Reid Hillin 6-7-26

Sometimes you ask your child to do something and they're excited about it until like 30 seconds before it's happening. And then they decide they don't want to do it at all. And you're like, I don't know how to get you up here. So you say something you would never say in any other circumstance, which is you're going to regret it if you don't get up here, which is what I just said to Henry. And you know, we don't always nail it, do we?

We don't always get it right. As a parent and I'm so thankful that this church body is a place that when I looked out at the faces in the room, all we saw back were beaming smiles and the word of God being spoken back to an eight year old heart that is wondering, is my perfection needed here? And the answer is, of course it's not. Of course it's not needed here. We don't need you to be perfect to be the people of God.

We need you to be who you are and to bring yourself fully into this space so that the spirit of God can work through you. This has never been about playing church. This has been about equipping God's people to do God's work in the world. I need you to know that I, as I was preparing, had sent the text in. This is the lectionary text for the week.

And as Heather showed us last week, we are entering, we just entered Ordinary Time. And I think this is actually probably a fitting text for Ordinary Time in one sense where it's like a, like, okay, this is a foundational story. It's an ordinary story that if you've grown up in church, you've probably heard this story a lot of times. Ordinary in that sense. In some ways it is an extraordinary text.

It is so deeply rooted into the DNA of the people of Israel and that I think sometimes we have a hard time understanding why it's so important because it feels like, cool, God says, go. Abram's like, woohoo. I'll go. They do it. And then God's like, I'm going to bless you.

Cool. Bless. God's a God of blessings. We're learning things about God, we learn things about Abram, right? And for us it's like millennia later we meet Jesus.

So it's like, how do we make sense of this really ancient story, this really ancient text and how do we wonder together about God's faithfulness here? Because it's an odd text. And so in my preparation I actually added Two verses to my. We used to call it the limits of the text. In preaching class, I added two verses to the beginning.

So I didn't start my writing in 12:1. I started in 11:30. If you're reading a Bible, 11:30 adds this. Now, Sarai was barren. She had had no children.

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, his daughter in law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram. And together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years and he died in Harry. I need to disclose to you that in a moment we will discuss barrenness and infertility because it is ascribed to Sarai in our text.

I will share a little of mine and Amy's own fertility treatment story and how we came to have a child at all and our difficulty there. And I want to preface it now because there are probably other people in this room who have walked a similar road and know that desperation, that sadness and that despair. And so when I share that part of the sermon, I speak to it because it's a critical part of the story of Abraham and Sarah. But I want to preface it because I never want to emotionally surprise or manipulate anybody. And so I say this now that I promise not to overshare or get into details in ways that would be unhealthy.

I mainly want to show the same respect that I would want if I were in the audience.

And one of my favorite things about scripture is that the writers of scripture never avoid the ugly parts of history, the hard parts of history. And in my. In my writing this week, I've written this, like, huge, long script. And I was like, I'm never going to actually read this script. What am I doing?

And one of the pieces that I've been working with is this idea that, like, an actual telling of history allows us to be more faithful in the present.

And. And so like it. Let me say it this way. If you're an origin story person. So if you're a marvel person, right?

Who are my marvel people out there, right? Like, you know the importance of an origin story, or if you're a Star wars person, go find these people after. And they'll be like, no, let me tell you, the origin story matters. You got to know it. You got to know the origin.

Because without. Without the origin story, we kind of lose our way of, like, why are they doing these things? Why do these places matter? You talk about Bethel and AI and Haran. What's happening?

Origin stories matter a lot. And we have our own origin stories. We live in the United States of America. We've been handed a baton of narratives, and what we do with those is up to us.

There's an interesting move that's happened not just recently, but it's happened, like, almost like cyclically in our history of a nation where we have. We try to do these things where we, like, edit. Well, actually, George Washington never told a lie. And there's this story about the cherry tree, right? He's never told a lie.

And we want to prop up the founders as though they were perfect, as though that's the point. Or like Thomas Jefferson's like, obviously a brilliant mind, this fantastic writer. And it's like. But we'll just like, look what he did in the Bible. We'll just cut out the pieces we don't like.

