Invest in the Promise - Genesis 23

Bible Study Lesson for November 11

After the climax of Genesis 22, we run into a series of transitional chapters in Genesis. I have skipped a brief genealogical material involving the children of Nahor back in Haran. We will come back to that family in Genesis 24. Roughly, chapters 23, 24, and 25 concern the death of Sarah, finding a wife for Isaac, and the last years and death of Abraham. The focus of the story shifts in these chapters from Abraham to Isaac as the one who bears the promise. As is so often true in our own lives, this time of transition is mostly the normal, every day stuff of life. Life on the earth is meetings and partings, new life and relationships, and death and grief. 

Genesis 23 is a straightforward story of Abraham’s need for a place to bury his wife (1-2) and his acquiring of the place (17-20). In between is a story about negotiation that seems strange and even humorous to us today, but probably reflects the bargaining practices of the ancient Near East. Throughout the story, Abraham and the Hittites use the word “give” a lot, but it becomes increasingly clear that no one intends to “give” anyone anything. I have heard it argued that the Hittites intend to give Abraham the land so that he won’t really have a legal claim to it. That doesn’t really make sense of what happens in the story. Abraham winds up paying 400 shekels for the land, which is quite a bit of money.

The emotion of the story is largely confined to verse 2. Abraham weeps beside Sarah’s deathbed, but then like all of us, he has to leave his mourning to do a necessary thing. No one is ever really prepared for the death of a loved one. Making preparations for burial helps to begin to find closure for the mourning process. So Abraham “rose up from beside his dead” in order to secure a burial site for her.

Abraham highlights his precarious position: “I am a stranger and an alien residing among you” (v. 4). Notice that he doesn’t merely ask for permission to bury Sarah. It is important to him that he has a piece of property where he can lay his wife to rest. Up until now, Abraham has been living in the land that God is promising to give to his descendants, but he lives there as an alien, not as someone who has obtained the promise. His God-given dream is becoming a reality for him. Even in his grief he begins to realize the promise and by the end of the story, he will have a foretaste of the land of the promise.

Perhaps the best connection we have to this story is from Jeremiah 32:1-15. In that story, the prophet Jeremiah is told by God to buy a field outside of Jerusalem, even though the city is under siege. Jeremiah has already prophesied that the siege will overtake the city and the government will fall and Judah will become part of the Babylonian Empire. But he is to buy the field because God says: “Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

Like Jeremiah, Abraham is making an economic investment in the future God has promised him. He doesn’t want his wife’s grave to be lost and God has told him that his descendants will inherit this land. So Abraham pays his neighbors for a permanent place to bury his dead. What investment are we making in the future God has for us?

Once I overheard a conversation in a church. An older man was asking why he should commit money to the long-range plan  the church was raising money for. He said, “I’m not going to live to see this stuff, so what’s the point?” I have reflected on this question often, and I think the answer is that to be a part of God’s kingdom is to realize that we are participating in a project that we will never see finished. We are always investing in a future that we will never see. Often, the gifts and acts that define the life of a church are anonymous, faithful gifts by people who will be forgotten in future generations. 

In closing, I want to share a poem that was written in memory of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador (1917-1980), after his martyrdom.

A Future Not Our Own

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction

of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of

saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession

brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church's mission.

No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one

day will grow. We water the seeds already planted

knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects

far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of

liberation in realizing this.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,

a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's

grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the

difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not

messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

Sometimes, I think, faithfulness to the promise of God looks like an economic, tangible investment in basic human needs. We need a place to sleep, a place to rest, a place to serve. We need to bury our dead in a land that is not yet our home. God has called us to this place and so we invest in it.