Part of King Charles coronation that I watched included the Moderator of the Church of Scotland presenting a Bible to the king.  I thought that was, like many other features of the service, very inclusive. 

After all one of the King’s roles, since Henry the Eighth, is to be head of the Church of England

Nevertheless, it bothered be slightly that a Presbyterian would say something like, these are the only laws you need.  To me the Bible is not a set of rules but a collection of stories that encourage us to prayerfully reflect on human behaviour and the divine influence on that behaviour.  

Like all good stories there are heroes and villains and after reading some of the stories you may want to check under the bed for monsters before you go to sleep at night. 

The lectionary avoids most of the real scary stories, but I have a copy of Phyllis Trible Texts of Terror and Jonathan Kirsch The Harlot By the Side of the Road: The Forbidden Tales Of the Bible, and I have skimmed through both of them.

Today’s readings do not meet the cut for either of those books.  But I suggest that an enterprising journalist could get three front page stories for the Press and an in depth interview on TV One’s ‘Sunday’ for our reading from Genesis.  I could certainly see it as evidence for a School Board in the USA to ban the Bible from the Library.

However, it is important that we read this story every three years because it is part of The Abraham Saga that, not only grounds our faith, but also three of the world’s great faiths.  Furthermore, this particular part of the story is about relationships and ambition so it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the way people behave so we can make ethical and spiritual decisions about that behaviour.

Hagar was Sarah’s slave and whether it was a marital decision for Hagar to provide an heir for Abraham or Abraham just helped himself to a bit on the side, we will never know. 

We live in a time when people have families later in life and surrogacy, with or without controversy, is one of the options that people choose when a woman can’t carry a child.  Of course, that usually involves a clinical procedure and willing participants not the head of the household to have a child by his wife’s slave.

In fact, we assume we don’t have slavery in our society. However, a recent ‘Sunday’ programme explored the conditions and abused employment rights of migrant workers. The word slavery was certainly used, and we were reminded that a man has recently been convicted for slavery.

But reflecting on Hagar’s situation I know a woman who was adopted by a family who physically abused her until they sent her to boarding school.  That was a  relieve from a household that relied on excessive corporal punishment and allowed her to qualify for medical school. 

Like so many people anonymously adopted out as babies she eventually sought her real identity and, not only discovered who her mother was, but found she had a whole family of brothers and sisters. 

Her mother had been a domestic servant and had a child by the head of each household she worked in.  Not terribly different to Hagar’s situation and illustrates that the Bible Stories are about real situations that happen to real people.  Furthermore, my friend’s story tells us those situations don’t just happen a long time ago.

Obviously, my friend and indeed her siblings survived because they were adopted by others.   Probably foster parents that were both good and bad.  Their mother I assume survived by continuing the near slavery of a domestic servant as pregnancy banished her from one household after another.

But we may well wonder how Hagar and Ishmael survived after being abandoned in the wilderness and the ‘good news’ story that helps us was in the Press on the 12^th of June. 

The headline was ‘Alive after 40 Days in the Wilderness.’  Of course all sorts of wonderful things happen in the Bible after 40 days or 40 years.  But this was a story about 4 children that not only survived a plane crash in the Amazon but were able to survive in the jungle until they were found. 

The general in charge of the rescue suggested the children were able to survive in the jungle because they were children of the jungle.  They knew what seeds and fruit they could eat and the dangers they must avoid.  However, despite their local knowledge the word miracle comes to mind and, with their parents killed in the plane crash, we could well imagine that they were, like Jesus in his 40 days in the wilderness, ministered to by angels. 

Their story also encourages us to suspect that Hagar as the slave of nomadic shepherds had a similar relationship with the wilderness she lived in.  We are told that God pointed out a well just as God looked after the four children.  All of them knew their wilderness but it was still a miracle they all survived.  

Comparing Bible Stories with modern parallel stories invites us all to take notice of the miracles in our own lives.  We are also challenged to notice the evil in our own world and remind us that it is possible to deliberately or inadvertently be part of dehumanising activities. 

But on a more positive reflection we are challenged to expect disaster to turn into triumph and we should even seek to aid such transformation. 

The Abraham saga is indeed the story of God guiding the journey of a family towards becoming a people of God.  It is also the story of a tribe fumbling their way through nomadic herding towards settled agriculture as God leads them towards the best outcome from each stumble along the way.

It is the founding myth of two great peoples and three of the world great religions.  

Along that journey we have the hard sayings of Jesus which begins with the most troubling verse for peace loving Christians:

‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword’. (Matthew 10:34)

Jesus then goes on to talk about division within families which is even more shocking for good comfortable middle-class Christians.  The idea that a commitment to Christ would divide families seems appalling. 

The reality is that families are divided by faith and ideas.  The story of the dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael shows that there is not only hope in such division, but it is part of the story of human development and migration across the face of the planet.

From an historical perspective, the Temple authority that ruled on behalf of the Roman Empire in Jesus’ time was corrupt and they would react violently to anyone who suggested that they were not representing the true faith in the true God.  That violence had Jesus crucified. 

