Father of a multitude
Commentary
Object:
Both the Old Testament and New Testament lections this week prominently feature the
Hebrew patriarch, Abraham. They refer to him by two different names, however. In
Paul's letter to the Romans, he is recognized as Abraham. But in the four verses of the
Genesis passage, he is referred to by the less familiar name, Abram.
It may be that some of our people already know that God changed Abram's name to Abraham. That event occurred some years after our selected passage -- Genesis 17:5 -- when God reiterated his promise to make Abraham the ancestor of many nations. But probably few of our people know the meanings of the two names. The original name, Abram, means "exalted father." The new name, Abraham, means "father of a multitude."
I wonder if Abraham was burdened by his name. We can imagine it at every age.
What boy wants to be called "exalted father"? That may seem fine -- even desirable -- when you're all grown up, but it must have been a source of at least some playful teasing when he was just seven or ten years old. Imagine how the other kids on a playground might teasingly call out, "Papa" to their peer.
Just about the time that the name should have become desirable, however, it may have become an embarrassment. Through their first years of marriage, Abram and his new bride did not produce any children. This "exalted father" was not a father at all, and so he was still likely elbowed and teased for his inaccurate name.
Eventually, the teasing must have stopped, for after a certain age it would have ceased to be funny and would have become simple cruelty. Once it was apparent to all that, for some reason, Abram and Sarai could not have children, no one with any sense would have teased him about his unfulfilled name, but still he had to live with it. Still he was called by it, awkwardly, as though his parents had named him "professor" but he had flunked out of school.
Then, in our passage, God does exactly the sort of indelicate thing that Abram's good friends would not have done. He brought the whole subject up again. And, at Abram's advanced and improbable age, God declares his intent to "make of (Abram) a great nation."
Finally, more than twenty years later, God raises the subject yet again, and this time he changes Abram's name to reflect his plans. With twenty-some more years of hopelessness and unlikelihood tacked onto poor Sarah, and with Abram as the beleaguered father of just one ill-conceived son, God announces that Abram shall henceforth be called "father of a multitude." As though the original name had not been hard enough to live with for all these years, now comes this most unfunny joke. Father of a multitude? He needed to go outside the family just to get up a good game of bridge.
Genesis 12:1-4a
Our Old Testament lection has four verses. In the first three, God speaks. In the fourth, Abraham acts. It is a tacit example, both of the quality of Abraham and of the look of faithful obedience. God says, "Go." And no sooner has God finished his instructions than "Abraham went, as the Lord had told him." It is reminiscent of the first disciples who dropped their nets and followed, without question or debate, when Jesus called them by the shores of Galilee. Within Abraham's own lifetime, as well, we are reminded of the quick and quiet obedience he exemplified when God instructed him to sacrifice his son (see Genesis 22:2-3).
If we read the passage from Abraham's perspective, we are properly struck by a great inequity in God's presentation. For we observe a grand contrast between what is made specific and what is left vague. If God had been writing a paper for school, the instructor would have red-penned one section and jotted in the margin, "Needs elaboration."
In his imagined retort, McDonnell captures an important feature of the passage: namely, the contrast between what is made specific and what is left vague.
God is quite specific about where and what Abraham will have to leave. While the familiar business practice in our day is to put additional costs in small print at the bottom or back of a promotion, God makes the cost the foremost feature. It's what he leads with. And he itemizes: "your country and your kindred and your father's house." This is poor salesmanship, indeed. But it is consistent with the one who, in the New Testament, insists that would-be disciples first "count the cost."
Meanwhile, though he is painfully specific about where and what Abraham will have to leave, God is teasingly vague about where Abraham will have to go. "To the land that I will show you" is the only destination God names. Try entering that in Google maps.
Still, God is not imperious or capricious. He is not moving old Abraham for his own amusement. No, he has a plan. And as far-fetched as it may have seemed, God reveals that plan to Abraham. Specifically -- and abundantly -- God will take the transplanted old man and turn him into a nation. He will make Abraham prosperous and significant. More than that, he will use Abraham as a kind of universal watershed: those who bless him will fall on one, lovely side, while those who curse him will land on the other, undesirable side. And, last of all, God promises to make Abraham a vessel of blessing to the whole human race.
