Abraham: The Near Death Of God's Promise
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series II, Cycle B
Since Dr. Raymond Moody published his book, Life After Life, we have heard a lot about what are called, "Near Death Experiences," often dubbed NDEs. These experiences result from having come near to death from illness, surgery, or accidents. The anecdotal material from Near Death Experiences varies widely, yet has some common elements: separation from the self, moving through a tunnel, powerful emotions, flashing lights, a sense of dying too soon, meeting loves ones, a life review, having cosmic knowledge, and a decision to return to the body.
Most of these NDE moments seem blissful and encouraging to the goodness and meaning of life. Interestingly, believers and atheists alike report their NDE moments. We have no scientific agreement on the cause of NDEs. For many they ground a belief in life after death. Others suspect that NDEs may have something to do with the origin of the world's religions and their founding figures.
It is quite interesting that many experiencing an NDE report euphoria coupled with a sense of being chosen. Other NDE experiencers want to ponder these moments by a temporary withdrawal. Perhaps Jesus and Abraham come to mind. Both of them felt they were chosen, and Lent begins with remembering the reports of Jesus going into the solitary wilderness.
Abraham's Near Death Experience
Today Abraham, some fifteen centuries before Paul, is cited in chapter 4 of his letter to the Romans. Here Paul argues for his doctrine of justification by faith through grace. Paul writes to testify how we are reconciled to God, given our sin and waywardness. The crucial concern is how this disruption may be healed. One old answer said ritual, prayer, and ceremony could do the trick. But Paul and his Jewish tradition had long abandoned this. It appeared magical and proved ineffective.
But another impressive theory arose, a significant advance over the rites and ceremonies answer. This newer answer, while not completely abandoning ritual, prayer, and ceremony, called people to live out the ethical parts of the Hebrew Bible. Doing this was believed to bring individuals and society into a reunification with God, creating the blessings of peace, joy, and just social arrangements. This was a magnificent answer and even after Paul rejected this answer, we can find much truth in it for our private and public lives before God and one another. It can serve to tell us how to live after our reconciliation.
What Paul is contending for in recalling the story of Abraham in this passage from the letter to the Romans, is that the way of faith in God's mercy is older than the ethical law of the Torah. Paul says it was three centuries after Abraham before the Torah began to take shape. Before Moses, Abraham was living out the grace and promise of God.
Yet Paul says that this was not easy for Abraham. God promised that he would make a great nation of him and his descendents. Being chosen by God for this was sheer gift. It was not because Abraham was such a wonderful person -- someone honest and just to the core, nor because of his vast intelligence. Abraham was chosen simply because he was chosen; it was all graciousness on God's part, not from something which qualified Abraham to this role. But discouragingly, Abraham and Sarah had no children. How could a great nation come from them and from their descendents? This holy couple was advanced in years, far beyond the normal years of having children. Paul says,
Hoping against hope, he believed that he would be "the father of many nations,"... he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead.
-- Paul 4:18-19
The wonderful promise of God was given, even though Abraham was having an NDE.
The Fragility Of God's Grace
God's goodness is always threatened. Abraham and Sarah feared they would have no children, dying with God's promise unfulfilled. Paul cites Abraham for his trust in the face of such a threat. But this underscores the truth that God's grace is so often challenged by our personal and public evils. Alfred North Whitehead cited "the perpetual perishing" of all our dreams and values making this one of the great obstacles to believing in the goodness of God and life.
We want democracy for the entire world. We believe that democracy is the best way for people to live out their public lives. Of course democracy is not perfect. Winston Churchill said it is the worst form of government -- except all the rest! But democracy comes close to the biblical dream of the kingdom of God on earth. Our nation and others have used the violence of war to impose democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, democracy in these places is a fragile sort of blessing. It remains to be seen if true democracy can overcome the democracy imposed by military might, and it remains to be seen if democracy can long endure, to use Lincoln's phrase from his Gettysburg Address.
