The Stories We Tell

Genesis 13:1-18

October 8, 2023 • Mount Pleasant UMC

When I was a kid, I hated going to family reunions. My mom’s mom’s family had a get together every December with all the brothers and sisters and cousins and in-laws and outlaws at a shelter house in Fairmount, Indiana—home of James Dean and Jim Davis (who created “Garfield”). We would leave after church to go to Fairmount, and as a kid that seemed like the longest trip ever. Now I know it was just about an hour from home, but back then the trip seemed to go on forever. And I didn’t know anyone who was there. These cousins I only saw at this time of year. And there was nothing to do. All these relatives seemed to want to do was sit around the tables, look at pictures and tell stories. A lot of the stories they had told the year before, too. Why did they want to tell the same old stories over and over and over again? As I kid, I hated those times. Now, looking back as an adult, there isn’t much I wouldn’t give to be able to do it all over again. Aunt Irene, Uncle Charlie and Aunt Sally, they’re all gone now, and a lot of the stories they told are gone, too.

I had a woman in one of my congregations named Pauline Huffman. Pauline over 90 years old when I got to know her, and she had been homebound already for quite a while by then. When I would go to visit Pauline, she had about three stories she would tell twice each time I visited. One was about how her dad would welcome anyone to stay with them, including a man who crawled through their window once. And she would tell about the farm store she and her family used to run, the ruins of which were still out by the highway. And she would tell about the meals she used to cook at the church, and how she missed being able to do that. When Pauline had told her stories twice, I knew it was time to go. When Pauline was 99 years old, I told her I thought was going to live to be 100, and she said to me, “I sure hope not.” She got her wish. But I still remember her stories. They were a big part of who she was.

Stories are the way we “make sense of our lives and our place in the world” (Truax & Campbell, Love Let Go, pg. 39). You can tell a lot about a culture by the stories they tell. In fact, what does it say about our culture that most of our popular movies and television programs are violent and dark? You can also tell a lot about a person by the stories they tell, especially the stories they tell themselves, the stories they choose to believe and internalize. “We become the stories we tell. If you repeat a story often enough, it will become a kind of established truth” (Truax & Campbell 39). What are the stories you live by? What stories give shape to your life?

This morning we are beginning a new sermon series, and I’m going to be up front with you this morning, as I try to be every year: this is our stewardship sermon series, and at the end of these three weeks, you will have an opportunity to make a promise or pledge of generosity for the coming year toward the church. But between now and then, we’re going to do some reflecting on what a life looks like whose story is one of “Love Let Go.” When we develop a different mindset, when a different story takes over our lives, we become radically generous people, followers of Jesus in an ungenerous world.

To begin thinking about that, we’re going to travel back in time somewhere around four thousand years and meet up with a wandering believer named Abram. Abram is often called the “father of the faithful,” as Judaism, Christianity and Islam all trace their roots back to him. Abram didn’t set out on this journey on his own initiative, though. When he was seventy-five years old, he heard a call from God to leave the place he had always lived, take his family and his possessions, and go to…well, God didn’t tell him at first where he was going. God just said go to “the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). It’s like heading out on a trip with no destination in mind and no GPS to tell you when you get there. But Abram goes, and he travels around, goes down to Egypt, acquires lots of flocks, herds, silver and gold, and becomes very wealthy (13:1). So does his nephew Lot, who is traveling with him, and pretty soon it becomes evident that the land cannot support both of them. There is not enough water. There is not enough grass for the animals. And there are other people there; Genesis says the Canaanites and the Perizzites were living in the land (13:7). And whenever resources are in short supply, tempers start to flare. Genesis says, “Quarreling arose between Abram’s herders and Lot’s” (13:7). It became obvious to Abram that things could not continue as they had been (cf. Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone—Part One, pg. 152).

So Abram goes to Lot and reminds him they are family. Not only are they biologically related, they are bound together in their belief in this God who called them to this new land. They are the people of God, and because of that they are called to be peacemakers. That’s been true from the beginning, and Jesus himself affirmed being peacemakers in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Matthew 5:9; Goldingay 153). So for Abram and Lot, making and keeping peace in their family and among their people means going separate ways. So Abram says, “Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left” (13:9).