It's an extraordinary passage.
Most people in history live and die with little or no remembrance of them just a century later. Even people of some importance and influence during their lifetimes become the answers to trivia questions just a generation or two later. It is not an easy thing to make a lasting mark -- to be known beyond your circle, and to be remembered after your time.
Here is a man who neither conquered nor ruled. He did not discover or invent. He did not even achieve very broad notoriety or influence during his lifetime, which we typically assume is a necessary precursor to being remembered after one's lifetime. Yet, 4,000 years after he died, he remains a globally famous figure: a religious paragon, a cherished patriarch, and even a familiar name in the world of geo-politics.
Still, lest we forget, there is in the passage a character more remarkable than Abraham. There is this God. A God who deigns, time and again, to do his business with human beings and through human beings. A God, by whose providence and grace one anonymous old man was selected to impact the whole world. And a God whose loving purpose and goal is to bless "all the families of the earth."
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
In our New Testament epistle, we return to the same man who was at the center of our Old Testament lection: Abraham. In this letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul is laying out the fundamentals of the gospel, and he turns to the example of the faithful patriarch in order to illustrate his point.
The text can be preached with several different contexts in mind.
On the one hand, we might preach the immediate historical and theological context of the passage. The apostle Paul encountered so often those Jewish Christians who, habitually, had a reflex reliance on the law. It was, after all, God's standard, the expression of his will, and the articulation of his covenant with his people. They found it difficult -- though necessary -- to hear Paul argue that "if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void." Our people could hear Paul's good news set in the story of an earnest Jewish Christian still bound by the law.
Alternatively, the text could be preached entirely within an Old Testament context. The key issues in Paul's argument, after all, are both rooted in the Old Testament: the law of Moses and the faith of Abraham. We could preach a sermon that tells both stories, side- by-side, and demonstrates where each one leads. Paul sees that the law brings wrath and condemnation, while Abraham's faith brings the gracious fulfillment of God's generous promises.
Finally, the text could be preached within a personal-experience context, for it goes to the heart of an individual's relationship with God.
In this regard, one can hardly read our selected passage without thinking of that tortured sixteenth-century soul: the German monk, Martin Luther, as stated in Luther's Works. Weighed down by his own sense of guilt and an inescapable image of God as a holy and angry judge, Luther pored over this letter to the Romans while preparing his lectures. There, in the texts he was so dutifully studying, he stumbled across his liberation. He later recalled, "I beat importunately upon Paul [in Romans] ... There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith ... Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself."
What was Luther's personal liberation, of course, became a widespread experience, as so much of European Christianity rediscovered the gospel truth of justification by faith. Our opportunity this week is to bring that same good news to the people within earshot of us.
Paul notes that, "to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due." For some of our people, we might do well to explore that distinction between wages and gift, for they may function with a wages' mentality. Some, overestimating their own goodness, may presume that heaven is the due reward for deserving folks like them. Others, underestimating God's grace, may presume that great, earnest human effort is required to earn one's salvation. Still others, like Luther, feel so altogether undeserving that their wages' mentality has them living under a heavy cloud of condemnation. All of them need to hear that "to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness."
John 3:1-17
This week's gospel lection features perhaps the best-known verse in all of scripture: John 3:16. Our privilege is to preach that familiar truth within its somewhat less familiar context.
The gospel of John features a series of one-on-one encounters with Jesus. Over the course of the book, we see Jesus face-to-face with Nathanael, the Samaritan woman, the crippled man by the pool, the woman caught in the act of adultery, the man born blind, Martha, Lazarus, Mary, Thomas, and Peter. And, rather early in that series, we see this episode featuring Jesus one-on-one with Nicodemus.
In stark contrast to the unlikely theologian and evangelist we meet in the next chapter, Nicodemus comes with a promising resume: "a Pharisee" and "a leader of the Jews." Unhappily, though he starts so much better, he does not end as well as the Samaritan woman who follows him.
We get a hint that Nicodemus will be a disappointing character when John reports that "he came to Jesus by night." Indeed, the narrator regards it as such a telling detail that it remains the characteristic by which Nicodemus is still identified at the other end of the gospel (19:39). In a such a dualistic book, with recurring images of light and darkness, it is surely a significant and unfavorable detail about Nicodemus that he came to Jesus by night.
