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Sunday, February 11, 2018

Faith As a Journey

A Sermon Based Upon Genesis 12: 1-9, NRSV
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
February 4, 2018

Most of you recall that wonderful opening scene in the Sound of Music, where the camera’s begin with a grand panoramic view of the Alps, but then slowly zooms in on one particular mountain top, where Julie Andrews whirls around and around and begins to sing, “The Hills are alive with the Sound of Music!”  I’ve been to those Alps and they are as majestic as the pictures, even more.  

That unforgettable scene of the Alps opens up a romantically told story about the motherless Von Trapp family, a former nun, and how she leaves the convent to marry into the family, and they all end up barely escaping the rise of Nazi Europe.  While Hollywood took liberties with the story, the basis is true.  The Von Trapp’s are a very musical family, the former nun did marry the decorated Sea Captain, and they did leave Austria for the United States under the shadow of Hitler’s rise to power. 

Part of what fascinated American audiences about the Rogers and Hammerstein musical story was how they escaped world that was falling apart, to find hope and promise in a new world called America.   And of course we America’s love such stories, because we can relate.  Most of our ancestors and forefathers and foremothers came here on a risky, perilous journey too.  America is filled with many celebrated journey stories, like the stories of the Pilgrims, the Pioneers, and others, like the explorers Lewis and Clark, who paved the way for other to “Go West, Young Man!”   And what about some of those fun “Road Trip Movies”, including the first one I ever saw when “I Love Lucy” went to Hollywood on Route 66?  The Sherriff of Mayberry once travel to Hollywood, but became disillusioned and homesick for Mayberry.  

In our text for today, when Abraham (then called Abram), heard God’s call to leave his home and go on a journey of faith, the text says he ‘went’, and he never looked back.   Abraham’s journey of faith is foundational in the Bible, and its story is shared by three major religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  For the next few weeks, we are going to be traveling with Abraham on his journey of faith; and at the same time, thinking, reflecting, and considering our own faith as a journey.   After we travel a bit through Genesis, we will turn to the New Testament and consider how this very Jewish Abraham, is one of the most important biblical figures for Christians, and Muslims too.   The Old Testament book of Isaiah and the New Testament book of James both refer to Abraham as ‘a friend of God’.  Could it be that Abraham’s story and journey invites us to become God’s friends too?   But how can it be, that we could be even contemplating that the powerful force that created this great universe, as infinite as it seems, could also be a personal power we might befriend?  This could make the most devout among us, at least dumbfounded, if not at most, secretly skeptical, couldn’t it?
NOW THE LORD SAID…
Back in late July, a doctor recommended that I go and have a ‘sleep study’ done at Wake Forest Baptist Health.  The study was done the basement of the Old Hawthorne Inn, located between Winston and Salem.  The young man helping to ‘wire me up’ and conduct my study was from Mt. Airy.   He was a pleasant young man, engaged to girl working on her PHD in microbiology.   He was to take her to the airport the very next day, where she was attending a research conference in Munich.  She was working as a research student at Wake Forest on the Mitochondria, in hopes of finding a way to slow aging.   

After we chatted about her visit to Germany, the young man, Jose I’ll call him, told me how his Father was Mexican Catholic and mother was a Jehovah’s Witness.  When I asked him about whether he was Catholic or Jehovah’s Witness, like his mother, he told me that he, like most young people his age, has little need, or use for religion.  Maybe he would return to it someday, he said, but today ‘it’s not where he is’.   

Like many of his generation, Generation X or “Next”, Jose does not have any need for religion.  The truth is that most of the young people his age, are leaving organized religion in ‘droves’.   For the first time in American history, most Americans are deciding to go the journey alone, without God.   And though some of them just don’t see any need for God right now (because they are young), many of them don’t believe that having any kind of faith in God is a credible, viable, or worthwhile option.   Pew Research gives many reasons for the decline of religion in America, as it has been in Europe.  But one of major reason cited is the problem of book of Genesis.  They just can’t get their parents, churches, and Sunday School teachers to talk honestly or intelligently to them about God, Genesis, Creation, and Evolution.  No one has helped them resolve all the questions they have about Science and Faith, so they have chosen to drop ‘faith’ and go with ‘science’.

We are not going to talk about the Creation/Evolution question from Genesis, but we are going to talk about another ‘faith’ question, that is just as puzzling, to many thinking people today.  That question has to do with this ‘call of Abram’ or ‘Abraham’ that is revered among three major, revealed, traditional religions.  If you go to Jerusalem today, you can go visit the great Muslim shrine, the “Dom of the Rock,” towering over the center of Jerusalem, Mt. Moriah, where Abraham was ordered by God to offer only son as a sacrifice to God.  We’ll speak about that story from Genesis 22 later, but right now, we need to see that, for most young people today, this story about Abraham being told to sacrifice his only Son, has the same problem the Creation story and this “Call” story does.  In other words, how did Abraham know God told him, called him, and how did Abraham know there was only one God to answer,  when there were so many gods and idols to confused his journey of faith?

