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Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston

 

FATHER AND MOTHER OF THE UNGODLY

 

Sermon by Fleming Rutledge                                                                       June 5, 2005

 

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation...and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

 

 What then shall we say about Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”...Now to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness...For [Abraham] is the father of us all, as it is written [in Genesis 12], “I [the Lord] have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom [Abraham] believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. (Romans 4:1-5, 16-17)

 

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As the first lesson was being read from Genesis this morning, how many of you, I wonder, realized that you were listening to the most momentous personal address in the history of the created world? Yes, we really could say exactly that. At the opening of the twelfth chapter, we read, The Lord spoke to Abraham.[1] The word spoken by God to his chosen servant in Mesopotamia some four thousand years ago is the opening event in the story of salvation for the entire race of humanity.[2]

 

Jews, Gentiles and Muslims all claim descent from Abraham one way or another; we have all grown accustomed to hearing about “the Abrahamic faiths.” It is not within the scope of this sermon to describe the role of Abraham for Muslims, but for us of the Judeo-Christian heritage who are here today, the message of the Lord God to this man who would otherwise have been of no significance is of first, present, and final importance. It is of first importance because it shows us where we are rooted and grounded. It is of present importance because it shows us how to live as the people of God. And it is of final importance because it points ahead to the only future that can be trusted absolutely in this world of earthquakes and tsunamis, not only in the soil and the seas, but also in the cultural, ecological and geopolitical fabric of our increasingly endangered planet. The covenant that God made with Abraham is the only force for the future that can be trusted.[3]

 

            God spoke to Abraham. There was a television series about Abraham a few years back. The director made a deliberate decision to have the actor playing Abraham speak God’s lines also. In other words, the voice of God, in the film, is a projection out of the depths of Abraham’s inner being. That is what a great many people believe about the Hebrew Bible in general—that it was produced out of the religious consciousness of a highly advanced people. This has become the received opinion in many academically elite circles, so that many people in the churches take it for granted. But if we read the Bible the way it is meant to be read, we discover that it is a story about how God spoke and acted to reveal God’s own self and God’s own purposes. Reading the Bible that way is not even remotely the same thing as fundamentalism—let’s get that bugaboo out of the way from the start. Many postmodern interpreters who are skeptical about religious faith are nevertheless very helpful in showing how a text should be read on its own terms, not terms that we invent for it.[4] We don’t have to accept the Biblical premise lock, stock, and barrel in order to give it a try. The point is to get started.

 

            The Lord spoke to Abraham. What did he say? First of all he told him to do something unthinkable for a man of that era. The Lord said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” We need to remember that people of that time and place had no concept of themselves as individuals in the modern American sense. A person uprooted from his ancestral land and tradition was hardly a person at all. His whole identity, indeed his entire existence, was invested in his extended family. This command of God, therefore, is truly scary. It is very difficult for us moderns to understand this in a day of jet travel and second homes, but if we want to understand the story of how salvation began with Abraham we have to imagine Abraham’s venture as literally impossible, except for one thing: the power of the promise of God.

 

The promise of God had three main features:

 

1.      Abraham and his descendants would possess a land.

2.      They would become a great nation with more descendants than anyone could count.[5]

3.      Abraham’s descendants would be a blessing to all the families of the earth.[6]

 

            Now I wonder if we can agree upon something, at least temporarily for the space of this sermon we are putting together, you and I in the power of the Holy Spirit. First, God spoke to Abraham. Not an inner voice of Abraham’s consciousness, not the promptings of Abraham’s religious aspirations, not the powerful wishes of Abraham’s unconscious as Freud would say (and Freud is the best of all the naysayers)—no, the word spoken to Abraham did not come from any of these humanly produced voices, but from the one and only living and true God.

 

Second, God inaugurates a cosmic plan of salvation through this one man and his wife Sarah. Abraham will become, as the Scripture says, the father of multitudes (that is what his new name Abraham means) and Sarah will become mother of nations [listen to this] and kings of the peoples will come to her (Genesis 17:16). All the rulers of all the peoples whatsoever will bow the knee before this otherwise unremarkable woman. Forget Cleopatra, forget Catherine the Great, forget Margaret Thatcher—this woman will be the mother of all earthly power whatsoever. Did I really say that? When I was sitting at my laptop writing this sermon I could hardly believe what had just appeared on the screen. In chapter 17, the promise about Sarah is phrased even more emphatically and inclusively than that about Abraham. Kings of the peoples will come to her [and bow before her]. Remember, though, this is not so much about Sarah the person or Abraham the person as it is about their descendants and the role that God has destined for them. They represent, first, their own family, then the emerging people of the covenant, and finally, all of humanity—all the families of the earth.[7]

