Genesis 12:1-4a
1 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.
To read the story of God and God’s people in Scripture is to read a story with a rocky beginning. Oh sure, it sounds lovely and mesmerizingly mysterious in those first two chapters, with God speaking the universe into existence or getting God’s anthropomorphic hands dirty in the act of shaping human beings from dust and rib bones. A lot of ink rests on a lot of pages in a lot of books about those two chapters to be sure, but it doesn’t take long—not long at all—before the story starts to go off the rails.
In the first verses of chapter three the story takes a dark, more dramatic turn. The woman the Lord has created has a theological debate with a snake that winds up with her and her man eating fruit which had been forbidden by the Lord. Their eyes are opened; they see their nakedness; they cover themselves up and hide—they hide from God. It’s the very moment in the story of God and God’s people where the needle scratches on the record, where the tires screech, where sin slips so seductively out of the shadow of human will and into the light of day. What’s the result of this crack in creation? What is the sum of sin’s arrival into Eden’s perfection? Expulsion…punishment…curses. The man and woman (along with the snake) are cursed by God in chapter 3, verses 14-19:
The Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." And to the man he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, "You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
With the arrival of sin in God’s garden came death and punishment and curses. One might think that such a dramatic turn of events over the consumption of fruit would have some lasting effect on the man and the woman, such an effect that might cause them to remember the Lord’s anger and teach their offspring the right way. We don’t even have to turn the page, however, to see that such a lesson is not so easily transmitted to the next generation, for in Chapter four of Genesis murder makes its way through the cracked door left ajar by that first sin. Cain, in his jealousy, kills his brother Able. And what is God’s response? Curses: “And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth."[1]
I’m afraid it doesn’t look much better from here, for after a chapter of genealogy in chapter five, we’re told in chapter six that “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”[2] We’re not even into double-digit page numbers and already God is sorry to have ever even fooled with the idea of creation. God’s had it to the back teeth with the sin and wickedness in the world, the way things seem to have spun out of control and away from what was perhaps a higher plan. So God set out with a plan, a “reset” on the world; God was going to punish sin and ultimately curse those responsible for it in one, grand, final way—God was going to drown them all! Well, all of them except Noah and his family.
Yet even after building an arc and surviving a devastating flood, after witnessing firsthand the enormity of God’s power and desire to rid the world of wickedness, after covenanting with God God’s self, Noah puts things back in the gutter before the puddles are even dry! Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk on his own wine, and after passing out naked, something happens that causes Noah to curse his own grandson.[3] It seems humankind can’t shake this whole cursing and punishment thing because even in chapter eleven, all the peoples of the world (having obviously not learned anything from Adam and Eve, or Cain, or the flood) decide to come together to build a tower in another attempt to reach some god-like status. When the Lord catches wind of their scheme, however, God scatters them across the land and confuses their language—a punishment meant to keep the people from ever attempting such a feat again. [I’m not sure what page your Bible is on by now, but I’m barely on page ten!]
This whole punishment/curse way of existence seems to have imprinted itself in the foundational sequences of our human DNA. At the first inclination of wrongdoing, many of us are quick to call for punishment, for the proper sentence to be handed down. We seem to be hard-wired with this retaliatory response, with lightning-quick defense mechanisms that allow us to return blow for blow and curse for curse. Why we even seem to celebrate this way of existence by rejoicing in the news of the failure of our foes and what we believe to be their “just deserts.” Punishment and curses seem natural to us: after all, what would the world be without such things to set the sinners straight? Do such things really set sinners straight?
