A People of Uncommon Grace
For audio, click this link: https://soundcloud.com/emsworthup/september-14-2014-10-18-22-am/s-PFTgl
Genesis 12:1-9
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your
kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I
will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name
great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless
you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of
the earth shall be blessed.”
4So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot
went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5Abram
took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that
they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they
set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of
Canaan,6Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to
the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7Then
the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, “To your offspring I will give this
land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8From
there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his
tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar
to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. 9And Abram journeyed
on by stages toward the Negeb.
God said, “Go,” and Abram went. Abram left behind everything he knew and departed
for…well…an undisclosed location.
But Abram went. Having absolutely
no clue where they would end up and trusting that YHWH would tell them when
they got there, Abram packed up his family and his servants and everything that
they could carry, and set off in the direction of Canaan. Well, I’m not sure that Abram knew what
direction they were headed, but the text tells us that’s where they
headed. And as if to make sure we
do not miss the implication of Abram’s decision, the text carefully catalogs
for us all that Abram left behind.
Country. Family. Friends. Inheritance.
All of it left behind, everything familiar fading away. All of it becoming less and less
visible in the dust kicked up by Abram’s group of pilgrims, trudging away from
Haran.
Perhaps at the beginning, as they were packing everything
up, Abram and Sarai felt something like excitement growing. We can imagine that feeling,
particularly those of us in middle age or later. Just imagine the opportunity to do something completely
new. Imagine a life shaped by a
promise from God that from now on your life will matter beyond the small circle
of the familiar. After all,
God said, “I will make of you a great nation…I will make your name great.” Greatness! At age 75? Who
wouldn’t feel incredibly pumped at the prospect of a completely reinvented and
renewed life?
But at some point in the journey, I’m sure the atmosphere
changed – maybe early on or maybe a little bit later when it became crystal
clear that there was no going back to Haran even if they could figure out how
to get back there. Whenever it was
that they reached that point, I imagine that there was a certain level of grief
for Abram and Sarai. Grief for all
that they had left behind. Grief
borne of the realization that there was no going back to the comfortable and
familiar. Grief for all that was
left behind them even with the promise of God shining before them. We know that feeling, too, don’t
we? When the initial excitement of
something new or something different wears off and we have to acknowledge that
the world as we knew it is forever changed – we cannot help but grieve. It is the worst kind of homesickness
when you finally come to grips with the fact that you can’t go back. That’s why people hate change – even a
good change -- so very much.
Change never happens without loss attached.
And what happens to Abram and Sarai establishes a theme that
is replayed again and again throughout the Bible. In the Old and New Testament, it’s a familiar
pattern. When God calls people in
Scripture, they never, ever, ever get to stay where they are. Spiritually. Physically.
Geographically. They
always have to let go of something.
Just like Abram and Sarai.
Moses has to give up a cushy job with his father-in-law. The people of Israel have to leave the
familiar food and routine of Egypt and subsist on manna while wandering in the
wilderness. Jonah has to give up his visceral hatred of people from Nineveh and
go to a place he despises. The
disciples give up everything to follow Jesus and they do it before they have
anything like a real clue what Jesus is about. Even Saul has to undergo a radical renovation of his heart
and soul, and receive a brand new name, before he can begin the difficult work
of blessing the new Christian communities. It happens throughout the entire Bible. In order to respond to God’s call, you
have to give up something, and it’s usually something that you’d really prefer
to keep, thank you very much.
There’s no way around it.
In fact, throughout Scripture, God does God’s best work with people who
have become a little unglued and a whole lot disoriented. That’s small comfort, I know, when you
are the one who is being undone, but there it is.
So they didn’t know where they were going, and they mourned
what they were leaving, but God couldn’t have been more clear about WHY Abram
and Sarai were making the journey.
To be a blessing. God was
ready to create a family of faith whose sole purpose is to bless others. And several millennia later, that is
why we are here. That is what we are called to DO. To be a blessing to the whole world and
even to the North Boros of Pittsburgh.
Now you may not have the lofty ambition of becoming a great
nation or have your picture on the front page of every newspaper, but I don’t
think you would be here this morning if you didn’t want to be a blessing in
some small way. That’s why we’ve
been in conversation for the past six weeks in our New Beginnings
meetings. The question before us
is not how we can save our church.
The question before us is not how to get new members or get more
dollars. The question before us is
not how we can become a bigger church or a more famous church or even a better
church. The question with which we
are wrestling is – how can we, the sons and daughters of Abraham, be a blessing
to our community, our city, our world?
Do you want to be a blessing?
Well, first of all, you’re going to need to let go of stuff
that is important to you. Like
pretty much everything that you think defines you, whatever it may be – family,
home, material comforts, money.
