Homily for the Twelfth Sunday after Penetecost - Be not afraid

Genesis 15:1-6
Psalm 33:12-22
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

For everything there is two creations, first the blueprint, then the building.  First we imagine; then we create. With imagination apprehending the finished product we can build it correctly. 

Stephen Covey proposes this as one of the habits of highly successful people: they begin with the end in mind. They envision where they want to go, so they can actually get there.

But if our vision is off, if the compass is pointing to the wrong wall, then every step taken will just move us to the wrong place faster!¹

So each of our scriptures today plead with us to orient our spiritual compass toward the right wall, the one that is as solid and sure as God’s promise, though we may see not and feel not.  But holding in our hearts and imagination obedience to God, we can move forward with confidence.

From the end of Chapter 11 to the beginning of Chapter 15 of Genesis, from which our first reading comes, we find a spiritual compass being reset, being redirected toward the right wall.

The story begins with Terah setting out from Ur of Chaldeans, heading toward the land of Canaan togethre with son Abram, daughter-in-law Sarai, and grandson Lot, Abram’s nephew. 

But instead of getting to where they were going, they “settled” for something else, and there in Haran Terah eventually dies at the ripe old age of 205, never having reached Canaan, the place for which he set out.

Then son Abram, himself 75 years old, hears God say, “Get up and go and I will make you a great nation.” So Abram obeys God and sets out toward that place God has told him, a new land where he is to become “a great nation.”

Unlike his father, Abram eventually does reach Canaan and there God again tells him that though he is as yet childless he will have many descendants. And once again, Abram believes God and even erects an altar to this Lord of promise.

After a considerable detour through Egypt because of famine, Abram eventually returns to that place where he had built the altar and there parts ways with nephew Lot, because, so we are told, both had amassed so much livestock there was no longer room for them in one place, so Abram remains while Lot goes East.

Again the Lord appears and promises land and heirs that cannot be counted.  The Lord tells Abram to check out the land, and Abram believes and obeys, eventually settling by the oaks of Mamre, where he builds a second altar to the Lord of promise.

Then after rescuing Lot who had gotten into a wee bit of trouble in Sodom and whose wife has become a pillar of salt, Abram meets up with the mysterious king of Salem, Melchizedek, a priest who blesses him and to whom Abram immediately gives a full tithe of all that he had, and we are told he had a lot, yet still no children.

That’s where our lesson this morning takes up, with the Lord telling Abram, “Be not afraid.”    

“But Lord,” Abram reminds God of God’s promise: “I still have no children.”  “Oh, but you will, as many as the stars of heaven and the sand of the seashore.”  And Abram believes and that belief is accounted as “righteous.”

And still it would be a long time before the now renamed Abraham and Sarah would be told that they will have their very own child. With Abraham now 99 and Sarah well beyond childbearing years, it is now a preposterous impossibility, a laughable promise, and thus there son is called “Isaac,” meaning “laughter.”

And through many years of wandering, waiting, intrigue, famine, war and peace, Abraham’s spiritual compass is anchored in obedience to God, and so he believes and so he obeys.

Abraham’s descendants would go on to live as strangers, as foreigners, even as slaves.  Generations would come and go, dying without themselves receiving the fullness of that promise.  And yet they believed and yet they obeyed, through however many detours and setbacks, moving toward a kingdom of which they had only a foretaste but could not see with their eyes and touch with their hands.

Believing and obeying they moved toward a better country, a kingdom where God is not ashamed to be their God in a city he has prepared just for them.  These descendants, including those not connected physically but by spiritual DNA, these descendants obeyed and believed God.

“Be not afraid, little flock, your Father desires to give you the kingdom.”

Despite implausibility and even outright impossibility, we can believe that God will fulfill God’s promise: “Be not afraid, little flock, your father desires to give you the kingdom,” the place where love wins decisively and life is given fully. 

With that vision before our eyes, with that hope in our hearts, we renounce any encumbrance that would set our hearts on that which over promises and under delivers, idols of our own fancy.

With that vision before our eyes, with that hope in our hearts, we await with eager longing the coming of Son of Man when God’s rule is fully established and when justice reigns together with mercy as wide as the sea, where there is no more pain there, no more crying there, no more dying there, but life without end in eternal felicity.

“Be not afraid, little flock, your father desires to give you the kingdom.”  Amen.

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¹ https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit2.php.  These and subsequent Covey references may be found in this article.

³ In Jackie Kelm’s “Appreciative Inquiry Principle Summary.” http://www.appreciativeliving.com/files/Kelm_AI_Principle_Summary.pdf