"All the Families of the Earth"
Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Ps. 32; Rom. 5:12-19; Matt. 4:1-11
Dr. George R. Sinclair
Pastor
February 17, 2008
How’s the world doing? If you had to give a grade, what would you give it: an A, maybe a B+, perhaps a C or an F? What would you give?
How’s the world doing? Is it “coming together and falling apart” as some say? Is it becoming “flat” as Thomas Friedman suggests or is it “clashing” as Samuel Huntington believes? Is the world divided between Jihad and McWorld as Benjamin Barber observes? How is the world doing?
And by world I mean specifically planet Earth—“all the families of the earth” as God puts it to Abraham. And there are many families. When I was a boy there were 2.5 billion people alive. Today the number is twice that and in 12 years it will be three times that—a whopping 7.5 billion.
The current world political map organizes the families of the earth into 193 countries, 26 more than in 1990. Officially, there are 192 members of the UN not counting Taiwan, which China counts as its province. Worldwide, there are 61 colonies—14 under the U.S. flag, which is third behind France with 16 and second behind the UK with 15.
According to the UN Human Development Index, the most livable country in the world is Iceland. Yes, that came as a surprise to me too. Norway and Australia place second and third on the UN Index. The U.S. ranks twelfth just after Finland and just before fourteenth placed Spain. Sierra Leone came in first among the least livable nations followed by 29 other African nations.
If you were to put six people in a life boat and survey them for religious affiliation, two would be Christian and one would be Muslim. There would be one Hindu, one Atheist, and one Other.
That’s the world I’m asking about. How are we doing—all of us in that lifeboat? And it really is a lifeboat. I know the planet seems really, really big and 6 billion is a large number, but compared to the universe we inhabit, it is a really, really small world. The star around which Earth orbits is just one of 400 billion in the Milky Way and the Milky Way is just one of 140 billion galaxies. If all of the stars in the universe were the size of the head of a pin, they would fill up Miami’s Orange Bowl not once or ten times or even a hundred times. It would take three billion Orange Bowls to hold them all. The Earth seems big, but compared to all God has made and is making—it’s one incredibly small lifeboat. So, how are we doing? How are “all the families of the earth” making out?
I don’t know what made me think of this but did you see the report on CBS about blue eyes—not Frank Sinatra, though he was mentioned—but a report out of Scandinavia about blue eyes? Did anybody see that?
How many people here have blue eyes? According to the Scandinavians, you’re all related—you’re all descended from one mutation. And they don’t know if the mutation had some purpose—like gathering more light in northern climes—or if the mutation just made people more likely to get a desirable mate. Anyway, they say that everyone with blue eyes descends from one blued eyed ancestor.
Actually, I thought about blue eyes because when you start looking around—mostly back into time—we all are more or less related. Each of us has around 10 thousand trillion cells in our body. Each cell contains a strand of DNA, which if uncoiled would extend about six feet. If you took all of your DNA and spliced it together into a single strand, it would stretch from Mobile to Los Angeles and back 2,400 times. That’s a lot of DNA and it comes from many different people.
My father had blue eyes, my mother brown. My father had red hair. I’ve got red in my beard and my son has even more. I’ve got double jointed shoulders—you know angel wings—so does my daughter, but not my son. People say Meredith favors me and Sean his mother. But to really get a handle on gene pools you have to count backward. Go backward to the time of Lincoln and you’ll find that more than 250 people each contributed to your gene pool. By the time you get to Shakespeare, your family tree has spread its limbs to include 16,385 ancestors. Go back even further, say to the days of Jesus 64 generations ago, and you’ll find a thousand trillion ancestors, which is more than the number of human beings who have ever lived, which adds up to what Billy Bryson calls “a genetically discreet move.”
Like it or not, we’re all related. And, as the saying goes, you don’t choose your family. Family is who you are stuck with. And, as it turns out, genetically at least, we’re stuck with each other. We’re all one very big family, which brings me to Genesis Twelve and the Call of Abraham or the Covenant of Abraham, which ends with the stirring if not curious promise of the Creator—“In you, [Abraham] all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Now to understand Genesis Twelve you have to back up to not only Genesis One-Ten but also especially to Genesis Eleven and the story of the Tower of Babel. Genesis suffers no illusions about how the world works. Go back and read again the story of Cain and Abel or Noah and the Flood. You remember why God destroys the earth in the days of Noah? “The earth was filled with violence . . .” Genesis tells us. And God vows, “Because the earth is filled with violence . . . I’m going to destroy them along with the earth.”
