Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; John 3:1-17

Two weeks ago I asked you whether you had ever heard God speak to you. I also asked whether you had ever been in God’s extended silence, summonsed to be where God is and then left waiting for God to invite you closer to hear the message God had for the world, which you were going to be the one to speak. I didn’t actually wait for your answer, although the 1:30 Bible Study caught up with me the day after and we had a long discussion about their answers to those questions. I love stories of God speaking with people as individuals and the plans that The Father has for the world that The Father is completing through my sisters and brothers in Christ, it was a lovely Monday.

Today we hear the beginning of another man’s story; and not only the events of his life but also the ministry that God called him to, and the message that God gave him to proclaim. In Genesis 12:1 we read that The LORD said to Abram, and we know who Abram is because he is named among the descendants of Terah, who is himself a descendant of Noah via his son Shem. So, Abram is our man, and what The LORD says to Abram in the moment includes the words and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed, by you shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Abram was called to leave his homeland and travel to a new land, a land big enough to hold all the completed promises that God would dump on Abram’s head, and we are told in Genesis 12:4a, so Abram went, as The LORD had told him. Nice work if you can get it. God tells Abram to move to a bigger place so that there’s room for all of the blessing that’s coming his way; so Abram went. Would you? If God told you that the place you are in is too small for what is coming your way, so many blessings for you and so many blessings coming through you to others, would you stay in your small but cosy home and offer God your contentment as a reason not to go? Thankfully for us there was no word in Ancient Sumerian for “nah, I’m okay ta”, and Abram did go to the land of promise; the land where God poured out in front of Abram everything that the world needed, things which Abram was asked to distribute.

It seems to me that God chose Abram at random, in other words he was called to salvation by grace. There are a lot of men named in Genesis 11:10-26; and alongside Shem, Noah also had Ham and Japheth as sons; so, of all the men on the earth at that time, why Abram, and why that time? It seems that Noah was the only righteous man on the earth in his day, so God’s choices were limited, but there’s nothing to say the same is true of Abram. There’s a well to be dug right there; today that well would be a rabbit hole so we’re not going to dig, but still, why Abram and why that year are good questions. There’s a very interesting story found in Genesis 11:31, which I am going to name drop and then walk away from; check it out later for yourself.

God chose Abram, and through him God chose Isaac and Jacob. Jacob is also named as Israel, and through his twelve sons and their sons we get God’s choice of the Jewish People as a whole. And what are the Chosen People chosen for? So that, through them all the families of the earth shall be blessed, by you shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. As resource for this responsibility, we read in Genesis 12:2 that God would make of you a great nation and I will bless you, specifically God would give them a land to live in, and a national identity. Later generations (and non-Jewish people) would receive what God has for them via the Jews as a channel, and they would ask God for what they see the Jews having: “bless us Father like you blessed Abram” should be our prayer.

The way to receive the blessings given to Abram is to follow the path of Abram; by which I mean that you listen when God speaks, and you do what God has asked you to do. Would Abram have been blessed if he stayed in Haran? Maybe. Would we have been blessed if Abram had stayed in Haran? Probably not; since the blessing God wanted to pour out on the world would not have had a human channel to receive it if Abram had turned down the job. Maybe God would have called someone else: if Abram of Ur had said no to God, then God might have gone to plan B and asked Mick of Glenorchy if he was interested in the job. Fortunately for us, Abram said yes, and because of Abram then Mick can still receive God’s blessing, even if Glenorchy is not Jerusalem.

In Psalm 121:1-2 we read I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. There are two points of interest in these verses, at least as far as they connect with Abram.

Point one is that this is a Song of Ascents, something pilgrims would have sung for worship and fellowship as they walked from wherever they were coming from to go up to Jerusalem for a festival. So, the hills might be Zion itself, and my help comes from the LORD because the LORD lives in the temple on the top of Zion and that is where I am about to go. You want help? Go to Canaan where Abram went, go to the mountain where the God of Abram lives, and ask for help.

