“No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere” The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, August 8, 2004 Text: Genesis 15:1-6, Hebrews 11:1-16 The Rev. Dr. Christopher Brown I love the sky in the North Country. Yesterday afternoon the sky was fascinating. Parts of the sky were covered with low-lying dark clouds that seemed to tear open in places and empty themselves on the land below. And they did too; we were in Canton underneath one of those clouds, and were caught in a torrential downpour. But even in the rain we could see places where the clouds opened up, and there was blue sky and sunshine, and tall billowing clouds that were not remotely threatening. As we drove down Route Eleven, we crossed a line when all of a sudden the roads and fields were dry and there was sunshine. An open sky gives you perspective—just because things are dark and stormy at one point, this does not mean they will be that way around the next turn of the road. There is a lesson there—it is the lesson of this sermon. I am especially aware of the sky at night. When you go out of your house at night, the stars seem to jump out at you. In the city, the night sky does not call attention to itself. It is just a black gap between the tops of the building above you—you are lucky if you get a glimpse of the moon. Even in the suburbs, there is so much pollution in the air, and so much light coming from the ground (they actually call it “light pollution” that you don’t see too many stars. But up here, if you take a moment to look at the night sky you can loose yourself in all the stars. You realize that each one of those little dots of light is a whole system of sun and planets, even a galax. And they are all spread out an incredible distance from each other. You feel suddenly a little smaller—it hits you that your busy anxious life is just a tiny part of all that is. I always think of Psalm 8, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” Our Old Testament reading this morning depicts the night sky spread out over a Middle Eastern nomadic encampment. There are some embers of evening fires still glowing, and occasional sounds from sheep enclosure. But otherwise all is dark and silent. Then an aging bearded man emerges from the largest tent and stands out in the open, gazing at the sky. His name is Abram. Abram had come from Ur in Babylonia (now the nation of Iraq). A little less than four thousand years ago, he and his family migrated to Canaan on the Mediterranean coast. Back then Babylonia was the center of civilization—it was the place to be. It was New York, Washington, London, and Paris all rolled up in one. It was the sort of place where you didn’t see quite as much sky. By contrast, Canaan was a cultural backwater on the trade route that linked Egypt to Babylonia. It was nowhere. Abram goes because God tells him to. In Genesis 12, God tells Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.” God promises Abram that he will make him a great nation, that he will bless him, and that all the families of the earth will be blessed through Abram. But there is problem: the fulfillment of this promise is to take place through Abram’s descendants, and Abram and his wife Sarai are childless. And Abram is seventy-five years old, and Sarai is not much younger--the possibility of their having children at this point is extremely slim. I have known couples who were unable to have children. Their infertility is often the source of great longing and sadness. I was cleaning my office the other day, when I came across a letter a former parishioner wrote to me when I left New York City. She thanked me for two of the happiest days of her life—her husband’s baptism and the baptism of her daughter. She had immigrated to the United States in the twenties from Europe, and became a respected editor for an academic press—she was smart, sophisticated, beautiful and happily married. But one day in the elegant staff dinning room of her university, she told me of a deep ache and longing that would not go away. She was unable to bear children. Then, in her late forties, the wonders of divine grace and medical science came together for her, and she gave birth to a daughter. Abram and Sarai experienced all the distress and longing that we associate with infertility—and more besides. In the ancient Middle East, children were seen as the continuation of a person’s identity. A man’s children, the continuation of his clan, was his immortality. These people did not believe in a resurrection; they believed only that the soul went to shadowy afterworld called Sheol, where one could not rest unless ones children performed the proper burial rites. Abram’s childlessness was a personal tragedy. Maybe that is why he was willing to stake everything on God’s promise and go to Canaan. This morning, twenty years have passed. Abram is still a nomad in Canaan, moving about with his sheep. He has obeyed God’s call, but he still remains childless—and he is beginning to doubt. So when the word of the LORD comes to him again, and God says, “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great,” Abram reproaches him. “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Elie’zer of Damascus. Behold, you have given me no offspring; and a slave born in my house will be my heir.” He had believed God’s promise and had gone responded faithfully to God’s call--but nothing had come of it. So God says, “Go outside your tent and take a look at the stars, try to count them if you can--that is how many descendants you will have.” Abram’s complaint is cut short; he goes outside, and looses himself amidst all those stars. The Bible says, “he believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Righteousness means to be in a “right relationship” with God. When God “reckons Abram’s faith as righteousness,” this does not mean that God rewards Abram for getting his doctrine right. Saving faith is not just correct doctrine. It is Abram’s personal trust that God will be faithful to his promise, that his descendants will be more than the stars in the sky—even when all appearances are to the contrary. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us this morning that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The text then gives examples of this faith from Israel’s history. The main example is Abraham. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance….By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land….he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God…. By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised.” I have attended a number of retreats with Bishop Bill Frei, who was the Bishop of Colorado in the 1980s. He used to say that Christians “borrow from the future.” Hebrews speaks of those who “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.” This is “borrowing from the future,” finding strength in our assurance of what we hope for. No matter how difficult our present may be--whatever frustrations or disappointments we may be living with, this is not the last word. In our trust in the promises of God we keep the future that God has promised in view. With God’s promised future in view, we will not defeated and debilitated by the present. This is the faith the saves—a trust in God’s promises that boldly defies all seeming evidence to the contrary. At the English novelist, Emily Brontë put it, No coward soul is mine No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere; I see Heaven’s glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. It is not hard to identify the barren places in our lives, the place of Abraham and Sarah’s infertility, the place of the disappointment, longing, frustration, the place in your lives where God seems absent. But faith is the “assurance of things hoped for and conviction of things unseen.” God is not absent to the barren parts of our lives. This morning the Word of God tells us to shake off our despondency; and tonight when, as The Book of Common Prayer puts it, “the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed,” go outside and take a look; try to count the number of stars in the sky. Try, if you can, to measure the abundance and blessing that God has in store for you.