The Perfect Couple

The Perfect Couple
Rev. Alex Stevenson

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 Mark 8:31-38

Abram and Sarai were old! I am sorry. I don't know any other way to say it. I know that now-a-days people like Abram and Sarai are called "Senior Citizens." But Abram and Sarai were just plain old. Even by modern standards they were old. Abram was 99 years old and Sarai was 90.

Picture them if you will. See them standing next to each other in front of you. Abram is mostly bald. What little hair is left is white. His beard is long and white. Sarai's hair is also long and white. Sarai is stooped over a little and Abram has a cane. "Wisdom lines" run across their faces. And given that your typical nomad in the 20th century BC didn't have access to false teeth, their lips are drawn in because of as lack of teeth to support them.

And they have no children. They've never had any. No descendants whatsoever. At their 75th wedding anniversary there were no children or grandchildren or great grandchildren, just Lot and a few great nephews and nieces. They are old and barren. It just so happens that God wanted to make a nation. So God decided that Abram and Sarai were the prefect couple to start with.

The prefect couple? Perfect for what? God's purpose was to create a nation; a new race of people created to serve God's will. A chosen people that were holy and set apart for God's use. To make this nation God would begin by giving a special child to just the right couple. This was a child of promise who would bear the promise of God's grace and who was destined to father a nation.

With all due respect to Abram and Sarai, by human standards they were not the perfect couple to receive this child of promise. Imagine you are an adoption agent, and you have been given the job of placing this child of destiny with a family. Would you choose an elderly couple: he's almost 100 and she's not far behind. Would you place this child with a couple that has no experience raising children. Would you let a family that lives in a tent adopt this child.

No, human standards demand just the opposite! You would find a younger couple in their late 20's or 30's. After all you would like to think that the parents would still be alive to see this child graduate from high school. You would also choose a couple who already have well adjusted children because that demonstrates parenting skills. You would also choose a family that is not moving around all the time so that the child would have a stable home environment. By human standards an elderly, childless, nomadic couple is anything but the perfect couple.

By human standards Abram and Sarai are the last couple to start with in making a nation. But by God's standards, they were the perfect couple. God works in a different way and with different criteria than people do. People look for the optimal situation. A situation where there is already hope and life. A situation where the desired goal, in this case descendants, already seems possible. Then all that is required is assisting the already naturally existing tendencies.

But God doesn't work that way. God Almighty is a God of miracles. God looks for the most impossible and the most hopeless situation to start with. Our Heavenly Father is one who makes the impossible, possible. God is the one who brings life out of lifelessness. God makes the hopeless hopeful.

You see, by God standards Abram and Sarai are the perfect couple. The book of Hebrews says that Abram was as good as dead(Hebrews 11:12), yet God brought forth life from them. A 90-year-old woman and 99 year old man have a child! Impossible! But God makes the impossible possible. Abram and Sarai were a hopeless case, but God gave them hope. Anyone could produce a nation from a young couple. But only God could do it with a couple like Abram and Sarai. There would be no mistaking whose nation this was.

Jesus' death and resurrection is another example of God making the impossible possible, bringing hope out of hopelessness, of God bring life out of death. Jesus tried to explain this to his disciples. He told them plainly that the Son of Man must suffer and die and on the third day rise. But this didn't make sense to them. Jesus was the Messiah, a great King, and great kings don't die before they have been crowned. By human standards the Messiah was supposed to go to Jerusalem, conquer the Romans, and establish the Kingdom of God.

That was the way humans think not the way God thinks. Jesus explained God's plan to the disciples. The Son of Man was going to Jerusalem - that part was fine! But once in Jerusalem he would be rejected and die on a cross and rise on the third day. That just didn't add up by human standards. By human standards you needed a palace and an army: that was the perfect couple for bringing forth a mighty King. According to God's standards the perfect couple for bringing forth the King of Kings was a cross and a tomb.

It has been said that Christianity is the only religion that has taken an instrument of torture, the cross, and turned it into an object of beauty. We decorate our churches with crosses and we wear them around our necks. If you think about what a cross really is, it is like we are wearing electric chairs or gas chambers around our necks. But that's not completely true. Electric chairs and gas chambers are designed to put people to death as painlessly and quickly as possible. The cross was designed to torture people to death in as painful and lengthy a way as possible. Yet God took this instrument of torture and sin and turned it into the means of by which sin is forgiven. Through the cross God brings and end to the spiritual torture of eternal separation from our Creator. And then God took the tomb, a place to death and decay, and made it a womb that brings forth eternal life.

That is God's way of doing things. God brings hope out of hopelessness. God creates light out of darkness. God makes the impossible possible. Our Heavenly Father brings life forth from lifelessness.

Are there situations in your life that seem hopeless? Does your family life, your marriage, or your spiritual life seem to be a hopeless case? Does your spiritual life feel dead and lifeless? Do you sometimes feel like you dwell in darkness? If so, that is the perfect situation for God to work. God specializes in bringing life out of death, and hope out of hopelessness. God majors in making the impossible possible.

Just turn it over to God. But when you do turn it over to God, you will be changed. God changed Abram and Sarai. They went from childlessness to being the parents of a nation. They went from being as good as dead to bringing forth life. They went from being no people to being God's people. And God changed their names as a sign of this change. God changed them and God will change you.

God can bring life to the deadness in you. After all God brought us his eternal love and loyalty through the disloyalty of Jesus' disciples. It was God who offers us eternal life through the death of his Son. It was God who used a cross and a tomb to bring forth new life. And if you accept Christ and put your whole trust in him, God will do the same for you. God will take the deadness and darkness in you and make it light and life. And your Heavenly Father will make hope possible even if things are impossibly hopeless.

used by permission
Lectionary Sermons of Rev. Alex Stevenson