Genesis 12:1-9; Psalms 33:1-12; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Hello! It’s perhaps an odd way to begin, but it’s kind of an odd setting that the Lectionary has offered us today; so welcome back to Genesis 12. Only three months ago on the first and second Sundays in Lent we were sent to look at  Genesis 12 and Romans 4, now here  we are on June 7^th and the Second Sunday in Pentecost to read then again, albeit more extensively. There’s more verses today. Early in Lent we reflected upon God calling Abram as a prompt to reflection upon God calling each of us: today, as I say, we read further. Then, we stopped at Genesis 12:4a where God has called Abram to go and Abram went as The LORD had told him: today we hear more information, that Abram was 75 years old when he went, that he took his wife and his nephew and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons they had acquired with him, and that they travelled in stages as God continued to direct them. We hear that God’s promise is generational, it will be fulfilled not only for Abram but also for his offspring, of which he has none at this point. A caravan’s worth of bounty, a mob of people, and a God-sized promise is all that went with Abram when Abram went with God. Blessed are those who leave, for they shall not leave empty-handed.

In March I directed you to look back before this story to see the false start, and I name-dropped a Bible reference but didn’t comment upon it, except at Monday Bible Study. Today we hop back to Genesis 11:31 were we read  Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot son of Haran and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. What do you notice? What? I notice that it was Terah who left Ur to go to Canaan, but that he stopped at Haran and never got to Canaan. It’s Abram and Sarai, and Lot, and all their staff and stuff which they had acquired in Haran who recommences and completes the journey. Had God actually called Terah first, but when he refused to complete the journey God tried again with Abram? Maybe Terah got weighed down by the staff and the stuff which he had acquired in Haran and got distracted. Terah missed an abundant life he could have had, because when God opened a door he froze and didn’t walk through it. Have you done that? I’m sorry I say that I have, very memorably for me. I am not certain that someone else is living the entire life God had set out for me; although I do believe that if God needed done the work that I baulked at then other people would have been appointed by now. It was 2003 for me, God has not waited 23 years for me to come around, and I am now somewhere else than there. In Terah’s case, he died halfway, and after his death Abram was summonsed to continue what his father had left incomplete. Blessed are those who leave, for they shall not leave empty-handed.

But, what of those called to leave who choose to stay? The promise made to Abram was for himself and his descendants; it appears his most immediate ancestor missed his chance. Why didn’t Terah continue the journey; after all he actually started it? In Romans 4:13 Paul reminds his readers, including us, that Abram was not chosen (nor is anyone ever chosen) by God on the merits of obedience to the Law, but by grace. God will choose the capable, made capable the chosen with the gifts and graces we heard about on Pentecost Day. We will never be sent out to fail, but we will always go with enough to get started and the skills and wisdom to pick up what else we need on the way. Terah did the first, but not the second. God chooses the obedient and the potentially capable, but God does not choose the most pious nor the most deserving. God chooses the most obedient because the obedient are trustworthy and pliable, not because they are morally superior of the exemplars of other merits. In Abram and Sarai God chose an old man and a barren woman to be the ancestors of a nation, and in obedience they went. Clearly fertility and motility factors were not at the top of God’s list of desirable characteristics, even if the highest priority of the job were to have babies in a foreign country. But maybe babies wasn’t the priority in selecting a candidate; maybe it was accountability and openness to the whisper of the Voice of God. God the creator can open a womb for the willing, but only the woman or the man who responds to God’s call with willingness can open her or his mind to God’s will. This is the surrender that God needs far more than potent ovaries. If God chooses according to grace, then God can only choose those who are listening for grace and who will respond to grace. Jesus found the Pharisees to be pious but deaf; obedient to the Law but cut off from the activity of the brooding Spirit. When God descended with power from on high (Acts 1:8) upon the Jerusalem at Succoth; a city heaving with pilgrims and righteous Jews from across the world, and local and leading Sadducees and Priests dolled up in their temple finery for the festival, the only openness God The Holy Spirit found was in one room where 120 frightened Galileans were hiding from those same pious and elected religious men. Once the obedient responded, the city exploded with fire and prophecy, and grace was poured out upon thousands of people; had it been left to the pious and the righteous to receive the Spirit first, the superabundant blessing of God would never have hit a single heart. The festival of Succoth would have continued for the Jews, but the event of Pentecost would never have happened for The Church.

