Go [Proper 5A - Genesis 12:1-9]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Genesis 12:1-9

 

Go

 

The momentum had stalled.  The first eleven chapters of Genesis, and, by extension, of the Bible, begin with a tremendous explosion of life.  In the beginning, God created.  And in the context of that wildly productive expression, God made all of these diverse and vibrant perpetuating lifeforms.  God intended that the spark of life, spoken forth by a divine word, would grow and spread, be fruitful and multiply.  But instead, it stalled.  The author of Genesis, before telling the story of Abram and Sarai, leads us into a surprisingly barren land, a world in which death and desolation had taken hold, a world in which hope had hit the wall. 

 

The teeming possibility of Eden’s Garden had withered.  No longer in those paradisal bounds, the story is set now in Haran.  And there was no hope in Haran.  In the final verses of the previous chapter, we discover that Sarai is barren; the journey to the Promised Land has been indefinitely detoured; Abram’s father is dead; and this family, without future, has made a home of what was meant to be a rest stop.  And there they are watching the clock run out.  The momentum has stalled – for this particular family and also for the greater human family.  And there was no reason to believe in a way forward. 

 

And so, you see, the grand story of humanity might have ended after just eleven chapters.  And there was nothing Abram, Sarai, or anyone else, for that matter, could do about it.  They could not build a future where there existed no possibility of life.  They could not conjure hope from nothing.

 

But God could.  As the creation story tells us, God creates with just a word.  And that word found a weary man, in a barren land: Abram.  Abram wasn’t expecting to hear from God.  Abram lived in a city of moon worshipers.  His ear was not readily tuned to the voice of the One who created the moon.  He probably was not aware that such a God even existed. 

 

And Abram wasn’t expecting a future.  He had settled into stasis.  He understood too well his situation.  Abram was at the end of his line; it was over.  He had nowhere to go.  Until God said “Go.”

 

Though they were strangers, the dictate of God was persuasive.  The promise of God was riveting.  But the steps required of God were heart-rending.  Abram was entrenched in a kind of hopelessness.  That sounds miserable.  But actually hopelessness can feel like home, can feel safe, once one settles into it.  Abram and Sarai had grown quite comfortable in Haran.

 

But God had other plans.  We think of God as a loving embrace, but sometimes the holy hug feels more like a tackle.  In this story, the voice of God was neither still, not small; the voice of God meant to be disruptive.  The summons grows progressively difficult.  Leave your country becomes leave your kindred becomes leave your father’s house.  God pulls Abram from the comforts of culture, tribe, and family.  To go.  But where?

 

The call does not include the destination.  What the call includes is danger and risk.  It is a journey into the unknown, away from all that is familiar and reliable.  Because the hope lives out beyond, beyond what is easily attainable, beyond the stasis, in those remote places accessed only by faith.

 

I appreciate that God called Abram and Sarai to set off together.  Like Mary and Joseph.  Like Paul and Silas.  Like Jesus pairing the disciples up for their short-term mission trips.  Abram and Sarai venture out together.  It is a lot to go and leave.  It helps to share the summons, to have someone who will listen with you when the voice of God interrupts all your plans.

 

Back in 2015, I thought I heard the voice of God calling me to set out.  I checked with my wife; she heard it too.  And so we opened our hearts to the next stage of the journey, not knowing what that meant or where the journey would lead.  It was, it turns out, the journey that led us here, to Colorado Springs, to Grace and St. Stephen’s, to you.

 

But that call wasn’t easy to hear – neither was it easy to accept.  We loved Toledo.  We loved our friends.  We loved the people of St. Andrew’s.  And they loved us.  We had built a life in Toledo – and memories.  We had two babies in that place.  Also, we did not really love the idea of moving two little ones across the country – away from our kindred and our parents’ houses. 

 

But throughout that discernment process, that disruptive voice of God came increasingly into focus.  Until the call was clear – persuasive and riveting.  And after months of discernment, the search committee of this parish named me a finalist and invited me to visit Colorado Springs, a city I had never before visited.  During that short stay, on a lovely December evening, as I was being introduced to the vestry of this parish, I heard the voice of God say, “These are your people.”  That night at the bed and breakfast, on the evening before we flew back to Ohio, still a couple of weeks before things were officially official, I told my traveling companion, my spouse, “I think we are moving to Colorado Springs.”

 

And we did.  It was a step of faith, not easy at the time (there were so many unknowns) but definitely right.  It was a step of faith, into the unfamiliar, with a God who not only calls us but then walks with us into the future. 

 

We trusted but we didn’t know; we couldn’t know.  Because God never gives us the ending, just a glimpse of the next step.  God summons us into those places that require of us great faith and immense trust.  Sometimes that means, like it did for Abram and Sarai, pulling up the roots.  More often the journey is internal, paved in our souls.  And so sometimes God calls us to shift out of neutral, to break out of unhealthy patterns, to dare to hope again, to plant a seed in a field long-barren. 

 

In this story, God saddles Abram with a lot of wills, and no proof.  God appealed to hope, to the possibility that the future would be filled with a vibrancy Abram had not yet experienced.  Every promise was a promise, not a guarantee.  And Abram and Sarai went.  They followed a mysterious stranger into a mysterious future; they took a chance on God. 

 

Our God is a dreamer, always and forever imaging the future.  Just beyond the horizon, in a place called hope, God is even now laying the foundation of a Kingdom.  And God is calling us to journey in the direction of that Promised Land.  And while we travel different roads, and walk at difference paces, each road is paved with hope and each journey fueled by as much faith as we can muster. 

 

God is calling you.  Listen closely.  And when you hear that word, be brave.  Go with God; be tossed ahead by the divine whim.  Walk boldly into your future.  The call might be unsettling; the journey uncomfortable.  But you go not alone.  And while the turns obscure the destination, when you travel with God, you wind up exactly where you need to be.