PROMISE
February 23, 1986, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

“How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers
her brood under her wings, and you would not!" --Luke 13:34 (RSV)

Scripture
Luke 13:31-35

One of the great moments in life happens when one -has the privilege of
standing outside a hospital nursery and looking at the babies. At one time
or another most of us have done it: stood on tip toe to peek into the crib
of the new child of a friend, or a relative. Some of us recall the days
when that's as close as a father got. Pastors have the privilege of doing
it a lot; sharing the joy of parents which always includes looking through
the glass at the babies. It's one of the great moments in life: because
what you're looking at through the glass is the future. Everyone knows it,
senses it intuitively even without the benefit of a sign which could read,
accurately: “Here is the future!" I'm certain I'll get into trouble for
saying this, but when you're depressed and can't see much hope, go look
through the glass.

The Judeo/Christian story begins with that kind of experience. One: of
the unique aspects of our story is that it really doesn't begin at the
beginning. Oh, on the first page of the Bible it says, “In the beginning,
God created..." But the oldest part of the stories, the Biblical scholars
tell us, are bits and fragments of a saga about an old man and old woman,
nomads, wanderers, childless. Abraham and Sarah are their names, and their»
story is the oldest - and the fundamental religious. tradition for us, it
comes from the Bronze Age, the very edge of recorded history. It begins
when God - who in these stories doesn't even have a name yet.- calls old
Abraham outside his tent one night - and says “look up: count the stars:
they are your babies. You have a future!"

Our story is different throughout. Its climax comes centuries later
in the life of a man who reaches back into time and recovers that most
ancient tradition, and teaches that God is most like a life giving parent,
who takes his children by the hand and leads them into the:future.

The hero of the story is not one who makes it big in any way, but one
who gives life away to make his point about God's parental love and walking
confidently into the future - even when that future looks hopeless, as his
surely did. You can tell how different our story is by comparing it with
other stories.

An archeoiogical exhibit opened this week in: the Oriental Institute
Museum at the University of Chicago. Back in one corner, modestly

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displayed, is one of the most important figures in the history of religion,
indeed in the history of the world: Baal, God of the Canaanites. The
artifacts on display are from the ancient land of Canaan, the land promised
to Abraham, the land conquered by Israel, the land fought over ever since.
The Canaanites were the people who were living there when the tribes of
Israel invaded and settled in. Canaanite civilization, customs, religion,
therefore, had an enormous influence of Judaic culture and by extension,
Christian culture.

Their god sits in the Oriental Institute, an exquisite, tiny, gold
leaf figure, seated on a thorne, with a crown and an emblem held in his
left hand, and one remaining earring. Baal was the god who fought back the
sea and brought order out of chaos, the god of rain and sun and fertility.
Baal was an attractive, awesome nature God and the religion of Baal is the
background against which Hebrew religion developed.

For a student of theology and history it was a special experience to
stand in front of the modest gold statue and reflect on the power it had
thousands of years ago: to recall that one of the ways Hebrew religion
defined itself was negatively, as not Baalism. It was intriguing to
contemplate the power to shape the lives and behavior and values and hopes
and dreams of people, this little gold figure exerted. And just at that
wonderfully reflective moment the woman standing beside me looked at me and
said, "What in the world did they see in that pathetic little fellow?"
Little did she know I-was in the process of composing the introduction to
this Sunday's sermon, and I certainly didn't help her because all I could
think of to say was: “I don't know. What do you suppose they saw in him?"
She didn't know either.

What: the ancient Canaanites saw in Baal of course is what al] human
beings seek and need - an answer to the mysteries they can't understand, a
system of meaning and order for daily life, a source of values. Canaanites
got from Baal what human beings have received from their religion, their
“isms," their. systems of organizing and structuring life, from the Marxism
which orders, or organizes and gives meaning to the Marxist revolutionary,
to the materialism that order the life of the upwardly mobile American.

