Advent 2014 “The Bible in 25 Days” Day 3 – Genesis 12. “Go, you!” As difficult as it may be for us to understand in today’s context, I don’t think it would be possible to summarize the Bible adequately without some mention of the “Promised Land”. No, I won’t get into modern-day Zionism (pro or con), but the story of the Promised Land is critical both as a historical reality and as part of the Bible’s overarching narrative of creation, sin and redemption. And so we come to the first recipient of the “promise”, Abraham – but here still known as Abram. (If any are curious, the name change in Hebrew is from, roughly, “exalted father” to “father of a multitude”.) (Incidentally, this will be the last chapter of the book of Genesis in our 25-day summary, which still makes the one book of Genesis, out of 66 books of the Bible, responsible for a full 12% of this exercise. But as its name implies, Genesis is indeed foundational on many fronts – even as we skip over such seminal stories as the Flood, the Tower of Babel and the foundation of Israel.) So far as we know from Genesis, there is nothing especially “special” about Abram at the beginning of his story. According to a longstanding Jewish tradition, Abram’s father, Terach, was an idol-maker, which would make for quite the ironic pedigree for the patriarch of virtually all modern monotheism. But for whatever reason, God chooses to “appear” (literally, “become seen”) to Abram with a command that is both exceedingly simple and impossibly difficult. (Think for a moment on the contrast with Cain, in Genesis 4, who spoke with God face-to-face as though this were the most natural and ordinary thing in the world!) God’s first two words to Abram (in Hebrew, “lekh lekha”, which also forms the Hebrew title for this section of Genesis) are difficult to translate into English. Perhaps the best approximation is, “Go you!” – not in the ”rah-rah” sense that a cheerleader or motivational speaker might give encouragement, but rather as an indication that the “going” demanded is not so much about the destination, as it is to, for, and about Abram himself. Both here and going forward, the real point of the story of the Promised Land is never actually about the physical land in itself, but that God is choosing a person (and in later generations, a people) – the point is never the “where”, but always the “who”. In the “going”, however, Abram is to leave behind everything of the life he has known previously – “your land, your family, and the house of your ancestors”. The demand is very similar to the one, many years later, that Jesus would make of the rich man who asked “What must I do to get into God’s kingdom?” – “Sell everything you have, give the money to the poor, and then come, follow me!” (That’s one verse that even the most rigid of fundamentalists will beg off from taking “literally”, or at least protest that it was not meant to apply to him, personally, in context!) Yet, in truth, I actually think that this is the demand God still makes of all of us who would truly know and follow God in this life. Not that we necessarily need “literally” to abandon our human families and possessions completely, but to turn to God from within this very non-God-following world requires a complete reinvention of our minds, our emotions, our education, and all of the “conventional wisdom” the world has to offer us – including much, I am afraid, that today comes to us in full force from “Christian” sources. (But we can leave that contention for now as there will be plenty of opportunity to discuss it as we move forward.) And what does Abram get in return for the “going”? Nothing but the promise that he will be “blessed” – and in fact, seven times blessed, if you count up the total number of statements of blessing in verses 2 and 3. In Genesis 4, Cain was “cursed” (the only human being to be given this designation as a result of personal sin) and promised sevenfold vengeance if anyone dared to remove him from his present life; now Abram, in return for making a “clean break” with his past life, is sevenfold blessed. (In my limited experience with the Bible, few such parallels are coincidences; instead, I believe we are here being shown very purposefully the real reason behind Abram’s call – to begin the long and painful process of reversing the “curses” brought about by the sins and failings of the first human beings, and compounded by those of every human being since.) That the world remains painfully dark and cursed is seen clearly enough in the story which concludes our chapter (which, in truth, had little to do with the reason for my selection of this chapter, but I think it’s instructive nonetheless). Cain’s murder of Abel rocked the very foundation of the human species as relational beings; by Abram’s time, murder has become so widespread in the world that Abram is compelled to lie about his relationship with his wife for fear of himself being murdered in Egypt (a place, incidentally, which you will note that God did NOT specifically instruct him to go). And what is the consequence of Abram’s lie? He becomes rich. (That’s right. Go ahead and read the story again.) Yes, the founder of our faith (and the faith of monotheists throughout the world) became wealthy and famous as a result of false pretense. (One might wonder whether some today have taken this particular aspect of his example too literally to heart, in their zeal to emulate his faith – but perhaps that’s neither here nor there.) God chooses imperfect people. (In point of fact, there are no other kinds of people that God COULD choose.) And so we, too, however conscious we may be of our own imperfection and inadequacy, must wrestle with our own place in the world, and God’s call upon ourselves to follow in Abraham’s footsteps so that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed”. But in order to do that, whatever else we might need to do, we can’t ever become complacent and stand pat with what we are and what we have. Go, you.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 16:16:44 +0000
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