Back Up and Go Forward

 

God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you. My sermon is entitled Back Up and Go Forward, and my focus is on our first reading (Genesis 12:1-9). Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now that our feet are standing within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.

When I say, “Back up,” what do I mean? Am I giving you driving directions or talking about your hard drive? Are we discussing your business plan if all else fails or are actors ready to step in for leads in a Broadway play? It could be any of those, except for today. This morning, back up means to turn the page back one time so that we can see where our story begins.

I open with the phrase “back up” because the story of Abraham, formerly known as Abram, definitely does not start in chapter twelve, but at the end of chapter eleven. After the Tower of Babel fell, Genesis tells us who the descendants of Shem were. The only one most of us know is one of the last, and that man is Abraham. Abraham took Sarah, formerly known as Sarah, as his wife. Sarah was barren. She had no children. The two of them and his nephew, Lot, were taken by Abraham’s father, Terah, from the land of the Chaldeans into the land of Canaan.

What have we learned by backing up? We learn what should have been the end of the story, but to paraphrase Paul Harvey, “Now we will learn the rest of the story.” The fact that Abraham and Sarah had no offspring should have been the end. Notice that there is no explanation, punishment or curse in regards to Sarah’s barrenness. Barrenness is simply a metaphor for “nowhere else to go” or hopelessness. There is not foreseeable future or human power to invent one.

The marvel of biblical faith is that barrenness is the arena of God’s life-giving action.[1] If we had been assigned the task of writing a hopeful ending to this story, well, we would probably would have wrecked it all. For some unexplained reason, God spoke his powerful word directly into a hopeless situation. Here we have the barrenness of Israel and the speech of God. Futility, meet Power.

The Lord said, “Go from your country.” The command reminds me of a conversation I had with my father decades ago. My father was a machinist from the age of 18 until the day he died at age 77. One day I asked him how he became a machinist. He said that when he started working at J&L, he wanted to be a millwright. His supervisor at the time, whose name I do not recall, said, “You don’t want to be a millwright. You go be a machinist. So, I went.” There was a time when the voice of authority was the voice of reason. To a greater degree the speech of God is simultaneously imperative and promise, summons and assurance. For Abraham, his obedience without hesitation is for all the model for the beginning of this way of life. For Christians, this story also became the paradigm for the Resurrection: through death comes life.

God’s speech to this barren family is a call to abandonment, renunciation and relinquishment. God’s command is brief and dictatorial. To go from your home and trust a promise that God would make you a great nation is an order to renounce everything you possess or stand to gain. In our culture, such a summon is most difficult to accept. But notice, the call to Abraham is not law or discipline. It is a promise, and it is the only way out of barrenness, the only way out of hopelessness.

Now what if you once heard the words, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”? (Mk 8:34-35) Would you hear these words as a way out of barrenness, out of hopelessness? Would the cost of renunciation be too great for you? What we hear from Jesus’ lips are spoken by the Father’s mouth to Abraham.

The idea that “we got this” is a joke not only for believers of the Bible, but for all barren people, for all individuals and families facing hopelessness. Why? Because there is no promise without a Promise Maker. There is no new beginning apart from the reality of God.

Now that we have covered God’s promise, let’s look at Abraham’s journey. The metaphor of journey is a way of life characterizing the life of faith. The Hebrew word for journey expresses the idea to “pull up tent stakes.” The journey is not simply a physical movement from point A to point B, from Beaver Falls to Broadway for any ordinary Joe. The journey is also, and more importantly, a theological program. Abraham is not one who arrives at his destination. He will eventually be in the land, but he falls short of grasping the fulfillment of the promise in which he trusted.[2] The other important theological note about this route is that it is duplicated by Jacob and Joshua.[3] This prophesizes what would happen to Abraham’s descendants in the future.

