Genesis 15 & 17

Sunday, May 17, 2026

The Rev. Megan Collins

Watch | Listen

When I was 9 I met my first childhood best friend.

We were erasing the chalkboard together in our elementary classroom and we struck up a conversation. We ended up spending the entire afternoon together on the playground. By the end of the week we were inseparable. We stayed every Friday night at each other’s houses. We made matching sweatshirts. We came up with special code words. And then we got . . . friendship bracelets.

These weren’t some generic friendship bracelets you could give to all your friends. They were gold, and had half a heart for each friend in the pair. This was a serious commitment friendship bracelet. We promised to be friends forever, and committed to wear the bracelets every day. 

Then there was a particularly contentious round of the game Boggle. She accused me of cheating. I responded by throwing the game pieces in the air. The fight devolved into days of giving each other the silent treatment as we passed back and forth the meanest notes we could come up with during class (and nine year olds can be very mean). 

The final note said something like “this friendship is over.”  

In the end, we got through it. (We’re not still in a fight). But at 9 I learned there is a big difference between wearing a friendship bracelet, and actually being a good friend. 

Now obviously we’re all here more evolved than a couple of nine year olds in a fight over a board game. But maybe not all the time, or as much as we would think. 

We still have relationships and the symbols we wear that represent them. We wear wedding rings and team jerseys and gifts from our kids and our friends, or crosses on a chain around our neck. But then we don’t always treat our friends well.  Or we snap at our spouse or our kids. Or we don’t feel like we’re really living up to the cross we wear. There’s this distance between who we are and who we want to be, between what matters to us, and the way we live our lives. And even when we try to fix it, we still mess it up. Perhaps the answer isn’t just, try harder. Just be better. The passages we’ll look at today talk about this. 

We’re continuing in our Bible project this morning, where we move through the entire Bible together. We’ve been following the story of a man named Abram over the past couple of weeks. God called Abram, who gets his nephew Lot and his wife Sarai, and all their people and things and they follow God into the unknown. There’s the whole sister-wife debacle with Pharoah, the parting of ways between Abram and Lot, and then, in Genesis 15, 

the Lord comes to Abram in a vision and says:

15b “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” ⁵ He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”  ⁷ Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” ¹⁸ On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram . . . 

It’s a promise, about land, and descendants, and a future. 

Then we move ahead to Genesis 17, and now Abram is 99 years old. The Lord renames him Abraham, and then he says this:

17 ¹⁰ This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹ You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. 

The relationship between Abram and God, needs a symbol, a daily reminder of how important it is. Something like a friendship bracelet. But God wants something better than a friendship bracelet. So God chooses . . . . . circumcision.

We’re going to look at a lot of passages about circumcision today. In fact, that’s really what the whole sermon is about.  I’ve heard one other sermon that was about circumcision. It was from Dave . . . when he preached his first sermon in this sanctuary . . . for his mother’s ordination service. My favorite line was when he said circumcision was “when the people all traded in their turtleneck sweaters for crew necks.” So I suppose this is the second time we talked about this here. (You’re welcome). 

Back to our passage from Genesis. Circumcision was this sign, this reminder, of the covenant, of who God is to them. You would think that a sign like circumcision would be too significant to ignore. Like, if you’re willing to commit to circumcision, wouldn’t it be relatively easy to do everything else you are asked to do for the relationship from there? If you’re willing to keep up with circumcision, generation after generation, shouldn’t the rest of the commandments be easy by comparison?  Honor your mother and father? No problem, compared to circumcision. But let’s skip forward a bit.

Generations pass. Circumcision continues. God holds up his end of the promise and does some amazing things. God parts the Red Sea. Frees them from the oppression of the Egyptians. Provide manna in the desert. But the people complain constantly. Not about circumcision, but about literally everything else. They complain that they’re hungry. They’re thirsty. Then they get impatient and rebel against God. They just can’t seem to live in a way that reflects this relationship with God that was so central for them. 

So Moses gets up in front of them and says this in Deuteronomy 10:

10¹⁶ Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. ¹⁷ 

That’s  new.  Moses isn't talking about the physical act of circumcision anymore. He's saying, look, the outward circumcision was not the whole point. It’s about what’s going on in your heart. It’s not enough to just have this physical sign on what you believe, even though it’s a big one. You have to live it out. You have to cut away whatever is in your heart that’s in the way.” 

And what’s in your heart will be reflected in the way you live. Moses goes on, saying God:

“executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.

So then: 

¹⁹ You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 

If your heart is changed, your actions will change too. You’ll do what God does. You’ll do things like care for people who are on the margins, people like the orphan, the widow, the stranger. There won’t be this gap between saying you love God and how you actually live. You’ll start doing the kinds of things God calls you to do. But first, you have to circumcise, cut away, the stuff in your heart that is keeping you from doing that. 

But this isn’t the last time the difference between physical circumcision and a life that follows God comes up. Look at Galatians 5:

⁶ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.

Circumcision is not enough.

Outward signs of faith that don’t change how we live aren’t enough. 

The thing that counts, Galatians says, is “faith working through love.”

But can we really do that?

You and I, we don’t usually set out to mess everything up. We don’t wake up and think “how can I really do a bad job today? Hurt some feelings? Ignore people who need me?” No, we start out with great intentions. We wake up just full of hope that we’ll get it right today. But then we take inventory 12 hours later and . . .  yikes. 

So what if the gap between who we love, God, our friends, our family, people God calls us to help, and how we live, is just too big for us to fix?

There’s good news. 

We don’t have to do it on our own.

Look at Deteronomy 30. 

30 ⁶ “Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart  . . . so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live. 

The Lord will circumcise your heart. I want to put that on a very niche Christian t-shirt (perhaps without a graphic, just the words). But this is such good news. The Lord will circumcise your heart. You might not be able to change entirely on your own. But God can change you.  And then, when God does that, what is the promise: that you may live. 

You can be a little more like the friend, the spouse, the parent, you want to be. 

You be a little more brave in following God 

You can live, really live, a life that matters because it’s  faith working through love.

Look at Colossians 2:

Colossians 2: 11 ¹¹ In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision,^[c] by the removal of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; ¹² when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead

In Christ, you are given a spiritual circumcision. Again, it’s not something you do, it’s something Jesus has done for you. And all of this starts with being honest about (and we are going to lean into our circumcision metaphor here) what needs to be cut away. 

What in your heart do you need God, to cut away? 

What needs to be removed to feel okay about the way your life reflects the relationships that matter most to you, to feel like you are at least making progress?

What’s in the way?

What in your heart do you need to have changed? 

What needs to die with Christ so that you can live? 

This is the part where I would sometimes give you some ideas of what that might be for you.

But today I’m not going to do that, because I really want you to think this, of what God wants to change, in you. 

This is what we mean when we talk about repentance.

We see what we need God to cut away in our lives, and we ask for God’s grace and help in finding a new way forward. This isn't passive. We don’t get to pray for change, go to sleep, and wake up differently. You still have to be a part of the work. You still have to make the choice to do the hard thing. But the change that happens in our hearts, that's what God does. 

That brings me to us.

One of the things I love about this community, one of the things we actually believe here,  is that it is never too late to start over. Whatever the gap looks like in your life. Whatever pattern you've been stuck in. It's never too late to change. 

We also believe that real community means being honest, actually telling each other the truth about what we struggle with, and knowing we can find help here. 

We’ll never be perfect. 

But God can help us change. 

God can change what you want. 

God can change what you love. 

God can change what you're willing to do. 

God can change your heart.