First Step

Genesis 12:1-9

October 1, 2017 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Have you ever wanted a sign from God? Skywriting, a booming voice, an email or a tweet—something! Something that tells you, for guaranteed 100% sure, that you’re doing the right thing and are headed the right way. A few years ago, someone began putting up billboards all across the country that claimed to be a word from God. Some of them are thought-provoking and some are just funny. This one says, “If you must curse, use your own name!” Or how about this one: “Let’s meet at my house Sunday before the game.” This one goes straight to the point: “Life is short. Eternity isn’t.” Or this one, that just addresses our desire straight out: “Well, you did ask for a sign.” I’m sure you’ve seen these or others, but the truth is, when we say we want a “sign” from God, a billboard is not usually what we have in mind. We’d like to know what we’re supposed to do, or sometimes we say we’d like to know what’s next. We’d like to see the options laid out clearly: if I go this way, what will happen? Or that way, what will happen? Sometimes I hear it expressed this way: why doesn’t God just speak to us like he did to all those folks in the Bible? You see, we have this image of God speaking to people in the Bible every day, like they sat down and had breakfast together every morning. But that’s not actually what the text says, if we take the time to read it carefully. For instance, when it comes to Abram, God spoke to him about once every twenty-five years on average (Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone—Part One, pg. 133). You want a sign from God? You might have to wait for a while—and when it comes, you might not like it. Because God often calls people to do things that they never imagined themselves doing.

This morning, we’re continuing our series of sermons called “The Epic of Eden.” We’ve been looking at these ancient stories, foundational stories to our faith, and we’ve been realizing that, for one thing, they still have a lot to teach us, and for another thing, what happens in these stories all flows out of God’s constant desire to have a relationship with us. We’ve visited with Adam and Eve, and with Noah, and last week we stopped by the Tower of Babel. (Just for the record, the fact that it was called “Babel” has nothing to do with why I asked Rick to preach on that!) As I’ve said in the previous weeks, in the early chapters of Genesis, the author is telling us about the early history of our world in grand, sweeping strokes. You can’t just add up the genealogies and try to figure out the date because these stories don’t work that way. We’re dealing with huge, sweeping events affecting the world and the human race. But at the end of Genesis 11 and onward, Genesis narrows its focus. Suddenly, we’re not looking at the wider history of the human race. Instead, we’re now narrowly focused on the events and life of one family (cf. Ross, “Genesis,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 1, pg. 96). Yet, when God calls to the patriarch of this family, it will have big implications for the whole human race—even down to today.

Abram’s story begins in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, where he is living among his father’s family. This was typical of the time, of course, that family groups lived together; in civilized territory, you would share life together in “the father’s house.” (That was still true among Jewish families in Jesus’ time, by the way.) According to Genesis 11, however, for some reason we aren’t told about, Terah (Abram’s father) decides to uproot everyone and move from the city of Ur in order to head toward Canaan, which is modern-day Israel. Ur was in the far south of Mesopotamia. At the time it was on the Persian Gulf, though the shoreline has changed today. To get from there to Israel, if you had permission to cross the airspace, today you’d just fly due west. But if you’re on foot, as Terah and Abram were, you’d have to go far north first and then turn south because the Arabian Desert is in the way. Most people didn’t try to cross the desert in those days; they would, instead, follow the route of what is called the “fertile crescent.” That’s the way Terah sets out, but he gets as far as Haran, at the top of the crescent, and he stops. He quits the journey and settles down again (11:31).

You have to wonder why. I mean, really, you have to wonder why he started out in the first place. Is it possible that God called to him while he was in Ur? Or did Terah make the move for his own reasons? Or did Abram’s call come first while he was in Ur and he convinced his dad to come along as well? We don’t know, of course. What we do know for certain is that Terah got as far as Haran and quit. He settled down, and he died there in Haran.

That’s where we pick up the story in Genesis 12, which we read the first few verses of this morning. When he is seventy-five years old (12:4), God calls to Abram and has a new mission for him. Now, we often picture Abram as a subsistence farmer, perhaps living on the edge of just making enough, maybe like the Bedouins today in Israel and Egypt who still live in tents. But based on what we know of the place he came from, he was anything but that. Rather, in his world, Abram was most likely a middle-aged (don’t you like that, 75 is middle-aged, but then again his father lived to 205), settled, prosperous, aristocratic and possibly pagan man (Ross 96). He’s more like the Bedouin family I saw in Israel several years ago who had their tent set up—right beside their satellite dish! He would have been well off, and it’s entirely possible Abram thought that when he and his father arrived in Haran, they had finished their journey. Whatever had compelled Terah to make the trip in the first place was no longer compelling, and so Abram settled down into the routine of life in Haran along with his father. And that’s why it’s telling that God doesn’t call to him until Terah died. It’s at that point God says to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (12:1).