So the flood comes and the earth is destroyed all except for Noah. Noah comes out of the Ark and there is a do-over. God begins again. There’s a fresh start, a clean slate—all of the corrupt and violent people whose hearts where inclined only toward evil were wiped off the face of the earth, which, if you’re trying to make a wonderful world where everybody gets along reasonably well with everybody else, is a logical thing to do—get rid of the bad guys and girls. That at least is the storyline.
So what happens? It’s not long after the flood that people are at it again only this time they are organized and they are ready to build an empire: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” That was the plan, anyway.
The story, popularly known as the Tower of Babel, is likely a dig at the Babylonians, Israel’s ancient neighbor and enemy, but it’s much more than that. The business about “making a name” is important. We call it reputation. Reputation was important when I was a kid. We all knew who the toughest guys were and we avoided them like the plague. Of course you don’t have to be a tough guy “to make a name for yourself,” you might make a lot of money or get your picture in the paper or play piano really well or win a spelling bee or be the smartest person in your school. There are many ways we make names for ourselves.
I love the way Genesis tells the story—the people have made this imperial city, which they think is really cool and impressive. It’s got this great big tower and it’s obviously well-fortified—lest it be scattered to the four winds. It’s a really impressive city, but God, whose way up in heaven, way up there in one of those billions of galaxies, has to “come down” to see the imperial city. So, God comes down. You’d think God could see the imperial city from heaven, in as much as God sees everything. But no, God has to come down to inspect the place, which makes you think that God either has very bad vision or else from God’s perspective it’s a very puny imperial city.
Anyway, God comes down and what does he decide? What is God’s take on the empire? “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”
The empire builders worried the Lord, so he put a stop to their building. God confused their language and “they left off building the city.” Now you might think that God has something against cities, but that’s not the issue. And you might even think God has something against name-making, which is another way of saying, identity, tribe, country, nationality, and the like, but that’s not it either. As a matter of fact, name-making is precisely what God promises Abraham: “I will bless you, and make your name great.” God will make Abraham’s name great. And by making Abraham’s name great all the families of the earth will be blessed.
At this point in the story, we’re not told exactly how Abraham’s name will be made great or how he will be a blessing through which “all of the families of the earth shall be blessed,” but we have a hint, a foreshadowing. Before Abraham can be a blessing, before God can make a name for him, Abraham must leave his country, his kindred, and his father’s house.
Now, that sounds utterly impossible. That’s asking too much. Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s house? Leave all of those things which give identity? Does God really expect us to give up our citizenship? Must we surrender family heritage?
I love my country and I’m very proud of my Scots ancestry. I even have a photo on my office wall of an old crumbling down Sinclair castle built way back when. I get all teary watching Mel’s Gibson’s Braveheart. My gosh, I even love bagpipes, as long as they’re played outdoors.
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Leaving family and flag is tough enough, but land is another problem, isn’t it? Chosen-ness is a real problem too especially when coupled with the land. “We’re special. We’re entitled. We have a right to this land.” You can’t get much higher than that—who says you have a right to that land? “Well, God says. It’s right here in the Bible. And we’re God’s people.” Is that what God intended? Did God’s election privilege Abraham over other families of the earth? Did God’s election exclude everyone else and entitle Abraham to the prized territory between Jordan and the sea?
We’re still having the same problem today—whose land is it? Does anyone ever own the earth? Boundaries are important. You’ve got have boundaries.
Somebody pointed out to me the other day that the reason our water meter over at Baytreat is on the other side of the property line is because we sold our neighbor a little strip of land and the meter was never moved. The boundary moved but not the meter. Boundaries are important. They tell us where things are or at least where we think they’re supposed to be. Borders do that. Borders give national identity, citizenship. But is that how God makes Abraham a blessing? Is Abraham a blessing because of a border that defines him? And is that how Abraham’s offspring become a blessing too?
In his book, The Great Divide, C.S. Lewis depicts hell as a vast, grey city inhabited only at its outer edges. Think East Germany—block after block, mile after mile, industrial looking concrete—that’s what I see anyway when I hear Lewis’ description. In Lewis’s hell, all of the houses in the middle of the city are empty, row after row, mile upon mile, all empty because everyone who had once lived in them quarreled with neighbors and made a new border. Then they quarreled with their new neighbors and divided again.
How’s the world doing? It’s a big question, so big it can just about overwhelm. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe we need to be overwhelmed—overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe and our planet’s smallness; overwhelmed by its diversity and yet also its intrinsic unity. We don’t choose our families. We don’t choose our genes, but we can choose our identity; when leaving country and kindred we accept God’s name. Maybe then we will be a blessing. Maybe then we will be a family without borders. And maybe then “all the families of the earth” will do alright. “Go . . . I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing . . . and in you all of the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Amen.