Genesis 15:1-12,17-18
But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,
“After these things” the first lesson begins. After what things? Well, after we meet Abram and Sarai for the first time and find out that Sarai can’t have children. After, they go with Abram’s dad toward Canaan, but settled down along the way in Haran. Still… no kids. After, God told Abram to get up and go to a land that God would show him. Still no kids. After they got to Canaan, and God told Abram, “I’m going to give all this land to your children.” Still no kids.
After they went to Egypt because of a famine. After Abram tried to pass off his wife as his sister because he thought Pharaoh would kill him, so Pharoah took her as his wife, but then found out she wasn’t Abrams sister and they got thrown out of Egypt. “After all those things…” today’s lesson begins and after all those things, still no land and after all those things no kids.
After all those things… they have the promise of the land, but still no land. After all those things they have the promise of children but still no children… STILL… after ALL THOSE THINGS… no kids. So Abram is, I think understandably, thinking that after all those things, this promise is never gonna happen, so he says, “God. Yo! Eliezer is going to get my stuff and my stuff is going to Eliezer! BECAUSE NO KIDS!” He says it two ways! He’s not messing around. Then God replies, “You’ll have your own heir. Look at the stars. That’s how many.” God answers Abram two ways. God’s not messing around either.
So HOW, after “After All Those Things” with the promise still unfulfilled and Sarai still without a child and Abram without an heir… HOW can Abram POSSIBLY still believe? Frankly, I don’t think he could! Except for the fact that God “reckoned” to Abram the ability to believe! Abram could not, by his own reason or strength, believe in this outlandish promise; but it was God’s Spirit that called, enlightened, and sanctified him and allowed him to keep the faith. (And if that reminded you of Luther’s explanation of the third article of the Apostles Creed, you’d be right. Abram was Lutheran, Sarai was Episcopalian.) Abram could believe in that outlandish promise ONLY because along with the promise, God also gave him the gift of faith so that he could believe that promise!
Some traditions want this to be a transaction. Land and kid in exchange for belief. But that misses the whole point of this story! The whole point of this story is that ALL of it… the land, the child, the heir, the generations to come… ALL of it… is an unconditional gift from God… including… INCLUDING the ability to trust that these outlandish promises that go against all rationality and all of Abram’s personal experience... of ALL THOSE THINGS… will still come true! If you need any more proof that this was a gift and not a transaction, just look at the next, strange, and mystical part of this story.
God tells Abram to prepare the standard, high stakes, covenant set up. In those days you didn’t go to the attorney’s office. In those days people making a deal would cut animals in half and then walk through the pieces together, both saying in effect, if I break my part of this deal, may what happened to these animals happen to me! So Abram set it all up and then fell into a deep and supernatural sleep. In that mystical state, Abram saw smoke and fire, a.k.a. God, walk between the pieces and seal the deal. But where was Abram? If it was a quid pro quo transaction, BOTH parties would walk through! But see, this is NOT a two-sided covenant with Abram trading faith for a promise. THIS is a ONE-sided covenant where God gives an unconditional promise requiring nothing in return! Abram was in a deep sleep when the deal went down! This outlandish promise AND the ability to believe it is an unconditional, totally free gift from God for Abram, for Sarai, for their descendants… as many as the stars in the sky... and for us as well, who are God’s children, adopted into the family through Christ in Baptism.
So what does all that mean for you and me today? For today, I think this means that God has given us the ability to believe in God's outlandish promises like peace, even when time and experience tell us peace is never going to happen. What it means is that God has given us the ability to live in hope, even when hope seems a foolish exercise in a world at torn apart. What it means is that God has given us, as a complete and totally free gift, the ability to believe in the insane idea, that the power of self giving love can change the world even in the face of a World War III. God has given us the outlandish and impossible promises of peace, hope, and love as well as the ability to believe that they ALL WILL COME TO BE even when all the evidence of the world around us says you'd be a fool to believe it. So my fellow heirs of God’s outlandish promises, let us live like Abram and Sarai did. Keep walking with the promise until the promise of Peace is fulfilled. Keep living in the promise of hope, until the promise of hope is fulfilled. And keep spreading love, until the entire world is swallowed up in God’s promise of love. It WILL happen, and we can believe it, because God has given us the ability to believe that with God, all impossible things are possible. Amen.
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