Genesis 15:7-12, 17-18
The Lord said to Abram, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” The Lord said, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other, but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram .... When the sun had gone down and it was fully dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates and beyond.
Lately I’ve been re-reading one of my favorite books, Mixed Blessings, by Barbara Brown Taylor. Taylor is an Episcopal priest and a prolific, gifted writer. This particular book is a collection of some of her early sermons.
We all know by now that the bible is filled with inexplicable-seeming things – things that are just way weird to our twenty-first century way of seeing the world. Too often, we just shrug those oddities off with something like, oh, things were just different back then, which may well be true ... but, do those differences still have any meaning for us today?
This is one of the reasons I particularly admire Taylor’s writing, because she often focuses on those very oddities and gives us a reality in which they (or the questions they trigger) can logically exist.
Today’s story revolves around Abram and his long journey, in several stages, that brought him from Ur to the north, down into Canaan, the promised land to be. Almost all the way through this tale Abram is still Abram, growing older but still childless. He has been following God’s orders, moving from place to place at God’s behest for years, trusting God’s word. He has been blessed with herds and wealth with each move but still ... he has no absolute guarantee of God’s promise of a home land...except God's word alone which, apparently, isn't good enough for Abram. He needs/wants something he can see and touch, as well.
Finally he has basically demanded more, some tangible sign that God truly will keep his promise of a permanent home land in spite of the apparent fact that Abram has no descendants to inherit that land. “But how am I to know that I shall possess it?” he asks. How am I to know? And finally, God gives him the sign he feels he needs, in the form of a bizarre and bloody ritual that binds God’s covenantal promise that this land – all that Abram can see from where he stands -- will be his and his people’s long after him – long after he becomes Abraham, father of multitudes; long after his one legal son is finally born and that child has sons who grow and multiply until Abraham has indeed become a nation to fill this land of the promise.
But first, the promise in bloody tangible form as Taylor describes it:
It’s a set of actions that certainly leaves an impression. A 3 yr. old heifer, a 3 yr. old goat, a 3 yr. old ram and a couple of good sized birds all together, are just bound to leave a bloody mess when you hack them apart and they bleed out on the ground.
This is one of those things I spoke of at the beginning here today – one of those “things were definitely different back then“ things that are just too weird to our twenty-first century sensibilities.
And yet ... and yet ...here we are gathered at table, the recipients of just such a symbol of another unbreakable covenant-promise, this one also bound by blood, the blood of Jesus shed with whips in a judicial courtyard and by nails on a desolate hillside.
I’d like to believe that God never truly demanded the blood of either covenant, that It was only our human need for a physical symbol that required it – that the blood was there because we needed to see it shed.
In the Old Testament example, Abram had already proved his side of the promise. Every time God told him to pack up his people and his animals and his possessions, he had done it. He had fulfilled his side of the bargain, over and over again. Now God had to give their unbreakable promise as well.
Jesus gives himself to us today at this table. Though no animals were cut into pieces for this promise, there was a life given – given to blood and death, as it turned out, but before that a life given to God’s service. Given to love. Given to showing us a better way.
What do we have to bring to our side of this covenantal exchange besides our human selves? If a covenant somehow requires blood then maybe that is what we have to offer as well -- blood -- the blood of our humanness – blood that without which we literally cannot be – the substance that is life to us. After all, our humanness is all we have to lay on our side of this covenant against God’s offering of eternal love and care.
Our humanity, and our “Yes.” Our consent to receive God’s love, to accept it with humility, knowing there is nothing we can do to earn it, so just live in it, and be grateful for it.
We all know by now that the bible is filled with inexplicable-seeming things – things that are just way weird to our twenty-first century way of seeing the world. Too often, we just shrug those oddities off with something like, oh, things were just different back then, which may well be true ... but, do those differences still have any meaning for us today?
This is one of the reasons I particularly admire Taylor’s writing, because she often focuses on those very oddities and gives us a reality in which they (or the questions they trigger) can logically exist.
Today’s story revolves around Abram and his long journey, in several stages, that brought him from Ur to the north, down into Canaan, the promised land to be. Almost all the way through this tale Abram is still Abram, growing older but still childless. He has been following God’s orders, moving from place to place at God’s behest for years, trusting God’s word. He has been blessed with herds and wealth with each move but still ... he has no absolute guarantee of God’s promise of a home land...except God's word alone which, apparently, isn't good enough for Abram. He needs/wants something he can see and touch, as well.
Finally he has basically demanded more, some tangible sign that God truly will keep his promise of a permanent home land in spite of the apparent fact that Abram has no descendants to inherit that land. “But how am I to know that I shall possess it?” he asks. How am I to know? And finally, God gives him the sign he feels he needs, in the form of a bizarre and bloody ritual that binds God’s covenantal promise that this land – all that Abram can see from where he stands -- will be his and his people’s long after him – long after he becomes Abraham, father of multitudes; long after his one legal son is finally born and that child has sons who grow and multiply until Abraham has indeed become a nation to fill this land of the promise.
But first, the promise in bloody tangible form as Taylor describes it:
- “Proof is what he wants, and proof is what he gets: a covenant with God that takes place in the middle of the night among a whole barnyard of slaughtered animals. It is a rather bizarre scene to our modern eyes, but it was an accepted way of sealing a covenant in Abram’s day. Take a bunch of good-sized animals, halve them as neatly as you can, clear a path between the pieces, and require each partner to walk between them as a sort of self-curse. By passing through the severed bodies of the animals, each partner says, in effect, ‘May the same thing happen to me if I do not keep my word.’ ”
It’s a set of actions that certainly leaves an impression. A 3 yr. old heifer, a 3 yr. old goat, a 3 yr. old ram and a couple of good sized birds all together, are just bound to leave a bloody mess when you hack them apart and they bleed out on the ground.
This is one of those things I spoke of at the beginning here today – one of those “things were definitely different back then“ things that are just too weird to our twenty-first century sensibilities.
And yet ... and yet ...here we are gathered at table, the recipients of just such a symbol of another unbreakable covenant-promise, this one also bound by blood, the blood of Jesus shed with whips in a judicial courtyard and by nails on a desolate hillside.
I’d like to believe that God never truly demanded the blood of either covenant, that It was only our human need for a physical symbol that required it – that the blood was there because we needed to see it shed.
In the Old Testament example, Abram had already proved his side of the promise. Every time God told him to pack up his people and his animals and his possessions, he had done it. He had fulfilled his side of the bargain, over and over again. Now God had to give their unbreakable promise as well.
Jesus gives himself to us today at this table. Though no animals were cut into pieces for this promise, there was a life given – given to blood and death, as it turned out, but before that a life given to God’s service. Given to love. Given to showing us a better way.
What do we have to bring to our side of this covenantal exchange besides our human selves? If a covenant somehow requires blood then maybe that is what we have to offer as well -- blood -- the blood of our humanness – blood that without which we literally cannot be – the substance that is life to us. After all, our humanness is all we have to lay on our side of this covenant against God’s offering of eternal love and care.
Our humanity, and our “Yes.” Our consent to receive God’s love, to accept it with humility, knowing there is nothing we can do to earn it, so just live in it, and be grateful for it.
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