What would also be true was the fact that within the families of Jesus’ followers some would choose to continue to follow Jesus and others would stay with the traditional temple faith, or the Pharisaic Judaism that replaced it. 

Indeed, there is evidence that, by the time Matthew wrote his gospel, a curse of the Nazarenes was added to synagogue worship.  That was a division between the religious family of Judaism and such divisions would also run through biological families. 

More importantly Jesus’ comments about not bringing peace and causing division among even the closest of relationships points to the need for a loyalty to the total family of all humanity. A loyalty that is greater than even our closest relationships. 

In Christ we are all one and therefore we have loyalties beyond our immediate biological family. 

All systems of human government try to impose an ethical framework that demands greater loyalty to the state rather than families, but governments are themselves human and therefore corruptible. 

Like Abraham, Henry the Eighth and his supporters worried about providing a male heir for the stability of the monarchy and the nation.  But Henry was the self-proclaimed head of the Church in England which by then stressed monogamy as a moral position.  So, he couldn’t be seen to father a son with one of his servants.  Such an heir would be contested, and the swords would come out and pit brother against brother.  Multiple wives like king David and Solomon had was also incompatible with Christian understanding so he simply murdered one wife after another in search of a suitable heir. 

Alas for all misogynists the family infighting and power politics failed to provide a monarch for any length of time, and it was his daughter Elizabeth who finally succeeded to the throne.  

She provided a stable reign and restored the economy by knighting the pirates who plundered the Spanish ships filled with Inca and Aztec gold.

Of course, the Spanish were rightly miffed.  But fog and a soft breeze allowed fire ships to drift amongst the Spanish Armada and change the DNA of the people of coastal towns and offshore islands. 

The journey towards an inclusive humanity is not only long and mysterious but a balance of triumph and tragedy with a sprinkling of miracles along the way.

Along that journey Kings, queens, tyrants, religious organisations, and even democratic elected governments set laws and regulations to guide humanities journey.  But they also get corrupted by the power they hold. 

Therefore, humanity must ground its ultimate values beyond an individual group or society.  That indeed is is one of the core tasks of religion. 

That task involves individuals reflecting on the stories of our scripture and relating those stories to our own stories. In that way our minds are opened to the divine Spirit.  The Spirit, that calls us to oppose actions that limit rather than enhance people’s lives. 

As religious people we are called by such study and reflection to speak out for justice even when doing so goes against loyalty to family, or mates.  We are called by our faith to live our lives in ways that give new life to the marginalised of our world.

As followers of Christ who claim to be both reformed and reforming, we must face the risk of division, even among friends and family, to promote a just society and live God’s Realm into the reality of our world.  

In 2004 Adidas launched a very successful advertising campaign with the byline  “Impossible is nothing”.   If you think about it, you may well think “what a load of mumbo jumbo”, really “impossible is nothing”?   But it didn’t stop Adidas making a lot of money as millions of people bought their products.  Nor did it stop them relaunching the slogan in 2021.   “Impossible is nothing”.   Perhaps part of the success of Adidas’ campaign is that we love the story of the impossible becoming possible.   And that is very much the story we focus on today as we again turn our attention to Abraham and Sarah.

Last week we saw that God told Abram to leave Haran, to leave his people and his father’s household, and to go to a land God would show him.   And God made a promise, “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”. Well Abram obeyed, for we read that Abram left, as the Lord had told him, and they arrived in the land of Canaan. But there’s a problem.   How do you make a great nation out of a childless couple, especially as Abram was 75 and Sarai 66 when God made the promise.  And that’s where we left things last week. 

Today we pick up the story in Genesis 17 and 18, and we find the problem has become even more impossible. 25 years have gone by and not a single child has come from Abraham and his wife, Sarah.   God had said I’m going to make a great nation from you.   But there’s no child, not a single one.   Surely God’s left it a bit late for this now 100-year-old and his 90-year-old wife.   It’s now way beyond the impossible.   

Of course, 13 years before Abraham and Sarah took matters into their own hands.  They agreed to a plan where Sarah would give over her maidservant Hagar and Abraham would visit her in the middle of the night so Hagar could become a surrogate mother.    And it worked, Ishmael was born but, and there’s always a but, this was not how God intended to fulfil his promise.   So when you get to Genesis 17, the whole thing starts turning into a comedy.    God repeats his promise “I will bless Sarah, and moreover I will give you a son by her.  I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” And what’s Abraham’s reaction? Well, he falls flat on his face laughing and saying to himself “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”  And when he finally stops laughing he says to God, “O that Ishmael might live in your sight!”. Hey God, Ishmael’s thirteen, use him to produce the kings and peoples and nations.  It’s a much more sensible plan.  At least by using Ishmael there’s a chance of success. But God replied “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac.”  And it seems that something clicks, that Abraham finally gets it.  He starts to believe that despite the problem of age he will have a son through Sarah.  And he goes away and the first thing he does, is to get circumcised as a sign that he believes God’s promise.