Point two is that when Abram got to Canaan the land was full of Canaanites. There were lots of different “-ites” depending upon which region or city they came from, the lists in scripture are a backhanded acknowledgement of country. Suffice it to say they were all Canaanite people, with Canaanite gods who required Canaanite worship, and Canaanite worship usually meant climbing to the highest place in the district and erecting an altar or worshipping at the altar that was already there. In this case, to sing I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? is to acknowledge that in previous days people would have looked to the hills for help. But we do not, we know that help comes from the LORD and we look to the LORD for our help; we have stopped looking to the hills and the things of stone and wood that once stood there. The way of blessing is to worship the LORD. To follow the example of Abram is to turn aside from old practices and old identities. The LORD will keep you from all evil, he will keep your life is we are promised in Psalm 121:7: the LORD will do that, the local gods of Canaan and Sumer won’t, because they can’t.

All of that is in the background when we get to Nicodemus, who John 3:1 describes as a Pharisee and a leader of the Jews. I assume that Nicodemus was a direct descendant of Abram, and we are told that he knew the scriptures and the traditions around them – that’s what “Pharisees” were. Today we might describe him as an Evangelical leader, someone who knows the scriptures and the ways that we interpret what we read. Nicodemus is not a priest, he’s more like one of our congregational Elders, but clearly he knows his stuff because in John 3:3 he correctly identifies Jesus as a teacher who has come from God based on the evidence in front of him, that Jesus acts in ways that are only possible with the presence of God. Nicodemus is not calling Jesus the messiah, what he’s saying is that he sees the Holy Spirit at work in Jesus’ life, and that he knows it’s the Holy Spirit and not some other spirit because what Jesus is doing is in the tradition of scripture and the work of other Jewish teachers. Jesus is acting and speaking in ways that match the long chain of example that goes right back to Abram, and Nicodemus as a member of Church Council who is also an occasional lay preacher, has recognised that.

Even so, Nicodemus does not know everything, and Jesus stumps him with a little bit of theology: the Spirit works wherever the Spirit wishes, and the work of the Spirit is transformation. Nicodemus gets caught up in the metaphor, the language around being born from above (John 3:3-4), and he misses that what Jesus is saying about the work of God and not the work of nor the demands upon man. This is a reminder to me as a preacher to be careful with my word-pictures – you’re supposed to be thinking about God’s freshness and continual renewal and re-creation in life, not the dynamics of childbirth. I am not criticising Jesus here, Jesus pitched his message at Nicodemus’ level of understanding to show Nicodemus that there was a gap in his knowledge, and he was effective in doing that. Jesus can do stuff in his preaching and teaching that I cannot, because I am not Jesus, and I do not have that authority. So yes, Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a leader of the Jews; yes, he was a member of Church Council who is also an occasional lay preacher, but he did not know everything. I am also member of Church Council and an occasional lay preacher, I preach on more occasions than any of our other preachers, but I am not ordained, and I am a member of Church Council and not a stand-alone priest in his own authority. I also, do not know everything, and I need to listen to God for wisdom and direction, and for understanding. These are also the qualities we are looking for in all of our local leaders. We acknowledge that no one that God calls to leadership in the local congregation is perfect or complete, and we acknowledge that we don’t want them to be. We want our leaders in church to be disciples in Christ; to have room to grow in faith and love and wisdom and skill, and to have capacity in themselves where God can continue to fill them, and time and space to follow when the Spirit blows us and them to wherever the Spirit chooses to blow.

Abram was available for God to call, and he responded when God called him out of the blue and seemingly at random. Abram might have had no prior warning that God was looking at him, he may have had no expectation that God would call him; however, God did call him, and God used him. Nicodemus may have had expectation that God would call him, he was a Pharisee after all; but he sought out Jesus for a conversation, and he was there when Jesus address the whole Jewish nation to call the people of Abram back to the simple obedience of listening to God where God speaks and responding to God where God directs. As we read in John 3:14-17 the direction of God to the Church is to love the world with the love by which are loved by God, the love revealed most fully in the public lifting high of Jesus, and to proclaim salvation in an age and a sphere where so many voices speak heavy with condemnation. We do not look to the hills, we look to the LORD. We do not look to our reputations as teachers of long repute, nor to our generations of long service to the land given by God to our forefathers, nor to our understanding as far as it is to this point of what God requires of us and what God can and cannot call us to do or to think. We look to the LORD, and we ask for life.

We are people who love the light, who hate evil and whose deeds are good. We are people who honour God as saviour and redeemer, as teacher and as king. We are people who love truth and who call the world to come to where the light shines; so that all may be born from above and refreshed by the Spirit, and so that they may not perish but may have a life in the unending presence of God. Amen.