Now, let me point out a couple of things. As the elder, Abram would have had the right to pick his place first. If, as he says, the whole land is before them (13:9), custom, tradition and family practices would say Abram gets first choice and that generally would mean he would get the best land. I wish my younger brother had understood that when we were growing up! Anyway…not only that, but he was the one to whom God had promised the land in the first place. He should have had first choice, but Abram gives Lot that choice as a gift (cf. Ross, “Genesis,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 1, pg. 103), the reason for which we will come back to in a few moments.

Here’s the other thing though: what you see depends on where you stand. Abram invites Lot to go left or right, and that’s not a political statement! In Hebrew thinking, when you are making a decision, you face east, toward the rising sun, toward the new day. So choosing left means choosing to go north and choosing right means choosing to go south. In the west is the lowlands where the Philistines will eventually settle and in the east is Jordan River Valley and mountains, an area filled with green trees and capped off by the oasis of Jericho “where natural springs turn desert into garden and orchard” (Goldingay 153). Those springs, by the way, still flow today; we saw them when we were there in January of this year. This is what Lot wants. He wants the good land, the land that seemingly will take very little to no work to make productive, the land that has cities and people. It’s a well watered and flourishing land, and Lot selfishly chooses it for himself, leaving the desert and the lowlands to Abram. Now, we the readers know (because the author of Genesis foreshadows it) that Lot has just made the biggest mistake of his life. He settles near Sodom, a place where the people were “wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord” (13:13), a place which will eventually be destroyed for its sin (13:10; Genesis 19).

Why the different choices? That Lot turns east and Abram turns west is more than a geographical difference. It represents the different stories they are living by at this point in their lives. And their different stories are not all that different from the same stories we tell ourselves, the stories we live by. Let’s see if either of these stories sound familiar. Here’s Lot’s story: the world is a hard place, and you only get what you earn. If someone gives you something, take all you can get. It’s a world of scarcity, after all, and there’s only so much to go around. You’d better look out for number one, and get all you can get before someone else gets it. And once you get it, you’d better hang onto it. Grab on tight and don’t let go, whether that’s people or possessions or whatever else. If it’s yours, don’t let anyone else have it. The story of scarcity says “greed is good” and it is closely tied to fear—fear that we won’t have enough, fear that someone else will get ahead of us, fear that if we share what we have, there won’t actually be enough to go around.

Honestly, the scarcity story is the one a lot of us live by most of the time, especially in the church. Every year when it’s budget time, we begin to plan and dream and think about what the church might be able to accomplish in the year—or years—to come. But it always comes back to the question of money. We can’t do this or that because we don’t have the money. Or we won’t have the money. Or we don’t think we will have the money. We live in a scarcity mindset. For Lot, that meant he took and lived in the land he thought was good, a land that looked good right here and now. He based it on appearances, but what he actually chose was a land full of sin and decay, a place that did not please God and would soon come tumbling down around him. A scarcity mindset causes us to become unreasonably focused on the “now” rather than trying to perceive, discern and listen to where God might be calling us next. We can end up living that way in our lives, too, where we hold so tightly to what we have that we can’t enjoy any of it. Remember, the scarcity mindset is rooted in fear—fear of the future, fear of running out, fear of not having enough. Remember what I said earlier? We become the stories we tell, and if we tell a story often enough, it becomes established truth (whether it matches reality or not) (cf. Truax & Campbell 39).

