12 The LORD said to Abram, Go from your country, your people and your father s household to the land I will show you.

Transcription

1 Torah 2 The scope of the first 11 chapters of the Torah, which we covered last time, was the entire world. In the first two chapters we learned that God created the world, and people especially, to be good, and that God loves us. In subsequent chapters God spent most of his time figuring out what to do about our inclination to steal, lie, covet, be unfaithful, and even to commit murder. Patriarchs and Matriarchs. Although the scope of Genesis 1-11 is global, the interactions are personal, in fact, highly personal. So it is not without precedent, even if it is mysterious in some ways, when the next thing God does after knocking down the Tower of Babel is to choose an individual out of all the inhabitants of earth and start talking with them: 12 The LORD said to Abram, Go from your country, your people and your father s household to the land I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. [a] 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. [b] 4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Although the personal conversation with Abram, whom God renames Ab-raham which means father of a multitude, has many precedents in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, this new story is very odd in many ways. First of all, since these stories are Israelite national stores, there are no specific ANE parallels. Like Abraham, we don t know where God is taking us with this story. What we do know is that somehow this approach is God s next try at solving the problem that the flood and the tower of Babel failed to solve, and that is the problem of the intermittency of human goodness. Which leads to the next odd thing: how is making a deal with one person going to address a problem of the entire human race? That the global problem is still front and center is clearly the meaning of all peoples on earth will be blessed in you, and the flow of the story requires this interpretation also. But what a strange thing. Global problem, personal solution. We surely don t think that way. 1

2 The final strange thing to note here, and it s the most wonderful part of the story to me, is that the solution which finally works is for God to form an explicit relationship between himself and Abraham. We call this relationship a covenant, for with the Hebrew word is b rith. In this covenant, God asks for Abram s trust in exchange for blessing. Immaterial things; possible futures. God doesn t tell Abram exactly where to go; he leaves on a journey and has to trust that God will show the way. God promises Abram lots and lots of children, but we learned at the end of chapter 11 that Sarai is barren. Again, Abram s job is to live his life according to the promise even though he doesn t see how it can happen. God promises Abram a new home as well; again, in chapter 11, we saw that none of Abram s family are from Canaan so they have no legal claims or heritage there. And, finally, somehow, this covenant relationship is going to lead, ultimately, to the blessing of all people on earth, which in the context has to mean solving the problem that arose in chapters God reiterates this promise to Abraham three times, and renews it to Isaac and then Jacob/Israel. It s probably not possible to overstate the importance of this event, so let s take a moment to appreciate what it means. Does anyone recall the first problem in the Bible? I think it might have been man s loneliness, in chapter 2. God solved that one with human company. God is solving the next big problem with divine company, if you will. What else is the covenant with Abram but a promise that, whatever happens, God will be with us. The covenant represents a promise of God s presence. Note, however, that God doesn t tell Abram exactly what to do, nor does he tell Abram all that will happen or how it will happen. Abram s life is very exciting, as it happens, and God is there all the way. Sarah is kidnapped three times; God warns her kidnappers in dreams and or gives them a rash until they let her go. Sarah laughs out loud when God tells her she ll bear a child; God says Hey, are you laughing at me? to which Sarah replies, What? Me, laugh? Of course not! to which God replies First you laughed, then you lied about it, I m finding another matriarch! No, actually God just says You did so laugh and you have the feeling you ve just overheard some family teasing. When God decides to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he lets Abraham negotiate him down to just needing to find ten good people to save both towns. God s relationship to Abraham illustrates the life of faith, life lived in the covenant. However, Abraham sets a really high bar when it comes to faith. I mentioned that God renewed the covenant promises he made to Abraham to Abraham s son and grandson, who were very different from each other and from Abraham. Isaac was a bit of a pushover who seems to spend a lot of his life getting tricked or pushed around by other people. Not very patriarchal, but as an example of someone living life in the covenant, he s kind of relaxing. Abraham s faithfulness is the stuff of legend; reading about Isaac makes you feel like, hey, I 2

