![Picture](/uploads/5/3/1/4/53145165/img-20161019-182621809-3_orig.jpg)
Peter JB Carman
Emmanuel Friedens Church, Schenectady, New York
March 17, 2019
Genesis 15:1-18
I.
It would have been one of those clear nights out under the open sky. Back then the world was smaller, and the one who stood there stood at the center in the middle of creation. The sky spread like a giant bowl overhead, filled with bits of jewelry and dazzling crystal fire. Yes, the sky was on fire.
If anyone had been watching, they might have wondered what was wrong with this nomad, who stood there alone, talking to the still cooling earth, gesturing to the dazzling sky. They wouldn't have heard the Voice that was speaking back to him, speaking so loud it shook him to the core. They couldn't have heard the promise he heard: that he and his partner Sarai, childless so far, would have descendants too many to count. No one else heard the Voice tell him, "Look up, and count the stars!" There were to be children, and children of those children and someday all the descendants would number so many they would be like all the stars he could see in the sky over his head.
He stood there and he believed the voice no one else could hear. It was an extraordinary thing to do, to trust that promise. And as the years would roll on and his descendants would remember, it became more remarkable, not less.
He believed about the children part, did that wanderer. But when the voice said to him something more, something about putting down roots in the land, having a permanent place to call home, he wanted a reliable indication it would happen. He wanted a signed lease agreement. Who could believe after all the wandering, after leaving the city of Ur, he would again have a home, a place to settle down? He couldn't absorb it or trust it, not at first. He had been traveling too long.
II.
And then it was another day, the day that he got it together, to cut a deal with God. Was it the next morning, or days later? No one knows. It was so long ago, and all we have is copies of copies of some ancient scratchings that tell us what someone told someone happened long before! The originals have gone to dust, long ago: but this strange ancient story survives.
This is what they say happened. The man took a she-goat, and he took a heifer, he took a ram, and he took two birds. And, well, to put it politely he practiced animal sacrifice, as ancient people did. And there in the afternoon light, he took the remains, and laid them out, and watched and waited.
As it is their custom to do when presented with fresh food, the vultures and the kites and the crows began to drop in. But the man- Abram, that’s what his name was-- drove them off into the hot sun and waited.
As the sun at last was going down, and the sky was softening pink and orange, he fell into a sleep, a troubled sleep, and the voice spoke to him again, this time out of terrible darkness. It spoke of a time to come, when his descendants would become slaves, oppressed in Egypt. But the voice said that after generations they would return to their homeland, return to this good place.
Then he woke up from his trance, he arose and looked around, now the darkness was complete. And as he watched, a flaming torch and a pot that held smoke and fire passed by. And the Voice told him that the promise was good, that his descendants would be at home in the land all the way from the Nile to the Euphrates. All the world that ancient person knew, and wandered, the whole world was transformed: home at last.
In the darkness, in the flames and smoke that lie between sleep and wakefulness, Abram learned that he and his offspring had been chosen by God. He believed, in his strange brilliant imaginative ancient mind, that it was a persistent promise this God had made...one that would not be destroyed by oppression or by captivity: a promise that could not be neutralized even by death itself.
III.
A long time passed, and Abram became Abraham, grew old and died in peace, and after him generation upon growing generation of his offspring were born, grew old and passed into dust as well. They indeed spent years in captivity, years in sojourn, not once but many times. And truer than he could imagine, there were uncounted descendants, not only by the favored son, but also by other tribes, with their own stories.
Three women shared children with Abraham, children who had children who had children who are still having children. There was Hagar, whose son was Ishmael, born first. There was Isaac, son to Sarah. And then after Sarah’s death, there were the children of Keturah whom Abraham married in his old age.
Today, the whole world is populated with those who look to Abraham their ancestor. We don't agree with each other on who is in and who is out, who holds the deed, and what the lease terms are. But we claim Abraham for an ancestor.
Judaism claims Abraham and Sarah by way of Isaac; Islam looks to Abraham and Hagar and traces spiritual descent from Ishmael. The Bahai look to both Sarah and Keturah as ancestors of their founder Baha’u’llah. Christians claim Abraham too, as children by adoption!
We who follow Christ believe Jesus threw open the family of God’s people to everyone who dared to trust: we are all children of the Abrahamic promise by adoption. Yet despite these inclusive leanings, despite the conviction that adoption makes us fully heirs of the promise, historically we Christians have often been the worst of Abraham’s offspring. We have forgotten the other children of Abraham, or claimed moral superiority. Christians have ripped land from others, and killed in the name of the Abrahamic promise, claiming it as our exclusive birthright. May God forgive us.
I don’t know whether the person who committed the recent atrocities in New Zealand against the Muslim community in Christchurch called himself a Christian—we do know that he was fueled by White supremacist hatred—and that there are twisted forms of Christianity that have fueled that way of thinking, not only here in the US but around the world, including in a city named Christchurch, New Zealand. Whatever drove him, we need to acknowledge, we know, that the people he murdered, the children, the youth, the old and the young, the women and the men, as Muslims, in addition to as humans, are your and my siblings. We need to confess the ways that the legacy of Christ’s church has been stolen to support and even fuel bigotry and race-hatred.
