Genesis 12:1-4 “Standing on the Promises”

On his first Sunday in the pulpit, the new minister delivered an amazing sermon. The congregation was deeply moved – laughing, crying, filled with awe. At the end of the service, they congratulated him on his wonderful message and congratulated each other on their inspired decision to call this new pastor.

On the second Sunday, the new minister delivered exactly the same sermon as the week before. People were still deeply moved though some wondered what was going on. However, they gave him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he had picked up the wrong notes that morning, so they did not say too much.

However, on the following Sunday, the minister once again gave exactly the same sermon for the third time. Now there was widespread consternation. The Church Council called a meeting and asked the minister what was going on.

"Pastor", they said, "The sermon you preached today is a really great sermon, but you have delivered it three times now. Don't you have any other sermons?'

"Oh, yes!” replied the new minister, "I have scads of them, and they are all just as good as the one you heard."

"Well then," replied the Church Moderator. "Why don't you preach one of them next week?"

"Oh,” the minister replied. “I am not going to do that until you start following the message of the first one."

Well, even though today I have a new sermon, its message is an old one that you have probably heard before. It is a sermon about journeys, in this case a physical journey where an ancient family up and moved for no reason other than that the man of the house had started hearing strange and wonderful voices. However, this sermon is also about spiritual journeys, which is precisely what we find ourselves in the midst of each Lenten season.

Though this sermon begins with verses from the 12th chapter of Genesis, it really begins in the very beginning of time as time is written about in this first book of the Bible. And there we find God establishing a master plan in the Garden of Eden. It started out well - until that apple and serpent business - and then, needless-to-say, God was not a happy camper when it came to this order out of chaos business. In fact, God got so fed up with the garden dynamics that the Holy One kicked out the occupants (that would be Adam and Eve).

Things were back on track for a while, but what with the generations coming and going, the parties getting wilder, and the arguing louder until it was little more than a continuous din, all that coupled with the total disregard of the created for the Creator, one day God could not take it any more.

It seemed that everything was evil or on the road to hell, and so God wiped the slate clean. Hoping for the best, God kept one man and his family (that would be Noah) and a bunch of animals to start the world anew.

The saga of this starting and stopping, all of God’s efforts to get the world up and running on an even keel, all these wonderful mythological events with their own inherent truths are found in the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis.

Our story for today in the 12th chapter marks a monumental shift and dramatic transition in God’s creating. You see, God takes another tact and chooses a single person (that would be Abram - not Abraham, mind you; his name change comes later on, second only to Moses when it comes to hero status in the Old Testament), and designating Abram as the one through whom the sacred master plan will be jumpstarted and without whom it can not be fulfilled.

To get the ball rolling, God calls on Abram and his barren wife who will later be called Sarah, and his nephew Lot to take a journey into the unknown, into nothingness - for God’s sake.

Now, Abram was no perfect human specimen. He was a commonplace nomad, neither more righteous nor more rebellious than anyone else. I am sure Abram wondered why God had chosen him in the first place, why he had to leave town to get the blessing God promised, and what guarantees had been put in place to ensure that his life would be better for the journey.

And yet, in spite of Abram’s ordinariness and the slew of questions that surely we would have asked too, God tapped him on the shoulder. And it is through Abram’s story that three important Biblical themes are interwoven. These themes encircle and challenge not only this ancient family but also us – down through the ages – so many millennia later in time. The themes are call, covenant, and journey.

The story of Abraham and so the story of Israel, which is really the beginning of our story as well, starts with God’s call: “The LORD said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’”

What would you have done? I mean, when God calls you into the unknown (which is what God most often does) – into a new ministry, a new relationship, a new way of looking at the world - it is always a difficult choice. And so it must have been for Abram. God directed him to leave behind everything that was most important to him: his land, his birthplace, and the house of his father.

As Old Testament scholar, Wilma Anne Bailey, writes, “In ancient societies, place and relationships were the most important considerations. One’s home and network of family and friends provided support and a means of earning a living. Without the political and economic structures that are in place today, travel beyond one’s homeland was difficult and dangerous.

