A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
Sunday 11th September, 2022
Genesis 12.1-9
Revelation 14.1-7; 21.1-5
Do you ever have those days where you wonder whether it’s all worth it?
…Where you wonder just where it’s all going,
what the point of it all is?
The stress! the hassle! the disappointment! the frustration!
I’m talking, of course, about church life…
I mean, it’s such a great idea in theory, isn’t it?
A community of people, filled with the Spirit,
walking the path of Christ together
in loving relationship with one another,
and in faithful communion with God.
And yet the reality is so often so far short of the ideal.
Arguments, relationship problems,
sinful behaviour, and petty politics,
are all too frequently the day to day reality of church life.
Recent research into why people leave church
shows that whilst many pastors believe that people leave their churches
primarily due to a loss of personal faith,
the reality is often more prosaic, and in many ways more worrying,
with a general disillusionment
with the structures and institutions of church itself
being far more influential
than any disillusionment with God. [1]
In other words, it’s not God that causes people to leave,
it’s other people!
And then there’s the numbers issue.
We might, in theory, believe that through us
Jesus Christ offers good news to all people,
but either we’re not that great at communicating it,
or a lot of people don’t want that kind of good news.
And we tell ourselves that numbers aren’t everything,
and that depth is as important as breadth,
but fundamentally, if no-one comes,
we’ve not got much of a church.
Churches across all the main denominations
are reporting a sustained decline in attendance through 2022,
compared to pre-pandemic levels.
One might wonder why we carry on?
And many, in fact, do just that.
I remember reading an article
in the Baptist Ministers’ Journal a few years back,
written by a recently retired anonymous minister,
who said that the moment he received his pension,
he stopped going to church.
He had stayed the course because he had had to be there,
but over the years he had utterly lost faith in the people of God.
And if I’m honest there have been moments in my ministry,
when never darkening the door of a church again
has seemed like a tempting proposition.
So, honestly, is it worth it?
Is it worth the stress, the hassle,
the disappointment, the frustration?
What is the point of being part of this so-called ‘people of God’?
There are many people sitting in congregations across our city
who are asking what on earth the point is of persevering with church.
And there are many others who used to be in our churches
who have come to the conclusion that it’s just not worth the struggle.
So, what is the point? Is all this worth it?
Well, I think that this question is addressed is by the passage
we had read to us a few moments ago from Genesis chapter 12.
Here, in this story of the call of Abraham,
we find an account of the moment it all starts.
Here, with Abraham, we get the story
of the beginning of the journey that we are now a part of.
The origin of the ‘called and commissioned’ people of God
begins right here in Abraham’s encounter with God.
And in this story, which echoes down the millennia to us,
we find that the call to be the people of God,
the call to follow wherever the path takes us,
is also a call to be good news to all nations.
It seems that the foundational principle,
right at the heart of the origin the people of God,
is nothing less than gospel itself
– a gospel of good news for all, not just for some.
In the book of Genesis, the move from chapter 11 to chapter 12
is an important one
because it describes a fundamental shift
in the story of God’s relationship with humanity.
It is, if you like, the move from pre-history,
to human history.
Walter Brueggemann describes it as
‘the most important structural break in the Old Testament’, [2]
because it marks the point of transition
between the history of humankind, and the history of Israel,
between the history of the curse, and the history of the blessing.
You see, if you were to read through Genesis chapters 1 to 11,
you would meet the stories of humanity’s inability to save itself.
From the fall from grace in Eden,
to the growing hostility between humanity and creation;
from the first murder
to the more general wickedness of humanity;
from the destructiveness of the great flood
to the curse of Babel.
Through the first eleven chapters of Genesis
we find God’s good creation on a downwards spiral,
with the story of humanity up to this point
leading to nothing beyond barrenness and futility.
In the Abraham story,
his wife Sarah is famously unable to have children,
having got too old,
and so the promise from God
that he will become the father of a great nation
is one which seems to them a laughable dream.
