"FORWARD WITH FAITH"

Rev. Jim Petersen

FCUCC

1-3-10

Text:  Genesis 12:1-9

 

This is an interesting weekend for a preacher because we have a convergence of a number of significant events, making it difficult to decide what topic to take.  You understand the preacher's life.  While you are out reveling in the New Year or slothfully watching bowl games or enjoying the wonderful snow at Showdown, I am in the preacher's workshop sweating out what to preach.

 

Hmmm...first, today is the 2^nd Sunday of Christmas, so it can be appropriate to preach old man Simeon & Anna with the baby Jesus in theTemple from Luke, or the holy family's flight into Egypt following Herod's "slaughter of the innocence" from Matthew, which admittedly doesn't read too Christmassy.  Second, this is the Sunday nearest Epiphany, so we can be about the baptism of our Lord or the three Wise Men, the two major themes of Epiphany.

 

And finally, of course, this is the New Year Weekend.  Not that New Years is a religious holiday, but it can lend itself to preacherly points, I pray, for I have kind of been rotating these themes for the past 27 years, and this is a New Year's Sunday.

 

Thank you for being here.  This feels very good.  I am feeling good.  Are you?  2010.  How we ever got here so fast is beyond me, having concluded the first decade of the 21^st century, but here we are, or so the calendar says?

 

It seems like only a few months ago the millennialists were making their pathetic predictions and we all, let's be honest, had a certain amount of Y2K anxiety, as if God's creation was dependent on computers.  And here we are already reading news stories on the top news stories of the decade, still deeply disturbed by #1 (9/11).

 

But it is a new year, let alone a new decade, praise be to God!  Close the crowded calendar, lose the lengthy ledger, box up the battered receipts, put away the pain of the past, and step freely forward into the future with renewed resolve if not resolutions. 

 

I think this is theological. We certainly have a biblical model.  The biblical model is in the beginning of our faith story.  It begins with Abraham, the father of our faith.

 

"Now the Lord said to Abraham, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.  And 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.  I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.  "So Abraham went, as the Lord had told him..."  (Gen.12:1-4)

 

Now this is a call to faith.  And this is a call to a new year, if not a new decade.  Oh, it could have been so otherwise, should have been so otherwise.  What was Abraham thinking? "So Abraham went, as the Lord had told him..."

 

How crazy!  Leave your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.  Oh really?  It sounds like ocean front property in Arizona to me.  But Abraham went.

 

Had he not gone, we might still be worshiping sun gods and moon gods, and slaying our first borns to appease the gods, but Abraham went and fathered our faith.

Let's look at this incredible call, and how Abraham, read as in you or me, might have responded.  Should have responded.  Five reasons not to go and give birth to our faith.

 
 

I.   First, "Leave my country"?

"My country, my culture, my customs...leave...just up and leave...and go to where...to a land you are going to show me, as in sight unseen?  What if it is dry, rocky and lacking in natural resources?  Which it turns out to be!  Had Abraham previewed the power point he never would have gone.  But he didn't, so he did!

 

What is incredible is people back then were identified by their land.  This is Jim Petersen of Great Falls.  People may not know Jim Petersen, but they knew Great Falls.  Where you lived gave shape and substance to who you were.  It said a whole lot about you.  It gave you identity.  You did not just leave.

 

You were born there and you died there.  You buried your parents there and your children buried you there.  It was the ground of your being.  You did not leave the ground of your being.

 

But God called Abraham, "Go from your country"...So Abraham went, as the Lord had told him...

 

II.  Second, "Leave my family"?

"My kindred, my clan, my kind of people...leave...my father's house...and all its possessions and generations of  accumulated wealth...which I am first in line to inherit... leave...for what...oh, you will show me later?  Do I have stupid stamped on my forehead?"

 

You see, people back then were identified according to their family of origin.  Who you were was in your name. 

People did not even have last names then; your name was associated with your parent's name.  It was bar this or beth that, meaning "son of" or "daughter of" your parent.  For example, I would be "James bar Joseph," "Jim son of Joseph."

