Sunday, September 18, 2016

Abraham; God's capacity to make something from nothing

Genesis 15:1-6, 17:1-8, 15-22

God does things with extraordinary people—you know this. He takes Abram and makes him ABRAHAM! He takes Saul and makes him PAUL! He takes Moses and makes him MOSES! I like that last one most of all because that’s me. I mean, like Sarah, my name change could be more subtle—you know, changing that last letter in your name but not really changing the pronunciation—like FRANQ! Of course, the names have more to do with ancient meanings we mostly don’t understand today. For example, Abraham means “father of many” in Hebrew. Paul means “humble” in Latin, which was such a big change precisely because Saul had been quite the opposite of humble.
            The point here is that Abraham is so great because God made him so. Same with Paul. Same with Moses—who never changed his name, I’m just messing with you. All these guys just had the fortune (or misfortune) of having God show up and meet them face-to-face. This is the only difference between you and me and Abraham; he had God show up at his door. And he did what most human beings do when confronted with God: He laughed. It’s not that “O-M-G. Wow. I can’t believe it’s you” laugh either. It’s honest to goodness, you’ve got to be kidding me, I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU laughing. Same with Sarah. They are pretty sure that God is out of the freakin’ divine mind here.
            You see, in spite of having a song about him now Abram was not so different from you or me. He spent one hundred years of his life doing nothing of importance. Well, I mean that’s maybe not fair. Perhaps he was the homecoming king, maybe he was a really fast runner, maybe he could grow a mean fig tree, but history was going to forget him. He was did nothing we would remember for 100 years. We can probably relate to that. By all odds Abraham should have died a nobody. The fact that Abraham was around at all by the time God came calling was something of a miracle. The idea that he and Sarah could have a child? Ridiculous.
            But God seems to excel in ridiculousness. Try and give me an example of God using the obvious person to change history in the Bible; it NEVER happens. God is always choosing the person with the least power or the person who has misapplied his or her power the most (think Saul or Matthew or Nebuchadnezzar). Jacob cheated his brother of his birthright, Moses was lost in a reed basket, then was shy about public speaking, David was the youngest and weakest of his brothers, he also cheated on his wife and murdered his mistress’s husband, Elijah was more-or-less suicidal, Jonah ran the other direction, the disciples were a hodgepodge of second-rate failures of Torah scholarship, Jeremiah was way too young, so was Timothy. Even the guys who naturally ascend due to birthright—think Solomon—had some rather substantial (and obvious) flaws that make them a strange choice for God to use to change history. But that’s the kind of God we’re dealing with here—a God who uses the most unlikely, the ones who look weakest, and, perhaps strangest of all, the criminals. God uses all these. Not joe or Josephine schmo good, moral, upstanding citizen.
            And you know why? Because there is no such thing as a person worthy of God’s use. Sorry to break it to you. This is why every presidential candidate sucks. And, yeah, maybe it’s true that this batch is worse than others, but mass communication has as much to do with our understanding of how flawed these people are as anything else. Surprise: These people are flawed human beings and, worse yet, they are flawed human beings interested in power. Anybody who wants to be president—like anybody who wants to be a bishop—should be immediately disqualified.
            But, you know what, it’s OK. Because it’s not God who calls presidents. We tried that in the 1600s; we tried having a theocracy. It led to a lot of witch burnings and the genocide of Native Americans. Hate to break it to you but things aren’t better when the church is leading the government—the church never makes the government more holy; the government always makes the church more corrupt—and anyone who wants power will abuse it; no matter how moral their initial intentions.
            Which is why God is really smart and we’re really dumb. God chooses people who actually have the capability of changing the world. God chooses the addict and the depressed bipolar homeless woman, and the closeted gay teenager who believes there is something inherently wrong with them. God chooses the people we see as particularly broken or beyond use—too old: Abraham; too young: Malala Yousafzai; too mentally unstable: Martin Luther; too poor: Mother Theresa. God is forever choosing the least likely person and doing extraordinary things through them.
            Back to Abraham.
            Abraham became the father of all these nations not because he was great but because he was the kind of empty vessel through which God would work. He wouldn’t have been of use in his thirties, full of potential and ready to change the world. He needed to be emptied. Nothing. That’s what God is looking for in us. God can do something with nothing. Just look at the beginning of the world. Now THAT’S something, and God formed it from nothing. If Abraham thought he was something, well then he would have had a problem.
            But he didn’t. Well, it wasn’t humility; it was more like acceptance. After all, Abraham had had an affair with Hagar (aside: Can we call it an affair if it was with Sarah’s blessing? I think we can.) and that led to Ishmael. Abraham thought this was good enough to keep his line going. So let’s not pretend Abraham was somehow perfectly faithful. So much of our present discord in the world stems from the division of Ishmael and Isaac—a common parentage for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And, yet, God chose to use Abraham even still. Even Abraham’s near-sightedness was not enough to change God’s mind.
            God chooses the ones who busted up, which is good, because so are we. God uses people like you and me, because that’s all God has to work with. God doesn’t use perfect people, because there are no perfect people. And there is nobody beyond God’s capacity to do something. Nothing. That’s what God is looking for. Nothing. That’s what we have.

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