Sermon for October 11

The Reading

Deuteronomy 5.1-21 : 6: 4-9

Moses convened all Israel, and said to them:   Hear, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances that I am addressing to you today; you shall learn them and observe them diligently. The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. Not with our ancestors did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today. The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the fire. (At that time I was standing between the Lord and you to declare to you the words of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain.) And he said:

 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation* of those who love me and keep my commandments.

 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

 Honour your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

  

You shall not murder.

  

Neither shall you commit adultery.

  

Neither shall you steal.

  

Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbour.

  

Neither shall you covet your neighbour’s wife.

Neither shall you desire your neighbour’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Sermon for October 11

Over the past few weeks, we have gone through about 1000 years of ancient history and teaching stories as reported in the biblical books of Genesis and Exodus.  We started with creation and walked together through God’s communications with Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isasc, Jacob, Joseph and Moses.  Last week, we heard about the start of the exodus journey out of slavery in Egypt. God called to Moses from a burning bush that was not consumed, saying “I have heard the cries of my suffering people and will set them free”.  This week, we see one of the last parts of that exodus journey, a trip that was filled with plagues, doubts, brutality, joy and struggle.  Throughout this time,  God makes agreements with people, promising “I will be your God and you will be my people”. As time goes on, the agreement becomes conditional,  “you will be my people, a great nation, if you obey my laws”.  When we think of God’s law, we think of the 10 commandments, which we hear God give to the people for the first time in this morning’s reading. They are only one part of this law though. There are hundreds of different laws that God gives to the people of Israel. The laws covered everything, what to eat, where and how to live, how to worship, rites of passage, how to atone for sins and how to mark holy holidays.  The law created a sense of identity for the people of Israel. Their entire lives are structured around God. The law was a gift that, when kept, constantly reminded the community that they were God’s beloved people, the people who were set free from slavery in Egypt though God’s powerful intervention in the world.   

Over 1000 years later, Jesus will be asked a very controversial and tricky question “what is the greatest commandment”. Jesus responds,  Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.   Jesus knows if you do those two things you will keep the entirety of the law.  (If you loved God, why would you worship other gods, ignore the Sabbath, disobey instructions for daily life, or use the Lord’s name in vain. If you loved your neighbor as yourself, why would you steal, disrespect parents, murder, lie, or break promises) 

Today, almost 2000 years after Jesus has this conversation about the law, things are very different.  Since its early days, Christianity has not centered on the law.  We do not avoid pork., shellfish, and other prohibited foods,  we have no restrictions on who we can come in contact or communicate with, we have no animal sacrifices, we have almost no concern for things being ritually clean or unclean.  In the very early Christian community, there was what I like to call the first big church fight. Then it was over the question “if you needed to keep the law in order to be a Christian”. On one side, was Peter and James who believed it was necessary for Christians to keep the entire law. On the other side there was Paul and his group of missionaries, who said the law was a huge obstacle to sharing the good news of Jesus, dead and risen for the forgiveness of our sins, with non-jewish people.  After Peter has a vision of God declaring all animals clean and witnessing the Holy Spirit descend on people who did not keep the Old Testament law, it was settled. Followers of Jesus would not be under the law. 

There was a new covenant, an agreement based on grace. We know we are God’s beloved people because of Jesus. We are reminded of God’s power and interference with the world when we love God and love neighbor. 

The 10 commandments though, are still around, still a guide for how billions of people try to live, still part of our Sunday school, still hanging in our courthouses,  part history and part something we all feel like we should do.  

For Martin Luther, the founder of our church tradition (and many other protestant churches) the 10 commandments are not a checklist used to gauge how good or bad we are.  The 10 commandments play a significant, other role in our faith.  For Luther, these laws serve two purposes.  One to reveal our sin to us, exposing the fact that we cannot save ourselves by obeying them and two, they drive us to the cross, to Jesus death and resurrection, to the real place of our salvation. 

