The following is a link to our reading today from Genesis 12:1-4a
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=261650934
Journey. It is a word we use a lot here at St. Paul’s, because it is what we call our program for youth—Journey 1 and Journey 2. We talk a lot about our youth being on a journey to adulthood. We recognize that their lives are not static, they are passing through many important transitions and facing many changes as they move from childhood toward adulthood. We also recognize that the transitions they face, the changes occurring in their lives can be scary for both our young people and their parents, and so we seek, as a community to provide support for both our young people and their parents as they journey from childhood through the great change to adulthood.
I often wonder though sometimes if we should have a program for adults as well called journey through adulthood. It can be easy to think that once we have made the journey through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood that we have made it, we have reached the end of our journey. We have arrived. I can really only speak for myself, but that is not what my life’s journey has been like at all.
Obviously I made the journey to adulthood, and finished that part of my journey quite a while ago. However, I don’t know about you, but I have never reached a destination called “adulthood.” I have reached plateaus and plains along my journey when I could rest, but those have never been places I have been able to stay in very long. Eventually some transition, some life event, something life changing comes along in my life that compels me to move off the plateau where I have been resting and pushes me further along the path that is my journey through life.
Obviously I made the journey to adulthood, and finished that part of my journey quite a while ago. However, I don’t know about you, but I have never reached a destination called “adulthood.” I have reached plateaus and plains along my journey when I could rest, but those have never been places I have been able to stay in very long. Eventually some transition, some life event, something life changing comes along in my life that compels me to move off the plateau where I have been resting and pushes me further along the path that is my journey through life.
It seems to me that to be human is to be continually on a journey and not a journey to places that are familiar, but a continual journey into the unknown. Just when you think you have the whole being an adult human being figured out something comes along and challenges your understanding and way of seeing the world. I’ll use my own life as an example. Just as I had figured out college, it was time to graduate and go out into the world. As many of you know, I served in three churches before coming to St. Paul’s. It seemed to me that each time I finally felt settled in a particular congregation God would call me on to somewhere new. I’ve become pretty used to the relationship I have with my parents as their adult child, but last fall when I had to take care of my father after his open heart surgery, I found myself thinking about how our relationship will change in the future as they both get older.
It seems to me that, though we want God to call us out of the wilderness, the unknown, into the known, God actually does the reverse. To be human is to be on a journey deeper and deeper into the wilderness, deeper and deeper into the unknown. Think about it for a moment. The end of our journey on this planet is death—that is the greatest unknown of all—we have been promised that this is not all there is. We have been promised that death is not the end. But the details of what comes next, those have been kept from us. It is unknown. God calls us to continue our journey into the unknown trusting in his promise that this journey brings us to life.
It is this kind of unknown journey that God calls Abram and Sarai into. God is pretty vague with Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 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. . . So Abram went.”
God doesn’t tell Abram and Sarai how to do this. He doesn’t give them any details at all. God just says “go.” And remember, Abram and Sarai are old. They are past the age when they could expect to have children. The promise is ridiculous and their journey makes no sense. Leave everything they have ever known in their old age for a promise that seems outrageous? Yes. That is exactly what they are called to do.
Now often Abram and Sarai are depicted as people of great and perfect faith. They did have great faith, but it was not perfect. They stumble and fall many times along their journey. Three times Abram denies Sarai as his wife in order to try to save his own skin. Sarai laughs when she hears that she will have a child in her old age. These are not perfect human beings. They are human beings who get up each morning, put one foot in front of the other, and do the best that they can to follow faithfully a God who calls them not to an easy life, or a known life, but instead to a full life that leads into the unknown. God called Abram and Sarai to take risks, embrace change, and walk into the unknown of the wilderness. He did not call them to be perfect people who get everything right all the time. He called them to be people willing to take a journey, willing to trust that they were part of something bigger, part of God’s plan.
God doesn’t tell Abram and Sarai how to do this. He doesn’t give them any details at all. God just says “go.” And remember, Abram and Sarai are old. They are past the age when they could expect to have children. The promise is ridiculous and their journey makes no sense. Leave everything they have ever known in their old age for a promise that seems outrageous? Yes. That is exactly what they are called to do.
Now often Abram and Sarai are depicted as people of great and perfect faith. They did have great faith, but it was not perfect. They stumble and fall many times along their journey. Three times Abram denies Sarai as his wife in order to try to save his own skin. Sarai laughs when she hears that she will have a child in her old age. These are not perfect human beings. They are human beings who get up each morning, put one foot in front of the other, and do the best that they can to follow faithfully a God who calls them not to an easy life, or a known life, but instead to a full life that leads into the unknown. God called Abram and Sarai to take risks, embrace change, and walk into the unknown of the wilderness. He did not call them to be perfect people who get everything right all the time. He called them to be people willing to take a journey, willing to trust that they were part of something bigger, part of God’s plan.
And so it is for us on our journeys. We are all on a journey. It begins the day we are born and on this planet, does not end until our death. Throughout this journey we are not being called to be perfect. We are not being called to get everything right all the time. We are being called to get up each and every morning and trust God’s promises to us. We are called to put one foot in front of the other and to move into the unknown when God is calling us to do so. We are called to take risks and embrace change.
And I know this goes against all our human inclinations. We so much want to follow a God who calls us from the unknown into the known. We so much want God to show us what comes next, or to let us just stay where we are without any change. But this is not the journey we are on. Even when we try to keep ourselves on the plateau. Even when we try to keep change from happening in our lives, it comes along anyway—a child is born, a job is lost, a child grows up, a spouse dies, a family home burns down, a spouse leaves, our health declines, we get older—the list could go on and on.
And I know this goes against all our human inclinations. We so much want to follow a God who calls us from the unknown into the known. We so much want God to show us what comes next, or to let us just stay where we are without any change. But this is not the journey we are on. Even when we try to keep ourselves on the plateau. Even when we try to keep change from happening in our lives, it comes along anyway—a child is born, a job is lost, a child grows up, a spouse dies, a family home burns down, a spouse leaves, our health declines, we get older—the list could go on and on.
For me, the good news from the story of Abram and Sarai is that in spite of our frequent failings. In spite of our fear of the unknown. In spite of not knowing what we are doing most of the time. God is with us. This is the promise of the story of Abram and Sarai. God is with us as we journey from one unknown to another throughout our lifetimes. We may not be called to literally leave our people and our families as Abram and Sarai were called, but we are called over and over again to journey forward into the unknown.
So, during this season of Lent, Go forth into the wilderness, into the unknown. Dare to trust in God’s greater vision for your life, even when you don’t quite understand what that vision is. Trust God’s call to you, knowing that you are blessed just as Abram and Sarai were blessed. Embrace the journey that is your life even when it is a journey into the unknown. For the unknown can never completely be the wilderness when God is present with us, because when God is present with us we are always at home.
Amen.
So, during this season of Lent, Go forth into the wilderness, into the unknown. Dare to trust in God’s greater vision for your life, even when you don’t quite understand what that vision is. Trust God’s call to you, knowing that you are blessed just as Abram and Sarai were blessed. Embrace the journey that is your life even when it is a journey into the unknown. For the unknown can never completely be the wilderness when God is present with us, because when God is present with us we are always at home.
Amen.