In the Name of Love
Scripture Reading: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Every year on the first Sunday of October there is a Schneider Family reunion down in York, Pennsylvania, which is my father’s hometown. I remember going once as a child. But two years ago, given that I was not serving a church and therefore had Sundays free, I attended for the first time in about 40 years. Of the 50 or so Schneiders, Schneiders-in-law, and Schneider-adjacent who attended, the only people I recognized were my aunt and uncle (my father’s younger brother) and my two cousins. Still, there was something affirming about getting in touch with my family roots.
One of the principal organizers of the reunion was my second or maybe third cousin once or twice removed, who is an amateur genealogist. Not only did he print a gigantic family tree to display on the wall (it looked like one of those wall maps you see in war movies when the generals are strategizing), he also published a booklet containing basic biographical information on everyone in the family tree and which was fully indexed! He traced the family back seven generations, all the way to the family matriarch Elizabetha, who left Bavaria in 1869 as a widow with four children, the youngest being my great grandfather.
I can only imagine the hardship that my great-great-grandmother faced—first for being a widow with four children, and second for boarding a boat and crossing an ocean to begin a new life in a foreign country. The courage, the determination, and the faith that she must have had! And after arriving in the United States without much more than a promise and a prayer, I wonder whether she could have imagined that she would one day be the matriarch of six generations of descendants and counting!
My great-great-grandmother’s story is not unlike that of countless other immigrants to this country, or for that matter, Abraham’s. Responding to God’s call, as told in Genesis chapter 12, Abraham, who was then known as Abram, left his homeland and travelled great distances back and forth throughout the Near East to eventually settle in a foreign land.
Not only had God promised to give Abram land but also descendants as countless as the stars. Both of these—land and descendants—would be blessings bestowed upon Abram through the covenant that God would make with him. And as a sign of the covenant, Abram would also receive a new name, Abraham, meaning “father of nations.”
Today is the second Sunday of Lent and our second consecutive Sunday exploring an Old Testament covenant. It won’t be our last. Each Sunday in Lent, until Palm Sunday, we’ll be looking at one of the five foundational covenants in the Old Testament. Last week was Noah. This week it’s Abraham. In weeks to come we’ll also look at the covenants that God makes with Moses, with David, and finally the new covenant in Jesus, as first foretold by Jeremiah.
In the interest of full disclosure, preaching from the Old Testament, especially from some of the lengthier books, like Genesis and Exodus, presents a challenge. Many of these stories are told at length across several chapters. It’s not like preaching about one of Jesus’s parables, which are usually just a few verses. As the one telling the story, I feel somewhat of a burden, but also a responsibility, not to parachute into the middle of the story without first providing some context.
That’s why before we jump into what happens in Genesis 17, I want to first back up to where Abram’s story begins in chapter 12. If you read the first twelve chapters of Genesis, you realize that something changes with chapter 12. Chapters 1 through 11 are about humanity writ large: Adam and Eve and their descendants populate the earth; humanity as a whole shows itself to be sinful, leading to the flood; humanity then reconstitutes itself and builds a tower to reach up to God, which ends in disaster. But then in chapter 12, seeing the misguided way that humans had tried and failed to reach up to God, God decides to reach down to us through one man…Abram.
God decides to take a chance on this man from Ur of the Chaldeans, somewhere in what today is southern Iraq. God tells this seventy-five-year-old man to leave his homeland for a land that God will show him. You know, it was a hassle for me to move from southern Connecticut to Haverstraw. I can’t even imagine the undertaking it must have been for Abram to travel thousands of miles on foot, at age 75, no less!
Abram is taking a huge risk in leaving his home, but God also has a lot riding on this venture. Not only is Abram up there in years, but at times he shows himself to be of questionable moral character. While traveling through Egypt, Abram fears that because his wife Sarai is so beautiful, the Egyptians may kill him in order to have her. He therefore passes off his wife as his sister and even allows Pharaoh to marry her!
The Bible doesn’t present an idealized picture of Abram or any other follower of God.
Later, in chapter 15, when God tells Abram that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars, Abram famously believes the promise. You may recall the verse: “And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). But Abram doesn’t exactly show much patience in waiting for God to fulfill that promise. Instead, he takes matters into his own hands, and with the blessing of his wife, sleeps with Hagar, an enslaved woman under his authority.
When Hagar conceives and Sarai becomes envious, Abram washes his hands of the situation and basically says, “She’s your problem. You deal with her.” Taking no responsibility whatsoever, Abram allows Sarai to mistreat Hagar, to the point that Hagar flees into the wilderness to escape from the abuse…while pregnant.
This isn’t exactly the portrait of a happy family. That’s why when I hear pastors, politicians, and pundits clamor for a return to traditional values and a biblical understanding of marriage, I want to ask, Have you read the Bible? People’s lives are a mess! Abram is just one example of many. In fact, it’s the unflinching honesty of Scripture that keeps me coming back. The Bible doesn’t present an idealized picture of Abram or any other follower of God.
For in revealing the name of God as “God Almighty,” God actually humbles himself by entering into a covenant with deeply flawed human beings.
And yet despite Abram’s moral failings, God remains faithful to him. As we’re told in today’s reading, Abram is now 99 years old. It’s been 24 years since he left his home. It’s been 13 years since his son Ishmael was born through Hagar. And now God appears to Abram to remind him of the promise that was made all those years ago. For despite all the years that have gone by, God has not forgotten his promise. “I will make my covenant between me and you, and I will make you exceedingly numerous,” God says to Abram.
As a sign of that covenant God gives to Abram a new name, one that aligns with God’s promise to make his descendants as numerous as the stars. For whereas Abram means “exalted father” (not too shabby), the new name Abraham means “father of multitudes,” which is what God will make of him.
Sarai is also included in the covenant, and she too receives a new name, Sarah, meaning “princess.” And as a sign of God’s covenant faithfulness to her, God tells Abraham that Sarah, even though she is beyond childbearing age, will give birth to a son. Through her nations will rise and kings will descend.
And that’s not all. Not only do Abraham and Sarah receive new names as part of the covenant, even God takes on a new name. This is the first instance in Scripture in which the name “God Almighty” appears. If you have a Bible in front of you (there should be one in the pew rack), you’ll see that “God Almighty” is capitalized. That’s because it’s a translation of a proper name: El Shaddai. It is one of several names for God in the Old Testament.
“God Almighty.” I can’t help but find this name ironic. For in revealing the name of God as “God Almighty,” God actually humbles himself by entering into a covenant with deeply flawed human beings. In the name of love, God Almighty binds himself to frail humanity, not for a while, mind you, but for ever. In the name of love, God says to Abraham, “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant.”
This is a lifetime contract we’re talking about (longer even than the Bobby Bonilla contract from the 1990s that the Mets are still paying for)! There’s no escape clause, no opt-out for God in this covenant. By forming a covenant with Abraham, God Almighty promises to be God to Abraham and to his offspring for all eternity.
And in the name of love, God Almighty humbles himself still further, to the point of taking on human flesh and subjecting himself to the power of sin and death, even death on a cross. This is the new covenant made between Jesus and everyone who trusts in his saving power, that being the power to forgive sins. This new covenant is also an everlasting covenant, sealed in the blood of Christ. For on the cross Jesus shows himself to be God for us: To be for us even though we are sinners; to be for us even when we deny him; to be for us even when we turn from him to go our own way. Such is the depth and breadth and power of God’s love. And in the name of love, we too are given a new name—no longer sinner but God’s beloved.