SERMON A God in Half

Rev. Ben Dueholm

February 28, 2010 (Lent 2C)

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In our Genesis lesson today we’re going way, way back. Back before Jesus. Back before the prophets. Back before Moses, all the way back to Abraham, the father of faith. So far back, in fact, that Abraham is still just Abram--God hadn’t started just changing people’s names. But we’re meeting Abram a few chapters into his story. It makes me wish the church could have a video montage like a television show, showing you what you missed: “Previously, on ‘Lives of the Patriarchs.’” We would see Abram at 75, turning over a new leaf. A God he does not know calls him to leave his home and his kindred to go to a new land. This God promises to make his name great, so that it is a blessing to all the people of the world.

Abram has no children, but he takes his wife Sarah and his household down to Canaan. There God speaks to him a second time, promising him the land to which he has come. But then a famine strikes the land and Abram and his wife Sara go south to Egypt. There Abram passes Sarah off as his sister, fearing that someone will kill him for her if they know they’re married. So Pharaoh takes Abram’s wife as his own and gives Abram lots of gifts. God is not pleased with this arrangement. Things go badly for Pharaoh, and he sends Abram and Sarah on their way.

Back in Canaan, Abram has a dispute with his nephew Lot. They part company. At this point God speaks to Abram for a third time. “Don’t worry,” he says. “You’ll possess all this land and your descendants will be more than the dust of the earth.” Abram still believes.

Then a local war breaks out. Abram joins one group of warlords against another and saves the day. He refuses any payment for his labor, wishing to remain independent.

That’s where we pick up the story today. God speaks to Abram a fourth time, telling him not to worry, that his reward will be great. Abram is an old man now and his hope has grown cold. “I have no offspring, and a slave of my house will inherit what I own,” he tells God. But God says to Abram that his own son will inherit his possessions. Then he takes Abram outside the tent and points him to the night sky. Try to imagine how dark this sky is, darker than any of us has ever seen. The sky is truly alive with stars. God says, “so numerous will your descendants be.”

Back in Abram’s day, men didn’t care about having a gym-toned body or a good credit rating or inner peace or eternal life. A man in Abram’s time wanted land, so he could be buried when he died, and children, to remember him when he was gone. That’s what God promises to him. And for some reason--we don’t know why--for some reason, Abram believes that God will yet fulfill this promise. After all these years of waiting, Abram still trusts God. God, for his part, overlooks all of Abram’s messy actions--Abram was no prize heifer as a husband or an uncle, we’ve seen--and considers him righteous for the sake of this trust.

But Abram is not a dupe either. He trusts God, but asks for a sign of God’s faithfulness. So God tells Abram to slaughter some animals and cut them in half. A deep and terrifying sleep descends on Abram and he has a vision of a torch passing between the halves of the animals. This is God’s covenant with Abram.

What’s going on here? What God is doing is enacting a treaty ritual from ancient times. The weaker king in the treaty would pass between the halves of the slaughtered animals to say to the stronger king, “if I fail to do what I have promised, may this be done to me.” Think about that for a moment. God is taking the role of the weaker party in his covenant with Abram. After all Abram’s years of waiting and hoping and trusting, God is saying that he would rather be torn in half than be found faithless to Abram.

This image of God is not at all what we’re used to. Here is a God who yearns to be trusted and to be trustworthy, a God who would make Godself vulnerable rather than abandon the people God chooses.

And indeed, God eventually gives Abram what he has waited for. Abram dies owning enough land for a tomb and with two sons to carry on his name.

But the story and the promise don’t end there. It continues down to the day of Jesus, eighteen centuries later. Jesus will extend the promise made to Abraham to the whole world. To do that he must risk the plots of local rulers and take the road to Jerusalem, the city where prophets go to die. He will take any risk to try to gather in his people as a hen gathers her chicks--another image of vulnerability. He, the Son of God, would rather be torn in half than abandon the people God chooses. So he goes to Jerusalem.

But the story and the promise don’t end there, either. Where are the stars in Abraham’s sky but right here--you and me, and all our sisters and brothers in every church in the world, and yes in the synagogues and mosques too. More and different people than Abraham could ever have imagined. All of us are Abraham’s children who brighten the world with our acts of good will and devotion. All of us share Abraham’s faith when we remain in fellowship with a mysterious God who calls us to a new life, to take a new risk, to trust God despite all--a God in Jesus Christ who walks with us to the end of the earth and to the last moment of our life. That is the faith that God considers as righteousness, whatever else we may have done in our lives. It is a faith so powerful that God would rather be nailed to a cross than found faithless in return. Amen.