Lent 2B, February 28, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16, 18. Then Abram fell on his face.
Romans 4:13-25. hoping against hope.
Mark 8:31-38. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
O God all sufficient, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
Once upon a time, when Abram was 99-years old (in other words, when he was as good as dead), he had a vision of the Divine. When the One-Whose-Name-is-too-Holy-to-be-Spoken appeared with a message for him, Abram fell on his face. Was it intentional or unintentional; was his belly-flop in the dirt solely an act of reverence or did he completely lose his balance when the Holy One appeared and spoke? Did his knees buckle; did his equilibrium vanish? The scene is a little funny to me. The voice said, “I am El Shaddai.” This is the first time this term is used in the Torah. El is the Hebrew word for God, but the meaning of shaddai is unknown. Scholars don’t agree about whether it might have to do with wilderness mountains or feminine breasts; but there is wide agreement that it’s inaccurate to translate shaddai as almighty.
The medieval rabbi called Rashi, who wrote comprehensive Bible commentaries, translated the word shaddai as sufficient. He explained that God was saying to Abram, “I am [God] whose divinity is sufficient to all creation.” God Sufficient– God Enough, Ample, Plenty: as in, you don’t need any other god; with the Holy One, you are fully equipped with all the God you will ever need. [1] This translation completely disarms the age-old argument of theodicy: that is, how can we make sense of God as both all good and all powerful? Rather than almighty, it’s God all good and God sufficient. What if, as a Lenten discipline, we started imagining, indeed praying to, and being faithful to, the Holy One as Sufficient, as Enough, Ample, Plenty. How might that Lenten practice draw us nearer to God’s saving Love in the midst of whatever is old, barren, or infertile?
Back to the story about Abram’s fall. God Sufficient commanded Abram, “Walk before me.” Idiomatically that means, “Be devoted to the service of me.” [2] Then God offered, yet again, the promise of exceedingly numerous offspring, but Abram didn’t walk anywhere; he immediately fell down. My curiosity about this face-plant prompted me to look to see if Abram fell down every time he encountered the vision or the voice of the Holy: in fact, no. Abram had heard the voice of the Holy One numerous times before this point in the narrative of the Book of Genesis, with no mention of falling down.
Back when Abram was much younger man, only 75, the Holy One had urged him to take his barren wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all of his enslaved people, and other possessions, saying, “Go from your country, your kindred, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 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 the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed, all of them!” Once Abram and his entourage had settled in Canaan, the Holy One appeared again and said, “To your offspring I will give this land,” which was great, except that, at the time, the land was suffering a terrible famine, so there was actually no way to survive on this promised land, because it was infertile and barren.
So Abram made his way to Egypt, where he sold his beautiful wife to the Pharaoh, telling him that Sarai was his sister, and Abram got very rich in the process. When Pharaoh and his household, however, started suffering from plagues, Pharaoh began to suspect that they were “because of Sarai” (nice). Having somehow figured out that Sarai was really Abram’s wife (and not his sister), Pharaoh gave her back to Abram with strict orders to hit the road. Across the desert, back in Canaan, Abram again heard the promise of God, that his offspring would be so numerous that they would be like the dust of the earth. This was particularly meaningful to him because he had just travelled a long way through a lot of dust. He was hoping against hope, as Paul writes.
Some military battles ensued because it turned out that there were many others already living in the land recovering from famine. Abram and his small-but-mighty gang prevailed. The Holy One appeared again and said, “Do not be afraid, Abram; I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” Again, God promised numerous descendants – this time, as many as the stars in the sky – in response to Abram’s complaint that he was still waiting for his first child. Abram was 86-years-old when Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian slave, bore his first child, his son Ishmael. Five chapters of encounters with The Holy One over two-dozen years, and Abram has not once fallen on his face; not even a stumble was recorded; this was a first.
