Proper 14 Year C 2025: Genesis 15:1-6

One of my favorite books is Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. Published in 1855, the book follows the changing situation surrounding Margaret Hale, the pastor’s daughter who finds herself moving from the agrarian South of England to the manufacturing North, following her dissenter father’s decision to leave the church. In one of the major points of conflict in the book, Margaret…tells a lie. That’s it. She tells a lie. Nevermind that it’s to protect her brother, who is a wanted man and returns to the country to say goodbye to their dying mother. She holds the guilt of this lie for pages and pages. Her male counterpart, Mr. Thornton, finds out she lied - he saw her where she said she wasn’t and, of course, recognized her although he didn’t know the man she was alone with and embracing - big no-no in 1855 - was her brother. And when her veracity is referred to as a given, Mr. Thornton hits her with the line, “is Miss Hale so given to truth?” 

Abraham and Sarah’s pilgrimage of hope had begun back in chapter 12 of Genesis on no other basis than the promise of Yahweh. The promise of Yahweh stood over against the barrenness. But when we arrive at chapter 15, the barrenness persists. That barrenness (which the promise has not yet overcome) poses the issue for this entire chapter. The large question is that the promise is delayed, even to the point of doubt from Abraham. It is part of the destiny of our common faith that we who believe the promise and hope against the metaphorical barrenness of our journeys as people of faith nevertheless must live with that barrenness. The mixture of “already” and “not yet” that comes with our proclamation of a Lord who has died and risen in the midst of a world where there is still suffering and death. That Christ has defeated death and yet there is still suffering. 

Why and how do we continue to trust solely in the promise when the evidence against the promise is all around? That is this scandal that is faced here from the very beginning of the covenant - this isn’t even the covenant, Yahweh doesn’t make the covenant with Abraham until chapter 17. Abraham is still Abram and Sarah is Sarai at this point in the story. But it is Abraham’s embrace of this paradox that makes him the father of faith. The faith to which Abraham is called is not a peaceful, pious acceptance. It is a hard-fought and deeply argued conviction. Abraham is not a passive recipient of the promise. Yahweh did not force the promise upon Abraham. A covenant is a willing partnership between two parties that sets the terms of the relationship. In this covenant between Yahweh and Abraham, Yahweh promises blessing and multiplication. God may not intervene in the way described at the Flood, but God is not done with humanity. There will be blessing. There will be life. There will be relationship with the Creator. And it will only grow. Abraham promises to trust in God’s promises and to teach each new generation to do the same.

The usage of the Hebrew word translated as “reward” in verse 1 implies a gift, not a quid pro quo. Here the reward is not a prize that is earned but a special recognition given to a faithful servant who has performed a bold or risky service. Like at the end of Star Wars where Luke and Han and Chewbacca are awarded medals. They didn’t destroy the Death Star to get their shiny medals. They did it because it was the right thing to do; it was what they were called to do. And then they happened to get rewarded for it. Abraham and Sarah are called to live their lives against barrenness. The “reward” calls them to live as creatures of hope in a situation of hopelessness.

After Abraham protests in today’s reading twice in verses 2-3, Yahweh once again reasserts the promise in verses 4-5. The text is unambiguous. Nothing more is offered except God’s word. Abraham’s response - “he believed the Lord” - means that he trusts God and God’s promise. It is not faith without evidence, but rather faith that takes God’s word as sufficient. Abraham and Sarah are left as they were in chapter 12, with only the reality of this promise. The response of God to Abraham is not a fool-proof argument like that of a lawyer. There’s a sign, but the sign proves nothing. How could it be that the multitude of stars is the promise of a son? It is not an argument, but a revelation. We are struggling, as was Abraham, with the emergence of a certitude that is not based on human reasons but on a primal awareness that God is God. We might be tempted to ask, as Mr. Thornton does, “is God so given to truth?”

But the answer to that question, when posed about God, is “yes”. Unlike Miss Hale, there are no falsehoods from the mouth of God. No excuses for why God might lie to us. We worship a God revealed in Christ who is the way and the truth and the life.

Abraham, like us, did not move from protest to confession by knowledge or by persuasion. None of us are here because we lost an argument or had someone talk us into Jesus. Rather we, like Abraham, are here by the power of our God who reveals and causes that revelation to be accepted. The new pilgrimage of Abraham is not grounded in the flesh of Sarah nor the bones of Abraham, but in the disclosing word of God. The text announces afresh what it means to be the human creatures we are created to be, that is, to be righteous. It means to trust God’s future and to live assured of that future even in the deathly present. Faith is reliance on God’s promise of overcoming the present for a new life.

We are called to faith like Abraham - not by letting it happen to us, but by engaging with God. By questioning our faith and the world around us, and bringing the two into conversation in our hearts and heads and with our hands. After all, Abraham’s grandson Jacob is renamed Israel because he wrestled with God - that’s what Israel means, one who has wrestled or struggled with God. From the beginning of our faith tradition, being fully engaged with God, with our devotion, our doubt, our joy, our rage, our sorrow, with every part of our humanity, has been something to be striven for. 

We can have an honest relationship with our Creator. We just have to trust, not only in the veracity of God, but in the love of God. We have to trust that nothing we can do or say will make God stop loving us. If you keep reading Genesis, Abraham lets down every person over whom he has power but there isn’t a point at which God says, “I’m done, you’re on your own.” God does not throw up his hands. God keeps his side of the covenant, no matter how many times we break our side. God is always waiting for us. Amen.