The Ten commandments play a central role in Luther’s small catechism, a pamphlet and guide he wrote to teach people the faith.  In the end of October, 1517, Martin Luther started the protestant reformation by posting the 95 theses.  This was a list of complaints that Luther had about the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and a call for a debate.  Luther felt like the 95 issues he had posted about the teachings and traditions of the church were interfering with people experiencing the comfort and joy that comes from knowing we are loved by God.  These issues centered around the question of church authority, pastoral care for the faithful, the clear teaching of God’s message, the clear announcing of God’s forgiveness and the matter of indulgences, which the church was selling to help people escape the punishments of sin.  Luther was not the first person to say these things but he started at a time ready for change and had access to the newly created printing press to help spread his ideas.   About 30 years later, Luther and other reformers had split from the Roman Church and new Christian traditions were developing.  As part of leading and building this new church, Luther and others went on visits, stopping in different churches all around the places where the reformation was talking hold.  The visits were meant for two reasons, one, to encourage the faithful and two, to take a survey of what people knew, believed and did in their daily lives.   After these visits are concluded, Luther reports:     How pitiable, so help me God, were the things I saw: the common man, especially in the villages, knows practically nothing of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are almost entirely incompetent and unable to teach. Yet all the people are supposed to be Christians, have been baptized, and receive the Holy Sacrament even though they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments and live like poor animals of the barnyard and pigpen. What these people have mastered, however, is the fine art of tearing all Christian liberty to shreds.

Luther was not content to simply list and complain about the things he saw, as though they were unavoidable signs of the times that he was powerless to stop. Luther goes on to write the small catechism or teaching as a guide meant to instruct people in the church’s teachings (after all, how could anyone experience the joy and comfort of the Gospel, if they had no idea what that joy and comfort was or how we receive it).  In the introduction to the small catechism, Luther writes, The deplorable, miserable conditions which I recently observed when visiting the parishes have constrained and pressed me to put this catechism of Christian doctrine into this brief, plain, and simple form.

The small catechism begins with the 10 commandments. For each one, Luther offers an explanation and an example of what obeying the commandment really looks like. Each explanation begins with the question “what is this” or “what does this mean” and the answer starts with the declaration, “we are to fear and love God”.  After that each commandment is made more difficult.  As people learned and thought about keeping this law, It would be impossible, The commandments reveal our sin to us.  After getting to number 10, the reader realizes they will not earn their salvation by keeping these rules.  The faithful are driven to the cross instead, to God’s gift of grace.  Luther’s small catechism ends with the sacraments and daily prayers, the places where we encounter that grace.   

Sermon for October 4, 2015

The Reading 

Exodus 1:8-14 and  3:1-15

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.’ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labour. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

(After 400 years of slavery in Egypt) 

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ He said further, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’

But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you”, and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’* He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I am has sent me to you.” ’ God also said to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “The Lord,* the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you”: This is my name for ever, and this my title for all generations.

The message

 

Our reading this morning is packed with things to talk about.  There are complex philosophical and theological ideas around God’s self-identification as “I am” and “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. “I am” reminds of us of the vast and eternal being of God, both revealed and unknown.  “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” is referred to by Jesus as a way of showing God’s promise of resurrection and eternal life. In addition to these theological ideas, we witness the first steps in one of the Old Testaments most significant events, the exodus journey of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Along with these steps, we see even more examples of God keeping God’s promises and covenants. Over the past few weeks, we heard of God keeping the promises that Abraham and Sarah would have a child in their old age and that God would always be present with the world. Today we witness the promise that God’s people would multiply and become a great nation kept despite many people forgetting this promise during 400 years of slavery in a foreign land.   In the middle of all this, something amazing happens again and again, God reveals, “I know their suffering and I have come down to deliver them”. God knows us, hears us, and can and will interfere in the world.  At the center of this story is God responding to the cries of those in need and interfering with the world.  It happens in unexpected ways, through unexpected people at unexpected times.

As I have done for the past few weeks, I am going to start with some background on this story, to recap some of the things we have talked about over the past few weeks and fill in some gaps.   Abraham who first hears God’s promise of care and greatness, and Sarah, one of his wives, miraculously have a son Isaac in their old age. (no one thought this would happen, in fact Sarah laughs when she hears the promise).   Jacob is one of Isaac’s children. Jacob has 12 sons who become the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons, is betrayed by his jealous brothers.  He is left for dead in the wilderness. After a series of events, Joseph ends up surviving but a slave in Egypt. There, things get worse and he ends up in jail due to a false accusation.  While in jail another series of events gives Joseph a chance to interpret a dream for the pharaoh. The dream involves 7 fat cows and 7 skinny cows.  Joseph says the dream is a message that means there will be 7 years of abundance followed by 7 years of famine in the land (personally I always thought it was a little obvious but maybe that’s because Joseph and I share a name). 