 

            So Abraham is a name representing a multitude, but at the same time he and Sarah are individuals as well. Because they appear in Scripture as human beings with specific traits, we learn something more about the promise God has made to them. These two are not always paragons of virtue. Sarah, we learn, is so beautiful in her middle age that during the time they spend in Egypt, Abraham passes her off as his sister so he can enrich himself by dangling her in front of Pharaoh. Later, when it becomes obvious that she isn’t going to have any children of her own, Sarah gives her servant girl Hagar to her husband, with the presumably unselfish thought that at least Abraham would have an heir in that way, but then she becomes insanely jealous of Hagar and demands that Abraham cast her and her child out into the desert to die. Abraham comes out of this like a typical man caught between two powerful women, in other words, not very well. So you can see that this raises some questions about how we are to think of Mother Sarah and Father Abraham.[8]

 

            A few years ago at Kanuga, the Episcopal conference center in North Carolina, our 4-year-old grandson and his age group performed a little song, with hand and foot motions to match. It went like this (perhaps some of your children have heard it).

 

Father Abraham

Had many sons;

Many sons had Father Abraham;

And I am one of them,

And so are you,

So let’s all praise the Lord.

 

            To tell the truth, in these politically correct days I was surprised that they let the children sing this, but if you can get past the “father” and “sons” part, it’s very good theology. We are all children of Abraham and Sarah, and it is entirely the doing of the Lord, so let’s praise God and give him the glory.

 

But is that right? Are we all children of Abraham? And is it entirely the doing of the Lord? To what extent should we praise Abraham and Sarah themselves? Here’s where St. Paul comes in.

 

Romans 4 together with Galatians 3 are the places where Paul puts Abraham at the very center of his argument. The debate in the Galatian church revolved around the question of who the real children of Abraham were. Were they descendants according to the flesh, so that Gentiles could never be first-class heirs of Abraham? Or were they descendants according to some other criterion, and if so, what criterion was that? And what difference does this make? The question is as contemporary today as it ever was. Just think for a moment about the words that stand at the center of debate in the mainline churches today: inclusion and exclusion. Who is included and who is excluded? And on what basis? Abraham is at the dead center of that question, or rather, we should say the live center.

 

Let me just say a little bit about my history, such as it is, with Trinity Church. By invitation of my good friend Sam Lloyd, I have had the great privilege of preaching from this Phillips Brooks pulpit several times over the past few years. I have mailed out numerous postcards of the statue of Phillips Brooks with our Lord standing behind him, and as a preacher I take great comfort and strength from that image. Moreover, I had the opportunity of hearing Dr. Ferris preach. He was rector here for thirty years. I only heard him once, but it was the Good Friday Three Hour service and I was never the same again. About once a week, I walk past Dr. Ferris’ grave in the beautiful wooded cemetery in Rye, New York, where he is buried with his parents and grandparents. For me that cemetery is a place not of death, but of life. I have dedicated one of my books to the memory of Dr. Ferris.[9] To this day I still meet people whose faith was quickened by his preaching. So I am with you, in this incomparable building, in this extraordinary location at the heart of the great city of Boston, as one who owes something to your ministries past even as you look forward together to ministries future.

 

Ministries past, present and future have something in common: all of them stand under the judgment of God. Let me try to explain. My ministry for the past ten years has consisted of travelling all over this country and visiting churches of all sizes in the various mainline denominations. I have noticed that there is a common theme in many of these congregations. On the covers of their newsletters or service leaflets there will be a description of themselves which typically says, we are an open, friendly, inclusive, welcoming congregation. I have seen this so often in one form or another that I think we can agree it is a real trend of our time. And yet I have personal knowledge of quite a few people who were either not befriended or were outright rejected by those same congregations, for various reasons—not because they were black or gay or Latino or poor, but because they were mentally ill, or had politically incorrect views, or were terribly disfigured, or were poorly socialized, or for that matter because they still loved the 1928 Prayer Book. It is not possible for any congregation to be “inclusive” of everyone. Someone is always going to be alone at the coffee hour. That is because of a thing called Sin. Because of Sin, it is not possible, humanly speaking, for any congregation to “unconditionally accept” everyone that comes through the door, and we should be wary of boasting about such a thing.[10] We can strive for it, but we are not capable of it.[11] Only our Lord Jesus Christ was capable of it and he was capable of it because he was God incarnate.