The early Christians were also referred to people on a journey. Before they were called Christians, they were referred to as “People of the Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22). They followed the way of Jesus. To be on a journey, then, whether it was for Abraham, the early Christians or us, means to live in a way which makes the community despised, at odds with the world, and certainly not understood.[4]

Abraham entered the world of the Canaanites. The word itself means those who do not believe the promise. Their presence points to two religious realities. First, the promise of God is never easy to believe and practice. Abraham, living in the midst of the Canaanites who managed society, is seen as a minority. Second, he is called to be in some relation with the Canaanites, and that relationship is never fully explained in the Bible. Living in their midst, the attractive ways of the Canaanites are a temptation to Abraham, who lives according to the slow-paced way of Yahweh’s promise. Abraham is not commanded to convert these people to his way, but simply to live among them.[5] And yet, Abraham built an altar, which meant that he trusted his promise maker and called on his name.

By calling on the name of Yahweh, Abraham is praised in Psalm 105, where we read, “Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works!” (1-2)

So, to summarize our reading, we see the promise of blessing to the nations and the act of calling on Yahweh alone. We see that the promise is to all nations (inclusivity), but loyalty only to Yahweh (exclusivity). This led Peter to proclaim in Acts 4, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (12). Some 15 centuries later, Martin Luther said of this reading, “Whatever your heart clings to and relies upon is properly your God.”[6] All people in the world are blessed by God but only in and through the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, the true Son of Abraham.

Now allow me again to back up and go forward. Many of you know that Cindy and I returned to Pennsylvania in March 2020. We moved into the orange brick, 800 square-foot, two-bedroom house that my father built in 1955. The road on which we live is well travelled by pedestrians and dog-walkers. As we were accustomed to walking Travis and Pepper those first few months, people would either recognize me and stop to talk, or not recognize us, and stopped because they wanted to pet our dogs. During these encounters, people who did not know me would ask, “Are you new here?” To this, I replied, “I grew up here.” In short, I too feel like I set out on a long journey like Abraham.

To back up, you should know that my journey began in June 2008. When asked by my high school friend and attorney, Daniel D’Antonio, “What’s your plan?” I responded, “My plan is no plan. I will see what God has in store for me.”

One year later, I met Cindy. That was God’s plan. So, my journey went through Berkeley and then Livermore, California; Whitesboro, Texas; Edmond, Oklahoma; Nashville, Tinley Park and Aurora, IL; and finally, back here. Like Johnny Cash, I’ve been everywhere, man.

I left home without a plan and twelve years later, I returned as a Lutheran pastor, married with four grandchildren, but no job. For the most part, like Abraham, I relied upon God’s providence, and also devised my own plans, which, like Abe’s, did not always bear the expected fruit. Then, Mount Olive called, or maybe it was God.

My point is two-fold. First, Abraham obeyed God’s command, and at 75, embarked on a journey. For the first time in his life, he would leave his father’s house and journey into the unknown. Through space and time, he experienced opportunities and challenges, but always remained faithful to God. We are all called to remain faithful to God no matter where our journeys lead.

Second, when I returned here, I accepted the invitation to become your pastor, not knowing the future. To paraphrase the borrowed words of one member, “Let’s stick around and see what God is going to do.” Why? Because we don’t got this. We never had this. We never will. If we did, the ride would be as boring as driving across Iowa.

Soon, we will be on another leg of our journey. I want you to remain as faithful to the Promise Maker as Abraham was faithful. There will be times when we all feel like Nicodemus, asking questions in the dark that only the Lord can answer, and like him, we may feel even further confused, but in the end, we know that the ultimate victory has been won. Stay the course. Not to minimize the past and the present, but looking back at the past 2,000 years, we all know that the Church has faced bigger obstacles than ours. Looking ahead to Christ’s return, we know that he will deal justly with all of us. For the time, let us take comfort in Jesus’ words that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” May these words rest on our lips, and may the peace of God which is beyond all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

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[1] Walter Brueggeman, Genesis. Louisville: John Know Press (1982), p. 116.

[2] p. 122.

[3] Richard J. Clifford, S.J. and Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm, “Genesis,” The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall (1990), p. 20. See Gen 33:18; 35:1, 6, 27; 46:1 and Joshua 7:2; 8:9, 30).

[4] p. 123.

[5] p. 124.

[6] p. 124.