The pharaoh and Egypt prepare for the famine by storing and saving during the years of abundance.  In thanksgiving for Joseph’s wisdom, he becomes a deeply respected leader in the kingdom, entrusted with great responsibility and a friend of the Pharaoh. When Joseph’s brothers come begging for help from Egypt, they are shocked to realize they are standing before their brother Joseph, who holds the fate of them and their entire family in his hands.  No one knew this is how God would save Abraham’s descendants and the promises made to them)  Joseph, with an explanation of divine providence, tells  his brothers,  no one knew this but it was God’s plan for me to be betrayed and enslaved, it was the only way they could now come to Egypt and be saved from starvation. They reconcile and Joseph brings his family to Egypt, where they settle.  At the time, the Pharaoh cannot do enough to provide for them, sending a huge amount of goods and help to them during the journey to Egypt. 

Years later, there is new leadership in Egypt. They do not know Joseph and do not particularly care about his role in their history. The people of Israel go from being welcomed guests to being an enslaved and abused people. They languish in this state for almost 400 years.

This story of Moses and the Exodus, the freedom of the Israelites from slavery and suffering in Egypt starts with God’s promise  “I know their suffering and I have come down to deliver them” At that time, no one knew what God’s plan is. Over the next few years, God will send Moses to the Pharaoh to demand “let my people go”, God will send the 12 plagues, everything from hail, darkness and pests to the death of all the first born of Egypt, God will part the red sea and let the Israelites cross on dry land. No one had any idea this is how God would save them. 

I do not want anyone here to think all we are called to do is wait for God to act in mysterious ways. We are called to actively look for God’s message in joy and sorrow, to discern what God is doing in the world. We are called to listen closely, hear God speaking and then act in faith. Though all of the exodus, the people doubt, fear, complain and question God’s work.  Even Moses will constantly make excuses to not follow God’s way.  Today, we hear two  Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” and  “what if they ask me, “What is God’s name?” what shall I say to them? Later Moses will make other excuses including “I am not very articulate and I don’t know what to say”.  To each protest or excuse, God says the same thing, “Trust me, we got this, I’ll be with you”.   That is exactly what God says to our excuses, when we feel shy to share the Gospel, God says “ We got this, ill be with you”, when we feel anxious to help, God  says :We got this, ill be with you: when we feel powerless against great wrongs, God says “we got this, ill be with you, when we feel frightened, God says “we got this, ill be with you”, we have the invitation to hear God speak and act in faith.    

 
At the start of the reading, we have an opportunity to hear God speaking and to act in faith.  The 400 years of slavery in Egypt starts when an empire deals with immigration in harsh and violent ways, an ancient people with great power acts out of fear and abuses the people welcomed into their borders and entrusted to their care.  Today, it feels like there is a little bit of Egypt in all of the world’s great powers.  In our nation, all over Europe and other places, we hear many leaders, candidates and citizens saying there are too many immigrants, we are losing our power and identity, we need to build a wall to keep others out, we do not have the resources to sustain this system, we need to protect and maintain what we have, we cannot trust them and we must watch for the danger of enemies within. Basically, we constantly hear the same things that the Egyptians said almost 3000 years ago and in some places, people are getting close to doing what the Egyptians did 3000 years ago.  As we think about the situation of refugees from Syria and other places and our debates about immigration, we need to remember that we have the empire, the power and the resources, We are Egypt and God tells us not to act like they did

Sermon for September 27

The reading:

Genesis 32:22-30

The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

The message

This morning, we continue with the narrative lectionary and our journey through the Old Testament. Over the past few weeks, we have looked at one of the creation stories and the story of Abraham and Sarah.   Today, we continue to walk together through the stories of God’s first communications with the world.  We are now a few years after God appears to Abraham and Sarah as three visitors.  These visitors are greeted and well cared for. As they leave, they share the promise that Sarah will have a child.  Sarah is shocked and laughs at the very idea of this. Her and Abraham are old, at the end of their lives and had given up on having a child decades ago.  One year and one son named Issac later, Sarah and Abraham learn that God keeps God’s promises.   A few years later, Issac, this miraculous child and his wife Rebecca become the parents of Jacob, who is the main character in this story and this part of God’s communication with the world. 

Jacob becomes the third person to enter a covenant and agreement with God.  (the first two were Noah and Abraham).  In Jacob’s case the promises God makes are a repeat and reinforcement of the promises made to Abraham, that his family line would become a great nation, special to God, obedient and cared for.  Jacob had twelve sons and at least one daughter, by his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and by their servants Bilhah and Zilpah.  (I don’t hear too many people talking about this common way of life at the time, when they talk about biblical marriage). Each of Jacob’s sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamim, becomes the patriarch of one the twelve tribes of Israel. 

