SERMON FOR AUGUST 11, 2019     NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 
     TEXTS:  GENESIS 15:1-6; HEBREWS 11:1-3, 8-16; LUKE 12:32-40     
     Phineas Taylor Barnum, P. T. Barnum, was the master of the con in the 19th century. He delighted audiences with a real mermaid, honest injun’ , captured near the Fiji Islands, carefully preserved and artfully hyped in the press by her owner. After she went on display at Barnum’s American Museum in lower Manhattan, ticket sales tripled, even though the specimen was an obvious fake. It had been stitched together from parts of an orangutan, a baboon, and some kind of salmon. Minor details. 
     Then there was Joice Heth, who had been a slave in Kentucky. She was advertised as the 161-year-old former nursemaid of George Washington. Barnum bought her act, which essentially meant buying her, from a traveling show in Philadelphia. He quickly recovered his $1,000 investment by sending her out on tour. Ms. Heth was blind, toothless and practically paralyzed, but Barnum assured the audience that she “was very garrulous when speaking of her protégé, ‘dear little George.’” According to a recent biography of the great showman, Barnum staged controversies for the express purpose of generating coverage. He made a fortune, then lost it, and while broke gave speeches on “the art of money-getting,” which restored his fortunes. Toward the end of his life Barnum even toyed with the idea of running for President. His running mate, he suggested, should come from a state like Indiana. (You can’t make this stuff up!!) Barnum called himself the “Prince of Humbugs,” which, as the book review in the New Yorker points out, left open the possibility that one day there would arise a king of that realm.
     How did Barnum come to discern such a vocation? It seems he learned early, falling prey himself as a child to the art of the dupe. Phineas was born in Bethel, CT, in 1810. At his baptism his grandfather had given him a tract of allegedly rich farmland near the village. Barnum later wrote in his autobiography, “My father and mother frequently reminded me of my wealth and hoped I would do something for the family when I attained my majority. The neighbors professed to fear that I might refuse to play with their children because I had inherited so large a property.” For years the youngster begged to visit the as-yet-unseen legacy. Eventually his father acquiesced and arranged for an expedition to the promised land, dubbed “Ivy Island.” Barnum was in for a shock. He writes: “I saw nothing but a few stunted ivies and straggling trees. The truth flashed upon me. I had been the laughing-stock of the family and neighborhood for years.” Instead of fertile fields, he was deeded a hornet-infested swamp. Barnum took the lesson to heart. “My grandfather would go farther, wait longer, work harder and contrive deeper to carry out a practical joke, than for anything else under heaven. In this one particular, as well as in many others, I am almost sorry to say I am his counterpart.”
     In today’s first lesson we read about Abram, later to be called Abraham, who, like P. T. Barnum, is counting on a promise of land. A twofold promise, actually: land and descendants. “The Lord said to Abram . . ., ‘Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.’” But other peoples lived in the land at the time, and Abram and his wife Sarah had no children. Years pass; they continue to dwell among foreigners and remain childless. Abram speaks frankly and calls God to account, when the Lord appears to him yet again. “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great.” “O Lord, what will you give me, for I continue childless . . .? You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” God responds: “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir. Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be.” 
     The Lord reiterates his promise but does not fulfill it straightaway. Nor does God give Abram a timetable for when that fulfillment will come to pass. The announcement that Sarai will bear a son within a year appears two chapters later in the Genesis account, a full 14 years after the vision recounted in today’s first lesson. The renewal of God’s promise under the stars that night requires renewed trust on Abrams’s part, a commitment to more patient, faithful waiting. “And [Abram] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” 
     In the New Testament Paul cites this Old Testament verse in several of his letters, and it is critical to his understanding of the Gospel. Take, for example, this passage from Romans: “[Abraham] did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead . . . or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ Now the words ‘it was reckoned to him,’ were written not for his sake alone but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him, who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Romans 4:19-25). The second half of the verse in Genesis, however, is ambiguous as to the subject and object of the verb “reckon.” The English translation in our lectionary settles the ambiguity along Paul’s line: “. . . and the Lord reckoned it to him [that is, Abraham] as righteousness.” But a straightforward translation of the Hebrew into English is “he reckoned it to him as righteousness,” leaving it up to the interpreter to decide who is “he” and who is “him.” Is God the one reckoning, or is it Abram? As one Bible scholar points out: “The verb ‘reckon’ can also be translated as ‘think, account, impute.’ If Abram is the subject, and God is the object, then it is Abram who accounts God to be righteous.” He relies on what the Lord has accomplished on his and Sarah’s behalf in their relationship thus far. He regards God as one who will keep his promises, who is reliable and deserving of trust. Abram has come this far by faith; he is ready to continue on with this God whose word he believes . And so the next stage of their journey begins.
     The descendants of Abraham and Sarah, “as many as the stars of heaven, and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore,” are strangers and foreigners on earth, in the world and not of it, as Jesus said. We are always on the way, seeing the reign of God from afar, yet experiencing our homecoming even now. We desire a better country, and we work at it, in anticipation of that heavenly homeland promised us. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we pray. In the Large Catechism Luther writes: “We ask  . . . that . . . this may be realized in us and that God’s name may be praised through the holy Word and Christian living. This we ask, both in order that we who have accepted it may remain faithful and grow daily in it and also in order that it may find approval and gain followers among other people and advance with power throughout the world. In this way many, led by the Holy Spirit, may come into the kingdom of grace and become partakers of redemption, so that we may all remain together eternally in this kingdom that has now begun.” This kingdom that has now begun extends its reach through our acts of mercy, our fight for justice, our deepening love for others in the midst of fear, prejudice and unconscionable cruelty. The promise made to us at baptism does not leave us with P. T. Barnum’s Ivy Island, a humbug of a legacy that betrays our trust. For as Jesus assures his disciples, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Here and now, forever. Amen.