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New
York Times Dateline: New Orleans, September 2:
They waited, and they waited,
and then they waited some more in the 90-degree heat. As
many as 5000 people huddled at a highway underpass on
Interstate 10, waiting for buses that never arrived to take
them away from a storm they could not escape. Babies cried.
The sick huddled in the shade in wheelchairs or rested on
cots. A few others, less patient, simply started walking
west with nowhere to go. (NY Times, page 19, Sept.
4, 2005)
Thousands…going out, not knowing where they are to go,
living in tents, looking for the city.
The name “Hebrew”
literally means “One Who Wanders.” This sermon series
out of the book of Hebrews was meant to speak to our journey
of faith, a metaphor for our spiritual life. But the faces
of “those who wander” have been imprinted on our hearts and
in our minds and we can never see it quite the same again.
It does provide a graphic and powerful backdrop for the
stories of the patriarchs, the Hebrews, “those who
wandered,” as do we...seeking a faith that will sustain us
in this real world, in this day, a faith that makes sense in
a world of wanderers.
A faith rooted in the God of
covenant,
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
the God of Sarah, Rebecca and Ruth,
the God of Moses and Miriam and Mary,
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The story
begins with Abraham and Sarah, and it begins with the simple
affirmation of faith:
1.
They trusted God for a future.
By faith Abraham obeyed
when he was called, and went out, not knowing where he was
to go... By faith Sarah received power to conceive, even
when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful
who had promised. Therefore, from one man, and him as good
as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of the
heaven and as innumerable as the sand of the seashore.
(Hebrews 11:8, 11-12)
The story begins in the land of
Ur (present-day Iraq) with Abraham minding his own business,
when God called, “Abraham...go to a land that I will show
you.” I imagine he went home that day and said to Miss Sarah,
“Guess what? We’re going.” And I imagine Miss Sarah
said, “Now do you mind telling me where it is we are going?”
“Well,” says Abe, scratching his wrinkled and bald head, “I
don’t rightly know.”
Now I can’t speak for your
spouse, but I can tell you about the seven times I have come
home to mine and said, “We’re goin’.” Sarah, like Judy,
might have just a few more questions to ask. But frankly, in
the end, I think it’s Sarah who exhibits the deeper faith in
this story. Without the encounter with God, without the
direct call from the clouds, without the confirmation of the
soul, the writer says, “Sarah considered God faithful who
had promised.”
And
they went out, not knowing where they were to go.
God’s call is often like that.
Not always sharply defined, not always clear, sometimes just
a nudge that feels like a command, “GO!!” Or as they say in
Tennessee, “GIT!! Go from your home and your kin to a place
I will show you. Trust me for your future.”
God often
calls us:
-
out of
the comfortable and the convenient into the risky and
the untried
-
out of
the security of the past into the uncertainty of the
“not yet”
-
out of
the 12-year stability of a well-loved pastor to the
unknown of a new guy, from of all places…Ann Arbor!
-
out of
the tried and true rituals of the known into the
spontaneous dance of the spirit
And in simple faith, the
Abrahams and Sarahs of every generation have trusted God,
packed up and followed to a land that God would show them.
They
trusted God for their future.
If you asked Abraham, “What is
the content of your faith? What does it mean to trust God?”,
he wouldn’t give you a theological discourse or
philosophical thesis. He would look across the plains and
say, “See these hills? One of these days, these hills will
be full of my descendants.”
“But Abe, you’re a foreigner
here, a wanderer, a sojourner. By law, you can’t even buy
property.”
“Yes, but God has promised, and
one of these days, these hills will be full of my
descendants because God keeps his promises.”
“Now Abe, I don’t mean to get
personal, but you and Miss Sarah, I mean you’re 70 and she’s
60, still childless.”
“Yes, but
God has called, and God has promised, and God will keep his
promises.”
If you come
back ten years later and ask, “Abe, what do you believe
now?”
“See these
hills, one of these days, these hills will be full of my
descendants.”
“And how
old are you now?”
“I’m 80 and
Miss Sarah’s 70.”
“What’s the
word from the rabbit? Any sign of a pregnancy yet?”
“No, but
you see we’re trusting God, and God keeps his promises.”
Come back 15 years later and ask
Abe what he believes, and he would still say, “See these
hills? One of these days, these hills will be full of my
descendants.”
“And how
old are you now—95 and Miss Sarah is 85?”
“Yes, and we just got the report
and guess what? Miss Sarah’s going to have a son, because
God always keeps his promises.”
And therefore....from one
man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many
as the stars in the heaven and as innumerable as grains of
sand on the seashore. (Hebrews 11:12)
Old Testament scholar Dennis
Kinlaw once said that when God told Abraham and Sarah they
were going to have a child, they went right out, bought
themselves a baby buggy and set it up in the living room.
For fifteen years, they used it as a coffee table in the old
folks home. Dr. Kinlaw said it always made his wife nervous
when she heard him say it, but he believes every house needs
a baby buggy….a sign of the hope in God’s promise, the hope
for the future.
Abraham and Sarah went out when
they were called, not knowing where they were to go,
trusting God for a future. They went out…
2.
Living in tents, looking for the city.
The Hebrew
writer says:
By faith he sojourned in the
land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with
Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he
looked forward to a city which has foundations, whose
builder and maker is God.
What a
wonderful image—“they lived in tents, because they looked
for a city.”