The English translation, as often happens, tones down what God actually says. It’s an imperative command God issues to Abram, more like, “Get out!” (Ross 95). It’s not an invitation; it’s more like a master summoning a servant or a slave. As one author puts it, the Hebrew language has more polite ways to put such things and God uses none of these (Goldingay 135). “Get out!” God says. It’s not a request. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a command, an imperative. Abram has to do this.

We’re not told how Abram heard this command. Yes, Genesis says the Lord “said” to Abram, but you know as well as I do that people use that sort of language to describe all sorts of experiences. How did he know for sure this was God speaking to him and not the stirring of the falafel he’d had for dinner the night before? Had he heard God’s voice before? We’re not told. For all we know, this is the first time Abram directly encounters this God. It’s possible his family had retained some semblance of belief or remembrance of this ancient God, but again, we’re not told. As we know from our look at the Tower of Babel last week, people had pretty much abandoned faithfulness and belief in the creator God by this point. They had become too sophisticated and talented to need this God any longer; sound familiar, by any chance? Somehow, Abram, a man in charge of this large household, hears the voice of the creator God and he knows it for certain to be a command: “Get out. Go. Leave behind everything you know and follow me.”

Now, I imagine that between verses 3 and 4, there had to be a lot of soul searching on Abram’s part, and at least one (probably more than one) conversation with his wife, Sarai, in which she likely said, “You’re thinking about doing what? You talked to who?” I mean, think about what he’d be giving up. His family—any family members that did not come with him he would probably never see again. There was no email, no FaceTime, so Skype, not even any real postal system. I think about that even among the pioneers in our own country’s history, who often left behind comfortable lives in the east to head out west, to settle an untamed part of our nation, knowing they would likely not see their families again. For Abram, it was even more certain. He would be giving up his status in the community, and for that matter, he would be giving up his nationality. He would be leaving absolutely everything familiar, comfortable and safe (cf. Goldingay 135), and he would be heading out to—well, at this point, he doesn’t know where. God just tells him to go “to the land I will show you” (12:1). So not only will he leave behind what he knows, he will be heading into something most definitely unknown (cf. Ross 96). Can you imagine how difficult it would have been to take the first step on this journey? And yet, we’re told simply that “Abram went, as the Lord had told him” (12:4). And, as far as we know, he never questioned the decision and never looked back.

God had, after all, made him a pretty spectacular promise. Listen to it again: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (12:2-3). Now, when we hear the word “blessing,” we usually think of material things; even more, we usually think of something we will gain or obtain during our lifetime. But how did Abram hear those words? For one thing, he heard them as words of grace. Like Noah before him, he had done nothing to earn God’s blessing. God chooses Abram because he sees in his heart a man who is willing to do what God asks (cf. Goldingay 139). Beyond that, at this point, he and Sarai are childless. “The man who was to become a great nation could not at that time be the father of one child!” (Briscoe, Communicator’s Commentary: Genesis, pg. 126). His family line, as far as he knows, ends with him. So what kind of blessing is God promising to Abram? And what does God mean later when he repeats and expands upon the promise with these words: “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be” (15:5)? At that point, Abram and Sarai are still childless and elderly. They are not at the point in their life where most people are having babies! What did this promise mean to this elderly man and his wife?

Have you ever tried to count the stars? Those of us who live in populated areas find it’s often hard to even see the stars, but when you get out away from the lights, from the buildings, from the city, you can begin to see how vast the sky is. Sandy Richter tells of another unique experience, of climbing Mt. Sinai at 4:00 a.m. I’ve never been able to do that climb because they want you to start in the early morning so you make it to the top by sunrise (before it gets too hot), and Dr. Richter was doing just that when she happened to notice the clarity of the sky. She writes about it this way: “I’d never been in a desert at 4:00 am before, so I didn’t know that without streetlights and car lights the sky looks as though it is encrusted with diamonds. I didn’t know that when you are perched on the side of a mountain it seems as though you can reach out and touch them. I didn’t know” (The Epic of Eden, pg. 160). Abram must have felt some of that same wonder, there in the desert near Haran, as God showed him the promise. And Abram had a choice: he could take a bold step of faith, answer the call and trust that God somehow, some way would fulfill the promise he was making, even if it didn’t happen in his lifetime, or he could stay put in Haran and miss the blessing. And Abram, by taking that first step, became the father of all the faithful and the proof that God’s promises will always come true.