Whatever the story of Abraham means, it refers to a life that answers one unique God, who calls people to a life of faith.   And as one Jewish Harvard scholar, James Kugel clearly noted: “What seems to be worth considering here (and many other passages in the Hebrew Bible), is what Abraham does to bring about this encounter with God: absolutely nothing.   He does not pray, he does not fast, he indulges in no acts of self-mortification such as those practiced by mystics and seekers in later times.  Presumably Abraham is just walking along one day or sitting somewhere when God starts talking to him…  From text’s standpoint: God spoke to Abraham and that was all that mattered (The God of Old, J.L. Kugel, 2003, p. 38-39).”  

So is the problem of faith today because God has stopped talking, or because we aren’t listening?   Now, that’s a relevant question, isn’t it?   And I don’t know who can answer it, as least for those who don’t, can’t or won’t hear God’s voice.  There are quite many people who still say ‘this or that’ is what God is saying, but not all of them are reliable.   For this reason, much of our society has decided no religious belief can be that reliable.   This is why ‘God’ and ‘religion’ has been neutralized in public places and confined to personal space.   As one pastor started politely praying, “To that great force beyond”, until he learned better and returned to the God of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Jesus (Willimon).   Since the ‘voice’ of God can’t be proven, can’t be recorded, nor can it be properly categorized, except by a psychiatrist at a mental hospital who might file it under ‘irrational’, then who can definitively say, when, how, or if God speaks or actually calls people today to take a journey called faith?

SO ABRAM WENT…”
The situation of reviving and revitalizing faith seems helpless, if not hopeless, except for one problem:  The problem for both antagonists; who oppose or care less about faith,  and for protagonists; who think they have God all sewed up in their own understanding.  Here is the big problem in two words:  ‘Abram went.’  In other words, we have 4000 years of a Jewish story goes back ‘a wandering Aramean as it’s Father’.  We have a Christianity that acknowledges Abraham’s children with one of Abraham’s children saying: “Even before Abraham was, I am.”   And lastly, we even have Islam, albeit a ‘step child’ of faith, but a child of faith nevertheless, still crying out in the wilderness to be part of the ‘blessing’ of faith.

Abraham went, but where did he go?  Does his story still mean anything for us?  Can his story still show us what it meant and what it still means to ‘hear God’s voice’ and ‘answer God’s call’?   And if Abraham was called a ‘friend of God’, as he is in both Testaments, how do we continue to be a ‘friend of God’ in our time, that is, how do we have a relationship with God, and can or does it matter?  Does it matter that we might still ‘hear’, ‘answer’ and ‘go’ like Abraham, went?

When I was going through missionary training, I was the only pastor/preacher in our group.  So, they asked me to bring the devotion one day, and speak about our common ‘call’ to international missions.  I preached on Abraham.  There were almost 30 different people in our missionary group, and we were joining over 4,000 others, along with almost 5,000 Home Missionaries, meaning almost 9,000 people that Southern Baptists had employed in world missions. How did all these people get there?  What moved in all those different folks to cause them to leave comfortable jobs, loving families, sell all their belongings, and give up their lives back home?  And why were some of these missionaries going into very dangerous places, where they not only could get sick or diseased, but where they could be robbed, or even killed?  Why where they all, like Hebrews says of Abraham, “He went, not knowing where he would go?”  Were all these people delusional?  Of course, they were Baptists.  Baptists do tend to get edgy at times.  Where all these good folks mistaken or misinformed?  They were surely not doing it for the money, because their salaries were meager.  Many of those salaries would rise and fall with the exchange rate.  The Southern Baptist Convention, in that day at least, was a great institution, that tried to take care of its missionaries, but as I learned, while living in Europe during the Gulf War, one day when a letter arrived for me from Richmond; mission headquarters:  “Our nation is at war and that war may spill over into Europe.  Please attempt to look less like an American.  If you are kidnapped, please know in advance, that the International Mission Board, nor the State Department, pay your ransom.  You are in our prayers.”

When I entered Eastern Germany as a missionary, to work with a German congregation, and develop Christian youth ministry in a once communist, atheistic area, one question that always came from those who learned about me, both from the newspapers, or from the schools and churches was this;  “Why did you come here?” “Don’t you have friends and family back home?”   This was the question we were asked over and over, both at home and abroad, as it had a possible answer many simply could not understand in their own lives.  “Why did you come, or go?”  It meant few, either Christian or non, had any context of hearing God’s voice or answering God’s call.  Do we?

One of the most surprising things about Abraham’s own call, at least as we know of it, is what we are told just at the end of chapter 11.  Abraham’s father Terah was already on a journey headed to Canaan, before Abraham heard God’s voice.   Terah had already left Ur of the Chaldeans, but had settled in Haran, never making it the whole way.   All we are told is that Abraham’s father died there, in Haran.   But it was in the land where Abraham’s father had ended his journey, that God called Abraham to begin his.   We don’t know if God had spoken to Abraham’s father before.  We know they all came out of a land of many gods, and many approaches to truth.   All we know is that after Abraham’s father died, it was the journey had stopped, that the journey began again,  and this time God called, Abraham answered.