Sometime later we read that the Lord appeared again to Abraham, this time by the oaks of Mamre.   For Abraham it’s just another hot day and he’s probably thinking about his midday nap.  Yet something makes him look up and he sees three men standing nearby.   Well there goes the nap, he’s suddenly wide awake and running round at top speed.    He hurries from the entrance of his tent to meet his visitors and bows low to the ground by way of a greeting and says  “If I have found favour in the eyes of my Lord, don’t pass by”.   I’ll bring some water and wash your feet.   

Then he offers to get a little bread so they can be refreshed and go on their way.  They accept his hospitality so he runs back to the tent to find his wife Sarah, and tells her, “Quick, Sarah.   Bake some bread.   Get on with it.”   And then he runs again, and he goes to the herd, which are presumably chewing the cud out the back somewhere.   He finds the best calf and he takes it quickly to the servant who hurries to prepare it.   Everything’s at speed for this very old man, where it should be very, very slow.   He’s desperate to be the best host he possibly can.  And did you notice how he’s just offers a little bit.   “I’ll get you little water for your feet”, “Let me bring a little bread”.   Just a mouthful, a morsel.   And then what does he do?   3 measures of the best flour, that’s almost 12 kilograms of flour.   That’s at least 25 loaves of bread.   And it’s not just a mouthful of something.   It’s a whole calf.   No wonder everyone’s hurrying.   It’s going to take all afternoon to get this feast cooked.   And all the time this 100 year old is dashing around, serving his visitors curds and milk, where did they come from?   He serves them and then just stands there and watches them eat.   It’s a strange little scene carried out at a frenetic pace.

So, what’s going on?  There’s a clue in verse 3, “If I have found favour in your eyes, my Lord, do not pass your servant by”.   If you’ve been reading Genesis from the beginning, you may have noticed that this it’s said of Noah, that he “found favour in the eyes of the Lord.”  But there’s a difference here.   Noah obeyed God by building the ark and rescuing his family and the animals, but Noah’s heart at the end of the story is no different to his heart at the beginning.   Abraham is going to be different.   He will be an utterly new creation.   Where once life was impossible, for Sarah cannot conceive, life will be possible.   And that’s why it could not be through Ishmael, for that would be taking matters into their own hands.   It has to be the way of a gift, Isaac will be the impossible being made possible.   And Abraham it seems has got it. “If I have found favour in your eyes, my Lord, do not pass your servant by”.  

But what about Sarah?   Abraham must have told her about the encounter he had with God in Genesis 17.  She must have noticed the circumcision of Abraham and all the males in their household.   But we’re to see the contrast between her and Abraham.   Verse 9 is a turning point.  The chairs are pushed back after their rather big meal.   And Abraham is asked, “Where is your wife, Sarah?”.   And he replies “There, in the tent”.  And suddenly we go from being under the tree with Abraham and his three visitors, to in the tent with Sarah.   And notice everything towards the end is towards, and about Sarah who is behind Abraham listening at the tent door. 

The promise is made, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah will have a son” a promise repeated four verses later “At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah will have a son”.   And in between the promises it’s all about laughter.   And Sarah’s laughter is understandable, isn’t it?   It’s not laughter of mocking.   It’s a laughter of hopelessness.   Life has taught her not to clutch at straws.   She’s in her 90s.   She’s given up hope of ever having a child herself.   It’s laughter that’s filled with human realism of pain.   Age and experience and disappointment can do that to you.   And we’re supposed to see and understand, Sarah.   We’re supposed to empathise with her.  That’s why verse 11 reminds us that “Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women” a rather polite way of saying that she’s well past  the age of childbearing.  It’s laughable that Sarah should have a child.   But while we’re supposed to empathise, we’re not supposed to agree with her laughter. 

The scene ends strangely.   “Then the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child now that I’m old?’   Is anything too wonderful for the Lord.   At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah will have a son”.      Then we read “Sarah was afraid”.   So, she lied and said, “I didn’t laugh”.   But he said.   “Oh, yes, you did laugh.”   And the story abruptly stops there and you find yourself in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, then the incident with King Abimalech, only resuming in chapter 21.

So you are lft with questions.  Does Sarah believe it or not?  Does it happen, will she have a son?  But it also leaves us with a challenge.  What about you?   What about me?   What do we think about verse 14 , about the question God poses “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”   Are we going to be like Abraham, who welcomes the impossible?  Or are you going to be like Sarah, who laughs in the face of the impossible.   And if you think about it there are echoes of the Garden of Eden for, we’re under a tree again.   And under the tree we have Abraham doing what Adam should have done, which was to serve and to welcome God.   And we have Sarah who’s hiding, she’s lying and did you notice, she’s afraid.   Which way are we’re going to go?  Are we going to go with this new creation way, which is through God, or are we going to stick with the old and try and sort it out ourselves.

Lets jump ahead, to when the people of Israel retold the story of Abraham and Sarah and told their children “That’s great, great, great, great, great, great grandad Abraham and look, that’s great, great, great, great, great great grandma Sarah,” and the children are asking “why doesn’t she believe?  She’s crazy.   We’re all here.   We’re all listening to the story of it.   We’re the decedents of Abraham and Sarah. Why doesn’t she believe?”  And no doubt the parents chipped in that it’s not just Abraham and Sarah who couldn’t have children but then had Isaac.   But Isaac married Rebecca, and she couldn’t have children either.   But they did have Jacob.   And then Jacob got married to Rachel.   And you know what?  She couldn’t have children either.   And there’s a whole tribe of us lot, in fact twelve of them.   God has kept his promise.   With God the impossible becomes possible, with God the impossible is nothing.   You might say that God has got form here.   Of breathing life into what was once dead.   You see God is making it clear in the very opening pages of the bible a principle that will run all the way through and all the way through today.   

