I
don’t know whether you’ve ever had the experience of reading the Bible and
being stopped in your tracks? We are in the Season of Lent, the season of
entering-into the wilderness with Jesus, the season of echoes of the forty
years the Israelites spent in the wilderness. God journeyed with them in the
form of a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. When God
moved, the people moved; and when God stopped, they pitched camp. Sometimes
God stopped for a night, sometimes for months. Perhaps that is something like
what I experienced this week, as I wandered through Genesis chapter 15. I got
as far as verse 12—As the sun was going
down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness
descended upon him—and the Holy Spirit stopped, and in effect said, this is
where we camp out a while.
A
deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. This is a psychological
darkness. It is not the night. Abram was a tent-dweller. He lived without light
pollution. The night was familiar to him. Indeed, for Abram, the day begins at
nightfall. The day begins with telling stories around the campfire, followed by
sleep, before rising from rest to work. Moreover, not long ago, God had stood under
the stars with Abram and challenged him to count them, if that were possible,
adding, so shall your descendants be. The dark is good, and God employs it. But
tonight, even though sleep comes, a different darkness falls.
What
does Abram know of such darkness? Abram has so much others would envy. He was a
successful businessman, with many employees and a large turnover and profit-margin.
He had strong personal relationships with the local kings, the political
leaders—a man of influence and power. He had a deep and loving relationship
with his wife: he has neither dismissed her when she was too old to bear him an
heir, nor, in a polygamous society, taken other wives; he would do anything for
her happiness, at great personal cost. But he cannot give her a child. He has
believed God for a child, but that child has not come along.
Abram
is haunted—taunted—by the ghosts of all the children he never had. The stars
have gone out. There is a deep and terrifying darkness.
He
is haunted by the ghosts of all the children he never had.
Into
this darkness steps God.
For
most people we read about in the Bible, God has needed to come hidden in either
inaccessible light or inaccessible darkness: for it is too much for us to see
God and live. But not so with Abram, with whom God walked, and ate, as a
friend. This darkness is not brought by God; but God steps into it, to face the
terrors hidden within.
God
does so in the form of a covenant. The corridor of blood we read about seems
strange to us, but in Abram’s time it was the familiar ritual by which two
kings entered into a covenant agreement, a sharing of identity. What can you give me? Abram had asked
God. To borrow words from the marriage service, the only form of covenant many
of us are familiar with today, ‘All that I am I give to you; and all that I
have, I share with you.’
What
changes? Nothing. At least, nothing outwardly. Nothing for a long time. But God’s
promise to Abram is that his descendants will possess the land framed by the
Nile and the Euphrates. By Egypt and Babylon. By exodus and exile. Framed by
covenant: made between God and Abram’s descendants when God brought them out
from slavery in Egypt; broken, repeatedly, habitually by them, resulting in
exile; but, even then, restored, renewed. Within the deep and terrifying darkness
of slavery, of exile, God promises to make room for a blessed life. Not that
the deep and terrifying darkness is banished; but that, within it, there is yet a
promise to be received.
So,
what is your deep and terrifying darkness?
No
one gets through life untouched, unscathed, by deep and terrifying darkness. But
the God of Abram, the God of Abram’s descendants—and, by the way, that is you,
and me; that is us*—comes to us. Amen.
*that
is Jews and Christians and Muslims; and, perhaps, all of any tradition who seek
to journey deeper into truth.
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