Genesis
12:1-3
It’s
strange how quickly seventeen years can slip by, especially when it seems like
the first seventeen years of one’s life take so long to pass. And even though
it doesn’t feel like that long ago, it was seventeen years ago today, that I
stood in a sanctuary, about to proclaim my faith for the very first time—though
I wasn’t standing in the pulpit. No, I was standing several feet back from the
pulpit, behind the three or four rows of pews that made up the choir loft,
behind the old, moss-green polyester curtains that had been drawn back,
reveling the hand-painted scene of a creek bank on the wall behind the two of
us standing waist-deep in that warm water of the baptistry at Goodman Baptist
Church.
We
didn’t wear white robes at Goodman, so I was standing there in blue athletic
shorts and a cutoff Nike t-shirt, when our interim pastor, David Coggins in his
white dress shirt and duck waders, said some words about baptism, following
Jesus…to be honest, I don’t remember much because he had told me prior to the
service that he had a bad back, so when I went under the water I was supposed
to go down a certain way so I could help myself back out, so I was a bit
distracted. He raised his hand in the air and said something like, “I now
baptize you, my brother, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” and
down I went under the water, before my feet slipped off the fiberglass bottom,
with one foot sticking out of the water, as I tried to pull myself back
upright. As I wiped the water from my face, the church was clapping, and folks
were shouting, “Amen!” I climbed up the brown-carpeted steps, and left a wet
trail down the hall and into the men’s room (where I discovered that I hadn’t
brought everything I
needed for a dry change of clothes…).
After I toweled off and got
dressed, I made my way out a side door and around the sanctuary to slip through
the front door and into the back pew. It was one of those muggy days in
mid-September in South Alabama, where the summer tends to overstay its welcome,
so the air conditioner in the sanctuary was blowing in through the vents in the
ceiling. I know, because I was sitting under one of those vents, and as that
cold air combed itself through my wet hair, I swear to you friends, as sure as
I am standing hear, I heard something. It wasn’t like an audible voice, as if
someone had leaned over the pew to whisper in my ear. It wasn’t like some
vision, where all other noises were muted so as to hear it clearly. Yet it was
more than just the sound of my own inner narrator. It was a voice, a call,
that said to me, “Boy, you’ve gone and done it now. They all saw what you did,
and you can’t take it back.” My baptism didn’t wash my past away so much as it
soaked me in a call towards something else, something more, something disruptively
divine. For me, it was not an instance of initiation, a singular moment
meant to prove that I was now a part of the inner circle; it was the beginning
of something, an initial response to that first call from Christ to
“come and follow me.” From that moment to this one right now and all others
hereafter, I have sought to live my life in answering that call, in pursuit of
the God who calls, the God who is the call, the God who calls me and
you, the God who called Abram.
Many of you have heard the story,
no doubt, how God called Abram in the verses we’ve heard this morning to “Go from [his] country and [his]
kindred and [his] father's house to the land that [God would] show [him].” It’s a staple in vacation Bible school curriculum,
a story that often adorns the walls of children’s Sunday school classes. It is
arguably the founding narrative of the three Abrahamic faiths of the world.
Even the Apostle Paul references it as we heard earlier this morning in his
magnum opus to the Romans. As is the case so often with these sorts of stories,
our familiarity tends to create a chasm of understanding between us and the
text, between our context and that of the narrative.
At
first blush, this is a story about a man who answers the mysterious call from
God to go to an unknown land, and in return, God will give him that land and
bless him. Abram’s positive response to this divine call initially hits us a
response of belief: Abram must clearly believe in whatever voice
is telling him to do this, and Abram must believe that this voice is
authoritative, so he does what it tells him to do. This is why Paul says, “What
does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as
righteousness.’”[1]
We read this as a story about a man whose religious faith and trust in his God
leads him to go to some undisclosed location so that he may be richly blessed
by his God upon his arrival. But that’s not the whole story.
