Amanda McMillen, “Life Where There Can’t Be Life”
This morning, we meet a man who is at the end of his rope. Last week Dave in his sermon used the AA phrase, “God’s office is at the end of your rope”. Well if that’s the case, then in this Old Testament story from Genesis, Abram finds himself in God’s office, ready for a miracle ASAP.
So here we meet Abram, who had already heard from God that the land of Canaan would be given to Abram’s offspring - only problem is that Abram has no offspring of his own. He and his wife Sarai have been waiting for a child and none has arrived. God promised, at least they thought he did, but so far, nothing. Year after year. Abram is starting to shift in his seat and comes up with a plan B, and it’s very sensible - God, let’s just say that Eliazar, my slave, will be my offspring. I guess that must be what is to come. That must be what you meant. But God says, no, thank you for that suggestion Abram, but I’m sticking with plan A.
And what is plan A? Plan A is an impossible birth. Life, where it doesn't make sense for there to be life. Life, where there should only be emptiness - in this case, that is the womb of Sarai, Abram’s wife, who is beyond child bearing years, “the way of women has ceased to be with her”, as the Hebrew puts it. Plan A for God is that there would be life where there cannot be life.
Does this sound familiar to you? Life where there can’t be life. The virgin Mary, a young girl at the time, is pregnant with God’s own son, says the angel. A tomb rolled away and only grave clothes inside, no dead body to be found. Life where there cannot be life.
Where in your life are you in need of life? Where are you coming up empty, when it comes to your own efforts to solve something? Where do you feel like you are at the end of yourself? I want you to think about those parts of your life while we look at the rest of this story with Abram.
Abram has good reason to doubt God’s promise of life where there can’t be life. So he asks, God, I want to believe you, I really do, but how am I supposed to actually trust this crazy plan? How am I to know that me and my offspring will possess this land like you promise?
And so God tells Abram to perform a covenant of pieces, an ancient and frankly very weird ritual. This specific type of covenant was a common practice at the time - made between two parties. One, the suzerain, the more powerful party, and the other, the vassal, the weaker party. The sacrificed animals are halved on the altar, as this passage describes, and then the less powerful of the two parties, the vassal, walks between the halves. The idea in the covenant is that what happens to these animals (being cut in two) is what will happen to the lesser of the two parties, to the vassal, if the covenant is broken. It’s extremely metal.
So God says to Abram to perform this covenant of pieces, to gather these animals, cut them in two, lay them on one another, to set everything up as you would normally do, for God and Abram to make this covenant between the two of them. What happens next is NOT normal for the covenant. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. While he was sleeping, a smoking fire pot and flaming torch passed between these pieces. In that moment the covenant was made between God and Abram, God made a promise to give Abram this land for him and his plentiful offspring.
If you’re thinking, what in the world am I reading?? - then that’s appropriate. So let’s break it down. As I said before, the way this covenant of pieces usually works is that the lesser party walks between the halved animals and the covenant is then formed. The lesser party between God and Abram would, obviously, be Abram, the party that is not the creator of the whole world right? Abram sets up the whole sacrifice, prepares everything, but then falls into a deep sleep - he doesn’t finish the covenantal ritual - God finishes it instead while he’s sleeping. God has the smoking fire pot and flaming torch pass between the pieces instead of Abram passing between them.
This deep sleep that Abram falls into by the way, the Hebrew word here is TARDEMAH - it’s a word understood to refer to a divinely induced deep sleep. It’s the same word used in Genesis 2, when God makes Adam fall into a deep sleep, a TARDEMAH, and from that sleep takes from him a rib and creates Eve. Life where there can’t be life.
While God made the covenant with Abram, God put Abram into a deep sleep. The covenant is between God and Abram, but God holds all of the risk, and Abram is promised all of the reward.
So God makes himself the lesser of the two parties - God acts as the vassal by having the torch pass through the sacrificial animal halves instead of Abram. This means that God brings upon himself the punishment of the covenant not being fulfilled by the actual lesser party (that is, Abram). This covenant of pieces is a conditional covenant - but the conditions do not rest on Abram, they rest fully on God.
And to be clear, Abram does break the covenant. He is supposed to have faith in God’s plan, and God promises that he will give Abram offspring. But Abram’s faith is not lasting - in the very next chapter, Abram agrees to have a child by his slave, Hagar - he’s still trying to come up with a plan B. His faith is full of doubt. He broke the covenant, but as we know, eventually, Sarah bears Isaac, their promised offspring. Abram is given what was promised, despite his breaking the covenant.
Earlier I asked you to think about areas in your life where you are in need of life. Where are you coming up empty, when it comes to your own efforts to solve a problem? An area of your life that needs newness of life, in which you find yourself, like Abram, at the end of your rope? Do you feel, in that part of your life, that God is putting you into a deep sleep, a tardemah, which requires you to fully rely on God? Not by your own choice, mind you, because if it was your choice you would probably choose to rely on yourself, to be hypervigilant, to be wide awake, doing everything you can to make that promised life happen, as would I. What we see from this passage is that in deep and terrifying darkness, as the text puts it, in deep divinely induced sleep, in our inability to solve our problems, in our giving up, in human unknowing, at the end of our rope, God does things that are literally unbelievable. And God does them in God’s time, which means that if it feels like you’ve been waiting for life forever, that doesn’t mean that hope is unfounded.
God’s role, in Abram’s life, and in your life, is to make life where there can’t be life. Where there is despair, and darkness, and grief, God makes life, and light, and hope. Abram’s role, on the other hand, is to sleep. To have faith, to give up control, or rather, to have control taken from him, because even that God actually does for him - remember, a deep darkness descended upon him, he didn’t even choose that.
What is this faith, that is reckoned to Abram as righteousness? It’s full of doubt, that’s for sure, it’s full of making plan B’s when God says I want you to trust in my plan A of life. Here’s how Episcopal priest Robert Capon describes faith: “Believing…is not a transaction by which we cause some effect, by which something that is not the case is made so by appropriate action on our part - it is simply our willingness to trust that a work we never know how to do and that we couldn’t have accomplished even if we did, has been done for us by a gracious other. Faith is not an act by which we enter into a deal that we’re responsible for bringing to fruition; it’s just saying, ‘Sure, why not?’ to somebody who claims he can deal out all the fruits to begin with.”
According to Genesis 15, faith is waking up from a restful nap during which God did everything for you, and saying - oh great, thank you - I have no better options right now, so I’m just gonna go with this. And that is reckoned as righteousness to God.
At first glance in this passage, all we see is a really weird ritual of cut up animals, but a closer look brings us to Jesus. How do we know that God is good for his promise of life, where there cannot be life? We know because of his own sacrifice, Jesus’ own body broken in two. That’s where our faith rests. That’s the covenant that we cling to. That Jesus takes on the role of the lesser of the two parties in our relationship, walking between the animals, taking on the risk of the covenant - and in doing so, Jesus actually is the sacrifice on the altar. Jesus takes on all of the risk, and we are given all of the reward. Jesus takes on all the death of the world. All the parts of our lives where we are at the ends of ourselves. All of our grief, all of our despair, is taken into the body of God Himself on the cross. In your life, where you find yourself coming up empty, where you are in need of some fresh, new life right now, where you see only death, Jesus takes all of that into his very self. And God does what God always does - God takes death and creates there endless life. In the barren Sarah, in the rib of Adam, in the virgin’s womb, in the empty tomb, and in your life, too.
Amen.
