Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
I like the way that Paul refers to God as one “who gives
life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” [Romans
4:17]
On one level, there is God as Creator of the universe. One
nanosecond there is nothing and the next — bang! — even a Big Bang! — and there
is everything, not yet fully formed, and flying apart at unimaginable speeds
and higher temperatures than can be measured, off into the far reaches of
nothingness, existence rushing to fill up the non-existence that was there but
isn’t there (although “was” and “is” are sort of relative because time just
came into being with the rest of the universe). Physicists describe all
this with mathematical equations because to put it into words is more than
language can handle.
Then there’s the way that the subsequent elements and molecules
and compounds organize into greater and greater complexity, with one building
upon another. Inorganic compounds become organic somehow, and learn to
replicate themselves and strings of DNA and RNA form, then produce proteins and
before you know it, after mere trillions and trillions of years there are
bacteria swimming in primordial waters on their way to becoming jellyfish and
kangaroos, earthworms and Albert Einstein. God
“gives life to the dead
and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” [Romans 4:17]
On another level, though, there is the smaller but no less
miraculous way that God calls newness into existence within and among
people. For instance, the Bible gives us the example of a man born in the
Late Bronze Age, sometime around 2500 B.C., in a city called Ur, then on the
Persian Gulf in what is now southern Iraq. His name was Avram or Ibram,
something like that. We would say Abram, which I’m going to do.
He would have been raised to worship the gods of his people, and
among them every city had its own gods, and sometimes families had their gods
that pertained to them alone. How it was that the one God, the one who
made heaven and earth, who “who gives life to the dead and calls into
existence the things that do not exist” spoke to him and how Abram
recognized what was going on we do not know, but somehow it was that God spoke
and Abram heard a word of promise that said,
“Go from your country
and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I
will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name
great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and
the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth
shall be blessed.” [Genesis
12:1-3]
Somehow, Abram trusted that promise, and as a result there are
people all over the world who now live their lives knowing that the God who
spoke to him can be trusted with their lives, too. Not just for this
world that we see, either, but on into the eternity that lies beyond our
comprehension.
What happened was told and retold by the children he and his
wife were too old to have. It is not always a story of virtue and
victory. There were moments when, faced with adversity or scared and
confused, they made some pretty bad choices. In fact, the bad blood and
dissension that some of their choices created still linger in ethnic conflicts
all across the lands of the Middle East, where they spent their lives
wandering. Even so, God always brought them and the equally mixed-up
generations that followed them out of the troubles they faced.
They faced famine, and God directed them to a land where there
was food. They faced genocide, and God kept them alive. They were
enslaved, and God sent them a liberator. They were drawn to worship other
gods, and the One God sent them prophets to call them back. They were
given laws to keep them on track and — oops. That’s where, much later,
one of their own, a man named Saul or Paul, had to point something out.
What made them a people wasn’t the rules that made them
distinctive. It was their living relationship to God, the kind of
absolute trust that Abram had shown, which came long before the rest of
it. In fact, Paul would come to say that to be part of this family
history doesn’t even depend on being a literal descendant of Abram, but on responding
to the offer of relationship to God in the same way that he did, with faith in
the One who speaks out of eternity into time, out of nowhere into our
here-and-now.
“It
depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed
to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those
who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is
written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’)”. [Romans 4:16-17a]
Notice that means that we are family with all of Abram’s
children. Attack the Jews, and you attack the Christians. Attack
the Muslims, and you do the same thing. These are not idle
observations. There is no place for the anti-Semitism that has shown its
face in recent weeks. Not among us.
It also means that it is unacceptable to condemn others beyond
these three Abrahamic faiths, saying, “We are God’s chosen, and you are
not.” Salvation is based on faith, not works, and certainly not on
birth. Those others, those outsiders, they may yet come to faith and hear
God’s call. Abram was once one of them. Why would a pagan or a
Buddhist or a Hindu or anyone else respond to the good news of a loving God who
embraces all who will come to him, if in his people the only thing they see is
rejection and hatred? To hate them, revile them, or even to see them as
inherently an enemy is for us not to trust the very promise that was given to
Abram:
“in you all the
families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Genesis 12:3]
I
will say that, among those who see their spiritual ancestry in Abram, it is
Christianity, with its insistent proclamation that it is faith alone that
counts, not specific customs, that best embodies that wideness of promise. For us, the story of God’s dealings with
humanity need not be told in Hebrew or in Arabic, but must be told in every
language on earth. For us, there is no
need to face in one direction to pray, because God is everywhere. For us, there is no one Promised Land, because
God has come to us – all of us – in Jesus.
“See,
the home of God is among mortals,
He
will dwell with them as their God;
they
will be his peoples,
and
God himself will be with them”. [Revelation 21:3]
And so we are told to go out and permeate the whole world
with the news of God’s creative and life-giving presence, with the promise of
forgiveness, newness of life here and now, and fullness of life in
eternity. It is precisely as we carry
out that mission that we find how close to us he truly is. One of Abram’s descendants, Jesus, had this
to say:
“Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything that I have commanded you.
And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” [Matthew
28:19-20]
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