Dorothy Churn LaPenta
Hope Presbyterian Church
Mitchellville, MD
June 26, 2011
Genesis 17:1-9, 15-16
THROUGHOUT THE GENERATIONS
This is quite a family God has chosen. I’m not sure what to think.
If you remember from last week, God calls Abram, a seventy-five year old man. He and his wife were never able to have children. God tells him to leave his country, his kindred and his father’s house. God will show him where to go. With the call came promises, I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
And Abram went as the Lord told him: to the land of Canaan, to Shechem, to the land of Moreh, to the hill country with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. They traveled to Egypt (Where Abram placed his wife Sarai in a very awkward and precarious situation with the Pharaoh. You can read about it at the end of chapter 12) They traveled to the Negeb where Abram and his nephew Lot went their separate ways. Lot was taken captive in the midst of a military upheaval between the kings of Mesopotamia and the peoples who inhabited the highlands of the Jordan. Abram and Lot were reunited after Abram and 318 of his trained men went in pursuit of those who had taken Lot captive. Abram fathers a son Ishmael by his wife’s Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar, because Sarai and Abram heard God’s promise of descendents, knew Sarai was barren and thought they would take matters into their own hands.
This is quite a family God has chosen. I’m not sure what to think.
Through all the travels and trials, God remains with Abram and continues to give the promise:
“Raise your eyes now, Abram and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward for all the land that you see I will give it to you and to your offspring forever.” (Genesis 13: 14-15)
“Do not be afraid Abram. I am your shield. Look toward the heaven and count the stars if you are able to count them. So shall your descendents be.” (Genesis 15: 1,5)
In today’s reading, Abram is ninety nine years old. Once again the Lord appears to Abram. We’ve heard these promises before.
But here in chapter 17, these promises take on a freshness, something has happened, there is something new. Names are changed and new names signify something new in a relationship.[1]
- God gives God-self a new name. God doesn’t just pop in and say, “Hi there, I am God.” Rather we read that God says, “I am God Almighty!” Actually, “almighty” is not the best translation of “El Shaddai.” El Shaddai translates as “God of the mountain,” or “God of the mother’s breast.”
It is a name for God in Genesis that is always associated with the promise of future generations. Mountains are in place for generation after generation after generation. Mother’s breast do provide the food and nutrition for sustaining generation after generation after generation. “El Shaddai!” The God who is with us for the long haul- throughout all generations![2]
- God gives Abram a new name. He is not just “father” now, but “Abraham,” father of the multitude.” At ninety nine with a wife who is barren?
- God gives Sarai a new name, Sarah, “princess of many.” She is not co-opted into this covenant on the basis alone of being Abraham’s wife. She will be the mother of the next generation of chosen people through whom God will work. It is unbelievable and she laughs at the thought, but God will be God doing what God does for Abraham and Sarah and through all generations. “Descendents” in some way is referred to in these verses thirteen times. God is serious about being God through all generations, and changes names to mark a new-ness in this relationship.
If we think about it, we can understand how a new naming changes a relationship, changes our identity. That has happened to many of you here: our name have named you and it has deepened the relationship. You are: Grandma Lisa, Miss Shari Baker, Uncle Jack, Miss Pat, Me-Maw, Mommie, Coach.
People will change their names sometimes when they marry to mark a change and a new chapter in a relationship.
We name our children when they are born after extreme thought and consideration for a name that marks the beginning of a new journey.
When we found out we were going to become grandparents a few years ago, my husband decided he would be called “Grandpop.” When Samuel was 15 or 16 months, my husband walked into the room and Samuel looked up, held out his arms with a big smile and said, “Pop Pop.” My husband had been named.
God is calling Abraham and Sarah, giving them new names, calling them into this covenantal relationship. What’s in this covenant?
- Abundance ( “Count those stars if you can. So shall your descendents be.”)
- Honor ( “Kings shall come from you.”)
- Relationship (“My covenant between me and you and your offspring after you, throughout their generations to an everlasting covenant and I will be their God.”)
- Place ( “I will give you land.”)[3]
This is a covenant of God’s faithfulness to Abraham and Sarah and for the generations, which calls for Abraham and Sarah’s faithfulness and the faithfulness of the generations which follow.
God says, “Walk before me.” God is not saying, “Let’s take a stroll.” “Walk before me;” back and forth and forth and back each day, every day, every minute of every day. Once again, we are talking of a journey.[4]
God says, “Be blameless.” Uh-oh! Blameless? Well, not as we might think of it. The word does not hold an expectation of perfection beyond our human capabilities. It means to live every day into the relationship God desires to have with us. [5]
God chooses us and our primary relationship is to be with God.
Eugene Peterson in his book, “Practice Resurrection,” says, “Everyone I know has story, usually from childhood, about not being chosen. Not being chosen carries the blunt message that I have no worth. Not many of us take it lying down so we do things to be noticed, sometimes things that are not God’s intentions for us.”[6] There’s part of each of us that still holds an experience of being left out, ignored, hurt, considered indistinguishable, an experience of being told that we are not chosen, and consciously and unconsciously this can sit heavily in our hearts.
But there’s another story about being chosen, and it’s told in the beginning of our scriptures. In God, we are never left out, ignored, unworthy, indistinguishable. We are chosen.
God chooses us to live with God in loving, covenantal relationship.
It’s not because God feels sorry for us. This was God’s plan for us chose us before the foundation of the world. It was always God’s plan to be our God throughout all generations. We have always been chosen to be in on God’s actions, even long before we had any idea that there was any action.[7]
When I read this story of Abraham and Sarah and God’s covenant, I know that there are so many years and generations between Sarah and Abraham and me… but somehow I feel a bond with them for the God who chose them and called them into a loving, covenantal relationship, many generations later chooses and calls me….. and you and will continue to choose and call throughout all generations with the promise, “I will be your God.”
God’s covenant is everlasting, then, now, through all generations.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen!
[1] New Interpreters Bible Commentary. Fretheim, Terrence. Genesis. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994
[2] Becky Purcell. “Join The Feast” out of Union Theological Seminary
[4] Brown, Driver, Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon. Hendrickson Publishers.
[6] Eugene Peterson. Practice Resurrection. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010, p.58.