Jump back to chapter 17, to when Abraham manages to control his laughter and ask “O that Ishmael might live in your sight” What if God had said yes, all right, let’s do it your way, through Ishmael.   If that had been the case, it would have allowed some human means to bring about his promise of blessing.   And it wouldn’t have dealt with the problem of the human heart, which is the centre of the problem.   It’s that default position, which means that we grab Gods throne.  My life, my way.   And the opening chapters of Genesis are filled with human examples of taking matters into our own hands, Cain literally took life into his own hands by murdering his brother Abel.   The citizens of Babel said we can do it ourselves, we can make ourselves great.   Ishmael himself, will be a wild donkey of a man.   It’s going to end in ruin.   That is the way of the human heart and it’s the way of insecurity.   In all of our human efforts, to bring about blessing when is it ever enough?  We are slaves to personal improvement.   And it doesn’t match up all the efforts we make, what do we do?  We hide away.   We pretend it’s better than it really is.   We lie due to shame.   We’re in a culture of progress and targets.   We’ve tried capitalism, we’ve tried communism.   We’ve tried individualism.   We’ve tried pretty much any other “ism” that you can possibly think of.   Yes we think that the possibilities are limitless, but that’s a lie.  The reality is that we are limited, we are limited in our abilities, we are limited in our understanding, we’re limited in our time.   But what we do is crazy.   We try to limit God by our own experience of limitation.   But God is God.   He is the only one who’s without limit.   Is anything too hard for God?   You see, if God creates a divine roadblock to Ishmael, he creates a highway for Isaac.   If Ishmael is a way of insecurity and dashed expectations, the way of Isaac is a way of certainty and hope.   If God can breathe life into the barren womb of Sarah, he can breathe life into an empty tomb.   He can breathe life into your heart and mine, no matter what you are like or what you have done in the past   Is anything too hard God?  When it comes to God’s promise that he will change me and he wants me to be more be more like his son, is anything too hard for God?   What about this church as it struggles to nurture life and build connection with the people living around us. It’s all too hard, too much of a struggle, but is anything too hard for God.   And when it comes to God’s promise on a global scale that he will reach every tribe and tongue and nation with his grace and favour through Jesus Christ, is anything too hard for God?   

Abraham learned.   Sarah is learning.   What about us?   You see we long for the impossible to be made possible.  Will we go God’s way for God is in the business of fulfilling his promises, because for him actually, impossible is nothing.   

I want to quickly finish by jumping to chapter 21 where we read:-

The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had promised.  Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him.  Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.  Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.  Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.  And she said, “Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

Over the last thirty or so years researching family history has become one of New Zealand’s fastest growing hobbies.   It comes complete with the excitement of discovering you are related to an amazing celebrity or that you have some juicy scandal in your past.    My father got into genealogy when he heard the suggestion that his great, great, great grandfather was the illegitimate son of Napoleon Bonaparte.   Much to his disappointment he quickly discovered that was untrue, and further research showed that he, and hence I, am disappointingly not related to any famous people and have a boring set of ancestors that appears totally lacking any skeletons in the closet.    

Having said that, I want to suggest this morning that if we are Christians, we have a surprise scandal in our family tree.   For right near its beginning is a moon worshipper who twice passed his wife off as his sister to save his own skin, had extra marital relations with his slave which resulted in a child, and later attempted child sacrifice.    I’m sure you’ve guessed that this outrageous ancestor is Abraham.   And if you’re thinking that Abraham is far too distant a figure to be of any significance to us as Christians, who are after all Jesus people not Abraham people, take a deep breath, for this once moon worshipper provides the essential starting point for every Christian’s family tree, he is the essential foundation for every Christian storyline.   So let me try and put the story of Abraham into its context, and hopefully we’ll see why Abraham matters and what he says to us today.   

Let’s start with some very familiar words of Jesus from John 3 : 16, “God so loved the world”.   But you only have to go a few pages into the first book of the Bible, and you could easily forgive God for not loving the world.   The Bible begins, as I’m sure you all know, with a description of God’s wonderful creation with human beings as the pinnacle of it all, and the placing of a man and a woman in the amazing garden of Eden.   But that man and that woman were not satisfied, they wanted more than God had given them, they wanted to take over and play God themselves.   Not surprisingly this rebellion provoked both God’s displeasure and judgement, bringing the curse that affects all of life even today, from work to family relationships, from the environment to spiritual warfare.   And it leaves Adam and Eve banished and barred from the garden, desperately clinging to a promise that one day, one day, a descendant of theirs would crush the evil one and undo the curse.   “God so loved the world?”  Well, maybe.   

