Pastor Micah preached this message at a lakeside annual celebration service with Life’s Journey United Church of Christ of Burlington, NC. This is sort of a homecoming service and church anniversary wrapped in one. Life’s Journey UCC is an open and affirming, God-is-still-speaking progressive church in the United Church of Christ. You can find out more about this church at its website, http://www.lifesjourneyucc.org/
Genesis 11:31-12:9, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
31 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. 32 The days of Terah were two hundred five years, and Terah died in Haran.
12:1
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 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. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. 9 And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.
The Spanish poet Antonio Machado once wrote,
“Walker, your footsteps
are the road, and nothing more.
Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
Walking you make the road,
and turning to look behind
you see the path you never
again will step upon.
Walker, there is no road,
only foam trails on the sea.”
I thought of these words this week, after I was asked to meet with a seminarian on the last leg of her educational journey. For one of her final assignments, she had to sit down with some ministers she respects and ask them about their work and calling. She invited me to be one of these pastors. Many of her questions were about the work I do, especially with hospice. Yet one question made me pause, a question asking me to look back at the road I’ve traveled to get where I am now. “When did you know you were to be a hospice chaplain and pastor? What was that journey like?”
The question took my breath away because, as Machado suggests in his poem, on the one hand, looking back, I can see a clear road and set of steps that got me here, to this point when I cannot imagine my journey going differently. Yet, on the other hand, as I look back, the journey was long, with lots of uncertainty, lots of questions, lots of moments the path I was walking seemed but foam trails upon changing sea.
Our annual celebration Sunday is a time we also look back on the journey this church has been on, where this journey has taken us, and what we have learned along the way. Looking back, as a church we can see many moments of clarity when the way ahead seemed clear like a bolt of lighting for us, and also other times that on our looking back look like just foam trails on an ever changing sea.
In our text today, we see Abraham, whose journey of faith has been a road map shaping the journeys of people all over the world. As we consider our own personal callings and what is next for us as individuals and as we celebrate today how far we have come as a church and wonder what lies ahead of us, Abraham’s example and calling has much to teach us.
First of all, it is important to notice the journey Abraham is called to as his life’s work is not just for himself. The end result of this life’s work for Abraham is blessing, a great name, and a promise for him and his offspring, a blessing and promise so strong that no enemy can rob him or his heirs of this blessing. Yet, God does not just bless Abraham to make him fat and happy. The reason God blesses Abraham and his descendants in this way is so countless others – so people of all nations – might be blessed through them. The Bible we have and the faith we proclaim exists because of this blessing. We are blessed through Abraham. And so are countless others in all the faiths inspired by Abraham. The world has been blessed through him.
When a group of people sat down years ago and charted the path that eventually led to the creation of Life’s Journey United Church of Christ, it was with the purpose too of being a blessing. The founding mission of our church they then helped write says “It is our responsibility and our privilege to extend God’s love, message and service to all people… In keeping with a Kingdom whose table is set for all, we will extend ourselves fully in an effort to relieve human suffering and will oppose that which diminishes or oppresses even one of God’s children. Can we change the world? Will love prevail? Absolutely.” These are the words of people who’ve caught a vision to be a blessing, to be ones through whom many peoples are blessed.
In our individual lives, as you and I struggle over “what am I called to do?” this principle of “be a blessing” holds true. As the late Frederich Buechner once wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
It is also important to notice how this text shows that our callings come out of who we are. Abraham’s journey does not come out of the blue but rather grows out of who he is and the life that has come before him.
Every time I’ve studied this passage before, I skipped on to Genesis 12:1 – “Now the Lord said to Abraham, ‘Go”… as if the journey to Canaan Abraham later makes came out of nowhere, like a bolt in the blue. I overlooked that this journey is one that Abraham’s father Terah had already begun when he up and left their homeland of Ur. That God’s call grew out of Abraham’s previous life experience and the example of one who came before him had never stood out to me.
We each have Terah’s in our life just like Abraham – people who set us up on a path that is going somewhere, people who’ve inspired us to not go blindly through life. Sometimes they get us going, inspiring us even though our life takes a very different turn than they’d expect. Sometimes what they begin is left unfinished and, like Terah does to Abraham, they hand on their unfinished legacy to us, for us to continue.
We also each have our own Urs – the places where we are coming from, and how our lives have shaped us. The other day, Eddie and I were talking as he shared with me some of the LGBT+ events he was exploring doing with our LGBT group. He turned to me, looking all serious and said, “Pastor, you know, I’ve tried for a long time to imagine myself straight. I sit and wonder what I’d be like if I wasn’t gay. And I just can’t. I can’t imagine myself any different than I am.”
I thought to myself, “don’t you worry, Eddie, none of the rest of us can either”. I turned to him and then reminded him of what one of the first openly gay candidates for president said. When put down and challenged for being gay, that candidate said to his hecklers, “If you have a problem with the fact I am gay, don’t take it up with me. Take it up with the God who made me. And that God doesn’t make any mistakes. That God doesn’t make any junk.”
“You can’t imagine yourself as anything different because you are not a mistake.” I told him. “God doesn’t want you to be someone different than you are. God wants you instead to take who you are and let that be the blessing.”
As Quaker author Parker Palmer once wrote, “Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live—but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.”
As a church, the voice those who joined together to start Life’s Journey heard called them to build a church home where anyone and everyone can learn they are no mistake and anyone & everyone can let their lives so speak. In our mission statement we say “We celebrate our differences, as these are examples of God’s creative spirit” and “we reject any status in terms of social standing, education, race, age, gender, sexual orientation, mental ability, physical ability or any other distinction” in “keeping with a Kingdom whose table is set for all”.
