The scriptures referred to are Genesis 12:1-4, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, and John 3:1-17.
Stephen King is known for his horror stories but he has written other types of stories. In one short story, the narrator recalls an incident in his childhood. He and his sister would spend their summers on their grandparents' farm. There was a huge barn with a wooden beam that ran the length of the barn high above the concrete floor. The kids were told never to climb up there and so, of course, they did, walking the beam as if it were a tightrope. One day the boy hears his sister screaming his name. He finds her in the barn, hanging by her hands from that high beam. She had slipped and was in danger of falling. The boy realized he could not climb the beam and pull her up. So he tells his sister to hang on while he does something to save her. He begins grabbing armloads of loose hay and piling it under her. Finally, after numerous trips with as much hay as he can carry, he tells her to let go. And without looking down, she does. The enormous pile of hay breaks her fall. She gets off with a broken leg but not a broken or dead body. But what the narrator remembers is that his sister could not see or know what he had done to save her but when he told her to let go, she did. She trusted him with her life.
Trust underlies all relationships, even if it is minimal. When you bring your car in to be repaired, you trust the mechanic to do the job properly and he trusts you to pay him. At work you should be able to trust your coworkers and boss to do their jobs and let you do yours. Business partners should be as good as their word. In the relationship between spouses or between parent and child that trust should be as close to 100% as humanly possible. Lack of trust makes it hard to work with or live with someone. Children who grow up in homes where they can't trust their parents or caretakers can end up with deep-seated insecurity, chronic anxiety and profound trust issues throughout life. They often struggle with low self-esteem, have difficulty forming secure attachments to others, and have a fear of abandonment. They may become people-pleasers or become overly self-sufficient so that they don't need others. They may crave closeness and yet push people away because they think others will inevitably hurt or leave them.
Faith is another word for trust. Faith in God is trusting him. In today's lectionary we look at Abraham, a man who trusted God to a greater extent than most people do. In our passage from Genesis, Abram (his original name) actually becomes an immigrant because of God's call. He grew up in Ur of the Chaldees, a prominent port city on the Euphrates in lower Sumeria, what today is southern Iraq. His father moves the family to Haran, another prominent city in northern Mesopotamia, what is now south-central Turkey. Haran was a trading partner with Tyre on the Mediterranean coast, and it was a major worship site for the moon god Sin.
So God calls Abram away from his family and the big city to live as a shepherd in the land of Canaan, a journey of about a month into an area in which we are soon told there is a famine. (Genesis 12:10) For him to give up family, civilization, and familiar and popular gods to follow a different God into the wilderness takes a great deal of trust.
Abram is trusting God to fulfill his promises to him: that Abram's descendants will become a great nation and a blessing to “all the families of the earth.” And while that may sound tempting, we learn that Abram is 75 and childless. And his wife Sarai is just 10 years younger. (Genesis 17:17) She is post-menopause. (Genesis 18:11) Abram is trusting that God will do what is essentially impossible.
As we know Abram and Sarai (now renamed by God as Abraham and Sarah) do have a child—25 years later! After a long period of Abraham trusting God to deliver, God fulfilled his promise. That is a tremendous display of faith on Abraham's part.
But Abraham has one more test of faith to come. A few chapters later, we are told, “Some time later, God tested Abraham...God said, 'Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.'” (Genesis 22:1-2) Abraham has pinned all of his hopes on Isaac. He, not Ishmael, his son by Sarah's maid, Hagar, is the one through whom the covenant will be fulfilled. (Genesis 17:19-21) Why would Abraham even consider sacrificing him?
A 2009 study of skulls from the royal cemetery at Ur, Abraham's hometown, showed evidence of human sacrifice. They were probably palace attendants sacrificed to serve the king in the next life. Ancient Roman and Greek writers mention infant sacrifices performed by the Phoenicians, who occupied the coast of the land of Canaan. And archaeologists have found thousands of infant skeletons there. Worldwide many cultures sacrificed infants in fertility rituals or to put in the foundation of new buildings to protect them. So, while not common, human sacrifices were known and Abraham would have heard of them and thought this was something a god could command.
Yet this is not infant sacrifice. Isaac was by this time an adolescent at least. He carries the wood for the sacrifice. (Genesis 22:6) Abraham and Isaac have a relationship. Why would God tell Abraham to sacrifice his son, whom he loved?
Lots of people follow God to get what they want. This is the attraction of the so-called “prosperity gospel.” Preachers of this “gospel” say, “Believe in God, give to him (through my ministry) and he will make you healthy and wealthy.” In other words, the reason to follow God is to get things out of him. God is reduced to a vending machine: insert faith (and money) and you will get what your heart desires. The downside of the “prosperity gospel” is that if you don't get what you want you didn't believe hard enough. It's your fault. And some people lose their faith because they were taught that God was like a genie but he didn't grant them their wishes.
So did Abraham, a childless man, merely follow God to get a son? Was Isaac an idol in his life, coming before God? Would Abraham trust God even when it meant giving up what was most precious to him?
