Abraham and Sarah: More Descendants than Stars in the Sky by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Patti Lusher)

I would imagine that more than once in your life you have looked up at the stars in the sky and marveled at how many there are. Because we live in the city with all the city lights, they are harder to see. I love the chance to go out into a more remote area, on a clear night, and just stare up into the heavens.

         On more than one occasion, Abraham, who was quite old and childless, was doing just this and got the message from God: “Abraham, your children and grandchildren will number more than the stars in the sky.” I can only imagine his astonishment at such a promise from God. Abraham was a man of deep faith, not one to doubt God. But such a proposition would have been hard for an old man to wrap his mind around.

We are his great great great grandchildren. Okay, I’m not saying I can trace all of our family trees all the way back to the Middle East, but we are part of Abraham and Sarah’s family because their family story is our story now.

I want to pause to say a word about that. The Christian Bible, which is our Holy book, has two parts. We call them the Old and New Testament or we can call them the Hebrew Testament and the Christian Testament. The Hebrew is written from the perspective of the Jewish people who know themselves to be God’s Chosen people. We will see that over and over again in this story: God tells them they are the chosen ones. When God chooses to come to earth in human form, God comes to the Jews, and sends Jesus to live as a Jew. This Holy book of ours is written from that perspective of those chosen people.

Now, we have a bigger picture of the world than they had in that tiny part of the world where this was written. We see that there are other religions that have many of the same values as Christianity. They also love God. They have their holy stories. They respect Jesus as a teacher but they find their way to God by another route. How do we make sense of that?

I believe God is big enough to create many routes for human beings to reach God. This is a big planet and a diverse planet, created by God, and why wouldn’t it follow that human beings of various cultures on different continents, in relation to God, might develop different religious practices?

For me, and presumably for you, we were born, most of us, into a predominately Christian culture. So the Judeo-Christian story, the one from the Old and New Testament, is our story. It works best for us. If other people find their way to God in another way, we respect that. And if other people are searching for God, we can introduce them to our way.  God is big enough and wise enough to create many routes to Him.  But everyone needs a story. Everyone needs an origin story as a way to connect to the family of God, and this is our story.

So, for a couple of months here, we are going to have some fun digging in to our family history, all the way back to our roots with the early mothers and fathers of our family tree beginning with Abraham and Sarah. They lived around the year 2000 BCE in Mesopotamia in a place called Haran.

Their story starts like this. God came to Abraham and said to him: “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you.

^2-3 I’ll make you a great nation
        and bless you.
    I’ll make you famous;
        you’ll be a blessing.
    I’ll bless those who bless you;
        those who curse you I’ll curse.
    All the families of the Earth
        will be blessed through you.”  Genesis 12:1-3

So Abraham took his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot and all his possessions. He left Haran and headed to a new home in Canaan. Along the way he got discouraged and that is when God had him look up and God said: “Look at the sky. Count the stars. Can you do it? Count your descendants! You’re going to have a big family, Abram!” Genesis 15:5

Soon we come upon the story that you heard today. It is a classic. Abraham and his people have set up their tents and are resting from their journey. Three travelers come along. As is the custom, Abraham offers them food. They come in and Sarah is just inside the tent cooking, but she can hear the men talking. The visitor says that he will return next year to see their baby. We are reminded, in case we had forgotten:

¹² Abraham and Sarah were old by this time, very old. Sarah was far past the age for having babies. Sarah laughed within herself, “An old woman like me? Get pregnant? With this old man of a husband?”

Then we are told that one of the visitors is actually God.

^13-14 God said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh saying, ‘Me? Have a baby? An old woman like me?’ Is anything too hard for God? I’ll be back about this time next year and Sarah will have a baby.”

Sarah comes in and God says: “Why did you laugh?” And she says: “Me? I was not laughing.”

The joke is on her because, of course she gets pregnant soon thereafter. They name the child Isaac which means “laughing one.”

So let’s go back and unpack this story a bit. The story sounds so simple when we read it, and know how it turns out. But it is far from simple.

Abraham and Sarah were old. They were nearing the end of their lives. And she was barren. Now, I think we all have some idea in our day of the pain that people experience when they want to have children and cannot. It is excruciating. But it was a different kind of pain in those days. Children were a sign of prosperity. They also took care of you and your land. You needed children so you could pass on your inheritance to them. Abraham did not want all of his wealth to go to his brother’s children. Barrenness in the story was also a symbol of hopelessness. Abraham and Sarah would have been hopeless for their future without children in a way that we don’t feel in our time.

