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Sermon Archive

June 8, 2008

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Leaving Home

Genesis 12:1-9; Romans 4:13-25

The Reverend Richard E. Allen, Jr.

It happened long ago, so long ago that I don’t remember the details that well.  Looking back, I can see the lasting effects of decisions made as a boy.  From the perspective of now, I understand. But back then, without the wisdom of my current perspective, I had only the intuition of a call.

Our family’s home was on the edge of a small town – about 500 people or so – in flat fertile farm country.  Corn, cotton, and tobacco flourished in the dark fields outside the open windows of my childhood home. In the woods beyond the fields lived quail, turkey, and deer in abundance. And, as improbable as it sounds to me now, it was not uncommon for a ten-year-old to begin his journey to manhood by killing his first deer with his own shotgun.

A late bloomer, I must have been thirteen when my father offered me a shotgun for Christmas.  With it, I could join the hunt, kill a deer, and begin my rite of passage toward adulthood.  But I was conflicted, though, and not by the thought of killing the deer.  In our community, deer drives were common, and hunting was a noble calling. But I had a different dream.  I had recently found a new life in the Boy Scouts and I wanted to go the next summer to New Mexico to spend a week hiking at Philmont Scout ranch. 

But my dad’s offer and my own inclinations came into conflict, and sometime in the late fall of 1962 I had to make a decision.  Here was the thing:  trip, like the shotgun, was expensive.  Each cost about $350, a large sum in those days.  Since we couldn’t afford both, I had to choose one. Even at the time, I sensed that the choice was fateful.  Looking back, I know that in opting for the Boy Scout trip, I also began the emotional and physical journey that led me away from my hometown and into a larger world.  In fact, that journey has brought me here.  I’m quite satisfied, really, but like Robert Frost, I‘ve often looked back at the road not taken. I know now that my early choosing of that trip began a song that continues to echo in my life.

But other choices followed:  college, then seminary, and finding a place to settle as a pastor.  And still more choices remain, of course.  The choices of youth set us on a path, but any decision along the way can change a life trajectory.  Today’s lesson from Genesis shows just as much.  This is central passage in the faith of Judaism – as it is in Islam and Christianity, for that matter.  Abraham, still named “Abram,” hears God calling:  “Go from your country, and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1, New Revised Standard Version)  Commentators point out that this is an indefinite call.  Abram doesn’t know exactly what God has in mind, or where he is to go.  Merely that he must go.  So, at age 75, Abram leaves the comfortable in favor of the unknown.  Or, as a commentator said, “Abraham journeyed from what he had to what he did not have, from the known to the unknown, from everything that was familiar to all things strange.”  (In “Abraham:  The Father of Us All,” at the website, www.journeyswithjesus.net)

It seems to me that this central story of the faith is about a core element of the faith:  trusting God in the uncertainty of life’s contours and ambiguity.  Instead of security of family, familiarity, and accumulated fortune, Abram trusts God’s inviting voice.

Of course, Abram’s story is being told with the insight of years.  Looking back, it all makes sense.  In the moment, though, every choice has a certain attraction, and every important decision requires courage. 

Think of Abram again. At the very least, God’s call may have been but a whisper. Or maybe some now untold event led to his following God’s lead.  Who knows, maybe life’s problems he later saw as God’s call.  What now-forgotten crisis precipitated his late-in-life departure? What circumstances formed God’s call? Perhaps Abram’s relationship with someone in his family had soured.  Maybe his family had fought over the Thanksgiving turkey, or its pre-Pilgrim equivalent.  Maybe a business failed, a partner betrayed him, or Sarah’s doctor said that she needed a different climate.  Or maybe the crops had failed for several years in a row, or Abram decided that after a prolonged drought it was time to find new pastures for his flocks.  We don’t know the immediate reason for Abram’s departure.

What we know is this:  such moves take courage.  For no matter how much the sea may beckon the sailor, once the line is cast and she heads for the ocean, the land behind looks nearly as inviting as the unknown water seems forbidding.  For some of us, maybe for all of us, going back always seems easier that plowing ahead.  I heard a rabbinic story about the Hebrew people at the Red Sea.  In front of them loomed the waters, and approaching rapidly behind them were Pharaoh’s chariots.  They looked to Moses; Moses looked to God, who instructed Moses to tell the people to go ahead.  They were to go into the water, and the water would part.  Faithfully, the Hebrews put their feet into the water.  Nothing happened.  They walked in up to their knees.  Still nothing.  Up to their waists they went, and still, the water remained.  And, worse, the chariots came closer.  One more step they took, up to their necks, and finally the waters parted.  God parted the waters, the rabbinic story concludes, only when the people show their faith in their obedience and trust.  The waters part only at the last moment, teaching God’s people that faith is trust; and true faith grows only with courage.

Perhaps the Hebrews walked into the sea because they knew the story of Abram’s trust of God.  And knowing the story, they came to know the God of the story, too. 

You and I, friends, are called to walk into the deeper waters of our lives trusting that God is there with us.  We’re called, like Abram, to “go.”  We’re called away from security of country, family, and home.  We’re called to trust that God is with us always, no matter where we are, no matter what happens.

In our church’s life, too, we are invited to trust God as we go into the deeps.  We are just now seeking to discern, “Where is God calling us to go, as a church?”  What ministries does God hope we will bring to this, our place of life and ministry?  What teaching, what healing, or what presence are we called to give to our neighbors?  How are we to develop our relationship with our neighbors in Nicaragua, and with our neighbors in New York? 

Maybe God is speaking to us in the disappointments of our lives as well as in the successes.  Perhaps we are called into the depths of our own pain, so that we can share the pains of others in a new way.

Loss can be God’s whispered call, an invitation to a new life, or to a new way of seeing your old life. Actor Martin Sheen was recently asked about his heart attack, at age 38, on the set of Apocalypse Now, and how as part of his recovery he came back to his Catholic faith.  “I did, yeah,” said Sheen.  “I was raised Catholic, but it was a religion, not a way of life.  [After the heart attack] I came back to a faith more than [to] a church.  I came back with joy and with freedom and thanksgiving rather than with fear or trembling or worrying about eternity.  I decided that what I really loved the most about the faith was the spirituality that this church possessed.”  (“Breaking Through,” an interview with Martin Sheen by Nancy Perry Graham, AARP:  The Magazine, July/August, 2008, page 44.)

Martin Sheen heard God’s call in the heart attack at 38.  His life shifted gears.  He found anew the faith he thought he had abandoned.  At that crucial moment, Sheen, like Abram, chose to hear God’s voice in the events of his life.  It was a voice calling him back to himself, back to his faith.  Sheen, like Abram, made the journey into an uncharted territory.  And he found joy.

You and I are invited by the same voice of God, whispering through the moments of our lives.  We are called to take risks, to let go old lives, to embrace the challenges and the changes of today.  We are called to live, and to enjoy the company of the God who goes with us, every day.

Amen.

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