The old Bible stories define who God is by setting out very clearly
that God is not Baal. Yahweh is creator - but more than creator. Yahweh
is powerful, awesome, mysterious but more. The story is radically
different, from the beginning. God tells Abraham and Sarah, in their old
age, to pick up and move. God promises them, in their old age, a family
and a land. Both promises are unlikely and outlandish. After all what are
the long-term prospects for a childless old couple tiving in a tent? And
so, after the initial promise is given, Abraham and Sarah, still childless
and homeless, wonder a bit about the authenticity of the promise, indeed
about the existence of the God. It is at this juncture that God invites
Abraham to step outside his tent and look up into the sky and count the
stars. Now the normal human reaction to that exercise is something like
religious reverence: fear before the God of creation, terror in the
presence of the Lord. of. this vastness, or at least a degree of appropriate
awe. Even the Psalmist felt that: "When I look at the moon, stars, what is

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man that thou art mindful?" That's not what happens here, however. No -
what Abraham and Sarah receive again, is not primal terror, but a repeated
promise of a family, heirs, babies - a future. At this fundamental. level,
encased in stories so old and fragile they almost crumble in-our hands, we
learn that God is surprisingly different: that God doesn't have to be
persuaded to be attentive and kind: Abraham isn't outside doing a rain
dance, or sacrificing an animal. God comes to Abraham. We learn, early
on, that God is a God of promise: that there is a future and God will be in
it and calls his people forward in hope. Our religion begins here when
somehow, against all the odds, living in barrenness, hopelessness, Abraham
and Sarah believe. That belief, - that trust - this old story shouts - is
what religion is. Abraham and Sarah are people of God - this old story
declares - not because they obey all the rules or believe proper. dogma,.or
belong to the right group but because they trust God to make good the
promise. They believe in the future, and not only believe it, they pack up
their belongings and walk hoepfully into it. That's a very. different. idea
of what religion is. It's why there is a gold leaf Baal. in the museum, but
no Yahweh. God, the stories affirm - is out in the future. Our story is
different. Move ahead now, 1,500 years or so. Jesus is on.his way to...
Jerusalem. Friends warn him that his life is in danger.. Herod. is looking
for him. He responds that people have always treated God's messengers like
that. The reader expects Jesus to say that God is sick and tired of that
ingratitude: that God will abandon this strategy and find a new way to
accomplish his goals. That's how Baal - or any of the gods of pagan
religion would deal with human intransigence. That's. how we would do it.
Luther pondered God's great patience with the human race and said that if:
he were the Lord God he would smash the world to bits. And it is precisely
here that Jesus expressed one of the most poignant and revolutionary images
of God in all of history - God as infinitely patient and loving parent: God
as mother hen gathering her chicks and nurturing them for their life in the
future. That is what God wants, Jesus said: people who know the love. of
their creator and who live hopefully into the future.

The God who takes Abraham and Sarah by the hand and shows them the
stars and leads them into the future is still at it, Jesus, said... God's .
point of reference to the world is not as Potentate or even King, so much
as it is parent: father and mother.

The ancient Hebrews knew that a lot depends on how you define God and |
that the most important issue in life is theological. They seem
fanatical, as we read about their unyielding prophets battling Baal and all
idols. They believed that the most important issue in life is: Who will
you trust? Who is your God? Who orders, gives value and meaning and hope
to your life? I would submit to you that they were never more correct. It
may appear that we are captives of a long-dead past when we tell these
obscure old stories, but the truth of the matter is, the issue is as
relevant as today's news. The question of God, your relationship to the
God you chose to trust - is the most important question in your life.

The basic issue is idolatry. Who orders your life? What is the .
source of your values? Who do you trust for the future? In his monumental
work Does God Exist?, professor Hans Kung suggests that the first and in

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many ways most important demand on the believer is to say "no" to all other
gods. To believe in God but trust something else for your meaning, vatues
and future is to be a pragmatic atheist. "“One-god faith" Kung wrote,
“dethrones the divine world powers in favor of the one-true God." Al]

the gods before whom modern people bow, “the great God Mammon, the great God
Sex, the great God Power, the great God Science, the great God Nation, the
great God Party. The one-god faith is utterly opposed to any quasi-
religion, It throws down all false gods." [p. 619]

It is the most important issue in life. Who do you trust for the
future?

The pantheon of contemporary deities - modern Baals, if you will,
includes power, technology, money.

We are in the process of spending every available dollar and many more
that are not available (borrowing from those babies as it were) to purchase
the military power we hope will save us. We look to that power and the
technology that accompanies it, not only to protect - but to provide
ultimate security. The national trauma of the Challenger tragedy, I
believe, was that it exposed the mortality, the finiteness of our salvation
scheme.

