Thomas J Parlette
“Never Too Old”
Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16
2/28/21
The story is told about an elderly gentleman who was sitting in the reception room of a dentist’s office. It was his first visit to this particular dentist. While waiting for his appointment, he noticed a certificate hanging on a wall which bore the dentist’s full name. Suddenly he remembered that a slender, nice-looking young woman with that same name had been in his high school some 50 years ago. Could this be that same person?
But when the dentist came out to meet him, he quickly discarded any such thought. This gray-haired dentist with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been his classmate.
After she had examined his teeth, he mentioned the name of his high school, and asked if by chance she had gone there. “I sure did.”
“When did you graduate?” he asked.
“1965, why do you ask?”
“You were in my class,” he exclaimed.
The dentist squinted her eyes and looked at him closely and asked, “What subject did you teach?”(1)
Apparently he didn’t look so young either.
Our lesson for today from the book of Genesis begins like this: “When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make a covenant between you and me, and will make you exceedingly numerous.”
99 years old! Certainly old – but not too old for God to do something new. This was not the first time that God had come to Abram making promises. 24 years ago, when Abram was a spry 75 year- old, God had come to him and directed him to pick up and move to a land that God would show him. “Take your whole family, Abram. Don’t worry about where you’re going, I’ll show you in due time.”
Abram obeyed God – he left, went on the road with his whole family, because God told him to. Never too old to make a change when God is involved. That was the kind of faith Abram had. And that was the kind of faith that gave birth to the nation of Israel.
In today’s passage, God challenges Abram’s faith with an even more outlandish promise. God tells Abram that Sarai will have a son. At 99 years old, Abram will be a father! And Sarai, is going to have a baby boy when she is 89! Never too old, I guess.
It was hard to believe, but nevertheless – Abram believed God’s promise. And he gets a new name, as does Sarai. Now they are to be known as Abraham and Sarah. Even God takes on a new name. This is the first time in Scripture that God uses the name El Shaddai – God Almighty. Everybody gets a new name, because a new covenant, a new promise, is being formed. Abraham and Sarah would become the ancestors of a multitude of nations. And Abraham and Sarah believed every word. As Paul says, Abraham “hoped against hope” that the message was true. And Abraham moved forward with faith.
As we consider Abraham’s example, we see what faith really is. Faith is a dynamic, forward looking relationship with God. Faith is not a spectator sport. Faith is not sitting on your hands waiting for God to perform a miracle. Faith is a matter of movement. Faith is a matter of obedience to God’s command’s. God needs people today who will obey Jesus’ instructions to love, to serve and to give. We are not called to be passive spectator’s. We are called to get into the game of life.
Many Christians miss that truth. For many, faith is a cautious, cloistered type of experience in which one seeks, above all, not to ripple the waters. But faith also involves risk. Faith involves moving out, like Abraham did. Faith involves setting our eyes on a lofty goal, even when it might seem unreachable – like having a baby boy when you’re in your 90’s and so is your wife.
In other words, there is such a thing as being too careful. We miss the exhilaration of life when we refuse to venture out, to do things on faith, to stretch for that which is beyond our grasp.
Have you ever noticed that so many of our attitudes about life are expressed in cautious, or even negative terms? For instance, when the weather anchor gives the forecast for the next day. “Tomorrow there will be a 20% chance of snow.” They never say, “Hey, there’s an 80% chance that it’ll be nice tomorrow.” Faith has a positive outlook. Faith is being willing to heed God’s command regardless of how daunting it may seem. Abraham is an example of what faith is all about. Faith is moving out. Faith involves setting your eyes on a lofty goal. People of faith are those who enlarge our horizons, champion our causes, who move humanity forward. They inspire the rest of us.
A fellow Presbyterian pastor named Stephen Janssen tells about Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish physician and microbiologist, who won the Nobel Prize for medicine when he discovered penicillin. As many of you are probably aware, Fleming made this discovery quite by accident. One day he happened to notice that the fungus on a certain glass plate had died when it came into contact with some mold that was on the same plate. Fleming was a very positive, forward-looking person who followed up on his observations. Most people would just wash the mold off the plate – most of us don’t see much value in mold.