You don’t have to give everything away or move to another city. But you do need to loosen your grip on
what makes you comfortable. And
none of those things can matter so much to you that you choose what is familiar
versus what is God. Jesus knew
this very well when he says, “Those who hold on to their lives will lose them,
and those who lose their lives for my sake will find them.” He wasn’t kidding. And God wasn’t kidding around with
Abram when God told him and Sarai to get moving.
Do you want to be a blessing?
If you do, you’re going to have to trust that even when you
have no idea what you’re doing or where you’re going, it’s not the end of the
world or even the end of you.
You’re going to have to learn to walk by faith with your eyes closed. Even if you peek, it probably won’t
help much. As Abram will tell you,
dealing with YHWH means dealing with some ambiguity and confusion. Maybe a lot of ambiguity and confusion.
You’re also going to have get over the idea that you have
nothing to offer because you’re too old to change or too frightened. You may not receive the miracle of
giving birth in your 80’s – and personally, I’m very hopeful that God does not
have that sort of surprise in store for me – but when you believe that God can
certainly work through anyone and everyone, you’ll be amazed at what God can
pull off. Even with little old
you. Sarai laughed like a hyena
when God promised her a baby.
Don’t laugh at God. Maybe
laugh with God, but never at God.
Do you want to be a blessing?
Every once in a while, you’re going to have to stop moving
and hunker down in one place. Not
to give up on the journey, but to rest.
And wait. And pray. And
listen for God. And wait some
more. While you’re waiting, you
may want to build yourself some kind of altar to remind you of how far you’ve
come and how far you need to go.
Church buildings are a kind of altar, I think, but they are not the only
kind. But don’t get too attached
to any particular holy site, because the odds are good that you’ll have to
leave that alter behind when the next stage of the journey begins.
Do you want to be a blessing?
Here’s a really hard fact of the matter. You’re going to have to accept that the
journey isn’t about you or what you want or the blessings you need, but about
God’s purpose to bless all people.
Abraham was not called to be a blessing for only a particular family or
a particular country or even for a particular faith. The great nation of
Abraham was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth.
No matter where it is we are going as a church family, we
can trust that our mission is as simple as this – we will be blessed if we are
a blessing. There’s no roadmap for
how to do that. In fact, there
isn’t even a road. We make the
road by walking it together.
Just a little more than 24 hours after preaching to you last
week about heart break, my own heart shattered. My dear friend and mentor, Reverend Jannie Swart died very
suddenly on Monday afternoon while playing Frisbee with students on the lawn
over at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
You may remember that Jannie preached here at Emsworth a few months
ago. I know at least a few of you
remember Jannie’s sermon because you quote bits of his sermon back to me every
so often. One of the stories
he preached about when he was here was how he told the people in the church he
served in Oil City that for as long as he was their pastor, nobody would dare
to utter the word, “program” in his presence. Many of you have been mindful ever since to avoid that
word. Another of you also reminded
me recently of another famous Jannie line. That evangelism is nothing more and nothing less than
beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. Jannie was more than just quotable. Jannie understood better than anyone
I’ve ever met the challenges the church faces in post-Christendom.
I met Jannie shortly after being called here to Emsworth
when he led a missional church group of pastors who met monthly up at Camp
Crestfield for a year. His
teaching, for me, had the effect of shaping my ministry during my early months
here at Emsworth. He helped,
particularly, in shaping my understanding of church mission as not a committee
of the session or a check we send overseas or even the good projects we do in
partnership with non-profits and other agencies here in our community. All of those are good and important
things to do. But Jannie was
convinced that mission is nothing more and nothing less than a movement of God
that began with the women running from the tomb to proclaim Jesus’
resurrection, and which invites us – all of us – to be swept up in that same
movement that is still all around us now. Jannie said that all of us are missionaries in our communities,
in our schools, in our work, in every place we spend our time. Jannie believed that our task as
Christians is to look for ways in which God is already at work in the world and
to get in on that action. The
first question is always – where is God in this? And the only way to see God’s
movement is to be in relationship with other people, to listen to them, to
accept them wherever they are in their journey, to offer hospitality and be
hospitable. Then – and only then –
can we serve them.
At his funeral on Friday, one person said that, like Nelson
Mandela with whom he served and worked for many years in South Africa, Jannie
was a “man of uncommon grace.”
Which is true. But the most
poignant question for us who mourn all that Jannie was for us and all we have
lost in his death came from Sheldon Sorge of Pittsburgh Presbytery who said in
his eulogy, “How can we go back after Jannie has changed our lives?”
The answer is, we can’t. And when we are tempted to forget what we learned from
Jannie that our mission as God’s people is to be in relationship with one
another, we will promise to remind one another.
And we can remind one another with this story of Abram and
Sarai. Because God didn’t tell
them to build a church and hope that people would find their way to them in
order to be blessed. God sent them
out with nothing but a promise that God would guide them to the places and
people so they could be the blessing.
It is a promise for us too, as sons and daughters of Abraham. We can be a people of uncommon grace.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
