9th Sunday after Pentecost: Genesis 15:1-6

Some of you may know that the annual Perseid Meteor Shower is at its peak this week. It’s one of the most beautiful shooting-star shows all year long. When I was growing up, my mom and I would look forward to these August nights, stay up late and sit outside gazing up into the night sky for the streaks of light. And I continued that practice with my own child, staying up late, heading out with chairs into the dark, putting away all phones and distractions and just settling in to wait.

There’s a particular rhythm to watching for meteors. You sit there in the dark; in the silence; feeling a little foolish, alert to strange noises in the dark. You’re waiting in expectation for what you think you know is coming; waiting for those ribbons of light across the sky. And as beautiful as it can be, as exciting as it is to see a meteor, you also begin to get that feeling of how little you are, and of how big the universe is. You begin to realize how much there is that is unknown, out there in the dark. How much, perhaps, there is to be afraid of. As Calvin and Hobbes once said in their comic strip after spending some time in the dark looking at stars, “Let’s go inside and turn on all the lights!”    

Today in our Old Testament lesson we find Abram at night. The Word of Lord comes to Abram, telling him, “Do not be afraid, Abram.” “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great.” Which is a funny kind of message for Abram to receive; if you look at Abram’s life up ‘til now he hasn’t needed to be afraid, in fact Abram’s life has been very successful. He’s accomplished great things, gained great victories, received great honor, he hasn’t needed a shield at all--he’s conquered his enemies, he’s defended his family, and from the outside it looks like Abram is doing just fine.                                                       

But he’s not doing fine. And we hear it in Abram’s response to God’s Word: “O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and my heir is Eliezer of Damascus,” who is a servant, not a true son.  Do you hear the heartache in Abram’s voice? “O Lord, What will you give me? This can’t be how it all ends?! This can’t be how my life turns out!”                                                                        

How about you and me in our own lives? How often do we seem on the outside to be doing ok? Getting up every morning, putting one foot in front of the other, keeping on keeping on.  Maybe in the eyes of others, or to ourselves on good days, we appear successful, happy, and fulfilled. But there’s some deep hole in our hearts, a deep hunger gnawing at us, a deep longing not fulfilled, a real sense of our own failures, of our losses and our griefs.                                      

For Abram, it’s the fact that he is childless, that he has no heir, and that when he looks up at the night sky he sees just darkness and no future. And then you can begin to hear the anger in Abram’s voice, as he thinks more about this, “You, Lord, have given me no offspring, so a slave from my house--this Eliezer guy--is to be my heir?!”

Now, anger is indeed a part of faith.  You don’t get angry with someone you have no relationship with. So we can hear ourselves in Abram. “You, Lord, have not acted in the way I need. You Lord, have not kept me from sorrow and heartache. You, Lord, have not answered my prayers. You, Lord, have not opened the future that I once imagined.” 

At this point, if we were God, we’d probably back off and tell Abram “Hey, Eliezer’s not that bad; look on the bright side!” But this is not God’s character. God’s character is that when he makes a promise, he sticks to it, he even doubles down—no, God doubles up--on the promise to show how serious he is .

And so the Lord brings Abram outside and invites him, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you can. So shall your descendants be.” God tells you and me this morning, “If you doubt my care for you; if you doubt the future I have in store for you; if you doubt the breadth and depth of my love for you; if you doubt the immensity of my care for even the littlest hair on your head; if you doubt my promises to you, then look up at the stars; how many can you see?”

Go out to the darkest prairie, imagine the stars 5000 years ago without a single electric light, how many stars could you see in the Milky Way? How many stars are there in the universe? God says, “That’s how strong my love is for you; that’s how committed I am to you; you can’t even count it all.” And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted it to Abram as righteousness.           

As Christians we name Abraham the father of all believers, of all the faithful, and this is the moment when it all begins: when hope against hope, when against all the evidence, when against experience, when despite it all, despite what he was going through, despite his doubts, despite his anger, no matter all that-- Abram heard God’s promise, and clung to it. He saw God’s hand stretched out to him, and grabbed on. He looked at the sky above and despite all that darkness, trusted in the light.

Five thousand years later Martin Luther would tell us what Abram discovered: that we’re saved by God not for the good things we do, not by our successes, and neither are we abandoned because of our failures; Instead, we’re saved as Abram was, simply by faith alone, by trust in a God who is trustworthy, a God who says: “I promise you,” and makes good on his promise.                                   

This does not mean that God’s timing matches ours. According to Genesis, it takes another 14 years after this scene before Abram and Sarai have this child of faith, Isaac. There are 14 years left for them to wait! And yet even in that time of waiting, the future is already theirs. When we wait in trust towards God, when we wait in faith--what we wait for is already ours.                                 

As people who trust in Jesus Christ, we wait for Him who is already ours. We too have received Abraham and Sarah’s promise, we have received the child long awaited, born on a starry Bethlehem night.  The child waited for by the those Wise Men from the East, searching the stars for a sign, who found that God had kept and will keep every promise to us all. The Magi came from the East and found the child by the light of the star, lying in a manger. Jesus is the child of promise, in whom all God’s promises are “YES.” Jesus promises us again today, “Don’t be afraid, little flock, don’t be afraid, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

God is for you, and he promises you not only a future this morning, but his Kingdom, so what are you all afraid of? Won’t God keep his promise to you? Isn’t it his pleasure to keep his Word, to give you his Kingdom? So instead of living in fear that shows itself in things like greed and apathy, Jesus tells us live in faith. "Live in trust towards me," he says, "Live in a life that manifests itself not in greed but in generosity, not in apathy but in anticipation." Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

We don’t need to hoard treasures for the future when we know we already have the priceless treasures of the Kingdom. We can’t live lives of sleepy apathy, letting the lights of faith burn out, when we know that our Master will return to us at the first light of dawn! 

But maybe we need convincing this morning, like Abram did. Maybe the grandeur of a trillion stars isn’t enough to convince us anymore.  Maybe they’re too big, too distant, too un-mysterious to us now. Well how about this proof: on the night, on the dark night in which he surrendered to betrayal and death, on the night when he gave himself up for you on the Cross, Jesus took bread, saying “This is my body, given for you.” And took a cup saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”

Once more this morning, like Abram of old, we come face to face with a trustworthy God who makes and keeps his promises, and to prove it shows us simple, earthly gifts, signs of the heavenly vastness of his love, Love put into our hands: This bread is my body, this cup is my blood, given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sin!

And in faith, in trust, despite it all, we grab on tight to him, and we say “Amen. Yes, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief, but I believe.” And as with Abram of old, God counts it to you as righteousness. In the midst of your every fear this morning, God relights in you the light of faith, for he is trustworthy and he will keep his promise. Number the stars, if you can--so great is his love towards you, so firm is the foundation of your faith.  Amen.