Meanwhile, sin infected the world and it spread at a speed that makes a global pandemic, even COVID 19 seem sluggish in comparison.   And soon all God could think of was to wipe everything out and start all over again.  God sent a flood that makes the recent Cyclone Gabrielle look like a tiddly little puddle.   But even as God’s flood swept everything away, the love God still had for the world was shown in the provision of an ark for Noah, his family, and the animals, so that even in this terrible destruction there could still be a future.   But even that doesn’t look very bright when Noah celebrates his rescue in a drunken naked stupor.   “God so loved the world?” 

The world remained an ugly place, and in Genesis 11, ambition and pride rear their ugly heads.   The people of the world are determined to make a name for themselves, and they plan to build a city with a tower that reached to the heavens so that they would be on an equal footing with God.   Well, not surprisingly, this triggers God’s judgement and displeasure all over again, and he scatters the people all across the world in a confusion of speaking many different languages and unable to understand each other.   “God so loved the world?” 

And as Genesis 11 works itself out, there’s no sign yet of any love, any grace, or any hope after the latest coup attempt.   It was as if God’s patience, God’s love, has finally run out, and if the story had stopped there, you could forgive current day atheists saying that everything is the result of chaos, that life is meaningless, that it’s all down to the survival of the fittest.   

But then at the end of Genesis 11 we get a tiny inkling that God hasn’t finished with the world yet, a faint hint that God’s heart of love is still beating.   And chapter 12 begins, “The Lord had said to Abram”.   Amazingly another storyline is starting.   God is still bothering with us.   His love isn’t exhausted.   God so loved the world, and I’m sure we all know how that sentence goes on, “That he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”  And that is true, but the story starts way, way back in Genesis 12.   God so loved the world that he called Abram.   And this is the story that undoes the curse, unravels the chaos, outlasts the despair.   God called Abram.   

But back up for a moment to the end of chapter 11.   Look more closely.   See, in this world, contaminated by the sin virus, reeling from the effects of God’s judgement, the curse, the chaos, the confusion.   But as you look you will see families are on the move, including a man called Terah and his family.   They leave the ancient city of Ur and they head for Canaan which will become the promised land.   But they don’t get there, they make a start, but then they stop.   Terah and his family settle in Haran which is way short of Canaan.   And we are told that Terah had a son called Abram, but Abram is not some sort of spiritual goody two shoes.   You know, a shining, glossy Yahweh believer.   We’re told that he and his family worshipped other gods.   And both the cities of Ur and Haran were major centres of moon god worship.   It looks as if they set out on their journey, found Haran and settled there, at home with the familiar moon worship.   But God’s love reaches down to the unlikeliest of people, to call them to himself.   And that’s what happened to Abram.   Genesis 12 begins, “The Lord had said to Abram”.   When?  When they were still in Ur, possibly.   After they settled in Haran? more likely.   But at some point, the Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.”

And it’s into this setting that the love of God speaks extraordinary words of grace.   Out of the blue, so to speak, God said to Abram.   “I will bless you”.   And then, maybe even more remarkably, “you will be a blessing”.   Promise after promise declares that God hasn’t given up on the world.   His plans are plans for welfare, not for evil.   Even in this darkest of starting places there is a future, and all this love and purpose and grace is poured out onto Abram.   But it’s not restricted to him alone.   Look at these promises a little more carefully.   There’s the promise of a people.   Verse two, “I will make you into a great nation”.   Surely an easy promise to come up with, but hang on, Abram is 75 years old when this is said to him.   And if you think that isn’t a particularly insurmountable problem, his wife Sarai was childless because she wasn’t able to conceive and at 66, she’s not much younger that Abraham and way past childbearing age.    “I will make you into a great nation” – Yeah right. 

God promises a people, but there is more for he promises a people with a place.   If you belong, you need somewhere to call home and when you don’t have that, it’s amazing how rootless people can feel.   Well, look at verse one, “go to the land I will show you”.   There is a promised land for the promised people.   I mean, rootless and banished from their original home that God made for them in the Garden of Eden, now they discover there’s a promise of a new place and a new home ahead.   And there is still more promised.   There’s protection on the journey.   “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.”  Blessing God’s people will bring unexpected rewards.   Opposing them will bring unexpected costs, promises God.   And there’s nothing small scale about the vision, about what God is going to do.   “All peoples on earth – will be blessed through you”.   Did you spot the irony.   In the chapter before these promises, proud rebels set about building a city with the Tower of Babel reaching to the heavens.   For in their words, they wanted to “make a name for ourselves”.   It must have been a remarkable bit of architecture.   But we’re not told, and no one knows the name of a single person who designed the Tower of Babel or worked on it.   Now Abram is told to go, to go away from home and family and anything that will give him identity and God promise, “I will make your name great”.   Today Abram whom God later renamed Abraham is known right across the world.   And this story, isn’t the story for Jewish people alone.   “God so loved the world” that he called Abraham to bless us.   You see, Jesus is there in Abraham’s family tree.   He’s one of the descendants.   He’s the one who makes these promises come true.   

