Walter G. Edmonds
Damascus United Methodist Church
Genesis 12:1-9; Psalm 33:1-12; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – June 8, 2008
In these last few months I have had the privilege of spending some quality time with Fred Stork, a 95 year old member of our congregation who is presently at Potomac Valley Health Care Center making his transition from here to his next home. You may remember Fred, who several Thanksgiving Days ago sang with me his song for Thanksgiving at the close of our traditional Thursday service. You may have also seen Fred singing in the Chancel Choir, being helped to his place by Don Cosman, his fellow choir singer and good friend. Fred has loved being in the Chancel Choir since he moved in with his daughter Cathy Waters some five years ago, and she brought him to Damascus Church.
Fred is a bright man. Fred is smart. Fred is a lyricist and composer. Fred is a gifted photographer. Fred has a great wit, and a tremendous imagination. He is a great story teller, and can remember details with uncanny preciseness. Fred has a zest for life, and is not afraid of engaging anyone in conversation in any place. Fred has traveled the world and knows something about everything, and enjoys bringing his observations to light. But above all Fred is a Christian, and he sees himself as a follower of Christ. He attributes most of Christian formation to his father and mother and their wonderful nurturing presence in his life.
Fred was reared on a nice estate with horses and all the amenities of upper class society. He had all kinds of important people come to his house for dinner at his family table. Sports, music, the arts, times at the theatre were all part of his upbringing, and he loved the way he was surrounded by the best of life. His parents took him to strong churches and he heard the best preachers in his formative years. He was taught to sing praises to God, to pray to Christ, to care about others, and to do acts of kindness, and to make a difference in this world. All these things he attributed to his parents who both authored in him a sense of the holy and the need to worship and interact with the divine. They also shaped in him the other half of the coin which is to love your neighbor as yourself. His mother and his father were the matriarch and patriarch of his faith. We could easily say that they were Abraham and Sarah to him, the spiritual father and mother from which he took life’s meaning. O that we all could say the same about our fathers and mothers, calling them our Abrahams and Sarahs, and attributing to them the foundational spiritual lights for our living.
This is precisely the leading we are getting from the Genesis 12 passage that we were given in our lectionary this morning. The writer is telling us that Sarah and Abraham were blessed and chosen to be a blessing for their faithfulness to God. What did they do? They simply heard the voice of God in their hearts, worshipped him, and left the country of Haran at God’s invitation to make their way to Canaan. Commentators are quick to point out that chapter 12 in Genesis is quite unique to the book. Before chapter 12 we hear the story of how God made every thing “good.” Then we hear how the human creatures messed it all. Adam and Eve disobeyed and had to leave the garden. Cain killed his brother out of jealousy. The people attempted to build a tower in Babel to reach God, and they had to be struck down. Noah and his family on the ark with all the animals were the last resort to save the world that had become so corrupted that God could not tolerate the behavior. Chapter 12 comes at the end of this rather morbid primeval history telling how people were separated because of their arrogant attempt to create a culture without God. Chapter 12 and the end of Chapter 11 allude to a migration of Terah, the father of Abraham and his family, leaving Ur, stopping in Haran, and then moving toward Canaan, what amounts to a very old trade route. Abraham and Sarah simply keep on going toward Canaan, in obedience to Yahweh, the voice of God they heard calling them. Their being chosen is not because of some great performance, not some unique conquering for God, not a history of fighting off evil assailants, but merely listening to God and doing what God asks. This is a turning point in the Bible of both the Old and New Testaments, for God is uniquely rewarding a couple who are being given the wherewithal to be a blessing to the “ground” people, adamah, meaning the people created from the dust of the ground. What Sarah and Abraham are being given is a new attempt from God to reconstitute the harmony of creation, to rebuild the people made of dust into a spiritual family that loves God singularly. Notice that our spiritual mother and father stop along the way to Canaan, to build altars, to make sacrifices, and to acknowledge their dependence on God who has made on peoples and nations from dust. Their faithfulness in wanting to remain “right” with Yahweh is the focal point of this chapter and its power in the midst of many appalling stories of the denial of God’s presence.
Sarah and Abraham become the symbols of God’s decision to dwell with the faithful, not matter what their mistakes and misguiding gestures. (We have only to think of Abraham’s telling the Pharaoh that Sarah was his sister in Egypt, to save Abraham’s life. The bitter outcome meant that Abraham and Sarah were thrown out of Egypt, but Yahweh never retracted or even renegotiated his love and guidance for the two.) They were spiritual parents, even when they made mistakes and were briefly misguided. God saw in them a right relationship with himself, and kept his promise, even in the face of Sarah’s barrenness. All the generations to come were reminded that God’s covenant with these two has never been severed or altered. Abraham and Sarah remain the parents of the spiritual “ground people” for all the time to come.
St. Paul is most forthright about letting all his peers know that Sarah and Abraham remain the same holy parents and “ground” makers of faith even after at least 1700 years. In the fourth chapter of Romans we hear Paul’s words with defining strength. “That famous promise God gave Abraham-that he and his children would possess the earth- was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and God’s way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all, (Sarah, mother of us all), they are not our racial parents- that’s reading the story backwards. They are our faith parents. We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in scripture. God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples. Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word made something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do.” (Romans 4, The Message)
This is still true today. Abraham and Sarah remain the spiritual parents we must have if we are to walk with Jesus Christ. They exhibit for us the kind of spiritual disposal to letting God have the front and back door of our lives. They teach us that everything depends on having Jesus the Christ call the shots, shape the attitudes, determine the amount of time spent on everything, and spark the enthusiasm we have for spiritual things. Sarah and Abraham create in us a disposition that says less of me, and more of you Lord. Sarah and Abraham call us from the shouts and demands of every other life draining activity and behavior, and put us back at their table where they feed us the best spiritual refreshment and life giving foods they have known for nearly four thousand years. In much the same way that Jesus in our Gospel lesson today went to the tax collector’s home and had a meal with sinners, so Abraham and Sarah make us most comfortable to be with those who are needing to know Jesus, wanting his wondrous fellowship, and hoping that his promise will make them new and better. That’s the kind of parents we have in Sarah and Abraham, and on this day when we celebrate a family festival, that’s the kind of matriarch and patriarch we need to emulate, remember as feast together, and allow to shape our every word and action in this place. So Abraham, so Sarah, be present on this day and keep us at your life giving table. And Fred, may you soon be welcomed at the eternal table where your saints feast forever.
