Bible reading: Genesis 17:1-8, 15-17.

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him, and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.’

Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, ‘This is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my everlasting covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.’

God continued, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai: Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.’ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’

Message.

On Wednesday I opened a birthday card informing me that “70 is only 21 in Celsius”. That made me feel quite good about myself until I realised that my age on the Kelvin temperature scale works out as 294! I don’t think I’m the same person I was when I was 21; indeed, I hope I’ve matured and become wiser with age, and I may even be physically fitter now than I was then. Nevertheless I can’t escape the fact that age is creeping up on me, especially in the hair department: ‘three score and ten’ is a significant number of years to have under my belt and none of us can turn back the clock.

When I first came to this church I joked that I was too young to either be the American President or the Pope. Seven years on, Pope Francis is still in post at the age of 87, while – assuming that they both run – Donald Trump will be 77 and Joe Biden just a few days shy of 82 on election day in November. However their ages fade into insignificance when we think of some other people. Kay White retired from running the post office in Claverley, Shropshire at the end of 2020. She was 93 and had worked there for 80 years, latterly with her sister who was “only” 75. Ernie Bradbury worked as a mechanic at his family’s garage in Barmouth until he was over 90; he’d started at 14 “just to help out over the summer”. Sadly he’s no longer with us. And last September Colin Bell, who flew Mosquito aircraft during the war and only retired as a valuer three years ago, abseiled 17 storeys down a London hospital for charity. He was 102 and said that he wanted “to do his bit”.

When viewed beside these folk, the fact that God spoke to Abraham when he was 99 years old doesn’t appear remarkable. I have to say at this point that I’m a bit wary of peoples’ ages that are mentioned in Genesis: was Enoch really 365 years old when, as we are told, “God took him”; did Methuselah really live to the ripe old age of 969? – for, if he were alive today, that would place his birth shortly before the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Invasion, a whole century before Wales’ Llywelyn ab Iorwerth. So did people calculate years differently in those days? Did nature itself function differently before the Flood? I have no idea (and someone asked me about this after church just a couple of weeks ago). By the time we get to Abraham recorded lifespans do seem to have become more normal. However I don’t know how accurately births and deaths were recorded back then; and I’m reminded of my time in West Africa when elderly folk were often said to be “a hundred years old” but probably weren’t. So we can decide whether or not to take Abraham (and Sarah’s) ages at face value; what’s certain is that both of them were getting on and – crucially – were far too old to become parents.

Yet here we are, with God making a covenant that will be realised through Abraham’s descendants. In a text which is foundational to Jewish identity, God gives Abraham the preposterous and impossible news that he will be “the ancestor of a multitude of nations” and that his descendants will be “exceedingly numerous”. God declares, in a verse that led to the blood and slaughter of Joshua’s time and which has brought both hope and heartache in the last century or so, “I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God”. Indeed, this ancient verse (and others like it) can be seen as the root of many of today’s troubles: Zionist Jews claim it as a divine mandate to take over and settle Palestine, with no regard for the intervening centuries of history; others (including many Jews) are far less sure.

But I digress! We need to come back to Abraham – or, as he is still called at the start of our reading – Abram. And, if I were in his sandals, I’d be feeling pretty frustrated by, and fed up with, God. You see, he’s been making promises for several chapters. In ch.12 he asks (or is it “commands”?) Abram to go to “a far country” which he will be shown: he sets off with the promise that he will be made “into a great nation” and that the land will be given to his descendants – although he himself journeys on, first to the Negev desert region of southern Palestine and then, because of a famine, to Egypt. Once things have returned to normal, Abram continues to wander the area as a nomadic farmer; later on, because the land cannot support both his and his nephew Lot’s herds, the two men part company. Abram returns to Canaan – which is by no means empty of people – and settles there. And God again says, “I will give all the land you see to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth”. At this point Abram is 75 years old.

There then follows an interlude during which other things happen; however in ch.15 we encounter Abram in a deep sleep during which God appears to him once more. In a strange passage, God says that Abram’s descendants – who will outnumber the stars in the night sky – will for four centuries be slaves in a foreign land (that’s the time in Egypt between Joseph and Moses) but after that return to possess Canaan as their homeland. That’s promise no.3 – are you counting?

By ch.16 we’ve moved on ten years but nothing has happened on the family front. This is when Abram’s wife Sarai decides to forget about God’s promises and hatches up a scheme to take matters forward – one that seems appalling to us but which was by no means unknown in ancient near Eastern culture. She tells her husband, actually tells him, to sleep with her slave’s wife Hagar and get her pregnant. As a good husband (really?) he does what he is told and Hagar duly gives birth to Ishmael – perhaps he can be counted as Abram’s heir even though he is not Sarai’s child. By now Abram is 86 (and, sadly, the Hagar incident ends in violence and with her running away).

It’s in this context of frustration, immorality and abuse that we arrive at today’s passage. Ishmael is now a teenager and 24 long years have passed since God first made his promises. If they were hard to believe then, they are simply ridiculous now. So, after God has spoken again to Abram – this time in far greater detail – his response is not exactly positive. In fact he falls flat on his face with laughter (as does Sarai a bit later on): “Oh, come off it, God, and talk sense. We’ve heard it all before and we don’t believe a word of what you’re saying. If Sarai couldn’t bear a child twenty-odd years ago, she certainly can’t do so now, it’s far too late”. God doesn’t react; he simply says, “Just wait and see: by this time next year, you will have a son”. That’s what does happen; and the baby is named Isaac – which means “he laughs”.

