Genesis 12:1-9
Romans 4:13-25
Our Old Testament reading from Genesis and our Epistle reading from Romans lead us to ask a basic question: what is a good life? Is the good life something that you do? Is the good life having a good job, a good family, a good home, and a good set of friends? Or, is the good life something that you are given, something that happens inside of you first and then flows out of you? It is a question of effort. Is the good life something that your achieve through your own efforts, hard work, and good behavior? Or, is the good life something that comes from outside of you as a gift, something that happens to you to change you that impacts everything about you?
In our Old Testament reading from Genesis we are introduced to a man named Abram and a woman named Sarai (who are later renamed by God as Abraham and Sarah). Abram and Sarai are husband and wife. Abram, we’re told, is about 75 years old and Sarai around that age too. Abram and Sarai, from their old age on, are people who are trying to figure out what is a good life.
Spoiler alert: a basic Christian claim is that the good life involves God Almighty. Another spoiler alert: the good life involves Almighty God, but not necessarily in the way that Abram or Sarai or we in our own lives expect.
Abram and Sarai’s life is interrupted by God. The Lord issues a call, a command, and offers them a promise. The call, the command from God to them is this: Leave. Go from your home and your extended family and the people and things that are familiar to you to the land that I will show you. That’s the command, the call – leave, go, and keep going until you reach the place that I will show you.
Here is the promise God offers to Abram and Sarai: “I will make you into a great people and give you a great name.” I think God is saying, in today’s language, I will make you and your descendents to know a good life. The Lord’s promises to them are this: “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.”
We’re told that Abram and Sarai (and their family) obeyed God and went to ‘the place that [God] will show them” as the Lord told them to. Can you imagine at 75, let alone 55, 45, or 35 picking up your life and following an admittedly vague command to leave, go to the place God shows you, without that place ever really being certain or nailed down specifically. It’s a preposterous story.
It’s an outrageous story and one that is hard to believe, except that most of the rest of the Bible after this 12th chapter in Genesis is about Abram and Sarai and their descendents (the people of Israel, the Hebrew people, Jesus and the apostles’ ancestors) working out what it means to live this good life the Lord invites them into.
We said that a good life involves God. We can be more specific now: A good life involves a command, a call from God and a promise, a blessing from God.
What is the Lord’s call for your life? That is an individual question for each of us. But here is something important that I’ve learned that might be helpful. We’ve been taught sometimes, or given the impression, that our faith must be big and dramatic to be true and real. But that is a false understanding of having faith in God. Sure, some people are called to do big and dramatic things for God. Some people are called to be like David and face down and do battle with a Goliath. Some people are called to be like Moses and lead hundreds of thousands of people. But most of us aren’t called to do those things. Most of us are called to do little things for God. For David or Moses or any of the big biblical names to do what they did for God, they needed dozens if not hundreds of people doing small, faithful things for God behind the scenes.
What is God’s call on your life right now? It might be a big thing or it might be a small thing? It might be a call to do something new like Abram and Sarai or it might be be a call to stay put and be faithful in your routine. The point of the story of Abram and Sarai’s call is not the big act of faithfulness they were called to – “go, leave, follow until you reach the place God shows you” – the point is Abram and Sarai’s willingness to follow God’s call and command. The Christian word for this is faithfulness. To be faithful to God means to be willing to listen for God’s word and willing to obey God’s call to you.
Let’s think some more about what makes for a good life. Is a good life an easy life? That is, does having an abundance of comfort and possessions, relative safety, and relative good health mean that someone has a good life? Maybe. But not always. There are people who have very easy lives, but not necessarily have a good life. I’m thinking here of the the TV show The Crown and Queen Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Maragaret. Princess Margaret had all of the comforts in life – she didn’t have to work, she had good food, stability, she got to travel – but at least in the show, she is shown as having a pretty miserable life. She couldn’t marry who she loved, she drank heavily, and never seemed secure in who she was. She had lots of comforts and ease, but she didn’t seem to have a good life.
None of us are obviously royals with all of the privileges that brings. We Americans have never been ones for kings and queens. But something similar is happening in our culture that has been swirling in the cultural air for a while. Historians will tell you that there has never been a better time to be alive in human history than right now. We live longer, have access to incredible medicines and vaccines, have stable food sources, and live pretty safely. Most people have running water and can drive or walk to get the things they need to live. Prices are really high for sure and AI is frightening, but compared to most of history, we are doing really well.
And yet, most of us, if asked, would say that things are not going well, that life is not all that good, and that our hope for the future is in short supply. Poll after poll, Democrats and Republicans and Independents alike, shows that most Americans are unhappy with the way things are and pessimistic about the future and it’s been this way for a while.
Why is that? I don’t pretend to have the answers or solutions for any of this. I also don’t pretend to have the corner on the market for a good life or the secret sauce to it. But I do know that what the Church teaches, what our faith teaches us, is that a good life involves God and not just God sprinkled in here and there when we need a little religion. But God is at the center of our life. That a good life is a life that is full or saturated with God and the things of God.
Notice what this doesn’t mean for Abram and Sarai. They don’t go to live in a monastery. They don’t spend every waking moment in church. They don’t start talking super churchy or using a bunch of religious sounding words and try to be someone they are not. Jesus warned people about saying really long winded prayers and trying to appear religious and spiritual on the outside, only to be dead on the inside.
Instead, what Abram and Sarai do as a visible way of showing thanks to God is build an altar. An altar is a place where heaven and earth meet. It’s not a shrine or a statue. Those are things to remember the past. Instead, an altar is something that lives in the past, present, and future. An altar is a place where God and humans meet, where heaven and earth connect. In our story today, Abram builds two altars, not because one didn’t work, but because the world and everything in it is God’s. God’s presence fills the whole world. The creation is saturated with things of God. You and I are created in the image and likeness of God. Having faith, a good life, is recognizing that is the reality.
There is an ancient church leader named Iraneus of Lyon (as in Lyon, France) who said that the “glory of God is a human being who is fully alive.” We could say this is a good life, a life well live – to be fully alive in heart, mind, and soul, oriented towards God and God’s ways.
The other part of Abram and Sarai’s encounter with God is God’s promise to bless them. What does it mean to be blessed by God? It can certainly mean to have a home, a loving family, good friends, enough food, and health. But is that all a blessing? Is it just things we have or earn and possess that we count as blessings? For Abram and Sarai, God’s blessing was both something material, something you can see and touch and have – a great nation, descendents – and also something intangible, something you can’t see but is still real – a great name, a good reputation.
The blessing for Abram and Sarai is something that happens on the outside and inside of them. The Lord promises to bless them materially and also inwardly, in their heart, mind, and spirit. The key thing, though, is that their blessings from God are not just theirs alone. They aren’t to hoard their blessings. Instead, the Scriptures say that God blesses them “so that they will be a blessing.” As Dr. King taught, we are all part of a human web. The Lord’s blessings are meant to be shared by everyone, not just those who have it all. This means that the Christian values cooperation over competition; neighborliness over division; fraternity (sister and brotherhood) over going it alone.
Life’s most urgent question, Dr. King also said, is what you are doing for others? How have you been blessed in your life? How are you using your blessings to be a blessing for others?
We started this sermon by asking ourselves the question of what is a good life? After all that we’ve explored, we can answer like this: a good life is a life lived with, for, and centered around God – the God soaked life and a good life is about serving and being neighborly and sisters and brothers to those around us. A good life is a God soaked life that involves being neighborly to those around us. Amen.