BIBLE READINGS: Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35

SERMON

The Old Testament reading today tells us of one of those private crisis points in Abram’s journey.

In his camp in the land of Canaan, he has a vision. God comes to him as he had in his homeland before he set out. And once again God makes him the same promise. He would be the father of a multitude.

“But how?” said Abram, “I’ve no children, and no sign of any children…”

God didn’t answer his question – he just told him to look to the heavens. “Count the stars. That’s how many descendants you’ll have.”

The story tells us that Abram believed him. But for him, just like the rest of us, faith is hard to sustain, and almost straight away he starts questioning again. How was this going to come about? What proof could God give him?

So God tells him to do something very strange – take a heifer and a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon and kill them. Divide them in two and lay them out opposite each other. It sounds odd to us, but it would have been very familiar to Abram. This was the way you made a covenant with someone. We shake hands on a promise to seal it. We sign a document. We give rings to signify the covenant of marriage. But in Abram’s time you killed and dismembered an animal. Then the person making the covenant walked between the pieces – as if to say – “let this happen to me too, let me be torn in pieces, if I break my promise”. “Cross my heart and hope to die…” – that sort of thing.

So Abram did what he was told. He killed and cut up the animals, and laid the pieces out. Then he waited for instructions. What did he expect would happen? Probably that God would tell him to walk between the pieces. It would show his loyalty to God. Subordinates often did this as a pledge to their leaders. Surely that was what God wanted from him– his obedience. But the instruction doesn’t come. He waits and waits. The vultures start circling. Abram drives them off. And he waits some more. As night falls, he is still waiting. What on earth is God doing? And what is Abram supposed to be doing? He listens for guidance, but none comes. And as the daylight fades, the fears he had fought off during the day crowd in. “A deep and terrifying darkness descended on him.” It is a very vivid phrase – “a deep and terrifying darkness.”

What was it about that darkness that was so awful? Abram was used to darkness – he wasn’t surrounded by streetlights at night as we are. If you have ever sat through the night, wrestling with a dilemma, or facing a challenge or a fear that seems unconquerable, perhaps you know. This darkness, which is so terrifying, is the darkness of confusion and doubt, of feeling lost, without bearings, not knowing which direction to take, not knowing what is coming next. You don’t know if you are walking into danger or away from it. It’s the kind of darkness where you ask yourself over and over, am I doing the right thing? Am I deluding myself? How can I know I am right? You long to be sure of yourself. You feel you should be able to do something – but what and how? There must be an answer, if only you could figure it out.

Abram feels all these things on that dark and terrifying night. He has taken his household out of the security of their own native land because of a promise from God that seems crazy. Perhaps he wonders, privately, whether he is crazy too. The distinction between faith and folly is a very fine one.

But as the terrifying darkness with its questions and doubts washes over him, something very strange happens. He sees, coming out of the darkness, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. There’s no one there. God himself carries them – they are symbols of his presence. And as Abram watches, the firepot and the torch make their way between those dismembered animals he has laid out. God passes between the sacrifices. Do you see what that means?

This ritual is about making a covenant. The one who walks between the sacrifices is the one making the promises, pledging loyalty. So it is God who is making the covenant here. God who is pledging his loyalty to Abram - his absolute, unbreakable faithfulness. God puts himself into Abram’s hands. He submits to him, not the other way round. “I promise you,” says God,” I will never leave you, and all I have said will come true.” It is completely the reverse of what Abram expects. He has been thinking that he must do something for God – but actually it is God who does something for him. “On that day,” the story says, “the Lord made a covenant with Abram”  It’s the Lord who makes the covenant with Abram, not Abram who must make the covenant with God.

A covenant is a binding promise. It’s not a contract – if you do this, I’ll do that. It is an unconditional commitment – and this is what God makes on that dark and terrifying night. It is a covenant that he has never given up on.

Jesus, too, went through the darkness of fear and uncertainty. He knew that his actions in confronting the authorities were likely to lead to his death. You didn’t need any spooky clairvoyant ability to see this – it was what happened to troublemakers.

In today’s Gospel the Pharisees come to tell him what he already knows. Herod is looking to kill him. But Jesus won’t be scared off. God has called him to proclaim the kingdom – release for the captives, justice for the oppressed. Like Abram he doesn’t know exactly how this will come about, but he is going to do what he is called to anyway. Far from running away he is heading straight for the eye of the storm – for Jerusalem.

He sounds so certain at this point, and we may perhaps envy his confidence – but we know it wasn’t always like that. Fear and doubt are slippery opponents. They creep back in when our guard is down. Just a little later, we find him on his own dark night in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating with fear, struggling to accept what he must do and to understand why? In his “deep and terrifying darkness” he agonises just as we all would. Is his death really necessary? Or is he putting himself and those who love him through unbearable pain to no purpose?

In the end he makes his choice – “not my will, but yours be done.” He doesn’t know what will happen but he finds somehow a faith – hard won, and fragile – that is nonetheless strong enough to take him through what comes upon him. A faith that God, who has never broken his covenant with his people yet, will not break it now.

God honoured his promise to Abram. A son was eventually born. And God honoured his promise to Jesus too. His refusal to abandon his message, his resolute declaration of God’s love for the poor, the sick and the outcast, were not in vain. The triumph of Easter, with its message that hope is stronger than despair, and love stronger than hate, bears witness to that.

What is hard for us, of course, is to trust that his promises to us will also be honoured. The faith of Abram and of Jesus might inspire and encourage us but ultimately it is our own relationship with God that matters. Each of us has to discover for ourselves in our own dark nights that the covenant God made – that he would never leave us - still holds true.

As we wrestle with the uncertainties and anxieties of our own lives, may we have our eyes open to the God who comes in the terrifying darkness with his promise of a love that never ends.