 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
UNDETERMINED BUT UNDETERRED | Genesis 12.1-9 | February 24, 2002 |
There is the one at the breakfast table. Abram says, “Sarai, I have something to tell you. I’ve heard from God. We are supposed to leave this place.”
“Really? Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. The destination is undetermined. God will show us.”
“When will we come back."
“We won’t.”
“How long before we get to this unknown destination?”
“I don’t know. God will show us.”
“Abram, Why should we do this? Do you know what this means? You are proposing to leave family, the place we know, the friends we know, the life we know–for what? You don’t know! Does this plan to leave have any thing to do with your mom’s complaint that we haven’t given her any grandchildren? Are you sure you heard from God?”
Can you imagine the conversations with neighbors as they came over to watch Abram pack?
"Where are you going with all this stuff, Uncle Abram?" "I don't know."
"Aren't you a bit old to pull up stakes like this? After all you're 75!"
"Why are you leaving, Abe?" "God has spoken to me."
The neighbors leave shaking their heads saying to one another, “I think old Abram has lost it. I fear he is getting senile. I wonder if we ought to intervene. Sad. Sad.”
Imagine the conversation at Sarai’s weekly coffee klutch:
It may have been like a cartoon in the New Yorker some time ago which showed a woman lashing storage jars to a donkey and explaining to her neighbor, "We're moving to some place called 'the promised land.' It's an entirely new concept in group living."
Perhaps the neighbors said something like this:
"Sarai, why are you letting him drag you off like this? You don't have a map. You don't have any reservations. You don’t have any traveler's checks since they do not exist yet and you don't even know if they accept Haran Express credit cards where you are going because you don't know where you are going! Is Abram just trying to get away from his father's clan and his father's shadow? Has he heard that the climate in Canaan might be warmer than the cold winters in Haran? Sarai, Sarai, so much of this is undetermined.”
“I know,” responds Sarai, “but he is undeterred by the uncertainties. And I trust him and I trust God.”
Was Abram apprehensive of the unknown that lay ahead? The future was undetermined but Abram was undeterred.
God says, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house." This triple emphasis cuts the ties that all traditional people hold dear. God's call goes counter to the instinct to stay with one's own, to stay with the familiar, to stay with the security of the known.
In the 11th chapter of Hebrews where we are given a list of our ancestors in faith, Abraham is listed with the description: "He left his own country without knowing where he was going."
No wonder he is listed in the honor roll of the faithful. We say "Abraham sure had faith. I couldn't do that. Abram was a brave man. I used to think that I couldn't do that. When I was a boy I was afraid my family would move. My dad bought a farm and I was in a panic that he would move us from our house in town to the farm. Abraham was a great man. I’m not sure I could do what he did.
Human history has always known migrations, people who in ones, and twos or families or whole tribes moved out into the unknown, pioneers filled with equal measures of elation and apprehension. Most of us in this room have ancestors who migrated and our stories are against the background of forebearers who traveled into the unknown or barely known. I loved to hear my grandmother tell of coming to southern Missouri from Illinois in a covered wagon with her family looking for work. Many of us in this room started our life elsewhere and have come here through pilgrimages that involved moving into the unknown or barely known. So we know something of "going out not knowing," of venturing into a future that is undetermined.
Actually we know a lot about it. We go out not knowing every day, all the time. It is the only way we can live. We make our plans, have our destinations but we don't know what will happen.
We move, marry, retire--not really knowing what will be in store for us.
We can pretend to know, to be sure, to understand, to see clearly but we do not. And yet we go. And we treasure the Abram story because he is a fellow traveler.
Martin Marty says, “the story of Abraham is ‘only a story,’ say some scholars. But to most of the three billion people who are ‘Abrahamic’–Jews, Christians, and Muslims–the story shapes much of their lives and gives meaning to their hopes. . .you cannot talk them out of the notion that the call to Abraham made them a people with special blessings and responsibilities. If we can agree on nothing else, we can agree that the call was fateful” (Found in Talking About Genesis A Resource Guide).
Naomi H. Rosenblatt in her book Wrestling with Angels says, ". . .Abraham and Sarah remain such fitting role models for us today. They were born to a Babylonian culture not unlike our own--one that worships materialism and neglects the life of the spirit. . .They go forth from the towered cities to build a new life for their people . . .they are free to integrate their spiritual aspirations into a worldly life. . . What God gives this first family of Genesis is a vision of the future they can journey toward."