You
see, Abram’s father, Terah, was already heading in that direction. We’re told
in the verses just prior to our text this morning: “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. The days of Terah were two hundred five
years; and Terah died in Haran.”[2] The land of Canaan is not some mysterious,
unmarked place on the map. The call to Abram is not a call pointing him in an
unknown direction; his dad was already heading that way! He just happened to
stop and settle down in Haran. Why? Who knows? Maybe Haran had the nearest
Target and a good Mexican restaurant. I don’t know, but what I do know is that
when Terah stopped to settle in Haran, so did his entire family, and that’s a
bigger deal than we may fully understand today.
You
see, the time of Terah and Abram is a time when people moved about the world as
families, tribes, and clans. It was a matter of survival as the changing seasons,
periods of droughts or floods, migrating herds, and the threat of violent
enemies kept people on the move. If a family settled in one place, it was
because it was a good place, a safe place, a place where their family, tribe,
or clan was either too large to be threatened or too isolated to be noticed.
For a family to settle in one place meant it was less of a risk than following
the seasons, following the herds, that the land was good, and the livestock
would have plenty to eat. If a family settled in one place, they might go so
far as to say that the land was blessed, the they were blessed. After all, one can
imagine the piece of mind that comes with living in a safe place, not having to
move from one place to the next for fear of what might find you, for fear of
starving to death.
It
makes me think of that family from one of my absolute favorite American novels,
The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck introduces us to the Joad family,
sharecroppers uprooted by the effects of the Dust Bowl and the mechanization
and industrialization of farmland, a family that begins the long trek to the
“promised land” of California, where there’s work, food, and a place to live.
Along the way, the Joad’s encounter others who have been displaced: families
like them who are just trying to find work and food, people who have been
driven mad by the way the Dust Bowl has changed their lives, violent people who
are out to take advantage of the downtrodden, angry people who don’t want
outsiders moving into their communities to bring down their way of living.
Along the way they stay in horrible work camps, where families live in tents
and children play in the garbage heaps; they stop along the road and sleep in
their overloaded truck; family members die; friends are lost, and enemies are
gained; they’re not sure who they can trust or what’s going to happen, so they
keep moving. In Tom Ford’s movie adaptation (the one with Henry Fonda), the
Joad’s finally make it to California, the promised land, and even the music
begins to sound hopeful—safe—as the Joad’s drive over the hill down into the
lush, green orchards of California, a place where the family can finally settle
and rest. It wasn’t too unlike the families, tribes, and clans of Terah and
Abram’s day.
Which
is why the call that comes to Abram is so disruptive. Abram and Sarai
are not simply a childless couple with the freedom to explore the world and
take on some new adventure. They are a part of this wider family system,
complete with Abram’s brothers (and probably sisters) and their families,
servants, livestock, the whole nine yards. After the passing of Terah, Abram
becomes the head of this household, the leader of this wide, interconnected
family. So, if Abram stays, they all stay; if Abram leaves, they all leave. And
who is going to want to leave after having traveled with Terah from Ur of the
Chaldeans to Haran, settled in the land—already bought a house, got the cable
hooked up, a new cellphone contract (and Lord knows those are nearly impossible
to get out of…)? Who’s going to want to leave this place they’ve deemed to be
safe, secure, stable? Abram, Sarai, and their entire family have settled in
this place; if God is going to call Abram, then why can’t Abram go alone?
That’s what Paula did…sort of.
My
stepmom, Paula, when I was a senior in high school, was an assistant manager at
the McDonald’s in town. She liked her job, especially working with the high
school kids during the day and the “dropouts” at night. I remember picking her
up after a late shift one night, and all the workers were hanging out in the
smoking section (which is sort of hard to believe that was still a thing); I
swear I smelled like Newports for a week. Paula like working with her friend
Beth the most though, so when Beth was offered a job to manage a McDonald’s
down in Foley, she offered the assistant job to Paula. Instead of saying no,
Paula agreed and moved into a room in my stepsister’s apartment during the week
and drove the three hours, one-way, home once a week. Dad didn’t move. None of
Paula’s things moved. She didn’t even have mail sent to Foley. She wanted the
job there, so she went herself.