Another element of this passage that should be seen against the larger backdrop of the fourth gospel is the use of the phrase "the world." By my count, "the world" or "this world" appears 75 times in John. That's an average of more than three references in every chapter, which surely qualifies it as a major theme.
Among other things, we see that the world did not recognize the Word (1:10), cannot receive the Spirit (14:17), and does not know the Father (17:25); the world hated Christ and will hate his disciples (15:18-19), is a setting of persecution (16:33), and is not ultimately Christ's kingdom (18:36). With all that in mind, then, hear again this gracious word: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son."
Finally, while John 3:16 is the most famous verse, its neighbors on either side deserve more attention than they usually receive.
In verse 15, Jesus makes meaningful reference to an underrated Old Testament book. Books like Isaiah and Psalms get most of the attention when searching for messianic allusions in the Hebrew scriptures. But Jesus finds a foreshadowing of himself in the wilderness of the book of Numbers. The serpent on a pole, at first blush, seems an unlikely and undesirable symbol for the Savior. But to a snake-bit world, it is good news indeed that we need only look to the One who hangs on the cross in order to be healed.
Finally, in verse 17, Jesus expands on the reason he was sent: not to condemn the world, but "that the world might be saved through him." Here is a lovely glimpse into the heart of God. As we established above, "the world" is an ignorant place, marked by sin, and inhospitable to God. Yet, still, he is not eager to condemn it, which is justified, or to judge it, which is deserved. Rather, he is eager to save it, even though it hesitates to be saved.
Application
Two thousand years after God had changed Abram's name to Abraham, the apostle Paul saw the fulfillment of the promise.
The 99-year-old with the newly minted name had only one child's picture in his wallet. And the prospect of the "multitude" implied in God's renaming could not have seemed more implausible. Perhaps the only way that Abraham could have been less likely to generate a multitude would be if he had already been dead -- and the writer of Hebrews suggests that he was pretty close (11:12)!
Then Paul -- a descendant of Abraham -- wrote to a group of Christians in Rome. In Rome! First-century Rome seems pretty far removed from a wandering Aramean who lived and died in the backwaters of the empire two millennia earlier. Yet Paul wrote to a group of Christians in Rome, and said, "He is the father of all of us."
Now, of course, it has been yet another 2,000 years. Now, you and I turn to our congregations -- in a time and in places still further removed from that unapt old man -- and we also declare that "he is the father of us all."
How do we know that we are his descendants? Do we have the genealogy, a record of the family tree that stretches back over 4,000 years? No. What we have, instead, is that distinctive family trait: faith. More surely than a certain shaped nose or certain colored eyes, this one prominent feature proves that we are his heirs.
Abraham responded to God's promise with faith, and he received the fulfillment of that promise by faith. He became, thus, the father of all the faithful: we "who share the faith of Abraham," and who have also responded to and received the promises of God by faith.
Look around the pews in your church. Add to them all the others pews in other churches in your community this Sunday. Add to them the believers coast-to-coast and around the globe. And add to them the men and women of faith throughout the generations of church history. What a family album! He is indeed the father of a multitude.
Alternative Application
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17. "The Things God Does." The final sentence of our Romans passage is a characteristically long one. I am told, by people who know Greek better than I do, that Paul's writing is not as cumbersome in the original as it sometimes seems in translation. As it stands, though, we find in Romans -- including this particular sentence -- some writing that rebuffs the quick or casual reader. We have to go over the field several times in order to harvest all that is fruitful there.
The long sentence concludes with a subordinate clause -- a pair of phrases Paul used to describe God: "... who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist."
I am reminded of a football game some years ago in which a receiver made a most improbable catch and touchdown. Sportscaster Al Michaels, then doing play-by-play for national television, exclaimed in the middle of the action, "He did what?"
That sort of awe-filled double-take ought to be the nature of our reaction to Paul's description of God. For if we see clearly what Paul is saying, we should similarly marvel at God: "He does what?"
There is much to be said about the two ways that Paul characterizes what God does, and scripture offers us plenty of illustrative material for each. At a minimum, however, we should observe and affirm this truth: that God is not limited by reality or confined to the facts as we see them.