And we find our place in the family tree in the remarkable storyline because of Jesus Christ.   Our reading from Romans 4 tells us this.   It says that if you belong to Christ then through faith you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.   If you’re Christ’s man, if you’re Christ’s woman, these promises are for you.   The New Testament tells me I don’t work out the Abraham family tree by following from father to son to grandson.   No, no.   I do it by following the faith line.   Abraham had faith in God’s promises, relied on them, lived his life trusting them.    Those who have faith in Jesus Christ, who rely on him, who live our lives trusting him, we make them true for we find ourselves on Abraham’s family tree of blessing.   

But there’s more from the New Testament understand that those who have faith are children of Abraham.   For those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith, and we’re included in the blessing.   “God so loved the world” he called Abraham to bless us.   His story is our story.   These are our blessings.   This is the story that undoes the curse, and as Christians we’re part of it.   And when it eventually reaches its climax, there will be a home.   Not a fluffy cloud and a harp to strum for eternity, but something far more earthy than that.   A new heaven and a new earth and nothing of the curse will stain it.   Gone will be all evil and sin, gone will be tears and pain, gone will be all sickness and death, they’ll all be gone.   And the people gathered to enjoy it will be from every nation, every tribe, every people, every language.   They will all be there as God promised.   All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.   “God so loved the world” he called Abraham.   To bless you.   So, this is the story to keep your eyes on.   This is the one to never lose track of, to make sure it’s on your playlist when you’re asking the question of how you make sense of life.   

And it’s a storyline that makes us look outwards.   We who are Christians often speak of the Great Commission, and we think of Jesus’s words at the end of Matthews Gospel.   You remember them, “Go and make disciples of all nations”.   But the idea doesn’t begin there.   It begins here.   In Genesis 12, all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.   If you’ve got a place on this faith family tree, then you can bring blessing to the world.   Blessing is God’s happiness.   Blessing is living in relationship with God.   Blessing is living under his favour.   And blessing is something we share with others, for like Abraham we are blessed that we may be a blessing.

Here’s something practical you can do in response.   Tomorrow morning when you wake up, wake up with a simple prayer, “God make me a blessing to someone today.”  It’s a great daily prayer to have.   It’s a great way to start the day and every day.   It’s a great way to live.   It’s being one of the family.   “God make me a blessing to someone today”.   You see, God so loved the world that he called Abraham to bless us, so that we bless others.   

God said “Go” and Abram went.   We read in verse 4 “So Abram left, as the Lord had told him.”  Verse 5 They set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.” And he went, did you notice, he built altars to the living God in the heart of Canaanite territory, in the land of Canaanite gods, as if he’s marking out the territory for the future.   Faith obeys.   Even when it doesn’t know just how things will turnout.  Next week we will pick up the story again almost 25 long years later.   Lots of altars have been built, lots of land has been explored, but there’s a massive problem for Abraham and Sarah are childless.   Is God going to keep his promise even when it’s way beyond possibility?  Find out next week.

REFLECTION:  God of Many Names

We call God by many names partly because we recognize the limits of our human language  No one name can capture God’s fullness. 

But the conclusion of  this morning’s story reassures us that all the individual voices ultimately come together to call God One. Composer Brian Wren has a similar theme in his hymn, Bring Many Names. We’re not singing it as there is no substitute tune for its unusual metre.  However, the lyrics speak of: Strong mother God, working night and day, planning all the wonders of creation; Warm father God, hugging every child, feeling all the strains of human living”; Old, aching God…wiser than despair; Young, growing God, eager, on the move, crying out for justice, and, finally, in the last verse, Great, living God, never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing….    

So on this Trinity Sunday we bring many names for God, but, as the story reminds us, we also call God One. In dialogue with our Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers, we can affirm our belief that God is one.  But, within Christianity, we believe that God is three-in-one.  Over time this idea came to be known as the Doctrine of the Trinity, traditionally celebrated on the Sunday after Pentecost.

This morning let’s look at how the doctrine of the Trinity developed.  Theologian Elizabeth Johnson traces the origin of Trinitarian thinking to early Christians experiencing God as beyond them, with them, and within them: as utterly transcendent, as present, historically in the person of Jesus, as present in the Spirit within their communities.  These were all encounters with only one God.  Out of their experience they sought a way to express this, leading them to talk about God in a threefold way. Early Christian writings are filled with this threefold understanding,  appearing in hymns, confessions of faith, liturgical formulas and doxologies. In the process, the view of God as One, flexed to incorporate Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And so their language expanded creatively to accommodate their religious experience.

As Elizabeth Johnson wrote, while early Christians still believed in one God, they also experienced God in at least three particular ways: beyond them, with them, and within them.

Experiencing  God beyond them, recognized that the fullness of God is beyond human language, knowledge, experience.  Of course the understanding of an utterly transcendent God was historically ancient.  God with them, was the recounted experience of the actual person of Jesus, who embodied the ways of God in his life.  Overtime, because followers saw the ways of God so clearly in him, Jesus of Nazareth became known as Jesus the Christ. And, at the same time that early Christians experienced God as beyond them and with them, they also experienced God as within them, as present in the outworking of the Spirit in their communities.

So, although there was a transcendent aspect of God that would always be beyond their experience, and even after Jesus was no longer physically with them, early Christians still experienced the closeness of God, that is, as Brian Wren writes, closer yet than breathing. The Early Church called this aspect of God Spirit.

