This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 7/12/20, at Berkeley Friends Church (via videoconference). The scripture readings for this sermon were: Genesis 12:1-9 and Hebrews 11:8-12. You can listen to the audio, or keeping scrolling to read my manuscript. (The spoken sermon differs from the written text)
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A couple of years ago, Faith and I were living in Washington, DC. We had a pretty good life there. We both had work we enjoyed. Our kids had school and childcare that met their needs. We loved our home and had some good friends. We felt comfortable.
We were at rest in our lives, but we were uneasy in our spirits. As well as things were going for us, we felt a yearning for more. More life. More spirit. More of God’s presence leading us, guiding us, flowing through our words and actions.
Even when everything rational told us that we should feel full, something gnawed at us, telling us we were empty. Our feet were firmly planted, but we could sense that God was calling us to take another step.
So when Dorothy Kakimoto reached out to us, asking us if we were open to exploring coming to serve as pastors at Berkeley Friends Church, we were ready to have that conversation with you. And as it became clear that God was clearing a path for us to join you here in California, we were prepared to embrace that invitation.
It would have been easy to resist that call, to turn away from the opening. There was a temptation to choose the easy, safe path – to continue doing the things that were mostly working and hope for the best. But we could sense that, in the words of Frank Herbert, “that path leads ever down into stagnation.” We could be safe, or we could be faithful; we had to choose.
In our readings this morning, we hear about Sarah and Abraham – back when they were still called Sarai and Abram. They had a choice to make. On the one hand, they had their safe, stable, predictable life in Haran. That’s where their family was, where they had gained their wealth and security. But they heard God calling them to set out on an adventure.
God said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Go from everything that you’ve ever known. Go from those things that make you safe and comfortable, into a place you’ve never seen. Go, because you can trust me. Go, and I will be with you. I will bless you in every way. Go, and all the families of the earth will be blessed, too.
That’s a big leap of faith for anyone. But especially for Abraham and Sarah. Because they were very old, and they had no children. As far as they could see, their family had no future. They thought they were the end of the line. Yet they could hear the call of the Spirit of God. They felt the hunger for more. They could sense that there was a great adventure that they were being invited into.
God told Abraham and Sarah to go, and they went. They went out of the land where they had lived their whole lives, into a new place. The Lord showed them where their descendents would someday live – not as a wandering family, but as a great nation.
And here’s an interesting part. They got to pitch their tent in the promised land. They got to drink from the rivers and eat from the fruit trees of Canaan. And while they camped in this land, God promised them that it would someday be a homeland for their family.
But then God called them to keep moving. It says that, after building an altar to God in the land he had promised, Abraham moved on. First to the east, and then south towards the Negeb. Abraham and Sarah had taken the big risk, and they had seen the promised land. But now they had to keep moving, because the promise was not only for them, but for all their descendents, for the next generation and on, and on.
I see this story in my own life. I see how God has called our family to uproot and travel to a land we don’t know, so that we will be blessed, and others will be blessed through us. I know that we haven’t reached the promised land yet, but we are on the path. We are living the adventure, with God leading us day by day.
We had something good in Washington, DC. We got to pitch our tent there, and we ate some of that promised-land fruit. But God wasn’t done with us. We had to keep moving, to cooperate with the grander, more beautiful vision that God has for us.
If we wanted to be faithful, we couldn’t cling to our own comfort; we couldn’t accept just getting by. We had to let go of our own personal experience of the promised land so that we could become a blessing to the world. Because the promised land is not just for us; God wants to invite the whole world. God is giving us a hope and a future beyond our own little family as we know it today. God is expanding the circle, blessing all the families of the earth.
Can you see yourself in this story? Can you see Berkeley Friends Church? How are we, as a community, like Abraham and Sarah? Can we hear God calling us to a new adventure, a risky path of going where God calls us and discovering the promised land where God will lead us? Could God use Berkeley Friends Church to bless all the families of the earth, just like Abraham and Sarah?
I believe so. Because we’re a lot like Abraham and Sarah. As a community, we’re wealthy. We’re successful. We’re comfortable. We’re old. And, let’s admit it: we’re afraid that maybe we don’t have a future.
