Genesis 12:1-4
We remember the blessing in the call of Abram who will become Abraham, the father of the world's three great monotheistic religions. Blessing run through this scripture, and on this side of the blessing we lose sight of the loss, the grief, contained in the first verse. What if God came to you instead of Abram. (He wasn't Abraham, yet) Abram was seventy-five years old when God told him to pack up and leave country, family, and home to be bless and to be a blessing to all the families of the earth.
Leave your country. Move from the familiar places of your life and move to a different country. Some of us might think about moving as the primary campaign heats up, but few wish to leave their homeland, native tongue, and become a foreigner in a strange land. Where July 4th is just another summer day and Thanksgiving isn't shopper's eve. Where the history you learned isn't the same history that everyone else cherishes. Where you are the odd one out, and your way is the uncommon way.
Leave your family. The people who know all about you, but put up with you any way. The ones who help you on special projects, celebrate special days with you, and sit with you when you are ill. Who will be with you at times of joy and sadness, if you leave.
Leave your home. Imagine what Abram had built up over three-quarters of a century. He was to leave his home at 75! Folks do almost anything to stay in their homes, and when they do leave, more than anything else they wish to return.
Why? Why couldn't God bless Abram right where he was? Why wasn't the country, family and home of 75 years good enough for God to bless right there right then? Abram doesn't ask, he leaves country, family, and home for promised land, the land of God's blessing. Leave everything in the past that is precious to you and you will be blessed.
Maybe we are Abram. Our country is not the same it was seventy five years ago. Even if we haven't changed nationalities, our nation has changed so much that perhaps some of us consider that we are foreigners in a stranger land inhabited by those whose ways are not our ways. We no longer live on farms but are increasingly concentrated in cities and the ring communities that surround them. The census 2000 found that for the first time the majority of Americans lived in suburbs, a 100 years ago, most Americans lived in rural areas.
The democratic presidential nomination is between an African-American man and a white woman. Freeways and airlines make this large land a small one. While the distance between far away towns has decreased, the distance between neighbors has increased. We don't know the people on our street, but media television and internet makes stranger's business everyone's business.
Families aren't the same they were years ago. More folks live in single parent households and for some couples marriage is a quaint option not a lifetime goal. More women work outside the home now than fifty years ago. Children, teens, and parents relationship range from traditional to inverted where children run the household and the teens are not controlled by anything.
Homes aren't the same they were seventy-five years they are bigger and farther from neighbors or older and filled with renters. Where several used to share a small house and a smaller bathroom, now smaller families have larger homes. The average household size has been declining Homes have moved from a shelter to an investment vehicle and back to shelter.
We are all Abrams. We have lost our country, our families, our homes, we grieve. Will we go on to the next verse, that the Promised Land is where God's blessing is waiting for us? Will we move from country, family, and home to the land of promise? God does not wait on our country's elections. God is not limited to our families and kin. God does not wait in our homes and buildings.
Sometimes we are anti-Abram, we feel like the promised land was the past land, where we were. Our Country, Our Kindred, Our Old Home…yet God tells us that the promise land is beyond our country, kin, and home, and that God's blessing lies there not in the past. Maybe Nicodemus is a severe example of this asking Jesus if one can go back to his mother's womb to be born again.
Jesus is talking about a second birth, not a repeat of the first birth. The first birth, to country, kin, and hometown is just the start, the birth “from above”, a better translation than “again”, is into a new land beyond native country, connected kin, and home town. Again, God is working beyond, outside of our comfortable environment that is given to us at our first birth.
This means for us, who feel sometimes as strangers as strange land, to look for the blessing of God in the new land we are, not seek to condemn the world, which even God in Christ did not do, but to be a blessing to the world, this new world, this promised land where we find ourselves. It might be new and strange to us, but God was here before we got here.
A student was called to pray at the last meeting of the seminary student body before graduation. The poor soul graciously asked that “God would go with the seniors as they moved into pastorates and positions of service.” After the prayer came the rebuttal from a second year student, “I move that God stay right here with us!” God doesn't go where we direct, but we are directed to go where God is, he is in the promise land where we are headed and wants us to join us.
Our job is not to condemn the world, but to save it. Our job is not to stay in our Father's house, our own kin and kind, our own country, but to be a blessing to all the families of the world. As John 3:17 tells us about Jesus' mission; it is to save the world not to condemn it.
How do we minister in the world like we have instead of a world that we like? A world of media, video, computers, credit cards, 24/7 workdays, mobile phones and mobile lives, of child care and elder care is what we have. How can we be a blessing to all the families of the earth? Leaving our comforts and native land behind, how can God make us a blessing?
I see a place in the hearts of the families, and the community with RIGHT and Charlie's Place, with outreach to the Youth and the community, with help from Easter Baskets to Relay of Life, to VBS for the community, to Angel Food ministries and Good Neighbors…to folks saying those folks are not about the fifties, they are about blessing people here and now.
How can we be a blessing. If I left behind my native land the country of my youth, the ties and expectations of family and the comforts of the church building for me and mine…what blessings could we be to all the families of the earth? Then we are on our way to the promise land. Then we are on our way to God's blessing so we can be a blessing.
[i]Advanced permission is given for non-profit, for-prophet use of the above at no charge as long as it is reproduced unedited with notices and copyright intact. Written copies are provided after they are preached as a courtesy for the personal, private, appreciative use of the congregation of Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church, their families and friends to support the ministry of Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church and its pastor the Rev. J. Christy Ramsey. Join us Sundays! 8:15 Traditional Worship and 10:15 Blended. Mingle in our Gathering Room between services and take advantage of Christian Education opportunities.
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