In this Lenten season we are pressed to consider how God's promise nearly dies in our own lives. There was a time when God's grace awakened in us the possibility of the Christian life. We felt called to a life of love and caring, paying more attention to the needs of others than to ourselves. We hoped to become someone who was gentle with the sins of others, and quick to acknowledge our own waywardness. Even if this hope was only a faint cry within, its promise became the center of our life and living.
We soon discovered how such a dream and hope are at the mercies of evil. Many historians tell us that Hitler and his Nazis were doomed in fighting a two-front war. Their armies were engaged in Western Europe trying to check the advances of the Allies in North Africa and later in France. At the same time their armies were also fighting the Russians in Eastern Europe. The strains of a double-front war proved their demise.
In God's dream for us we face a two-front struggle, too. One front is the continual impact of our culture and society. We are urged to choose the values of our consumer society -- a high position job with a triple digit salary, a bigger home in an upscale neighborhood, a luxury car, vacations in exotic places, membership in a country club, and the means to send our children to a high-prestige private school. These materialistic gods and idols urge us to place our security and self-esteem in them. When we get caught up in these, God's dream for us nearly dies.
The second front in our personal struggle to keep faith with God's dream is within. At some point we understand that we can fake personal godliness -- fooling others and ourselves. We know that we can pretend to love others when we don't really care about them. Learning of the good fortune of a friend or colleague, we may exhibit all the graciousness required, saying that we are so pleased that this has come to her or to him. But inwardly, we feel we are more deserving. We begrudge our friend's good fortune. More devastating for us to admit, tearing apart our facade of Christian gracefulness toward others, is our inner glee when someone stumbles into bad fortune. Our delight about this happenstance prompts us to share the story of their fall; it drives us to constantly be on the hunt for similar stories, making us feel better about ourselves because it lessens the competition to our own self-worth.
So What?
A pastor once said, "Every sermon should have a 'So What?' " Folks in the pews have often longed for a "So What?" to lots of sermons inflicted upon you. You have wished for the preacher to come to grips with a serious "So What?" before shuffling together her or his notes and waiting for the closing hymn. So here is a feeble try at "So What?" It comes in two parts.
First, the fragility of the promise of God in our social structures, or in our private lives often wins out over the powerful odds against them. This is Paul's point. Writing to Christians distressed that the 2004 presidential election seemed to be a victory for those advantages to the wealthy over against the needy and oppressed, Peter Story expressed some heartening words. Story is a retired Methodist bishop who, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, challenged the system of Apartheid in South Africa. He wrote,
In our four decades of almost despair in South Africa, it was important to remember that while God prefers to work with enlightened, committed, and compassionate servants of the people, God has extensive experience of advancing the Kingdom in spite of the arrogant and shallow people we often get instead.1
Perhaps we should pay less attention to the biblical miracles that seem so questionable to modern Christians and focus instead on this miracle: God brings life out of those godly realities that seem so doomed outwardly and inwardly. It is these miracles, enlivening our faith rather than fussing over the miracles that strain our scientific credulity.
But we have not yet fully responded to the prompting of our text. We must admit that sometimes Abraham and Sarah die. God's dream and theirs dies with them. Also, often God's public concerns die while the rewards to the rich and powerful continue. Not only this, but it seems likely that billions of years out into the future the whole cosmos will burn up or freeze all life to death. Then certainly all things will die short of what God would want so that everything will go down to oblivion -- or does it?
In Lent we are driving toward Easter. Our celebration of Easter will hinge on our willingness to confront the fragility of God's dream, how all life and reality are headed toward death. Then Easter -- happening more than the Sunday after Good Friday -- goes beyond our being left only with what Bertrand Russell called "yielding despair." Even if Abraham and Sarah go down before the birth of Isaac, God's dream and love are still working. At Easter we will be permitted to sense that God's dream is larger than this life, death, or the dissolution of all this is, and out of such faith we are enabled to live this life with courage, with goals and dreams for provisional social and personal improvement, and with a joy that is incomprehensible.