What is new in Abraham’s journey of faith was not the journey, but the promise of the journey.  It is the promise that made it a matter of faith.  God said:  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.   I 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.”    The journey of faith is not to be a curse, but a blessing.   Abraham was to be made great, not for the sake of being blessed, but for the sake of bringing a great blessing into the world, because as God told him, through him, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 

Is this another one of those ‘far-fetched’ ideas?  Who ever heard of gaining a ‘blessing’ so that you could ‘be a blessing’?   Most of the people in this world seem to be in it just themselves. Even in the church, we make it about ourselves,  blessing our family, or our own group.  Who ever heard gaining a blessing to be a blessing?   Isn’t this all so foreign, strange, and unheard of in this ‘dog eat dog’ world?   We live in a world where it’s sink or swim, kill or be killed, as the heavy metal song goes:    “Release the warrior within,  No choice, no way back,  Survivor philosophy, Dead end, to kill or be killed,  Take charge, no ruth for the weak… ….It’s useless Soul’s broken, ….It’s sink or swim…. Get up Get up now Get up, Don’t stop fighting …. Own this war…. Those who live are those who fight …. you’re big as you’ll be Tonight, we praise your success,  Glory, to your name,  Greatness, awaits you back home,  Your tale will always be known, Mighty, hallowed be thy name Legend, you have become.  It’s sink of swim, kill or be killed….”

In the letter to Hebrews, we find the Christian commentary on what it meant that Abraham ‘went’ and followed the beat of a different drum, when it says,  “By faith Abraham obeyed when he set out for a place…not knowing where he was going”  (Heb. 11: 8).  At least in the Christian mind, the Abraham ‘strange’ faith was obedience to the voice that was not his own.  It goes on to say that he ‘looked forward to the city that has foundations, who architect and builder is God…’ (Heb. 11: 10).

ABRAM JOURNEYED….BY STAGES
This is the kind of ‘faith’ that called, motivated, moved Abraham.  It was a call from to move beyond himself, toward blessing and being blessed, all because of his faith in one, true God. 
But maybe you aren’t there yet?  Maybe you’re are one of those troubled about whether this call to have a faith journey is real, or really matters enough to give your life to.  Maybe you’re saying to yourself, I don’t know God like that, or I can’t know God like that, or maybe even, you are like the skeptic who says, no one ever really knew God like this, and it’s just ancient story that was told to motivate religion wasn’t true, but just human imagination based upon fear.  Maybe this is where you are, or maybe you are just another polite listener who likes what you hear, but believes that this is a call to a faith journey is meant for someone else, but you can’t go there, won’t go there, dare not go there.

But I ask you to consider this text once more.  At least in one version of the Bible, th New Revised Version, a more modernized, more accurately interpreted version of the ancient Hebrew language, we find a word of encouragement that is meant just for you, whoever you are.    The text tells us that when Abraham journeyed… he went in stages, but not all at once.  God spoke to Terah, but he could only go so far.  Then God spoke to Abraham.  He went, he obeyed, but he could only go ‘in stages’ too.  This journey of faith is never a journey you make all at once, or once for all, but it a journey where faith mean, you walk by faith, and not by sight; you walk one step at a time, and not all steps at one time.   It is a journey where you are on a journey, and you never reach the final destination, until the journey is over, and the faith journey is never over, until faith becomes what only faith can become,  the realization of faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these, even greater than faith itself, is the love and the hope that is shared on the journey, so that faith is never about the destination, but it is always about the journey, that can only be lived, taken, and known, by faith.

Now, I know I’ve said too much here, so let me conclude with a window that lets you and I look into the window that is faith, ours and Abraham’s, which is still one and the same, no matter that we are at different times or different places.  This window into faith is the window we all look through all the time, whether we are atheist, scientist, believer, church goer, young or old.   The truth is, we all live by faith, whether we realize it, baptize it, or acknowledge it at all.   It’s like I was sharing with the young man at the hospital, who said he didn’t have any time for religion right now.  I didn’t really ask him for any details; all I could do it try to plant a seed; a seed of faith.   I found this seed, when I was watching a Science show, perhaps NOVA, on PBS.  After they told about the immense vastness of the universe, millions and millions of lightyears across, and still expanding; then they said something I’ll never forget.  They said that all of the elements of this big universe, no matter how far away it seems; almost all the stuff that makes up this big space, all those stars, and all those planets; even the ones that might have, or don’t have life on them; all those elements out there, are just like 97% of the elements we find on earth.  In other words, we are all, everything, pretty much made of the same stuff.

This the same kind of thing Missionaries believed when they risked their lives, to go to far away places to love people they’d never met.  This the same kind of belief, doctors had when they started running experiments, believing that if they helped some people, they were helping all people.  And this was the same kind of belief that people like Martin Luther King had, when he believed when he hoped for a time, even in America, when people would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.   Who could believe stuff like this?  People who had faith.  And whether your realize it or not, for the most part, at least in the civilization we know, it all started when Abraham believed, and went out on faith.  Amen.




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