Father Abraham

Lent 2 B February 25, 2018

Do you remember the Bible camp song, “Father Abraham?”  Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, So let's all praise the Lord.  Sing it 6 times. After each one. right arm, then left arm, right foot, left foot, chin up, turn around - sit down!

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; . . . I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” Then Abram fell on his face.

Billy Graham was 99 years old. November 7 he would have been his 100^th birthday. Friday’s paper compared him to St. Paul as an evangelist. In the 58 years between1947 and 2005 Graham conducted 417 crusades in 185 countries on six continents. He was heard by more than 210 million people - face to face and on television. The longest crusade was in 1957, 16 weeks in New York City. In 1973 in South Korea he preached to over 1,100,000 people at once. I never heard him in person but I watched him on television. Graham is remembered for his friendship with Presidents and other world leaders, remembered for desegregating his crusades in 1953, remembered for posting bail for Martin Luther King in 1963, but chiefly Billy Graham is remembered as a preaching witness to the good news of God’s love in the life, death, ns resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Billy Graham was 99. Abraham was 99. I can’t imagine beginning a family at 99. I hope we all continue to be like Billy Graham and like Abraham, trusting in the love of God as long as we have breath.  St. Paul tells us that Abraham’s faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” God offered, and Abraham received by faith, a covenant of eternal life. We are spiritual descendants of Abraham and God offers us in Jesus Christ the same covenant of eternal life.

Abraham stands at the margin of legend and history. Noah is oral tradition and legend. We have physical evidence of an ice age, and global warming, and many cultures have a tradition of flood, destruction, and new life repopulating the world.  Genesis tells us of God’s covenant with Noah and with all humanity, a covenant of respect for life with the sign of the rainbow.

God offers Abraham a covenant for himself and for all his descendants physical and spiritual. God will bless Abraham’s descendants, and they will be rulers of nations.  Abraham received tis covenant in faith. “Then Abram fell on his face.” He prostrated himself in faith and obedience before the Lord.

In the Holy Land from November to February the rain clouds blow east from the Mediterranean Sea. On average 24 inches of rain fall each year. (Boone gets 52 inches.) Most of the rain falls west of the central ridge where Jerusalem sits. East is a steep escarpment down to the central valley of the Jordan and Dead Sea – 4,000 feet in 14 miles. Little rain falls there. But the rock formations bring some of the water that falls in the west through the limestone to springs and pools to the east. The Dead Sea has so much salt and minerals that swimmers can lie on their back, put chin up and all four hands and feet in the air. “Father Abraham had many sons . . . .”  Four yards from the edge of the Dead Sea is a fresh water swimming pool.  This is sheep and goat country, nomad country. Flocks move from spring to spring, well to well. Scholars think Abraham was a nomad chieftain, living in a big tent. The bible stories about Abraham fit into the Middle Bronze Age, about 1800 to 1500 years before Christ.

Abraham received God’s offer of blessing with faith and trust. St. Paul reminds us, “The promise that he would inherit the world” came to Abraham “through the righteousness of faith.”  It is not what Abraham did, but what God does. God offered the covenant to Abraham not based on what Abraham did, but what God does. God offered, “I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous. . . . You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations .” The covenant with Abraham and his descendants was God’s free gift of a relationship.

Abraham had a choice. He could have rejected God’s offer. But Abraham fell on his face in worship and acceptance. Sarah first doubted and then accepted God’s offer of a son.

God offers us in Jesus Christ the same covenant of relationship that he offered Abraham. We don’t have to be 99 years old; we don’t have to be childless; we don’t have to be a nomad herder of sheep and goats in the Holy Land. We are who we are; where we are, in the present time. We don’t have to fall prostrate.  We have simply to open our hands and our hearts to receive God’s love, and to allow that love to fill us, and cleanse us of sin, and give us the truth and power of the Holy Spirit to love and serve God, this day, and for the rest of our lives.

Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, So let's all praise the Lord.  Right arm, then left arm, right foot, left foot, chin up, turn around – love and serve! Amen.