What He Said and She Said
/It’s amazing to me how quickly things take a downturn in Abram’s story. Just last week the promise of land and descendants and blessings for obedience sounded so good and everything seemed on track. Abram had done what was asked and pitched his tent with God after uprooting his household and moving into the unknown. He had built altars and worshiped the Almighty. Life was pretty good.
Then in Genesis 12:10 we find out that a severe famine hits and there isn’t food so they make their way to Egypt. Whether this was God’s idea or Abram’s is unclear, but this was about survival. Knowing that they were entering a foreign country and that his wife was stunningly beautiful, Abram allows fear to set in. He assumes worst case scenarios and that, in order for lusty men to acquire Sarai, he will be killed as her husband. He convinces her to lie and say that she is his sister. This was not God’s plan but Abram’s anxious grasping for control. And he is right - the men do notice her beauty and because she seems single take her to Pharaoh. God keeps the promise of harming those who harm Abram and sends plagues on Pharaoh’s household. When the lie is discovered, the anger is palpable - first that it would be assumed that a married woman would be taken and then the dishonesty. They are unceremoniously kicked out. It’s unclear if the many gifts lavished on Abram for giving her to Pharaoh were reclaimed. The bridge is burned and they have to leave the country that would have provided for them and go back to Canaan, possibly while the famine was still happening.
This seems a pretty intense cause and effect story which predates the Ten Commandments by hundreds of years. It’s perhaps not so much the lying that is the biggest issue here but the assumption that God wouldn’t protect them and provide for them. It was God who called them on this journey in the first place and made promises to them. Why wouldn’t God ensure they could do what was asked if it was so important? This was God after all.
This story not only reminds me of other stories of deceit in the Biblical narrative but also of political events here in Ontario. The Premier has broken promises about maintaining the ecologically sensitive and important Greenbelt and instead has allowed it to be sectioned off to wealthy developer donors for housing which will not meet the needs of those desperately seeking safe, affordable homes. He has somehow justified the backroom deals as a means to an end without recognizing the damage to public trust and an egregious lack of ethics and accountability.
I wonder if Abram ever truly understood the cost of his actions or if he just chalked it all up to a cranky foreign ruler. We find a parallel story in Genesis 20, so either the sources of the Biblical narrative disagreed about when this happened, or it happened twice and Abram was a slow learner. You can’t deny this was a stressful time as food was not available and Abram was carrying the weight of his calling. You could perhaps understand his rationale to protect himself over Sarai as he was to be the father of this new nation for God. He was trouble-shooting a difficult situation in a time of loss of what was familiar. How many during the pandemic looked out for themselves first and even told white lies to protect themselves or jump ahead in line or get out of doing what they had been told to do, and they forgot to lean on God?
This was the first real test of Abram’s commitment and leadership after agreeing to God’s plan and covenant earlier in Genesis 12. I wonder how Sarai felt to be sacrificed to ensure Abram’s survival. I wonder if she willingly agreed to the plan or if she was being obedient to the male head of the household. We will see over the course of their story together that her role shifts. Perhaps this tricky situation left a bad taste in her mouth and coloured their future plans and decisions.
I vividly remember while at seminary hearing a female graduate preach about sacrifices made on altars and how women have often been the offering, their gifts and calling not valued, held up or protected. Instead too often, she argued, they were treated as scapegoats or sacrificial lambs. In that particular chapel at that time it was a fiery and pretty controversial sermon and she didn’t hold back. I always wondered if she faced repercussions afterwards.
How often do we presume that God will not provide and that we need to come up with a plan to protect ourselves, our way of doing ministry, our role or how we are seen in the community? How often when we hit roadblocks or crises or conflict do we allow our anxieties to over-ride our trust in God to show us the way through the wilderness? And how often does someone else take the hit and get sacrificed as we attempt to protect ourselves? Our history of residential schools, racism, homophobia and sexism in the church tells us that this is part of our identity that needs to be acknowledged and reconciled and healed.
Our pianist for this Sunday introduced me to a children’s song her minister dad used to love called My Lord knows the way through the wilderness. We’re going to teach it this Sunday as it says something very important: God shows us the way and all we have to do is follow. “Strength for today is mine all the way and all that I need for tomorrow.” It’s been stuck in my head ever since she sang it to me and will likely still be stuck until next weekend. This isn’t a bad thing.
It seems so simple. Just trust in God, even in the wilderness, even when chaos is ensuing and the plans you had seem to have fallen through, and God seems to have left the building. Trust in God and don’t question that you will be provided for and strengthened and blessed by the One who called you.
I had great hopes for the kick-off of my series last Sunday, even though it was Labour Day weekend, a traditionally low Sunday. We were a very small crowd and no kids came and I warned them that my sermon was long because of all my excitement and wanting to set the stage for Abram and Sarai’s story. It seemed the biggest win was that no one fell asleep (that I noticed).
As I’ve reflected on it, I recognize that I need to be in the passenger seat more and letting God drive. I don’t believe that I made a mistake in not scaling back in worship because it was a “low Sunday” but perhaps I was putting myself first over allowing God to speak and run the show. Perhaps it was a reminder that the way through the wilderness, especially starting up after being closed a month, is not easy. Perhaps it was a reminder that I need to stay focused on the needs of the people journeying with me and listening to where they are more than on what I hope will happen and what I will teach them. We need to find our way together, even as I am the worship leader.
If you are in the wilderness right now, I pray that you are not panicked but able to lean on God. I pray that you can trust that if you are led to it, you will be led through it. And I pray that I can internalize these words myself as the journey continues.