Have you ever heard God’s call? I’ve shared my story of being called before, but some of you weren’t here then, and some of the rest of you may have forgotten! I never heard a loud, booming audible voice, and I can tell you that in my case, there wasn’t a point in time where God made it absolutely clear that pastoring a church is what he was calling me to. I’ve always said I was a little slow to catch on, so he had to work harder (and slower) with me. I can now look back and know that God was calling to me when I was in high school, and he worked through my home church who gave me various leadership opportunities. That call continued when I got the chance to serve as a leader in the Ball State InterVarsity chapter. I grew spiritually so much during those years, and I also got the chance to prepare and lead Bible studies, share messages, and design retreats. At the end of my four years at Ball State, I wasn’t exactly sure what was next (except marriage to Cathy), so I enrolled at Asbury Seminary, not intending to become a pastor. In fact, I remember my mom asking me years ago if I thought I might become a pastor, and I distinctly remember telling her, “Why would I want to do that? That’s sounds so boring!” And yet, as we began at Asbury, the call to become a local church pastor, to make a difference for God’s kingdom through the local church, became clearer and clearer. One evening in particular remains in my memory, and that was the night before classes began for my first semester. They had a convocation or an orientation for all of us new students, and I can’t tell you a thing that anyone said that evening except one line from Dr. Robert Mulholland. Dr. Mulholland, in the midst of his address to us all, said this: “If you can imagine yourself doing anything else, you need to go do it.” Now, almost twenty-five years since I took my first appointment, I still can’t imagine really doing anything else. Oh, there are days, as there is in any calling. I imagine Abram had days where he got out the maps and started planning a route back to Haran. For me, there have been a few days where I’ve wondered what sort of education I’d need to go do something else. But in the end, it comes back to a call. Not too long ago, in speaking with two different clergy friends of mine, I asked a question. Both, on separate occasions, were talking about possibly leaving ministry, and the question that came to my mind, and that I actually asked, was this: “God called you to this. Has God called you out of it yet?” Because it all comes back to call, whether your name is Abram, Dennis, or anyone else.

So let me ask you this: what might you be called to? Your call may or may not overlap with your career. For me, it does, but that’s not the case for the vast majority of people. Listen to me carefully: if you are a follower of Jesus, you are in ministry. You are called to live out a call right where you are. Several years ago, I had a long conversation with a friend who was contemplating leaving behind a career he believed in and believed he had been called to because he thought the only “real” ministry was in being a pastor. I told him then, and I’ll tell you today, we need Christians who are faithfully following Jesus in every area of life. As we prayed last week, we need Christian teachers and administrators who will serve Jesus faithfully in the schools. We need Christian financial people and Christian lawyers, Christian bus drivers and Christian restaurant workers, Christian healthcare workers and Christian plumbers—the list could, literally, go on and on. The question is not what is your job. The question is what is your calling. How can you faithfully follow and represent Jesus in the place he has put you? He has not called us all to full-time church or pastoral ministry. But he has called us all to ministry, and our baptism is a sign of that call. Now, some of you may be called to ministry, and if you’re exploring that or thinking about that, I would love to talk with you sometime. Just never forget that God calls you right where you are. He may call you to move, like Abram, or like a United Methodist pastor (we had no idea when we started that we would end up in places like Muncie, Rensselaer, Portage or Terre Haute!), or he may call you to serve right where you are.

Of course, we need to go back to the question I asked earlier in regards to Abram. A lot of folks claim to hear from God. So how do you know when it’s a true call from God and not last night’s spaghetti speaking to you? First of all, any call from God will always align with Scripture; God will not call you to do something or live some way that contradicts what he has already told us in the pages of this book. The second thing you need to look for is the affirmation of trusted, Christian friends. If you believe you’re called to start a Christian music ministry and lead the greatest Christian band ever assembled, but no one wants to come hear you sing, you might not have heard from God correctly. And third, I go back to Dr. Mulholland’s words: if you can imagine yourself doing anything else, you should probably go do it. Or, put another way, if you have to have a back-up plan just in case this ministry doesn’t work out, you might want to actually pursue the “back-up plan.”

Regardless of where God calls you, remember what he promised Abram: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Abram was blessed to be a blessing, and I believe we are, as well. The promise once given to Abram comes down to us. And, certainly, all peoples on earth have been blessed because of Abram, and down on through the generations because of his people, and one in particular who came from his family line: Jesus Christ. In many ways, Abram’s descendant Jesus is echoing this same calling when he gives his disciples their last instructions: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). In our church, we express that mission this way: we are called to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” Disciples, you’ve been blessed—now go be a blessing to all those around you. Jesus doesn’t promise it will be easy, or that we’ll always have clear direction of which way to go. God didn’t make those promises to Abram, either. God promised his presence, and Jesus still makes that promise to us: “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

One way we experience his presence is in the bread and the cup that we have come to share in together today. This sacrament, this holy moment, is a reminder of our calling: to make disciples, to invite others to the table of the Lord. Jesus gave his disciples this act on the last night he spent with them before his crucifixion, and the church has been re-enacting this promise for two thousand years. Today, on this World Communion Sunday, we gather at the table in remembrance of the promise made to Abram and the commission given by Jesus with brothers and sisters all around the world. How appropriate, then, that we remember, as we come to the table, that God’s people are all blessed to be a blessing, from Abram all the way down to us. We are called to bless the world around us. How will you do that this week, even today? Will you answer God’s call and take the first step this morning toward answering that call? Let’s pray as we prepare our hearts for holy communion.