As we imagine what may lay ahead for us as individuals, as couples, as families, and especially as a church – those callings,, too, will flow out of who we are, out of our not denying who God made us to be, and out of us listening to our lives and letting them speak.
Yet, to move forward to become a blessing for all peoples, in the way we are called to, we have to figure out what threatens to keep us stuck and let it go. In Abraham’s case, a part of why God had to speak to Abraham as he did is that Abraham’s family got stuck in Haran.
Haran was not just a place. You see, Abraham’s father Terah stopped his journey after Terah’s son Haran died, because Haran died, in the town that shared his son Haran’s name. And Terah never resumed that journey. Terah died there. When Terah died in there too, Abraham stayed stuck there , too.
Losing a son is devastating. Losing a father and a brother can be too. Such loss splits your life open, and can shatter your heart. It can be hard to even put one foot in front of another to go through your daily routine, let alone go on some further journey. Abraham got stuck in what he had lost. He got stuck in memories of the past and in grieving what could now never be. That’s why he got stuck in Haran. And yet, God had more for Abraham and he had to let go of his Haran, let go of his clinging to his losses and griefs in order to open up to the blessing God had for him and, through him, for others.
We too can get stuck in our own Harans – stuck in the past in terms of being dreamy-eyed about the good old days we had in our lives, in our communities, in our families, in our churches. Clinging to what has been can cause us to fail to see what is possible, just around the corner, if we but keep moving on one more step forward at a time.
We also can get stuck in another Haran, in our pain – our griefs, in our traumas, in our fears. Yet if we open up to God, God can transform those pains from broken places that get us stuck into teachers, teachers that show us how to be there for others and that grow in us the very inner strength we need for what God is bringing next.
Next, Abraham’s journey shows us as we continue in our own journeys, we need to realize God calls us to go exactly where we cannot go by ourselves and to do exactly what we cannot do in our own strength.
Yesterday was our denomination’s Conference gathering all of our NC and Eastern Virginia churches and in two weekends we have the gathering of our Association of Eastern NC churches. Last year ended my term as president of that Association. While I was serving the Association, I built connections with pastors in churches of all stripes in our area. Almost to a person, those I know have been saying the last few years “I don’t know how it’s possible. We’ve lost members. We’ve lost funds. How do we rebuild? How do we begin again?”
It’s not just churches, though. At the hospice I serve at as a chaplain, I’m doing double duty – working both in the hospice facility and in homes and the wider community. A part of the reason why is all of us are doing double duty at the hospice. We can’t find enough nurses, enough social workers, enough people able and willing to do the work. In meeting after meeting we hospice workers are saying “I don’t know how it’s possible to fix this. How do we rebuild?”
My sense is that challenge is not unique to hospice but is a question many are struggling with all kinds of businesses and careers.
Yet, this is also a question families and partnerships face. How do we rebuild after broken relationships? After losses of those we love? After illness or financial upset? In the face of trauma, or addiction histories? Or family members who abandoned us due to who we are and who we love, or due to our choosing to stand with those who don’t fit their mold? “I don’t know how it’s possible” we might say.
Yet Abaham is told, not as a young man, but as a man past retirement age to get up and go to lands he does not know. He and his wife Sarai are told well beyond childbearing years that they will have children and grandchildren, descendents, through whom the nations would be blessed. God is telling Abraham to try for what does not seem possible – while knowing precisely that it isn’t. God calls us to do precisely that which we cannot do on our own, but which we and God together can do, if we will just walk with God, side by side.
Finally, we need to recognize the destination God has for us comes only by stages. Genesis says Abraham moved his family and his household to the Negeb, by stages. Abraham traveled. He stopped and recognized their progress, celebrating how far they’d come. Then he rested. Only after did he move them on further, to the next stop on the journey. Then he began again, heading further onward toward Negeb, until it was time to pause again, celebrate again, and rest again, before resuming. He arrived at his destination only in stages.
This is important. When we sense God’s calling on our lives individually, for our families, for our workplaces, for our communities, for our church, one reason it might feel impossible is we are imagining it all has to happen at once. Yet God calls us to move forward by stages.
This means if you feel a calling toward a career – don’t be discouraged that you don’t automatically arrive at the job you want. No, it may take work. It may take study or returning to school. It may take a long slog of doing some jobs that aren’t your calling that wear you out and frustrate you. You will only get there by stages, by keeping at it, by not giving up, and by doing your part. You almost never will get there all at once, in one fell swoop.
The same is true for what you may feel called to as a couple or family and certainly for what God may be calling us to build toward in the church. It takes time. It takes working on it. It takes trying things that don’t work out, learning from them, and trying anew. It takes not giving up. It takes keeping going.
May we, like Abraham, listen for and answer the call. May we answer this call together, not giving up on each other or God, not giving up on our journey. As we do, we like Abraham can be a blessing to all peoples and to God’s world. May it be so. Amen and Amen.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; 4 they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Studying today’s text and really Revelation as a whole got me thinking alot about Victor Frankl. Victor was a budding young psychotherapist in the Germany of the 1930s-40s. In his mid-30s, Victor was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. His experience there was of unimaginable suffering and unfathomable loss. Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most of his family, including his pregnant wife, had perished — but he, prisoner number 119104, had lived. 
progressiveredneckpreacher 