I don’t think we should be too critical of Abram and Sarai: their disbelief and scepticism were natural. Indeed, they may have even felt that God was mocking them. One writer on this passage says, “God’s grand promise of an everlasting covenant with the patriarch’s multitudinous offspring was called into the most serious question by the terrible and painful fact that Abe’s wife could not have any children. God might have pontificated about it in all manner of grandly divine ways, accompanied by full orchestra with trumpets and trombones, but the couple had no kids. This did tend to throw a serious spanner into the Godly plan, didn’t it?” Although God did go on to reassure the couple by saying, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”, I suspect that the only acceptable proof that he was able to deliver on his promises would be Sarai’s bulging stomach, followed by a crying baby in her arms.

So that’s the story, probably with too much detail! But what can it teach us (apart from alerting women to the consequences of lending their husband to their slave-girls, which I doubt is a pressing matter for any of us here today!)? I can see several themes here, so I’ll try to deal with each of them fairly briefly.

The first has to be the theme of age. Although Abram and Sarai were both elderly, God didn’t write them off. Quite the opposite in fact, as he used them, rather than younger and more obvious people, to carry out his plans. That’s an important lesson for Western society to learn, as it tends to value people while they are ‘economically productive’ but set them aside when they are no longer able to hold down a job. Having said that, more and more older people are staying in employment: here in Britain 446,601 people above the age of 70 were still working in 2022, compared with 277,926 in 2012. Some of those work because they want to keep participating in society: employment gives them meaning and stability, helps maintain their social ties and a sense of belonging, and may even offer them learning opportunities and new experiences. By working these people retain their human dignity.

There are other folk, many of them women, who are in a very different position; they desperately want to give up work but cannot, as their pension and savings are simply not enough to live on. The rising costs of food, energy and everything else pose a real threat for these people, and any suggestion of loosening the infamous “triple lock” on the State Pension fills them with dread. Many of them may feel that they have contributed diligently to society for 50 years – yet that society is now spitting them to fend for themselves. What a contrast to societies in, say, Africa where the old are respected and treasured rather than seen as a burden. Abram’s story shows us that God values older people; as far as his purposes are concerned, there’s no retirement age.

So that’s the age theme done and dusted! What about another one: faith? Our reading from Hebrews depicts Abram as a hero of faith who trusted God although his promises were slow to materialise. Dare I suggest that Hebrews gives us a rather “whitewashed” version of his faith? Although Abram did respond to God’s initial call to leave home and travel into an uncertain future, the passages we’ve looked at today tell me that the needle on the dial of his faith in fact wavered between “rock solid”, “plodding on“ and “I don’t believe a word of it”. After all, the episode of Hagar and Ishmael would never have happened if he’d totally trusted God to keep his promises – but he didn’t, and thought that God could do with a helping hand. That was a Bad Idea!

Yet Abram is still commended – which encourages me. For there are times when my faith feels strong, and times when it is wobbly. There are times when I feel that I can move mountains (well, tiny hills!) and times when I feel that prayer is a waste of time. There are times when I can trust God’s promises and wait patiently for them to be fulfilled, and times when I rail at him and say, “Why aren’t you doing anything? You simply can’t be trusted!” I’m sure that all Christians have felt the same because, unless we are very unusual, we’ll all have those ups and downs of faith. They are part and parcel of our journey with God. What’s hard is continuing to trust him when he seems to have vanished and, despite his promise ‘never to leave or forsake us’, we feel abandoned.

Age; faith; the final theme I’d like to take from Abraham’s story is patience. I’ve emphasised the timescale because we sometimes read the Bible and “telescope” events together (I think that’s especially true in the book of Acts where we get the impression that the apostles are doing amazing miracles of healing on a daily basis, when in fact we’re looking at events which take place over a wide area and over a period of twenty years – so these miracles are actually quite rare). Abraham’s story evolves over a quarter of a century, as he and his wife are getting steadily older; I think it’s perfectly understandable that they became frustrated by God and doubted his already hard-to-believe promise. You and I would have given up on him much more quickly!

This poses an interesting question. Christians sometimes say that we must wait for God’s timing, sometimes called the “kairos moment”; equally the Bible tells us that a thousand years to God is like a day to us. That’s all very well; but it isn’t if we have no idea as to when that “kairos moment” will happen – and, of course, none of us has a thousand years to play with! So is God playing games with us? Surely not.

Nevertheless Christians (and Jews for that matter) are enjoined to “rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him” and, while it’s true that we can be over-hasty and rush into action when we shouldn’t, it’s also true that “resting in God” can be extremely difficult – especially when we see a situation, whether it be a loved one suffering with pain or the ongoing tragedy in Gaza, where we feel he should act with speed but doesn’t. Few up us are naturally patient, all of us become infuriated when we see actions and projects being repeatedly delayed or deferred – and yes, I’m thinking of how long it’s taking to build the much-vaunted South Wales Metro, and of the refurbishment of Pentwyn Leisure Centre which has now been closed for four long years while partnerships and plans have been tossed around. Might I suggest that, while he ultimately remains inscrutable, God is at least more trustworthy than the Welsh Government or Cardiff Council? I’m joking, of course; but the words of Psalm 20 seem relevant: “Some trust in their chariots and others trust in their horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God”.

So there’s much to take from this story: God using rather than side-lining older people, faith strong and feeble, patient years and precipitate action. But if there’s one phrase I’d like you to take away with you, it’s this verse from the letter to the Hebrews: “Let us hold unswervingly [I like that word!] to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful”.