We look for “systems" to save us. Anne Tyler's wonderful new novel,
Accidental Tourist, tells the story of a man whose life falls apart when he
loses both his son and wife. Macon looks to systems to save him.
Ordinarily an orderly man, now alone, he systemitizes everything,
eliminates all waste and frivality. He lives and sleeps in non-wrinkle
Clothes, fashions a body bag instead of wasting time making his bed, washes
his clothes by walking on them while he showers. His life is neat,
systematic and without meaning until someone loves him and will not be
persuaded to stop loving him. “Systems are not saving," this wise and
witty author is saying.

We live in a society that proposes that what is trustworthy is cash,
goods, securities. The advertisements for sleek sports cars not only point
to fine craftsmanship, they promise meaning for one's life, to drive one is
an ultimate experience. One insurance company, unapologetically appeals to
religious sensitivities. People in the commercial have a close brush with
death, something like a resurrection and now, chastened, wiser - buy more
insurance! To an astonishing degree we have bought into a theological
system which provides order, values, a cause for which to live, and a hope
for the future. It is called materialism. To believe in God is to loosen
your grip on the “isms" in which you are investing for your future, It is
to acknowledge the religious significance of those “isms." It is to trust
God with your future. It is to live into the future with hopefulness, And
that is a radical commitment.

The evidence, the reasons for the commitment are not always easily at
hand. My guess is that Abraham and Sarah had a difficult time explaining
to their neighbors and family why, at their age, they were picking up and
moving, making a cradle and knitting booties. My guess is that the friends

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of Jesus were appalled when in the face of Herod's threat, he started .
talking about a God who wants to gather even the Herods of this world into
a nest and mother them a little bit, instead of arming them at least for
protection.

Our task is to live in the tension between the promise and the reality
of life at 8:30 Monday morning. That reality can be pretty barren. We've
heard the promise. We know the stories. We want to trust God for our
salvation. We want to build our values, and receive meaning and future hope
from our faith in God. But the barrenness is there. At some point the
issue is confronted in every life.

Some must live with illness, with the certainty of continuing
debilitation. Some must live even now with the certainty that the
condition is terminal. Some must live with the numbing certainty that the
pain will be there in the morning, and the next morning, and the next...

Some must live with addiction, with the burning physical. need and then
the relief and the guilt and the destruction. some must carry that lonely
burden into what looks like a future without possibility.

Some must decide the difficult matter of life in relationship: to be
together or apart: to separate because there is no life left, or to stay
together with the lifelessness and hope for the best.

some must, for the sake of family, and sanity and personal health,
decide how to live the rest of life: to continue risking it all for a
promotion or a raise, or to re-evaluate and make tough decisions which
forever alter the possibilities.

At some point each of us is deciding a basically theological question:
who will I serve? Who or what will I trust with my future?

And to each of us, out of these crusty, fragile old stories comes an
invitation to trust God. The promise isn't a rose garden. Abraham and
Sarah didn't come close to seeing all those babies and the friends of Jesus
stood by helplessly as their Lord joined the long line of martyrs Jerusalem
had killed. The promise isn't that everything will be healed and restored
and made instantly whole, that the pain wili not be there, or the burning
need for a drink, or the desperate loneliness in the middle of the night,
or the regret and guilt and remorse because you decided to miss dinner and
work another hour, or eat dinner with your family and miss work.

The promise is a God who takes us by the hand and leads us into the
future. The promise is that God and the future may be trusted and that we
can let go of the past. The promise is a God whose love for us is personal
and tender and strong and parental. "How often would I have gathered your
children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would
not!" Jesus said.

It doesn't take a linguistic expert to point out how strongly feminine
this image of God is. Jesus had no language or gender problems with God as

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mother. The point is that the God of the promise loves us as deeply and
powerfully as one human being can love another. There is no stronger
metaphor for that than maternal love: the primal, urgent and compelling
care a mother has for her children.

If the most important question you must answer is theological: who
your God is, who you will trust, the most amazing suggestion is that there
is a God who cares about you as a parent cares for a child.

The saving good news is that there is a God whose love is not ended
even by the crucifixion of his son: a God of infinite patience who keeps
loving through all If life: who wants to love and nurture and give growth
and strength and hope - just as a mother wants that for her children.

God wants to love you. God wants you to know how deeply you are
loved. God wants you to know there is nothing you can do to stop that
love, God wants you to let go of whatever binds you to the past and to
live for the future.

God wants you to remember that when you look up into a night sky full
of stars. God wants you to know it when you fight your battles and when the
future looks overwhelming, and when you feel, above all, that there is
nowhere to turn and no one who cares. God wants you to recall a story
about a mother hen and a promise and a love that will never let you go.
Amen,