By faith Abram was blessed by God, and by ongoing faith, (that is, continual trust that God would honour the promise and all that Abram had to do was stay close to the tap), Abram continued to receive and to display and finally to distribute the blessing of God. Through Abraham this blessing went out to all nations and throughout all ages, including ours. Who wants God to do that here? Are you willing to release control to God and let God do it God’s way? Abram was, but the Sadducees were not.

In today’s story from the Gospel Traditions we find Jesus acting to give healing to a woman who came with faith and action. In Matthew 9:20 we read of her that she suddenly…came up behind Jesus and touched the fringe of his cloak. It all reads a bit cloak-and-dagger (without the dagger), a bit pantomime with this suddenly and behind him stuff; but if you think about it it’s about humility and desperation. If this woman had thought herself worthy and deserving of Jesus’ help she wouldn’t have been so surreptitious. She knows that Jesus has compassion and would have wanted to help her, he is literally on his way to heal a girl who has died because her father has come to Jesus in person and asked for his help: if the woman had asked Jesus to heal her then Jesus would have healed her because Jesus is a healer. But she didn’t ask, probably because she didn’t feel worthy or deserving even of such a kind man’s pity, probably because she was considered socially unclean. However, if she had only considered her unworthiness she would not have received Jesus’ help because she would have kept her uncleanness hidden and not come out in the crowd. The woman received her healing because she was faithful and sought grace, not approval. She didn’t feel deserving and she was afraid, but she acted with trust and hope. In the same way we can be blessed as ministers, by faith seeking grace and not by entitlement seeking approval. A few verses earlier in our story today we find Matthew himself responding by grace and not law: a tax-collector and sinner has no business approaching Jesus, but when Jesus approaches him he drops everything and follows utterly. Whether you are a man in the wrong business or a woman with an embarrassing illness, or some other equally hopeless parallel situation, ask yourself what you must drop, worthy or unworthy, that would otherwise keep you from following Jesus entirely.

In the story of Matthew, of the nameless woman, and of Abram and Sarai we see the same truth: if you are righteous God has not come for you, but if you are someone full of mistakes then God has. Jesus came to heal the sick; the healthy don’t need healing and there is nothing he can do for them.

• Isaac was a miracle baby for Sarah. There would have been nothing miraculous about his birth if Sarah had been 20 rather than 90 years old and had had three sons before him, but that wasn’t her situation and what God did was glorious.
• The woman had a miracle of healing. There would have been nothing miraculous about her not being on her period that day if her cycle had been normal, but that wasn’t her situation and what God did was glorious.
• Matthew had a miracle of inclusion. There would have been nothing miraculous about him being called to follow Jesus if he were the leader of the synagogue rather than a Roman collaborator and an extortionist, but that wasn’t his situation, and what God did was glorious.

And yet the situations, or lack of them, isn’t even the best part of the stories. It’s not only that Sarah was old, or the woman was sick, or Matthew had chosen a dodgy career path, but that when God appeared in all gloriousness and promise that each of these people dropped any semblance of pretence and took God at God’s word. A promise was made and that that promise was grasped and wrung out for all of its goodness, and miracles flowed.

Today marks a new season for growth, and I dare suggest for miracles. The Christian seasons of Lent and Easter are past, and the festivals of Pentecost and Trinity are also behind us: what lays ahead is the Christian season of Creation and growth, of green and of hearing about life. God’s promise in all of what we have experienced this year, the journey to and through the cross, the life beyond the tomb, the presence of Christ with us as we walk and the overshadowing and empowering of the Spirit as we minister, and the mindset of God as unimaginably formidable and yet utterly relational, rests in our minds and our hearts as we enter this new portion of the year. I urge you to stay expectant, stay open, stay humble, stay flexible, and above all stay excited for what God is about to do, and about to do for you and do for the world through you.

Amen.