The commentaries have little to say about Abram falling on his face, except that it was a prostration. Christian commentators are eager to get on to talking about the God-given name changes: Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah – not so different from Saul to Paul. Jewish commentators are eager to get to talking about the verses on Abraham’s circumcision (at age 99), which are omitted in our lectionary portion presumably because of the letters written by that same Saul turned Paul. I wonder if either the new name or the circumcision would have even been possible before Abram fell on his face. Doesn’t falling on one’s face involve a certain surrender, whether it is an intentional or unintentional act of reverence? It couldn’t have been easy for Abram at age 99, even if it was voluntary. In my experience, when a fall happens because of a loss of balance, it comes with broken teeth and bones, cuts and bruises. Since Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions revere Father Abraham so much, no wonder there is so little talk of his face-plant on the ground, and no talk that it might have been involuntary, but I am not so sure.
He did pick himself up, accepted the name change and the circumcision for himself and his household, including people born into slavery and people purchased, as specified. All of the men were marked with/as signs of God’s promise. Fortunately, the women didn’t need such a dramatic reminder! When God told Abram, turned Abraham, that Sarai, turned Sarah, would bear a son for him, he fell on his face again. We know this from the verses which follow, which are not included in our lectionary portion. He fell on his face again, and this time, the text says, he laughed; he fell on his face and laughed. The laughter is not good-natured hilarity – it’s mockery, it’s a bitter laugh: God, you’ve got to be kidding me, Sarah? She’s 90-years old! To Abraham’s credit, he did ask, what about his son Ishmael? God All Sufficient assured Abraham that Ishmael would also beget a great nation.
My reflection on Abram’s falling on his face took me back again to the late Philip Simmons’ beautiful memoir about his learning about the art of dying, through which he learned about the art of living with ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s disease). Perhaps you remember his book Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life. Diagnosed at age 35, he lived for more than ten years with ALS. He wrote about how falling is the perfect antidote for complacency and pride. It’s true, in my experience anyway; I have fallen on my face literally and metaphorically, intentionally and unintentionally; it is the perfect antidote for complacency and pride.
Simmons wrote: [3]
Think…of falling as a figure of speech. We fall on our faces, we fall for a joke, we fall for someone, we fall in love. In each of these falls, what do we fall away from? We fall from ego, we fall from our carefully constructed identities, our reputations, our precious selves. We fall from ambition, we fall from grasping, we fall, at least temporarily, from reason. And what do we fall into? We fall into passion, into terror, into unreasoning joy. We fall into humility, into compassion, into emptiness, into oneness with forces larger than ourselves, into oneness with others whom we realize are likewise falling. We fall, at last, into the presence of the sacred, into godliness, into mystery, into our better, diviner natures [and] in falling we somehow gain what means most. In falling we are given back our lives even as we lose them.
Ahhhh, that sounds like our Gospel lesson for today: “We are given back our lives even as we lose them.”
Jesus has turned from a private exchange with Peter to the group of disciples. Having called the crowd to join his disciples for this teaching, Jesus (now shouting) says:
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed what can they give in return for their life?
In other words, what is your life for? Remember what your life is for – to love. (As my favorite songwriter, Kris Delmhorst sings, “If not for love, what are you for?”)
But let’s back up a minute because I always want to review what taking up a cross means. In Jesus’ time, the cross was the most unambiguous instrument of capital punishment, used on the lower classes, slaves, criminals, violence-inciters, insurgents, and traitors, to maintain the rule of Roman law. It was employed in theaters and concert halls, on hilltops, and along busy roads, as a kind of grotesque billboard warning anyone who might be tempted to subvert the dominant political, military, and economic order. What does for the sake of the gospel mean? In Jesus’ time, it meant, “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.” [4] It meant to “bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.” [5] It still does mean those things. Taking up a cross for the sake of the gospel means voluntarily picking up and carrying a burden on behalf of another, which will probably cause you to fall on your face, and might cost your whole life, for the love of God. The thing is, none of us is getting out of this life alive. So how are we going to spend our life? How will we spend it, because we actually can’t save it.
So a last word from Philip Simmons for this season of Lent: [6]
We are all—all of us—falling. We are all, now, this moment, in the midst of that descent, fallen from heights that may now seem only a dimly remembered dream, falling toward a depth we can only imagine, glimpsed beneath the water’s surface shimmer. So let us pray that if we are falling from grace, dear God, let us also fall with grace, to grace. If we are falling toward pain and weakness, let us also fall toward sweetness and strength. If we are falling toward death, let us also fall toward life.