ABRAHAM & SARAH = YOU, ME, US

(Preached on Sunday, June 5, 2005)

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house tot he land that I will show you.                  -Genesis 12:1

 

Strange hero, this Abraham.

He is not the warrior and conqueror that David was.

He was not an agent of miracles like Moses.

He did not live in the splendor and accomplishment of Solomon.

He did not serve as God’s spokesperson to his generation, like Elijah.

Rather, he was a simple, man who packed up and left home because God told him to.

 

Abram and Sarai, as the story tells it, most likely lived 1,700 to 2,000 years before Jesus.

Only a few hundred years before this, a very different people on a far away island raised the massive slabs of stone which we know as Stonehenge.

Unlike Britain at the time of Stonehenge, Mesopotamia, in the north of what is now Iraq, was a highly developed civilization of proud cities and temples, literature and astronomy, legal codes, medical skills and massive irrigation schemes.

However, Abraham and Sarah were outsiders, somewhat like the gypsies of Europe or the Bedouin of Saudi Arabia today.  He was a Semite herdsman; living in tents with his small tribe, moving from place to place to find feed for his cattle, sheep and goats. 

 

Would you be surprised if I told you that Genesis 12 is not just the story of Abraham, not just the story of the Israelites, not just the story of the Bible, not just an intent of Jesus’ ministry, not just a purpose of the church?

Would you be shocked if I insisted that Genesis 12 is our story, that it is not simply Abraham’s purpose but our purpose?

This is a foundational story for Christians, Jews and Muslims.

This isn’t history — it is myth in the best and most profound sense of the word.  (I hesitate to use the word “myth” because in popular speech, it means “untrue.”  But a genuine myth is a story that is most powerfully true.)

 

This story is powerful and foundational for us because it is the story of each of us individually.

It is also the story of our faith communities.

It is the story of our nations.

It is a story of a tender, caring, loving parental God who sends us on our journey.

God promises to be with us, every step of the way, but it is our journey (our country, our church, ourselves), and we must walk it.

God cannot or will not walk it for us.

But God will walk it with us.

We never walk it alone.

 

And furthermore, our journey is of infinite importance.

Our lives, our communities, our countries, are filled with divine potential.

And because of our journey, the whole earth may be blessed.

 

Have we not been blessed in order to be a blessing?

If not, then why have we been blessed?

Is it because we have been so good?

Do you really believe that?

Some of our friends may have some doubts about that!

 

And if we do accept Abram’s call, what would that mean?

Could we be asked to take some risks, make some sacrifices?

Perhaps.  Even at age 75?  Possibly. 

Would more be required of us than simply keeping a running total of our blessings?  Yes, more would be required.  We would be asked to share, to give.

Would we be expected, even with limited talents and resources, to be a blessing?  Yes, we would and, yes, we could.  Would we be expected to spend less time and energy blessing ourselves and more time and energy blessing others?  Precisely.

“But I want to be blessed.”  So do others.  “But I like my comforts.”  Can we hear those words, “You are blessed in order to be a blessing”?  “But I am barren.  I have no life in me.”  God promises new life.

God empowers us to be blessings. 

God promises to go with us.

 

The story of Abraham and Sarah is our story — you, me, us.

In that story, God makes a claim on us.

Toward the beginning of his Confessions, Augustine asks a question that, if you really think about it, should shock us.

“What indeed am I to you, that you should command me to love you?”

That God cares so deeply about us as to actively seek our love is extraordinary.

It also marks the difference between God as an object on my moral/intellectual shelf and God as someone who calls me to a personal intimacy.

I don’t know about you, but for me, personally, far too often I treat God far too much with the first understanding.

Way more than I like to admit, I keep God on that intellectual shelf, where God is just a nice idea, but I don’t really let God get into my heart and gut — because when I do, then God starts to mess around with my life, calling me to do things I am not always ready to do.

They are just too risky.

 

Those risks are just too great to take, when God is just an “idea” for me and not someone with whom I am in relationship.

The story of Sarah and Abraham is all about a God who enters into personal relationships with everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill people.

Not just kings and prophets and presidents and messiahs.

But plain old, ordinary, average Joe and Josephine types.

And any relationship has to be built on trust.

 

This is the whole key to our life as a church together with God.  How much do we really trust God?  Are we willing to take the risks God asks us to take?

Can we trust God enough to take the 1% challenge?

Can we trust God enough to really be welcoming of new people, especially when they don’t look like us, talk like us, when they appear to be less educated, less well off financially, much more ethnic than we are?

Can we trust God enough to really be welcoming of new people by being willing to try some of their new ideas?

Can we try singing new songs?  Can we try new ideas for getting together?  Can we embrace new mission projects?

Can we really embrace God’s call to be a blessing for others, that is, are we ready to take the risk and give our lives for the sake of others, as Jesus did?

William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury in the last century, once said: “The church is the only organization that exists for the sake of non members.”

Like Abraham and Sarah, we in the church are a chosen people; chosen by God who loves all people, to help display that love towards all people.

 

We are here today because others in the past gave their lives for the sake of others.

We are here because a small group of members from the Congregational Churches of Coral Gables, Plymouth, and Miami Beach took the risk to help start a new congregation in the wilds of South Dade.