See the two realities Paul identifies: 1) things that are dead, and 2) things that do not exist. Then see that neither of those facts is an impediment to God. For, with a word, he can change both realities. The thing that was dead, he can make alive. And the thing that does not exist, he can call into being.
We see these powerful truths at work all through scripture, from the story of creation to the story of the empty tomb. And, particularly appropriate to our assigned passages and to Paul's present argument, we think of the example of Abraham. How improbable were God's promises, given the reality of Abraham's situation, and given the facts of his case? Yet, God is able!
Let us make this the backdrop against which we set all of our needs. Let us make this the refrain of our every prayer. This: that our God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist."
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 121
There is perhaps no better feeling than knowing that someone "has your back." Having someone's back is a term that arose from urban street fighting where a partner or ally would stay with you and protect your back in the thick of the fray. When someone has your back, you don't worry about being hit from behind. When someone has your back you can concentrate on the struggle in front of you without worrying about dangers you cannot see. When someone has your back you feel protected, secure, safe.
In God, the psalmist finds the king of all street fighters to have his back. His help doesn't merely come from a trusted compadre, it comes from the creator of the universe! "My help (emphasis on the word, "my") comes from the Lord!" The wonderful implication here is that the adversary can bring on all comers. God's on the scene. God's in charge now. No matter what comes, it can be handled.
The trick in all this, though, is trust.
Whether it's a buddy from the "hood," or the Lord God, letting someone come to your defense means you have to trust the source of the help. Think about it. Not trusting someone who has your back is pretty much the same as having two adversaries. So it is that these words come with a simple surety. Trust runs through the psalm like a drum keeping silent time. No doubt here. No wavering or wondering in this proclamation. God won't allow my foot to be moved even an inch. God doesn't slumber or sleep. God is on the job.
It would be an easy thing here to go the smoke and magic mirrors route, assuming that trusting in God is equivalent to some kind of insurance policy. It's the old quid pro quo. If I believe in God then thus and such will or won't take place. Not so. Life and death continue to flow forward bringing everything with it. Earthquakes, fires, wars, and disease will not take a holiday because of trust in God. What will evaporate, however, is the fear with which we confront life's challenges. What will come is a confidence and sense of power that emanates from the sure feeling that God's got your back. In truth, can it get any better than that?
It may be that some of our people already know that God changed Abram's name to Abraham. That event occurred some years after our selected passage -- Genesis 17:5 -- when God reiterated his promise to make Abraham the ancestor of many nations. But probably few of our people know the meanings of the two names. The original name, Abram, means "exalted father." The new name, Abraham, means "father of a multitude."
I wonder if Abraham was burdened by his name. We can imagine it at every age.
What boy wants to be called "exalted father"? That may seem fine -- even desirable -- when you're all grown up, but it must have been a source of at least some playful teasing when he was just seven or ten years old. Imagine how the other kids on a playground might teasingly call out, "Papa" to their peer.
Just about the time that the name should have become desirable, however, it may have become an embarrassment. Through their first years of marriage, Abram and his new bride did not produce any children. This "exalted father" was not a father at all, and so he was still likely elbowed and teased for his inaccurate name.
Eventually, the teasing must have stopped, for after a certain age it would have ceased to be funny and would have become simple cruelty. Once it was apparent to all that, for some reason, Abram and Sarai could not have children, no one with any sense would have teased him about his unfulfilled name, but still he had to live with it. Still he was called by it, awkwardly, as though his parents had named him "professor" but he had flunked out of school.
Then, in our passage, God does exactly the sort of indelicate thing that Abram's good friends would not have done. He brought the whole subject up again. And, at Abram's advanced and improbable age, God declares his intent to "make of (Abram) a great nation."
Finally, more than twenty years later, God raises the subject yet again, and this time he changes Abram's name to reflect his plans. With twenty-some more years of hopelessness and unlikelihood tacked onto poor Sarah, and with Abram as the beleaguered father of just one ill-conceived son, God announces that Abram shall henceforth be called "father of a multitude." As though the original name had not been hard enough to live with for all these years, now comes this most unfunny joke. Father of a multitude? He needed to go outside the family just to get up a good game of bridge.