It has been more than three years since Rabbi Matthew Cutler stood here in Emmanuel Friedens Church and spoke to us openly about the need for us all to address the rising epidemic of Islamophobia together. In the years since, he, along with a whole bunch of other religious leaders in town, ranging from Catholic to Unitarian to Sikh to Muslim, and including Phil Grigsby and Lynn Carman Bodden and myself, have tried to work together locally to respond to that kind of hate. It is a hate that lives in corners of our county as well, just beneath the surface. So, we are in a different place than when Matt came to visit. There is instantaneous communication between different faiths in Schenectady. Today I know that many of the religious leaders in this town stand together with the Muslim community in grief, in shock and in anguish. We will gather in person at the Islamic Center in Colonie, at the invitation of that community, in solidarity and shared grief.
IV.
We are children of a common spiritual ancestor, even as we share common biological ancestors. We are children of the same ancient promise. As children of the same ancestor, we must protect our own, mourn our dead, cry out against acts of violence perpetrated against anyone, particularly perpetrated against any community of faith, in the name of racial or ethnic or ideological supremacy.
Remember the solitary figure in the desert, counting the stars by night, dreaming, praying, talking into the formless deep. Remember the ancient trust and know: There is a Power worth trusting, who will deliver in the end.
There is a Presence who gives wanderers a home, gives the solitary soul kin and grants the dying a future. There is a Spirit who will provide us the resources to face anything and everything, even the cross itself, and stand up straight and tall. There is such a God, worth trusting, even when we have nothing to go on, no way to know it, but the feeling of the grains of dirt beneath our feet and the grandeur of the sky over our heads.
The promise still stands: there will be more children of promise, more than any can count or imagine. There is more promise than one nation or tribe can hold, there is a dream of belonging and redemption for far more than one people or one empire even. The spewers of hate, the fearful attackers, the arrogant, will crumble and fade into oblivion. Make no mistake.
At last there will be more brightly shining witnesses to the faithfulness of God, than all the stars in the heavens, than all the sands in the desert.
Trust this...speak with clarity, act with courage, love without reservation! And may it be reckoned to you as faithfulness for your liberation, as it was to your ancestors, and as it was to too many of their offspring to count, a great cloud of witnesses who sing to us from Glory, and who will, in flaming fiery grandeur, someday lead us home.
Emmanuel Friedens Church, Schenectady, New York
March 17, 2019
Genesis 15:1-18
I.
It would have been one of those clear nights out under the open sky. Back then the world was smaller, and the one who stood there stood at the center in the middle of creation. The sky spread like a giant bowl overhead, filled with bits of jewelry and dazzling crystal fire. Yes, the sky was on fire.
If anyone had been watching, they might have wondered what was wrong with this nomad, who stood there alone, talking to the still cooling earth, gesturing to the dazzling sky. They wouldn't have heard the Voice that was speaking back to him, speaking so loud it shook him to the core. They couldn't have heard the promise he heard: that he and his partner Sarai, childless so far, would have descendants too many to count. No one else heard the Voice tell him, "Look up, and count the stars!" There were to be children, and children of those children and someday all the descendants would number so many they would be like all the stars he could see in the sky over his head.
He stood there and he believed the voice no one else could hear. It was an extraordinary thing to do, to trust that promise. And as the years would roll on and his descendants would remember, it became more remarkable, not less.
He believed about the children part, did that wanderer. But when the voice said to him something more, something about putting down roots in the land, having a permanent place to call home, he wanted a reliable indication it would happen. He wanted a signed lease agreement. Who could believe after all the wandering, after leaving the city of Ur, he would again have a home, a place to settle down? He couldn't absorb it or trust it, not at first. He had been traveling too long.
II.
And then it was another day, the day that he got it together, to cut a deal with God. Was it the next morning, or days later? No one knows. It was so long ago, and all we have is copies of copies of some ancient scratchings that tell us what someone told someone happened long before! The originals have gone to dust, long ago: but this strange ancient story survives.
This is what they say happened. The man took a she-goat, and he took a heifer, he took a ram, and he took two birds. And, well, to put it politely he practiced animal sacrifice, as ancient people did. And there in the afternoon light, he took the remains, and laid them out, and watched and waited.
As it is their custom to do when presented with fresh food, the vultures and the kites and the crows began to drop in. But the man- Abram, that’s what his name was-- drove them off into the hot sun and waited.
As the sun at last was going down, and the sky was softening pink and orange, he fell into a sleep, a troubled sleep, and the voice spoke to him again, this time out of terrible darkness. It spoke of a time to come, when his descendants would become slaves, oppressed in Egypt. But the voice said that after generations they would return to their homeland, return to this good place.