If you read about Thomas Jefferson, you can go find. He just was like, I'm just going to cut out these parts of the Bible. I don't like any of these. And we just. We'll just delete the pieces that don't feel good to us, especially about our founding people.

In God's Word, we find over and over and over again the courage of the Israelites to not need to prop up the founders because they're not the point, but instead to see that through them God is faithful because God is the only hero of the Old Testament. And if we are not good readers of the Old Testament, we're going to be dangerous readers of the New. I grew up in the Church of Christ, where I was often told that I could basically take this. Let me go to Matthew, act like this is Matthew, and just rip this part out. I'm in Ezekiel.

I could just rip this part out. I don't need it. I don't need this part. You can just read the Jesus stuff, which is. I agree with it on one hand.

Like, yes, read the Jesus stuff. Read the most, read often. It's the foundation of our faith. But if we don't read the Old Testament well, we become dangerous readers. The new things like all soul is good and all flesh is bad will creep in if we don't read the Old Testament.

Well. This is called Neoplatonic thinking, where, like, everything in here is all good and God only cares about this stuff. But this stuff, God didn't care.

If I go and read the creation narratives, I see a God who cares a great deal about this stuff.

God cares a lot about all of us.

And so our soul matters, our flesh matters, our mind matters to God, all matters to God. How we read the origin stories is going to impact how we then interpret and understand Jesus.

And so I had an inkling that I was going to skip this text and not preach it today. When I was looking at it, I was like, I don't know, I just, I wanted to just jump to the Matthew text. There was a really good Matthew text that was in the lecture room today. Like it's ordinary time. I'll just preach a Jesus story.

That's a good idea. It always is. It could have. But I think I could still preach a Jesus gospel centered sermon by reading this. Well, and so I want to invite you into an imaginative moment for the next 15 minutes where we are going to wonder about God's faithfulness together and that by looking at actual history, it allows us to then live faithfully from this moment because we are still the people of God and we are still wondering, what do we do next.

The image I've come up with in my brain as I'm thinking about this story and I don't want you to know, I think there's a second one of these. But I think this moment and then actually like 12, 15 and 17 are all like the covenant language stories. I think these are like prisms that the light of the narrative shines through and it shows this array of story from it. And so one color goes in and out of it. Boom.

There's this rainbow of colors that emerge from this prism of Genesis 12.

Will you pray with me, Lord? We call out, like John the Baptist, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Would you heal our relationships? Would you give us the courage to look clearly to the way of Jesus as our only way to life? As we engage this ancient story of an ancient people, Would you reveal your word to us and for us today?

We live in a chaotic time and space and we're not alone in that. We trust that you know well what we need.

Give us your peace, O Lord. You are the God who loves and longs to bless all people in Christ who lives and reigns with you. In the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen.

Today we are wondering about the story of God and the people of God who are later called Israel, named after Abraham's Jacob, Abraham's grandson Jacob. One of the things I respect most is the bravery to include these ugly pieces. As I mentioned, humans are naturally story beings. We make meaning by the stories we believe and hold to be true and so in Genesis 1 through 11, it tells these stories of people, but it uses this universal language through out all of it. In 1 and 2, God is creating the whole world.

In 3 you see what we often call the fall or the crisis where they make sin enters the story. It's all. And then 4 through 11, you watch this almost like continual tumble that's taking place. And the whole time the language is universal. For example, in chapter six, it says it this way.

When God is judging the people, the earth before the flood, God says, I'm going to put an end to all people. For the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

He does say Noah there, but the vantage point is still all people. And then in our text today, we see the shift to this almost localized language where there's like other tribes already existing, where God is now speaking this word to the one rather than to the all.

And there's this shift in the text and from here it stays true that way.

And God starts making this covenant with Abraham.

At this point, the only thing Abram does is he goes. God says go. And he does. And God then tells him of the blessings that will happen. And I mentioned that before the covenants today.

There's a critical moment in chapter 11. Remember, it starts with the Tower of Babel. Remember the story of Tower of Babel? If you didn't grow up in church, that's okay. It's that weird story where everybody speaks one language.