Interestingly enough, Abram is not promised that life will be better in Canaan…Actually it’s almost guaranteed that at first - when he’s left behind his known language of communication, his reputation, his kin network, his knowledge of a place and how to survive in it - life will be worse.” Calls from God are not always what we want to hear because they usual mean disruption, dislocation, and – dare I say it - change.

However, for Abram, along with the call came a covenant – a kind of generous quid pro quo that God initiated. “By deserting his country he lost his name there: care not for that, (saith God) but trust me, and I will make thee a greater name than ever thou couldst have had there." That is how John Wesley, the founder of the Protestant denomination of Methodism, puts it.

The Message translation of our Bible continues: “I'll make you a great nation and bless you. I'll make you famous; you'll be a blessing. I'll bless those who bless you; those who curse you I'll curse. All the families of the Earth will be blessed through you."

I bet it was the blessing part that gave the Abram the hutzpa to, on a wing and a prayer, up and move his sheep and tents and cooking pots and slaves and servants. After all, he was an old man at the time – and though it was virtually impossible that a blessing upon him and his long barren wife would result in a child, let alone a whole nation – well, it was God who was doing the blessing, and that should mean something.

We often applaud Abram as a man of great faith because he followed God’s call. However, I think Abram was faithful not because he never doubted the call or ever tried to fulfill it on his own terms, which time and time again, he did.

No – Abram was faithful because when the chips were down and, oh, at times they were, when Abram stumbled and fell as he most certainly did, he always got back up and clung to the promises – tenuous as they might have seemed. He held fast to the covenant God had made with him.

It is like when we get that urge to risk ourselves and our way of doing things, to change our perspective, and it all seems quite overwhelming until we realize that the one who is nudging us is also the one reminding us in thirty ways to Sunday that we do not do it alone. God promises to be with us. God promises that Jesus walks beside us and the Holy Spirit leads us. To trust in the covenant makes all the difference – standing on the promises of God.

And so with the call and the covenant in his heart, Abram began the journey, believing in God’s future as it was laid out before him. He believed in the blessing. He also believed that he – even he – was meant to be a blessing too.

And so it is for us – our own journeys. Just as Abram leaves behind the old and moves forward into the unknown, so we journey out of nothingness into something else. We look forward to a future yet unknown. But we do know two things – and maybe this is the old, old message encased in a new, new sermon.

First, God chose an unlikely pair on which to found a chosen people. But with my hair turning gray, I find that both comforting and deeply inspiring. I mean, if God can choose an elderly man and his equally elderly and barren wife to be the ones to begin the process that would bring the holy plan to fruition, then surely there is a role for you and me in this kingdom business as well.

As seminary professor Louis Smedes wrote, “What really matters is not whether Abraham is good or bad or cowardly or heroic, but that God pursues His design for the welfare of the human family with people like that -- in other words, people like us."

Even we who may feel past our prime, believing that there is nothing we can really contribute, we too we have important work to do as we journey toward God’s kingdom.

If we trust in the covenant – stand on the promises – just a fraction of how much Abram did, then I believe that we will have the energy and will to follow where God leads. You see, God lets no one off the hook.

And, second, the journey itself really does still continue, and we are children of that journey. It is up to us now. Abram was willing to take risks and embrace change. Though certainly cowardly at times and no doubt fearful for what might come, he stepped into the journey anyway, a journey that took this 75 year old man far from the old and thrust him into the new.

And so it must be for us. Whether we are twentysomethings or pushing 90 and beyond, God calls us to venture down unknown paths, at the end of which, we will never be the same.

As Methodist pastor, Geoff McElroy claims: “the journey is still before us, a journey to try and make the covenant real in this world, to enact those covenant promises, that we might be blessings ourselves to all the families of the earth.”

So, go. Go this Lenten season. God calls you. The journey beckons you and encourages you to move ahead in faith through the unknown, daring to trust in a greater vision for life – and new life. You are invited on a bold journey of exploration, and you are secure in God's keeping and blessing. (Seasons of the Spirit)

So, go. Follow God’s call, knowing that you are blessed because God blesses you. Go on your journey wherever it may lead because it will end to a place of restoration and newness. Go on your journey, believing as well that you can be a blessing to all whom you meet.

Rev. Nancy Foran
http://www.rvccme.org/