The Grand Adventure of Blessing the Nations—Lectionary Reflection for Lent 2A (Genesis 12)

Genesis 12:1-4 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² 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. ³ 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.”

⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

***********

                The reading from Genesis 2 and 3 that served as the first reading for the First Sunday of Lent describes how things went wrong in the garden, leading to exile from the garden. While God decides that at least for the moment it wouldn’t be wise for humanity to continue to have access to the Tree of Life, that doesn’t mean God gave up on humanity (though the story of Noah suggests that God might have had second thoughts about creating humanity—Genesis 6:5-8—but that’s a different story that I’d rather not explore at the moment). While the opening chapters of Genesis tell the story of humanity gone awry where everyone does what is right in their own eyes, when we get to Genesis 12, we see the beginning of something new. Abram and his wife, Sarai, appear for the first time in Genesis 11, where Abram’s father moves the family from Ur to Haran, where Terah died. That’s where we pick up the story in Genesis 12.

                I’ve come to believe that this chapter is foundational to the Christian story (as well as the Jewish and Islamic stories). Before we get to Genesis 12, I want to turn for a moment to Matthew 1, Matthew begins his gospel with “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Genesis 1:1). I want to take note of Matthew’s genealogy in part because he starts his genealogy in a different place from Luke, who takes Jesus’ lineage back to Adam (Luke 3:23-28). I believe that Matthew chooses to start with Abraham because he believes Jesus’ ministry/calling is rooted in the call of Abram that is first recorded in Genesis 12 [see my book Called to Bless, pp. 17-26].

                Here in Genesis 12 Yahweh (Adonai-LORD) appears to Abram, who is at the time residing at Haran. With the death of Terah his now head of the family. God tells Abram to pack up the family (including the extended family) and head to “a land I will show you.” Note that God doesn’t give a final destination. Abram can’t get out his Google map and plot a course to the land God was sending him. If he was to take this journey asked of him, he would have to take a step of faith (Gen. 12:1).  

                In verse 2 of Genesis 12, God reveals a promise. If Abram takes this step of faith God will in turn make him a great nation. Not only that God will make Abram’s name great so that he might be a blessing. Here is the key word—if he takes up this calling he will become a blessing. That is, he will become the source of blessing for others. One might assume the blessings will start with the family but remember that God promises to make him a great nation. To this point, Abram’s family isn’t that large. There’s Sarai and his nephew Lot and Lot’s family. As for Sarai and Abram, they don’t have any children of their own. So, how will God make them a great nation? Besides, in a tribal world, moving into a strange land was itself risky. What if the folks at the end destination weren’t too keen on this group of migrants from entering their land? They might even perceive this to be an invasion by a group of outsiders. So, the promise might be enticing, the question was how would it work out.

                Of course, our reading is not yet complete. Not only does God promise to make a great nation out of Abram so that he might be a blessing, but this blessing would extend to the nations. So, whoever blesses Abram will be blessed and whoever curses him will be cursed. The second part is problematic, but for our purposes, I want to focus on part 1, the part about blessing the families of the earth.

                The outworking of this call has many twists and turns. As the story continues, God covenants with Abram in Genesis 15, where God promises descendants to Abram. God does the same in Genesis 17, though by that time Abram has a son through Hagar, who was Sarai’s slave/servant. While Abram received Ishmael as the one who would carry on the covenant promises, even circumcising him (Genesis 17), but still has something else in mind. That something else involves a child born to Sarai (Sarah), who will carry the name of Isaac. When it comes to the outworking of the promise God makes to Abram, the Book of Hebrews notes that while Abraham set out “not knowing where he was going,” he and his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, all lived in tents never truly receiving the land of promise. Nevertheless,  despite Sarah’s initial inability to bear a child, the promise revealed itself over time, but “all of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance, they saw and greeted them” (Hebrews 11:8-13). There would be times when Abraham took matters into his hands, such as when in pursuit of an heir he took Sarah’s slave, Hagar, and had a child with her. Despite the twists and turns, the journey to blessing starts here and continues through the Covenant of Sinai to that of Calvary and the embrace of the Gentiles into God’s realm.

                Jews, Christians, and Muslims all interpret the call of Abraham differently. For one thing, Muslims hail Ishmael rather than Isaac as the one through whom the covenant blessing is passed on to later generations. So, as a Christian, I interpret the call of Abraham through the lens of Jesus. He is, as Paul suggests, the seed of Abraham through whom the blessings of God would be revealed to the nations (Gal. 3:15-18). This is the message of Matthew’s genealogy (Matthew 1:1-17). For Matthew, Jesus, the Messiah, is the son of David and the son of Abraham. By connecting Jesus’ mission to Abraham, he envisions Jesus as the one through whom all the nations will be blessed. That is, he will save the people from their sins (Mt.1:21). From this perspective, the coming of Jesus is not a course correction on the part of God, but a natural extension of the call of Abraham.