____________
1.ÊSocial Questions Bulletin, The Methodist Federation for Social Action, January-February, 2005, p. 5.
Most of these NDE moments seem blissful and encouraging to the goodness and meaning of life. Interestingly, believers and atheists alike report their NDE moments. We have no scientific agreement on the cause of NDEs. For many they ground a belief in life after death. Others suspect that NDEs may have something to do with the origin of the world's religions and their founding figures.
It is quite interesting that many experiencing an NDE report euphoria coupled with a sense of being chosen. Other NDE experiencers want to ponder these moments by a temporary withdrawal. Perhaps Jesus and Abraham come to mind. Both of them felt they were chosen, and Lent begins with remembering the reports of Jesus going into the solitary wilderness.
Abraham's Near Death Experience
Today Abraham, some fifteen centuries before Paul, is cited in chapter 4 of his letter to the Romans. Here Paul argues for his doctrine of justification by faith through grace. Paul writes to testify how we are reconciled to God, given our sin and waywardness. The crucial concern is how this disruption may be healed. One old answer said ritual, prayer, and ceremony could do the trick. But Paul and his Jewish tradition had long abandoned this. It appeared magical and proved ineffective.
But another impressive theory arose, a significant advance over the rites and ceremonies answer. This newer answer, while not completely abandoning ritual, prayer, and ceremony, called people to live out the ethical parts of the Hebrew Bible. Doing this was believed to bring individuals and society into a reunification with God, creating the blessings of peace, joy, and just social arrangements. This was a magnificent answer and even after Paul rejected this answer, we can find much truth in it for our private and public lives before God and one another. It can serve to tell us how to live after our reconciliation.
What Paul is contending for in recalling the story of Abraham in this passage from the letter to the Romans, is that the way of faith in God's mercy is older than the ethical law of the Torah. Paul says it was three centuries after Abraham before the Torah began to take shape. Before Moses, Abraham was living out the grace and promise of God.
Yet Paul says that this was not easy for Abraham. God promised that he would make a great nation of him and his descendents. Being chosen by God for this was sheer gift. It was not because Abraham was such a wonderful person -- someone honest and just to the core, nor because of his vast intelligence. Abraham was chosen simply because he was chosen; it was all graciousness on God's part, not from something which qualified Abraham to this role. But discouragingly, Abraham and Sarah had no children. How could a great nation come from them and from their descendents? This holy couple was advanced in years, far beyond the normal years of having children. Paul says,
Hoping against hope, he believed that he would be "the father of many nations,"... he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead.
-- Paul 4:18-19
The wonderful promise of God was given, even though Abraham was having an NDE.
The Fragility Of God's Grace
God's goodness is always threatened. Abraham and Sarah feared they would have no children, dying with God's promise unfulfilled. Paul cites Abraham for his trust in the face of such a threat. But this underscores the truth that God's grace is so often challenged by our personal and public evils. Alfred North Whitehead cited "the perpetual perishing" of all our dreams and values making this one of the great obstacles to believing in the goodness of God and life.
We want democracy for the entire world. We believe that democracy is the best way for people to live out their public lives. Of course democracy is not perfect. Winston Churchill said it is the worst form of government -- except all the rest! But democracy comes close to the biblical dream of the kingdom of God on earth. Our nation and others have used the violence of war to impose democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, democracy in these places is a fragile sort of blessing. It remains to be seen if true democracy can overcome the democracy imposed by military might, and it remains to be seen if democracy can long endure, to use Lincoln's phrase from his Gettysburg Address.
In this Lenten season we are pressed to consider how God's promise nearly dies in our own lives. There was a time when God's grace awakened in us the possibility of the Christian life. We felt called to a life of love and caring, paying more attention to the needs of others than to ourselves. We hoped to become someone who was gentle with the sins of others, and quick to acknowledge our own waywardness. Even if this hope was only a faint cry within, its promise became the center of our life and living.
