Abraham - The End
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18
1 Some time after these events, this word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what good will your gifts be, if I keep on being childless and have as my heir the steward of my house, Eliezer?” 3 Abram continued, “See, you have given me no offspring, and so one of my servants will be my heir.” 4 Then the word of the LORD came to him: “No, that one shall not be your heir; your own issue shall be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said: “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so,” he added, “shall your descendants be.” 6 Abram put his faith in the LORD, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness. 7 He then said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession.” 8 “O Lord GOD,” he asked, “How am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He answered him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon.” 10 He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up. 11 Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram stayed with them. 12 As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him. … 17 When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brazier and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces. 18 It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River (the Euphrates).
Okay, so far we’ve seen Abram struggle to trust. We’ve seen God give this pretty odd seeming response about cutting up animals and laying them out to form a path between them. And we’ve seen Abram have do battle with the vultures over whether the recently deceased animals were going to be, in some weird and rather gruesome way, a place where God would show up or would they simply a next meal for scavengers. We’ve seen that Abram “Stayed with them.”
At this point of the story we are supposed to see a turn around, some sign that Abram's faithful, "staying with it" is paying off, being rewarded. That's how it is in the movies, on T.V. After a heroic struggle the hero, bloody and scarred, attains the victory and basks in the glow of triumph - and walks away with the beautiful girl who fell in love with him while he was saving the world. But that isn't how it always goes in life. Sometimes it just piles on. Bad news after bad news, struggle upon struggle. And, when it seems you are completely exhausted and all the fight has gone out of you, it sometimes gets darker still. For Abram, a "deep and terrifying darkness enveloped him." At this point he had to have come close to breaking, giving it all up, admitting it was never real in the first place. "Maybe the 'voice' of God that I heard wasn't real, was just my imagination, was only my needs playing themselves out. Or maybe I was just out in the sun way too long. And all this ritual stuff, the animals cut in two, the path between them, the 'promise' of a covenant -- all that is just empty religion, worthless. Maybe it's time to grow up and just admit that I was wrong, God has NOT been leading me, has NOT been speaking, is NOT here now and is NOT about to show up. I'll get over it. It's sad and depressing, scary actually, but it's time to move on. "
Talk about a "terrifying darkness!" Everything that seemed so sure and solid now seems slippery and ready to give way. We've all felt that, all had moments, days, months, years when the light of God's presence seems an illusion and the darkness of God's absence seems all too real. But, finally, when the sun had set and the darkness was at it darkest, God actually shows up. Not in some blaze of glory, a blinding flash or a thunderclap. No, here God shows up in the form of a smoking oven and a torch (which sounds suspiciously like a barbecue and a flashlight -- I don't get it either). But somehow Abram knows that God is in the smoke of the oven and the fire of the torch, and God passes between the animal’s carcasses and makes a covenant with Abram, "You know, Abram old buddy, all those promises I made before -- I'll keep them.
And, again, isn't this how it happens with us. We have fought and struggled to remain faithful, kept at it long after it seems pointless, were terrified in the darkness of those times and then God shows up; shows up not in some fantastic Hollywood special effects way, not in the spectacle or glory that we think we need to believe again. No, God shows in the kind word from a stranger, the listening ear of a friend, a Scripture passage that we've heard a million times suddenly taking on meaning. God shows up without all the fanfare, without the pomp and circumstance but in the little lovely ways that God seems to prefer -- a smile, a spark of hope in a fearful heart, a stable on a cold night in Bethlehem. And in those moments, if we had "stayed with them" and, truthfully, even if we haven't, God says to us, "You know all those promises? They're real!" And the darkness begins to lift, not in a sudden rush of blinding light but in a small little flame that helps us see just enough. The darkness that has weighed us down, bent us over as we tried to carry it, begins to lighten and we realize that finally, instead of staring down at defeat, we are looking up at the stars God laughed in place eons ago…and can believe again.
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