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Holy Week resources and reflections

Abraham and the covenant people (October 1, 2017)

UNIFORM LESSON FOR October 1, 2017
Scripture passage and lesson focus: Genesis 15:1-6, 17-21

A frequent misunderstanding about John Calvin and his Presbyterian followers is the claim that their defining characteristic is a belief in the doctrine of predestination. According to this stereotype of Calvinists, God’s decree determined long ago that only the people whom God favors will be saved. These are God’s covenant people, the elect, the chosen. All others have no hope of salvation and will be damned.

Although there were some Calvinists in past centuries whose piety was based on their assurance that they were God’s elect people, most Presbyterians today do not place emphasis on the doctrine of predestination. To be God’s chosen people sounds like a self-serving elitist claim to be avoided. Indeed, many Presbyterians do not know what the doctrine of predestination is.

Underlying the doctrine of predestination (as it has been historically developed in our Presbyterian creeds and confessions) are Scripture passages like our lesson for today. The message of Scripture is that God has graciously and freely entered into a permanent binding commitment, a covenant, with humanity represented in the Hebrew Bible by Abram and his heirs. The 20th century Reformed theologian Karl Barth wrote that the doctrine of election was the heart of the gospel: God chose to be in relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ.

Genesis 15:1-3 — Abram questions God’s promises
Abram’s complex relationship with God begins in Genesis 12, where Abram responds to God’s call by leaving his homeland and his family. God promises to bless Abram and make a great nation out of his offspring. Later God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, which means the “father of a multitude.”

Three chapters later in Genesis 15, Abram has a vision in which God identifies himself as Abram’s shield and God assures Abram that his reward will be great. Nevertheless, Abram questions God and complains that he still does not have a natural-born heir. Abram is concerned because he expects that Eliezer of Damascus, about whom we know nothing except that he was a slave born in Abram’s household, will be his heir. Abram is worried because God’s promise has not been fulfilled.

Genesis 15:4-6 — Abram believes God’s promise
God offers Abram a powerful visual assurance of the promise God has made to Abram. God brings him outside in the dark of night. There God promises Abram that his offspring will be as numerous as the of stars of heaven. God challenges Abram to count the stars. The heavenly display Abram must have seen is difficult to imagine for many people today, who live in highly populated or heavily industrialized areas where the light blocks out the stars. Such city-dwellers are awed by the magnificent display of stars and planets on a clear night away from centers of population.

And Abram “believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abram trusted God’s word of promise. That trusting relationship between God and Abram is what righteousness means.  Centuries later, the apostle Paul (in Romans 4) described Abram as an example of righteous faith. That kind of faith is central in the theology of Martin Luther, John Calvin and their adherents.

Genesis 15:17-21 — Land promised to Abram’s descendants
Later, after Abram had witnessed the magnificent display of the stars, he experienced a mysterious ritual associated with covenant-making in the ancient Near East. The carcasses of a heifer, a goat and a ram were split into pieces (Genesis 15:9-10) and a fire pot and a flaming torch passed between them. Jeremiah 34:18-20 suggests that violators of the covenant would encounter the same fate as the carcasses.

Again, God made a covenant with Abram and his descendants and promised them the land between the Euphrates River and the river of Egypt. In the eyes of many, this ancient tradition provides justification for the modern state of Israel. Could this be Abram’s great reward?

John Calvin commented on the promise of Abram’s great reward in Genesis 15:1 with these words: “The meaning then of the passage is this, that we shall be truly happy when God is propitious to us; for he not only pours upon us the abundance of his kindness, but offers himself to us, that we may enjoy him.”

For Calvin and his Presbyterian followers, being the covenant people who have a relationship with their loving God does not include a promise of territory or privilege. The Shorter Catechism from Westminster captures this relationship when it says that the chief purpose of humanity is to glorify God and enjoy God forever. God’s covenant people have been chosen to serve God, to serve all of God’s people and to serve God’s world.

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