Couldn’t Abram just do that? I mean, if he
really felt strong enough about this calling from God, couldn’t Abram just go
by himself, send a postcard back every-so-often, come visit on the weekends, or
at least at Thanksgiving? Maybe Sarai would want to tag along, but did everyone
else have to go? Well…no.
Remember, the call was, “"Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house
to the land that I will show you…”
But would Abram want to go alone? I suppose (speaking for myself) there is a
certain sense of adventure, a thrill of sorts, in striking out alone, of
heading the call into the wide unknown. I often scroll through Instagram and
Facebook, just a bit envious of my single friends who are clearly living their
best lives now, jet-setting to exotic destinations, walking down crowded
streets in some of the most ancient cities in the world, seeing some of the
most amazing beaches, visiting some of the great wonders of the world. Yeah,
today there’s something thrilling I suppose about striking out there on your
own, tethered to the world you know, the world that’s safe, by your smartphone
and a global network of connectivity, but that wasn’t the case for Abram.
Abram’s safety, Abram’s security, is with his family, his kindred in his
father’s house, in the proven safety of Haran. To leave would almost certainly
mean his death, because to go alone, without provisions, he wouldn’t last long,
but to travel with enough, alone, would certainly attract the wrong kind of
attention.
So, this call, that comes to Abram
isn’t just some notion regarding his beliefs about his God. This call isn’t just some suggestion, an inherited
responsibility from his father. This call to Abram isn’t just a call to future blessings,
riches, and comfort. This call is nothing short of a disruption for
Abram, a rending apart of his family, a contradiction to the cultural norms and
societal securities which would ensure Abram, Sarai, and all of those under
their care a fighting chance to not only survive, but thrive in Haran. This call is so much more than a discernment of vocation or
the weighing of risks to rewards. This call Abram experiences, is
not too unlike that which I experience seventeen years ago: that disruptive call is God.
I mean that in the way theologian John Caputo
means it, that God is the very call itself. Caputo says, “God does not exist;
God calls. God does not subsist; God insists. God is not an absolute being but
an unconditional call.”[3]
In other words, the way we know God, the way we experience God, is in the call, and the way God becomes real to us is in our
response to that call—whether we seek to follow it or reject it. I believe this
is why Abram goes, because the call, the disruption, God won’t let him go, because God doesn’t just
call us once, as if it were a summons to appear in court, but like the father
of Jesus’ prodigal son, God continues to call us, to wait on us, to wait for us
to respond to God’s presence in the call. It’s now a sale’s pitch. It’s not a
transaction. It’s not just an RSVP to the reception after this ceremony we call
life. No, God is the call that all too often disrupts our comfort, disrupts our
safety, our security. God is the call that comes when we’ve finally decided
what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives. God is the call that comes
when you’ve settled into the rhythms and rituals of your religion just enough
for them to become rote. God is the call that keeps you up at night, that won’t
leave you alone, that makes your heartbeat faster when the congregation sings
the invitation hymn. God is the call that makes you turn the channel when the
news reports of all of those without power, water, and food in the Bahamas. God
is the call that won’t leave you alone until you respond—one way or another.
God is the call that says to those of us who’ve left our kindred and our
father’s house, to those of us who’ve given up our cultural safety and
security, to those of us who’ve passed through the waters of baptism, declaring
to the world that we will now follow that call—it says to us, “you’ve
gone and done it now; they all saw what you did, and you can’t take it back.”
God is calling you, and you know God is. You’ve felt it. It keeps you up
at night, won’t leave you alone, makes you question so much. God is calling.
You know God is, because you can’t just walk away from it; you can’t just take
up the comfort of what’s in front of you. God’s calling, and you know God is.
So, what are you going to about it today? Amen.
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