Old Testament: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Looking at this morning’s passage from Genesis, one thing is abundantly clear: Abram was a man with questions. I think it’s fair to say he was a man experiencing doubt. In and of itself, that’s quite a remarkable thing to consider given what had happened to him not long before.
It’s worth noting at the outset that this entire scene takes place in a vision, one lasting nearly two days. It began when Abram was led out of his tent to look at the multitude of stars in the night sky on day one and ended with sunset of the next day. I’ve tried to imagine what that would be like, encountering God in a vision that lasts not just minutes or hours but days. Without ever having experienced such a vision, though, it’s frankly impossible to comprehend just what Abram’s encounter was like. What is possible to comprehend is that for him it was a truly powerful experience.
There’s also something else noteworthy here: this is the first time Abram responds to God with words rather than just actions. Just a few chapters earlier he’d heard the voice of God tell him to drop everything, pack up his family and move to a new land – and he did it, without question. God said go, and Abram went. Here, though, Abram feels compelled to speak, driven by the anguish of recalling what he hasn’t yet received. After responding without question in chapter 12, Abram now asks things giving a glimpse into his doubt. “What will you give me? How am I to know that I shall possess it?”
How did God respond? “What will I give you? I will give you an heir; in fact, I will give you more heirs and descendants than you can count. How do you know the land will be yours? Simple: I will make a covenant with you.” In short, the answer to both questions was simply God saying, “Abram, you will receive because I promise.”
Even after the many times I’ve read and heard this passage over the course of my life, I continue to be drawn to the image of God asking Abram to look up into the heavens and try to count the stars, for the number of his descendants would be even greater than that. Each star represented a man or woman who would come after, each part of a growing number of generations that would increase in size with the passage of time. As we know this became a reality, as Abram became the spiritual ancestor of many individuals and many faiths that share him as their common point of origin.
Each time there’s an act of violence in the world I wonder about how this shared origin can be tossed aside so easily. Every time a life is destroyed by hatred or degradation, every time the image of God – the spark of the divine – that all humanity carries within is blotted out by any act that denies that shared bit of God within us all, I find my voice echoing Abram. Frankly, I think we all ask these questions regardless of whether we think of Abram or not.
How and why.
How could brothers and sisters do this to one another, treating each other with scorn or hatred or as “other” rather than as “one”? Why would those magnificent points of light in the heavens that God showed to Abram, those stars created to share a common existence in a common universe, tragically work to extinguish one another rather than joyfully enhance each other’s brightness? Like Abram, I find myself asking how I’ll know things will be okay. How do I know things will one day get better? In those moments, as with Abram, I hear God answering, “Because I promise” – and like Abram, I find my reassurance looking up to the heavens.
In the story of Abram God asks him to consider the stars, to see the descendants as individuals, increasing one by one, then two by two, down through the generations. But what is equally important, I think, is where the stars are found. The universe doesn’t simply contain them; the universe surrounds them. It envelops them. As the stars are the descendants of Abram and his promised inheritance, the universe is the God who encompasses them, who surrounds them, who blankets them with love.
Even as stars are born, burn brightly, and are extinguished at the end of their existence, the universe is still there. God is still there. Even as we’re born, and live our lives, and one day die in the hope of the resurrection, God is there. Amid all that’s temporary, in all in this world and this universe that’s fleeting, God is there. Amid the struggles we may face, among all the (in the words of the collect from Compline) changes and chances of this life, God is there.
The presence of God is a theme I continue to hammer home, and it’s what I feel is the great unspoken promise in this passage from Genesis. Throughout his moments of doubt, God will be there. Throughout the generations of descendants promised to Abram, God will be there. Throughout the duration of the covenant forged with Abram, God will be there.
And throughout the lifetime of the stars too numerous to count, as they explode into existence and one day flicker out into darkness, God will be there.
He promises.
Amen.