3 could do that! Jacob, too, was very different from Abraham, but also very different from Isaac. With people he was sneaky, and he lied. He cheated both his blood kin and his in-laws, though in the latter case his father in law had put one over on him first, substituting the older sister Leah for Rachel on Jacob s wedding night, which I m still not clear on how that worked. Jacob took morally ambiguous short cuts to get his way. In terms of his relationship with God, where Abraham chatted with God as easily as strolling to your fence and chatting with your neighbor, Jacob/Israel encountered God in spooky dreams, or wrestling with a stranger in the dark on the eve of a battle. His relationship to God is not comfortable. And yet, it was his name, Israel, meaning wrestles with God, that was the name by which the multitude of descendants promised to Abraham came to be known. Jacob/Israel s life of faith and relationship to God, too, are precedent-setting. Apparently being neurotic, paranoid, and in terms of human interpersonal relationships, more sneaky than reliable, i.e., like most of us are most of the time, is sufficient to qualify one to live in the covenant. I m pretty sure when the community of faith read the stories of Jacob/Israel, tricking his brother, tricking his dad, tricking his father in law, and finally tricking his brother again, they did so with a bit of admiration and delight, and a feeling that even God probably enjoyed working things out with the good hearted scoundrel. God appeared to Jacob in Genesis 28 and extended the Abrahamic covenant promise to him as he is sleeping at Bethel. When Jacob wakes up the following morning: 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear 21 so that I return safely to my father s household, then the LORD [f] will be my God 22 and [g] this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth. This is so typical: Jacob answers yes, but unlike Abram, who just gets up and goes, Jacob says basically, I ll do it, if you throw in food, clothing, protection, and success for my journey. Since I m upping the ante, in exchange I ll give you this rock as a house, and a tenth of all you give me. I am not seeing the rock as much in the way of a counter-offer, but the tithe is very clever. I guarantee it didn t escape the Israelite s notice that the tithe represented an incentive to God: the more Jacob got, the bigger the tithe would be. But with all this, Jacob, too, is a model. Where Abraham s example of faith is the stuff of legends, as high a mark to aspire to as anyone could wish, Jacob s example demonstrates that God s love will make up for however much we may fall short, and Isaac s example gives hope even to couch potatoes, which as a 49er fan I find to be a very cheering thought. As long as we intend to live in the covenant, evidently, God will accept what we have to offer as fulfilling our side of the agreement. 3

4 We ve reached the end of Genesis, and I want to point out something before we go on to talk about Moses. We Episcopalians navigate the bible using the lectionary. That means we skip around a lot, and leave parts out that don t match up with stories in the gospel for preaching purposes, are R-rated, or are just too boring. However, this morning, I want to emphasize that we re supposed to read what happens later in the bible in light of what comes before. The word bible comes from the simple Greek word for book, biblios. Apart from the Cloud Atlas, which I admit was really cool, books are supposed to be read from beginning to end. If we do that, we see that the primeval history conveyed that God loves us as children, is good and intends good for us, and we read what comes after in light of that. Similarly the covenant with Abraham is simple God and us together, whatever happens, no conditions other than that we agree to it and remain in relationship, which the stories illustrate can work in a range of ways -- and again, we read what follows in light of it. Just stop and relish that for a moment. Ahh. Things will become more complicated when we get to the Mosaic covenant, but nothing that happens in Exodus and rescinds or undermines in any way the basic bond between God and people established with Abraham and the rest of the patriarchs and matriarchs in Genesis 12 and following. The last chapters of Genesis recount what is called the Joseph cycle, which for our purposes here mainly serves to bridge between the age of the patriarchs and matriarchs and the fulfillment of God s final promise to Abraham. Just to remind you, out of jealousy, Joseph s brothers sell him into slavery to some Midianite merchants who take him to Egypt where he starts working in the Pharaoh s household. Ironically, after breaking Jacob s heart, the brothers record-setting sibling rivalry saves Jacob s family because when a famine strikes Canaan and Jacob sends his sons down to Egypt to buy grain, Joseph has risen to sufficiently high rank to invite them to Egypt where they can live in comfort and plenty. There the descendants of Jacob thrive and multiply until they become an entire nation, and a Pharaoh arises who doesn t know who Joseph was. So, at the beginning of the book of Exodus, the situation is that God s promise to Abraham of numerous progeny has been fulfilled, but the promise of a homeland has not. That lack of a homeland suddenly becomes a life or death problem for the descendants of Israel. Now let s turn to the second narrative cycle we ll be dealing with today, about Moses. The book of Exodus, first, tells the story, and second, details the stipulations, of the third major biblical covenant. The first covenant, you recall, was with Noah, featuring the rainbow; the second, we ve been discussing so far this morning, was the covenant with Abraham. You 4

5 might wonder, why was a third covenant needed? The Old Testament could have been so much shorter and easier to understand if God had just stopped at two covenants. They were really nice covenants, too. Once when I was driving from Seattle to San Francisco along the coast highway I saw seven rainbows in one day. Why all this extra hassle and confusion? The answer to this question has to do with scale and trajectory. An agreement that works between a few individuals runs into problems when scaled up to cover an entire society. The covenant God extended in Moses time was a function of the reality that God was now dealing with a nation. Furthermore, wonderful and clear as it was, the covenant with Abraham was mysterious in terms of how it was supposed to solve the global problem of all human inclination to be bad instead of the good God made us to be. God is moving to step two of the master plan, and we re starting to see how the interpersonal Abrahamic covenant was just the beginning of how God intended to address the global problem. Once again, however, God begins by approaching a single individual, Moses. After outlining the Israelites problems in chapter 1 and describing Moses birth and flight from Egypt in chapter 2, God sets a bush on fire to get Moses attention hey Moses! -- then when Moses passes the test of curiosity and comes over to check it out, God commissions him: 6 Then [God] said, I am the God of your father, [a] the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. 7 The LORD said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey I.e., God commissions Moses to fulfill the final promise he made to Abraham, namely a homeland. Like many prophets after him, Moses not very politely refuses the job. I don t know if that was just a bargaining position, but after God insists and throws in a very cool magic staff, Moses finally agrees. You are all familiar with what follows: Moses returns with Aaron, they conduct negotiations with Pharaoh through the ten plagues, then God himself leads them in their flight from Egypt, including the defeat of the Egyptian army at the crossing of the Red Sea, and they end up on Mt. Sinai. These events are mainly important for our present discussion in that they are miracles, signs and wonders God did for Israel leading up to the covenant ceremony on Mt. Sinai. God invites the Israelites to the covenant ceremony with these words in Exodus 19: 5