I wonder if perhaps such a thought had occurred to God. You see, for the first eleven chapters of Genesis, God is pretty handy with the “punishment/curse” way of governing creation. However, no matter how many times God curses or punishes, humankind still slinks back into sin; we still find a way to conveniently forget the lessons of our own history. I mean, even a flood that kills EVERYTHING doesn’t do it! I wonder if perhaps God decided to shift the approach of control over creation, or if maybe God had another way in mind all along…
By the time we arrive at the part of God’s story in the text before us this morning, we’ve been through the cycle of curses and punishment enough times to see the pattern. You get the sense that God may be a bit tired of fooling with us fractured folks, that maybe God is ready to throw in the towel and let us run creation into the ground, take care of the destruction ourselves. We might be tempted to come to such a conclusion, but that is before we really read these three and a half verses before us (listen to it again): “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. 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. 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." So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”
Notice anything different? This isn’t the Eden imperative, a restriction followed by a threat. This isn’t the Lord who curses the ground should Abram fail to comply. No, this doesn’t even seem to be the same God who was sorry to have made humankind in the first place. In fact, there’s no mention of what would happen if Abram didn’t go “as the Lord had told him.” No punishment. No curse. What is there then? BLESSING! Blessing: for the first time in the story of God and God’s people we hear that word. After generations of punishment and curses—blessing. It’s almost as if God was through trying it the old-fashioned way and took creation in a new direction, one where curses only come to those who curse the ones who have been charged with doing the blessing, one where people are not threatened with punishment and curses from the angry Almighty, but where they are promised blessings from the God who calls on human agents to carry out such blessings.
Sure, it may be a bit messier this way. After all, we’re still cracked creatures, broken vessels who seem to spend more time searching for our own blessings than we do bearing blessing for others, but still, it seems to be the way God has ordered things, especially in the light of the text before us. It’s blessings, not curses. It’s a promise for the future, a promise that is only truly fulfilled in the unseen future, which means it is a promise bigger than Abram himself, a God-sized promise. It’s the kind of promise, the kind of blessings, that can only truly come from God, even if they may come by way of human agents. In these three and a half verses, God has shifted the entire course of creation, changed the trajectory of the story by abandoning a method of threatening commands laced with curses for the way of blessing. God has focused on a way of blessing that is about action, trust, faith, and the promise of things yet to be seen.
Isn’t that really what this season is about too? Aren’t we reminded, as we draw closer to the cross, closer to Holy Week, closer to Easter’s empty tomb, that God has made a way through blessing, a way towards life, a way of hope in the promise of those things yet to be seen? Is not one of the predominant lessons of this season that the cruel curses of punishment and death, manifested in Christ’s execution on the cross, are overcome by the power of Christ’s resurrection? It seems to me that this may have been God’s way from the begging—at least the beginning with Abram. It seems to me that we human beings seek to right the wrongs of this world, the wrongs committed against us and our kin, by enforcing punishments we feel fit the crimes or by cursing those who dare step a toe out of line with our definition of what is right. Of course, the truth is as long as we have done this it has never really solved anything. Punishment and curses have not rid the world of wickedness—it didn’t with God’s flood, why should it with our feeble attempts? Punishment and curses have not healed broken relationships or fully restored or rehabilitated those who have gone astray—it certainly didn’t seem to work with Cain’s descendants. As one scholar puts it in addressing this text: “In short, curse and punishment have solved nothing.”[4]
So it’s no surprise to me that God changes tracks in the story with Abram, a track that leads all the way through Canaan, through Egypt, on into the wilderness, through wars, wicked and selfish kings, through division, through exile and dispersion, through occupation and oppression, through a virgin womb and a feedbox baby bed, through the calling of fumbling disciples and the misunderstanding of miracles, through the provoking power of parables and scandalous encounters with those who are unclean, through betrayal, arrest, abandonment, accusation, assault, and even death. No, it’s no surprise to me that God changes tracks with Abram, that God moves from a God of curse and punishment to a God of promise and blessings. It’s no surprise to me, for that is the God I see—the God I know—in Christ Jesus! That is the God I see when I am tempted to believe in a dark world filled with anger, hatred, and ignorance, yet I hear joy in the laughter of a child and witness love in the interaction between strangers. That is the God I see when I am tempted to think the worst of everything, yet God reminds me that I am a part of bringing about the best of everything. That is the God I see when I look upon a cross meant to curse and see a promise and a blessing that fills the world with hope! Amen.
[1] Genesis 4:11-12.
[2] Genesis 6:5-6.
[3] Genesis 9:21-27. The passage simply says “Ham…saw the nakedness of his father,” which could be a reference to something sexual and incestuous, or it may refer more to the shame of Noah in his nakedness being broadcast as Ham “tells his brothers.” (NIB, Vol. 1, p.404.).
[4] Niedner, Frederick. "Second Sunday in Lent: Genesis 12:1-4a (Theological Perspective)." In Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 2 (Lent through Eastertide), edited by David L. Bartlett, & Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010 (p52).
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