Welcome to the second Sunday in our worship series, Before I Die, Life Before Death. We have two experiments happening. The first is the Before I Die Wall downstairs by the entrance. Before I Die is a global art project that invites people to contemplate death and reflect upon their lives. When I saw this project, I thought of Abraham. A man who before he died established three major world religions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Check out our wall and add your dream.

Which brings us to our second experiment. At the beginning of each sermon at Trinity UCC on the Southside of Chicago, the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III has his church turn to one another and say the key point of the sermon.

A few of you came up and expressed how meaningful this experiment was on first try. One of you said, “I like getting to the point and not beating around the bush, so I thought that was good.” Last Sunday we learned that Everybody was God’s somebody. Now for this week…

I need you to turn to a neighbor. “Neighbor. Oh, Neighbor. You are God’s promise. To the world.”

Yes, we are God’s promise to the world. God makes a promise to Abram in our scripture reading today. And it’s more than a promise, it’s a covenant. A covenant is a promise of a very serious matter.

To teach what a covenant is, my guru Rob Bell asks, “Where do you go if someone breaks a contract? Say you’re a business owner and someone walks in and takes something from your shop, what do you do?”[1]

We have a whole legal system in place. First is a call to 911. Then a report to the officers. Then an arrest of the shoplifter (see, we even have a name for the crime). Then we have lawyers, and process, and fines, and due process. We are a nation of laws. The Constitution is a covenant of sorts for our country. These are the freedoms, these are the laws, and here’s how the process goes for complaints, challenges, and crime.

Back in Abram’s day, there was none of that. They had a practice though when establishing a covenant. They would take an animal— the bigger the animal, the bigger the contract—and the two parties would negotiate a covenant. Once terms were reached, they would bring about witnesses, usually the tribal or village elders, and they would cut the animal in two and walk between the parts saying, “If I break this covenant, may I be like this animal.”

So we see God telling Abram about the promise that his offspring will be more numerous than the stars in the sky. And I love this line, “Abram believed the Lord.”

Then God says, “I need a 3-year-old cow, goat, ram, and throw in a turtledove and a pigeon.”

Abram doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t wonder what’s going on. This is his culture. He knows what this is for. For us it might seem barbaric… that’s because IT. IS. Think of the time. People were still living off the land.

Abram cuts everything in two and then waits for terms and witnesses. He falls asleep waiting and has a dream. The promise is made about ancestors and giving the land to the nation Abram will bring about. And then God walks between the pieces of the animal.

The covenant is one sided. It’s all on God. Scholars say that this means that “God commits to the promise at such a depth that God considers an experience of suffering and even death.”[2] That is the level of divine faithfulness on display here. Does this sound familiar?

All because Abram believed God. He has no concrete evidence that God’s promise will come to pass. Who is Abram? A nobody. A nobody who didn’t believe the idols of his culture. Who changed his views and met the Living God, the Ground and Source of all being.

Yet the promise will take 400 years to come about. We live in an age of the quick fix. Our culture is all about instant gratification. This promise changes all of that.

The first thing it changes is a physical change. Abram has to change where he thinks of has home. He has to understand that his physical form won’t be around when God’s promise comes to its fulfillment.

The second thing it changes is a political change. Abram is not in control of this promise. He has no agency, no part. God alone walks through the animal pieces.

To show that God is in control, God changes Abram’s name. In chapter 17, Abram is renamed at age 100. And Sarai is renamed at age 90 and is promised to get pregnant. Lucky her. Abram means “High Father.” Abraham means “father of nations.” Sarai’s name I messed up in last Sunday’s sermon. Sarai means “quarrelsome”.[3] Sarah means “lady, princess, noblewoman.” In Modern Hebrew, “sarah” (שרה) is the word for “woman minister”.[4]

God provides for Abraham’s physical needs, like a place to live and children that will be as numerous as the stars. God takes on this promise all in Godself. There are no politics here other than Abraham believing the promise. A promise that will take 400 years to complete and that will never be revoked.

The Apostle Paul picks up on this and says that faith does not earn or merit righteousness. God’s gracious action precedes anything that Abraham is or does. Abraham then, in Paul’s eyes, becomes the father of all who have faith. He writes in Galatians 3:27-29 “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” You are in the covenant, too! Not through any merit or action. Just because. God’s grace came before and inspired trust in Abraham and in us.

Now here’s where it gets really crazy. The individual promises of physical and political change go corporate.

Rob Bell says that God’s promise to Abraham forms a “new tribe” committed to blessing the world and displaying love as opposed to perpetuating the cycle of violence prevalent in the ancient Near East.[5] This is the “blessed to be a blessing” that I spoke about last Sunday. Abraham is not commissioned to go and destroy all over the other tribes. This is not command-and-conquer which is the politics of history and the politics, sadly, of today.

Instead of carrying that on, this nation will be different. This nation will be blessed to be a blessing. Not because they are superheroes, but because they are nobodies. Yet the people fail to live into the covenant. The people don’t quite live up to the promise.

So then we see Jesus. The descendant of Abraham. Of David. Of all those men and women of faith who stepped outside of what their culture and society demanded of them and lived to a higher principle—the universal love of God. Jesus who shows up, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who gives the covenant to the Gentiles and Jews alike, washing away all the division. And what do we do to him to show our thanks? We kill him for it.

Yet the God-in-Jesus honors his covenant to us made through Abraham. God would rather die than go back on the covenant made. God alone walks through the animal pieces. Now we know why. God would rather die than keep our violence in circulation. Violence that has and continues to tear the world apart.

Current events may have you troubled and fearful. We see mass shooting after mass shooting and nothing done to curb them. No mental health funding, no sensible firearm regulations. There’s a lot to despair, violence seems to win.

Violent, hate speech is on the rise. Violence is in our day-to-day speech. If someone did a really good job, it’s a thing to say, “Oh, they killed it.” Or if we lack clarity or direction, we say, “I’m trying to get a bead on it.” Which is a gun reference. There are lots of violent metaphors in our language, and that is amplified in our day and age. Violence is tearing the world apart.

But we are the promise of God. Through faith, you are the promise of God. You have been blessed to be a blessing! You are that nation that was promised to Abraham. And our nation exists for what the Jewish people call, “Tikkun olam.” “Tikkun Olam” which means “repair of the world.”[6] In our language. In our actions. In our trust in God.

Remember that promise! Remember it in good times and bad. Remember that we are Abraham’s heirs which exist for the repair of the world. Tikkun Olam. Can you say that? Tikkun Olam. Repair the world.

Neighbor, oh neighbor. Before I die, I want to be a nobody who is somebody to God, who helps repair the world as promised. I know I can’t fix everything, but I can do my part. And you can do your part. And together we can do our part. And slowly… ever so slowly… we can see a difference. In our age of quick fixes and instant gratification, remember the promise. Know that you ARE the promise to the world. Blessed to be a blessing. A child of Abraham through Christ Jesus. Amen.

Works Cited

^[1] Rob Bell, What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything. Audio book version. Heard by Pastor Luke in May 2019.

^[2] Terence E. Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, Introduction, commentary, and reflections. The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume 1. Page 449

^[3] http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13194-sarah-sarai

^[4] Schreiber, Mordecai; Schiff, Alvin I.; Klenicki, Leon (2003), The Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia

^[5] Rob Bell, What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything. Page 12.

^[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam