The Miracle that Matters Most [Lent 2B - Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

 

The Miracle that Matters Most

 

At this point, even the promise is old.  You see, this isn’t the first time Abram, better known as Abraham, heard from God.  This is just the latest in a series of conversations – each one substantially the same.  It is a testament to Abram’s stubborn hope that he even answers the third call.  The devastating lack of divine follow-through suggests that perhaps this God is all talk.

 

See, nothing ever happened.  The first time Abram heard the voice of God he was a younger man, virile, ready to sire a future, ready to fill a tent with the children of his beloved.  But that was a long time ago.  He had listened intently to that mysterious voice; it gave him hope – contagious hope; even Sarai, better known as Sarah, started to believe they might one day have what they had only dared to dream.  Abram left his family, his homeland, all he knew, in search of that promise – the promise imparted by unseen lips.  And he found on that journey only heartbreak and disappointment.

 

Many years later, the voice returned.  And it spoke the same message – now, skin less smooth, bones more brittle, not quite as believable.  There is generally a timeframe for this sort of thing.  The window was closing; it had been closing for a long time.  And so during that second conversation, Abram reminds this God that he is still waiting.  And because the waiting has been in vain, Abram is pleased to inform God that his heir is a slave born in his house.  Hint, hint.

 

God it seems possesses a patience born of eternal perspective.  Abram does not have that luxury.  Instead he has lived and died with the cycles of the moon.  And so has his wife.  Every month a painful reminder that the promise is again delayed, has once again not come true. 

 

Deciding either that God was not trustworthy or perhaps only helps those who help themselves, Abram and Sarai decide to make something happen before it is too late.  And so the Hagar story is told.  In a sense, Sarai falls on her sword and yet it is ultimately Hagar who bears the worst of the pain and the abuse.  And so while this plan does make Abram a father at last, he also loses that child to domestic dispute.  And as they sort through the broken pieces of their relationship, this weary couple must feel that this promise is the worst thing that ever happened to them, that hope is ruining their lives. 

 

And then God shows up again, a third time (what we read today) and has the audacity to repeat the same promise.  And this time when it is far too late.  Abram is 99 years old; his wife, 90.  And now that it is impossible, the sound of God’s voice must feel like the cruelest form of death.

 

And at this point, though I cannot be sure, I imagine that Abram is questioning his sanity.  That maybe the voice was just in his head and that it all had been a huge mistake. 

 

I lost my hair when I was nine.  It happened quickly and without warning.  It left me and my parents confused and groping for answers, solutions, cures.  Because I was Pentecostal, I was a magnet for the hands of traveling prophets, itinerant healers.  They would touch my bald head and declare the very healing that doctors could not seem to summon.  And I would go to bed with this stubborn hope – every time.  And I would look in the mirror every morning, hoping to see a miracle.  Turns out, it is hard to sort through the voices.  One biblical sage tells us that there is a time to keep, and a time to throw away.  And that is true enough.  The hard part is telling the time.

 

The promise to Abram, now Abraham, and Sarai, now Sarah, came true.  It came true long after the expiration date.  It came true even though it was impossible.  And while, I am sure, Abraham’s faith wavered on more than one occasion, he somehow clung to just enough faith to keep answering the calls.

 

Which is, I think, all that God asks of us.  Sometimes hope doesn’t come true.  Sometimes prayers are never answered.  Sometimes we die before the promise happens.  That is not the story of Abraham and Sarah.  But it is a true story – one with countless sequels.

 

And I don’t know why that is.  But I do know that that little boy who kept looking in the mirror, kept faith for a reason.  It wasn’t because of those so-called prophets with their easy words and get-away vehicles.  It was because I just knew, deep down in bones, that no matter what happened, or didn’t happen, God was in it with me and God loved me.  And maybe that is why Abraham kept answering the call.  Because faith is not a guarantee; it is a relationship.  And that relationship, that is the miracle that matters most.