Guy named Nimrod, great name, is like in charge. They're trying to build this tower of the heavens. And God is like, nope, that's not how we're gonna do it. And disperses the people all throughout the lands. And he also disperses their languages.

And that move leads us to this moment. That is the family tree of Terah, who is the father of Abram. We learn that Terah has three sons. One of them dies. Young Haran.

We learn his daughter in law is unable to conceive. Or as many translators have put it, she is barren. Her name is Sarai, or later Sarah. She is married to Abram and they are unable to have children. Her barrenness stands at the gate of our text today, casting a shadow of doubt.

At the very moment that God starts promising things, God is promising this couple who have never been able to conceive that they will become the matriarch and patriarch of this great, powerful, sprawling, huge nation. This barrenness motif appears more times in the New Testament, in the Old Testament, just a Few stories later, we see it with Rebecca, who marries Isaac, their son. And we see it again a little later with Hannah, who is the mother of Samuel in First Samuel.

Sarah's already 75. Hannah's story is really interesting, too. She is showing up year over year. She's married to a man named Elkanah. And he has another wife named Peninnah, which was told totally normal in the day.

Anyway, we'll just slide right past that. Pennon has a bunch of kids. She can't have any. And year over year, she returns. And it's like this check is happening over and over and over again.

Where she feels like something's wrong, she's maybe failing, and she's weeping. In the story that we get to the point where the priest Eli goes, woman, are you drunk?

And she says, no, I'm a woman in despair.

And that's when the Lord meets her. And so that shadow that is cast to our story today from Genesis 11, holds space of something that is true of human beings. Things don't always go how we want them to. Our bodies do not always function how we plan. And just because we want something doesn't mean it gets to happen.

And so that prism of light that refracts to this story of. I imagine that that one is like, if you've ever seen a prism. There's, like, the light you can see. And on the one hand there's infrared, which is above the red. And on the other hand is like the darkness, the ultraviolet.

I imagine that this level of sadness, and I speak to it from experience, is ultraviolet.

I'm going to read this part. The sadness connected to infertility is a unique grief. It's like losing a loved one to death. But a loved one you never get to. Each month presents another trial of failure and sadness.

My wife, Amy, and I went through years of fertility treatments to have Henry, who you saw Today, he's now 8. And then years more, trying to have more children. And one time we were fortunate and blessed to have Henry. And the next time it felt like a curse of sorts. I'm not sure I can fully express to you how deep that sadness still is.

At times. Times I don't tell you to make a point about my family, but rather that Sarah's barrenness being already mentioned reveals something to us about God's nature. Though it feels like a curse to not receive the blessing in a timely way or at all. For us, it was three years the first time and forever the second. For other people, they never get the first time.

Like we did. And for those people, I want you to know that your grief is not unseen, is not unknown, is not unheard, and that you are loved. I don't know if it feels like a curse or like you did something wrong. I know we used to ask those questions and sometimes still do.

In reality, things like this happen. Bodies do not always function how we plan, and couples cannot always create the families they desire.

And despite how the text kind of presents it, infertility is carried by two people. Historically, the shame and blame was placed on women. The assumption was that it was a woman's body failing if a couple could not conceive. That is, if you've ever done any reading, of course, completely not true.

There are many, many reasons a couple might struggle to do so. And the weight, shame and sadness is a shared reality. Both spouses feel it all and then must choose to walk out the next steps as courageously as possible. For Sarah in her day, the blame would have sat squarely on her shoulders. At least that's the way the author writes it.

It is Sarah's barrenness.

Her infertility, or barrenness, casts a long shadow over chapter 12. It is from this chaos and sadness that God is going to allow something new to emerge. God now chooses to bless the one. And out of the land of desperation, God speaks words of promise. Unfortunately, this motif does not mean that everyone who wants the blessing of children receives it.

Rather, I tend to think that God, in the person of Christ, weeps with us as we look such sadness right in the face. Like in John 11, where Jesus is at the tomb of Lazarus. He sits and weeps with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus. He does not judge them or emotionally negate their grief. He rather chooses to enter into it and join them in the saddest thing that they know at that moment, which is that their brother has died.

And they all weep together. I imagine it's the same with God. God enters grief not always to fix. God enters to hold us, care for us, and love us. I often wish it was to fix what isn't working.

