Saved from, Saved to: The Fourth Sunday after Trinity (July 2, 2023)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Over the past two weeks we’ve discussed the character of Noah, specifically the themes of trust and obedience that are so prevalent in his story. Today, we see very similar themes in the call of Abram. God calls Abram to leave his home and family and travel to a new land, a land God will show him. In addition to this new territory, God promises to make Abraham a great name, bless him, and make him a blessing to the world. Abram, like Noah, trusts and obeys, leaving home, heading to the land of Canaan that God affirms is going to be given to Abram’s descendants. Our reading this morning ends with Abram worshipping by sacrificing on an altar at Bethel, which would become an important place in Israel’s cultic worship later in their history. Still, Abraham has to journey on, knowing that it’s not time for him to possess the promise land. I said it last week, but I think it bears repeating: these stories are our stories. The call of Abram is the call to live the Christian life, a life that has a nomadic rhythm in which we are saved from sin and saved to bring blessing into the world.

The call of Abram in Genesis 12 comes after the events of Genesis 11. The story in Genesis 11 is the Tower of Babel. The people want to make a great name for themselves so they build a temple to worship the heavenly bodies. As a punishment for their hubris, God comes down--a phrase that’s often used in the Scriptures to emphasize God’s judgment—and confuses the languages and scatters the people over the face of the earth. Genesis 12 then picks up with Abram, the man who was instrumental in God’s plan to create a people who would carry out his mission in a world that had given itself over to the forces of sin and chaos. The way these stories are arranged mirrors these events of Babel and the call of Abram with the story of the Flood from just a few chapters earlier. There is an overwhelming sense of human depravity in both which brings a divine punishment that involves scattering. The flood waters were scattered over the face of the earth in the flood just like the people were scattered over the face of the earth at Babel. But in both stories, out of the wreckage of these monumental human failures, God picks out a small remnant by which some form of salvation is brought to humanity. For Abraham, this salvation meant being wrenched from his home, no doubt a pagan context, in order to follow God’s call. Their story is our story: we’ve been called out, saved from, the chaos and destruction of sin, the doomed project of human autonomy. A good number of the Church Fathers see a connection between the call Abram follows and the call of our Lord: “Follow me.” This call is answered for each of us at our baptisms. Just like the call for Abram is the beginning of a long journey, so baptism starts the Christian life which, for most of us, is full of twists and turns.

But why was Abram called? “Thou shalt be a blessing,” God tells him. This is meant in an immediate sense as Abram and his family become a blessing where they go, though often in spite of themselves. It’s true in an extended sense when it comes to the nation of Israel which acted as a blessing by being God’s representative to the world. Ultimately, however, this is fulfilled in Jesus Christ who is the salvation of the nations. In order to do this, Abram had to be separated from the world so that he could then be a conduit that brings grace to the world. And of course this promise is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus too. Their story is our story: the Church is similarly a conduit that brings grace to the world because we are the hands and feet of Christ in the world. In baptism, we are sealed by the Holy Ghost and marked as Christ’s own forever so that we can be missionaries.

What I want to zoom in on is Abram’s response to God after he sees the land where God is leading him. Like I said, Abraham closely corresponds to Noah: trust and obedience. But a unique aspect of his response in our reading this week that was lacking last week is that Abram, unprompted, builds an altar and offers a sacrifice to God in worship. Why do humans sacrifice to deities? Almost all world religions involve some form of sacrifice. Why do we humans have this impulse? Because whatever our specific religious convictions, it’s a nearly universal phenomenon that people can sense that there’s something greater than us that deserves our homage, our respect. And so we worship because we are homo liturgicus. Worship literally means rendering to someone what they’re worth. In the 1662 Prayer Book, a husband pledges to worship his wife with his body. In the old days, judges were referred to as “your worship.” Not because these people are gods, but because a husband needs to give his wife what she’s worth and judges need to be shown respect for their office. And so Abram offers the sacrifice to God on the altar, an attempt to give God what he’s due. This is a common liturgical act in the Old Testament: the book of Leviticus gives us complicated and ornate liturgical instructions detailing a variety of sacrifices and how they were to be done in Israel. But Hebrews 10:4 points out a problem: “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” The Old Testament logic of sacrifice that involved animals was only a temporary fix. Their story is our story. Their reliance on the sacrificial system points us forward to something much greater: the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus is very man, his sacrifice is made on our behalf; because Jesus is God, the sacrifice is of infinite value. This is the only sacrifice that is able to provide true worship of God because it is the perfect sacrifice. The benefits of that sacrifice become ours when we are in Christ. The sacrifice of Jesus is the only way for humanity to have access to the Father and it’s the only sacrifice that can sustain us as we live the nomadic Christian life, journeying to the Promise Land. And guess what? That sacrifice that’s so vital is what we’re about to partake in in just a few moments. When we celebrate Communion, the sacrifice of the Cross is brought to us so that we can receive the Body and Blood of Christ which are given for us. By the way, the fact that we separate the Body and Blood has a sacrificial value: in the Old Testament, the sacrificed animal would be drained of blood and then its body burned on the altar. Christ is our sacrificial lamb. And the beautiful thing about this sacrifice is that we become what we eat. Christ becomes our food and drink so that we might become like Christ; it’s a sacrifice that transforms us.

And so the Call of Abram is an invitation to all of us today. It’s an invitation to wake up, to be wrenched from lives of sin, to be saved from the ongoing destruction we create for ourselves. But it’s important to remember that our salvation is so much more than fire insurance. We aren’t just saved from, we’re saved to begin a journey, a journey towards the promised land. And as we progress through the Christian life, we’re called to bring the blessing we have received into the world. Some do this by explicitly becoming missionaries, giving up their lives here and going somewhere in the world where people need to hear the Gospel. But for many of us, this means using our God-given vocations to be bring the Gospel to the world: we bring the Gospel to our families, to our neighbors, to our friends, to our co-workers. The whole world is a mission field. But it’s important to remember that this journey is never done alone. Our mission is fueled by our worship and our worship is centered around Christ and his sacrifice. We come to the Altar to receive his Body and Blood that are given for us and we offer ourselves to him in response, joining ourselves to that sacrifice. And that changes everything.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.