She says that "like any good parent God understands that it is not enough to love a child. We must also give a child a sense of personal responsibility and purpose. By giving Abram and Sarah a mission in life--to be a great people, a blessing by example to the other families of the world--God helps them forge an identity they can transmit to future generations."
Like all the patriarchs of Genesis, Abraham is a seeker. He is also a risk-taker. Unlike the mythological risk-taking heroes of other cultures, Abraham is not a young man setting out to seek his fortune, draw a sword from a stone, rescue a princess, or capture the golden fleece. He is a man in late middle age ( I know, 75 seems old to many of you but the closer I get to it the more it seems a stage of middle age). Why does God choose an older man as the conduit of blessing? He has none of the advantages of youth: physical vigor, illusions of invulnerability, naivete, innocence. Abram is at the age which Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi characterizes as “a time for harvesting the wisdom of a lifetime.” What he does have is the maturity to seek a higher goal than romance, adventure, and personal glory. He has the perspective to see beyond his own life and to understand the importance of making sacrifices for future generations. His midlife crisis is a familiar phenomenon, but his response to it is not. By the time most of us reach middle age we have too much at stake to make bold course corrections. We have our reputations to worry about, assets to protect, bills to pay, children to educate, grandchildren to nurture. Rather than take a blind leap into the unknown, we usually settle for buying a sports car or taking up a new hobby. Abraham remains an inspirational role model because he demonstrates the power of faith in the promise of things to come which will overcome cynicism, despair, and defeatism at any age.
But is was not, it is not, easy to believe in a promise “with no power to make it come true. Everything is in the future tense–the land, the son, the blessing.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine) The future is undetermined but Abram goes into it undeterred by the not yet quality of the promise.
We all go into a future of exploration and discovery. Faith in the future is--for all of us--constantly doing battle with fear of the future. We see Abram as a hero of faith because he trusted and depended on God. Can we do that?
A key feature of the promise God made to Abram was that not only would he be considered great, not only would he be blessed, but he and his descendants wouldbe a blessing to others.
Since the horrific events of 9/11 we have seen a renewed interested in those professions which help people. We have heard our president in his State of the Union address call us to serve others. We who claim to be the spiritual descendants of Abraham live with the promise that we can be, will be, should be a blessing to others. And like the undetermined nature of God’s promise to Abram we may not yet know how we can be a blessing.
William Harvey is a student at Juilliard, a violinist. On September the 16th of last year he went to play with a quartet Juilliard had organized to provide some music at the Armory in New York City. The Armory is a huge military building where families of people missing from the 9/11 disaster went to wait for news of their loved ones. The walls were covered with thousands of posters of those missing. Harvey joined two of his Juilliard buddies and for two hours they sight-read quartets.
At 7 p.m. the other two had to leave; they had been playing at the Armory since 1p.m. and simply couldn’t play any more.
Harvey volunteered to stay and play solo. A man in fatigues who introduced himself as Sergeant Major asked Harvey if he would mind playing for his soldiers as they came back from digging through the rubble at Ground Zero. Masseuses had volunteered to give his men massages, he said, and he didn’t think anything would be more soothing than getting a massage and listening to violin music at the same time. So at 9 p.m. William Harvey headed to the 2nd floor as the soldiers began to arrive. He says, “I played everything I could do from memory: Bach B Minor Partita, Tchaikovsky Concerto, Dvorak Concerto, Paganini Caprices 1 and 17, Vivaldi Winter and Spring, Theme from Schindler’s List, Tchaikovsky Melodie, Meditation from Thais, Amazing Grace, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Turkey in the Straw, Bile Them Cabbages Down.
“Never have I played for a more grateful audience. Somehow it didn’t matter that by the end, my intonation was shot and I had no bow control. I would have lost any competition I was playing in, but it didn’t matter.”
The men would come up the stairs in full gear, remove their helmets, look at Harvey and smile. At 11:20 he was introduced to Col. Slack, the head of the division, who told him that his rendition of Amazing Grace was the best he had ever heard. The Col. presented him with the coin of the regiment. “We only give these to someone who’s done something special for the 69th .” The Colonel informed him.
Harvey writes, “I’ve never seen a more appreciative audience, and I’ve never understood so fully what it means to communicate music to other people.” (“Playing for the Fighting 69th” by William R. Harvey on WFMT web site.)
You never know when you may be called on to be a blessing.
God promised Abram, “I shall bless you . . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Amen.
Joe Dunham
| Copyright © 2002 by Joe Dunham. All rights reserved. |