Plotting Goodness


Genesis 12:1-9 

Galatians 3:6-9

 

I want to take just a moment to remind us that we are on a journey – and along the way, we are forging a path. That path is thousands of years in the making and many people from many places have walked portions of the path that we will never see. But their walking has left markers and resources and guides for us. And if we are doing our work, we are also crafting some resources for those who will continue the path in generations to come.  

 

In the six weeks that we have been on this journey, we’ve begun to encounter some themes in the story of God that will help us to continue along the way. Sometimes, it is tough to track from week to week because…well, because life happens. Meetings happen, contracts happen, emails happen.  But I have been thinking about these past few weeks and I think maybe we’ve picked up some things along the way that we might want to carry with us on this journey.

 

The first thing I think we need to carry with us on the journey is the idea that we are made in God’s image (share the mirror).  We are made in God’s image and therefore each of us shares a bit of God’s light in the world. We are not God. But collectively, our presence illuminates who God is and how God moves in the world around us. (put the mirror in the backpack). This idea of bearing God’s image in the world is paired with the charge we are given to have dominion over creation – the idea that we are responsible for caring and tending to all of creation as God’s workers in the world.

 

The second thing we need to carry with us on this journey, I think, is that choice laid before Adam and Eve in the garden – the idea that we can choose the way of life or that we can choose a way of trying to be like God by knowing both Good and Evil.  We talked about that fork in the road that shows up a lot – sometimes daily. (share the fork)  It seems to be showing up a LOT right now in our daily lives.  (place the fork in the backpack)

 

The final thing will make more sense after our reflections on today’s scripture.  (big lovely stone…). This stone right here – it represents blessing.  Now, maybe it should be a star. Or maybe you would expect a glitter bomb or something.  But…it is a stone.  Not a light stone either.  I think we’ll discover some reasons for its form as we travel.

 

Let’s think about blessings (and this rock) today as we explore how God is plotting goodness for God’s people.

 

With the reading from Genesis 12, we enter into what some scholars understand as the second part of Genesis and perhaps the opening bars of the rest of the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures.  The first part – the creation story through the flood and then some complicated ancestry – establishes the basis for all the families of creation. It sets up God’s creativity, our human inclination to want to be more like God, and the free will with which we are created.  And with Abraham and Sarah (at this point still Abram and Sarai), we begin to explore the more specific story of the people who will become Israel. 

 

We begin with God speaking to Abram – directing him to leave his “country, his kindred and his father’s house.”  This three part description sets up a pattern we will see later.  With each further detail, the direction to leave what is familiar becomes more intimate, and likely more complicated.  “…country, his kindred and his father’s house.”

 

In the book We Make the Road by Walking, McLaren provides a little bit of backdrop – Abram’s “country” was pretty affluent, and that life is built on a societal structure of haves and have nots.  Based on the herds and slaves we hear about as Abram’s story continues to unfold, we can assume that Abram was among the haves.  So he’s being asked to pull up stakes and leave all of that.

 

In return for following this direction, God makes a promise – I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.

 

Now this is sort of non-specific.  What we know at this point is that Abram and Sarai are without children and already advancing in age.  God promises to bless those that bless them, curse those that curse them, and as a result of Abram’s choice to follow this direction, all families of the earth shall be blessed.

 

We don’t get to hear from Abram really. We don’t know how he understood what God has said, but we do know that he sets off to the place he is being sent, with his herds and his flocks and all of the people in his household and with his nephew Lot – and all of his herds and his flocks and all of the people in Lot’s household.  I imagine the caravan was quite a sight!

 

Abram accepts God’s promise and goes where he is directed to go.  God leads him to Canaan and clarifies that Abram’s descendants will dwell in this place – but with no specifics about when or about how they will come to occupy land occupied by others.

 

Along the way, Abram stops to set up some altars – to worship and give thanks for the future vision that is being unveiled, for the blessings that he has been promised and for the safe travels he is encountering as he follows.

 

I want to lift up s key things:

Abram is silent in today’s reading. We don’t hear any questions, concerns or misgivings. He is promised blessings. And he hears that promise and the directions that go with that promise. And he goes.

 

God includes people who are not Abram’s kin in the blessing.  First, those that bless Abram along his life journey will be blessed. And more broadly, all the families of earth are somehow going to be blessed through Abram’s obedience to God.