Jacob’s life has some aspects to it that are not really what we would think of as right or moral and parts of the story play out like a contemporary drama or even a soap opera. There are time of betrayal and serious lies.  First, Jacob should not be that important in his family. He is the younger brother of his twin Esau.  As the younger child, Jacob would not be entitled to much of anything. He tricks the birthright away from Esau (trading it for some food when Esau is starving) and then tricking his now blind father Issac into blessing him instead of Esau. Throughout the stories of Jacob and his family, there is a constant sort of wrestling between what is right or wrong, good or evil, part of God’s larger plan or humans acting badly.  Perhaps the best example of this is the story of Jacob’s son Joseph.  Joseph’s brothers are jealous of him so they leave him to die in the wilderness, return home and tell Jacob his son was killed by wild animals. Joseph does not die. He ends up being picked up and turned into a slave in Egypt. There, he interprets a dream for the pharaoh which predicts 7 years of abundance followed by 7 years of famine. This news allows Egypt to prepare for the coming struggle and Joseph becomes a powerful and deeply respected leader of Egypt.  During the famine, Joseph is able to bring his whole family into Egypt, where they are able to survive.  Joseph tells his brothers, while it was their plan to kill him, it was God’s bigger plan for their actions to save their family.

 

That idea of wrestling with how to be faithful in a complex and broken world, with how to understand God’s love and presence in a place where things do not go how we feel they should,  brings us to what I like to think of as the world’s first recorded wrestling match. I want to share a little about when this happens.  Jacob and his wives (the sisters Rachael and Leah) have spent twenty years staying with and serving the women’s father Laban.  At this time, they have nothing to show for it.  Jacob and his family takes all of the property from Laban and tries to flee to Jacob’s father Issac and his land.  Laban chases them and during the conflict, they come to an agreement to permanently go their separate ways.  The wrestling match happens during their trip back to Issac.   

These few verses in Genesis are amongst the strangest in the bible. The Hebrew language is not quite clear on who or what exactly Jacob is wrestling with and neither am I. People have said, its an angel, the angry guardian angel of Esau who lost his birthright, God, some sort of spiritual being, even a pre-incarnation Jesus. With that said, Jacob seems to believe he was wrestling with God.  Peniel, the name given to the place where this encounter happens,  expresses something like “I have seen the face of the Lord and lived”).  Israel, the name that Jacob receives at the end of the encounter, literally means “he who struggles with God”

This story came up once during Vacation Bible School a few years. At the end of the program,  one of the children from Rainbow ran over and told me she forgot her plush bear in the classroom (which was a big deal).  I walked over with her to open the doors and find it.  During our walk, she asked me a really great question,  “If God is so powerful why couldn’t he just beat that guy up”. It took me a minute to realize she was talking about the reading we just heard (apparently they recently talked about it in Sunday school at her church).  The only answer I could come up with was that well God was not trying to beat up or hurt Jacob, God was trying to teach Jacob and all people a lesson.

Now, a few years later, I have had a lot of time to think about this but I still do not have a better answer. I would like to end by talking a little about what I think that lesson is (at VBS, the little girl didn’t let me go that easily, her next question was “what lesson”).  This story of Jacob wrestling with God is a physical, real illustration of something we all know and often feel.  Faith ain’t easy but God will be with us in our struggles.  We often imagine we are the only ones who struggle, that we are not like the great saints. The truth is, the history of almost every person of faith, historically celebrated or unknown, has these times of wrestling with their doubt, faith communities and even God,  Martin Luther, the founder of our church (and many other protestant traditions)  wrestled with these things so much, he gave the experience a name  “Anfechtungen”  (At this point I had to turn to some of our German members and find out how to actually say this word and talked about Luther's personal struggles with his faith and work, which were numerous)

We see the universal realness of struggling with God in these stories and we can see hope in how Luther pulled out of these moments.  Luther found help in Scripture, baptism, communion and the “fellowship of the church”  Luther went on to say that the church and the ministry of the Word were instituted for this purpose, that hands may be joined together and one may help another. If the prayer of one doesn’t help, the prayer of another will.”.  From this story of Jacob wrestling with God, we are reminded that when we feel like we are engaged and caught in doubts, struggles, uncertainty, despair or mourning, we have help. Most importantly to wrestle with God in the world means to know God is with us in the world.     