But out of curiosity, Fleming took a bit of mold and cultured it for further study. And out of his work back in 1928 came penicillin – the most widely used antibiotic in the world. Alexander Fleming had found a way to treat formerly severe and life-threatening illnesses such as pneumonia and meningitis.
Pastor Janssen writes, “One observer commented that what impressed him about Fleming was that he immediately acted on his observation. Most of us, when we see something unusual, we say “That’s interesting,” and we do nothing about it. We need to let God show us how to see the world’s difficulties, so that we might know what we can do about them.”(2)
It is important for us as Christian people to see that Christian faith is not a static, passive, non-threatening style of life. Jesus was a doer. He was a person who was so outspoken that he aroused envy, bitterness and even hatred. If he had been some nice, quiet guy sitting in the corner not bothering anyone – well, he wouldn’t have accomplished very much, and certainly not salvation and eternal life for his followers.
Somehow, though, the Christian faith is seen by many people as a style of life in which we are quiet, submissive people who never venture out, never trouble the waters, and subsequently never achieve great things. But nothing could be further from what God calls us to be. Christian faith is a dynamic, forward-looking relationship with God. People of faith are the doers in this world, they are the ones who enlarge our horizons. And one of the greatest acts of faith involves our relationships with others.
You may be familiar with the name Philippe Petit. Petit is a French high-wire artist who gained fame when he walked on a high-wire strung between the lofty towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971. Some of you may remember that, in 1974, he pulled off the same stunt at the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. As thousands watched below, Petit made seven crossings of a cable stretched 1,350 feet above the traffic and concrete of Manhattan – dancing, spinning and even lying down in the middle of his cable.
Even today, Philippe Petit is not afraid to take risks. In fact, he says he does not see wire walking as risky. He has rehearsed his moves on the high wire so many times that he feels safe there.
There is one thing, however that terrifies Philippe Petit. He says, “Some risks I find impossible to take – particularly personal risks with people – for example marriage, or having children.”(3)
That seems odd. Getting married and having children are scarier to this wire-walker than crossing a tiny cable 1,350 feet in the air. In some ways, I guess he’s right. Getting married is a big leap of faith. Pledging to love someone till death do us part, that’s a little risky, a little scary. And so is having children. Kids change everything. And just when you think you’ve got everything sort of under control, they grow into another stage with new challenges. Infant – to toddler – to pre-school – to kindergarten… and then they’re driving cars and looking at colleges. It is both risky and scary. But such relationships also bring great joy.
But there is a greater risk that this passage highlights – the leap of faith that Abraham took. A leap of faith in God.
Sheila Cassidy in her book Audacity to Believe, tells of being arrested in Chile years ago on trumped up charges after treating a wounded revolutionary. She was arrested and held without trial in a detention camp.
She was finally found guilty of a minor infraction but still was held in the detention camp. A friend gave her one of those pocket New Testaments. Leafing through it, she came to that passage in Romans where Paul asks, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Sheila writes, “Incredibly, in the midst of fear and loneliness, I was filled with joy, for I knew without any vestige of doubt that God was with me, and that nothing they could do would change that.”(4)
Faith is not accepting a handful of propositions and saying, “Oh yes, I believe. Now I am bound for heaven.” That is a pale imitation of the real thing. The real thing is when you know Jesus as your Savior and Lord and you seek to live courageously for him in this world – staking everything you are and hope to be on God’s eternal promise – like Abraham “hoping against hope” that the message of the covenant is true.
That is real faith. That is the kind of faith that can turn a world right side up. And as Abraham and Sarah demonstrate – you are never too old to have that kind of faith.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol XXXVII, No. 1, p43.
2. Ibid… p44.
3. Ibid… p45.
4. Ibid… p45-46.
