The Big Idea: God heals divisions by promising blessings for all.
Learning Goal: Learners will understand the role that Abram and Sarai played in God’s creation of a people-with descendents, land, and a blessing-from the divided people of the earth.
God’s call to Abram and Sarai ushers in an entire new history-a history of blessing. It is the bridge between the first 11 chapters of Genesis, often called the “pre-history,” and the ancestral stories. Previous stories in Genesis show that human beings cannot independently achieve the level of blessing that God intends in creation. They rebel against it, in fact. Therefore, God gives the blessing as a gift to all the nations through Abram (Abraham) and Sarai (Sarah). Abram and Sarai are issued both a command and a promise. The command: “Get up and go!” The promise: Abram and Sarai will become the ancestors of a great nation; they will have land and descendents, and they will be a source of blessing for the world (Genesis 12:1-3). In some ways, the promise is a reversal of the curses given in Eden (Genesis 3:16-19). This line of promise will carry through the rest of the biblical story.
Many have called Abraham a model of faith. When told to get up and go, he got up and went. But the way he went was not at all smooth. As we continue reading in Genesis, we see that the road of faith that Abraham traveled was bumpy with doubt, missteps, and mistakes. The actual story centers less on Abraham’s faith and more on how he handles the complexities, ambiguities, and struggles of the life he lived. The promise is threatened many times in many ways, but the threats do not define the plot as much as the promise of goodness and well-being. “Blessing language” is used 88 times in Genesis-it is by far the overriding theme.
Again and again in the Old Testament the future is shaped by God’s promises. It is a conflicted family that God chooses to mediate divine blessing. Abraham’s family lives in the midst of the world’s families. It is as if the story’s writer(s) wanted us to know that Abraham and Sarah’s family had a deep connection to the world’s families, and much in common with them. They are not so different from the rest of us. They make mistakes and sometimes the mistakes are big ones. They try to take things too much in their own hands. They misunderstand God. They grow impatient. And God works through them. The line is not straight between Point A and Point B (for blessing), but the story and God’s people always move forward. God’s intention is to bless even when there are what surely must be aggravating roadblocks. Through all the bumps in the road, God continues to work with Abraham and Sarah to bring divine blessing to the world.
The exclusivity that God chooses (i.e., Abraham and Sarah) is for the purpose of maximum inclusivity (i.e., all of humanity). This promise is at the center of the entire Abraham and Sarah narrative. Their actions, helpful and not, remind us that God will continue to work with human partners even when they aren’t much help. And although the way may not be smooth, the promise is sure. Faith is not a condition of the promise, but it does remain relevant because of the divine-human partnership. At the same time, the “chosen ones” cannot thwart the promise because God does indeed act outside the chosen community. God is at work everywhere with everyone.