As Christians continued to experience God in these three ways, they also wrote about God in a threefold way.  We see an example of this in the apostle Paul’s second letter to the Church at Corinth, written around the mid-50s of the first century, so more than twenty years after Jesus’ death. In the very last sentence of chapter 13,  Paul offered a three-part benediction, one we know well, namely  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

However, we still need to remember that the New Testament does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity, nor does the word Trinity ever appear. It was almost 200 years after Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians that scholarly writings in the early 3^rd century attempted  to apply the Greek word Trinity to Christian thought.  And the Doctrine of the Trinity was still a further 100 years away, formulated at the Councils of Nicea in 325 and Constantinople in 381. If we do the sums,  it was 350 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus before a fully-fledged doctrine of the Trinity was able to be articulated, eventually becoming orthodoxy.  During those centuries, there were also many other diverse ways that people’s experiences with God were understood and expressed. 

Today we are a long way beyond the  Trinitarian battles of the Early Church.   And today we are not limited to how the Trinity was understood in the 4^th century.  Afterall it did take 350 years to settle on an official doctrine.  The Ecumenical Councils where this occurred were actually only called  because of bitter disputes among rival groups on  how to talk about Jesus Christ. These rivals had various ways to understand God, both Trinitarian and non- Trinitarian.

Although the Trinitarian camp received a majority of votes at the 4^th century Ecumenical Councils, the minority Christian groups didn’t disappear.  So called heresies flourished, along with diverse interpretations of the orthodox creeds.

Early Christians did their best to reflect theologically about their experience of God from the limits of their time and place.                

Our challenge is the same, as it has been for people of faith in every age. 

We are called to reflect about God as best we can, based on our  experience, while taking into account the wisdom of the past. 

For example, many people today, find it insufficient to limit our language about God to the classic Trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   Limiting ourselves to an exclusively masculine formulation (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) can be an inadequate reflection of our 21^st century experience.               Just as Sandy Sasso’s children’s book and Brian Wren’s hymn urge us to bring many names for God, we need to bring many names for the Trinity.  There is strong precedent for this.  In the 4^th century, St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, in Algeria, listed twenty different formulations for the Trinity in his book On the Trinity.

When we hear  different Trinitarian formulas, do they resonate with us, or disturb us?  Either way, it might be helpful to ask ourselves the question, why? What feelings, thoughts, or memories emerge in response to the metaphors?

First, how do we respond to the traditional language of Father, Son, Spirit?  What are the things that affect our response?

Secondly, one I use often,  Creator, Redeemer and Giver of Life.   

And thirdly, from Jim Cotter’s Lord’s Prayer, Eternal Spirit, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver.

We don’t have to look far to find many other images or metaphors.  You may like to consider what names for God are meaningful for you.  What formulation of the Trinity would you choose to express something of your experience of God?  

You won’t be too surprised that  argument and conflict over Trinitarian formulations continued beyond the great Councils of the 4^th and 5^th Centuries.  16^th Century Protestant theologian John Calvin reminded people,  that no figures of speech can describe God’s extraordinary affection towards us; for it is infinite and various so we might be more aware of God’s constant presence and willingness to assist us. Today’s readings from Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 reinforce that.

In fact God loves us as if we were God; and invites us to love other humans beings in the same way that we are loved by God – by loving our neighbours as our very selves. That is the deep meaning for us on this Trinity Sunday.

I recently read a book called Resilience written by Inge Woolf whose family I got to know through photography.  The book reminded me of how important refugees have been in the development of our society. Furthermore, on rereading and reflecting on our Acts passage I was reminded that refugees were an important part of the development of the early church.  Sadly, Inge did not live long enough to complete the book and left that task to her daughter Deborah.  Very competent hands indeed.

Deborah Heart is the director of the anti-smoking group ASH and they note that she is a former lawyer, Human Rights Review Tribunal Panel member, Chair of the Consumer Advocacy Council and the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand.  She is also the former executive director of the Arbitrators’ and Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand.

I know she was also a photographer at Photography by Woolf, that was her father’s firm.  It is currently run by her brother Simon who is also a regional councillor, and Deborah is currently chair of the Government-driven independent review of electoral laws.

At a time when the world seems filled with refugees who seem to be universally rejected and despised, it is worth knowing that Deborah and Simon, who give so much to our nation, are the children of refugees.   

It does not spell it out in the book of Acts but it’s not hard to discern that refugees, persecution and slavery were very much part of the wind and fire that spread the early church throughout the known world and even beyond. 

To understand that, we first need to understand some of the metaphors that Luke and John use and the best place to start is at the beginning, Genesis 1:1and 2 tell us ‘In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters’ (Genesis 1:1-2)

The footnote in one of the Bibles I have used makes the point that ‘a wind from God’ could also be translated ‘the spirit of God’   So right at the beginning of the Bible the story begins with the action of the divine Spirit, and wind and Spirit are interchangeable.