The barrenness of Sarah in Abraham’s story
is in many ways symbolic
of the barrenness of the world as a whole,
which every year grows older,
without bearing the fruit of new life.
The way Genesis has been telling the story up until this point,
humanity is going nowhere
other than an eventual petering out,
and a dwindling away to nothing.
So it is into a world that has run its course,
to a world that is dying without issue,
that the promise and call of God comes.
Just as the God of creation called something from nothing,
calling ‘order’ from chaos,
so in the call of Abraham
the same God calls humanity to new life;
calling forth life from a barren womb and a sterile world;
calling people of death to experience the gift of life
which they meet through covenant relationship
with the living God.
This call of God then echoes through history,
through the prophets of Israel, down to the first century,
and it’s a call repeated in the invitation of Jesus
who invited his own disciples to ‘follow’ him.
The call of Jesus is likewise heard as a summons
to move from chaos to order;
it is an invitation to move from barrenness to new life.
And like the call of God to Abraham,
it’s a call that is accompanied by promise.
The Lord told Abraham that through his descendants
‘all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’
And to this end promised Abraham a new world,
where humans are reborn, are born again,
into covenant relationship with their creator.
Through the call of God and the promise of the covenant,
a new way of being opened before Abraham,
bringing into existence
that which could not be achieved by other means.
The building of a tower to the heavens at Babel
had failed to bring humanity any closer to God,
but through God’s gracious intervention,
the covenant established with Abraham brought God close to humans.
Humans had to discover
that they could not reach God through their own efforts,
and that the gift of new life comes from God alone
as a gift from the God of love,
and not as the result of human activity and attainment.
The promise of God is fulfilled by God’s action,
rather than by the efforts of humans.
The lesson of the call of God on Abraham
is that people are not ultimately reconciled to God
through Abraham’s efforts,
nor through the efforts of his descendants,
nor through the efforts of humanity as a whole,
but only in and through the one who calls
and gives the gift of new life.
But this call to Abraham,
and the promise to him and his descendants,
also carried a commission.
God’s chosen people are not to live in a vacuum,
separated and holy.
They are to live with, for, and among the nations of the world.
The good news for Abraham
is also to be good news for all peoples,
good news for all nations,
without qualification, without barrier, without condition.
Just as the Lord called Abraham into new relationship,
so through Abraham and his descendants
the same call must go to all people.
The same promise,
of new life in relationship with God,
is for all nations, not just for one nation under God.
In the New Testament,
we find that both Paul and Peter grasp this truth,
and see its fulfilment in Jesus Christ as good news for all people.
In his letter to the Galatians,
Paul says that (Galatians 3:8)
‘the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith,
declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham,
saying, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.”‘
And in his sermon at Pentecost,
Peter declares to his Jewish congregation that they (Acts 3:25)
‘are the descendants of the prophets
and of the covenant that God gave to your ancestors,
saying to Abraham,
‘And in your descendants
all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’’
This is the true purpose of the people of God,
and it has been so from the very beginning.
The Good News is for all nations, for all peoples,
and has always been so.
This same principle can also to be found in the book of Revelation,
where the church is described as the Bride of Christ.
Now, I don’t want to get too earthy about this,
but seeing as we’ve already spoken about Sarah’s child of promise,
it seems to me that there is another promise
inherent in the image of a bride and a groom.
In the first century world, the celebration of a wedding
included the hope that it wouldn’t be long
before new life came into being,
as a result of the consummation
of the relationship between bride and groom.
All of which raises an interesting question:
Given that in the book of Revelation
John describes Jesus as the Lamb that was slain,
and the church as the bride of the Lamb,
One might well ask who it is that he envisages
as the offspring of this marriage that he describes
between Christ and his Church?
The Abraham story may help us here:
The covenant with Abraham
was built upon a marriage,
with the barren Sarah becoming miraculously pregnant,
thereby beginning the ‘great nation’
through whom, we are told, all nations will be blessed
(Gen. 15.5; 18.18).
