Genesis 15
I find myself pausing with the opening line: “the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision.” How do we describe in mere words what it is like to encounter or engage with God. I think about this all the time as I read the scriptures. I think of how these words are an approximation of an experience that was so intimate and real and unquantifiable. When God speaks to us, how do we prove it? We are so unpracticed at God talk. Who did Abram tell about his encounter? How did he put it into words? What is the gap between what happened and what the first listener heard?
I do trust we have enough here, that the Word of God can be heard in and through these words which have been passed down these thousands of years. But I wonder, too, what it must have actually been like, this vision. People still have visions of God. Here we have one of Abraham’s; some two thousand years later Paul will refer to visions he has. They don’t say, “Something happened to me that wasn’t real, but let me share it any way.” This Godspeak, this vision was so real to Abram that he lived his life with it in mind.
What words does God speak to us that are that powerful? How do we hear them or sense them or envision them? Do we go around supposing that there was a time when Yahweh communicated with very special human beings, but that God would no longer do such a thing?
The covenant ceremony here is fascinating to me: it’s a sort of ritual meal. Abram asks God for reassurance, for some indication that what God has promised will really come true. The first step in the assurance is for Abram to do something just because God has said it: go get some meat. Abram actually appears to go do some hunting and get some meat, enough for quite a feast. He waits. He sits there for hours, shooing away the predator birds, and waiting. At twilight, Abram falls asleep and falls into a deep and terrifying darkness. In the Jewish Publication Society translation of the Torah, it reads “a great dark dread descended upon him.” Abram is dreaming now, and the dream is real. The assurance of the promise is a strange one: besides the fact that your descendants will be as numerous as the stars, you should also know that life won’t be easy for them. There will be a time of slavery and oppression. Is the bad news supposed to prove the truth of the promise? Or is the assurance meant to be that God will share something of what God knows with Abram? Is the assurance that despite whatever horrible things may happen, God is still with them?
The dream continues and the covenant is made. God has sealed the deal with a meal and some fire.
From the very beginning, being the chosen people never meant being the people who have it easy. God chooses to work through these people, to save the world through these people. But it won’t be easy. It won’t be all that long before one of these chosen people will say, “Take up your cross and follow me.”