Genesis 12:1-4a
Our Old Testament lection has four verses. In the first three, God speaks. In the fourth, Abraham acts. It is a tacit example, both of the quality of Abraham and of the look of faithful obedience. God says, "Go." And no sooner has God finished his instructions than "Abraham went, as the Lord had told him." It is reminiscent of the first disciples who dropped their nets and followed, without question or debate, when Jesus called them by the shores of Galilee. Within Abraham's own lifetime, as well, we are reminded of the quick and quiet obedience he exemplified when God instructed him to sacrifice his son (see Genesis 22:2-3).
If we read the passage from Abraham's perspective, we are properly struck by a great inequity in God's presentation. For we observe a grand contrast between what is made specific and what is left vague. If God had been writing a paper for school, the instructor would have red-penned one section and jotted in the margin, "Needs elaboration."
In his imagined retort, McDonnell captures an important feature of the passage: namely, the contrast between what is made specific and what is left vague.
God is quite specific about where and what Abraham will have to leave. While the familiar business practice in our day is to put additional costs in small print at the bottom or back of a promotion, God makes the cost the foremost feature. It's what he leads with. And he itemizes: "your country and your kindred and your father's house." This is poor salesmanship, indeed. But it is consistent with the one who, in the New Testament, insists that would-be disciples first "count the cost."
Meanwhile, though he is painfully specific about where and what Abraham will have to leave, God is teasingly vague about where Abraham will have to go. "To the land that I will show you" is the only destination God names. Try entering that in Google maps.
Still, God is not imperious or capricious. He is not moving old Abraham for his own amusement. No, he has a plan. And as far-fetched as it may have seemed, God reveals that plan to Abraham. Specifically -- and abundantly -- God will take the transplanted old man and turn him into a nation. He will make Abraham prosperous and significant. More than that, he will use Abraham as a kind of universal watershed: those who bless him will fall on one, lovely side, while those who curse him will land on the other, undesirable side. And, last of all, God promises to make Abraham a vessel of blessing to the whole human race.
It's an extraordinary passage.
Most people in history live and die with little or no remembrance of them just a century later. Even people of some importance and influence during their lifetimes become the answers to trivia questions just a generation or two later. It is not an easy thing to make a lasting mark -- to be known beyond your circle, and to be remembered after your time.
Here is a man who neither conquered nor ruled. He did not discover or invent. He did not even achieve very broad notoriety or influence during his lifetime, which we typically assume is a necessary precursor to being remembered after one's lifetime. Yet, 4,000 years after he died, he remains a globally famous figure: a religious paragon, a cherished patriarch, and even a familiar name in the world of geo-politics.
Still, lest we forget, there is in the passage a character more remarkable than Abraham. There is this God. A God who deigns, time and again, to do his business with human beings and through human beings. A God, by whose providence and grace one anonymous old man was selected to impact the whole world. And a God whose loving purpose and goal is to bless "all the families of the earth."
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
In our New Testament epistle, we return to the same man who was at the center of our Old Testament lection: Abraham. In this letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul is laying out the fundamentals of the gospel, and he turns to the example of the faithful patriarch in order to illustrate his point.
The text can be preached with several different contexts in mind.
On the one hand, we might preach the immediate historical and theological context of the passage. The apostle Paul encountered so often those Jewish Christians who, habitually, had a reflex reliance on the law. It was, after all, God's standard, the expression of his will, and the articulation of his covenant with his people. They found it difficult -- though necessary -- to hear Paul argue that "if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void." Our people could hear Paul's good news set in the story of an earnest Jewish Christian still bound by the law.
Alternatively, the text could be preached entirely within an Old Testament context. The key issues in Paul's argument, after all, are both rooted in the Old Testament: the law of Moses and the faith of Abraham. We could preach a sermon that tells both stories, side- by-side, and demonstrates where each one leads. Paul sees that the law brings wrath and condemnation, while Abraham's faith brings the gracious fulfillment of God's generous promises.
Finally, the text could be preached within a personal-experience context, for it goes to the heart of an individual's relationship with God.
In this regard, one can hardly read our selected passage without thinking of that tortured sixteenth-century soul: the German monk, Martin Luther, as stated in Luther's Works. Weighed down by his own sense of guilt and an inescapable image of God as a holy and angry judge, Luther pored over this letter to the Romans while preparing his lectures. There, in the texts he was so dutifully studying, he stumbled across his liberation. He later recalled, "I beat importunately upon Paul [in Romans] ... There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith ... Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself."