It may be that John’s image of the final consummation
between Christ and the Church,
which he depicts as a marriage
between a bride and her husband,
has in view the ultimate fulfilment of the promise made to Abraham.
If this is the case, then the marriage of the Lamb and the bride
may not be so much the end of the story,
as it’s present reality.
This may not be a marriage that has yet to happen,
and which will occur only at the end of time.
Rather, it could be read as a description of the here-and-now,
with the church united with her Lord
in loving and fruitful union.
Rather than seeing the marriage of Christ and the Church
as the final goal of creation,
we find before us the possibility
that there is a much greater inheritance due to the Church,
as the embryonic promise of God’s covenant with Abraham
is brought to birth in the proclamation of a gospel
for ‘every nation and tribe and language and people’ (14.6).
The book of Revelation ends with this picture
of the church as the Bride of Christ,
and she is seen joining her voice with that of the Spirit
to call all the nations of the world,
all those beyond the gates of the new Jerusalem (cf. 22.15),
to enter into the city and drink from the river of life
which runs through the city (22.1–2).
The covenant which began with Abraham
thus finds its fulfilment, as the people of God
become a source of blessing to all peoples,
releasing them from their enslavement to the forces of evil
and enabling them to enter into the new life
that is theirs when they are born again
as citizens of the heavenly city.
As Jesus’ famous conversation with Nicodemus shows,
those who want to enter into the new life that begins in Jesus,
must do so through being born again, through being born from above.
But they do so as those
who are born into the new life
that came into the sterile world of Abraham,
through the barren womb of Sarah,
and they do so at the invitation of the Spirit,
to enter into a life-giving relationship with Jesus.
This same principle can also to be found in the image of 144,000,
who are another one of Revelation’s symbols
for the faithful and chosen people of God.
Within John’s story, only the 144,000
can sing the song of salvation to the earth.
Only the faithful people of God
can speak the gospel to the nations.
However, what becomes clear is that
through their faithful proclamation of the gospel for all,
they are seen to be the firstfruits of a much greater harvest (14.4).
The seed is sown,
and the Lord brings it to fruition.
This image evokes the Jewish practice
of offering the first fruits of a harvest
to symbolize the fact that the whole harvest belongs to God.
Understood in this way, the faithful witness of the Church
is seen once again to result in good news
for all the nations of the earth,
as the covenant with Abraham is fulfilled
in the gathering in of the great harvest,
of which the church are simply the first fruits.
So, to return to the question with which we started:
Is it really worth it?
Is it worth persevering in witnessing
even through difficulty and persecution?
Is it worth persevering with the people of God,
even when all seems lost
and despair, despondency and defeat
lurk round every corner?
Yes, says John, it is!
Because the gospel is good news for every nation,
and the ultimate result
of the faithful witness of the people of God
is the freeing of all the nations
from their enslavement to the forces of evil,
as the coming judgment of God consigns to the flames
all those systems and principalities and powers
which distort, demean and destroy the covenant relationship
into which God calls the people of the earth.
When seen from the perspective of the earth,
the people of God might be a feeble, frail and flawed grouping,
with the good news hard to discern within them.
But when seen from heaven’s perspective,
those of us who gather
faithfully and steadfastly in the name of Christ
are seen to be the fulfilment of God’s covenant with Abraham.
We are those who proclaim a gospel
which is good news for all nations,
and we are those who pave the way
for the eventual ingathering of all people
who pass through judgement to hope and new life.
We are those who have been born again and from above,
and we are those who will in turn bring to birth
a people so great that no-one can count it.
This, surely, is good news.
Good news for all nations,
good news for all the world.
This is the gospel of Christ.
Thanks be to God
[1] Alan Jamieson, A Churchless Faith, SPCK, London: 2002
[2] Brueggemann, Genesis, p. 116
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