There is another story, however—a story called abundance. This is the story Abram is living in, and it’s rooted in trust. Abram allowed Lot to choose first, trusting that the land had been given to him by God and no matter what choice Lot made, God would take care of him. “He knew that the promise was his, and that he did not have to cling to things. And he knew even if he gave the whole land away, God would still give it to him and his descendants” (Ross 103). From a human standpoint, we would probably say he gave up his future, his resources and his family’s security. But he’s done that before, too, like when he left his home and set out to find the land God was pointing him toward. Abram’s also in a situation where his wife, Sarai, is not able to have children, so Lot in many ways is the future of his family. To separate at this point is, in a lot of ways, giving up on the future. And yet—and yet, as soon as Abram lets go of that future security, as soon as he allows Lot to make his own choice, God comes back to him and reaffirms the promise. God says, “Look around from where you are…all the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted” (13:14-16). Despite all evidence to the contrary, the promise is still valid. Lot cannot take it away, no matter what he chooses. And Abram knows this because he is living by a different story.

There are, of course, all sorts of people throughout the Bible who live by this grand story of a generous and abundant God. One of them I was reading again recently is Stephen in the book of Acts. Stephen was one of the people chosen to take care of the daily distribution of food to the widows who, some thought, were being overlooked. Stephen was one of those chosen to do this because the Apostles needed to focus on preaching the good news about Jesus and not on “waiting tables” (Acts 6:2). And yet, pretty soon, we find Stephen preaching and healing. And then he gets himself arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, to give an account of himself. Why was he preaching about Jesus? And, rather than answering their questions, Stephen proceeds to tell them a story—a story they of course would have already known because, remember, these are Jewish rulers. They of all people should have known the story Stephen tells. He begins with Abraham, talks about Moses and tells about the escape from slavery in Egypt, and he concludes by sharing about Jesus. But do you know who the central character in Stephen’s story is? It’s not Abraham. It’s not Moses. And it’s not even Jesus. The central character in the tale Stephen tells is God. Over and over again, he emphasizes not what the people are doing but what God has done. He says, “The God of glory appeared…promised…spoke…gave…” and on it goes (cf. Acts 6-7). God is the main “actor” in the story, and this God is one of abundance. There is nothing he does not own and there is nothing he cannot do. The story of the Bible challenges us to determinedly believe what God has promised: “There will always be enough” (Truax & Campbell 50).

So let me ask this question of you and me: who is the subject of our story? Who is the central focus of the story we live by? Who is the central focus of our worship, of our service, of the things we do and say even in this place? Is it “me, myself, and I”? Or is it God (cf. Walt, “The Grammar of a Martyr,” Wake-Up Call, 9/25/2023)? The focus on “me” leads to a story of scarcity, but a focus on God leads to a story of abundance because he is the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10). He is the God whose resources never run out.

It doesn’t matter how much we have. It matters that we find a way to share what we have. No matter our income, no matter our wealth or lack thereof, the call for God’s people is still to generosity. And generosity is rooted in trust. One major difference between Abram and Lot is that Abram trusted God to give him the land; Lot took what he wanted. “Generosity is the evidence of a living faith, for faith does not selfishly seek its own desires but is self-denying and magnanimous” (Ross 104). After all, Abram had been told by God he would be blessed to be a blessing to the world (cf. Genesis 12:3) and he believed that promise to be true.

Shane Claiborne tells of working alongside Mother Teresa in Calcutta< India. As a part of that work, every Tuesday, they would get about a hundred homeless children together to play games, eat a big meal and have a party. One week, one of the kids, an eight-year-old who was homeless, told Claiborne it was his birthday, so Claiborne went and got him some ice cream. Listen to how Claiborne describes it: “He was so excited he stared at it, mesmerized. I have no idea how long it had been since he had eaten ice cream. But what he did next was brilliant. He yelled at all the other kids and told them to come over. He lined them up and gave them all a lick. His instinct was: this is so good I can’t keep it for myself. In the end, that’s what this whole idea of generosity it all about. Not guilt. It’s about the joy of sharing. It’s about realizing the good things in life—like ice cream—are too good to keep for ourselves” (qtd. in Truax & Campbell 55). That little boy lived by a different story, one that we would think he should not live by. He was homeless, had nothing to his name, but lived by the story of abundance.

Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that Abram from this moment on was a super-saint. He was not. He gave into the story of scarcity and fear as often as he lived by the story of abundance. Not too long after this, he and his wife give up on God’s promise to give them a child and they take matters into their own hands. Abram has a son by his wife’s maid, showing a lack of trust that the God of abundance could actually come through on his promise. Then he passes through a foreign land and gives into fear that someone might kill him so they can take his wife. He claims she is his sister in order to protect himself, but the ironic part of the whole thing is that the king does take Sarah. Only God stops the whole thing from becoming ugly. Fear makes a fool out of Abram and causes him to forget his story. Listen to how one author describes it: Fear “causes us to focus on what we don’t know instead of what we do. It invites us to dwell on the worst of our imaginings and urges us to sum up all the what-ifs. And the things is, you can’t prove fear wrong—there simply aren’t enough facts to definitively shut it down. We’re never going to be free of fear. But that doesn’t mean we have to be paralyzed by it. We can tell a different story” (Truax & Campbell 52).

Abram didn’t always get it right, and neither do we. We fret and we fear and we worry and we fail to trust. At least I do. You’ve undoubtedly been there; we all have—in a place where there is too much month at the end of the money. And when I’ve been in that place, I have found it so easy to switch over to the story of scarcity. I say to people, even from this pulpit, that I want my life to reflect a story of abundance, a story of trusting in an abundant God, but when push comes to shove, my default setting is the story of scarcity. I worry; I’m a world-class worrier. If there was an Olympic event in worrying, I would win the gold medal every single time, I’m that good at it. And every time, God comes through. He meets us where we are. Sometimes he has come through with a check in the mail at just the right time, something Pastor Rick shared about a few weeks ago. Sometimes he comes through with someone else who walks alongside us to help with the situation. And sometimes he gives us peace in the midst of the storm knowing that he is working in ways we cannot and may never see. We might fail to trust for a time, like Abram did, but that does not mean it’s the end of the road for our walk with God. It wasn’t for Abram and it isn’t for us. We can still learn to listen to another story and we must—because the stories we tell determine who we are and who we become.

So as we begin this generosity journey over the next few weeks, I’m asking you to consider: what story defines your life? What story are you listening to? This week, as you go about your daily life, as you do your work, as you interact with others and have opportunities to practice generosity, pay attention to the story that you tell, the story you live out. And pay attention to how it shapes your life, because it will. It already does. If you believe and live by a story of scarcity, it will shape you in one way. You will likely make choices like Lot does, holding onto what you have and grabbing all that you can. It will make you closed-fisted. We grab onto what we have and try to keep it. The problem with that is that when God wants to give us a blessing, when God wants to give us more, we can’t receive it because we’re holding so tightly to what we have.

But if you believe and live by a story of abundance, you will live more like Abram, with a radically generous spirit toward others in your life. The story of abundance makes us open handed, able to share and give of what we have. And only this posture, the open-handed, generous person, is ready to receive anything else. Only the story of abundance allows us to receive what God wants to give, the blessing God wants to give to our lives. How do you live? Closed fisted or open handed? It all depends on the story you tell.

But here’s the other thing: the story you live by now doesn’t have to be the story you continue to live by. Ask yourself: which story would I like to live by? Which story do I want to define my life? Start telling yourself that story. Memorize Scriptures that remind you that our God is a generous God who never runs out of resources. And call those to mind when you are tempted to go back to the other story. Read stories of generous people and the ways God worked in their lives. Or put a picture of an ice cream cone on your mirror or on your refrigerator, someplace you will see it, to remind you of the eight-year-old who gave everyone a lick on his birthday.

The end of this chapter tells us what Abram did after dividing the land with Lot. He picks a place, near “the great trees of Mamre,” and he pitches his tents. He settles down for a time. And after the tents are up, what does he do? “There he built an altar to the Lord” (13:18). That’s actually what he has done everywhere he has gone—he puts up his tents and he builds an altar (cf. 13:4). What do you do with an altar? You offer a sacrifice on it. You give something precious back to the one who has brought you this far. The story Abram lives by leads him to worship, and so should ours. So must ours. So, to that end, as we seek to live by that story, let’s pray and offer what we have to the God who gives us everything we need.