 

For better or for worse, that would pretty much explain everything.  Oh, yes, we know about that family and those kids.  You could not escape it.

 

Why, the Bible had spent the previous chapter, Genesis 11, delineating the genealogy of Abraham, from Noah to Shem to Shelah to Eber, about 400 years worth, the son of the son of the son of the son, to Nahor to Terah to Abraham.  This identified who Abraham was.  Abraham son of Terah.

 

Then you tacked on the location, Abraham son of Terah of Haran, or Jim son of Joseph of Pleasant Hill, and there was nothing to add.  It was all in the name and in the land.

 

So Abraham is supposed to sever himself from his family tree, say good-bye to those who new him best and loved him most?  This was the root of Abraham.  You did not uproot and leave your kindred behind.

 

But God called Abraham, "Go from...your kindred and your father's house"...So Abraham went, as the Lord had told him...

 

III. Third, "At my age"?

"Begin anew, start over, commence a journey?  Lord, do you know how old I am?"  Let me tell you, Abraham is 75 arthritic years old at the telling of this story.  He has been drawing social security for ten years.  This is no time to be daring, to be going forth, to be leaving any place. This is time to come home, to pull in, to cut commitments.  This is time to guard your time and reduce responsibilities.

 

Abraham's years of sowing seed are over.  This is reap the harvest time.  That's why we call it the ?golden years."

The harvest is ripe.  It is time to swath and spend the children's inheritance.

 

"Don't tell me to ?go', Lord.  This is ?stop' time.  Well, except for an occasional junket to Vegas."  But the Lord says, "go."  For the Lord knows this is the age in life when some of life's most important work gets done.  For by now, pray tell, we know what is important. What is lasting and worthy, and what is wasted and in need of the dump.

 

This is the age in life when we are free of those nagging mid-life responsibilities, college savings and retirement plans, and we are not so hung up about power and prestige, what I can buy and what other people think of me.  So we can get on with what is really important - God's work!

 

And if it appears foolish to those uptight, status-conscious, success driven middle aged folk, like our children, just mumble a little and they will think we are addlepated and they will ignore us.  This way they will leave us alone and we can get a lot done.

 

So advanced in years, God called Abraham, and "Abraham went, as the Lord had told him..."

 

IV.   Fourth, "A great nation"?

"What is this promise - a great nation - from me?  Leave everything behind, my country, my kindred, my accumulations, and you will make me a great nation?

 

Look, here is my establishment, right here in Haran.  In my father's house in my home country with my siblings and cousins, this is my best shot at a great nation.  I cannot leave it all and start from scratch and survive, let alone make it to greatness.  And, Lord, aren't you forgetting something?  To be the father of a great nation, I must have children.  Sarah and I, well, you probably know, Lord, we are not even trying any more.  You cannot make the future through us, Lord, we have no heirs.  You would not do that to us, would you, Lord?"  But God called Abraham, and Abraham went and did it with Sarah, "as the Lord had told him..."

 

V.  And finally, fifth, "Lord, what about the Canaanites?"

"Lord, you are calling me forth to the land of Canaan, and you say you are going to give the land to my descendants, of which I have none.  But Lord I perceive a problem.  The land is occupied.  It is called Canaan, because the Canaanites live there.  They are big and mean, well established and fortified, and they intend to give their land to their descendants.  I am not sure the Canaanites are going to consider me a blessing in the land of Canaan."

 

Nevertheless, and though this part of the story continues to today, as we well know, "The Lord said to Abraham, ?Go'...so Abraham went as the Lord had told him."

 

Well, my friends, this is why Abraham is the father of our faith.  God called and Abraham went.  He left his country on faith.  He left his kindred on faith.  He responded to God's call late in life on faith and went on to father a great nation with no heir in sight.  He entered the land of Canaan, despite overwhelming odds, on faith.

 

God called... "So Abraham went, as the Lord had told him," and scripture tells us, "and God made of Abraham a great blessings, such that all the families of the earth were blessed."

 

Well, surely if Abraham could do all of this, then we the children of Abraham, can be a blessing to someone or to some nation this "two  thousand and ten" Year of our Lord.