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’.
(https://answersingenesis.org/christianity/church/pew-research-why-young-people-leaving-christianity/).
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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