But for whatever reason, that doesn't always happen. And as the preacher today, I need you to know that I don't have a good reason or a good answer for why God doesn't just fix these things.

So Abraham and Sarah are early examples of the word of God speaking newness into hopelessness. Life being brought forth from what appears to be barren. And they are honored all throughout Scripture as the light of life refracts through this prism, shining with Every color of faithfulness and righteousness, even the faithfulness of ultraviolet light. From barrenness, God begins a nation similar to the creation stories before. In this regard, the word of God brings forth faith worlds.

God speaks and creation responds. In this case, God speaks. And a quarter century later, Abraham and Sarah finally have a child by the name of Isaac.

I want to know why. It takes 25 years, but like my grandmother used to say, I cannot always answer the why question. And here, God doesn't answer the why question for us. And this side of death, I'll never know the answer for sure. So for now, I sit open handed, trusting that God still moves and speaks.

Chapter 12, verses 1 through 9 have these three distinct sections that we can see as Diego read so well for us. First there's the call, and then the promises. And then there's action on the part of Abram. The call rings loudly. Leave what you've known and go somewhere new, somewhere that I will show you.

In other words, Abram has no idea where God is leading him, nor does he ask where it is. As far as we can tell, the call gives way to God's promises. God promises all the things we want as humans. He says that you'll be revered and numerous and blessed and powerful, and you'll even be protected. I'll curse those who curse you.

Finally, and this is what makes a major difference between the things that we want and why the why behind God does that. God's not blessing Abram so that he can feel superior or revered or respected. God is blessing Abram because it is through Abram that God wants to bless all nations. It's almost like a change of tactics from the beginning of the story where God's trying to bless everybody, and it's like no one is able to receive it because they're all so violent. In this case, God is saying, through you, I want to reveal what the blessing looks like.

Then we see Abram. He responds and he goes. And in the going, we meet all these places like Shechem and AI and Bethel. And they are critical pieces throughout the Old Testament. Big things happen at each of those places.

Like Bethel, we have Jacob's dream with the Ladder, right? Shechem becomes this. This critical piece. It's Joshua holds his final address to the Israelites there. They bought land there.

Bethel means house of God. We are learning these pivotal locations because it is a great origin story.

We look at the light refracting from this ancient story through the Old and New Testament, that God wants to bless every nation through you. And our Jesus Christ is the ultimate version of what that looks like. Like he is what that blessing looks like for all time and all people. His way is the ultimate invitation to life and blessing. And I don't want a silver lining pain.

I don't want to say that if you are sitting in the things I was talking about earlier, that it doesn't matter. But I am saying, and I do wonder where God is in the midst of us collectively as a church body. I need you to know that I'm guilty of the modern move to nihilism at times that life doesn't have inherent meaning and it's on me to choose my meaning. And then, like Brad said earlier, I return to the table and I take communion every week with you. And my friend Rin usually brings it to me and she tells me not to embarrass her.

And I do my best, but I always do. And then I hear the words, the body of Christ and the blood of Christ Christ. And I ingest the body and I drink the blood. And I remember that the meaning of my life is at the table with you.

It's not for me to choose it and claim it and own it. It's for me to submit to the things that God is doing.

So even when my life doesn't go how I want it to or how I envisioned it, I still hold open handed the trust that God is good. So we follow a Messiah who never passed anxiety on like we watch our leaders do.

In fact, I watch how the leaders, not just in our country, but historically, leaders love to actually use anxiety to manipulate people to action. You never see it with Jesus, he never acts that way.

He is the one who takes that, holds it and says it stays right here in my body. Bring it to me.

So the chaos and stress is real. But it is not the final word about what matters about us. So, Highland, I invite you to leave here praising not because all things are how we want them to be. No, we leave here praising that God is the God of the story, who refracts this ancient prism of scripture, of God's light onto every human experience and holds us safe in each part of it, from the ultraviolet to the infrared. There is nothing unseen, invisible to God.

So bring all of who you are. The gospel has a word for you. It includes every piece. The body, the soul and the spirit. Will you stand and receive benediction?