Abram had learned to wait. God had spoken to him powerfully, when he was a man in the prime of life, living in the great Mesopotamian city of Ur. “"Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.[1]” And he had gone, following this strange God and his lavish promises. God told him of an abundant land. He promised wealth. And most poignantly, he told of a multitude of descendants. Abram would be the father of a great nation.
God had spoken to him once more, when his protégé, Lot had set off to make his own way in the world. Again, there were the same promises, the assurance that God would be faithful. That was decades ago, though. Abram amassed cattle and slaves, he dabbled in politics, he became an elder statesman among the tribes of the Palestinian desert. He’d just been through a rather fierce battle, which has a way of clarifying your perspective, I’m told. But still there were no children.
And Abram was tired of waiting.
God appeared to him in
a vision, and again God leads with the big promises: “I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great.” But this time, Abram is ready for Him. He jumps in before God has a chance to repeat
the promises to politely and respectfully decline God’s offer. It’s actually the first time that Abram
addresses God. All these years he has
listened and obeyed, and now he speaks, cries out really. “The bonds of restraint are broken, a
commentator writes, and the patriarch bares the bitterness of his soul in a
brief, poignant outburst bordering on utter despair.[2]”
“O Lord God,” he says, “what can you give me, as I shall die childless.” He gathers himself again, and then announces his plan, a second best option. “But it will soon be that time. I’ve made out the will, and Eliezer of Damascus will be heir. He’s my best servant, he’ll know how to manage things properly. I owe him something for all those years of faithfulness.”
But God won’t let
Abram go. No, God says, “your own son
will be your heir. Let me show you what
I mean.” And then God shows Abram the
starry sky at night, all those stars you can only see out in the desert, with
no trees and electric lights to get in the way.
“Your own son will be your heir, and your offspring will be as many as
the stars in the sky. “And Abram believed,”
the narrator tells us, “and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”
At least he believed the first part of
the promise, the one about all the offspring.
In the morning, when the sun rose and the vision faded, he was left with
a question: “how will I know?” I have
believed before, I’ve wandered and waited.
I want something more, a little skin on this promise.
And so the Lord tells Abram to do
something very strange. It’s probably
illegal in Fairfax County, but it was even strange by ancient Near Eastern
standards, so strange that the narrator records all the details of it. God told him to slay several of his livestock
at the prime of life: a heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtledove and a young
pigeon. And he cut the animals in half,
and laid them over against each other, a path between the halves. It’s a costly offering, even for a prominent
herdsman like Abram. And it was hard
work to prepare it this way. You try
cutting a three year old heifer in half with a bronze knife, and see how long
it takes you. This is like telling a
farmer to set one of his tractors on fire, bidding an artist to slash one of
her canvasses, running a checkbook through the shredder. God has required something valuable of him,
and Abram gives it freely, and then he waits to see what will happen.
And, surprise, nothing happens—not for
a good while anyway. Abram sits there,
alongside those bloody carcasses all day.
Their bodies start to swell and stink in the desert heat. The vultures start to swoop down, and Abram
has to chase them away. He waits all day
for God to do something about this offering he has so carefully prepared. More waiting: all day, from early morning
until “a dread and great darkness” came upon him. Was it the darkness of doubt, a feeling that
all was lost, that he had followed God to the end of the world, and now God had
slipped away, never to return?
But in the midst of the dread and
great darkness, God does appear. Like so
many other things in this story, it is a strange appearance: a smoking fire pot
and a flaming torch passing between the animal carcasses. Blood, and smoke and fire and darkness: I’m
sure the depth psychologists would have a field day with all that. But we know these symbols, don’t we? We know that this is how God show
himself. Isn’t this the cloud by day and
fire by night that would guide Abram’s descendants through the wilderness on
the way back to this land? Isn’t this
the light that appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai, the blaze of glory that
surrounded Jesus when he was transfigured, the flames that came down and rested
on the apostles’ heads on the Day of Pentecost?
As the smoke and fire passed between
the carcasses, the narrator tells us, God made a covenant with Abram: a solemn
agreement, the deepest pledge. When Abram had seen this, he knew that God would
keep His word.
But what did Abram see? How did he know that this was a true
covenant? What made this sign different,
confirming his faith and giving him hope for the future? Of course, the narrator is far too wise to
tell us exactly what Abram saw. It was a
dream after all, and you know what it’s like to see in dreams: you never see
just one thing, do you? And you know
more than you can see.
Did he see, as the rabbis thought, the
long history of his descendants—their great moments of glory and their bitter
sufferings? Did he see the temple and
the land flowing with milk and honey? Jesus,
you might remember, turned to his critics once and said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was
glad.[3]" Was Jesus talking about
this moment, when God made the promise that could only be truly answered by
coming among us, and shedding His own blood, so that the blessings promised to
Abram could truly reach to every nation, and all the world would know the
promise of His love?[4]
Did old Abram see us that day? Did he see us as we continue in our
struggles of faith, clinging fast to God’s promises, putting our trust in what
we cannot see but believe He will bring to pass. We too, are Abram’s offspring, numbered as
stars in the heavens. There is only one
covenant, one great solemn promise that God has made to humanity. It was made first there in the desert, with
one man in the smoke between the beasts.
It was made new by the One who said, “this is my blood of the new
covenant, shed for you and for many for the remission of sins.[5]” But it is the same covenant, the same God who
holds before us the possibility of a holy and glorious life with Him, but who
calls us to sacrifice and obedience and steadfastness along the way.
Perhaps you think that the Old
Testament is rather bloody and dark and bizarre; and this story could give you
plenty of evidence in that direction.
But I think that it’s really all about the living the faith now, being
an heir of the covenant. It’s about holding
fast to God’s promises: which are certain, but for which we must often wait far
longer than we would prefer. “The faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting[6].” That’s what T. S. Eliot wrote in the Four Quartets,
and it’s the great lesson that Abraham our first father in the faith still
teaches us.
I cannot
promise you that God will give you every blessing you want. I don’t know that he will take away your
pain, or help you find a job, or discover a clear answer to that doubt that
troubles you over and over again. I can
promise you that in the end, all will be glory.
There will be a new heavens and a new earth, a place where God is at
home with His own, and all pain and sorrow pass away: the whole family of
Abraham will be gathered together in their true and everlasting homeland.
I know
this is true because, like old Abraham in the night, I’ve seen a glimpse of
it. I’ve seen it here, as God’s people
gather to share in the beginnings of that great feast, in those rays of light
that shine out now as they will shine one day more fully. I’ve heard the beginnings of the songs we
will chant there, tasted that the Lord is good.
And that vision sustains me, as I know it does so many of you, as it
sustained the old patriarch when he saw it flashing between those beasts so
many centuries ago.
But for
now, we must wait, as Abram waited before us.
Sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the light. And “the faith and the
love and the hope are all in the waiting.”
[1] Genesis 12:1
[2]
Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah
Commentary: Genesis. Philadelphia:
The Jewish Publication Society, 113.
[3] John 8:56
[4] c.f. Reno, R. Genesis. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible.,
162-163.
[5] Matthew 26:28
[6] Four Quartets, East Coker, III
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