Then he woke up from his trance, he arose and looked around, now the darkness was complete. And as he watched, a flaming torch and a pot that held smoke and fire passed by. And the Voice told him that the promise was good, that his descendants would be at home in the land all the way from the Nile to the Euphrates. All the world that ancient person knew, and wandered, the whole world was transformed: home at last.
In the darkness, in the flames and smoke that lie between sleep and wakefulness, Abram learned that he and his offspring had been chosen by God. He believed, in his strange brilliant imaginative ancient mind, that it was a persistent promise this God had made...one that would not be destroyed by oppression or by captivity: a promise that could not be neutralized even by death itself.
III.
A long time passed, and Abram became Abraham, grew old and died in peace, and after him generation upon growing generation of his offspring were born, grew old and passed into dust as well. They indeed spent years in captivity, years in sojourn, not once but many times. And truer than he could imagine, there were uncounted descendants, not only by the favored son, but also by other tribes, with their own stories.
Three women shared children with Abraham, children who had children who had children who are still having children. There was Hagar, whose son was Ishmael, born first. There was Isaac, son to Sarah. And then after Sarah’s death, there were the children of Keturah whom Abraham married in his old age.
Today, the whole world is populated with those who look to Abraham their ancestor. We don't agree with each other on who is in and who is out, who holds the deed, and what the lease terms are. But we claim Abraham for an ancestor.
Judaism claims Abraham and Sarah by way of Isaac; Islam looks to Abraham and Hagar and traces spiritual descent from Ishmael. The Bahai look to both Sarah and Keturah as ancestors of their founder Baha’u’llah. Christians claim Abraham too, as children by adoption!
We who follow Christ believe Jesus threw open the family of God’s people to everyone who dared to trust: we are all children of the Abrahamic promise by adoption. Yet despite these inclusive leanings, despite the conviction that adoption makes us fully heirs of the promise, historically we Christians have often been the worst of Abraham’s offspring. We have forgotten the other children of Abraham, or claimed moral superiority. Christians have ripped land from others, and killed in the name of the Abrahamic promise, claiming it as our exclusive birthright. May God forgive us.
I don’t know whether the person who committed the recent atrocities in New Zealand against the Muslim community in Christchurch called himself a Christian—we do know that he was fueled by White supremacist hatred—and that there are twisted forms of Christianity that have fueled that way of thinking, not only here in the US but around the world, including in a city named Christchurch, New Zealand. Whatever drove him, we need to acknowledge, we know, that the people he murdered, the children, the youth, the old and the young, the women and the men, as Muslims, in addition to as humans, are your and my siblings. We need to confess the ways that the legacy of Christ’s church has been stolen to support and even fuel bigotry and race-hatred.
It has been more than three years since Rabbi Matthew Cutler stood here in Emmanuel Friedens Church and spoke to us openly about the need for us all to address the rising epidemic of Islamophobia together. In the years since, he, along with a whole bunch of other religious leaders in town, ranging from Catholic to Unitarian to Sikh to Muslim, and including Phil Grigsby and Lynn Carman Bodden and myself, have tried to work together locally to respond to that kind of hate. It is a hate that lives in corners of our county as well, just beneath the surface. So, we are in a different place than when Matt came to visit. There is instantaneous communication between different faiths in Schenectady. Today I know that many of the religious leaders in this town stand together with the Muslim community in grief, in shock and in anguish. We will gather in person at the Islamic Center in Colonie, at the invitation of that community, in solidarity and shared grief.
IV.
We are children of a common spiritual ancestor, even as we share common biological ancestors. We are children of the same ancient promise. As children of the same ancestor, we must protect our own, mourn our dead, cry out against acts of violence perpetrated against anyone, particularly perpetrated against any community of faith, in the name of racial or ethnic or ideological supremacy.
Remember the solitary figure in the desert, counting the stars by night, dreaming, praying, talking into the formless deep. Remember the ancient trust and know: There is a Power worth trusting, who will deliver in the end.
There is a Presence who gives wanderers a home, gives the solitary soul kin and grants the dying a future. There is a Spirit who will provide us the resources to face anything and everything, even the cross itself, and stand up straight and tall. There is such a God, worth trusting, even when we have nothing to go on, no way to know it, but the feeling of the grains of dirt beneath our feet and the grandeur of the sky over our heads.
The promise still stands: there will be more children of promise, more than any can count or imagine. There is more promise than one nation or tribe can hold, there is a dream of belonging and redemption for far more than one people or one empire even. The spewers of hate, the fearful attackers, the arrogant, will crumble and fade into oblivion. Make no mistake.
At last there will be more brightly shining witnesses to the faithfulness of God, than all the stars in the heavens, than all the sands in the desert.
Trust this...speak with clarity, act with courage, love without reservation! And may it be reckoned to you as faithfulness for your liberation, as it was to your ancestors, and as it was to too many of their offspring to count, a great cloud of witnesses who sing to us from Glory, and who will, in flaming fiery grandeur, someday lead us home.