Tarnished treasure is still treasure.
What matters finally isn’t that our discipleship is perfect; what
matters is that we aspire after consistency.
John Calvin was fond of saying that what mattered finally was aspiration
not achievement. In
a moment of panic Peter says, “Jesus? Never
heard of the man.” Once?
Three times. Still,
eventually Peter is the acknowledged leader of the church in Mark
accompanied the apostle Paul on a missionary journey. Mark
was only nineteen years old. He
became homesick and returned home. Paul, of course, was disappointed.
More than disappointed, he pronounced Mark unfit for apostolic work and
refused to have Mark accompany him on his next missionary journey.
Barnabas, on the other hand, Barnabas thought Paul to be wrong with his
“one strike and you’re out” approach.
Barnabas thought Mark should be given another opportunity.
And so Barnabas took on Mark as missionary companion.
Eventually Mark gave us the gospel that bears his name.
Barnabas proved himself right in the episode with Mark, Paul wrong.
Paul must have known he was wrong, for he subsequently wrote, “I’m
not perfect…but I press on.” In
our Abrahamic venture what matters is that we press on.
What counts is our aspiration. We
aspire to be worthy of our Lord Jesus Christ who has called us.
And as God continued to use Abraham despite Abraham’s treachery,
God’s promise is that he will continue to use us.
Martin Luther said it so well: God can draw a straight line with a
crooked stick. God will ever use us
despite the disfigurement we can’t hide. III:
-- All
of which brings us to the last family resemblance we are going to discuss today.
Abraham is called out of the city of Yet
Abraham doesn’t shun the city in principle.
Instead, having distinguished himself from the city, having distanced
himself from it as it were, he intercedes for the city; he pleads for Judicious
balance is required here. Lack of
balance results in two polarized positions.
One segment of Christendom wants to repudiate utterly the society around
it. These people speak of the need
to keep oneself “unspotted from the world.”
They uphold a religious isolationism that seeks to preserve the church by
segregating the church from a society which they describe as godless.
Such isolationism renders the people of God irrelevant. The
other pole in Christendom is determined to be “with it.”
No isolationism for them. No
self-distancing from the world at all. They
identify with the world uncritically. While
they are quick to tell us they love the world just because God loves the world,
they fail to understand that they and God don’t love the world in exactly the
same sense. God loves it to redeem
it. They love it to ape it.
Such uncritical aping renders the people of God useless. The
truth is, Abraham is neither irrelevant nor useless.
Abraham stands back from his society precisely in order to be able stand
with it. Abraham refuses to identify
himself with the society in order to be free to intercede for the society.
We who are possessed of Abraham’s faith must grasp what is to be done
here and why: we who are citizens of the kingdom of God first are never citizens
of that kingdom only; we remain citizens as well of a realm to which God has
appointed us just because he has appointed himself to it, for indeed “The
earth” – the whole earth – “is the Lord’s,” says the psalmist. In
order to exercise a ministry of intercession for our society we have to have a
mind informed by the mind of Christ. As
Paul puts it, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own
mould, but let God remake you so that your whole attitude of mind is changed.”
(Rom. 12:1) Christians are mandated
to be aware of what enhances human existence and what is degrading; what
enhances community life and what destroys it.
We have to be aware of what is important and what is indifferent.
Some people will agree with us; many will not.
No matter. When Abraham set
out he was a minority; when he interceded for At
all times we must return to the balance of the twofold movement:
God’s people can be helpful in a society only if they are first holy
– distinct in some sense. (The
root meaning of “holy” is “different.”)
Conversely, we are genuinely holy only if we intend to be helpful
(God’s holiness, remember, always aims at helping us.) Some
of the people who are most committed to a holy intervention in the world may be
people whom we think initially to be world-denying.
Thomas Merton, instance. Thomas
Merton was a Roman Catholic Trappist monk in rural Long before Merton, long before me, Abraham knew.
-Abraham knew about the society he would neither
fawn or nor forsake. -Abraham knew as well that the treachery of his own
heart didn’t disqualify him as God’s servant.
-Above all, Abraham knew what it is to live in the
land of promise, knowing that no uncertainty or insecurity outweighs the
substance and truth of the God who unfailingly keeps the promises he makes. Abraham’s
is the family resemblance we want to recall and glory in on this day, Christian
Family Sunday. Victor
Shepherd
May 2004
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