The beginnings of things often fascinate us.  My spouse and I have five children, three biologically and two by adoption.  At one time or another, each of them has asked, “Tell me again about the day I was born,” or “Tell me again about the day I came to you.”

{quotes}Stories of origins often contain clues as to who we are and why we act the way we do.{/quotes}  One of my the stories that I treasure about my own family’s origins is about how my grandfather crossed the Mississippi River, bought some acreage near a little town in the Missouri Ozarks called Fairdealing and cleared the land by hand — rolling huge rocks, pulling logs with mules, and blowing up tree stumps with dynamite.  Although I was raised in a county seat town fifteen miles away from Fairdealing, Dad would say, “The name of that town shows the kind of person you are — fair in your dealings with others.”

When we stray from our fundamental life purposes, preachers can appeal to our origins in order to help us remember who we are and how we are supposed to act.  As a child, when I was more interested in playing than my responsibilities, my Dad would remind me that we are the kind of people who get up early in the morning, who roll stones out of the field, who move logs with mules, and who blow up stumps.

Similarly, the book of Genesis contains the earliest ancestral stories of the Jewish people and of the church.  These narratives explain who we are and how we are to live in order to embody who we are.

The priestly theologians gave the first book of the Bible its present form around the time of the exile.  The priestly theologians intended to encourage a people who were in danger both of losing sight of who they are and of losing confidence in God.  These concerns are similar to those of today’s long-established churches.  Many of us feel like we are in exile as our values and behaviors differ from those of the larger culture.  Preaching on the book of Genesis can help today’s exiles remember who they are (beloved by God) and how to live faithfully in a situation of estrangement

June 1, 2008

Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19

Genesis 1:1 through 11:32 sets the stage for the rest of the Bible by giving a big picture of why things are the way they are.  God had sought to bless the whole world at once through creation (Gen 1-2) and re-creation (Gen 8:13 – 9:17), but human beings so violated God’s purpose of living in mutual support (Gen 3, Gen 6:1 – 7:24) that God eventually decided to attempt another means of blessing the world: by using one human family as a model of the way all could be blessed. (Gen 12:1ff)

Today’s passage, adapted from other ancient flood stories (e.g.  Gilgamesh), portrays both the consequences of violating God’s ways (the flood) and the trustworthiness of God (the Noahide covenant in Gen 9:1-17).

Is there a more poignant line in the Bible than Genesis 6:6 when the narrator says that God was sorry for making humankind?  God had intended for human beings and elements of nature to live together in mutual support, but by Noah’s day violence ruled.  Noah however, lived in right relationship with God and with other creatures.

As a consequence human violence, God causes water from the sky and the subterranean deep to reduce the earth to a chaotic flood.  The narrator wants the community in exile to identify with the Noah’s generation.  He wants them to see that by their own participation in idolatry, injustice, and exploitation they have brought chaos to their own social world.  The exile is their generation’s flood.  They suffer the consequences of their own sin.

Yet grace is present even in the chaos.  Boats in antiquity were typically open and small, but the ark is covered and huge.  God provides.  The ark thus becomes a symbol that Israel will later call forth when threatened.

Noah is a model.  For Noah’s first act out of the ark is to build an altar.  God, in turn, promises not to destroy the world again by flood.  As an African American saying has it, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign: no more water, the fire next time.”

In Genesis 8:22, God promises always to maintain the structures upon which all life depends:  “As long as the earth lasts, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, they will never cease.”  In the future, regardless of how dissipated and violent life becomes, God does not give up on the human community or nature.  The possibility for repentance and renewal remains because the essential elements that support life “will never cease.”

A preacher could explore similarities between the world as it was before the time of Noah, and the world as it is today.  Where are today’s flood waters rising?  Who feels like they are being overwhelmed by chaos?  How does God provide an ark?  How do we experience the ongoing structures of life?

June 8, 2008

Genesis 12:1-9

Sarai and Abraham lived in Haran about 500 miles from the promised land. (Gen 11:27-32)  God’s call is an act of unmerited favor (grace).  In response, they are to go from Haran to the land that God would show them but that is yet unknown to them.  Because family was a key to identity and security in the ancient world, leaving their kindred was a dramatic act of trust in God.

The promise to the couple is in five parts.  (a) God will make a great nation from this aging couple.  Because Abram was 75 years old and Sarah was barren (Gen 12:4; 11:30), this part of the promise seemed particularly unlikely.  Its later fulfillment demonstrates God’s power.  (b)  God intends to bless the couple.  In the Bible, blessing often refers to the complete quality of life, including material comforts and concerns.  (c) God will make the ancestral couple a source of blessing for all.  Their lives are a mission: to reveal to the way of blessing to others.  (d) God will bless those who bless them.  But (e) God will curse those who curse Sarai and Abram.  In short, through them “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

The couple demonstrates how a person or a people should respond to God’s call by immediately setting out on.  Only after they have been on the road for some time does God show them the land their children will inhabit. (Gen 12:7)  There are real challenges in preaching this lesson because many people in today’s congregations are ethically troubled by the fact that God eventually took the land away from the Canaanites to give it to the descendants of Sarai and Abram.  This is especially vexing both in light of America’s painful injustices concerning Native Americans as well as the daily headlines chronicling the conflicting claims of modern day Jews and Palestinians to this very same land.

Despite our contemporary issues with this story, the theme would have been powerful to the community in exile.  Their situation was as unlikely as that of Sarai and Abram.  Yet they could trust God to be faithful and to lead them into the land of blessing, especially as they responded faithfully.  Indeed, God would use their blessing as a means to bless the other human families.

