Go!

Genesis 12:1-9

March 16, 2014

Have you seen the video floating around the interwebs these days secretly shot from the top of a not-yet-completed sky-scraper in Shanghai? Or how about the one of a woman bungee jumping into a 600-foot gorge in South Africa?

I actually can’t even watch the ones shot from great heights. They always make me feel slightly ill. So it leaves me wondering why people do such things?

Any daredevils, thrill-seekers or risk-takers among us this morning who can enlighten me?

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Personally, this morning’s story from Genesis is enough risk-taking for me, and if you take this foundational story of our faith seriously it will give you more than enough vertigo for the day. It’s a story of the bottom dropping out.

The framers of the lectionary made an interesting decision with where they have us pick up the story. By beginning the Abraham saga with God’s initial command, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house …” they leave us with the impression that this is something akin to creation ex nihilo; perhaps sojourn ex nihilo. Out of nothing comes this journey.

But that’s not the way journeys work for most of us. We just got back from California last week. The journey did not come out of nowhere. Not only did we plan it for months, but we took it to a particular destination for a particular purpose. Bud’s out there, and we went to visit. (And, by the way, thanks for your faithfulness and support – I know y’all worshipped well in our absence, and we had a fantastic time!)

Most of the journeys we take are similarly planned and purposeful; even those that seem to come up at the last minute don’t really spring up completely out of context.

Truth is, that’s not what happens in Genesis either.

Listen for a bit of context in these words from the end of the previous chapter:

 Now these are the descendants of Terah. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran was the father of Lot. Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram and Nahor took wives; the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.

 Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan; but when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Haran.

What are we to make of this? It sounds, at first blush, like just another one of the Bible’s weird forays into genealogy, which leave every preacher remembering the seminary advice: don’t preach the lists. But the lists often have a great deal to tell us, and this one is no different.

To begin with, the list reminds us that this story of Abraham doesn’t, in fact, come out of the blue. Abraham is situated among a people, a family, a tribe, and a particular history. This is not a sojourn out of nothingness, but rather leaving home and history.

It’s also a leave-taking from disaster.

If you pay attention to the lists, to the genealogies in scripture, it is abundantly clear how overwhelmingly important kinship is to the people of Israel. Some of us pay similar attention, but many of us, and I count myself in this camp, know very little about our own families of origin past a few generations. For example, I know that my mother’s great-grandfather came from Ireland probably during a mid-1800s potato famine. But I know nothing of that part of my roots beyond that. My mother’s mom’s family traces its roots back to the founding of Hartford, Connecticut, but I can’t really tell you much about any of them from those early 1600s until, oh, about 1927, when my mom was born. Interestingly enough, my father’s family, on one side, traces its roots back to the same founding crew in Hartford. The respective family names are inscribed on opposite sides of the Founders’ Monument in Hartford.

I suppose that’s mildly interesting, but, again, I don’t know anything about any of those people between those early Americans and my parents’ births in the 20s. Other than knowing that the Ensigns come from Scotland, I know nothing about who they were, where they lived, what they did.

I don’t think that is at all unusual for contemporary Americans. We are a rootless people who reinvent our selves and renew our stories constantly. Most of us pay precious little attention to things like family trees.

But the limbs and branches and roots of such trees were of primary importance for the people of Israel. Around the campfires of the Chaldeans, I imagine Terah told his children and grandchildren stories of his father, Nahor, and Nahor’s father, Serug. He probably knew all the names going back many generations, and he had likely learned the stories of how they had made a life, generation after generation, there in the land of Ur. And that’s precisely how you know that when God said “go” to Abram, Abram was getting up to go from a site of disaster and despair.

For his wife was barren. There would be no more generations of his people to occupy their land. There was no future there for them.

“Go,” says God. “Go to a land that I will show you.”

Ah, right. This great story of journey begins without a map. In fact, it begins without a destination. It begins, simply, with the imperative: “go.”

I like to travel, and I’m perfectly happy to explore a few unknown hiways and biways when I do. But this is more than a bit crazy. “Go.” Don’t ask questions; just go, and I’ll show you a land. Frankly, that’s nuts. It’s as crazy as bungee jumping into a gorge – crazier, in fact, because there’s no cord attached in this story.

Perhaps the only way any of us will actually take such risky leaps of faith is to get to places of despair. The addict who hits rock bottom might just be ready to chart a new course of recovery. The student who has all but flunked out might just be ready to ask for some extra help. The victim of spousal abuse who sees the abuse about to pass along to another generation – the kids – might just be ready to leave the relationship.

I think that’s where Abram and Sarai are in this story. They have reached the limits of their own capacity, and all they can see ahead of themselves is a bitter end to their family’s story.

They are willing to take a risk of faith, even if they are not, necessarily, ready. Indeed, how could we ever be truly ready to go when we don’t know where we’re going?

But they are ready to risk.

As I said, perhaps it’s simply because they’ve reached the end of their own devices.

But I don’t think that’s all. They have clearly reached the end of their line, but they come to that end with a faith they have inherited all along the line.

Thus, when God speaks, they are willing to listen, to hear, and, ultimately, to trust enough to obey.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that for him it was never really a question of faith, but, instead, one of obedience. Bonhoeffer trusted the presence and the leading of God, but obedience was always difficult because God didn’t ask for simple things. God asked for his life.

Well. There’s nothing at all new or surprising about that. When God speaks, God bids us follow, and, in the following, God calls us to let go of all that we have held so close, all that we believe has given us security, all that seems certain.

And we’re called to give that up – for what?

A land that I will show you.

God does provide an enigmatic, yet nonetheless powerful picture of what will come with this journey to the land that God will show.

We go there to plant seeds. They will grow to become a great harvest. God will make of that a great nation, through which all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.

Tonight the Lenten study group is going to look at the first of the Great Ends of the Church. It says that one of the six great purposes of the church is to proclaim the gospel for the salvation of humankind.

The Abraham story captures the gospel, the good news, in its essence: plant seeds, trust God, a great community will grow, and through it all the peoples of the earth shall be blessed.

It’s incredibly risky business, this trusting God, going when God says “go,” being obedient when God bids us follow.

Sometimes I think people take crazy, adrenalin-fueled risks because they don’t believe good news to be good, they don’t trust that the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice, that small seeds planted today will reap a significant harvest, that God will be good in all times and places, even the ones we can’t imagine or understand. So they just go for the simple rush of thrill seeking.

Somehow I can’t quite imagine Dietrich Bonhoeffer sneaking into a skyscraper to shoot video dangling from a crane. He had real risks to take for the sake of his nation. Nor can I see Gandhi bungee jumping. He had an empire to overthrow. Nor King. He had a life to give for the sake of freedom.

God said to each of them, and to countless other faithful folks in ways both grand on the world stage and intimately small ways as well, “go. Go from the place that is safe and comfortable to a place that I will show you. Go. Plant small seeds. Reap a great harvest. Be a blessing to all the earth. It shall make all the difference. Go.” Amen.