Stories of Love and Loss--Pulling Up Stakes
The Church of the Wayfarer
Dr. Norm Mowery, Pastor
First Sunday of Lent—March 13, 2011
Genesis 12:1-5
This is the first in a series of seven messages for the Lenten Season. These messages will begin with first-person dramatic presentations based on the lives of persons in the Hebrew Scriptures. Today we learn about Abraham and Sarah.
Text: “I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” Genesis 12:2
One of the hardest things in life is when we must ‘pull up stakes’ and move but we don’t know where we are going.
That’s the way it was for Abraham. That is the way it is in the Christian life, too.
(Bonnie Read)
The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.”
I will make of you a great nation
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.”
The Lord God essentially told Abram: “Uproot yourself from the comfort of clan and country, gather all your folks, flocks and other goods, and then head out to points unknown.”
I know what that is like! As a United Methodist pastor I wait for the Bishop’s call to tell me where to move.
My mother is experiencing that right now. She has been hospitalized and now has to move to a nursing home to points unknown.
It requires a lot of trust in God for Abraham to take those many steps of obedience along an indeterminate journey. But the Lord said, “Go,” and Abraham “went”, at the age of 75, leaving much of what was near and dear to him.
Abraham is still called Abram at this point. He and his wife, Sarah, as you may recall, had a name change later on in their lives. We know little about Abram before Genesis 12, but what we do know about him and his cultural ethos is important: • In the ancient Near East, family is the entire basis of social and religious life. • Abram and Sarai battle infertility and have no children. • His father takes the family from Ur to live in Canaan but settles halfway on that common trade route at Haran. When God calls Abram, we have to appreciate how that call utterly turned Abram’s world upside down and totally reshaped his life and his family members’ lives. “Go from your country”. Abram had just uprooted from Ur; now he’s to uproot again from Haran. God has something in mind about Canaan, and he wants Abram to continue the family journey to get there. “Go from … your kindred and your father’s house”. Family is everything — business partners, “church small group,” friendships. He’s supposed to leave that clan. “Go … to the land that I will show you”.
It’s like geographic Simon Says. Start traveling with the family until Yahweh says, “Stop!” That’s a crazy calling. “Go from where you live and whom you know to a place I won’t reveal yet.”
God says that if Abram does that, he’ll bless him deeply.
Barrenness will turn into family.
Family will turn into nation.
Worldwide legacy and impact will result.
We can reduce Abram’s calling into a mission statement for us today:
Follow God. Be blessed by God. Bless others. With both successes and setbacks, Abraham navigates some major-league challenges. Why didn’t he just check out on God after years of empty promises concerning a possible child?
What kept Abraham from moving back to family and what he knew?
How did he go through with circumcision and the potential sacrifice of Isaac? Abraham must have stayed true to that call.
“I follow God. I’ll be blessed by God. I bless others.”
Abraham’s journey was marked by the following features: • First, Abram headed out in response to what he perceived as a call from God. The writer of Hebrews says this was because of Abram’s faith, but the Old Testament writer doesn’t use that word. He simply points out that Abram “went.” He obeyed the call. Obedience is evidence of faith, of course, but it is faith in action. • Second, when Abram arrived at his destination, he listened for what God wanted him to do there. He built the altar at Shechem because he became aware that God was speaking to him. • Third, he “invoked” the name of the Lord. That is, he did what he could to make the place where he was God’s place. In other words he worshipped God. • Fourth, he worked as a selfless peacemaker. In the conflict with Lot, he put his own desires last. • Fifth, he grew in his own understanding of God because he journeyed where God wanted him to go. Those five criteria —
obedience,
listening,
worshiping,
selflessness
and remaining open to new understandings of God —
can turn all sorts of efforts into Abram-type pilgrimages.
That’s important because God sometimes calls us, like Abram, to leave our comfort zones and go places where we feel out of our depth, but he calls us to go anyway.
Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
“So throw off the bowlines,
sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore.
Dream.
Discover”.—Mark Twain.
In closing here are some tips on packing:
When preparing to travel,
lay out all your clothes and all your money.
Then take half the clothes and twice the money.