What was Luther's personal liberation, of course, became a widespread experience, as so much of European Christianity rediscovered the gospel truth of justification by faith. Our opportunity this week is to bring that same good news to the people within earshot of us.
Paul notes that, "to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due." For some of our people, we might do well to explore that distinction between wages and gift, for they may function with a wages' mentality. Some, overestimating their own goodness, may presume that heaven is the due reward for deserving folks like them. Others, underestimating God's grace, may presume that great, earnest human effort is required to earn one's salvation. Still others, like Luther, feel so altogether undeserving that their wages' mentality has them living under a heavy cloud of condemnation. All of them need to hear that "to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness."
John 3:1-17
This week's gospel lection features perhaps the best-known verse in all of scripture: John 3:16. Our privilege is to preach that familiar truth within its somewhat less familiar context.
The gospel of John features a series of one-on-one encounters with Jesus. Over the course of the book, we see Jesus face-to-face with Nathanael, the Samaritan woman, the crippled man by the pool, the woman caught in the act of adultery, the man born blind, Martha, Lazarus, Mary, Thomas, and Peter. And, rather early in that series, we see this episode featuring Jesus one-on-one with Nicodemus.
In stark contrast to the unlikely theologian and evangelist we meet in the next chapter, Nicodemus comes with a promising resume: "a Pharisee" and "a leader of the Jews." Unhappily, though he starts so much better, he does not end as well as the Samaritan woman who follows him.
We get a hint that Nicodemus will be a disappointing character when John reports that "he came to Jesus by night." Indeed, the narrator regards it as such a telling detail that it remains the characteristic by which Nicodemus is still identified at the other end of the gospel (19:39). In a such a dualistic book, with recurring images of light and darkness, it is surely a significant and unfavorable detail about Nicodemus that he came to Jesus by night.
Another element of this passage that should be seen against the larger backdrop of the fourth gospel is the use of the phrase "the world." By my count, "the world" or "this world" appears 75 times in John. That's an average of more than three references in every chapter, which surely qualifies it as a major theme.
Among other things, we see that the world did not recognize the Word (1:10), cannot receive the Spirit (14:17), and does not know the Father (17:25); the world hated Christ and will hate his disciples (15:18-19), is a setting of persecution (16:33), and is not ultimately Christ's kingdom (18:36). With all that in mind, then, hear again this gracious word: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son."
Finally, while John 3:16 is the most famous verse, its neighbors on either side deserve more attention than they usually receive.
In verse 15, Jesus makes meaningful reference to an underrated Old Testament book. Books like Isaiah and Psalms get most of the attention when searching for messianic allusions in the Hebrew scriptures. But Jesus finds a foreshadowing of himself in the wilderness of the book of Numbers. The serpent on a pole, at first blush, seems an unlikely and undesirable symbol for the Savior. But to a snake-bit world, it is good news indeed that we need only look to the One who hangs on the cross in order to be healed.
Finally, in verse 17, Jesus expands on the reason he was sent: not to condemn the world, but "that the world might be saved through him." Here is a lovely glimpse into the heart of God. As we established above, "the world" is an ignorant place, marked by sin, and inhospitable to God. Yet, still, he is not eager to condemn it, which is justified, or to judge it, which is deserved. Rather, he is eager to save it, even though it hesitates to be saved.
Application
Two thousand years after God had changed Abram's name to Abraham, the apostle Paul saw the fulfillment of the promise.
The 99-year-old with the newly minted name had only one child's picture in his wallet. And the prospect of the "multitude" implied in God's renaming could not have seemed more implausible. Perhaps the only way that Abraham could have been less likely to generate a multitude would be if he had already been dead -- and the writer of Hebrews suggests that he was pretty close (11:12)!
Then Paul -- a descendant of Abraham -- wrote to a group of Christians in Rome. In Rome! First-century Rome seems pretty far removed from a wandering Aramean who lived and died in the backwaters of the empire two millennia earlier. Yet Paul wrote to a group of Christians in Rome, and said, "He is the father of all of us."
