Year A, Lent 2
I don’t like the question, “What’s
your five year plan?” This is despite
the fact that I’m a planner and always have been. I still remember my first planner when I was
in 6th grade. I wrote
everything down. I don’t have a paper
planner anymore, but I still love to see my calendar all planned out. Until a couple of years ago, I always had a 5
year plan. The 5 year plan worked out
until college graduation, then life started going off plan, no matter how
dedicated I was to my plans. As I look
back on the last 10 years I realize that nothing has really gone according to
plan. So I stopped making 5 year
plans. Now when people ask me my five
year plan I usually remind them of the idiom, “When we make plans, God laughs.”
Our Old Testament reading for today is
one of the first times that we encounter Abraham (or as he is called in this
text: Abram). He first appears in
chapter 11, but all we learned was that he is the son of Terah, has three
brothers and a wife named Sarai who is barren.
He lives in Haran with his family.
We later learn that he is 75 when the Lord first speaks to him. We don’t
even know what he did for a living. Our
ignorance about Abram is interesting, but not as fascinating as what Abram
doesn’t know about God. We do not even
know if he believed in God, or if he was polytheistic, meaning he believed in
multiple gods.
For millennia, rabbis have been
hypothesizing about the back story of Abram.
Jews have something called a midrash.
It’s similar to Biblical commentary, but more creative. In ancient midrash, learned rabbis would
create stories about certain biblical characters. They would essentially fill in the
gaps. There are several midrash stories
about Abram, especially before age 75.
One story explains that his father was a creator of idols. He made and sold idols of gods. Abram’s job was to sell these idols. However,
according to the stories, he was not a very good salesman because he mocked
those who bought them. In one story, he
asked the customer how old he was. When
the customer responded, Abram said, “You are so old and yet you spend so much
money on a god that is only one day old.”
Since Abram had actually seen these idols made, he knew that there was
nothing to worship.
Obviously, we have no way of knowing
if such stories have any truth. But I
can understand why these stories were developed. It almost seems like we need Abram to
believe in God before he first heard the voice of God. Otherwise the whole thing is just madness.
One minute Abram is minding his own business living with his family and then a
voice comes from somewhere (we don’t know where) and tells him to leave all
that he knows and go to a place that the Lord has not yet disclosed so that the
Lord can bless him and make his name great.
Can you imagine that conversation with
his wife? “Sarai, sweetheart, I heard a
voice that told me to leave town. No, I
am not sure where we are going. I guess
we will just start walking and the voice will lead us from there. And I have reason to believe we will be the
parents of a great nation. I know we
don’t have any children yet and we are both 75, but you know, the voice said so;
let’s start packing. Who is the voice? The Lord. That’s all I know. ” Of course the rabbis needed to provide a
backstory. With no backstory, Abram
sounds crazy.
Despite the craziness and lack of
information, Abram follows God’s call. Abram
and Sarai journeyed from place to place.
There was never a five year plan, never a map, never a destination. They would travel to a place, pitch a tent
and set up an altar. God would speak to
Abram, remind him that his descendants would be numerous and then they would
start all over again. There were adventures along the way. Abram became rich with livestock and
land. He fought wars. He interacted with kings. God and Abram kept talking, but there were
still no children. Abram would ask God
why there were no children and how he could be a father of a nation with no
children. God did not tell him how, he
just kept repeating the promise.
This went on for 24 years until Abram
was 99. At age 99, God told him once
again about all his descendants and then asked Abram to make a promise, to create
a covenant with God. God would change
his name to Abraham and ask him to be circumcised along with all of his
family. This is what Abraham gets for 24
years of faithful loyalty: a new name and a very painful physical
sacrifice. With this news, Abraham
finally just fell on his face and laughed.
This time it was man laughing at God’s plans. As a result, God gave Abraham more specific
information. He gave him the name of the
son that Sarah would have. The name
would be Isaac….which means he laughs.
This seemed to be enough for Abraham because he did just as the Lord
asked, once again. A year later his wife
had her first child at the age of 100.
They named him Isaac.
I don’t think that God laughs at our
plans, at least not in a mean way. That
idiom is just a reminder that our plans are as brittle as the paper we write
them or as changeable as the devices we record them on. I don’t know if the rabbis were right and
Abraham’s resume had idol salesman on it.
But considering where and when he lived, he was certainly part of
culture that was steeped in idol worship.
As I result I wonder if there was a longing in his heart for something
bigger. Because of that longing, when he
heard that big voice of God, he believed it.
Perhaps Abraham appreciated a God that did not give a plan, did not have
a backstory. Abraham was accustomed to
seeing people worship figures that men had created. Seeing how powerless those gods were, Abraham
knew there was a need for a God that could not be known, could not be handled
or molded by human hands, and could certainly not be controlled by our own
plans.
While we do not have stone idols that we
worship, we know what it is to think that we hold the world in our hands. And
sometimes we know what it is to feel crushed by those hands, those hands that
hold tight to our expectations and the world’s expectations. It would be so liberating if we could break
free of those plans….wouldn’t it?
I would love to stand up here and tell
you all how I have learned to let go of my plans. You see, I have a 5 year plan that I want.
I’m just realistic enough to know that it’s probably not going to happen. Sometimes I am ok with that. Sometimes I get really angry that God has not
seen the wisdom and pragmatism in my plans and frankly, gotten with the
program. Then I am reminded of that man
and woman who waited 25 years for a promise.
During that time of waiting, they had adventures. They grew closer to God and one another. Every place they stopped, one of the first
things they did was set up an altar and worship the one true God. During that time, God would actually consult
Abraham on actions that he was taking.
By the end, they had a relationship, a relationship so natural that
Abraham could fall on his face laughing as God looked on. So instead of waiting for our five year plans
to really happen, what if we made the waiting the destination? What if we used that time to create a
relationship with God (and one another) that would sustain us? Then, we would
know what it is to be blessed. The promise just might be in the waiting itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment