On Abram and Altars - Genesis 12:1-9

Well friends, it’s my favorite season again. No, I’m not talking about summer, although I do love the warmer weather, the sunshine, and all the opportunities to go swimming. And no, I’m not talking about baseball season, although at this point in the year, my dog would probably answer to the voice of a Washington Nationals announcer before he’d answer to me. No, I’m talking about my favorite lectionary season, the season after Pentecost in Year A. This summer, you and I are going to spend 12 weeks reading my favorite book of the Bible: Genesis.

Now, between last week’s lesson, in which God lovingly created everything in heaven and on earth and called it good, and today’s lesson, in which Abram meets God and we meet Abram, you may have noticed that we skipped a few key events in the story. Allow me to summarize. Things have gone downhill for humanity. From Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel, to the great flood, to the tower of Babel, God’s people have continued to ignore God’s love and seek power, knowledge, and status instead, and God has continued to punish their poor behavior. 

It’s clear to God that this pattern is not working, and it’s time to make a change. So in today’s passage, we see God make an intentional shift away from the reward and punishment method of dealing with human brokenness. In its place, God begins a relationship-based method. Enter Abram. Eventually, Abram will become known as Abraham, the one with whom God initiates the covenant. But today, we start with Abram’s call story. 

The first words God speaks to Abram are instructions to pack up his household and move far away to a place that God will reveal. Next, God tells Abram that a great nation will come from him, and that he and his family will be blessed. And that’s it. From this brief, one sided conversation, Abram answers God’s call, packs up his family, even his weird nephew, Lot, and heads out on the journey of a lifetime. 

Since Genesis 12 is the first appearance of Abram, and we don’t really know what he’s been up to before now. The text doesn’t tell us that Abram was particularly virtuous, like Noah. But it doesn’t tell us that he’s a notorious sinner, either. We get to assume that Abram is just an average person, not unlike you and I. If Abram can answer the call, so can we. 

And what’s more, you’ll notice that God doesn’t wait until the covenant is established to start making promises. In their very first interaction, God promises Abram blessings without asking for anything in return. This is one of the earliest scriptural examples of grace. And what Abram does in response to this grace has much to teach us. 

We learn that Abram’s journey takes place in stages, as do most road trips. On the first leg of their trip, the family makes it to Shechem, the most prominent community in the land of Canaan. It is here that God speaks again to Abram and tells him, this is it. This is the place your descendants will call home. And how does Abram respond to this proclamation from God? He builds an altar for prayer and worship. 

If we are to take cues from Genesis about how to be in relationship with God and with one another in God’s image, Abram’s pause should give us pause, too. What Abram is showing us is that when God calls us to something — a job, parenthood, a move, a change of any kind — our response, one of the first steps in saying “yes” to the call, is to pause for prayer and worship. 

Abram teaches us that altars are places where we give to God and God gives to us, and this is reiterated over and over again in scripture. Altars come in all shapes and sizes. They are tables like any other, but what we do there sets them apart. During the early days of the pandemic, when we couldn’t worship all together, many of you made altars in your homes. Some of you lit candles there or kept your rosary on it. Some of you set up altars near your televisions or screens so that you could watch virtual services and participate from your own space.

Our worship at an altar is the place where our covenantal life with God begins. Reverent worship and intentional prayer, in whatever form it takes, is our posture of response to God’s work in our lives. We’ve learned in this age of social media that thoughts and prayers are not a full or sufficient engagement with the world around us, but for us, and for many around the world for whom the story of Abram is sacred, they are a foundation. 

Genesis is a long book. The second longest, after Jeremiah, in fact. And God is going to spend the next 38 chapters overcoming obstacles in order to deliver on the promise of land and blessings. Most of those obstacles are Abram. Or Isaac, or Jacob, you get the idea. It’s us. We are our own obstacle when it comes to experiencing the fullness of God’s grace. 

The Good News is that on this new path of relationship that God created for us through Abram, God’s call on our lives is in no way dependent on our worthiness or on our accomplishments. God is determined to be in relationship with us, and for us to be in right relationship with one another, no matter how hard we resist. 

And when we feel distant from that relationship, or overwhelmed by life’s challenges, or nervous about what God may be calling us to, our path is clear. We come to an altar, to a place where we give to God and God gives to us, and we worship. This is our foundation for action, for engagement in the world. It is through prayer and worship in community that we are able to recognize the grace God gives us to uphold our end of the covenant. 

I’m excited to walk through Genesis with you this baseball season — I mean summer. We will listen as Abram and his children fumble through becoming people of the covenant. We will hear them doubt and throw stumbling blocks at God’s promises. We will hear them discover who God really is. And we will hear them build altars, ten in Genesis alone. And we’ll be reminded that while our human folly is plentiful, God’s grace is abundant. And rarely is that grace more apparent than at the altar we share. Amen.