Children or no children, it’s risky to want something out of life.  It’s a bold move to ask for a blessing.  Even bolder when you get a blessing to keep coming back to it year after year, knowing it has outgrown your previous efforts to care for it.  The blessing, now with a life of its own, calls for one’s own expansion.  More fabric to fit a larger frame.  More room within oneself to hold this ever-expanding prayer.

The glory and the beauty and the wonder of divine presence is all around them.  But they settle, like we all do at times, for something less alive, less real.  They make a golden calf, and believe, for a short time, it’s the best symbol of what’s important, what’s worthy of their energy and resources and devotion.  But fortunately for them, and for us, God, keeps offering the real thing, always ready for us to receive it, to accept this less shiny but far more glorious reality as the grandest gift of all.

Whoever put Genesis together thought this was an important story to tell, at length.  How do we use the power we have, and how will that affect future generations?  And what if the most powerful thing we can do, the greatest legacy, is to let go of vengeance, to weep and grieve for the sins of our ancestors and our own, to love those who have treated us like an enemy, and to protect vulnerable life rather than subdue it.

Abram and Sarai’s story (and the author who wrote it) speaks about the positive impact that wrestling with our faith/God can have on us. God seemingly calls Abram and offers a promise in return. Then later adds more detail, and all the while Abram is grappling with what the call and promise means. In this sermon Marty connects “contending” with “theologizing” – the act of doing theology not as a destination or doctrine; but as a dialogue and a spiritual discipline that can enliven faith. The title playfully explores how in Genesis 12 God promises Abram and Sarai more kids than sand on earth, and in Gen 15 God promises more kids than stars in the sky.