To Paths Unknown
NL Year 1 • Sermon • Submitted
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How many of you have ever moved? It doesn’t matter if it was to a different country, a different state, a different city or a different home in the same city. If I could go back in time I would tell 8 year old Brian that moving is never easy but it’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be. I say that because I had a terrible time dealing with the reality of what a new life in a new town would be like when my parents told us that we were moving from Laguna Hills to Escondido in California. The reason for the move was very normal and practical: my dad had taken a job offer near Escondido so we moved to be closer to his new job. Yet, as an 8 year old who loved his school, his neighborhood, and his friends, moving seemed like the worst thing that could happen to me. Obviously it wasn’t and I recovered from this tragedy. Little did I also know what the future held for me. Since graduating high school I have moved more times than I wanted to spend counting. In fact, my younger brother and I have a running joke about who has moved more than the other. While I still think that I have him at the moment, he is quickly catching up with me. Even though I would tell my younger self not to worry as much about it, moving still isn’t exactly something I get excited about. There’s all the planning and packing, the selling of your home and buying a new one. You have to find movers and start all over with doctors and everything in a new town.
While I am sure that Abraham didn’t have to deal with quite the same issues that we might have to deal with when packing up and moving, I am sure that moving might not have been exactly something that Abraham was planning or wanting to do with his life at that point and time. Yet God calls to Abraham and tells him to leave everything and go to a new place that God will show him. While God does tell him to leave his land, his family, and specifically his father’s house, we don’t quite get the impact of this moment, so I’m going to tell you why. Probably the most impactful is that he is being asked to leave his father behind. The reason that is so important is that Abraham would have been the only family member to take care of his father, especially since scripture tells us that he took Lot, his nephew with him. Abraham’s father, Terah, only had two living sons at this time and Abraham was the only one that went with him when they moved the first time. So if Abraham leaves and takes his wife Sarah, and Lot, they are leaving Terah to live all by himself. Abraham would have been the caretaker of his father, and the social norm and obligation was to care for your parents as they aged, so God asking him to leave is asking him to ask his father to be self-reliant while Abraham follows God to some new land. And not just that but for Abraham to give up that societal obligation he has to his father because his only other family is quite literally thousands of miles away back in the land of Ur where they originally came from.
For all this what does Abraham get? He is going to be shown a new land, he will be made into a great nation, he will be blessed, his name will be respected, and he will himself be a blessing. To be honest the idea of a great nation sounds intriguing, but we also have to remember that we already know that Sarah is barren. The rest we hear is about being blessed and being a blessing. Now I don’t want to make it sound like I am entirely against this proposal, but I have to admit that God picked the absolute right person because I don’t know how many people would have gone with such a vague promise as that. Last week we heard the covenant that God made about never flooding the earth again and that seems very concrete, but this promise, this covenant that God makes with Abraham, at this point in the story, is so vague, it’s hard to really believe that Abraham went along with it. But that’s exactly what it says happened. Genesis 12:4 “4 Abram left just as the Lord told him, and Lot went with him.”
So he brings everything he has and travels to this new land, and as he travels through the land he stops at various places and he worships God. During one of those stops the promise, the covenant, becomes more clear that this land he has traveled to will be the land that God wants for his descendants. The faith and trust that Abraham exhibits continues to blow my mind. First he goes without asking a single question of God and now he is in this foreign land and he travels and builds altars to God along the way and spends his time in worship to God.
While God does promise to bless Abraham, what I see as more concrete to the promise and the covenant that is just being made is that it is actually meant for his descendants and that all the families of the earth will be blessed because of Abraham. So again, I will say that Abraham has no descendants and yet when he is given this promise of land for his descendants he builds God an altar to mark that holy moment between the two of them. Basically trusting in God to fulfill that promise, and yet again without Abraham having any understanding of how that is going to unfold. The other that makes me do a double take, if I am completely honest is that all the families of the earth will be blessed because of Abraham. While it may be that his descendants will inherit land, God has promised to bless all the families, all the people of the whole earth becuase of the covenant God is making with God.
We once again see from last week with the flood, to this week with Noah, that one person is given blessed by God and that those blessings and the covenant made is extended to all people of the earth. And that is what really just speaks to me today. God blesses Abraham before he even leaves to go on this crazy journey. God blesses the families of the world before he even breaks the news to his wife and his father. God bestows blessings on Abraham and all his descendants and all the people and families of the world. It is no wonder that Abraham takes the time to build altars and worship God every time he stop and camps in this new land he has traveled to see. God has promised to bless him and the whole world through him. We even see how the writers of the New Testament pick up on this very idea. That the love and grace of God is meant for all families, all nations of the world and that it was promised to Abraham and fulfilled in Christ Jesus.
So no matter how many more times I may move in my life or go through times when I don’t know what is happening or where I might be going I look at this calling of Abraham and how it may have been his call by God, but what is promised is meant for us all, for all generations and families of the world. That we are blessed and called to be a blessing to this world so that all may know that God wants to bless and love all people in every corner of this earth as we read in the gospel of Matthew this morning. So as you go forth from this place today know that you are blessed, you are a blessing to others, and so is everyone you see, you meet, and talk to all thanks to God’s promise to Abraham. Amen.