                Here is where we must be careful not to suggest that the church replaces Israel or that the Jews got things wrong, but Jesus got things back on track. The way I read things, according to Paul, the Gentiles were grafted into the olive tree that is Israel so that the nations might share in the blessing that God first promised to Abraham and Israel (Rom. 11). As we ponder the call and the end result, it is wise to remember the promise of Second Isaiah, that Israel would be a light to the nations so that God’s salvation would reach the ends of the earth (Is. 49:6).

                Theologian Clark Williamson devoted much attention to the question of the church’s relationship to Israel, especially in a post-Shoah world. He writes that “Israel was to be a priestly people, serving others, not itself. God’s covenant was not merely for Israel’s good but for the good of all human beings, Gentiles and Jews. God chose Israel as an instrument so that all peoples may come to know God and God’s purposes for them” [A Guest in the House of Israel, p. 125]. The covenant, it would seem, is expanded in Christ to include we who are followers of Jesus as members of the extended family. That is, Gentiles who are grafted into the family in Christ also are called to be a blessing to the nations. The call first broached in Genesis 12 was formalized more fully in Genesis 15 when the promise of a child/heir is given. That covenant promises is again explicitly restated in Genesis 17 when God changes the names of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah.

                Getting back to Genesis 12, when Abram answered the call on behalf of the family, not knowing where God would lead them, though the general direction appears to be the land of Canaan, he did have a promise in hand. That promise involved becoming a great nation through which the nations would be blessed. Abraham’s descendants would have understood themselves to be the recipients of that call themselves. While one particular nation received the promise, the blessings embedded in that promise extended to the entire creation.

                For Christians, this means recognizing that we have been, as noted earlier, grafted into the olive tree that is Israel. We have been adopted into the family through the one who is the seed of Abraham. But as the Gentiles are drawn into the family, and blessed by God, that doesn’t nullify the previous covenant (Gal.3:15-18). There is a tendency for Christians to read Paul in a supersessionist manner so that Jesus replaces Israel. That would be inappropriate. For our purposes, let us simply understand Paul’s reference to seed to be a sign that God always intended to bring all of creation into the fold, and that Israel plays an important role in this, as does Jesus, and through Jesus, we have been added to the agents of blessing.

                While there will always be interpretive questions to wrestle with when it comes to what it means to claim descent from Abraham on the part of three religious traditions that have often been at odds with each other, it seems wise to affirm the common ancestry so that we can move to what it means to be a blessing to the nations. It is good to remember that the blessing with which we are to bless is a gift of God.

                The question for those of us who are Christians as we ponder this passage concerns the nature of this blessing and how we share it with the world. For many modern readers, the word blessing may seem quaint and therefore not very meaningful. However, when we consider the Hebrew word that is translated as to bless (barak), it is understood to be a counterpoint to curses (that is the message here in Genesis 12—those who bless Abram will be blessed, while those who curse him will be cursed). As such, it is suggestive of good things such as well-being, fruitfulness, and flourishing. The message here is that God is calling Abram to be a source of blessing so that he and all who bless him will flourish. When it comes to what it means to flourish, Miroslav Volf suggests that to flourish means that one does not live by bread alone. Volf writes in his book Flourishing that the global world needs religion if it is to flourish (be blessed). In that regard, he writes that “when we live by bread alone, there is never enough bread, not enough even when we make so much of it that some of it rots away; when we live by bread alone, someone always goes hungry; when we live by bread alone, every bite we take leaves a bitter aftertaste; . . . living by ‘mundane realities’ and for them alone, we remain restless and that restlessness, in turn, contributes to competitiveness, social injustice, and the destruction of the environment as well as constitutes a major obstacle to more just, generous, and caring personal practices and social relationships.” The material is important, but it’s not sufficient. Thus, we need more than mere bread, we need the bread of life.  [Volf, Flourishing, p. 22].

                As I read scripture, I see a thread running from creation (Genesis 1) to the new creation (Revelation 22). It runs through Abram and on to Jesus. While God calls Abram and his descendants to be agents of blessing to the nations, to be in Christ is to be grafted into that tree of blessing so that we too might be agents of God’s blessings to the world. As Paul reminds us in Romans 4, this is a calling received by faith (Rom. 4:1-5, 13-17) because it is a gift of grace.