It turns out that he did trust God. And as C.S. Lewis points out, while God might have known what he would do, Abraham didn't know the extent of his faith or his obedience until he raised that knife. His trust in God was not conditional or transactional. And when God stops him, he also learns that Yahweh is not the kind of God who would have his followers sacrifice others. In fact, in the law he gives Moses, God prohibits such things. (Leviticus 18:21) So here instead God provides a sacrifice in Isaac's place. And later God will provide a sacrifice for the whole world in the person of his son, Jesus, whom he loves.
Abraham's faith in God is an example for all of us who say we believe in God. And he is a key part of Paul's argument that it is faith, not works, that save us. He points to Genesis 15:6, where it says, “Abram believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.” In other words, God saw Abram's firm loyalty and support and trust and God considered it proof that he was a man in the right relationship with him.
As we said, trust underlies all relationships. Remember how last week, we saw that the temptation began with doubts about God's goodness? The first humans doubted that God was reasonable and truthful. They thought he was holding them back from becoming what they wanted to be: knowledgeable and powerful like God. So they decided they didn't need to obey him and tried to find a shortcut to godlike status. As always, this attempt to circumvent God's process, which is growing more fully into his image, failed.
Again, it is hard to work with someone or for someone you don't trust. Learning whom you can trust begins in infancy. This is why children who are abused and neglected have a hard time trusting other people. And if you don't have a father or have an unreliable one, it is hard to trust God, our heavenly Father. You need a new start.
And that leads to our gospel reading. Jesus tells Nicodemus that to enter God's kingdom one must be born again, or “born from above,” another possible translation. In other words, your life needs a new starting point, a spiritual rebirth. Jesus is probably referring to baptism when speaking of being “born of water and the Spirit.” He often uses water as a metaphor for the Spirit. (John 4:14; 7:37-39) He is also possibly referring to Ezekiel, where God says, “I will sprinkle you with pure water and you will be clean from all your impurities. I will purify you from all idols. I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you; I will cause you to obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.” (Ezekiel 36:25-27) In other words, just as being physically born is outside our control, in being reborn spiritually God will take the initiative. All we can do is trust him to do as he promised.
So our salvation is not dependent on how good we are but upon how good and faithful God is to those who accept him and put their trust in his promises. This does not mean we should stop being good. The point Jesus is making about the kingdom of God is that God cannot reign in our hearts and rule our lives and enable us to do the good he wants us to until we trust him and are reborn by his Spirit. Just as you cannot live until you are born, you cannot live as a child of God without being reborn. Trust is the first step.
It is not the only step. God not only wants us to trust him but also to love him. Again it is really hard to love someone if you don't trust them. But if you realize that they love you, then your relationship can grow into a mutual love. Think about this: most of the marriages in the Bible were arranged marriages. And yet we see that Abraham loved Sarah, Isaac loved Rebekah, Jacob loved Rachel. (Genesis 23:1-2; 24:67; 29:18) Arranged marriages start with commitment and can grow into love. Modern freely chosen marriages start with love and then lead to a commitment. A 2012 study found “high levels of satisfaction, commitment, and passionate and companionate love” in both arranged and love-based marriages. There were no significant differences in those areas. But the commitment speaks of trust. To say that this is the person you will spend the rest of your life with takes trust on both sides.
The Bible frequently compares our relationship with God and Jesus to a marriage. (Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 31:32; Matthew 9:15; Ephesians 5:25; Revelation 19:7) It takes trust in the goodness of the partner and commitment to them. The love in the relationship grows and bears fruit in doing good things. (Ephesians 2:8-10) But if it's true love it does not depend on the ability of the person to perform good works. I spent several years acting as a private duty nurse for a couple. The man had a massive stroke and could do almost nothing for himself. His aged wife, with my help, would give him a suppository, get him out of bed and into his wheelchair, wheel him to a place where she would wash him with a shower hose while he sat on a potty chair, towel him off, dress him, and wheel him to breakfast. In the evening, we would change him and put him to bed. He could do nothing for her. But she loved and cared for him. And he loved her. When she died of breast cancer, he died 6 months later despite being taken care of by his family. But before that he became the first person I baptized. And his wife, who was also a believer, was happy because they would be reunited after death.
You may have lived a life where it was difficult to trust people. It may have been your parents, other family members, a spouse or even a church leader whom you realized you could not trust. Don't transfer that distrust to God. God is not like abusive or neglectful humans. He will not leave you or abandon you. (Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:5) He will remain faithful to us even if we are sometimes unfaithful to him. (2 Timothy 2:13) In fact, we see his love for us and commitment to us in that it was while we were still sinners that Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, died to save us. (Romans 5:8)
It all starts with trusting God and believing his promises. In Jesus we see what God is like: loving, just, merciful, and forgiving. If you ever find yourself at your wit's end, hanging on by your fingernails, your life all but lost, if you call upon him, if you trust in his goodness, you can be sure that he is there for you. Let go of your past. Let go of your sins. Let go of your bitterness and anger and regrets. Let go and he will catch you. As the Bible says, “The everlasting God is a refuge, and underneath you are his eternal arms.” (Deuteronomy 33:27)