We soon discovered how such a dream and hope are at the mercies of evil. Many historians tell us that Hitler and his Nazis were doomed in fighting a two-front war. Their armies were engaged in Western Europe trying to check the advances of the Allies in North Africa and later in France. At the same time their armies were also fighting the Russians in Eastern Europe. The strains of a double-front war proved their demise.
In God's dream for us we face a two-front struggle, too. One front is the continual impact of our culture and society. We are urged to choose the values of our consumer society -- a high position job with a triple digit salary, a bigger home in an upscale neighborhood, a luxury car, vacations in exotic places, membership in a country club, and the means to send our children to a high-prestige private school. These materialistic gods and idols urge us to place our security and self-esteem in them. When we get caught up in these, God's dream for us nearly dies.
The second front in our personal struggle to keep faith with God's dream is within. At some point we understand that we can fake personal godliness -- fooling others and ourselves. We know that we can pretend to love others when we don't really care about them. Learning of the good fortune of a friend or colleague, we may exhibit all the graciousness required, saying that we are so pleased that this has come to her or to him. But inwardly, we feel we are more deserving. We begrudge our friend's good fortune. More devastating for us to admit, tearing apart our facade of Christian gracefulness toward others, is our inner glee when someone stumbles into bad fortune. Our delight about this happenstance prompts us to share the story of their fall; it drives us to constantly be on the hunt for similar stories, making us feel better about ourselves because it lessens the competition to our own self-worth.
So What?
A pastor once said, "Every sermon should have a 'So What?' " Folks in the pews have often longed for a "So What?" to lots of sermons inflicted upon you. You have wished for the preacher to come to grips with a serious "So What?" before shuffling together her or his notes and waiting for the closing hymn. So here is a feeble try at "So What?" It comes in two parts.
First, the fragility of the promise of God in our social structures, or in our private lives often wins out over the powerful odds against them. This is Paul's point. Writing to Christians distressed that the 2004 presidential election seemed to be a victory for those advantages to the wealthy over against the needy and oppressed, Peter Story expressed some heartening words. Story is a retired Methodist bishop who, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, challenged the system of Apartheid in South Africa. He wrote,
In our four decades of almost despair in South Africa, it was important to remember that while God prefers to work with enlightened, committed, and compassionate servants of the people, God has extensive experience of advancing the Kingdom in spite of the arrogant and shallow people we often get instead.1
Perhaps we should pay less attention to the biblical miracles that seem so questionable to modern Christians and focus instead on this miracle: God brings life out of those godly realities that seem so doomed outwardly and inwardly. It is these miracles, enlivening our faith rather than fussing over the miracles that strain our scientific credulity.
But we have not yet fully responded to the prompting of our text. We must admit that sometimes Abraham and Sarah die. God's dream and theirs dies with them. Also, often God's public concerns die while the rewards to the rich and powerful continue. Not only this, but it seems likely that billions of years out into the future the whole cosmos will burn up or freeze all life to death. Then certainly all things will die short of what God would want so that everything will go down to oblivion -- or does it?
In Lent we are driving toward Easter. Our celebration of Easter will hinge on our willingness to confront the fragility of God's dream, how all life and reality are headed toward death. Then Easter -- happening more than the Sunday after Good Friday -- goes beyond our being left only with what Bertrand Russell called "yielding despair." Even if Abraham and Sarah go down before the birth of Isaac, God's dream and love are still working. At Easter we will be permitted to sense that God's dream is larger than this life, death, or the dissolution of all this is, and out of such faith we are enabled to live this life with courage, with goals and dreams for provisional social and personal improvement, and with a joy that is incomprehensible.
____________
1.ÊSocial Questions Bulletin, The Methodist Federation for Social Action, January-February, 2005, p. 5.
