Abraham Pt 2 – Material or eternal
Readings: Genesis 13, Matthew 4. 1-11
As Abram returns to the promised land we find him faced with a choice: to hold on tight to the riches of this world, or to let them go in trust to God.
As we rejoin Abram and his family he has just been thrown out of Egypt and is retracing his steps back to the promised land. And I mean that quite literally. In chapter 12 we’re told he settled in Bethel, between Bethel and Ai, and then he travels on to the Negeb and from there into Egypt. And as we join them in chapter 13 we find them leaving Egypt, heading to the Negeb, and then on to where he had first pitched his tent between Bethel and Ai. There’s this sense of a reset, of getting back to where he was both physically and spiritually.
When we’ve strayed from God and from his ways and we realise what we’ve done and repent, sometimes we want to press on straight away from where we’ve ended up, but what is so often needed is to go back to where we were before we messed up, taking the time to retrace our steps, sort out our relationship with God, to work out the ways on which it had all gone wrong as we slowly work our way back to the crossroads where we turned off. And only then, when we find ourselves back at the crossroads can we take the right step and move forwards. It feels costly, but only when we have the humility to do so can we truly move forwards with God.
So here he is, back at the crossroads, and immediately he is faced with a very similar decision to the one that had led him down into Egypt previously. Once again he is faced with a question about stuff, material wealth and possessions. Previously the question had been about a lack of those things, the famine that had caused him to abandon the land and head to Egypt, but now both he and Lot have the opposite problem, they have too much, the land can’t support them both and their herdsmen are falling out over who gets to graze where. It’s a problem we’d perhaps love to have ‘oh no I have too much stuff, I’m too wealthy, whatever shall I do’. But it is a problem, it’s causing tension between them, and Abram will show us in what he does that he has learned from the fiasco in Egypt.
He turns to his nephew and says ‘here’s the land I’ve been promised, have a look and you choose which part you’d like’. All this land has been promised to him by God, but he seems to be holding it loosely, allowing Lot to choose which part he wants for himself. And so Lot scans the horizon and his eyes fall on the Jordan plain. It looks amazing, exactly what he’s looking for, in fact it looks like Eden itself, the garden where humanity had begun before the fall. It looks like heaven on earth in other words, and so he settles there.
Now if we’re not paying attention perhaps this feels like a simple and obvious choice, land looks good, settle there, but there are a few phrases that should set alarm bells ringing. The first is the mention of Sodom and Gomorrah, those towns are on that plain, and if we don’t already know what’s coming, we’re warned that later God is going to destroy them. Perhaps settling in this area isn’t the best idea, perhaps this neighbourhood is not as good as it first seems. But there are other warnings too. The passage also says it looks like Egypt, the place they’ve just left, the place that was such a danger to them Abram pretended Sarai was his sister to survive. And of course Egypt will continue to be a dangerous place for God’s people for generations to come when they are taken as slaves there. Perhaps Lot has not learned from Egypt.
And then there’s a throwaway line we’d easily miss; Lot journeyed eastward. The part of the land he’s chosen is to the east. Now on the one hand that’s just the direction he chose, and objectively there’s no difference between east and west, but on the other journeying east has a deeper meaning in Genesis. When Adam and Eve leave the garden of Eden they leave to the east. After Cain has murdered his brother Abel just a chapter later, we read that he journeys east to settle in the land of Nod. And later again when we read of the Tower of Babel we find that those who decide to build it were journeying eastward. In Genesis, to head east is to head away from the presence of God. Lot is heading east, symbolically away from God, and to drive it home further he settles on the plain of the Jordan river, that river being the very boundary of the land God had promised. He’s living there right on the edge, perhaps even beyond the edge as the plain would cover both side of the border. It’s a dangerous place to be, and when we return to Lot next week and again later next year we’ll discover just how dangerous.
Lot is thinking how this world thinks, in many ways it’s a materialist mindset. He already has an abundance of things, he’s very wealthy, but a little more couldn’t hurt, the best part of the land should be his. He’s thinking purely of himself and in material terms. God’s promises, Abram’s welfare, all secondary to what he can get. It’s Abram’s fault after all for offering it to him. His trust is in his stuff, it’s in what he can see, and more importantly in what he can possess, that’s where his security is found. And even if that leads him away from God, into danger, and even settling into the neighbourhood of those notorious for their wickedness, so be it. But it sets him on a dangerous path. We’re told here that he settles as far as Sodom, he’s near the city, by the next chapter we’ll find he’s moved into the city. Choosing to look after ourselves and think purely in terms of the material may seem harmless at first, but it can set us on a dangerous path. Our stuff can so easily become a snare, but we don’t realise it, because the snare isn’t barbed wire or rough rope, it’s velvet and smells like lilies even as it slowly tightens around us. Lot may well have a faith in God, but he needs to put his faith in himself first, just to be sure. Where are you looking for your security? Where is your trust? Is it in your finances, your possessions, your connections. Are you holding them loosely, or are they held tight?
Abram will have seen that lush and fertile land with all that it promises, but Abram has learned, placing his faith in himself has only led him into trouble, and so he lets go and trusts God, even to the point of offering Lot free choice of where to settle. And in doing so he likely knows that Lot will chose the Jordan plain, who wouldn’t, but God will take care of him. And as Abram settles to the west, trusting that God will provide for him, God reaffirms the promise that this whole land will be his and his descendants. As Abram chooses to trust God, God reaffirms that he won’t let him down. Are we willing to be like Abram? Are we willing to hold loosely to what we own, and to what we could gain if we pushed for it? I’m not suggesting any of us should push ourselves to poverty, but do we see our stuff as our security, or as what we can use for God and to bless others? Are we holding it loosely, ready to let go at a moments notice? Our world calls us to hold on tight, God calls us to let go and trust him.
And actually, God doesn’t just call us to do it, he models it for us. For we see in our Gospel today how Jesus refuses the material means to achieve his mission. He could turn stones into bread, bow down at the feet of evil and shortcut all the suffering he will have to endure. It would be so easy to just save himself the time, the suffering, the trust. But Jesus will go the long way round. He’ll hold everything loosely, even his own life, laying it down on the cross for our sake. In Abram’s willingness to let go and to trust God we see a glimmer of Jesus who himself did not grasp hold of what he had but let it go, surrendering it all for our sake.
And Jesus is holding it all loosely because he is looking ahead to a better future, a better home, a better life for us. Abram, as we heard in Hebrews last week, ‘was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God’. His hope was not simply in the land that God had promised to him and his descendants, his hope and trust was in the eternal home God had prepared for him. Whilst Lot needed to find heaven on earth, Abram knew that heaven was coming and so used the things of earth to prepare himself for that day. All the stuff of this world could be held loosely, something far better was coming.
As we follow God, as we live for him in this world, we’ll likely have stuff, material possessions, and the opportunity to gather more for ourselves. Will we follow Lot in hoarding more to ourselves, tight fisted as Scrooge as we seek to get everything we can from this world as we seek its satisfaction, making heaven for ourselves on the earth. Or will we learn from Abram that God can be trusted to care for us, that we can give away even the riches before us and still know God’s blessings? Will we trust with Abram that a better world awaits us, that will far outshine anything we could build for ourselves in this world. Will we follow Jesus in the way of the cross, not seeking shortcuts or compromising with evil or wickedness, but faithfully following in his footsteps, seeking first the Father’s will, and trusting in him for the rest.
The choice is set before us today, and every day. Will we trust in ourselves and our stuff, or will we trust God? Will we hold onto this world tightly, even if it leads us away from God, or will we let go that we may draw nearer to him? May God give us his grace that we may trust in him, now and always.
Amen.