Wind and spirit are often a creative force in the Bible.  As well as the creation story, we can remember the breath that gave life to the bones in Ezekiel’s dream.  There is also the restoring wind in the story of Noah. ‘And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided’. (Genesis 8:1b) 

That is a divine wind of new beginnings for life on earth.  As we move on through the Bible we come to the beginning of that forty year refugee journey that formed the people of God. 

‘Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.  The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left’. (Exodus 14:21-22)

The reference to wind as the creative force from God continue but the reference to that particular sea crossing is a good place to note that one of key story lines in the Gospels is ‘Jesus as the new Moses forming a new people of God.’

Not surprising therefore that as Luke begins to launch the disciples into his story of the young church in action he does so with the announcement: ‘And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. (Acts 2:2) 

Luke also wants to make it clear that the Spirit rested on each of the disciples. ‘Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them’. (Acts 2:3) The Spirit empowers them as apostles.

The other useful thing about the fire metaphor is that flames will ignite any potential fuel they touch.  The story that Luke is telling is about the church spreading through the known world like wild fire.

However, we also need to look at the Gospel reading, and alternative spirit transfer it presents. 

Luke tells us that all the disciples were in one place and goes on to describe the reaction of people around them. We can assume that they were outside in a public space with the crowds who have come to the festival of Pentecost. 

But in John’s Gospel, the disciples are locked away in a room and the risen Christ arrives and breathes the Spirit onto or into the disciples. 

This was the first appearance of the Risen Christ to the male disciples although he had previously appeared to Mary Magdalene, and she had reported to the others. 

John is a theological gospel and one of the important theological points John is making is that, in commissioning the apostles, the Risen Christ breathes the empowering and life-giving breath of God. 

Importantly for us this reading shows that a meeting with the Risen Christ can be a private meeting not just the public display of ecstasy that Luke described.

Both our readings confirm the tradition that God acts through the Spirit to equip and empower God’s people. 

That is something that we can all experience.  We may have had faith confirming spiritual moments in our lives at a particular time.  But we can also experience serendipitous moments when following a hunch or unexpected opportunity leads to something special and a new turning point in our lives.

We can all spend a lot of time working out a cunning plan, but often real progress has come when we have taken opportunities that unexpectedly presented themselves.  

The story of Archimedes discovering the principle of flotation when his bath overflowed is a case in point.  Although it is probably best to contain one’s excitement and not to rush through town clad in nothing but a towel shouting ‘Eureka’

In fact, the Pentecost fire storm story is filled with serendipitous events.  Firstly, Luke sets it at the feast of Pentecost when so many people from so many places were in Jerusalem.  Both Jews and proselytes.  Proselytes were gentiles who had studied the Jewish culture but didn’t have Jewish mothers and were probably apprehensive of the required minor surgery.  All these people were religious tourists who would go home and carry the Spirit all around the Roman Empire.  Traders, refugees, and slaves would take it even further.  In fact, tradition and archaeological evidence suggests that Thomas even took the Jesus message to India, possibly as a slave.

Whether the Spirit came to the disciples in the locked room or singled them out amongst the crowds at the festival of Pentecost the Spirit came to the disciples at ‘an opportune time’. 

In fact, the whole Jesus story happened at the best possible moment for the life changing Spirit to begin its journey throughout the world and into the future.  Travel on Roman roads was easier than it had ever been, the Roman Empire, just like the British Empire was a trading organisation so people were moving around the known world.  Furthermore, the language of trade was Greek so missionaries could make themselves understood. 

Something that is really worth remembering is that the Holy Spirit can even make the most of disaster and tragedy. 

Just seventy years after Jesus’ death the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed as Rome put down the rebellion.  Some of those who weren’t killed were taken as slaves.

Others fled as refugees to other parts of the empire.  Some of those would have been followers of Jesus and would have established emerging church communities in the towns and cities were they settled. 

The tongues as of fire did not just ignite those first apostles, they ignited lives the apostles touched and the world of that time had all the ideal conditions for the fire to spread. 

We can look at the big picture with hindsight, analyse those conditions and realise that the church spread because it came out of an established religious tradition at the right time and the right place. 

However, those involved would not have seen the big picture in the same way we can’t see the big picture in our world.  Think of the kind English woman who looked after little Inge Woolf, but also muttered with deeply ingrained prejudice ‘the trouble is you will grow up and marry a big fat Jew.’ She had no idea of the impact Inge and her children would have on the other side of the world or as Inge wrote in her book, no idea she would actually marry a delightful and talented skinny Jew.

Luke and John have both given us powerful imagery of the way the Spirit of everything those first apostles felt and learned about Jesus, became part of them. 

The imagery tells us that without knowing the outcome they opened themselves to serendipitous opportunities. Meetings on the road and making the most of disasters and forced migration.  Like us, they probably looked at events with hindsight and realised God’s Spirit was acting in their lives.  Inspired by the Spirit they wrote down some of the experiences and insights they had.  They wrote to inform and encourage others and those writings have been passed onto us.  Our scripture and our tradition bring us to the noise and excitement of a religious festival or the quiet reflection in a locked room.  Moments where we encounter the Spirit of Christ.   

Through our own Spiritual encounters, we too will feel the creative and re-creative divine breath as a burning passion to live Christ into reality in our world.