Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent: Genesis 17:3-9; John 8:51-59
In both readings from today’s liturgy, the figure of Abraham plays a prominent role. In the first reading, God makes a covenant with Abraham, repeating a promise that God had already made to him: that Abraham would be the father of many nations. Kings and nations would spring from him. Abraham placed his faith in God’s call and God’s promises, even when that faith was sorely tested.
The story of Abraham is so familiar to many of us, and his status in our tradition is so exalted, that we can easily miss how remarkable it truly was that Abraham placed such faith in God’s promises to him. When we are introduced to Abraham and his wife Sarah in Genesis 12, he is already 75 years old; she is only a few years younger than this. They have had no children. They are well beyond their child-bearing years. Sarah initially laughed at the thought that she and Abraham could have a child. Yet, Abraham leaves the land where he was raised and heads out at God’s call, not knowing where he was going.
To get a sense of how remarkable Abraham’s faith was, imagine Abraham telling someone else he met during his wanderings that God would make him the father of many nations. Anyone who heard such a thing would have found it literally incredible. They would have though that Abraham was telling a bad joke, or teasing them, or lying to them for some unknown reason. Or, they might have told him that he had spent too much time in the desert sun. He must be insane, by their reckoning. How could such a thing be – especially at Abraham’s and Sarah’s age? Even Sarah tried to force things, so to speak, by offering Abraham her younger female servant Hagar, who was more likely to conceive a child.
The faith that Abraham showed in believing the promises of God was deep, but it was hardly unique. His descendants would find themselves called upon, over and over again, to make similar acts of faith, to trust that God could do what seemed to be impossible from a merely human perspective. Moses was challenged to believe, that he, a fugitive from Pharaoh, could go to Pharaoh and persuade him to let the people of Israel, slaves of the most powerful nation in the Middle East at the time, leave their slavery and worship God. The Israelites were challenged as they left Egypt and travelled through the forbidding lands of the Sinai Peninsula to trust that God could indeed feed them, give them water, and bring them into a land that would become their new home. Many centuries later, after political disaster had overtaken them, the Israelite exiles in Babylon were challenged to believe that, in spite of all appearances, God had not forgotten them, that God would forgive them, and bring them back to their own land. A young virgin from Nazareth was challenged to believe that God could make her the mother of the Messiah, even as she remained a virgin. Some of these believed, and proved themselves to be true children of Abraham, the man of faith. Others struggled with faith, and at times did not believe.
Now we come to the Gospel reading. The people who are speaking – or, perhaps, debating – with Jesus have called themselves ‘children of Abraham’. Now they, too, find themselves being challenged by God to put their faith in something that was no easier for them to believe than it was for Abraham to believe what God had promised him. On the one hand, what they were being asked to believe seemed wilder, less likely, even more impossible than anything their ancestors had been asked to believe: that this man Jesus standing before them was not only the Messiah, but the Son. Equal to the Father. God in the flesh. On the other hand, what they were asked to believe was in continuity with everything that their ancestors were asked to believe, a continuity that was now raised to a higher and deeper level: that God was truly Emmanuel, God-with-them, and that now God was with them in the fullest possible way: as a man like them.
Jesus’ hearers were divided. Many rejected him and even sought to stone him. Some, however, believed. They showed themselves to be true children of Abraham, believing that God could fulfill whatever promises he made, no matter how unlikely or wild they might seem. God could be with them – and us – even in this way, as one of us.
In our own lives, we are also challenged to be true children of Abraham, the man of faith. However, our challenge does not usually begin with doctrine: with believing that Jesus is truly the Son, truly God, One with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The challenge is usually more along these lines: does Jesus really see me and care about me? My struggles? My pains? My fears? Is he only in some far-off and unimaginable “heaven”, far from us, or is he also truly here, God-with-us, now? We can accept the God part; we have a hard time believing the Emmanuel part. In this, we are not so different from the Israelites of Moses’ time, or those who heard Jesus while he walked among us in Galilee, Samaria and Judea. Is God truly with me? Even now?
Just like in Abraham’s case as well as in the case of those who saw Jesus, what we are asked to believe will seem unlikely to many people around us. We may find ourselves tempted to doubt it ourselves. In the face of trials and evils of all sorts, what God promises us can seem hard to believe. Yet, Abraham went forward in faith, trusting that God could do what he promised, even if Abraham would see only the very beginnings of that promise in his own life. The disciples of Jesus followed him. Their faith was imperfect at first, to be sure, but they followed him even in the face of challenge and rejection. They would flee from Jesus during the first Holy Week, when all seemed lost and impossible, but he came back to them, forgave them, and renewed them after his resurrection. They even found THAT hard to believe at first. But, once they believed, they were committed.
God has promised to be Emmanuel for us. In Jesus, God fulfills that promise in the most direct way. It is through our faith in Jesus, as weak as that faith may seem to us, that he can begin to fulfill his promises to us. We follow his lead; we trust that he never abandons us, no matter how hard our road may feel. With just a little effort, we can recall times when Jesus graced us in some way. We know not only the stories of how he was with believers of the past; we also know stories of how he is with us now. Tell these stories to one another. Encourage one another on our faith journeys. Help one another to see how, even now, Jesus is still Emmanuel, God-with-us. May we walk in that faith, together, until the Lord fulfills every promise he has made. He is Emmanuel. Therefore, he will do it.