Being Reminded and Invited

I thought about entitling these ruminations as "Abram and Abraham Lied," but expressing it in the first sentence will do nicely just the same. I'm back in Oklahoma for the weekend, attending a gathering of men from my former denomination called "Sessions 2008." This group gathers every four years in different locations across the country for fellowship, food and attempts at middle-aged frolics, having begun such matters in 1976. This morning I decided to attend a workshop loosely titled "The Old Testament" led by a Professor who teaches said collection and, like me, once lived in the state where wind does sweep down the (mostly Republican these days) plains. Since seminary, I've had a living interest in the first testament of God's ongoing revelation--for we Christians anyway--and am usually eager to listen, learn and try not to talk too much. So today's opportunity was a welcome way to spend a few minutes.
Our convener broke our large group into smaller fragments and assigned us the task of looking closely at three apparently different stories in Genesis, of which my particular fellows and I , as I recall, perused 12:-10-20. It's the story of Abram--not yet Abraham--telling Sarai--eventually Sarah--to lie to Pharaoh so they might gain admission into Egypt and, given the present famine in Canaan--eat. Abram told Sarai--not asked, told--to say that she was his sister rather than his wife. As the story goes, Pharoah admitted Sarai "into his house," probably meaning in those days that Pharoah had sex with Sarai and there was nothing she could do about it. The text isn't spcific, but given the cultural realities of those years, it's a fair inference that Sarai was "sent for," especially since the text indicates that she "was a beautiful woman." The story goes on that Pharoah rewarded Abram with multiple material gifts for Sarai ("'s services," but again, the text isn't specific here), but eventually YHWH (the LORD in English and always capitalized) sent plagues onto Pharoah and, conveniently, he saw the light enough to send Abram, Sarai and their unmentioned fellow travellers on their way.
The other two stories from a bit later in Genesis were basically retellings of the same story even as Abimelech became Pharoah and, in the final eipsode, Isaac took the place of his father while Rebecca became her mother-in-law. All of this was fascinating stuff, especially since in the stories before and after each episode, the writers of Genesis proclaimed and reaffirmed God's promise(s) to his people. In the midst of our overall discussions, however, I was once again reminded how they have been unfortunately misinterpreted by us people of faith for our own purposes even as we profess the desire to "take the Bible seriously."
Several times in our assembly, I heard people say that "once God got angry at Pharoah (for what he may have done with Sarai), he got busy" and saved Abram, Sarai and the promise of faith. Others put it that "this was all part of God's plan" while still more wanted to say that Pharoah probably didn't have sex with Sarai, implying that someone so specifically chosen by God for "his purposes" couldn't possibly fall into the hands of such a nefarious a character as Pharoah. I tried, without much success, to keep a sort of straight face. I became reminded that for all our talk about "taking the Bible seriously," we still want to impose our beliefs about God's relationship with human beings onto what the text(s) actually say. It is true, as I learned today, that Abram's lie was not seen in the same light as we understand a lack of truth-telling since as the senior male of the household, it was Abram's cultural job to use any method and any means to protect it. That obligation, logically enough, became even more pronounced as Abram had just received God's promise of future generations. If, as would have happened with his truth-telling, Abram had been killed by Pharoah and Sarai simply absorbed into his household with no hope of leaving, it is understandable that our biblical hero might have wanted, well, "to help God out a little bit" by making sure that he stayed alive long enough to have a chance at preserving God's promise.
There are basically two interelated problems with that idea. First, that there was any sort of "plan" at all apart from God's promise and second, Abram's--and our own--desire to somehow "help God out a little bit." What I wanted to scream was that God did not institute any pan at all before the beginning that, conveniently for Christians, culminated in the "Second Coming" of Jesus. That notion comes from a particular reading of Scripture, refers to John Calvin's notion of God's "sovereignity" and creates more than a few theological problems (was the Holocaust a part of the plan? The Trail of Tears? How about the woman who died in a Brooklyn hospital lobby floor last week after she had been ignored for apparently 24 hours? Was the Murrah Building explosion that murdered 168 Oklahomans including small children part of the plan?). Many of God's people have just swallowed these dubious notions without one ounce of thought to their implications and what those inferences suggest about God. Such thinking--however well intentioned as most of the people who use that expression, in my experience, are not moral monsters--has done more harm to more people than almost any theological notion I can imagine.
What I did manage to suggest here and thgere this morning was that Abram--and, in the later stories, Abraham and Isaac--just out and out lied. They lied , or as my Baptist Grandmother might have said, they sinned (she would have put it more graciously). Whether their time and place thought it morally acceptable--or at least necessary--to those of us who read these stories today, our moral code tells us without equivocation that Abram, Abraham and Isaac, the heroes of faith we learned to believe set us on the road to "God's saving revelation in Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice was the final atonement for our sins that, if we accept him as our personal Lord and Savior, will get us into heaven," were morally dubious characters at the very best. We continue to have a great deal of trouble in accepting what the stories so clearly tell us through the lenses of our own values, so we desperately look for any means, methods or rationalizations that "pretty-fy" or clean up what stares us in the face.
At the same time, we paradoxically miss what so clearly stares in the face. We do not allow ourselves to see, in a rather interesting irony, what Abram also did not allow himself to see. With our sometimes desperate talk about "the plan" or some other eternal recurrence of the same (Nietzsche pun), we miss the reality of God's ongoing promise. We miss that, in spite of our own foolishness, fear and outright unfaithfulness, God remains faithful, even to the point of working with liars, thieves, rogues and moral ne-er do wells. As my Baptist grandfather might have said, to grab hold of God's promise and embrace God's loving abundance stands as our ongoing invitation as God's people. That is no easy grab to accomplish, quite often well-nigh and apparently impossible. But as Henry may also have said, God's love is greater than our fear and promises to--somehow--see us through. That's something I can, at my best when I, with fear and trembling, muster the courage to be long enough to let myself experience God in yet newer ways, doing so "just as I am." I don't even need a plan to do it.