6 3 Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: 4 You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 you [a] will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites. 7 So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the LORD had commanded him to speak. 8 The people all responded together, We will do everything the LORD has said. So Moses brought their answer back to the LORD. By referring to the Israelites as the descendants of Jacob, God is identifying them as the heirs of the covenant with Jacob. God then identifies himself as the one who just saved them, and he offers them a covenant that is very similar to the one with Abraham in articulating a relationship with God based in love, expressed by the reference to God s treasured possession. A requirement of obedience is explicit, but this was implicit in the Abrahamic covenant as well. The reference to the kingdom of priests anticipates the idea that the God of Israel will ultimately be acknowledged as the God of all nations. However, there are also some differences too. In contrast to the very simple Abrahamic covenant, which took the form you do this, and I ll do that, the Mosaic covenant took the form of a common type of political treaty in the late 2 nd millennium BC called a vassal treaty. The vassal treaty spelled out a relationship between an overlord and a lower ranking official. The overlord formulates the treaty, spelling out, first, what the overlord has done for the vassal; second, what the vassal is obligated to do for the overlord; and third, the blessings that will accrue to the vassal if they re obedient. All the parts of the treaty are present in the Torah, and in the right order. What is completely distinctive is that there is no record of such a treaty between a national god and people aside from the one in the Bible. In fact, such a thing was probably unthinkable. Although there is a hierarchy implied, and the overlord sets the stipulations, the treaty is binding on both parties. That God would do such a thing is just not how people thought about the behavior of their deities. Unless, that is, they believed some very unusual things about the nature of God, such as the lengths God would go to be connected to the people he claims as his own, which is how people who gave us the Hebrew Bible thought. In chapters 19 and 20 of Exodus, the entire people of Israel prepare themselves to accept the covenant offered by God in a ceremony on Mt. Sinai. At that ceremony, the covenant stipulations will be spelled out in two forms: first, the ten commandments, then the case law, containing 622 separate stipulations. In our next session we will consider these 6

7 two kinds of covenant law, as well as cultic law as spelled out in Leviticus, and finally the reinterpretation of all three as expressed in the final book of the Torah, Deuteronomy. Conclusion to day 2: implications of covenant for understanding God s will for us. Last time I said that I wanted to focus on the issue of trajectory, by which I meant discerning God s voice in the midst of the historical and societal particularity of the bible and seeing in which direction God tries to move the community of faith. In the primeval history we encountered God s nature and intention for the world, as well as the problem of our inclination to turn away from that intention and follow the devices and desires of our own hearts instead. Today in the patriarchal and then the Mosaic narrative materials we encountered God s solution to this problem: the offer of relationship to God. In the case of the Abrahamic covenant, which defines the basic relationship in individual terms, all we have to do is willingly assent to live in the relationship. We ll work the details out as we live into it. In the case of the Mosaic covenant, we ll get to the details next week, but for today, again, it is a covenant directly between God and the very extended family that the descendants of the matriarchs and patriarchs came to be. So, trajectory. First, although our inclinations are really our problem, God offered not to deal with the problem for us, but to stay with us through thick and thin as we deal with it. Second, the relationship is based on acceptance. It was only necessary in the first place because of the differences between us and God. It s going to take work on our part and patience on God s. All part of the deal. I think a moment s reflection will reveal important ways this can guide us to approaching problems in today s world. For your consideration I d like to just suggest that most of the problems in the world today, from interpersonal to international, are not technical, scientific, or even environmental per se. Fundamentally they re problems with us as human beings. We are selfish, self-centered, proud, and insufficiently identified with the rest of humanity as our siblings by virtue of being children of God. Whether out of laziness, fear, or both, we are very unwilling to change unless we see a direct threat or benefit to ourselves. Changing how we live because it s required to eliminate others suffering or enhance their well-being is not how we re inclined, but how good it often feels deep within us when we do manage to lay down a little bit of our lives for others is a sign of the good God made us to be. Change for others sake becomes natural if we define nature in terms of the creator, with whom we live in covenant. Covenant was God s way of taking his intentions for creation and making them present to each succeeding generation. And that, my friends, is a hopeful thought. Let s see if anyone has questions or anything they d like to discuss. 7