Hard-Headed Hope - Reflections on Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18, Lent 2, Year C

by John C. Holbert on Thursday, February 6, 2025

I currently live in Los Angeles, a city that is just today (1/15/2025) experiencing what all imagine is the near end of an apocalyptic series of fires that have decimated thousands of acres of homes and businesses, has displaced nearly 100,000 people, has upset the lives of many more persons, has destroyed numerous cultural landmarks, and has created stark tensions and fear in millions of Angelenos, who have sat near sources of media for over a week awaiting the dreaded order to evacuate their treasured homes and all those homes have represented for them. My wife and I have been safe from the fires, our home a tucked-away haven on the western edge of Culver City. In addition, we were able to leave the burning city and head to the desert about 100 miles east with our daughter and son-in-law where we have stayed since last Friday (1/10/2025). The air here is clean and easily breathable, unlike the air over LA, filled as it is with ash and fire residue particles that can be dangerous for those with lung issues.

         I say all this, because the Hebrew Bible text for this second Sunday in Lent is precisely the one we need as we attempt to navigate our now charred city. Rebuilding will be a monumental and lengthy task, comprising many months of frustration, anger, and buckets of tears. The promise of the paradise of Southern California—its sun-splashed beaches, its vast number of cultural playgrounds, its infamous Magic Kingdom—has been reduced to so much ash and soot for many of our neighbors. Like Abram of old, we need a word from YHWH that will transcend our current circumstances and provide for us a word of hope in the face of all this rubble we see. 

         Abram in Gen.12 was offered by YHWH the huge task of becoming a “great nation” and as a result, to be a “blessing to the nations” (Gen.12:3) after he had shown his willingness to leave country, family, and closest kin to follow YHWH to a place he has never seen or heard of. We Angelenos are being asked to do nothing less, to see a future which, at the moment, is thoroughly obscured by smoke and ash. Like us, Abram is dubious at best, wondering just how he is be a great nation when his wife, Sarai, is infertile! YHWH proclaims, “To your seed (offspring) I will give this land,” where Canaanites are currently living. Wait a moment, cries a reasonable Abram in Gen.15. “O Lord YHWH, what can you give me, for I continue without offspring; the heir of my house will be the slave Eliezer?” (vs.3). No, thunders YHWH! “This man will not be your heir; no one but your very own issue will be your heir” (Gen.15:4)! Well, that looks like the seal on the deal, because Abram at YHWH’s behest walks outside to count the stars, being promised that his offspring will be no fewer in number than these. 

         Then follows the very famous line, used prominently by the Apostle Paul: “He believed YHWH, and YHWH counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen.15:6). Indeed, this line has long been the rallying cry of those Christians who were intent on rebutting any who would say that works of any sort would get you to find favor with God. Never, they shouted! Only the unmerited grace of God gave one favor, and anything we do has exactly nothing to to with it. Paul’s quotation of Gen.15:6 in his letter to the Romans has served down the centuries as the basis of that central claim for countless Christians from Augustine to Calvin to Wesley to uncounted believers after them. 

         Well, however, that is hardly the end of the problems for Abram, in the same way that some few bits of fleeting hope are the end for those in LA. YHWH goes on to promise Abram “this land to possess,” that is the land filled with Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaim, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites (Gen.15:19-20). Several of these tribal and national names have lost all meaning for us, but such an extensive list suggests that the land is hardly empty of inhabitants. And Abram is still not convinced. “O YHWH God, just how am I to know that I shall possess it?” (Gen.15:8) He may well be immensely fearful of that daunting list of potential foes, not to mention that strange promise of numerous offspring from a woman incapable of birthing one. 

         There follows the spooky worship experience that YHWH bids Abram undergo, involving heifers, female goats, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon, all save the last Abram dutifully cuts in two. And between the two halves of these sundered animals passes YHWH in the strange guise of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. The very last thing we Angelenos need is anything else that smokes and flames! Still, we could well use the hope that YHWH has not and will not leave us alone among our ashy landscape. Those promises to Abram of offspring and land are what many of us need now, gifts from a God who sees greatness for us in the future, who makes promises hard to envision but certain of fulfillment nonetheless. We may, of course, ask hard questions of those who come to offer hope, be they God or government officials; Abram did not hesitate to question his God directly, nor should we. But hope is real; hope is clear. But it is a hard-headed hope, not a pie-in-the-sky sort of wistful romantic hope. It is a hope that we can live with and strive to fulfill, and, like Abram, a hope that will sustain us for the coming days, months, and years.