 

This ties to the text read from Galatians. Paul is writing to a sharply divided young Christian community – and he is declaring that righteousness – a right relationship to God – has nothing to do with following specifically Jewish customs like circumcision or keeping Levitical laws – and has everything to do with choosing to accept God’s promise demonstrated through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are part of Abraham’s blessing… And Abraham is included in the gospel good news that God loves us and promises eternal life. There is some measure of reciprocity here…

 

Let’s drill down on this idea of blessing because it is foundational. 

 

What exactly is a blessing?

 

Singer Laura Story sings a song released in 2011 that is popular on Christian radio entitled “Blessings.”  It poses these questions:

 

What if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

 

I confess, like a lot of contemporary Christian music, I appreciate it musically, mostly because it is super singable, but the underlying theology imprecise.

 

Here’s what I mean:

I share life with a spouse who has watched at least one family each week lose a child as he has, for 13 years now, walked the halls of the Children’s Center at Johns Hopkins, journeying with families who face unimaginable suffering and grief.  

 

He has heard every response they have experienced as he has counseled them in their grief.  The family member who insists God must have needed another angel. The church friend who claims somebody didn’t pray hard enough.  The person who wants to know what sin the parents have committed in their lives? If only you had enough faith, goodness, obedience….whatever.

 

And the way that Laura Story sings about blessings, listeners might think that all these tragic events in life are intended to cause us to thirst for God. “What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near…”  It might sound as if we have to suffer to pay attention to God.

 

I’m not buying it. What kind of God permits or even imposes suffering in order to bless us? In order to compel us (in our free will) to depend more heavily on God? It is these kinds of misunderstandings about God that has people leaving the greater church these days, I believe. 

 

Now, to be clear, I believe that in the midst of suffering, we may find blessing. We might ENCOUNTER blessing.  But I wholeheartedly reject the idea that somehow God requires or demands suffering.  (And this matters for how we understand Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection…so remember that rock we are carrying around).

 

In this story that is just beginning to unfold about Abram and Sarai, we are seeing a God who makes a promise. It is a promise whose fulfillment Abram cannot see as he accepts it.  In fact, he will NEVER see the fullness of God’s work to fulfill that promise. But he goes anyway because he believes in God’s bigness for what lies ahead.

 

Back to our question: What is a blessing?

 

We put a rock in our backpack, right?

 

Hmm. It’s heavy. It’s awkward. But maybe we use it when we need to stop and give thanks for that moment when we recognize God’s blessing in our lives…when we look out over the land that might belong to our descendants one day.

 

At this point in our own story, God has promised a great blessing.  And much like Abram, we cannot see it.  We cannot fully understand what it means to step out in faith and follow where we are told to go…we can only decide whether we are willing to risk following. 

 

McLaren notes this:

If you scramble over others to achieve your goal, that’s not true aliveness.  If you harm others to acquire your desire, that’s not true aliveness. If you hoard your blessings while others suffer in need, that’s not true aliveness. True aliveness comes when we receive blessings and become a blessing to others. It’s not a blessing racket – figuring out how to plot prosperity for me and my tribe. It’s a blessing economy where God plots goodness for all. (26)

 

In the midst of twin pandemics – racism and COVID 19 – God is still with us and still promising to bless us. Will we go? 

 

Are we willing to leave our country, our kindred, and our fathers house… Whatever that means metaphorically in this season? 

 

Maybe we have to let go of identities we covet. 

 

Maybe we have to let go of titles and structures and ways of doing things that aren’t serving the good of the Kin-dom where Jesus is Lord. Maybe we have to acknowledge brokenness that we’ve inherited even if we ourselves don’t identify with it.

 

Even if the blessing isn’t for our generation, will we go?  

 

Why would we?

Why wouldn’t we?  

Do we trust God’s goodness?

 

In my more adventuresome moments (and perhaps by now you recognize I like some adventure), the promise seems mighty thrilling. Mighty life-giving. 

Hard? Yes.  

Risky? Yes.

Worth it? You betcha.

 

And God goes with us on the journey, blessing us on the way.

 

Let’s go.

 

And may it be so.

Amen.



We are currently in the 6th week of a 52 week study of the book We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation and Activation by Brian McLaren. You can order this book through your local independent bookseller (may I recommend seeking out a black-owned business like Loyalty Books in Silver Spring) or Amazon.




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