Sermon. "Go Ye"

Sermon. St Mary’s Great Ilford. 8 March 2020  

Lent 2 (Year A)

Genesis 12.1-4a

In today’s first reading, from the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, we are introduced to Abraham. Actually, that is not true, in two ways. First, Abraham is not yet Abraham; he has his earlier name of Abram (or Avram), meaning something like High Father. Second, if we were reading through the book of Genesis, we would already have met Avram. In the preceding chapter, we are given his family tree. We are also told that his family, led by his father, Terah, already intended to move from Ur to Canaan, but had settled in Haran instead, where Terah died.  

  

In today’s reading, then, we move from the big picture, of the clan of Abram and their movements as a family, to the detail of Abram himself. The movement of the narrative is slowed right down. And something really dramatic happens. Something momentous, miraculous even, happens. And we can miss it. What do I mean?  

  

I mean that Gd speaks to Avram. Gd addresses Avram. Gd uses - so the story tells us - human language to give Avram a message, a command. This, as far as we can tell, has not happened before. It is a radically new thing in Avram’s life. Indeed, it gives his life its purpose. It is the beginning, in more ways than one, of his life’s journey.  

  

If we missed altogether how astonishing this is - that Gd speaks to Avram - we need not be critical of ourselves. The text itself presents Gd’s speech as perfectly natural, normal even. The Hebrew is as normal as the English: “And the LORD said to Avram…” And Avram is apparently unperturbed by being spoken to by Gd, and simply responds, simply obeys. We may well want to ask exactly what happened. How did Avram know it was Gd, for example? But we are not told.  

  

So we may well want to conclude that this is deliberate. That the message here is that Gd is intimately involved with us, and, when Gd speaks, we need not be bowled over by fear and awe, we can simply respond. We can say yes to Gd.  

  

There is something unusual about the Hebrew which the English does not convey. The expression “Go” in English does not capture the Hebrew well. The Hebrew is literally: “Go to yourself” or “Go for yourself”. It is one occasion when the King James Version actually does it: “Get thee out” it says. “Go ye” is another translation.  

  

This expression is rare. So it is likely to be telling us something important. It may be that Gd, who is always intimately involved with us, and who can speak quite naturally to us, can issue commands to us, and those commands may be difficult to obey, may involve risk and loss and hardship, but they will also be “for us”, they will be about going with the grain of our truest selves. They will be about us becoming more ourselves. “Go for yourself”.  

  

By the way, the only other time this Hebrew form is found in connection with Avram is when Gd gives Abraham another command, the hardest command of all, that he prepares to sacrifice his son, Isaac. So the expression is surely a solemn one, and not a throwaway line.  

  

Avram then is to go, is to leave his country, and his kindred, and his father’s house. Notice how the intensity of what Avram has to leave behind grows. He is to leave not only his country (hard enough) but his wider family, and not only his wider family, but his more immediate family too. 

  

And/but but/and if Avram does this, then he will be blessed and blessings will abound. He will be blessed and blessings will abound. Any who bless him will themselves be blessed. And in him all the families of the earth will be blessed. Except it is not quite that simple. The Hebrew may indeed say that in Avram all the families of the earth will be blessed. But it can just as naturally be translated as in Avram all the families of the earth will bless themselves. You know, like a parent saying to a child: “May you grow up to be like Avram, rich in blessing”. Unfortunately, the context doesn’t really help settle the matter here. We simply have to make a choice. But in any event Avram stands for blessing.  

  

So in these few verses we are told important truths. The truth is expressed in story form, as so often in the Bible. It is, then, more an invitation to ponder, and take to heart, than it is a lesson to be learned like an equation or spelling. The truth in question says that we need to remember that Gd is close to us, is intimately involved with us, and can even speak to us, can command us to act, that the action Gd command us to take can be hard and costly, but that at another level it will truly be “for us”, but it will never be wholly for us, it will always be so that blessings abound in the world around us.  

  

Now, you and I know how the story continues with Abraham and Sarah. It is involved. There are hard times. Abraham certainly makes some mistakes along the way. It would be very wrong to think of Gd as always obviously alongside Avram simply offering reassuring words. That is not how life was for Avram, and we know full well it is not how life is for us.  

  

So, what do we do with this story? We can indeed treat today’s first reading as an invitation, a call to draw us in. It may resonate with us strongly, but even if it does not, we can still ask ourselves, well, how would life be, if it really were true that Gd is close to us, is intimately involved with us, and can even speak to us, can command us to act, that the action Gd commands us to take can be hard and costly, but that at another level it will truly be “for us”, but it will never be wholly for us, but it will always be so that blessings abound in the world around us? How, then, to live?  

These surely are questions that take us close to the essence of this still-young Lenten season.  

  

Amen.