You see
Abraham and Sarah learned the difference between:
-
tents
and cities
-
the
temporal and the eternal
-
the
passing and the permanent
-
those
things which are nothing more than temporary, and those
things which are lasting and eternal
They knew the difference between
temporary tents and those convictions and values which give
life its lasting foundations, as if its builder and maker
was God.
In our prayer service Wednesday
night, I said that one of the things we have learned in this
last week is the brevity of life, and the fragility of all
we hold so dear. Our homes and gardens; our antiques and
keepsakes; our treasured traditions and our earthly
treasures…my grandfather’s dining room table and Judy’s
dad’s wooden wagon which has been our coffee table for
thirty years; all the things which mean so much to us can be
gone in a moment with the sound of a sudden wind and the
flood wall of rushing water.
It’s important to be able to
tell the difference between the temporary tents where we
live out most of our days and the eternal city whose builder
and maker is God. Dennis Kinlaw once drew the contrast in a
slightly different way: “Abraham pitched his tents and built
his altars.”
If you track Abraham’s journey,
you find no evidence of castles, forts or fortresses, no
palace ruins or glorious remains. What do you find? Piles of
rocks where he worshipped God, cairns of worship, reminders
of God’s permanence in an ever-changing world. He
pitched his tents, and he built his altars. He knew the
difference between the temporary and the eternal. They lived
in tents because they looked for a city with foundations,
whose builder and maker is God.
Back during the dot-com boom and
bust, I heard a report on NPR about all the baby boomer
billionaires with fabulous fortunes and the frantic spending
on expensive cars, homes, and gigots and gadgets. Then, just
as suddenly came the overnight drop in those overnight
fortunes. The commentator used a phrase which has stuck with
me. He said, “They didn’t realize it was only on paper.”
Only
on paper.
And I recalled the story Jesus
told of a baby billionaire. His farm business was booming.
You can check it out on www.biggerbarns.com. So he said to
himself: “What shall I do? I’ve got all this stuff, all this
wealth. I know, I will build bigger barns.” And he did. But
God said:
Thou fool. This night thy soul
shall be required of thee…then whose shall these things be?
So is he who lays up treasure for himself, but is not rich
toward God.
(Luke 12:13-21)
Only on paper. We pay more
attention to our paper fortunes than our eternal souls. We
are more concerned about our relationship with our
accountants than our relationship with God. We invest more
in our tents than in our altars. And the confusion between
the things which are temporary and the things which endure
threatens to undo us.
Abraham and Sarah had it about
right. They lived in the midst of the transient, living in
temporary tents, with an eye toward something which would
give their lives foundations, something lasting, eternal, a
life whose builder and maker is God.
Living
in tents, looking for the city...
3.
So they went out, backing into the future.
In seminary, I studied Greek but
not Hebrew, so at this point, I will once again turn to
Dennis Kinlaw to interpret it for me. He says that in
Hebrew, as in English, a word can have more than one
meaning. We lived in England for a time and discovered we
really are “two nations separated by a common language.” In
the USA, a boot is something you put on your foot. In
England, a boot is the trunk of a car, but of course,
the word trunk can also mean the proboscis of an
elephant.
The same is true in Hebrew. The
Hebrew word for right can also mean south,
and the word for left can also mean
north. The word for east can also mean past.
The word for west can also mean future.
Which means we are standing in such a way that we face
east with our backs to the west. We can see the
past, but the future is unknown and uncertain,
so we cautiously back our way into it. “But,” Dr. Kinlaw
said, “God literally has eyes in the back of his head! God
knows the future as well as the past, so the most sensible
thing in the world is to place our hand in his and move out
in faith. And it’s the fool who keeps his hand out of the
hand of God and tries to walk it by himself.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ knows the
end as well as the beginning. He is the alpha and the omega,
the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
In these early days of our
journey together, I am not certain what the future holds.
I’ve been listening…in over 25 home gatherings, in
committees and groups, with individuals. I’ve been asking
about our hopes and dreams for the future. And I am trying
to listen for the voice of the Spirit in it all. Frankly, it
is not yet clear just where God might be leading us.
I do know
this is a time of great transition in the life of this
church:
-
new
opportunities for ministry through the CLC
-
new
experiences in fellowship and growth in group life
-
new
doors of service and mission in the community and around
the world
-
new
avenues of spiritual formation and growth
At this point, I feel like we
are backing into the future. But when God has been so good
in the past, when his leading has been so reliable, when God
has blessed this church in so many ways across the years, I
am willing to place my hand in his, and trust him for the
future. We can back our way into the future with confidence
and hope.
There is an old hymn which no
longer appears in the United Methodist hymnal. It could have
been the song of Abraham and Sarah, and in days of
uncertainty in our world and new opportunity in our church,
it could be our song as well.
God of our life, through all the
circling years,
we trust in thee.
In all the past, through all our hopes and fears,
thy hand we see
With each new day, when morning lifts the veil,
We own thy mercies, Lord, which never fail.
God of the past, our times are
in thy hand,
with us abide.
Lead us by faith to hope’s true promised land,
be thou our guide
With thee to bless, the darkness shines as light
And faith’s fair vision changes into sight.
God of the coming years, through
paths unknown,
we follow thee
When we are strong, Lord, leave us not alone,
our refuge be.
Be thou for us in life our daily bread,
Our heart’s true home when all our years have fled.
(1964 UM Hymnal, page 47)
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