Now, of course, it has been yet another 2,000 years. Now, you and I turn to our congregations -- in a time and in places still further removed from that unapt old man -- and we also declare that "he is the father of us all."
How do we know that we are his descendants? Do we have the genealogy, a record of the family tree that stretches back over 4,000 years? No. What we have, instead, is that distinctive family trait: faith. More surely than a certain shaped nose or certain colored eyes, this one prominent feature proves that we are his heirs.
Abraham responded to God's promise with faith, and he received the fulfillment of that promise by faith. He became, thus, the father of all the faithful: we "who share the faith of Abraham," and who have also responded to and received the promises of God by faith.
Look around the pews in your church. Add to them all the others pews in other churches in your community this Sunday. Add to them the believers coast-to-coast and around the globe. And add to them the men and women of faith throughout the generations of church history. What a family album! He is indeed the father of a multitude.
Alternative Application
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17. "The Things God Does." The final sentence of our Romans passage is a characteristically long one. I am told, by people who know Greek better than I do, that Paul's writing is not as cumbersome in the original as it sometimes seems in translation. As it stands, though, we find in Romans -- including this particular sentence -- some writing that rebuffs the quick or casual reader. We have to go over the field several times in order to harvest all that is fruitful there.
The long sentence concludes with a subordinate clause -- a pair of phrases Paul used to describe God: "... who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist."
I am reminded of a football game some years ago in which a receiver made a most improbable catch and touchdown. Sportscaster Al Michaels, then doing play-by-play for national television, exclaimed in the middle of the action, "He did what?"
That sort of awe-filled double-take ought to be the nature of our reaction to Paul's description of God. For if we see clearly what Paul is saying, we should similarly marvel at God: "He does what?"
There is much to be said about the two ways that Paul characterizes what God does, and scripture offers us plenty of illustrative material for each. At a minimum, however, we should observe and affirm this truth: that God is not limited by reality or confined to the facts as we see them.
See the two realities Paul identifies: 1) things that are dead, and 2) things that do not exist. Then see that neither of those facts is an impediment to God. For, with a word, he can change both realities. The thing that was dead, he can make alive. And the thing that does not exist, he can call into being.
We see these powerful truths at work all through scripture, from the story of creation to the story of the empty tomb. And, particularly appropriate to our assigned passages and to Paul's present argument, we think of the example of Abraham. How improbable were God's promises, given the reality of Abraham's situation, and given the facts of his case? Yet, God is able!
Let us make this the backdrop against which we set all of our needs. Let us make this the refrain of our every prayer. This: that our God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist."
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 121
There is perhaps no better feeling than knowing that someone "has your back." Having someone's back is a term that arose from urban street fighting where a partner or ally would stay with you and protect your back in the thick of the fray. When someone has your back, you don't worry about being hit from behind. When someone has your back you can concentrate on the struggle in front of you without worrying about dangers you cannot see. When someone has your back you feel protected, secure, safe.
In God, the psalmist finds the king of all street fighters to have his back. His help doesn't merely come from a trusted compadre, it comes from the creator of the universe! "My help (emphasis on the word, "my") comes from the Lord!" The wonderful implication here is that the adversary can bring on all comers. God's on the scene. God's in charge now. No matter what comes, it can be handled.
The trick in all this, though, is trust.
Whether it's a buddy from the "hood," or the Lord God, letting someone come to your defense means you have to trust the source of the help. Think about it. Not trusting someone who has your back is pretty much the same as having two adversaries. So it is that these words come with a simple surety. Trust runs through the psalm like a drum keeping silent time. No doubt here. No wavering or wondering in this proclamation. God won't allow my foot to be moved even an inch. God doesn't slumber or sleep. God is on the job.
It would be an easy thing here to go the smoke and magic mirrors route, assuming that trusting in God is equivalent to some kind of insurance policy. It's the old quid pro quo. If I believe in God then thus and such will or won't take place. Not so. Life and death continue to flow forward bringing everything with it. Earthquakes, fires, wars, and disease will not take a holiday because of trust in God. What will evaporate, however, is the fear with which we confront life's challenges. What will come is a confidence and sense of power that emanates from the sure feeling that God's got your back. In truth, can it get any better than that?