In our world, where do possibilities for blessing seem unlikely?  How might God be calling the congregation to become a means of blessing?  How can we respond faithfully in the manner of Abram and Sarai to the divine leading?

June 15, 2008

Genesis 18:1-15

The ancestral couple is encamped by the oaks of Mamre (near Hebron, roughly 15 miles south of Jerusalem and 15 miles west of the Dead Sea).  In the middle of the day, three unnamed visitors approach.  Although some Christians claim that these visitors were the three persons of the Trinity, that identification is not specifically in the text.  Based on similar figures in other texts, the three visitors are likely a deity and two attendants.

The ancient practice of hospitality is fundamental.  Sarah and Abraham enact hospitality by providing the three strangers with welcome, safety, refreshment, food, and conversation.  As the text unfolds both the ancestral couple and the readers recognize that they are welcoming a life-transforming presence.

Where and how does today’s congregation encounter strangers in the manner of this text?  How can the congregation practice the hospitality embodied here?  The preacher can point to such encounters resulting in life-transforming presence.  What can the congregation do to be more open to strangers who may bear the seeds of blessing?

When the visitors came to the tent, Sarah was ninety years old.  Nevertheless, a stranger said Sarah would have a child.  In the tent at the time (and hidden from the visitor), Sarah laughed.  The narrator now identifies the visitor as God and asks whether anything is too wonderful for God.  Sarah lied: she denied laughing, but her mis-step did not stand in the way of God keeping the promise.  A minister could help the congregation explore occasions when, effectively, we laugh at possibilities for blessing that appear to be as unlikely as a ninety-year old woman giving birth.  Our reticence only amplifies the stage for God’s faithfulness.

June 22, 2008

Genesis 21:1-17

Today’s reading is a key moment in demonstrating God’s trustworthiness and God’s power to regenerate the most unexpected situations.  God had promised that the Sarah and Abraham would become the parents of a great nation. (Gen 12:1-3)  Furthermore, God promised a biological child as heir. (Gen 15:1-6)  God promised that Sarah would be the mother. (Gen 17:1-6)  Now, God makes the promise come true.

Eight days after being born, Isaac becomes the first person to be circumcised.  Isaac’s name means “laughter” or “little joke,” and the birth transforms Sarah’s unbelieving laughter into amazement.  As the African American church often says, “God made a way out of no way.”

The exiles may well have laughed at the possibility of returning home and of living again a robust and blessed life.  To them — and to us who are similarly doubtful — Sarah says “Everyone who hears [my new and transformed laughter] will laugh with me.”  As one of my spouse’s bumper stickers says, “She who laughs, lasts.”

In a morally troubling development, God directs the ancestral couple to send away Hagar and Ishmael. (Gen 21:8-17)  Earlier, when a biological heir seemed impossible, Sarah asked her servant, Hagar, to bear a child (Ishmael) who would be as Sarah’s own and would inherit the family estate. (Gen 16:1-15)  However when Ishmael and Isaac were playing together, Sarah asked Abraham to dismiss the slave woman and her son. Sarah wanted to be sure that Isaac would inherit the entire estate by himself.

By being sent away, Ishmael would lose his share of the property.  Abraham is reluctant to do so, but God intervenes because God intended for the heir to be a biological child. (Gen 18:9-15; cf.  21:12)  However, as a sign of providence, God promises to make a nation of Ishmael. (21:13)

Today’s congregation should rightly be troubled by what happens to Hagar and Ishmael.  Nevertheless, the narrator demonstrates that God’s blessing of one person (Isaac) does not preclude the possibility of blessing another (Ishmael).  The God of this story is the universal God who seeks to bless all.

June 29, 2008

Genesis 22:1-14

The narrator states that God “tested” Abraham.  If Abraham were to carry out God’s instruction to sacrifice Isaac, then the promises that have been repeated in the readings from Genesis throughout this month would be nullified.  The heir upon whom the future descendents depended would be dead.

With stark economy, the narrator gets Abraham and Isaac up the mountain.  At the place of sacrifice, Isaac realized that they did not have a lamb, whereupon Abraham says solemnly that God would provide. Abraham did as God had directed by building an altar, preparing the wood, binding the boy, and raising the knife.  At the horrific moment, the old man hears, “Abraham, Abraham.” A ram is in the thicket.  The test is over.

God now knows that Abraham and Sarah are trustworthy.  Today’s preacher needs to note that the emphasis of the story is not upon Abraham’s obedience but upon God’s provision.  Indeed by naming the place “[God] will provide,” Abraham makes explicit the meaning of the story.  As the text reaches its conclusion God reaffirms promise to bless Sarah and Abraham and through them to bless all human families. (Gen 22:17-18; cf.  Gen 12:1-3)

For the exiles, this story has a powerful purpose.  First, in leaving Israel to travel to Babylon, and now again in leaving Babylon to return to their homeland, they were forced to sacrifice much in their life that was treasured, comfortable, and to which they had developed strong attachments.  This is directly analogous to Abraham being willing to give up Isaac.  This text promises that if they remain faithful, even in the face of circumstances that seem to deny the promises of God, the God who provided the ram in the thicket will provide for them.

From my point of view, the preacher needs to assure the congregation that God does not deliberately create difficult circumstances to test us.  Rather, this story assures us that in the midst of circumstances that we experience as pushing us to the limit, God provides.