Advent 2022: Abraham

Over the years I’ve been able to go to a few different Christian festivals and events. Things like Spring Harvest, Greenbelt, and so on. They’ve often been great occasions, times of meeting with God, witnessing God at work, encountering something more of God’s love and transforming presence. And then it’s often back down with a bump – sometimes as the sleep deprivation kicks in, but sometimes even trying to get out of the car-park on the way home…

So, seeing Abraham, as well as some many others, veer from witnessing God at work to making a spectacular mess of things seems all too believable and understandable to me. In this passage from Genesis 12, Abraham moves from meeting with God to acting in a manner that even the exploitative Pharoah will find morally questionable.

In this passage, God’s actions set off the long chain of events that eventually lead to the birth of Jesus something like 2,000 years later. Abraham, and later Sarah, witness the birth of a new way of relating to God, a new way of God relating to humanity, and to a new set of promises.

God calls Abraham not simply to be a witness, a passive observer of something. Instead, God calls Abraham to action as a result of what he has seen. God tells Abraham that he will be a blessing, that things will be different because of him. Abraham responses through his actions. He travels with his family, he worships God.

The word ‘bless’ is repeated five time in the first three verses. This is significant, a way of emphasising that God’s blessing is greater than the wrongs that have happened, and continue to happen. God promises land, descendants, blessing. God promises that Abraham will witness the start of these blessings, and that other people will witness those blessings through him.

But there is a long, hard journey to get there. There is a name change, some questionable decisions, mistakes, repeated promises, and the birth of children before even Abraham and Sarah see the start of those promises growing before their eyes. And that is a pattern that is repeated again and again in the run up to the birth of Jesus (and since then in the life of the Church).

This passage really summarises the whole message of the Bible. God longs to bless his people. Because of God’s blessing people can worship God and be active witnesses. Through Abraham, all people will experience God’s blessing. This is the promise that is repeated to King David, that the prophets remind us of, that is repeated by John the Baptist, and repeated to Mary by the angel Gabriel. It is the promise that Jesus takes up and fulfils. His birth, his life, death and resurrection are how God keeps his promise to Abraham.

Advent is a time of preparation, of reminders of the journey, of encounters with members of that ‘great cloud of witnesses’ (as Hebrews 12 puts it) who have already gone on their journey of faith, including Abraham and the people we will meet again over the next few weeks. Advent is a time when we witness God’s blessing and, like Abraham and Sarah, we are called to be part of that blessing, through our words and actions. Like Abraham and Sarah, we can worship, we can go on a journey with God. And God’s promise through Jesus is that God is with us, that the Holy Spirit will help us, and that we too will know God’s blessing.

God’s promise through Jesus is
that God is with us,
that the Holy Spirit will help us,
and that we too will know God’s blessing.

Published 27 November 2022