But along comes God. And God offers a promise that was too good to be true: descendants numbering more than the stars in the sky. And land.  These people lived off the land, they were either farmers or herders. “I will give you land and people. You will be the father of a great nation. I have chosen you, Abraham.” Land was of great value to the people. And children mean that you could farm the land and raise animals. That meant prosperity. No more barrenness.

So when Abraham and Sarah listened to God the first time and picked up and left their home in Haran, on the promise of blessing, their act of trust was HUGE. Think about it. People hate change, right? People want to stay in what they know. The people know barrenness, so that is secure. People will stay in the misery they know. Theologian Walter Bruggemann writes of this story: “To stay in safety is to remain barren; to leave in risk is to have hope” (Walter Bruggemann, Genesis: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, John Knox Press, Atlanta, 1982, p. 118). Teaching and Preaching, John Knox Press, Atlanta, 1982

Abraham and Sarah have a choice. They can live “for the promise” or live “against the promise” in the state of barrenness (ibid, p. 113). They choose to live into God’s promise for them, and that makes all the difference. They move to Canaan, which will be their home, and God blesses them with a son, Isaac. God fulfills God’s promise. Isaac and Rebecca are the parents of Jacob and Esau. Jacob and his wives become the parents of the twelve tribes of Israel. But I am getting ahead of myself.

What does this story of promise mean for us today?

Is there a place in your life where you feel stuck or unfruitful? I hesitate to use the metaphor of a “would be” mother who cannot get pregnant, because I know that can be a very real situation for some. But perhaps you can just imagine feeling like your life is passing you by and you are too old to do something that you had always dreamed of. Perhaps there is a situation where you just keep hitting a wall.

When I was the pastor of another church, before I felt called to plant The Village, I had no plans to leave that church. I thought God put me there to grow and develop that church for a long time. After about seven years there as pastor, I began to sense that the work was no longer fruitful. I tried everything I could think of but nothing was working. At the same time, I had been trained as a church planter. I was using the skills I learned as a church planter to do innovative ministry with that established church. I never really saw myself as someone who would plant a church from scratch. Honestly, that seemed too scary. The familiar, of the church I was in, seemed better to me, even though it was no longer fruitful. But I began to hear God speak to me clearly: “Cheri, you need to let go of what is familiar so that I can use you to do something new.” I was, quite frankly, terrified.

I did not know how to plant a church. There was no financial support for such a project. But the message from God got more and more clear. “Cheri, leave the familiar behind, and plant something new. I will show you the way.”  

Now I am not saying that God spoke to me like God spoke to Abraham. God did not say God would make a great nation. But God said that God would help me plant a church, and here we are.

Sometimes we just need to take an entirely new look at a situation. We need to look at something from 360 degrees. That’s what God came in and did for Abraham. Abraham and Sarah had long since given up on the idea that they would ever have children. Being without children had become their normal and God came in and said: “I will give you a new normal. I will change your life plan. Put your trust in me.”

I thought I was going to stay at that other church and keep trudging through, even though the ministry was no longer fruitful. Every church has a life cycle. They are all born and they will all die eventually. That is why we plant new ones. God showed me that it was time to step out and do this new thing that God had prepared me my whole life to do, but I had to let go of something in order to do it.

When Sarah heard she was going to have a baby, she laughed. But God said to her: Is anything too hard for God? God is the one who has the power and the wisdom to get us out of our stuck places and make us into something new at any age, at any place in life.

So what about you? What is God’s promise for you? And are you ready to live into it? If you are feeling stuck or unfruitful in this season of your life, what new direction is God trying to show you? Or maybe you are not really stuck. It does not have to be something big. It might just be a small course correction. Maybe God is simply trying to show you something you can do together to move into the wonderful life God desires for you: some change, some risk, something to leave behind, or something to try. The way to know what it is, is to listen to God. Pray. And in your prayer time, don’t just talk, listen. Ask God: what is your promise for me? And listen for what God has to say.

RESPONSE TO THE MESSAGE:

Homework – Go out one night and look at the stars, remember the promise to Abraham. Ask God what promise God wants to make to you.