Abraham and Sarah thought that their family would die with them. That they would have no children to carry on their story. They were living their lives in a defensive crouch, waiting for the end.
So it must have come as a big shock when they discovered God calling them into a new adventure. At the age of 75, God was telling them, “Go! Try something new! Take a big risk, and I will walk with you. I will bless you. I will give you life, a hope and a future.”
Where did they find the courage to do this? What vision did they see that energized them to set on this long journey – a journey that still to this day is not over?
The author of the Book of Hebrews says that Abraham and Sarah perceived something that no one else around them could. They experienced a hope that, at the time, must have seemed totally unrealistic. But on the basis of faith, they acted. They took the big leap and found that the God who spoke to them was trustworthy.
God filled Abraham and Sarah with a powerful vision. He gave them eyes to see the future glory of God’s kingdom. A chain of events that God would use them to set in motion. A family history that would culminate in the savior of the world, Jesus Christ.
And so in this hope, they set out on their great adventure. Hebrews says that they “looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” They knew that they would not personally reach the end of the story, but by faith they knew how the story ended.
Even more than Abraham and Sarah, we know how this story ends. We know that the Lord Jesus has sat down at the right hand of the Father. We know that, in spite of all the terrible shakings we are witnessing right now, that the God we worship created the entire cosmos, and he sees ahead to the end. He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
This is the reality that Abraham and Sarah experienced, leaving their home in Haran thousands of years ago, back when the Middle East was still the Fertile Crescent. This is the faith, hope, and love that gave them the courage to risk abandoning everything they knew – even in their old age – to embrace the great adventure that the Spirit whispered in their hearts.
Do you hear that whisper? What is the adventure that the Spirit is beckoning us to discover together? What are the risks that we must take, the safety that we must abandon, to be reborn in our descendants and become a blessing to our city, our nation, our cosmos?
You are not an accident. We are not an accident. It’s not random coincidence that we’ve been drawn together at this point in history. God has called us to be Berkeley Friends Church, to be this particular community in Jesus Christ. The Spirit has called each one of us here. God has a purpose for us, and he is ready to guide us together.
2020 is a time of shaking, the likes of which we’ve never experienced. In times like these, it’s natural to want to retreat to the beforetimes. It can be tempting to say, “Oh, boy – I’ll sure be glad when this is all over. When the pandemic ends, we get a vaccine, and we can all go back to the way things were before. Lord, take me back to 2019!”
There’s no going back to 2019. Things will never be like they were before.
If we’re honest with ourselves, that’s a good thing. We knew in 2019 that our community needed a change. We knew that God was calling us to something deeper. We had that hunger that Abraham and Sarah experienced, that deep desire for more of God, more of his life and power and spirit in our lives. We wanted more, and we knew the status quo couldn’t get us where we wanted to go.
Well, good news: The status quo is gone. 2020 has swept all of that away. We are in brand-new, uncharted territory. We don’t know what comes next. All we do know is that we serve a God who sends us out. We serve a God who invites us into the risky path of vulnerability, discovery, and adventure.
We stand with Abraham and Sarah on the border of Haran, looking out at the road ahead. We stand with Jesus by the Sea of Galilee as he calls our name. We stand with the apostles, as the Holy Spirit fills the whole house and joins us into one body, one community. Together with all the saints, we “look forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”
Do you hear that voice? Do you hear the call? Do you feel the hope breaking through the fear? Are you ready for the adventure?
The years to come will not be like those that came before. Our community will change in ways we can’t even imagine right now. This is a good thing. We are blessed – and God will make us a blessing to the world.
Let go of your fear. We don’t have to die without descendants. God has given us a future. The future will be different. We will have to change. But God will care for us. Open yourself to the adventure. God wants to bless us and make us as numerous as the stars.
Say “yes” when God says “go.” Say “yes” to God’s adventure. Say “yes” to the stretching and struggle and upheaval that stands before us. Because we will pitch our tents in the promised land and eat from the fruit trees there. We will set up our altar and give praise to God in the land where he is leading us. We will journey onward, led by the Spirit and trusting in Jesus to prepare a place for us. There is a home for us, and many are yet to be gathered.