There has been much media hype recently over meetings between world leaders sitting at opposite ends of a twenty-foot-long table in the Kremlin. The pictures of these occasions boggle the mind. Even in a pandemic, we’re not used to meetings where people are separated by such great distances when they are intending to have a conversation. One wonders how a conversation in such conditions is even possible.
We could speculate about the extreme distance in these meetings. Was there a real concern about contracting the coronavirus? Was it a powerplay? But for our purposes, let’s just focus on the image for a minute. Two powerful world leaders sit at extreme ends of a very long, ornate table—just two people, no one else in sight. It’s a helpful metaphor for the state of the world at the moment, isn’t it? There is very little real or productive dialogue happening, and not just in Ukraine and Russia. The distance between two world leaders seated at a long, long table is a helpful metaphor for the countless ways in which we, as citizens of a shared planet, are quite adept at putting distance between ourselves.
And because we are so used to human separation, do we also assume such distance exists between God and humanity? Do we assume this, too, when God enters into dialogue with chosen people in Scripture? Do we imagine God and Abram sitting at a long, long table as they negotiate their covenant relationship? God begins the conversation by telling Abram not to fear. Meanwhile, Abram sits twenty feet away wondering how in the world he is not to fear.
God has just brought him from his homeland in Ur of the Chaldeans with little more than a promise that the nations of the world shall be blessed through Abram. Abram has journeyed a vast distance, along with his family, presumably because he trusts God’s promises.
He now sits at one end of a long, long table, while God sits at the other. God is still telling him that his reward shall be great, but the only thing that is obviously great to Abram at the moment is the chasm between him and God. Can he still believe God’s words? A significant period of time has passed since God first made a promise to him, but Abram still has no biological heir. And he and Sarai, his wife, are a little long in the tooth.
Abram, still sitting yards away from God, decides to name the discrepancy between God’s promise and his experienced reality. Abram doesn’t seem terribly confident that God will make good on his promises. So, God brings Abram outside and directs his gaze to the heavens, promising that his descendants will be as numerous as the number of the stars, which are uncountable. Then we are told that Abram believes.
But Abram still wants more. At the long, long table, Abram longs for something to close the gaping hole between him and God. God, he says, how will I know your promises are true? Close the gap. Show me a sign that the land you have also promised me is my possession and will be populated by my heirs.
And God does. God doesn’t remain in the sky, distant from Abram. God touches down in the form of a flaming torch passing between pieces of slaughtered animals, enacting a covenant of promise with Abram. God gets up from his end of the long, long table, walks over to Abram, and shakes his hand. It's a done deal. My word is trustworthy.
In a cursory reading of the Book of Genesis, Abram seems like a profoundly trusting person. It would be easy to surmise that he is almost naïve in his willingness to leave his homeland based on a surprising vision from God. Time and again, when he still has no children, he continues to follow God’s call—through a brief sojourn in Egypt to avoid famine and through battles with surrounding foreign nations. Abram remains steadfast in following God, even when it seems ridiculous.
But sitting at that long conference table with God, when we encounter him today, we see that Abram’s inner state is more complicated than simple acquiescence to God’s demands. Somewhere inside Abram’s soul, there is a chasm to be crossed in belief. Will God really honor his promises? Was he stupid to leave everything that was familiar to go to a strange and foreign land? Abram wants some proof. Abram yearns for God to get up from his end of the table and to come to him, to certify that his promises are trustworthy.
Perhaps Abram is not so unlike you or me. How can faith and trust even be real if there is no gap of belief from time to time? We are told to wait on God, as if we must sit at a long, long meeting table, shouting down towards God and, if we’re lucky, we hear God respond, albeit faintly. In our prayer, we recall the powerful and almighty God sitting high and lofty. We plead, we ask, we entreat, but can we cross the mental and spiritual chasm we feel exists between God and us?
Feeling powerless before God, humans amass their own fragile power in other ways and play off the canyons of separation within the human race. We bully by email because the computer screen offers a comfortable virtual buffer. We jealously guard our choice morsels of anger and our resentments because if we hold onto them, we have something to wield over the one who has offended us.
We exercise and claim our power by widening the distance between ourselves and others. We play hard to get. We pout. We gossip. We judge. And all these things place us at one end of a very, very long table, while the targets of our meanness sit at the end. There in an empty room sit two parties, one offending and the other offended.
But in his encounter with Abram, God does something quite extraordinary that reverses all our expectations. As we so often conceive it, God sits in authority at one end of a long, long table, wielding judgment over us and deigning to heed our requests. So often the gap between us and God is silence, unanswered prayers, and loneliness.
And yet, God does something incredible with Abram. God reveals his power not by creating an unfathomable distance between himself and Abram but by closing it. God gets up from his end of the table and walks over to Abram. He comes down in a flaming torch and makes a hard and fast covenant with Abram, literally promising that God himself will be like slaughtered animals if he does not measure up to his promises.
And God does something else, too. He directs Abram’s gaze up to the heavens and teaches. Abram, it’s not I who have created a void between us, but you. You are so hyper-focused on your biological kin and on your own parcel of land to possess. But I am giving you a much larger vision. And the larger the vision is, the closer the distance is between us.
What God promises to Abram transcends the idolatry of familial ties. It transcends nationalism. It surpasses the human tendency to turn everything in on ourselves and circle the wagons with those who are like us. The human tendency is to sit at opposite ends of a twenty-foot-long table and keep plenty of distance between us so that we can survive, so that we can be powerful, so that our own interests are met.
But paradoxically, God demonstrates his power by closing the distance between himself and us and by widening his vision for us. God has made covenant after covenant with his people, putting everything on the line for a sinful and wayward people who frequently forget what he has done for them. And in the fullness of time, by sending his only Son into the world, he crossed that gap in a profound way so that the entire world could be drawn to himself.
As we sit at the table with God, we will fill up the chasm between us with all kinds of things: with our pride, with our lust for power, with our anger, with our lack of trust, and so often, with our acute fear. And because we are usually incapacitated in our sinfulness, God moves. God takes action. Time and again, God reassures us that the chasm we have created or imagined has never really been there.
God stands up from his end of the long, long table and comes to us. God has done so throughout human history and will continue to do so. And God doesn’t just shake our hand. God reaches out to us with arms wide open.
Look to the heavens and see the immensity of what I have in store for you, God says. I will help to widen what you have narrowed. I will help you trust and love. I will help you let go of your fear. If you can but believe in my promise, you will see that there is no gap between us. Believe me, because my promises are true.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday in Lent
March 13, 2022