 

Does that mean we should give up the idea? Does that mean we should not pray and work and aim every day to be more “inclusive”? Of course not. Let’s be clear about that. No Episcopal Church can survive as a bastion of old-line WASPS and Boston Brahmins.[12] Besides, it isn’t just a matter of survival. Far more important, it is the purpose of God that the Church should be the image of his embracing and unconditional love for the world. But in order to move out into a more radical understanding of inclusion, we need a better theological grounding for it. Here’s where Abraham comes in. In Romans 4, Paul writes that Abraham, the original chosen person, the original “included” person, the father of us all, had no ground for boasting (4:2). Why does Paul say that?

 

Abraham can be interpreted two ways. The most obvious way, the most familiar way, is as a model of righteousness for us to emulate. That’s the way the Galatian church started understanding Abraham after Paul left. Paul writes back in considerable alarm to show the congregation that if they continue in that direction, they will lose the freedom [they] have in Christ Jesus.(Galatians 2:4). They will be drawn back into a realm where there is competition between who is more righteous than whom, who is more inclusive than whom, who is more Christian than whom. That sort of rivalry about who is worthy and who isn’t has been wired into our DNA since Cain and Abel, and there is nothing that we can do to change it. Only God can change it, the God who brought the heathen Gentiles into his family before we could do a thing to deserve it. Paul quotes from Genesis, saying that the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” But here’s the key thought. At no point has Abraham done anything to earn this honor. He has no ground for boasting. Paul’s exact words are, if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness...to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness (Romans 4:3-5). So here is the most truly radical thing of all. Abraham, far from being a model of righteousness, is first and foremost the original justified sinner, the original “ungodly” person who is reshaped by God into godliness, not because of his own deeds but because of the God who does the unimaginable thing—the God who justifies, rectifies, redeems and remakes the least acceptable, most ungodly person.

 

The usual way of talking about Abraham and Sarah is to emphasize their courage in venturing into the unknown. The stress is upon their journey, their faith, their perseverance. But this is not the way that the Bible sees it. The first verses of the 12^th chapter of Genesis are the opening announcement of a completely new religious arrangement. People will not be assessed by their journeys of faith or habits of prayer or their works of inclusiveness or indeed any other works. They will not be “assessed” at all, but rather will be “justified,” that is to say, made right, made whole, made human in the image of Jesus Christ who is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). This is a qualitatively and quantitatively different outcome from anything that we human beings can do for ourselves.

 

No human group is going to be able to include everybody. Sin will see to that. Besides, no congregation can come up with a plan that will appeal to absolutely everyone. In order to appeal to absolutely everyone, God chose one man to begin with. In order to bring all the rulers of the earth under his one reign, God chose one mother of nations to begin with. In order to include everyone, Jesus chose twelve to begin with. Thus the smaller group becomes a sign of God’s purpose for the greater world. That’s what a congregation of Christians is, an outpost of God’s kingdom planted in the territory of the enemy. But mark this: for any person or congregation or group that is powerfully used by God, the greatest temptation is that of boasting, of being self-righteous, of calling attention to ourselves and our achievements. The temptation is to forget that we owe it all to the irresistible grace of God.

 

The last time I was here, Sam Lloyd and I talked a lot about the incomparable Southern activist, folklorist and theologian Will Campbell. Will’s extraordinary New Testament radicality enabled him to maintain relationships with black victims of the KKK and at the same time with the KKK murderers. Literally.[13] Brothers and sisters, that’s not “inclusion.” That’s the resurrection of the dead. Indeed that is exactly what Paul says toward the end of Romans 11: For if [God’s temporary judgment upon unbelievers] means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?...So do not become proud, but stand in awe. All his life, Will Campbell has said, over and over, that it is God’s intention, not just to “accept” the ungodly, but to unmake the ungodly, that is you and me, in a way that we could never do ourselves. by giving life to the dead and calling into existence the things that do not exist (Romans 4:17). What are these things that do not exist? They are people who are righteous as he is righteous. That is the promised future of God.

 

And so the story of Abraham and Sarah brings us within the circle of those who bear witness continually, in daily repentance and humility, not to our own human programs of inclusion or of anything else, but to the truly radical power of the promise of God. For there has never been anything even remotely as inclusive as the plan of God to justify the ungodly.

 

Father Abraham

Had many sons;

Many sons had Father Abraham;

And I am one of them,

And so are you,

So let’s all praise the Lord.

 

 

 

AMEN.

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