 

Sermon for September 20

We continue with our introduction to the Narrative Lectionary.

The reading:

 

Genesis 18:1-15,21:1-7

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, ‘My lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you have said.’ And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, ‘Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.’ Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

  

They said to him, ‘Where is your wife Sarah?’ And he said, ‘There, in the tent.’ Then one said, ‘I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.’ And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’ The Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, and say, “Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?” Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.’ But Sarah denied, saying, ‘I did not laugh’; for she was afraid. He said, ‘Oh yes, you did laugh.’

The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.’ And she said, ‘Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.’

The message 

Last week, we heard one of the creation stories from Genesis 2, about God breathing life into us and being present with a prefect and then a broken and suffering world. This week, we just heard the story of Abraham and Sarah having a child in their old age.  A lot of things happened between creation and this joyful event.  The biggest involve Noah, the flood, the renewal and God’s promise to not do that again. After the flood God makes a covenant (promise or agreement) with Noah  

 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:  “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:  I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

The story of Noah and the flood ends with a covenant. The story of Abraham begins with a covenant.  Centuries after the flood, the Lord once again communicates with the world. This time, it starts with God asking Abram to do something very frightening and difficult, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. And God promising “I will make you into a great nation,  and I will bless you;I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you,  and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” 

After this, Abram moves his family where the Lord said, During the trip, there are challenges, obstacles and successes, God travels with them, continues to communicate, make agreements with and promises to Abram. To show the new relationship between God and people, at one point Abram’s name is changed to Abraham. in Genesis 17 we hear

As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, And you will be the father of a multitude of nations. "No longer shall your name be called Abram, But your name shall be Abraham; For I will make you the father of a multitude of nations

This morning, we hear another promise central to the story of Abraham and his family, In this case, the Lord seems to appear as three man and issues the bizzare, impossible promise ‘I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.  Sarah overhears this promise and does the first thing that comes to mind, she laughs, a silent, internal, yeah right, sort of laugh.  One year and one son later, Sarah and Abraham realizes that God keeps God’s promises. Sarah gives birth to Issac (who is part of one of the bible’s most challenging stories: years later, God will order Abraham to sacrifice Issac and stop him at the last minute, accepting an animal sacrifice instead).

  

It can be hard for us to really understand what it means for God to keep promises. The first challenge is that we often break our own promises. We live in time and place where divorces, no shows, deceitful statements and broken promises abound. Sometimes it is for good reasons, sometimes, there are things that happen beyond our control, and other times, we decide fulfilling our promise will be too costly, forget or simply do not do it.  We often promise to help people do something only to find out we cannot do so. 

Professionally and personally, I have always prided myself on keeping commitments, on being where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be there and doing what I say. About 2 years ago, I ended up going to the hospital for an illness.  It came at a very bad time, I was scheduled to preach at my friend’s installation on long island that afternoon and fly off to India the next day for a mission trip. After the first hour or two in the ER, I realized those things were not going to happen. I felt bad, this was a big disappointment to my friend, his church and the people who planned and were going on the trip to India.  No one blamed me for this, people understand that emergencies, accidents and illnesses happen.  That is our usual idea of promises, we do what we can, we try our best and sometimes we just cannot do it.  That’s not how God works though. God always keep promises. Nothing will come up that can stop God from doing what God says.  We are asked to trust if God says it, these things will happen. 

That is often the second challenge we face.  God makes some unbelievable promises. Today’s story of God telling an old, barren woman that she will have a child is just one of hundreds of examples where God promises incredible, impossible things. God tells weak nations they will defeat empires, slaves they will be set free, prisoners will walk out of their cells, great walls will fall, sins will be forgiven, peace will come to earth, prayers will be answered, Jesus has prepared a place for us when we die, God will restore all things. God tells a world filled with violence there will be peace, tells a world of inequality that all are loved, and tells people in darkness they will see a great light. God speaks of unity in a world of separation, speaks of  light to a world spiraling in the darkness of greed, abuse and sin.  We are not called to just believe these things happened in the past, We are called to believe the God who gave a child to Abram and Sarah will do these things as well.

Our faith centers around these promises, they are the words that bring us hope in times of struggle, comfort at the end of life, release when we are burdened, wisdom when we are confused, peace when we are anxious, guidance when we are lost and joy when we are mourning.