Readings

The world Genesis 12 assumes is pretty much the world we know: we’re scattered, divided, infested with idols. And the Lord says to Abram, “Go…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That’s the start of the main story line in the Bible, the story we’re part of, God’s primary response to our scattered, divided, idol-infested world. “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” or, as our Jewish brothers and sisters put it, the healing of the world.

Our text is a good reminder also towards the beginning of Lent. It’s easy to get distracted, to forget what the point of all this is.

Our other readings bring in big words like “faith” and “believe,” so it’s worth noticing how these play out in our first text. “So Abram went.” He trusts (he doesn’t write off the Lord’s words as one too many the night before). He responds. We’d have a very short Bible if Abram had simply stayed put with a new set of things to believe. He goes, and, not incidentally, leaves behind pretty much all his security (“your country and your kindred and your father’s house”).

More precisely, he enters into an open-ended relationship. “The land that I will show you…a great nation…a blessing.” None of this is nailed down. Abram will need to keep trusting, keep responding.

Abram helps us not mishear today’s collect. “Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word.” It’s easy to hear this as encouraging stasis over movement. Recalling the account of the Transfiguration we heard two Sundays ago, that sets us up to be clustered around the booths we’ve constructed for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus on the mountain, not noticing that Jesus is already down the mountain. Trying to get everything settled, nailed down, a sure-fire way of going astray.

So those small fonts with holy water at the entrances to the nave are important. “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” Our baptism puts us right there with Abram, invited into an open-ended relationship of trust and response. Equally, and more importantly, it puts us right there with Jesus, whose own path involved no small measure of trust and response. Jesus’ path looked to be ending with him nailed down on a cross. So both for Abram—childless—and Jesus—on that path—it was really important that, as Paul puts it, their God is the One “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”

“I lift up my eyes to the hills; / from where is my help to come? / My help comes from the Lord, / the maker of heaven and earth.” Words that Jesus would have held onto; not bad words for us to keep handy in Lent. Like Nicodemus, whether it’s being born “again” or “from above,” we’re all in a lifelong process of unlearning, learning, relearning in this open-ended relationship with the Lord.

That’s the wonder of these texts. They’re not confined to the other end of the world, millennia ago. The same Lord who spoke to Abram speaks to us: “Go.” The same Jesus who engaged Nicodemus, Nicodemus, confident that he had so much nailed down, continues to engage each one of us. All the families of the earth are still in need of blessing; there’s a world to be healed. As Jesus puts it, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” May we continue to trust and respond.